Develop New Habits at Every Level
The culture of any organization is affected by many things. Different industries, markets, and countries tend toward different cultures. And, the systems of information flow, work processes, structure, all of the HR systems, all influence the culture. But the culture is also habitual behavior and changing that habitual behavior requires leadership.
It is a responsibility of the leadership team to learn and model the behavior that will be desired of others in the organization. Modeling is a powerful form of teaching.
For many years I have had a team manual that taught the basics of effective teamwork and problem-solving. Effective teams are the heart and soul of lean organizations. In recent years I have developed and refined my online team leadership course,
Leadership Skills: Leading High Performing Teams. This course provides all the basic skills and philosophy of both lean and self-directed teams. My
Team Kata book is a text for this course.
Every Leader and Team Need a Coach
At Toyota every manager has a coach. Every great athlete, as a coach. In business we have tended to view the need for a coach as something remedial. “I don’t need a coach! What’s wrong with me?” Why does Tom Brady have a coach? Why do all the world’s best athletes have a coach? The answer is simply that they are engaged in continuous improvement of their own skills. That attitude of excellence, the attitude that we can all improve, is an essential model for others in the organization.
My book
The Lean Coach and my online course
Coaching Leaders for Success are both based on an assumption that a) every leader needs a coach; and b) every leader is a team leader and the coach can help to develop the team toward high performance and self-management.
The combination of these elements, commiting to principles, the redesign of the organization’s systems and structures, the development of effective teams and team leaders, along with coaching, have proven to create sustained change and implementation of lean culture.