John’s presentation last month to the Lean Construction Institute Congress was an opportunity to see Lean from the perspective of someone who has been working from a Lean perspective for a long time. While much of the Lean literature provides a wealth of information about the more visible aspects of a Lean enterprise John made the point that a lot goes on in a Lean enterprise people do not necessarily see. This aligns with Chauncey Bell’s observation that the invisible is more important than the visible.

John commented that Lean is both social and technical in nature. I believe that there is also an economic aspect to Lean that is separate from the social aspect and not as deeply explored.

Incidental work is not considered waste John’s view, and energy spent making incidental work more efficient allows a focus on reducing waste. Likely separate than John’s intended meaning, this does remind me that we sometimes can spend a lot of time deliberating over whether incidental work is or is not waste, when what is more important is whether the work contributes to production flow.

John recommended that people implementing a Lean transformation focus training on addressing key questions of purpose, process and people, while noting idea that it is easier to act your way to thinking differently. The key in a transformation is to both increasing understanding while implementing behaviors. It may be necessary to implement some behaviors before grasping why, and then adjust behaviors as learning progresses.

John presented his own house model, similar to the Toyota Production System house below, for a Lean transformation framework.

While these house models are helpful in understanding core Lean concepts, my anticipation is that we will start to think about these models in a more organic way – one which uses the dynamics we find in organisms to describe how Lean enterprises work in place of machine and inanimate structure models. It’s a shift, because we have experienced multigenerational conditioning of using machine based models to describe how the world works, including at times how biology works.

If you haven’t already, take a look at some of John’s work at the Lean Enterprise Institute – www.lean.org.