Double-Lean focus on coaching

The Lean Enterprise Institute and Lean Frontiers joined together to create the Inaugural Lean Coaching Summit, a collaborative and hands-on learning environment to address coaching in companies and institutions that have adopted the Lean process improvement philosophy.  As noted by the hosts:

“Most lean practitioners have heard the principle ‘Before we make product, we make people.’ This embodies respect for people and describes the two responsibilities of every leader: Get work done and develop people. To accomplish these as separate activities is difficult, if not impossible. So the lean leader’s solution is to develop people through getting the work done. Easy to say, but what does it take? It takes coaching.” 

I was pleased to be invited to deliver the keynote address, based on the coaching themes and stories from my book Goal Play! But as usual in these sessions, I learned a lot of new things.  There was one bit of history from the original Toyota Lean work several decades ago.  They employed a four-part mantra that could apply to any organization today that hopes to become a learning organization:

Build people before cars;
Establish mutual trust;
Lead as if you have no power;
No problem is problem.