When you hear Lean Management, what do you think about
If you are reading this post you are probably in one of these categories:
- You want to know what this post is about, you have no clue about Lean Management.
- You want to know what this post is about, you are the type that have criticism against Lean Management.
This post particularly speaks to you reader in the latter category. If you are the former, let it serve as an educative reference or perhaps you are an entrepreneur, you can use it as an educative reference during operations restructuring or share with work colleagues.
The Presenting Problem
As a founder of a Startup WebEase Inc., I come across readers in the last category many times, while trying to pitch the values of my Startup, either through cold calling or at meetings. I battled with lots of refusals of proposals, even when I thought of the potency of acceptance as high. This happened numerous times and I wonder why one will not subscribe to Lean Management, especially considering its benefits. Well, it added up to my learning phase as an Entrepreneur during the growing phase of the Startup; the mistake I was making in pursuit of contracts, was getting in touch with wrong contacts(people whose decision-making rights are limited in the Business). I soon realized that my conversations with founders and some managers goes smoothly but the opposite ensued when I made a call to a company and an in-house accountant picked up and spoke in a way that portrays my Startup as a disruptor, trying to take away his job or a LinkedIn InMail message to the Operations Manager of a Beverage company, which resulted in refusal within minutes without consideration, whereas aftermath an approach through the same channel to the founder, resulted in consideration.
…picked up and spoke in a way that portrays my Startup as a disruptor, trying to take away his job.
Solving the Problem
Hmm, trying to take away jobs? My Precious Startup?!! Instead of creating more ?!!
Dear reader, pause for a moment. When You think of implementing Lean in your Startup , Small or Medium Sized Business, what comes to mind? I will try to guess your answer later.
To provide a justification that effectively counters your pre-assumed perception of Lean Management is to discover its real purpose. The concept “Lean” came about as a result of the strive for “Quality Management Systems” by Toyota, the car manufacturing company. It is a concept that involves the elimination of waste [what is not needed] in production systems to cater for efficiency and still retain product quality. In a nutshell, the purpose of Lean Management amongst its benefits is to accelerate product delivery to market and the alignment of an organisation's operations to strategy (focus).
If you practised the above exercise, I am guessing your thoughts tend towards implementing cost-cutting measures in your little or big organization. Perceptions of lean management always connotes the notion of cost-cutting, whether it be reduction of labour headcount or replacements of expensive fixed assets with cheaper ones, lowering the number of staff headcount etc. Undoubtedly, implementation of Lean can stimulate cost-cutting measures, for example: digitalisation of processes could mean, layoffs and hence, lower operating costs, increase in revenue and process efficiency. But actually the opposite is always the case, such perceptions towards Lean are referred to as the Old Management Style Approach. This management style believes cost-cutting as the solution to Lean. On the contrary, striving to achieve the purpose of lean, does not always dictate cost-cutting but can dictate an increase of the related asset concerned. For example, the development of a Minimum Viable Product to ascertain the viability of a business model, to prevent waste; a purpose of Lean Management, could encourage a huge outflow of cash more than expected. Likewise, the restructuring of an organization, the redesign of business processes as a result of M&A could lead to lead to increase in labour headcount.
On the contrary, striving to achieve the purpose of lean, does not always dictate cost-cutting but can dictate an increase of the related asset concerned….
Having established the purpose of Lean and an amendment of your perception has been worked upon. It is worth to recall and always resonante that the purpose of Lean Management is not to take away jobs but to enhance the operations of an organization, of which an employee could be a benefactor as well.
What We Preach
So what do we preach, we are not going to come into your organisation and reorganise your business processes, to tell you “Practice Lean”. Though we preach that every organisation should embed Lean principles, they are the implementers and we are the end point supplier waiting and anticipating the outcomes of your implementation, hoping that you will consider Outsourcing as part of your strategy towards Lean Management and also hoping that the outsourced business functions will be within the range of what we off .
