Why Lean Fails…
In this episode, Ryan Tierney unveils the hidden key to lean success: Focusing on People Development. He shares enlightening experiences and practical advice on:
How ignoring people development causes lean initiatives to fail
The critical mistake of seeing lean as merely physical changes
How to build a thriving people development system
Learning the true essence of lean from Yellotools
Starting every day with a purpose-driven morning meeting
Encouraging employees to pursue their dreams and start new ventures
Implementing three simple steps to cultivate a lean culture focused on people
Check it out!
Links:
Book a Lean Made Simple Tour: https://www.leanmadesimple.com/book-a-tour
Send a voice message/question to the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeanMadeSimple
Welcome to Lean Made Simple: a podcast for people who want to change their business and their lives one step at a time. I’m Ryan Tierney from Seating Matters, a manufacturing company from Limavady, Northern Ireland that employs 60+ people. Almost ten years ago, I came across this thing called “lean” and it transformed my life… now I want to share this message with as many people as possible.
This podcast unpacks our learnings, lessons and principles developed over the last decade in a fun, conversational way that will hopefully empower you on your own business journey — whether you’ve been doing lean for years or are just starting out!
Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform by searching “lean made simple.”
Thanks and all the best.
— Ryan Tierney
Full Transcription of Episode
LMS People Development
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Ryan: [00:00:00] Michael, the owner of the company
came over to me and he kind of tapped me in the shoulder and he was like,
Ryan, you're taking all these photographs of "the things" but
Lean isn't about "the things"
he said, lean is a tool for growing and developing people.
It's not about the physical things.
And if you want lean to stick in your organization, you have to get that.And that's why Lean fails,
because people don't know that.
Matthew: So Ryan, you're known all around the world as being a lean maniac, someone who loves lean manufacturing, and yet here we are today doing an episode all about why lean fails. So this is probably going to be a bit controversial, bit of a hot take, but why? Why does lean fail and what have you seen in your experience?
Ryan: Yep. There's loads of organizations around the world that have tried Lean and it hasn't worked. And we think today in this podcast, we're going to cover why. So I'm really excited to get in. So straight away, first off, we were a couple of years into our Lean journey and somebody mentioned going to see this company in Germany that was really good at Lean.
The company was called Yellow [00:01:00] Tools. So myself and a few other people from, uh, the company went to visit Yellow Tools. And as soon as we walked in the door, I was like, I had my camera out. I was taking photographs of all the physical, the visual markers on the floor, the Kanban system they had, the way they organized their tools, the way they organized, you know, all their inventory.
I like this place was, to me, it was immaculate, every single thing in its place, highly organized, the best I've ever seen. And I was going around taking all these photographs, getting really excited and Michael, the owner of the company came over to me and he kind of tapped me in the shoulder and he was like, Ryan, you're taking all these photographs of the things, but Lean isn't about the things.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, I know. I kind of brushed it off. About half an hour later, we were still walking around, looking at all the things and, you know, they have an injection molding machine and they were changing the dyes and like under three [00:02:00] minutes. And I was just absolutely fascinated by how they were able to do this.
Looking at all these really cool, uh, Improvements that Michael and his team had made at his company. And again, Michael came back to me and he said, Ryan, you're still taking photographs of the things. Lean isn't about the tools. It's not about the physical things that you can see. He said, lean is a tool for developing your people.
And I was like, Oh, okay. I didn't really know what he meant. So. After the tour was over, we were getting in the taxi to go home.
And just before I get in, Michael kind of grabbed my arm and he said, Ryan, you need to get this because I've told you, tried to tell you twice before, and you're not getting it. He said, lean is a tool for growing and developing people.
It's not about the physical things. And if you want lean to stick in your organization, you have to get that. And I still didn't know what Michael meant. And on the way home in the taxi and on the plane and the train, I was just thinking, what did Michael actually mean when he said lean isn't about the [00:03:00] tools, the physical things?
And I was actually going in for an operation the next day after the Germany trip.
I was going to be in bed for like seven days. I was lying in bed. And I was thinking about what Michael was trying to tell me because I wasn't getting it. And then it clicked. And I was like, ah, I think I know what Michael's talking about.
