Introducing the Lean Culture Model, an alternative to the Star Model

I have been thinking a lot about the Star Model lately. It’s something I have been exposed to in the past, but given my more recent education in lean and innovation principles I have been able to view it through a new lens.

If you’re less familiar, here is the basic rundown:

• When you’re building your company, you start with a strategy — that thing that defines what industry you are in and how you are going to position yourself in it.
• From there you can start to put together an organizational structure that supports your strategy.
• Then you can begin defining the processes the structural pieces will follow to execute your strategy.
• Next comes people, who are able to bring to the table the skills needed to fill roles within the structure and carry out the processes.
• Finally, a reward structure is put in place to retain the people in order to grow the company.

I actually really like the Star Model, I think it’s a great framework that can really help to shape a new company having to put itself out there via its strategic positioning. However, I see a big problem when the company’s strategy has to change rapidly, even if it is just in small increments at a time. This situation can easily be caused by an industry that is quickly growing or changing, and in today’s world of ubiquitous technology there are few industries that fail to fit this mold.

Within the Star Model, this rapid redirection of strategy has a chain-reaction effect; if the strategy changes, the structure, processes, people, and rewards should be re-evaluated and re-aligned with the strategy. This is costly, and in most cases, re-evaluating the people piece is really hard. So what do you do? I think a lot of companies using this model do their best to focus on changing processes first, then structure if it really needs to happen. People and their rewards are left untouched. This might work for a few iterations, but eventually you’re going to have the wrong people in mis-matched roles trying to execute foreign processes. Finally, to patch the holes you see a lot of roles turning into something like a project manager that brings on contractors to fill the need for process execution.

So here’s my solution; the Lean Culture Model.

This model takes many of the same components of the Star Model, but reorganizes them in a way to allow for rapid iteration of your strategy, structure and processes. At the same time, it acknowledges that as a part of your strategy you can devise a set of company values that should be used as guides to grow and foster your culture. Your culture attracts people who are able to execute on the changing processes. Furthermore, these people can understand the strategy loop objectively and are empowered to make the structure and processes better over time. With a culture-driven workforce, your strategy becomes a much more agile component of the model, allowing you to compete for the best position in your industry.