When implementing the “Lean Mindset” most companies reach a point when using the tools and methods do not bring significant further development in their production or service delivery systems. A real paradigm-shift is needed. Successful companies promote the lean transformation not just „top-down” but they also support it from the „bottom-up”. Involving the leaders into this change appears not only to be one of the success factors but also a real competitive advantage.
This is exactly where our Deliberate Lean Leadership Program is designed to help: it combines and complements the classical leadership-competence development with the Lean leadership principles and tools not just in sake of the production-related businesses but in office environments as well.
The program puts great emphasis on the practical implementation of the gained knowledge. It adds so called peer-coaching sessions to the usual management topics and complements the “Lean Leadership” topics with transfer- workshops held in small groups where the participating leaders are empowered to try out the usage of the lean leadership tools in their daily practice, collecting own experience and refining their way of working.
Participants not only learn how to improve their effectiveness, but also how to develop efficiency in a Lean context, how to enhance the processes on their field of operation applying the “Lean Mindset” and using the tools and0 m4 ethods of the “Lean Leadership”.
1. Performance management and supportive communication
Pair coaching session
2. Responsibilities and roles of the manager in managing and optimising processes
Transfer workshop – Lean culture, communication and leadership
3. Motivation
Pair coaching session
4. Strategic thinking: management by objectives, value stream analysis and a flow approach to the flow of material and information
Transfer workshop – Identifying and eliminating losses in production and office environment
5. Coaching approach to leadership
Pair coaching session
6. Assertiveness and Conflict management
Pair coaching session
7. Shopfloor menedzsment
Transzfer workshop – structured problem solving with the A3 method
8. Time management and Stress management (+ Program closure)
Pair coaching session
Learning is made effective and attention is maintained through activities, analyses, questionnaires and experiential learning exercises. Although the workshops are fully activity-oriented, we consider it important to summarise the theories and models underlying the content of the thematic workshops.
The development program consists of 8 one-day thematic workshops and follow-up sessions (pair coaching sessions and small group transfer workshops). The thematic workshops are held approximately monthly, in two semesters. The expected total duration of the programme is 10-12 months.
Thematic workshops are one-day workshops with a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12 participants. Paired coaching sessions last 1 hour with 2 participants. Transfer workshops last 2 hours, with 3-4 participants.
The Ac2Manage Lean mobile app is an important complementary element of the program, effectively supporting turning knowledge to action and continuous learning. The combination of workshops, follow-up sessions, regular reflection on experience, peer-to-peer learning and digital on-the-job micro-learning ensure that new knowledge effectively gets transferred into everyday work, and results in lasting behavioural change.
Checking our calendar, we had a kick-off meeting at the beginning of 2021 and started dreaming about the 4.0 version of our Act2Manage leadership development application. And now, we have just released the improved version including most of those dreams. It is a major change from professional perspective as well, we implemented a number of new functions based on behavioural science and neuroscience.
Working with managers over the last decades I am getting more and more convinced that despite trainings (or because of a lot of poor ones) managers have got confused about the concept of management.
It’s always great to see when L&D professionals make an effort to find data-based evidence for the effectiveness of various training and development initiatives. One day, Fuse, a digital learning tool provider (no, not LMS, but a totally different approach) joined forces with the AI Center of University College London to work for Carpetright, an international retailer with 420 outlets and 3000 employees. They wanted to find out if digital learning results in measurable performance improvement in sales.
Over the past twenty years I have had a chance to see hundreds of performance appraisal documents that had a goal setting section. An incredibly high proportion contained low quality, vague goals, such as “keep up with the good work” or “develop communication skills”. All these managers missed an opportunity to actually carry out their primary responsibilities: improve the work performance and output of their people, and help them grow.
