Guide
Practical Lean guide
Change and leadership
9 of 13 articles
"We have always done it this way" is the most expensive sentence in the plant
The sentence comes up in every meeting, every hall, every office. It sounds like defiance, but it is usually something else. Whoever hears it correctly gets further than with any argument.
What new plant managers almost always get wrong in the first weeks
The new plant manager wants to show quickly that he has arrived. That is precisely the mistake. The first weeks are decided not by what you do, but by what you find out.
Why your best people resign inwardly before they say it out loud
The inner resignation begins long before the letter of resignation, and it begins with the people you least want to lose. The signals, the causes and what you can still do.
The workshop was great. And then nothing happened.
The feedback forms were glowing, the action list was long. Three months later nobody remembers. Where workshops fail, and it is usually not in the workshop itself.
Production versus sales. Why the wall between departments costs so much
Sales promises, production complains, the customer waits. This conflict is not a character problem but a system fault. And it can be fixed.
What a CEO learns on one early shift, no report will ever teach
Reports smooth things over. The early shift does not. Why a full shift on the line reveals more about your plant than any presentation, and how to set it up so that it changes something.
Employee survey. And then what? Why most results end up in the cupboard
The results are in, the traffic lights are lit, and nothing happens in the plant. Why that is, and how to set up a survey so that it does not end with the presentation but starts there.
Why change gets stuck in middle management
The executive board has decided, the line is waiting, and in between sits the level that is supposed to carry everything and gets the least for it. Why that is and how to turn the middle into the engine.
When your lean manager resigns, more than one person leaves
The lean manager resigns, and suddenly the plant realises that everything depended on him. How to move knowledge from heads into structures before it is too late.