Here is a preview of the Associated General Contractors of America Enthusiasm for Lean webinar which will be moderated by Sean Graystone and co-presented with Joanna McGuffey on May 7. The focus of our conversation will be the importance of and an approach to cultivating an enthusiastic commitment to lean practices. Even if you are not in the building industry or have yet to apply what is known as a lean management philosophy to your work, the webinar is relevant if you are concerned about having deeper employee engagement within your organizations.
The program starts with an introduction to a lesser known and fascinating history about the origins of Lean. While the Toyota Production System, on which much of commonly understood lean thinking is based, began to be developed in earnest around 1950, the Lean Story at Toyota begins more than a half-century earlier. We’ll provide a summary of that history along with an explanation of why the shared identity and purpose created during that time was necessary for the development of lean practices.
Then we will share a transformation model for explaining why lean was able to be sustained at Toyota, and why it often loses traction elsewhere. The model is a path to understanding why some organizations can sustain continued growth and success, and a map toward creating continued transformation in other organizations and within an individual’s professional and personal life. We’ll invest some time explaining the four elements at work, and why these elements together foster a human-centered organization.
These elements are labeled Connection, Cognition, Commitment and Challenge. We find the elements of this model at work in other successful organizations, and on successful building projects. In our research we have found case studies prepared by others where we see some of the elements of the model have a positive impact, and one case study where all four elements were at work.
We’ll end our presentation with our recommendation on how project teams and organizations can put all four elements of this model to work. Even in a multi-company, multi-discipline work environment the steps toward sustained transformation are not difficult to understand or begin to implement. The main challenge is maintaining daily focus on learning and growth across an entire team of people, and we’ll provide recommendations on how you can maintain this focus among your team.
Click the following to register for the webinar.
AGC Lean Forum Enthusiasm for Lean Webinar
