Lean into Lean
Lean practices are unique in their ability to provide situational awareness at scale. However, too many Lean efforts gloss over the foundational elements of structure and shared understanding (blueprints) that enable organizations to pursue multiple transformation initiatives successfully.
Our “Lean Into Lean” series of practical workshops focus on reimagining core Lean practices for the Agile era, where fast feedback loops, minimum viable products, and quick turnaround are expected. For example, our version of value stream mapping delivers the holistic perspective of the classic workshop while being done in hours instead of weeks.
Our updated suite of Lean techniques, such as Hoshin Kanri, A3 thinking, value stream mapping, and Gemba Walks, is designed for today’s hybrid workspace and knowledge-work industries.
What is Lean?
Lean is an approach used to align purpose, people, and process to realize value; it emerged from Toyota’s methods of car manufacturing and product design and has been adapted successfully for other contexts. Our approach to Lean blends classic techniques with Agile principles to deliver light-touch, lightweight approaches for contextual value realization.
Holistic Portfolio
Too many portfolio information radiators focus only on projects, thereby missing all the (operational, business) work that is concurrently happening. We advocate using the Running / Growing / Transforming model to provide a more holistic representation of work and understand the true cost of change and the tradeoffs inherent in these decisions.
Seven Forms of Waste
Foundational to Lean is the concept of waste, which is a business activity or process step that consumes resources but creates no value from the customer’s perspective. The forms of waste look slightly different in a manufacturing context than they do in software development or in knowledge work. What represents waste in your context?
Lean How: 5S
5S is a technique originally used to guide and measure the implementation of lean manufacturing techniques. The 5 principles — Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain — can be adapted for any business process improvement efforts or cognitive change approaches.
Lean How: VSM
Value Stream Mapping is a classic Lean-based technique that helps visualize all of the activities needed to bring a service or product from customer request to fulfillment and payment. It is used most often to identify waste, reduce process cycle times, and implement process improvement at all levels
Lean How: Hoshin Kanri
A Hoshin Kanri X Matrix is a single-page visual that displays long-term objectives, strategies, goals, projects, and owners. This technique helps align long-term goals with the most important activities, who does them, and when. It provides an effective alternative to OKRs and dashboards.