What Do We Mean by Lean?

After a handful of reader comments and another handful of reader emails I've decided I need to comment further on Wednesday's posting Innovation and Lean Go Hand-in-Glove. I wrote it in response to Joyce Wycoff's Do Less, Have More appearing in her weblog Good Morning Thinkers! Joyce argued for more slack time so people have time to be innovative saying that companies focus on "sucking out all the fat" so they are left with a "lean machine" eliminates the time to be innovative. I commented that lean initiatives create slack time. Each reader essentially has the same thing to say to me. I've included the text of one of those emails followed by my response.

  >
  > You and Joyce Wycoff are talking two different things. When a company
  > goes "lean," they often take out too many employees "because they are
  > going to work smarter." The thing that happens is the work is not
  > analyzed for best procedures and risks, so the remaining employees are left to
  > carry an extra work load and have no time to think or act proactively.
  > You, on the other hand, are talking about solving problems before
  > removing employees — and no where did you indicate removing employees is
  > necessarily part of the plan. What you could be removing is time, or
  > waste, or effort.
  >

One way of seeing the situation is that Joyce and I are talking two different things. However the risk is that most people will not see that. When we communicate there is always the denotative meaning, the connotative meanings, and the oh-so numerous misunderstandings. Those misunderstandings have numerous sources. Here are two. The first is a blindness to the denotative meaning in the choice of words used. The second is a blindness to the listeners' knowledge of denotative meaning. As David Schmaltz points out in his comment to my posting there is a growing understanding of lean to be mean. It is that definition that Joyce conveys. It is unfortunate. I encounter one person after another that has objections to lean initiatives because they anticipate mean consequences. I've traced this back to Chain-Saw Al Dunlop's driving Sunbeam into the ground under the banner of lean. We have to change this. We can't let anyone think that Joyce and I are writing about the same thing. Lean has a very specific meaning that everyone in business must know to be successful.

The lean approach has separated Dell from everyone else in their industry. Dell is able to invest in new US factories at a time where others are off-shoring. The lean approach allows Toyota to build cars in each of the markets they serve rather than exporting from Japan. The lean approach is responsible for an Ohio general contractor expanding in a very competitive and scarce market these last two years while other firms struggle for their existence. A hallmark of all three firms is how they've systematically tapped the everyday-always inventiveness of their people. Invest in Dell and Toyota. They will continue to thrive as will other firms who take a lean approach. Too bad you can't invest in the Ohio GC. It's a 100% employee owned firm.

I have my own take on why innovation is stifled. It has to do with the Two Great Wastes: not listening and not speaking. But that's for another time…

So thank you Joyce for continuing to write on innovation. I'll keep visiting your weblog Good Morning Thinkers!. And thank you everyone who wrote comments and emails. You've given me the opportunity to sharpen our understanding of lean.

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