Creating an Icon –“The Lean Mindset”

March 8, 2021

Lean is a Mindset

"Lean” is more than a buzzword. When properly understood, implemented, and executed, the philosophy that underliesThe Lean Mindset can be of enormous value. Lean was born out of manufacturing practices, but in recent time has transformed the world of knowledge work and management. Lean is a management philosophy, a methodology for process improvement including specific techniques and tools, a set of principles, and most importantly, a total shift in mindset. It is a way leaders can change the way they think about continuous improvement.

The “Lean Mindset” is not just about cutting costs, but a way of life. It encourages the practice of continuous improvement and provides a framework for creating an efficient and effective organization. Lean principles encourage creating better flow in work processes and developing a continuous improvement culture and new leadership approaches.

Lean Mindset Objectives

The transition to a Lean Mindset is a cultural shift; it requires employees to buy in and actively search for areas of improvement within their purview. Creating a culture of profitability-correlating to ways of working that people and organizations can learn—which, over time, constitute a new company culture of how people behave and think. 

Benefits of adopting a Lean Mindset culture include:

  • Enhanced Problem-Solving Capabilities
  • Creating a framework for Continuous Improvement
  • Developing breakthrough Innovations by moving beyond predictability to experiment and beyond productivity to impact.
  • Increasing organizational Agility and Flexibility to respond quickly to customer and market needs.
  • Increasing organizational resilience and sustainability

Creating a “Lean Mindset” Culture

Four Integrated Discipline 

Four essential management disciplines facilitate the creation of a Lean Mindset Culture. Leaders that design systems that enforce these disciplines effectively ensure they are followed every day, at every level of the organization. 

These disciplines reinforce one another to create what a Lean Mindset has long been envisioned: an adaptive organization that consistently generates the most value possible for all stakeholders from all there sources it can bring to bear.These four disciplines correlate to tangible skills and ways of working that people and organizations can learn—which, over time, constitute culture—how people behave and think. The more the organization learns regarding each of the four disciplines, the more it can achieve and the faster it gets at learning and improving itself.

1) Discovering better ways of working 

  • As customers, competitors, and the broader economic and social context change, the whole enterprise must continually think about how today’s ways of working and managing could improve.
  • Problem identification and resolution must become a part of everyone’s job description, supported by structures to ensure that problems flow to the people best able to solve them.

2) Delivering value efficiently to the customer 

  • The organization must start by understanding what customers truly value—and where, when, how, and why as well.
  • It must then configure how it works so that it can deliver exactly that value with the fewest resources possible, improving coordination, eliminating redundancy, and building quality into every process.

3) Enabling people to lead and contribute to their fullest potential.

  • The organizations that get the most from their people provide them with support mechanisms so that they can truly master their work, whether at the front line or in the boardroom.
  • Enabling employees to guide and own their own development, without leaving them to figure it out by themselves.

4) Connecting strategy, goals, and meaningful purpose

  • Organizations that endure operate from a clear direction—a vision of what the organization is for, which in turn shapes their strategy and objectives in ways that give meaning to daily work.
  • The final step aligns individual goals to the strategy and vision, with the result that people fully understand their role in the organization and why it matters.

What Will Success Look Like

Organizations that adopt a Lean Mindset operate from a clear direction—a vision of what the organization is for, which in turn shapes their strategy and objectives in ways that give meaning to daily work. At every level, leaders articulate the strategy and objectives in ways that their people can understand and support. Individual goals are aligned to the company’s strategy and vision. The Lean Mindset can transform an organization’s culture to:

  • Energize teams by providing well-framed challenges, larger purposes, and a direct line of sight between their work and the achievement of those purposes. 
  • Delight customers by gaining unprecedented insight into their real needs and building solutions and services that fully anticipate those needs.
  • Achieve authentic, sustainable efficiency and effectiveness without rock-bottom cost focus, or rigid work systems.
  • Develop breakthrough innovations by moving beyond predictability to experimentation, and beyond productivity to impact.