Why Lean and Agile may save your business
Did you read the McKinsey article? If not, I strongly recommend you do. As you’ll find in the article, there are many good reasons to have a look at Lean Production. But there are also pitfalls. Here’s my recent blog. And here’s the original McKinsey article “Next Frontiers for Lean”. I will try and prove why Lean and Agile may save your business. And that adding some LUCKc Concept may improve your chances.
Your business model is under threat – and Lean and Agile may save it
In a conference arranged by Kongress Media and Agile Elephant on transforming enterprises in London Nov 2014, it was stated from several areas – exactly that: “Check your business model – it’s under threat” and “Someone else is having your lunch”.
Now. Except for these excellent reasons provided in the article, in 2005 I found most well-working transformations based on Lean Philosophy or similar need more. That for me became the core of what later became The LUCKc Concept. In short: Lean is great – but I doubt it’s enough. And by being such a groundbreaking philosophy it also calls for pretty radical shifts to leadership behavior and power structures that are often not mentioned at first. I’ll return to that later. And there’s more: To make a transformation happen we need to work on several layers simultaneously, change very easily fall back into old tracks. To avoid this you not only have to get away from the old tracks, you may have to change your wheels, direction you’re traveling and fill in the old, deep tracks. And one of the most common mistakes in Lean is to make it look like a transition, but they are merely picking a few raisins from the cake.
But – Lean and Agile is not enough
Let me provide a few examples of what I mean by bringing the other three ingredients of The LUCKc Concept, except for Lean/Agile they are:
Unifying Communications – team by networking:
Including human communication means with the available tech solutions, both hardware like computers, smartphones and wearables and software, apps and services. As we all know – this area is exploding with services!
Coaching Leadership – leading through others:
In research being performed as this is being written managers are shown to still perform a lot of their time “leading their staff” by means of instructions. That may be technically very accurate, but most employees today are better met with dialog, challenges and agreements on how to perform. A majority of human beings we meet are naturally creative – if you let them.
Kognition – our internetified brain adopting to our age
Yes, i kept the K to indicate the massive effect of internet on our brain’s ability to create a probable picture of what kind of reality surrounds us. It’s pretty amazing how well our ancient brain adopts to this often new environment – meanwhile it’s also rather easy to fool. You know, “we’re only human”.
Why the time is right 2015
A number of reasons why the time is just soooo right for Lean and transitions of organisations:
Here are few of the benefits I’m so eager to let out to work not only with our Swedish customers.
a. Cognitive measurement – we today what happens in human interaction with machines, software and each other.
b. Psychology – Neurological insights – we today can provide proof of some functions and deny others by measurements of sophisticated PET cameras with non-intrusive measurements.
c. Sports psychology – and in sports we both get proof what works in the shorter and longer periods. The monetary effect of course drives development.
d. Smarter visual tools – and seeing is believing. With the possibility to show what actually happens, understanding can grow.
e. Portable data power – and the power we carry can be used to all from gigabit slowmotion movies from your smartphone to analyzing water pollution data on the spot in your school project.
f. Video and photo powers including slomo and fastmove – again: by showing a normally slow process like people passing a square in a day – or the landing of a bat – understanding grows.
g. Smarter algorithms – will find out new things we aren’t even aware of today.
h. Wider knowledge of coding and programming in ordinary staff – as programming will become/is currently becoming a subject at school
i. The nature of lean and agile work – accepting mistakes but learning widely from them – helps strengthen organizational culture
j. Coaching skills advance – as the coaching style becomes more common – it finds new areas – like team coaching
k. Precision – as continuous improvements and making mistakes are both part of our standard – precision WILL indeed improve. It already happens!
l. New values, previously not present on this market – new tech not only provides new habits – new values and demands occur
m. New paradigms previously impossible – with new combinations, new actions become possible. Like Ultra light, super strong materials will change our sports
n. Infographics – values of this biz today can be displayed in seconds, making space for adoptions and adaptions for tomorrow
…and there’s a lot more to come.
We are on the brink of something really big. Want to join?
Remember that joyful little kid you once were? What if…. that kid could jump out in some of those stiff meetings and make a change?
What if?….
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