Lean Leadership – The way to achieve change
As a search consultant working in Supply Chain and Operations transformation, continuous improvement tools and acronyms have always been terms that I have found in the Job Descriptions of many of my clients. Even though I have a basic understanding of them and what the tools are used for, I do not have a Black Belt in Six Sigma or a certification in Lean; I do not possess years of experience on the shop floor or any in-depth knowledge of how these tools work.
My case is not unique, and this is the reason why here at Morgan Latif, we invited Harvey Bond -former Danaher OpCo President and Lean Leadership Consultant- to our offices to educate our team on how Continuous Improvement and lean leadership (“Leanership” as he calls it) can help an organisation to change and achieve better, sustainable results. Harvey stayed the whole day with us and took us through his career and how he was involved in many projects with his former employers and current customers.
He explained that there will be many lean tools that we can use and apply, however, there is only one skill that will be crucial: Leadership
It was an extensive schooling from Harvey – Value Stream Mapping, Six Sigma, Lean, Daily Management, Policy Deployment, 5S, like Kaizen, SMED… the list goes on. I’m not going to define and explain each one of them in this blog (this is probably not the place and would take many hours of reading) however I will try to define the leadership skills and approach that Harvey outlined as essential.
Harvey insisted on the fact that having the right people at the forefront of the transformation was the essential point to achieve transformation. These leaders need to be able to help their client or employer to think about flow as the result of eliminating bottlenecks and waste and understanding where the tipping point will be; someone who understands what the Future State is, the “why” (or purpose) and what is needed to get there… “tension” as he calls it. A leader who can align engaged teams to a compelling future state (breakthrough) typifies the difference between success and failure.
Morgan Latif has a network of diverse leaders specialized in transformation in various industries who are all passionate about creating and enabling sustainable change.
Get in touch with @albertoeiras or @harveybond to find out more!