And it finally came to me that Lean is about growing and developing people. And that's why Lean fails, because people don't know that. Right.
Matthew: We get so caught up in the colorful tool holders and look how amazing this little drill bit is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we all end up focusing on the wrong things.
And what I heard you say is, it fails because we don't focus on our people. Absolutely. And if we want all of those things, the beautiful factory, the engagement, the really crazy creative ideas, is you have to start not there, but you start on the people. Exactly. So how the heck do we do that? [00:04:00] It's easy, you know, end the episode, that's it guys, just
focus on your people, you'll be all good.
Yeah. Where
do we go from here?
Yep, so the goal of every single lean organisation is to create a people development system. That's really what we should be trying to do. Create a people development system. Because if we focus on growing and developing our people All these improvements and all this stuff comes as a by product.
Ryan: The productivity, the efficiency, the engagement, this all comes as a by product of growing and developing our people.
Matthew: So how long ago was that Germany trip? Uh, six years, six years ago. Right, and so within a six year period You have been able to turn your business around into one of those places that companies fly in from all over the world to go and see, and they've got the phones out and they're taking the photographs and they're like, look at this, look at that, look at all the colors.
It's the Disneyland of lean. This is class. But beyond all that, talk to us about what your business has produced because every system [00:05:00] is proven by its outputs and the output of your people is insane. So just share with, with the people listening and watching like.
What they can look forward to whenever they start to implement some of the things we're going to talk about today.
Ryan: Yeah,
great question. So when people come for a tour of our facility and they come every week from all over the world,
The first thing they say is, your people are so engaged, your people are so bought in,
they're empowered to do a good job, they're motivated, they're inspired, they're so positive.
These are some of the benefits that you get. you know, we're not even talking about productivity and efficiency. These things are actually a byproduct again, but productivity goes through the roof, efficiency goes through the roof, customer satisfaction is at an all time high. All these things are because We found out six years ago the missing link and the key is to
grow and develop the people in the organization
and all these benefits come as a byproduct.
Matthew: And the other crazy thing is that, you know, you hear in other businesses, whenever people leave, they maybe leave because they're, they're not [00:06:00] happy. They maybe leave because they have conflict or they've had a problem or they leave because they want to go, you know, work somewhere else.
When people leave your business, like the amount of guys I've talked to on your team who've left, And gone on to do maybe a surprising thing is shocking to me.
Ryan: Yep, definitely. A lot of people leave and go and start their own business because the teaching and training that they're getting is, you know, making them think differently.
It really is. And we, we encourage that. We, we encourage people to go and, and. Be the best version of themselves that they can be, but it's all because they're going through the system, the system where we're teaching and training them every day, we're growing and developing our people, and sometimes that means that they move on and fulfill their own dreams.
And that's brilliant. We actually encourage that.
Matthew:
When I first met you, like there was basically no one on our team and I was hearing about this people development system.
I was like, I want that. That aligns with my values. That aligns with the dent I want to make in this universe. And so, [00:07:00] you know, Ryan's got this amazing people development system. I didn't want any team. I wanted just solo entrepreneur life, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And seeing what you guys were doing inspired me so much that I was like, no, actually I want to grow my business.
I want to grow my team because I want to offer. People, this opportunity to transform and become better versions of themselves, like, like you said. So
as always, we're going to break it down and make it really simple. I mean, it's on the name of the podcast, we're going to share three tools.
So the first tool is something that is, uh, A widely used tool if you're in Lean, if you've been doing Lean for a while. If you haven't, this is a very, very strange concept and that is the Morning Meeting.
So how did you first come across that and why is it so important for making sure that Lean actually works in your business? Yep,
Ryan: so we
started Lean almost nine years ago and we were really, really struggling at the start. We couldn't get it off the ground and you know, with no local examples to go and see because nobody in the UK or Ireland were doing what we were trying to do.
You know, we couldn't jump in the car and go and see a company
that was doing it. So I was trying to [00:08:00] piece all this together and I was actually being mentored by Paul Akers himself,
the author of Two Second Lean. And Paul, you know, was coaching me one on one and we were like four or five, six months in and I went to Paul one day and I said, Paul, it's just not working.
