Innovation and Lean Go Hand-in-Glove
November 10th, 2004 by Hal
Joyce Wycoff suggests that one of the reasons companies aren't more innovative is they have become so lean they don't have the time for thinking, Good Morning Thinkers!: Do Less, Have More. I've found the exact opposite to be true. Taking a lean approach to projects frees up time that otherwise is spent addressing what should have happened yesterday, but didn't. Reliability in your processes and results makes time available for team members to improve and innovate in their work. That in turn makes the project more lean generating even more time for thinking and innovation.
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November 10th, 2004 at 4:52 pm
Hal,
In reading both Joyce and you, I think she’s talking about lean (too few employees) and you’re talking about Lean (a system of management that eliminates waste). Different topics. Talking past each other.
November 10th, 2004 at 5:10 pm
Then I should have been clearer. The lean movement worldwide is being mis-characterized as a source of leadership wrong-doing. A company that has too few employees is far different from an agile highly competitive firm. Cost-cutting is not lean. Cost-cutting is just the some ol’ thing that unimaginative and irresponsible senior executives inflict on their customers and the employees for the sake of pleasing Wall Street in the current quarter.
November 11th, 2004 at 6:23 pm
Interesting discussion, but I think we are talking about two different production systems. Lean manufacturing is about streamlining an ordered - Newtonian - process, where management to a great extend is top down. Opposite we have lean construction - or lean project delivery - which looks at a complex and dynamic production - and therefore chaotic - system where management must be organized bottom up and the system be operated by local control of the operations along with a distributed right to initiate local improvements.
Sven