Lean Implementer: You Have a Choice!
Either Accept the Old Myths That Have Plagued the Lean Transformation for Decades.. OR.. Learn to Create the Right Conditions That Make Lean Change Elegant, Stable and Extremely Effective.
You are a leader of a profoundly important tectonic shift, and contrary to what most people believe to be the main role of a Lean implementer, the real job is that of change agent. And we’re not talking about “forced change” that a command & control paradigm might prompt; when it comes to Lean culture shifting, by its very nature that change is doomed to failure – Dead-On-Arrival if you will.
The change you want is easy change, smooth and stable change, change that flows from a highly choreographed plan, using a few simple but highly-leveraged new behaviors. You want behaviors that repeat themselves through conscious application until they are unconsciously habitual.
In your experience as a Lean implementer, have you experienced any of these frustrating feelings during a Lean transformation?
Disappointment after leaders promised to, but didn’t actively support the Lean implementation?
Unappreciated as the Lean effort gets treated like a cost cutting tool and your role turns into that of “efficiency sharp-shooter.”
Undervalued because Lean doesn’t get adopted widely enough to actually become part of the culture or fulfill the potential you know it has.
If you’re like me, you were attracted to Lean by the tremendous amount of potential good it promises
Lean promises a win-win-win for everyone; a win for the company, a win for the employees, and of course a win for the customers. That really resonated with me, and I’m pretty sure that if you’re still reading this, it does with you too.
I started my Lean journey after serving as an Army officer, when GE introduced me to Dr. Deming’s teachings. I remember the excitement that pulsed through my veins from reading Lean Thinking. I came to believe that Lean represents a fantastic and far-reaching opportunity – for companies, countries, and for humankind in general. Today, after dedicating 25 years of my professional life to the Lean movement, I KNOW that it definitely holds that power.
After I left the Army, I dived into Lean consulting with both feet, learning everything I could about it. I accepted any consulting assignments I could, all the while implementing a standard routine of classroom training that was designed to drum up enthusiasm, followed by a week long kaizen that included a Value Stream Map, some furniture rearrangement, and whatever countermeasures matched the client’s worst ailments. More kaizens followed, typically all at ground level operations. This was the basic “Lean implementation” plan laid out by Jones & Womack’s book, as they documented what they saw the first Japanese consultants doing during their week long visits to US companies.
I did well, mostly due to my own enthusiasm. Anyone I came into contact with typically got a large dose of Lean thinking into their brain and usually surprised me with some of the ingenious things they came up with. But it was all a facade. The gains made were nothing more than one time “low-hanging fruit” kinds of savings – savings that tended to get people excited, but for the wrong reasons. Not only that, once everyone got a taste of these savings, they were convinced that all Lean was for, was to eliminate waste and capture savings.
Little did I know that it was ALL A GREAT BIG FACADE.
You see, during these implementations, leaders rarely got involved in much more than a 5 minute kick-off speech. To be sure, they mouthed the words “Lean is good” and cheered “Rah Rah Ray, Lean It, Lean It, All the Way!” But they never changed themselves at all (or the way in which they managed), which really sucked the fun out of the work. Time and time again, I witnessed how the gains made were only temporary, until the next crisis hit and half the workforce got laid off, or a new leader took over who “didn’t believe in Lean.”
And I’m not talking about a lack of buy-in a couple of times in my career – this happened almost every time – which really made me “red-in-the-face” angry afterwards. For a long time I blamed the executives for being lazy and unwilling to get involved (which is totally untrue). Then I blamed the system for forcing management’s quarterly short-sightedness (which is somewhat true but not the real reason for the years of failed attempts at Lean).
Not in a million years did I suspect that we’d all been SOLD DOWN THE RIVER. We’d all been handed a “heaping helping” of WRONG. There real reason we were not successful is because WE were doing the wrong things to get the cultural change we sought, and WE were not doing the right things with executives to allow them to lead their way into the new culture. The way we learned to implement Lean was actually the cause of the problem all along. You see . . .
