“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.”
Employee: And that concludes my presentation on this project. As I mentioned previously, it will take about a year.
Boss: That’s great – but can we have it in six months?
I recently had the opportunity to listen to a couple of hugely insightful podcasts presented by the lean leader and learner, Katie Anderson.
Katie’s guest is something of a legend in lean circles. In 1990, alongside Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos, James Womack authored the hugely influential business tome, “The Machine That Changed The World.” This book is largely credited for bringing the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the attention of the wider world. It is also the source of the term of which we are all now incredibly familiar, namely lean production, with all of its immense meaning and nuance.
However, almost thirty-five years after publication, in October of 2024, James Womack spoke at a lean summit in Santiago. His message appeared to include a surprising yet compelling statement that lean had failed. During the podcasts mentioned above, Katie Anderson allowed Mr Womack to expand further upon this statement, and you can listen to that intriguing conversation here.
So, having listened myself, I would like to share some of my thoughts. I do so not because I am qualified but more to uncover my own thinking around the topic – so it may look like I am throwing out ideas as we go along – but let’s see where we get from here.
The first thing that struck me from Mr Womack’s discourse was the concept of time. Early in the piece, Womack describes the Western habit of CEOs and senior leaders moving from company to company every four to five years. He also states, very clearly, that lean is not a programme. But here is the challenge. A new leader often needs to bring a new programme or approach, and that approach needs to deliver results relatively quickly.
Hence, the quotation at the beginning of this piece. Lean is the tree that you plant for the benefit of future generations.
Some historians believe that China embarked on a one-hundred-year plan shortly after the Communist Revolution in 1949. By 2049, it is said, China plans to be the dominant global superpower. Whether or not this plan works is unimportant here, but the fact that such a timeline is considered certainly is. To truly implement lean at a deep and meaningful level, leaders must be prepared for the idea that they will not see all of the benefits – but their successors will. In this sense, we must all embrace the same notion. We are merely the stewards of the businesses which we serve. Our job is to leave them in better shape for those yet to enter the working world.
Time, when it is stretched out in front of you, can be an intimidating thing. Nothing is more terrifying in the world for a writer than that first blank page and the knowledge that you are as far away from achievement as possible. In steps Fast Terry, a shady character from the murky side of town. He offers to sell me an AI. “Why would you write it yourself?” he asks, “when this little box can do it for you?”
It is similar for those going to the gym. With years of exercises mapped out before them, Fast Terry appears from behind a vending machine (his usual place of concealment), cradling a small pill in the palm of his open hand. “You could do those exercises,” he says, “but this will get you there much quicker.”
Many have been tempted away from the painful rowing machine by Fast Terry and his snake oil. Only a few have stayed, but no one suggests that the gym is ineffectual. After all, the business model of a gym relies on pessimism. Sell far more memberships than you could sustain because most people will never turn up. No, I realise. I am the steward of my health, and it will take some hardships to maintain it. Fast Terry, annoyed, disappears in a cloud of his own, self-mixed smoke.
The mindset of stewardship is more pressing when we begin to consider businesses as being part of a community. The focus is not only inward, in improving and growing the company, but also outward in terms of contributing to the community in which the business sits. There is something of the Japanese seiri at play, which I will translate in a more literal sense as the establishment of ri, or harmony. In this sense, I am envisaging organisations that blur the borders of their being. In quiet times, they may send team members out to mow local pensioners’ lawns or paint a peeling fence. What is true is that this sort of enterprise recognises that the goodwill of their residential neighbours is crucial and that a significant portion of their future talent study at the schools in the vicinity and listen to the grumbles of their parents, when they return from behind the mysterious gates, and shed the strange language of the workplace.
Never was this truer than in villages like Bournville, which began construction on 120 acres of land in 1893. Designed to provide workers at the nearby Cadbury Factory with spacious, well-built cottages, in which to enjoy their leisure, I can imagine that generations of employees dwelt there, embued with a loyalty that would not have seen them wish to move anywhere elsewhere. However, in many workplaces, that old adversarial relationship had long been perceived to exist: the management versus the workers.
Never have I seen this relationship more starkly described as in the book “A Savage Factory,” by Robert J. Dewar. In this book, the author describes his experiences as a manager at a transmission plant in Detroit. One hourly man even confides that he had brought a gun to work with the intention of shooting the author. Of course, this is an extreme example, but if lean is to work, everyone within the team must pull in the same direction. The perception of management versus workers is a myth, but one that feels wholly real through the lens of those who perceive it. Here, Fast Terry reappears, now in the guise of a shopfloor agitator. “You know that if you do it faster, they’ll use it as an excuse to get rid of someone, don’t you?” “When the guy comes round with a stopwatch, go as slow as you can.” “That lean is just another fad of theirs – they’ll move onto something else in a few months. It can’t work here, because we’re different.”
I’ve never worked out who the disembodied they are.
I recall, during the Covid lockdowns of 2020, pondering on all of the industrial and corporate buildings sitting silent and empty. It made me ask, “Where was the business?” Was it the building? No, it didn’t feel like it; that was just a construction of bricks and girders. Was it the product? Again, no. The product was just sitting idle, in whatever state it had been left. There was no life to it, but it did have a potential energy, so felt closer to being the business. Maybe it was a set of articles and agreements that sat in a deep, dark, safe somewhere? Those documents were certainly a skeleton, but they lacked the vital components to make it move.
For me, a company exists principally in the hearts and minds of the people who work together, the customers who receive value from its processes, and those who live around and about. To get the most out of lean, there must be a harmony between all of the groups and their subsets – and this harmony must also exist in however we measure the success of the business, and the behaviour that those measures create.
It is no accident that the word company is derived from the Latin “companio,” literally meaning “those with who we break bread” – i.e. those with whom we share, whether that be food, a goal, or a shared value. This, for me, is where lean should measure its success.
What I am describing is an inside-out relationship. The external world does not create our experience of life by lighting up thought; our thoughts create our experience of the world. You don’t have to change the system to make you feel better about it. You only have to change how you think about the system. Externally, you only need one example to show that lean is a success – and while there may not be as many as Mr Womack would have hoped, there are plenty. But internally, in the influence of thought, Mr Womack can pass on the baton with certainty. For those whose thoughts begin with lean are legion. The lean thinkers are in every organisation, solving problems with customer orientation and a desire to learn. Moreover, with every small success, these lean thinkers attract one or two others. In this sense, at the thought level, lean is a tremendous success, and can only grow with more kindness, responsibility, and sustainability, from within a community of sharing.
I would say that is a pretty good legacy to be part of.
Follow this link to listen to Part One of Katie Anderson’s discussion with James Womack.
Follow this link to listen to Part Two of Katie Anderson’s discussion with James Womack.
Follow this link to read my review of Katie Anderson’s book, “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn.”