Is recruiting hindering your Lean journey?
A friend of mine was recently laid off and has been looking for a job. As he was telling me about the jobs that he had applied to, it struck me that most companies, including those that are several years into their Lean journeys, are still hiring for functional silos. Out of curiosity, I typed the keyword “Lean” into the job site Indeed.com and, sure enough, up comes a long list of functional management and leadership roles. Sometimes, Lean is a required qualification but, more often, Lean experience is a “preferred” qualification.
Why is that? If a company is looking to hire Lean leaders to accelerate their Lean efforts, wouldn’t it make sense for Lean expertise and a broader value stream perspective to be the primary qualification with functional experience secondary or “preferred”?
After noticing this disconnect between Lean and many companies’ current job postings, I believe that recruiting is an area that many organizations are overlooking as they work on implementing Lean. If functional expertise trumps Lean in the job posting and, subsequently, during the hiring process, there’s a very good chance that the new hire will also put their function above the value stream. Ultimately, this will hinder the organization’s Lean journey because it subtly (or not so subtly, depending upon the new hire) reinforces the silos that the organization has spent so much time and effort trying to break down.
If your company is on a Lean journey, take a minute and look at the job postings on your company’s recruiting site. Are you looking for new team members and leaders who have deep Lean and value stream experience or are you looking for years of experience in a specific function? If it’s the specific function, there may be work to do to align your job postings and recruiting processes to the ideal state for your organization. Run an experiment when you subordinate functional expertise to Lean expertise and see if the type of candidates changes to give you the Lean leaders that your organization needs.