You Can’t Just “Do What Toyota Did” Implementing the Concepts and Tools, And You Can’t Even Get the Culture to Change by Imitating Them. But Luckily, You Don’t Need To! There IS A Better Way! A Much Better Way.
Because the books all pointed to the tools, Lean zealots like you and me latched onto those and thought, once management sees the results we’re able to get with these great tools, they will back “the rest of Lean thinking” 100%.
Some of it was my fault too. As an engineer and a quality expert, I gravitated to those tools quickly and easily. I’ve even met Lean experts who were completely in love with the tools. So it was pretty easy to fool us by pointing out the fantastic results the tools are capable of.
Lucky for me (and for you too), I bumped into someone who was able to show me the error of my ways. Ben was an older Lean consultant who had originally learned systems management through Deming. I met Ben in the Dubai airport during my extensive international travels. As we got to talking and I expressed some of my frustrations, he pointed out several things I had been unaware of, and I’m so glad he did.
What Ben showed me was that it was much easier to implement Lean well, if only you do the right things. The most blindingly obvious thing was that you have to make the managers do all the work, rather than doing it for them. By introducing the Lean tools myself and getting involved in the actual execution of those results . .
I was handicapping the company
and not allowing them to learn what they needed to learn.
Ben also showed me a really easy way to get buy-in from the top. By picking a single problem to pursue and letting top management install the visual system they will use to solve all of their problems, you have taken that single small step for a team, that amounts to the proverbial giant step for . . . in this case, the company.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. It was so simple and yet so beautifully sophisticated at the same time. By being the coach who installs Lean thinking into everyone around you and by building in an infrastructure to allow the Lean thinking to accelerate, you get leaders to drive the entire Lean management model directly into the heart of the business, without much resistance. Absolutely brilliant!
But how could this be done, and more importantly how could it be done over and over again? That’s where the Lean 2.0 Blueprint comes in. I’ll talk more about the Lean 2.0 Blueprint in a minute, but first let me tell you that you are in a very special place right now. You have the opportunity to capitalize on a method that works really well, again and again, to do something that is in high demand right now, demand that will only continue to grow in the coming years. Because Lean management is near the tipping point, you are in a Sunshine industry and that’s a really great place to be. You see,
Lean management is about to take over the world! Every industry, every function and every entity! We are near the proverbial Lean Tipping Point.
And excellent Lean implementers are going to be in high demand, be they external consultants and coaches, internal consultants and coaches, Lean experts, Lean managers, or Lean executives. If you know Lean and how to lead others to it, you are about to be in very high demand.
The fact is, as Lean management finds its way into every nook and cranny of our management universe, those who know how to implement, will be in a position to help many more people – clients, companies, employees, customers and ultimately the world. That gives you a “Wayne Gretzky Opportunity.” When Wayne Gretzky, arguably the greatest hockey player of all times, was asked the secret to his success, he pointed to the most basic hockey rule there is. He said, “most people go to where the puck is – I go to where the puck is going to be.”
YOU CAN BE ONE OF THOSE EXCELLENT LEAN IMPLEMENTERS!
GO TO WHERE THE DEMAND IS GOING TO BE, AND BE READY!
START leveraging your efforts by DOING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS at the RIGHT TIMES in the RIGHT PLACES.
BECOME one of those excellent Lean implementers right now.
STOP being one of the few people driving your organization’s Lean implementation.
Learn our proven way to implement Lean in your organization over the next 12 weeks, using our cutting edge, highly successful implementation methodology. Best of all, you’re coached by professional Lean implementers.
Join a community of Lean implementers who are undergoing the same frustrations you are, implementing the same methodology you’re learning here, and sharing their experiences. Bounce your ideas off them and get feedback, while learning together.
Get your leadership team supporting your Lean implementation quickly.
Insure you do ALL the right things every step of the way.
Move your company to a state of Lean management quickly.
It doesn’t mean anybody is going to be Toyota right away – Toyota’s been harvesting their collective knowledge for over 50 years. But it does mean that you’ll be on your way to doing what Toyota does – operating via systems management principles – in the right way.
