Doing The Gemba Walk - Ayyy!
1st December 2020 by Clare Bourne
What is it?
Lean is the twofold approach to running a sustainable business practice, first is the art of removing wasteful activities that add no value to your customer’s experience of your service and product, thereby ensuring optimal efficiency and reducing costs within the business - which as a result really helps that bottom line.
Secondly, Lean is a significant culture driver - enlisting the existing talents and people resources in the business to help identify improvements in their own work practices and ensuring they are involved in a continuously improving environment - which shows significant benefits in terms of employee inclusion and wellbeing.
What types of businesses practice lean?
Despite its roots in manufacturing, the Lean way is practiced by all types of businesses. Whether you are in the product delivery space or you provide a service - you can easily apply the principles of Lean to any type of business or process.
I’m a small business - why do I need it?
Many times, it’s smaller businesses that need it the most! There’s a whole heap of reasons why small businesses need Lean (now more than ever)! Here are some simple reasons:
You have to get the most out of your resources you have, especially in terms of time, people and costs.
In a highly competitive world, your focus should always be on adding value to your precious customers.
A pillar of Lean is to have respect for people, by empowering employees to own their processes you will have higher employee engagement, ergo lower attrition.
These are just the top three reasons why small businesses should adopt Lean as soon as possible and remember: small businesses unlike larger businesses can be incredibly agile and are able to implement effective changes quite quickly!
Let’s not forget, as I type this in January 2021 we are in the midst of a global pandemic - there is a great likelihood that you have had to adopt new working practices, pivot your business or are worried about how your business is going to be sustained - now is a really good time to take stock of what can be improved going forward.
Ok, but where do I start?
If you’re reading this as a business owner or leader, amazing! The first hurdle is getting top management to buy in - so if you’re convinced at this stage, the most difficult hurdle is already cleared!
You can start by taking the following steps:
Simply taking an online course to give you the basics of Lean
Monitoring a process in your business to see what steps are not adding value
Speaking to your employees to see what improvements they would implement if they had the chance
Contact us for a free 30 min session, where you will complete the Kaizen Can Lean self assessment tool!