In this blog, we sometimes talk about the fact that vital, growing organizations are learning organizations. The lifeblood of a learning organization is knowledge management. For learning to sit at the heart of your organization, leadership needs to recognize and promote knowledge management at all levels. Our guest blogger today is Lean practitioner  and author Robert Camp who talks about the qualities of Lean Leadership and how they support a learning organization.

Guest Blogger: Robert Camp

The longer I practice Lean the more I appreciate how great a role good leadership plays in an organization’s transformation.

LEADERSHIP: Honestly, I can think of no other single factor that makes or breaks a transformation so readily.

A LEAN LEADER:

- LEADS FROM THE FRONT

By that I mean they make the time to learn about Lean themselves and make the decision to proceed. No successful transformation can be approached with a “do as I say” attitude. You’re asking people to change, and leading from the front means you have to change first and demonstrate your personal commitment.

- REQUIRES SUBORDINATES TO COMMIT

Lean can’t succeed without a personal commitment from all leaders. That commitment can’t be provisional or halfhearted.  Once subordinates have learned what Lean is all about, they need to commit to personally practice and support it. If they can’t or won’t, they’ll need to leave. PERIOD.

- CREATES ENVIRONMENT

You can demand people to change and they will do exactly what’s required, but no more. You’ve won their hands, but not their hearts. Only by creating an environment in which subordinates are led to embrace lean can real change take place. That brings us back to leaders lead by example and coach good performance.

- CASCADES LEAN FROM THE TOP

Most organizations are in a rush to save/make money, so they begin Lean at the bottom of the organization, where money is made. That won’t work.

For Lean to work, employees at each level need to see their leaders demonstrating it first. That means Lean behavior has to cascade down from the top. Anyone who tells you that Lean can work from the bottom up, or the middle out, has never seen a transformation to the end. There’s only one way. Top down!

- EMPHASIZES PHILOSOPHIES OVER TOOLS.

Because the tools save money, everyone’s in a rush to start with the tools first, but tools only support the philosophies. If practitioners don’t understand how Lean works, any gains made with the tools will be short lived.

It doesn’t take years to learn the philosophies. It takes a lifetime, but you can begin your use of a tool as soon as the connection has been made between the tool and the philosophy it supports. Those connections are well covered in “The Toyota Way.”

Lean becomes the WAY you manage, HOW you manage and ultimately, WHY you do everything.

- KNOWS LEAN IS A MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Lean isn’t something you do in addition to managing your company. It becomes the way you manage. Lean isn’t something you layer on top of everything else you do. It becomes how you do everything. In time Lean becomes why you do everything.

One would think profit or revenue would suffer, but the opposite is true. Lean management leads to a state, a mindset, of continuous improvement; not only reducing the cost of today’s product, but becoming more aware of your customer’s needs and creating products and services to meet or exceed those needs.

- LOOKS TO THE HORIZON

Like all great leaders the Lean leader’s focus is often on the horizon. They are scanning for new ideas, new technologies, new products, etc. Lean leaders don’t spend their time perfecting today, they are constantly on the lookout for things that will enhance their future position in the market.

- HAS PROFOUND RESPECT FOR OTHERS

Fanatical Fans return to do more business and bring others with them. Lean leaders understand that neither money, nor machines, nor technology, nor anything else makes fanatical fans of their customers. They know that only people do that. Whether it’s their suppliers, their employees, or their customers, Lean Leaders recognize the dignity of the people they lead and serve in all they do.

That doesn’t mean Lean leaders are soft. Part of recognizing the dignity of people is to continue to challenge them, to continue to hold them to high expectations. Lean leaders don’t just arbitrarily set new challenges. They collaborate with their suppliers, with their employees, with their customers, always looking to improve. Because the leaders set the standard by embracing change first, others are more open to accepting new challenges and even recommending them.

- CONTINUES TO LEARN AND GROW

Lean leaders don’t end their growth once they’ve embraced Lean. They continue to learn and grow. Moreover, they create an environment in which everyone continues to learn & grow. That is why Lean organizations are frequently referred to as learning organizations.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost

If you have recently embarked, or are thinking about embarking, on the road of Lean, ponder these words, as they will have profound impact on your life.

To learn more, visit Getting to Lean or contact Robert Camp at Robert@gettingtolean.com

During the last several weeks I have seen several titles of workshops on how to work with SMEs that bothered me, and I feel the need to step forward and speak up in defense of experts.  I don’t vent often, but this needs to be said.

No, I won’t call out the sponsors of the workshops, but I will call out the pattern of disrespect because it offends me to see experts insulted. In fact, let me suggest that if people who work with experts do not respect the people they work with or enjoy the job, they should find other work or change their attitudes.

Here’s what I have seen:

• One workshop offered help on how to work with “brilliant jerks”. Seriously? If you think someone is a jerk, why would you want to work with them? Even more poignantly, why in the world do you think they would want to work with you? When you resort to name-calling, it demeans not only the other person but it demeans yourself.
• Another workshop insinuated it will help you deal with experts in a way that suggested deer-hunting or working in a morgue. This particular company said it can help you “snag, tag and bag” your expert. The image is really quite macabre when you think about it.
• A third consultant suggested that experts are sort of goofy and need to be managed in a way that is manipulative.

A Real Methodology that Respects Everyone

Yes, good people skills are essential to working with experts. In fact, good “soft skills” – as they are called in the training industry – help in all relationships. My colleague Nathan Eckel is an expert on working with subject matter experts from a soft skills perspective.  He is an expert in leadership skills. In fact, he speaks and writes on how to “lead” experts from a 360 degree perspective. That attitude, one of leading another in a relationship of mutual respect, is a positive approach.

He and I often tease each other about our different mindsets about working with experts. Nathan is about soft skills and I am about process, templates and methodology. He points out that we actually are both about all of it but we focus on different parts. Certainly, we recognize the need for both approaches and the value of having a combination of those skills in any project.

Nathan says, “We differentiate what we do, and we both add value to everyone by valuing everyone. Our work is beyond the ‘ID (instructional design) zone’ because we want the whole team working and playing well together to get results.  We both know it’s better to be in the performance zone than the ID zone.”

Especially because I have known and listened to Nathan speak on this issue, he has made me particularly sensitive to the way we work with, talk to and talk about the experts we have the honor of knowing and learning from. A respectful attitude ultimately spells the success or failure of your training project. More important, they lead to success or failure in life.

If someone thinks they are working with a “brilliant jerk”, guess who the real “jerk” might be?