Wanna be an outstanding Lean implementer who can approach any organization or industry with the knowledge and confidence that you can translate your efforts into their culture, no matter where they are on the Lean journey? Strongly consider joining us next week as we kick off training aimed specifically at teaching Lean leaders like you, how to do just that.
So Let Me Ask You – Are You Ready for This?
Are you ready to take advantage of the most up-to-date Lean knowledge, and start getting consistent, reliable results in all of your Lean implementations?
That’s what you’ll get from this course. It’s the only course ever to discuss the mechanics of Lean implementations from the perspective of you, the Lean expert. The Lean 2.0 Blueprint is an online course that you can access at your own pace – as fast or as slow as you want – walking you through the details of how to get individuals, leaders, and an entire organization to make the shift toward Lean thinking. You’re getting hard-fought knowledge that’s based on years of professional Lean consulting experience gained from the very best consultants.
This isn’t your typical “Lean leadership” or “Lean tools” course. In this course I discuss Lean implementations from the perspective of what it takes to actually “get from here to there,” as described by world class consultants who have TRIED EVERYTHING. The techniques you learn here are not covered anywhere by anyone, and in fact are considered highly guarded “trade secrets.”
You get these insider, professional methods for enticing others to want to change themselves. This is the main difference between what you learn here, and what others call “change management.” We teach how to get people to want to change, rather than forcing them with manipulative methods. Inside the Lean 2.0 Blueprint, you’ll learn:
How to think like a world-class external Lean consultant (whether that’s your job or not – this is a useful skill to have).
How to tap into your talent’s emotional “hot buttons” to trigger them to want to change their behaviors.
How to position yourself so you have NO competition . . while also making you the #1 choice that everyone wants.
A proven, step by step system for getting people to want to do implement Lean.
How to dramatically increase buy-in by giving them something of real value . . plus 5 things you can offer to executives right away.
Armed with these skills and techniques, imagine the impact you’ll have, and appreciation you’ll garner when the results are rolling in. No more false starts or violated expectations around the Lean movement at your workplace – you’re going to be part of the army that is getting real Lean change into place, and you’ll get the satisfaction of helping the entire company get ahead, and the well-earned credit for being the one who knew exactly what to do.
Having said all of that, at The Lean Expert Academy, we don’t believe that any one person can change another. That’s a fallacy and the experts who preach they can “manage change,” are already starting out on the wrong foot.
Rather, we’ll teach you how to entice others to WANT TO CHANGE. That’s a tremendously useful skill you’re going to learn right here, and we’re going to make sure you “put it into your muscles” so that you can unconsciously use it for anything you want in the future.
Bravo – very well done. I love this course, and truly believe you have a series of books here. I know I will be referring back to these sessions religiously. This is wonderful insight. You’ve really helped me understand the many times great momentum was lost during implementations I’ve been involved in. ~Scott S. VP of Lean
Imagine the confidence you’ll gain and the excitement you’ll create (for yourself and others), once you take the Lean 2.0 Blueprint methodology and put it to work successfully in your organization. Suddenly you’ll be the one…
everyone looks to, for the answers, and . . . you’ll be the one who . . .
gets called by the leadership to help them improve their areas, and . . . you’ll be the one who . .
gets the next promotion.
And do you know why? Because you’ll be able to provide everyone with certainty that YOU can deliver. And with that certainty comes high praise, appreciation and a career that is as fulfilling as you can imagine.
You also get something that isn’t really available in too many other fields of work, which is fulfilling work that is:
Intellectually stimulating – you’re helping people become creative and gain self-respect by “thinking on the job” rather than just being cogs in the machine.
Emotionally satisfying – as morale improves and positive results come in, your life changes dramatically. You’ll get high fives from coworkers and executives alike, and that will transfer to your personal life too.
Spiritually enhancing – you’re involved in one of the greatest movements in the history of mankind – the shift from an archaic form of management to an enlightened one – and you’ll know that you were instrumental in that movement.
On top of all of that, think about this as a final piece. Think about the legacy you’re going to leave behind, as a stamp on the culture of the organization that you are a part of. So once again let me ask . . .
