The continuing faith that the Lean community has on changing top leaders’ behaviors, from the old way of leading to the new Lean way of leading, is worrisome.
Why? Because it is based on a preconception that leaders’ behaviors are rationally informed and thus can be changed via facts, persuasion, etc.
As such, it totally discounts the reality that leaders’ behaviors are also nonrationally informed by magical, superstitious, and mystical beliefs — to a greater much degree that people realize.
Experience over the last four decades tells us that leaders’ behaviors — especially top leaders’ behaviors — are very difficult to change.
The evidence for that is the remarkably low number of so-called “Lean transformations” that have occurred, as they require substantial changes to a wide range of leaders’ behaviors.
Lean professionals’ belief in the ability to change leaders’ behaviors also has a substantial nonrational basis, likewise informed by magical, superstitious, and mystical beliefs.
Scientific thinking applied to this problem for leaders as well as Lean professionals should guide people towards investigation to learn more about it, and experimentation to try to solve the problem.
If you want to learn more about this, and apply scientific thinking to this problem, please read these books: