For many organizations, lean management can be a significant difference maker. It not only eliminates waste on factory floors but also ensures streamlining of digital workflows. In simpler terms, each organization, regardless of its scale of operations and size, can benefit from it.
However, in applying this helpful tool, many CEOs overlook applying it where it may matter the most: the C-suite itself.
The result is an ironic one where the principles that drive efficiency across organizations are ignored in the very sector expected to steer that efficiency. To that end, CEOs must ensure they keep applying the following rules to the very top of their organizations:
Eliminate Waste
As stated before, lean is not about cutting costs or reducing headcount, or at the very least, not only about it. At the executive level, waste can often transform itself into noise. Doing more does not always mean doing the most.
Just as weekly reports that summarize outdated data, redundant meetings that interpret what dashboards can already show, and emails that regurgitate stale insights. All highly important parts of organizational workflows, and all adding little to no value.
In that sense, every delay is a waste.
Amplify Flow
This is where the nature of the organization becomes a factor. In manufacturing, flow is king. However, in management, there are significant barriers to flows. As a result, inefficiencies originate at the departmental level.
Marketing runs metrics, finance tracks ledgers, and operations monitor outputs…and yet, how often do all these departments coordinate their efforts to ensure they flow together? Information moving in silos will only result in fragmented insights.
Flow, in its truest sense, must mean seeing how each of these operations affects organizational ROI in real-time.
Build Quality In
When it comes to lean management, quality isn’t a mirror to use at the end; it must be built into the entire organizational workflow at every stage. And yes, this means the decision-making stage as well.
As insights get filtered through layers of management, a natural degradation of quality occurs. Data is summarized, reinterpreted, and delayed, which in turn leads to it losing its raw quality by the time the CEO has viewed it.
Any decisions based on this data will be based on polished assumptions, and not facts.
Respect People Closest To The Data
A key aspect of lean management is respect for the people working with the details that CEOs don’t. While traditional management hierarchies stifle these voices, lean must aim to give them their proper due.
This means encouraging direct communication, bypassing unnecessary layers, and empowering people to share real-time feedback.
As visibility and respect for the details go hand in hand, the people with the knowledge of the data must be treated with a proper stake in the decision-making process itself.
Pursue Perfect Clarity
While traditional management hierarchies pursue control, lean values clarity above all.
The more complex an organization becomes, the more tempting it is to have one centralized authority. It makes things easier, but it all comes at various costs, the chief of which is the absence of transparency. This lack of transparency leads to blind spots, which in turn lead to inefficiencies.
Hence, perfection doesn’t come from greater oversight, but from greater visibility. The more the information is available, the more actionable it will be for everyone involved.