Introducing the Lean 2.0 Methodology Anyone Can Learn
Are you ready to create a life of your own design and be a world class agent of change, while taking your Lean implementation skills to a higher level?
This course is really inspiring – it is strong at making the theory practical, and for building enthusiasm around Lean thinking. I’ve changed the way I look at things in terms of the problems I face in the company. I now see potential everywhere, and I know that all problems are solvable and can be eliminated. ~Niels v.H. CIO
In this 12 week self-paced, online training series, you’ll learn the same deep, powerful, yet simple principles the most successful coaches in the world use to produce elegant Lean implementations:
A counter-intuitive Lean implementation methodology that will give you a powerful, impactful coaching ability, so you can make a real difference in your organization and the people in it, leaving an unforgettable legacy.
The ultimate strategy that will transform you into a world class Lean implementer who is in such high demand, you’ll never have to worry about where your next paycheck is coming from.
Easy to follow, step-by-step guides and instructions that you will use to implement Lean while you are still in the training, so that each live coaching session answers questions customized to your specific implementation.
High Impact, self-paced, online training designed to get you maximum results in minimum time. Each video lesson is designed for fast learning, yet is power packed with transforming ideas that will create major shifts even before you finish the training.
You’re not learning “high-level theory” from people who are simply “paper qualified” or university professors. You’re getting the best digest of real-world solutions from the world’s top-earning coaches who are leaders in the field of Lean implementation – the exact same step-by-step process that has been used by our coaches to build highly successful implementations over the past 8 years.
In addition to this online training series, you will complement your learning journey with opportunities to access supporting resources that present specific challenges, so you can deepen your learning in areas you struggle with the most.
This is a great course. It helped me improve my Lean game to a whole new level. I’ve recommended it to all of my healthcare colleagues. ~Stephanie P. Lean Healthcare Expert
Here’s a Breakdown of Everything You Get in the Lean 2.0 Blueprint
Module 1: Orientation Fast Start (Weeks 1 & 2)
Get a detailed plan that matches your situation and allows you to customize the training and your results to your present circumstances
Implement important mindsets that help you learn quickly and effectively, while also preparing you for action – this is a highly interactive training so you’ll implement throughout the training
Set yourself up to get maximum interest from any organization you choose to work with
Module 2: Getting Buy-in at All Levels Using Simple Techniques (Weeks 3 & 4)
Get a complete implementation methodology along with a detailed outline of how to introduce and execute the methodology
Get the step-by-step process that gains you immediate buy-in from everyone in the company, be they executives or the most resistant old-timers in the organization
Learn the secret to crystal clarity framing to take the leadership team from where they are to where they want to go, using your method as the vehicle of choice
Module 3: Critical First 3 Weeks to Deliver Remarkable Results (Weeks 5 & 6)
Learn step-by-step tools you use to lock in a strong implementation sequence, so that you leverage your time . . . and theirs
Learn critical things to avoid saying or doing which can hurt results
Get a complete overview of all the methods and techniques that do not work well, along with an understanding of why you avoid them
Module 4: Critical Steps For Successful Coaching and Implementations (Weeks 7 & 8)
Learn several simple techniques, tricks and hacks that will make your implementations fun, easier than expected, and faster than usual
Use the best methods to capture and capitalize on accomplished results (people have short term memories – you have to get this right)
Learn to inspire others to want to be coached by you and only you
Module 5: Getting Everyone Implemented For Extraordinary Success (Weeks 9 & 10)
Architect an irresistible way to get everyone in the organization, actively involved in the implementation
Get good at generating more influence (and affluence) in less time
Learn to snowball your efforts into the rest of the organization, even if they’re on the other side of the world
Module 6: Mapping the Future – Becoming a World Class Coach (Weeks 11 & 12)
Learn to take your knowledge in either a particular function or an industry, and turn that into a niched down area of interest where nobody else is competing (making you a very valuable resource)
Approach new organizations (either in an interview or as clients) and get them excited to say “yes” to launching Lean and being involved
For those who are interested, learn the process that 6 and 7-figure coaches use to create a thriving business
For those who are interested, learn to nail down every single interview, yielding an offer at the highest salary allowed
Avoid the limiting belief that will hold you back no matter how much you know about Lean
What You’re Going to Take Away from This Training
Elegant change techniques – that do not involve confrontation.
