The comment and questions shown below come from a person who works at a well-known company that has made a lot of noise recently about their Lean management efforts.
What is so familiar to me about this disturbing situation is the gap between the company’s public-facing claims about their Lean prowess and what actually goes on inside the company — employees’ private reality; their daily lived experiences at work. In years past, my graduate students from other well-known companies acclaimed for their Lean efforts cited the same problems — metric-driven performance and management practices that run counter to “Respect for People.”
This is why when someone asks me “What companies are succeeding with Lean,” I always say “I don’t know.” There is no way for an outsider to know for sure if the leaders of a company actually practice what they preach about kaizen and respect for people — unless they do extensive research and fact-finding as we did for our book about The Wiremold Company.
It is noteworthy that as time goes by, both the impressiveness and uniqueness of Wiremold’s evolution from classical management to progressive TPS-style (Lean) management becomes evermore apparent. The people who led the company had a rare combination of curiosity, motivation, courage, and perseverance. The leadership team sought to be consistent with “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People” in every aspect of the business. That is what makes this book worthy of study and emulation for decades to come.
Superior financial performance and high stock price are often cited as proof of the practice skilled Lean management, both “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People,” but I don’t buy it — again, unless one does extensive research and fact-finding as we did (one the co-authors, Larry Grasso, was a certified public accountant). There are lots of ways to improve financial performance and stock price that are misleadingly or falsely attributed to Lean by the company or by outsiders.
After being in this unusual business for 30 years, it is clear that classical management nearly always co-opts Lean in many important ways, thereby producing a significant gap between the company’s public claims and employees’ reality. The gap is much more likely to widen over time than shrink due performance pressures and management turnover. Needless to say, the gap is detrimental to the credibility and utility of Lean management.
Finally, the “AI Bob” chatbot gave a compassionate, accurate, and helpful answer. My answer to the two questions posed at the end of the paragraph above is “No” and “No,” and my compassion for people in such situations has been a principal theme of my work over the years. Learn more here.