Lean implementation can help all levels of your organization, including employees and patients. But for lean methodology to be most effective, it’s crucial that your leadership teams learn skills and develop new behaviors to engage teams in problem solving, improving processes, and developing people.

Using the principles of the Toyota Management System, our Lean Leadership Development program coaches teams to develop a daily management system and develop leadership behaviors that will guide your organization’s leadership toward becoming successful lean leaders.

How Lean Leadership Development Works

The program teaches leaders skills so they’ll be prepared to engage teams in:

• Problem solving
• Conducting daily improvement routines and practices to complement event-based improvement
• Maintaining organizational alignment using visual management systems, with a focus on process and results

During this five-unit journey, vertically integrated, unit-based leadership teams work together to develop a consistent approach and begin to coach and mentor others. By practicing as a cohort, leaders learn to use an interlocking system of management principles and methods that focus on their role in improving processes and developing people.

Through changes in leader thinking and behavior, culture shifts and lean transformation can be sustained. Each workshop is designed as a learning laboratory in which leaders build, plan, and practice new tools and skills in iterative learning cycles. During the time between workshops, typically six to eight weeks, participants use new skills on the gemba—the locations where the actual work is done—with onsite coaching to support development and review progress during each successive workshop.