A step-by-step implementation methodology that works every time.
Easy to learn, quickly implementable techniques.
Techniques for influencing others that nobody else is using.
Real business linkage, not some pie in the sky “we gotta meet the customer needs with quality product.”
Fast working stuff that gets quick buy-in; no grappling with resistance.
Techniques that draw out the right activities – socratic management, teaming, process thinking, learning, etc.
An entire section on how to be a professional coach/consultant.
Complete Lean implementation explained, step by step with easy to follow instructions for you to take and integrate with your existing knowledge.
Coaching and guidance from a world class Lean implementer, who gets paid thousands of dollars per day to implement.
Meet Your Host, Jim
I am the founder of the Lean Expert Academy, partner in the Lean Leadership Institute with Jeff Liker (The Toyota Way), Paul Akers (Two Second Lean) and Norm Bodek (Productivity Press Founder), and author of the soon to be released book, Lean 2.0: How to Dominate Your Industry Using Lea(R)n Thinking. I am also the CEO of a Lean consulting company where I train Lean consultants to implement the exact methodology and techniques that you will learn here.
I’ve been called “The Wolf” . . . because for many years, every time something went wrong at a client’s implementation, I got the call and not only fixed it, but got even more consulting work out of “the crisis.”
I’m on a quest to “bend the universe.” I believe it’s not okay for us to sit back and just let the Lean movement limp along, as it has over the past 30 years. It’s time for all of us to turn up the heat and turbocharge our efforts by making change happen better, so that everything that has the name management attached to it, is done with Lean thinking and Lean management.
And I know for a fact, after years of being deep in the trenches of making change happen that implementing Lean is not that hard to do. It’s actually quite easy and my course shows you exactly how to achieve that outcome consistently.
My goal and mission is to produce as many excellent Lean thinking implementers as possible – to arm you with the ability to recreate what I and my team of consultants have been doing consistently for the past nine years – which is exactly what I’m going to teach you in this course. See you on the inside!
Here’s What Others Say About Our Training
Lean Metrics Workshop BONUS!
As a bonus for registering in the Lean 2.0 Blueprint course, you’ll also get this workshop, that enables you to set up a workshop around metrics, and focus your organization on the critical few things. It’s one of our best courses.
The Lean Metrics Workshop is a really powerful tool in your arsenal, allowing you to singlehandedly give each person in the organization more capacity (and the most valuable of all commodities – their time) regardless of their position in the organization. By focusing the executive team on the right metrics, and dropping off the useless ones, you will hand executives and workers alike, more value adding time to replace the wasted capacity they previously spent on those useless metrics.
This self-paced, online workshop shifts organizations more in one half of a day, than anything you’ve ever seen done before.
You’ll learn to conduct this with an executive staff, and free up so much of their time that they’ll be thanking you for the rest of the year, and . . . asking you to come back with more soon.
Here’s What You Get When You Register Today…
100% Guarantee
Complete Satisfaction with Lean 2.0 Blueprint
Or Get a Full Refund
No haggling, nothing to do, no waiting, just say the word and we’ll refund right away. I want you to feel secure that when you attend the classes and do the exercises with me, you’re going to get the results you expect to get. That’s the whole point.
And you will. But I also have a secure guarantee, just in case you need a little more peace of mind…
Here’s my guarantee: When you go through the Lean 2.0 Blueprint training, attend your classes and do your homework, and at the end of 30 days, you are not completely satisfied with what we have presented, I’ll refund your entire tuition and give you all your money back. No questions asked.
Why would I offer a guarantee this strong, and let you go through the entire course at my risk?
I want you to be completely satisfied with what you are buying, and I am absolutely confident that what you will learn here will be so effective and so different than anything else available to you right now, that you’ll be elated with it. Which is why I am offering you this strong guarantee.
