Lean Philosophy

This Article is not About Eating Less, BUT

Do you recognize yourself, as fit, lean, and flexible? A body ready for life, a figure ready to deliver value with flexibility?

This is not what I would like to talk about. Indeed, most of the time, when I am not writing on Medium, I am restructuring companies, trying to reduce costs to support organizations to survive.

Currently, black clouds are amassing and slowly preventing the hot Summer European sun from reaching planet earth. The war in Ukraine and inflation fears are increasing pressure on companies to reduce costs and become leaner.

As I mentioned it in another article, very soon the war for talents will transform itself into a war of the talents to get a decent, regular salary. I have seen it before. Here we are again, trying to correct the excesses of the past.

In 2009, it was the subprime crisis, in 2022, the aftermath of the corona crisis with its unprecedented money injection in the economy coupled with the war in Ukraine. The cause does not matter, the result is always the same. In many cases, what we call “direct employees” will pay for the mistakes of the past. We call direct employees the guys that are generating value in a production company. They work on the machines and assemble the goods that we or other companies buy.

You would of course assume that these employees are the treasures of companies and are treated as such. Indeed, in many of them, they embody the know-how and the experience necessary to fabricate what is sold. This know-how is oftentimes and surprisingly not documented so when these employees for one reason or another disappear, they take their know-how with them.

In many cases, they get the worst salaries, work in the worst conditions, break their backs and sniff nice chemicals without the highs you would expect. They just spend their time for you, for your comfort. They are the modern slaves in our factories.

But, when the going gets rough, they are the ones that managers in many cases run after and want to pressurise even more. “Employee X, you were in charge of one machine, what about getting two, before we move to three. I am sure that if you move a little faster, with some more enthusiasm, you will manage and if not, well if not, we will find you a replacement”. It is all about lazy managers in their offices putting pressure on what, they think, are their lazy direct employees.

My philosophy has always been a different one. Direct employees are generating value. The rest of the organization is only surviving because of this generated value and has to be grateful, that the value added is paying their salaries. They have to be thankful that someone is risking his health in some extreme cases so that they can sit in airconditioned offices on nice chairs.

I have worked in many industries, in many countries. I have spent time in many production environments. I have been close to metal casting employees pouring liquid steel in molds in tee shirts and beach tongues, their skin getting burned by the splinters of liquid metal. I have been close to employees producing viscose filaments in a production hall where a hundred machines were spinning, the air filled with toxic chemicals, their feet in plastic boots to escape the filthy liquid covering the floor. I have seen their toothless mouths in this hall dark as hell. I have followed prisoners cleaning metal-casted parts, the air full of metal splinters to get some money to reconstruct their lives.

So please, before you concentrate on increasing the value-add generated by your direct workers, think twice about the cost you can save by reducing a few of your non-value generating employees, blood suckers that survive like parasites and slowly asphyxiate your organization.

Looking forward to reading your comments.