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Beyond the Lean Revolution

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Beyond the Lean Revolution

Achieving Successful and Sustainable Enterprise Transformation

AMACOM,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

The “lean paradigm” has been popular since the 1990s. Unfortunately, it solves only half the problem.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Lean is a proven system for eliminating waste and cutting costs in production and management. Unfortunately, say MIT professor Deborah J. Nightingale and research scientist Jayakanth Srinivasan, the current “lean paradigm” is only a halfway measure for improving your enterprise in a meaningful way. They discuss their “beyond lean” program – already in use at 75 organizations – as a way to surpass expense reduction and transform an entire enterprise. The authors offer solid information, though it is sometimes repetitive and tangled in maddeningly complex, convoluted sentences. Nevertheless, these brilliant technical professionals do their best to explain abstruse points about an arcane subject. getAbstract recommends this sophisticated, substantive treatise to senior leaders looking to update their approach to lean strategies and institute meaningful, cost-saving change.

Summary

Change Seldom Comes Easy

Numerous triggers could spark your organization’s change initiative: new competitive pressures; an exciting research and development project; or a significant manufacturing problem, the origins of which you cannot identify. Or maybe your employees have become disgruntled because your organizational structure or culture stifles open discussion. Or, perhaps, business is in order, sales are sound and your employees are performing well, but your enterprise seems mired in its own processes and is not moving ahead. Your “Six Sigma black belts” are busy with numerous modernization projects, but other than minor silo modifications of little importance, the overall company is not developing in a meaningful way. Whatever the reason, the time for a transformation has arrived.

Almost always, when executives institute what they hope will be significant change initiatives, the programs don’t achieve their goals, or they prove unsustainable. Often this happens because “businesses are trying to do things in a piecemeal fashion, in silos.” Leaders get distracted by concerns that “do not affect the bottom line or that are not linked to the company’s most important...

About the Authors

Professor Deborah J. Nightingale directs MIT’s Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development. Jayakanth Srinivasan is a research scientist at its Lean Advancement Initiative.

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