I can't get it. I'm off the ground of don't, I think I'm doing everything right, but it's just not working. And he said, how's your morning meeting going? And I said, Oh no, we're not, we're not doing that. You know, we thought the morning meeting was to, you know, America. It's okay. It's okay for the Americans.
Get that
Matthew: cheesy stuff out of my face. I get that. I get that.
Ryan: It's okay for the Japanese to stand around in a circle and do stretches, but we're from Limavady in Northern Ireland. We're not going to do that. But Paul said, how's your morning meeting going? And I said, we're not doing it. And that was the missing link.
So there, and then we started and the morning meeting started off very simple, very small. It was one A4 laminated page with five questions on it. And you know, it was really awkward. There was total [00:09:00] silence. Nobody wanted to, nobody wanted to speak. But as we developed it and continuously improved the meeting, people started to open up, they started to share ideas.
And they started to get excited about Lean and that was the key. So number one is the morning meeting is the reason why most Lean companies fail. Because they don't do it.
Why do you think the morning meeting is so powerful? Like why if you take that ingredient out does the whole thing fall apart?
There's something so powerful about bringing every single person in the organization together. It kind of creates unity, it creates togetherness, it creates a sense of camaraderie, it creates a sense of teamwork.
You know, we're all in this together. Everybody around, standing around the circle has their own part to play. Everybody's doing improvements, you know. It's not the Lean team over here or the Six Sigma team are doing their Lean meeting. It's every single person in the organization is at the meeting. [00:10:00] And that's why it's so, so powerful.
Matthew: Second tool is Improvement Time. What is it? Why is it important? And why, without this, does the Lean table
Ryan: collapse? Yeah, I get so excited talking about improvement time because it's such a foreign idea to most companies. It really is. And when I came across it, I was like, what? Improvement time? You're telling me that we're going to stop for 30 minutes?
With every single person in our organization and make improvements. I thought that was crazy.
Matthew: So we added up all the numbers and it's such a huge cost to the business. You know, the fact that every single person would stop for 30 minutes or 15 minutes every single day is We just couldn't get our head around it. We absolutely couldn't get our head around it.
Ryan: But now we just, we wouldn't look back. It was the difference, it was that key ingredient that just turned our company around and turned our culture around.So if we're teaching and training our [00:11:00] people every single day at a morning meeting, well, it makes sense to give them time and allocated time to go and do their improvements, right?
Because without that freedom, without that time, They're not getting, you know, their ideas actioned. So if you just think about it for a minute, we have a morning meeting for 15 or 20 minutes, then we've either 15 minutes or 30 minutes off improvement time. So we're not starting production until 8. 45, you know, every single day.
That's a huge investment, but it's about going slow to go fast. We're so efficient because we stop and improve, right? We're so efficient because we stop and teach and train our people. We're so efficient because we stop and allocate every single person. That dedicated time in the morning to make improvements.
Matthew: And if it's not scheduled, it doesn't get done. You know, you can kind of say, Oh, well, maybe if there's a wee bit of free time later on in the day, like maybe you could then implement stuff. That just doesn't happen. Yeah. [00:12:00] Why is it important to do it in the morning?
Ryan: It's so important to do improvement time in the morning because we're starting the day with an improvement mindset.
So if you can imagine people drive up. Park their car in the car park, walk into work and start working. They're not thinking about improving. They're thinking about working. We don't want people to think about work. We want people to think about how can I improve the process of the work?
So when we go to a morning meeting, that's improvement.
When we have an allocated time for improvement time, that's improvement. So then that thinking
translates into the work and day. So we're actually not working.
All we're doing is testing the improvement that we've made in the morning to see if it works. To see how we can make it better the next day. So I kind of think of it as morning meeting, then improvement time, then testing the improvement.
So we actually don't work. That sounds, that sounds, uh, you know, funny saying that, but we don't [00:13:00] work.
And we don't want our people to work. We want our people to improve the way we work. Right.
Matthew: And I heard you say one time recently that an improvement isn't complete until it's shared. What do you mean by that?
Ryan: So, a really powerful concept that I learned in Japan when I was there about four years ago was Yoko Ten. So, Yoko Ten is sharing ideas laterally across an organization. So, if Kerry in the accounts department has an improvement, somebody in the welding area could pick up Kerry's improvement and say, oh, we could do that.
