If you want Lean management to truly take hold in your college or university, you are going to have to get faculty involved. Experience has shown time and again that highly educated people doing work on the front lines push back hard on change. Faculty are united in pushing back on what they perceive to be “corporatization” of the university or the adoption of management fads to academic work that they see as not subject to managerialism.
Who better to help convince your faculty to support Lean management and participate in process improvement than me, someone with 15 years of experience with lean in higher education and the author of scholarly works about Lean in higher education?
University faculty also dislike university funds spent on expensive consultants who duplicate internal expertise, do little actual work, and provide little or no value. I am not a consultant; I am a teacher as the graphic below shows:
If you need my help to gain faculty support for Lean and participation in improvement activities, I make the following offer to you. I will come to your campus and spend a few days with your faculty to teach them about Lean management and how it applies to academic work in higher education. The terms are as follows:
- Fee is for a minimum of two and maximum of three working days in any six month period, paid for by the university president (personal check), the college or university’s foundation, private donors, or a combination of the three.
- Reimbursement of domestic coach air travel, lodging (simple accommodations), and ground transportation (but not meals) by the above funding sources (not university funds).
- At least one dinner meeting with the president, provost, chief financial officer, and vice president of human resources (president pays out of pocket; b.good, Noodles & Co., KFC, or Burger King is OK with me).
- Commitment to return a large portion of the cost savings generated from process improvement to academic departments (especially the arts and humanities) and to students in the form of lower tuition prices.
- List of area companies practicing Lean where students, faculty, staff, and administrators can go to participate in shop and office floor kaizen and experience hands-on learning.
I am happy to help any college or university whose top leaders are committed to learning and practicing Lean management. A little preparation would be helpful.