How to avoid liposuction... Lean yourself

In 1986 I worked for Vickers; a large UK heavy engineering company. All supervisory staff attended at least 10 days of training in Total Quality Management: a forerunner of Lean. Then some of us did many more days on Statistical Process Control (now called 6-sigma) and Statistical Experimentation (Taguchi and Plackett-Bogeyman). Over the next decade we were able to apply these techniques, as a team, and help the organisation become world class

Apparently recently, the Public Service of Canada has been very interested in Lean as an approach to improve service delivery to Canadians and to reduce internal red tape. Although Lean is relatively new to the federal public service, Canada is not the first public sector organization to adopt it. HM Government in the United Kingdom, has experienced failure with Lean: e.g. Pacesetter. One path that several public organizations in Canada are now engaging on is very similar to the path the UK took more than 10 years ago: creating armies of internal facilitators and over-relying on Lean workshops and tools. This path has proven to be unsustainable (Radnor, 2013).

The problem with armies of facilitators is the separation of work from improvements that reflects a lack of understanding of what Lean truly is: participatory science. Understanding Lean as participatory science is to understand that knowledge about problems (and countermeasures) resides with the people doing the work, in their context. Lean is about creating a culture of making everyone, at all levels (including senior management) responsible and accountable to solve problems in their work, every day. In such a culture, value is determined collaboratively with external clients, not solely by and for internal clients.

In contrast, armies of facilitators assigned to specific “Continuous Improvement Divisions” or “Lean Units” generally lead to a culture of improvement ‘experts’ who are responsible for planning, implementing and reporting on improvement activities. A hammer looking for nails. Solutions in search of problems. Daily work meanwhile remains disconnected from improvements. Lean in these organisations is unfortunately reduced to applying the same Lean tools regardless of problems. Lost is the strength of participatory science: a deep, shared understanding of the problem, of what holds value and of countermeasures, in context.

Work and improvements cannot be separated. The team must grow together!