So, Yoko Ten, sharing the ideas, sharing the improvements. So, if I make a really good process improvement to make my job easier and I don't share it, that's actually wasteful. So it's wasteful to not share the knowledge. It's wasteful to not share the improvement. So an improvement isn't finished. Until it's shared.
Matthew: Love that. And that kind [00:14:00] of leads us into our third and our final tool, which is exposing people to new ideas. So the third reason why Lean fails is because we as business owners don't expose our people to new ideas. Yeah. Unpack that for us.
Ryan: So yeah, exposing people to new ideas is such a massive thing and it has every right to be number three. It really does. And the power of going outside of your work working environment.
outside of your company to bring in new ideas. And it's something that we've got very good at over the last two years. Even today, actually, after this podcast, I'm traveling down south. Uh, we're doing a video with a company in County Wexford, but I'm bringing two people from, from the company with me. Nice.
To expose them to new ideas. Yeah. Because they're going to see some welding fixture or some office improvement or some new piece of software. that they can
bring back. Yeah, totally different product. They make what, steel sheds? Sheds, yeah. And you guys make chairs? It's like, what?
Matthew: Why would you make the investment?
Why would you bring people down to see that? But it's because you [00:15:00] believe in this,
this point so
much. Exactly. So exposing people to new ideas is such a powerful thing. So get your people out on the road, get them out seeing other companies. You know, the benefit of that is huge. The investment is maybe one or two days, but the benefit, if they see one thing, if they only pick up one thing on that trip, The whole trip's paid
Ryan: for.
Matthew: Yeah. And you guys not only do this kind of externally with other companies, but I've seen you guys do it internally. So like you'll train people in totally different departments and totally different skills. Yeah. How do you do that and why do you do it? Well,
Ryan: to be honest, we didn't come up with that. We got this idea from Michael actually at YellowTools.
Hey, there we go.
Yeah, so Michael's getting another shout out. When we went to see Michael's company, he had a training matrix on the wall
where any person could go up to the chart and show an interest in cross training in a different area. So just because you're in the marketing department doesn't mean you have to stay in the marketing department.
You know, just because you're in the [00:16:00] welding area doesn't mean you have to stay in the welding area. If you want to learn woodwork, let's do it. Go and do it. If you're in the woodwork area and you would like to learn upholstery or powder cutting or welding, Let's do it, let's set it up,
so the same thinking goes, if we can take two people out of our company and go to another organization to bring back ideas, it's the exact same thinking, only we're doing it internally.
So we're bringing ideas from the woodworking area to the welding area. We're bringing ideas from the welding area to the sewing department. You know, it's this cross functional sharing of ideas, which really, uh, motivates people to be creative.
Matthew: It's interesting for a couple of reasons. The first one is.
You can kind of live like 20 versions of your life inside the one company. Do you know what I mean? I could go from like, I work in accounts and now I'm a welder and now I'm this.
But it also gives you like, this might be a weird word to use, but like a real sense of empathy and understanding for what your colleagues do every single day.
And that must lead to so many [00:17:00] fresh eyes, new ideas. Oh, have you thought about this? And what about that? Why do you do it that way? And like, what about this way?
Ryan: It's interesting. Exactly. Even on the training matrix, one of the areas is first aid. So if somebody wants to learn first aid, they just fill in the training matrix.
The next day we're doing first aid training, we go to the chart and we say, Ah, there's six people that are interested in learning. So it's a pull system as opposed to a push system.
Matthew: So, so, so good. So for people listening to this, like, we always try to look for like the minimal viable action. So, how do people Start, you know.
Yes, Ryan, I get it. I want to turn my business into a people development system. Okay, three great tools. Really excited. The morning meeting, improvement time, exposing my people to new ideas.
How do you actually get started?
Ryan: Brilliant question. What I would recommend is not to do all three at the one time at all.
Start with the morning meeting, but it doesn't have to be a morning meeting [00:18:00] with your entire company. Start with one department and then invite another department, invite another department until eventually it's a larger group. But start really small and don't even start with a daily morning meeting. We do a daily morning meeting, but it doesn't have to be every Tuesday and Thursday, every Monday and Wednesday.
