I would like to thank Dr Marc Anderson of Green Bay for the job he has done on my hip. Doc you have given me my life back. Thanks to you and your staff.

To truly transform into a Lean company, the company’s culture must be addressed. Culture isn’t a vague term – it is key for improvement success. Creating a Lean Culture addresses both active resistance to change and the tendency of people, like a dieter reaching for ice cream, to revert back to old habits after the effort to change has passed.

“Culture has really been missing over the years,” said Maureen Brom, WMEP manufacturing specialist. During the 1980s, companies were implementing quality circles, TQM and other improvement efforts. “It was a lot of the same improvement changes companies are making now, but what was missing was getting people involved in the process.”

Lean Culture deals with this issue by acknowledging that culture greatly influences many facets of daily work tasks, as well as improvement efforts. How change is introduced, and the reaction to it, is determined by culture.

To better understand the dynamics of a Lean Culture, it helps to know what business culture is – a pattern of behaviors or problem-solving techniques commonly used by individuals in a company. A Lean Culture has specific qualities that define the behavior of the employees.

A Lean Culture:

• Focuses on the customer: “Employees need to understand who the customer is,” said Brom. “They have internal customers also. How they serve the external customer is directly tied to how they treat each other internally.”
• Is totally committed to continuous improvement: For this kind of commitment to occur, all employees need to be involved in the improvement process. This means keeping them enthused about the process and creating a safe environment for them to make suggestions and take risks.
• Communicates a clear vision for the company to all employees: “This is key,” said Brom. “If everyone is going in a different direction or doesn’t understand the vision, it’s difficult to pull together as one big team.” Senior management needs to identify the vision and help employees understand how their daily tasks relate to the vision.
• Ensures everyone knows their roles by setting clear standards and expectations: The expected behaviors within the organization need to be spelled out. It should be clear that the new culture is now customer-focused, and that the commitment to continuous improvement is genuine and permanent.

A Lean Culture also encourages all workers to contribute ideas, responds quickly to suggestions for improvement, works to keep everyone learning, seeks perfection in its products, services and processes, and enjoys the visible support of all leaders.

Teams are the basis of the Lean Culture infrastructure and include a core team, steering team and project teams. Senior management makes up the core team, which works to support the Lean process and remove any roadblocks preventing successful implementation. The core team also provides metrics that are directly tied to the company’s success and that employees can directly affect. The steering team, a cross-functional, multi-level group, drives Lean implementation. Finally, project teams work on specific processes to improve efficiency.

Even after establishing a Lean Culture infrastructure, some companies have problems sustaining change. Resistance often comes from middle managers who feel threatened because decision-making authority has been expanded. “Resistance can be overcome when they understand that their new role is to lead people, not manage them,” said Brom. “They should be focusing on strategic areas, not day-to-day decision making.” Lean Leadership addresses these issues.

Changing a culture can’t be done without support from senior management. “If you don’t have buy-in at the top, it won’t work,” said Brom. Senior managers are important because they set the ground rules for the new culture. In addition, long-term commitment to continuous improvement starts with top management. This commitment is expressed in policies, practices, language and actions that shape employee behavior at all levels. Because of the vital role played by top management, Lean Leadership is an essential part of Lean Culture.

Since a primary goal of a Lean Culture is to build an empowered workforce, empowering leadership behaviors are crucial. Learning to use empowering leadership behaviors requires motivation and skill. Some actions senior leaders can take to create a Lean Culture include:

• Empowering workers at all levels to act on behalf of the customer. Assemble project teams made up of frontline workers and a steering team with rotating membership to foster the participation of all workers.
• Respecting and using the expertise of everyone. Put up a suggestion box that includes a formal system for implementing good suggestions.
• Encouraging risk-taking to test improvement ideas. Urge workers to try new ideas, such as changing the location of equipment to improve efficiency. The final decision on where it goes should be made by the people working in that area.
• Using Lean to improve the way people do their jobs, not to eliminate jobs. When you find extra capacity in one area of a process, there is usually another area where more capacity is needed. A Value Stream Map shows the locations of both bottlenecks and overcapacity. People can shift from one areato another.
• Building consensus on and establishing clear ground rules that support the vision. Get feedback from workers to make sure new rules are realistic. For example, can parts be supplied to assembly within a day? Find out before setting the rule in stone.
• Supporting continuous learning for everyone and actively seeking continuous learning for yourself. Set a specific goal (hrs/yr) for the amount of employee training.
• Making needed changes to align organizational  structure, management systems and measurements with the vision. If you implement Lean on the shop floor, it will also be necessary to align the accounting system to Lean, i.e., Lean Accounting, which uses different measures.

Being an effective Lean leader requires a willingness to learn new leadership strategies, including personal effectiveness and interpersonal effectiveness. Personal effectiveness helps people understand their own personality and recognize personality traits in others so that they can interact more effectively with them. Interpersonal effectiveness shows how to be a better communicator, actively listen and handle conflict resolution while preserving employees’ self-esteem such as collaborative strategies that help managers lead in a constructive, positive way.

