While Lean/TPS is an unbeatable system to engage people and drive performance, its deployment is still limited outside of Toyota. This is a mystery we need to solve. — Bruce Hamilton
Those words are from Bruce Hamilton’s blog post. titled: “Old Lean Dudes.” Here was my reply:
I solved that mystery — from not one, but from six different directions due to the complexity of the problem: status, rights, and privileges; irrationality, secular spirituality, aesthetics, preconceptions, and workmanship. The actual problem is that the crew shown in the picture does not want to acknowledge that the problem has been solved and move on to the next phase: What to do about it.
Go here to learn how I solved that important mystery, which bedeviled progressive management since the days of early 1900s Scientific Management.
Now, let’s face some facts. Despite what these men have said, they do not want you to succeed with Lean. The proof is that they withhold relevant information and want you to believe their words that the mystery still needs to be solved. It does not.
It is intransigence such as this that prevents the so-called “Lean movement” (not really a “movement”) from moving forward. What causes it? Pride, ignorance, rivalry, bad for business, or something else — all of which is “behavioral waste” (a term I coined in 1999 in my award-winning paper titled “Lean Behaviors,” now regarded as a “pioneering study.” You can find the paper here).
Another fact is that they had decades to solve the problem if they wanted to, but did not do so for reasons that only they know.
Starting in the late 1980s, James Womack and Daniel Jones were leading the Lean Kaikau Crew (kaikaku means “radical change” in Japanese). They were spearheading a radical change in management thinking and practice. But, today, they and their close associates, “old Lean dudes” in Bruce Hamilton’s vernacular, are the Lean Kaiaku Crew (kaiaku means “deterioration” in Japanese). Rather than solve the most pressing problem in all of Lean world or letting you know that the solution to the mystery has existed since 2018, they have presided over the deterioration of Lean management. But a positive attitude they must keep, for that is what’s best for the business of selling Lean. “Customer-first?” No, not for this.
Bruce’s blog post concludes with these words:
Please join us on November 7-8 in Providence, Rhode Island to help ‘solve the Lean mystery.’ For more conference and session information, click this link: Solve the Lean Mystery
Here you have direct evidence that the purpose of claiming the mystery still exists is to sell tickets to the 20th Annual Northeast Lean Conference. Needless to say, the agenda has no session devoted to solving the Lean mystery this year or in the prior 19 years.
Like all other Lean conferences, this is a science-free feel-good gathering to share success stories and fulfill participant’s spiritual needs. As such, they can never devote time to the depressing topic of deeply examining why “deployment [of Lean/TPS] is still limited outside of Toyota.” Intentional or not, marketing the conference this way is at best manipulative and at worst “bait-and-switch.” Either way, it carries the scent of being unethical for those who profess “Respect for People.”
It is unfortunate that so many Lean professionals fall for this and related forms of misrepresentation tied to selling Lean goods and services, and that the top Lean influencers see Lean professionals as targets to monetize rather than helping them alleviate their difficulties.