Every Monday and Friday, whatever works for your organization, but the key is to start, start with some form of a morning meeting and build it up from there. Once you've got the morning meeting going and there's a good routine going there, then add an improvement time, but again, gradual, slow, stable progress, you know, to go out and tell a hundred or two hundred of your people to go.
and improve for 15 minutes. It would be chaotic. It would be carnage. It really would. So again, slow and incremental. One department allocate 15 minutes improvement time to one department and say, go and make some improvements. Go [00:19:00] and see what you can do. And if that's successful, when it's successful, roll it out to a bigger team.
And the same with exposing your people to new ideas. Really small and really incremental, like everything we do. Yeah,
Matthew: and that is interesting because you see in the wider lean world,
you know, people have all these black belts and all these courses and this and that. And they'll go and they'll get like super pumped up, you know, and they'll get all this information
and then like one person will come back to the whole organization and try to dump it and download it and install it everywhere.
And it just doesn't work. It's too much all at once.
Ryan: That's right. And you've just reminded me of something that happens all the time. If I go to this company in the south of Ireland and bring back all these ideas. Oh, there's Ryan going on again, you know, about all his, his new concepts. But if I bring Cody from the welding area and he's coming back and he's fired up, the peer to peer learning is more powerful than manager to employee learning.
And that's another reason why the morning meeting is so important because every [00:20:00] single person in the organization gets their turn. So it's peer to peer learning,
Cody in the welding area will learn from Patty in the woodworking area because it's more relatable as opposed to me teaching and training on lean all the time.
So peer to peer learning is such a powerful concept and it's one of the reasons the morning meeting is so important.
Matthew: Yeah, big time. I think another thing that I've noticed is. How important humility is and how important having like a really open
mind that's hungry to learn like the people we even talked about today.
Okay, so yourself, Paul Akers, Michael Althoff, you know, really, really, really highly respected in the lean world of some of the most amazing businesses on the planet. People fly all over the world to go and see them, but I've watched all three of you guys go around other factories with notes and with phones and just scribbling ferociously and just [00:21:00] really seeing what you can learn from everybody.
Even though, maybe from someone else's eyes, they're like, oh, you know, they're up here, those three guys, they're just top tier, you know, they have so much to teach us, but actually all three of you guys show that humility. We're so hungry to learn. And I think that's another reason why Eileen feels is because.
They lose that hunger. You lose that humility. It's, it's
Ryan: cool. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew: Well, we really, really appreciate you spending this time with us. Uh, it's so funny whenever we plan these episodes, we're like, you know, we have a few ideas, we're going to see where it goes. And we really appreciate all of the feedback that you give us.
It's super, super powerful. Like Ryan said, exposing yourself and to your people to new ideas is super powerful. We always invite you to join us for a Lean Made Simple tour here in Northern Ireland. The link is in the description. Bring some of your people. Bring your whole team. I mean, there's people that have come, like, what do you think is the most number of times someone has come to your factory?
Ryan: We've [00:22:00] had entire companies that have taken the whole company. Last year, two different companies, one company took 110 people, another company took 70 people. Crazy. Just took them in small groups of 5 or 6, but the entire company came. And those companies are on fire with Lean now because they exposed their people to new ideas.
Matthew: Final question, right? This is just a total bonus.
is there a company
that you haven't been to yet that you would love to go and see?
Ryan: Absolutely is. I would love to visit the Lexus plant in Kishi, Japan. It's supposed to be unbelievable, so, uh, I would love to go there someday.
Matthew: Ryan, thank you so much for your time. These are three super, super valuable things that I know if anyone listening to this actually implements them We can pretty much at this stage, we can like guarantee they will succeed with Lean.
Because this is your experience. You've
made all the mistakes.
You've had all the stress and the heartache and the pain of trying to implement Lean and it failing and failing and failing.
And so, you've just shared the cheat codes with [00:23:00] everyone listening. I think that's super valuable and
I appreciate your time.
I appreciate everything you shared.
Ryan: Yep, thank you. And it doesn't have to take a company nine years to do what we've done. You know, this is the fast track. Somebody out there can do in three what we've done in nine. Yeah.
Matthew: The shoulders of giants. Yeah. Awesome. Ryan, thanks for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you.