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Demystifying lean leadership
Journal Article
Author(s):
Netland, Torbjörn ; Powell, Daryl J.; Hines, Peter
Publication date:
2019
Permanent link:
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000387445
Rights / license:
In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted
Originally published in:
International Journal of Lean Six Sigma 11(13), https://doi.org/10.1108/ijlss-07-2019-0076
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Pre-print. This is the Authors’ Original Manuscript of an article accepted for publication
in the International Journal of Lean Six Sigma. For the final version and citation data, see
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJLSS-07-2019-0076/full/html
Demystifying Lean Leadership
Torbjørn H. Netland, Daryl John Powell, and Peter Hines
ABSTRACT
Purpose
There is convincing evidence that companies need a special form of leadership to succeed
with lean transformations. The general advice for lean leaders, however, are often obvious
or unrealistic. The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss specific lean leadership
practices for top-managers, middle managers and front-line managers respectively.
Approach
In this conceptual paper, the authors draw on their rich experience from researching,
leading and consulting lean transformations in a large number of firms.
Findings
Leaders must adapt lean leadership practices to their hierarchical level. This paper
provides a framework to understand and debate lean leadership at different levels of the
organisational hierarchy.
Originality
This paper demystifies lean leadership by offering a discussion of specific lean leadership
practices at different hierarchical levels. The paper offers a new perspective for
researchers studying lean leadership behaviours and it contains helpful advice for firms
seeking lean transformations.
Type: Conceptual paper
Keywords: Lean management, Lean leadership, Lean transformation
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INTRODUCTION
The ultimate goal of lean programmes is to instil a culture of continuous
improvement in the organisation, making the company a little bit better every single day.
Unfortunately, in many cases, lean is understood simply as the application of a few highly
visible techniques, though these are only the surface artefacts of a deeper culture
(Emiliani and Stec, 2005; Roth, 2006; Hines et al., 2011). This has in part led to many
failed attempts of lean (Pearce and Pons, 2013; Hines et al., 2018). A focus on the lean
tools alone can only achieve limited effects in an organisation and, as a result, this
approach cannot be sustainable. To succeed with a lean transformation, an organisation
must also focus on strengthening the leadership role, so that managers through their
behaviour and interactions with employees, inspire and involve the employees to work
systematically with continuous improvement (Spear, 2004; Rother, 2010; Liker and
Convis, 2011; Antony and Gupta, 2019). As such, the term “lean leadership” has recently
begun to appear in both scientific and practitioner literature (Mann, 2009; Liker and
Convis, 2011; Ballé and Ballé, 2014; Dombrowski and Mielke, 2014; Liker and Trachilis,
2014; Netland and Powell, 2016; Harald and Maurits, 2017; Van Dun et al., 2017; Seidel
et al., 2019).
To the assistance of managers seeking to deploy lean, several authors have
presented various lists of lean leadership practices in recent years. However, as we will
discuss in this paper, a limitation of most descriptive lists is that they are too general to
be useful in operational day-to-day situations. Managers that try to apply the various
textbook advice will soon experience that leading the transition to leaner operations is not
an easy task (Emiliani and Stec, 2005). Part of the difficulties arise because the companies
try to use the same leadership practices for managers at different levels of the
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organisational hierarchy (Roth, 2006; Lodgaard et al., 2016). After all, the connections to
the actual operations and people on shop floor—as well as other roles and
responsibilities—differ extensively between top-managers, middle managers and front-
line managers. Therefore, we set out to explore specific lean leadership practices for
managers at different levels in the organisational hierarchy.
LEAN LEADERSHIP PRACTICES
Management commitment and involvement remains the most referred to critical
success factor for lean implementation in the literature (Jadhav et al., 2014; Bortolotti et
al., 2015; Netland, 2016; Antony and Gupta, 2019). However, the exact management
practices and behaviours that help deploy lean thinking in an organisation have for long
been unknown to many managers (Emiliani and Stec, 2005; Netland et al., 2015). In
recent years, the term ‘lean leadership’ has been suggested as a specific type of leadership.
Normative descriptions of lean leadership behaviours are put forward by Spear (2004),
Liker (2004), Rother (2010), Liker and Convis (2011), Ballé and Ballé (2014),
Dombrowski and Mielke (2014), Netland et al. (2015), Van Dun et al. (2017) and
Camuffo and Gerli (2018) among others. These articles have helped bring some clarity to
what a lean manager should do.
In one of the earliest descriptions of lean leadership practices, Spear (2004)
summarises four lessons from the leadership practices at Toyota:
1. ‘There is no substitute for direct observation’,
2. ‘Proposed changes should always be structured as experiments’,
3. ‘Workers and managers should experiment as frequently as possible’, and
4. ‘Managers should coach, not fix’.
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Later publications suggest comparable lists. Liker (2004), for instance, identifies
12 leadership principles at Toyota which align closely with Spear’s observations. As an
extension, Liker also stresses the need for managers to create a ‘learning organisation’.
Mann (2014) proposes a four-point framework involving ‘leader standard work’, ‘visual
controls’, ‘daily accountability process’ and ‘discipline’, with the first three closely
aligning with Spear’s advice and the latter being an underlying behaviour in order to make
the first three work. Also, Martyn and Crowell (2012) present a similar approach
including ‘strategy deployment’, ‘visual management’, ‘daily kaizen’ and ‘standard
follow-up’. In yet another classification, Dombrowski and Mielke (2014) suggest five
fundamental lean leadership practices, namely ‘strategy deployment’ (‘hoshin kanri’),
‘improvement culture’, ‘self-development’, ‘qualification’ and ‘gemba’. We will focus
on Spear’s original four lessons as a starting point but borrowing from this wider literature
will later add two further areas.
Spear’s first advice is often referred to as ‘go and see’ (or ‘genchi genbutsu’ in
Japanese) and is perhaps one of the most fundamental leadership practices at Toyota
(Ohno, 1988; Stewart and Raman, 2007). The core idea of this practice is that any lean
leader should do first-hand observation at the place where value is created (or destroyed)
for the customer. Taiichi Ohno is known for his ‘chalk circle,’ which means drawing a
circle on the shop-floor, standing inside it and observing a process (Ohno, 2012). ‘Gemba
walks’, in which leaders purposefully walk the shop-floor, is another popular way in
which to enforce the ‘go and see’ principle (Camuffo and Gerli, 2018). Another
commonly cited practice that supports direct observation is ‘daily layered accountability’
(Mann, 2014), which is realised through a set of short, structured daily meetings that
provide a platform for problem- and task follow-up across all levels of the organisational
