How to Grow Big by Going Lean?

The Secret of Lean-Sizing your Organisation

A lean organization operates on an optimal cost platform. Going lean, however, is not the same as “cost cutting”. Lean organisations grow by doing more with less resources. Going lean means going beyond legacy low productivity growth to embrace new mind-sets to unleash unconventional innovative approaches to everything that leaders, managers and workers have been accustomed to doing so far.

“Problems cannot be solved with the same mind-set that created them.” ― Albert Einstein

The lean organisation provides the operational framework for defining a company’s purpose and decision-making to reflect the needs of all stakeholders. The lean framework engages stakeholders in the co-creation of the company’s value proposition strategy from the ground up so as to gut feel and guesswork out of strategic planning.

The empowered lean business corporation is the proven most effective organisation. No business success is based solely on technology. Quality people make products/services distinctive through superior quality and total customer satisfaction. And it is their commitment, determination and resourcefulness which drive the business organisation to achieve excellence and advances in technology and systems for a sustainable excellence in the marketplace.

The Secret of Successful Lean Organisations is Empowered People.

Empowered people in a company have a profound sense of control and ownership over their jobs. A high-commitment human resource strategy will encourage empowered employees to take on more responsibilities, emphasising mutuality or team synergy and produces a stronger commitment to excellence. Within such a corporate culture, and guided by leadership providing clear mission and strategic directions, your people will focus on getting the job done, and having more responsibility further makes their work more challenging and rewarding.

Lean organisations have highly engaged employee culture.

They understand the importance of engaging employees at the entry point of staffing so as to enhance productivity and contribute significantly to financial performance. Many lacks the leadership and practical ideas for a feasible employee engagement program to include employees as stakeholders and participants of the strategic planning and execution.

Talent development programs are also needed for a mindware shift in employees from fearing problems and innovations to embracing and celebrating change. No one in a lean organization is comfortable with successes achieved and they always have scenario roadmaps in readiness for the changing circumstances in the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) marketplace today.

Exceptional management leadership in lean business organisations focus on corporate values such as openness, honesty, self-direction, development and the promotion of innovations in the workplace.

The fundamental management task is to visualize, optimize and manage the entire organizational value stream as one value-generating system with sustainable knowledge creation. Among the tangible goals are the elimination of waste, embrace sustainability targets, building quality into every process and system, on-time delivery, customer empathy for total customer satisfaction, and respect for people. The result is continuous ingenious, creative and responsible marketplace-oriented contributions from its motivated employees.

HOW TO BEGIN TO GO LEAN?

It starts with a strategic business review and planning to clarify the future direction and nature of the business given the increasing crunch in manpower. Only then will it be possible to design, develop and build the most effective organisation that will “do more with less”. “Business” and “Organisation” are not the same thing. A Business applies resources to create superior products and services to meet the market needs; whereas Organisation is the way in which those resources are organised and administered; referring to the systems, structure, jobs and corporate culture.

Companies who want to command continuously sustaining competitive positions in their current marketplace must continually renew their organisations. They do this by changing the organisational “shape” and “size”, reducing “layers” and increasing the “span” of responsibilities as well as embedding “agility” and “adaptability” in their corporate culture to engage new and dynamic challenges in the changing marketplace environments.

The values, beliefs and norms that constitute corporate culture also provide the cohesiveness for corporate activities and affect the implementation of the flexible corporate strategies by the language and manner that strategy is communicated from one organisational level to another, vertically as well as horizontally. Shared values and beliefs define the fundamental character of a lean business organisation, providing that unique organisational personality that distinguishes it from all others.

Organisations and people can be empowered with a greater awareness of your corporate values so as to develop an ongoing organisational response, driven by these values, to the ever-changing and competitive business operating environment and marketplace. The immediate leadership task is to facilitate the growth of lean business organisations and empower your people to achieve greater effectiveness and success through understanding and discovering the value of leadership in human resource management.

The “secret” in growing effective Lean Business Organisations is High-Commitment People Teams nurtured from the foundation supported by the corporate pillars of Leadership, Culture and Strategy. You can “Grow Big by Going Lean” from engaging the following people areas:

[1] Culture Development & Strategic Planning

[2] Strategic Human Talent Management

[3] Lean Sizing and Organisational Development

[4] Training and Development for Fewer Jobs with Higher Pay

[5] Corporate Employee Conversations Strategy

[6] Impact Oriented Rewards Sharing System

[7] Continuous Corporate Values Reinforcement