Lean leaders also are skilled at leading teams and managing change, especially when addressing the normal fear associated with change. “So many people have been put in a position of leadership, and they’ve not been given the tools to do it effectively,” said Brom. “When they find out about these strategies, they say, ‘Wow, I wish I’d known this before.’”

The benefits of Lean Culture and Lean Leadership include retention of good employees, an improved bottom line and sustainable improvements. Without a Lean Culture, companies risk spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars on technical changes with no buy-in or ownership to sustain the change,” said Brom. “They realize short-term gains, but don’t get the long-term gains.” Lean Culture is not abstract but a real factor in generating long-term results, because changing the culture makes continuous improvement a way of life.

I wish I could claim this article but it was copied and posted from the WMEP website

Linkedin Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/autenjim/

Company Name: WMEP (Wisconsin Manufacturers Extension Partnership)

Company Website: www.wmep.org

First realize that I am not an economist just an everyday guy who pays attention to the world that surrounds him. Most of the time. For those business owners who were just getting started in the late 90′s and early 00′s history kind of repeated itself. Once again we got caught thinking that we could run wide open forever. So what did we do… hire more staff… build mre buildings……borrow more money. Life was good. Or so we thought.

A wise man, by the name of Edward Graetz, told me along time ago about his business philosphy. PAY CASH! don’t build anything you can’t pay for. I used to think that those were the “old days”. But, he built a multi-million dollar business from a blacksmith shop. He had every right to tell me his opinion. And he did on a regular basis. For you see he was my wifes grandfather. A man who lived through the depression, built his business, held 16 patents in his life time and forgot more about business than I will ever know.

So once again my question is….desparate times? People managed to make a way for themselves in prior times of economic hard ship so what makes this different. I personally think it is because of our unwillingness to admit that our elders know more than we would wish to give them credit for. Our education helps to change our thought process not make us more intelligent. The main differnce now is the speed with which we do things now because of technology.

Right now people, myself included, need to put our shoulder to the mill sone and get things done. No complaining, jst do what needs to be done in order to provide for our families. Whatever that is “Just do it!” I won’t apologize for the rambling I just think we need to quit whining about how bad things are and be thankful for what we have. We suffer at a higher level than most!

I am still struggling with my legs. When I am lifting I feel like I am pushing but the 30 minutes after I am done I feel like I could go some more. I don’t think it is because I recover all that quickly so I will ahve to push to absolute failure from now on. Even if I hav to crawl up the steps when I am done.

This Sunday I think I am going to take all of my measurements and check my bodyfat again. Because I want to see where I am and also because I am sadistic that way.  I don’t have any other way to measure my progress other than to do that so there really is a method to the madness. Anyway I am not sure how many people if any are reading this but it is a much abreviated journal of this life changing journey and a way to hold myself accountable.

I really like the new workout it allows me to push harder.  Plus it gives this 50 smething more time to recover. The supplements I have been taking are sweet. They make me blow up like a balloon the creatine and NO mix do the trick.

 Here are some facts I found out as I started this process. If you work out in the evening as opposed to the morning you are supposed to get about 4% greater mass gains. No particular stats to prove this but I am going to try it.

On a final note is that my youngest daughter now says that my arms aren’t mushy anymore. How cool is that! that’s what I’m talkin about

I got on the scale the other day and my bodyfat is down 1 1/2  percent and my overall measurements and they are up as well. For those of you who stumbled across this by accident I am a 50 year old man who is going to compete in a bodybuilding competition in the end of the year. As you can tell by the title of this blog the journey began 4 weeks ago. I have not started from scratch. I have just completed 2 rounds of P90X. SO i am in okay shape just not bodybuilding competition shape. Thats the goal.

I have been aided by Max-out supplements http://maxoutsupplements.com/ and other friends too numerous to list. I wish a couple of things to come from writtng this blog, THat some will be amuzed that I am crazy enough to write about what I am doing and secondly but not least important that someone will be insoired in some way to improve themselves

Towards the end of 2009 I used the workout P90X to beat myself back into some semblance of being in shape. A bumpy ride at best, I must admit. In 2010 I am going to undertake something that has been a life long goal of mine. I am going to compete in a body building contest. Maybe two if I do well enough. Along this journey I will be assisted by a company called Max-Out Supplements. They have been very helpful in assisting me with the products I need for optimum results. Here is a link to thier website http://maxoutsupplements.com

Along this journey I will be posting my progress both good and bad. I look forward to sharing this little portion of my life with you. Oh yeah, did I mention i just turned 50? We arte going to set it on ROCK N ROLL BABY!

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As a business you need to play in these spaces to some degree. The extent is up to you, your staff and what you are trying to accomplish. My advice is to be methodical and to be patient as you learn. you can find me on these sites.

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