Leaning Towards Change
Seduced by the publicity surrounding the impact of Lean on organizations, its no surprise that people new to Lean, upon hearing or reading such information, are anxious to implement a continuous improvement initiative in their organizations.
What has received little publicity, however, and often frustrates Lean implementation, are the employees on whom Lean is often inflicted, albeit unwittingly. The culture of an organization can repel attempts to implement Lean, so it is vital to understand the culture that you have, so that you can create a cost-effective implementation plan. I say cost-effective, because many organizations spend more time, effort and money to implement Lean than they first envisage, or they give up, or they settle for a halfway house solution. Often, they do not realise that it is their prevailing culture that is out of alignment with the ideology of Lean. 6 sigma training
Here is a story of one company, between 2002 and 2004, who realised that they needed to be cognisant of their organizational culture when implementing their Lean programme. The company concerned is a fully integrated manufacturing business, covering product development and design, through to product installation. Sales are around $25 million. They employ 150 people. The company had changed ownership at the beginning of 2002, moving from being part of a much larger business to a stand-alone profit centre. Ill call them ABC Co, for purposes of anonymity.
In the summer of 2002, a survey was undertaken, to assess the prevailing organizational culture, to understand how well the existing climate would support Lean working methods. The results were revealing. They showed that, on nine out of the ten dimensions of organizational culture, employees perceived the organization as being below average. In particular, the employees felt that communications, structure, planning, leadership & humanistic working practises were inappropriate. Interestingly, the one above average response said that employees viewed the organization as being a sociable place to work, although morale was slightly below average.
Put into context, employees appeared to be saying that the organization was very hierarchical, rigid and autocratic and not a people centred company. The sociability seemed to arise out of two situations: firstly, the organization had been established for very many years, with little staff turnover, and secondly, employees stuck together, to defend themselves against the management. Morale appeared to have dropped over the preceding months, largely because the employees were apprehensive about what the new management team were going to get up to. This did not appear to be a particularly good cultural backdrop for a smooth Lean implementation programme.
Meetings were held with the Directors, to discuss the results of the organizational culture survey, and to create an action plan to try and improve the working climate, before announcing a Lean implementation initiative a few months later. Incidentally, during the survey, employees had commented negatively on how previous management initiatives had fizzled-out after a very short while.
Anecdotal evidence during the period following the original survey suggested that the management were trying to address the employee concerns. A Lean initiative was announced, and commenced in Autumn 2002.
In January 2004, the organizational culture survey was repeated.
Compared to those four dimensions in the 2002 survey, which attracted particularly negative views from employees, the 2004 survey results showed that employees perceptions had improved marginally on communications practises and considerably on leadership practises and organizational structure. Employee perceptions had lowered on how sociable the company was and how committed employees were towards the company. This was echoed in the morale score, with a drop of 26%, and on the secure/insecure scale, a drop of 31%.
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