Why lean fail

We discussed why organizations look at lean. We discussed about some of the motives behind lean implementations. But the truth is sometimes lean fails. Lean fails to achieve results it expected to achieve. Lean fails due to many reasons. Below are few of them.

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  They simply copy from others. It doesn’t matter where you copy from, when you copy; it can go wrong than going right. Original ideas and free thinking is the ideal way to go forward. I do not mean you should re invent the wheel. But when it comes to lean, you will have to make sure, you get the concepts right. When you identify the concepts right you can apply them anywhere. Copying some other system will look easy, but copycats are proven to be failures. So be careful. Never copy. They have little value.

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  They are dishonest. Yes, if you are business man and if you are not keeping to your word you are dishonest. For an example, if you give a money back guarantee for your product at the point of selling them, you must make sure you attend to the need of the customer immediately. If the customer wants their money back, even if you know your product has nothing wrong, you must give them their money back. If you said to them you are offering a “No Questions Asked” money back guarantee, you should never question them. These are simple enough to understand. But what I am talking here is not being dishonest with the customers. I am talking about being dishonest with your efforts. Once you are committed to implement lean, you must make sure you give it a real whole hearted go. If you have doubts yourself, this will not work. When people are not honest with their efforts, they find plenty of excuses, but the end result will be never achieved.

Just like the good businessman who sticks to his original “No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee”, you should stick with your efforts honestly. This will bring you results.

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  They do not learn. Learning is a part and partial of the lean game. If you want to be in the game of lean, you will have to learn from your experiences. You must invest some of your time to read new literature on the subject. You must invest some of your time to think about new ways and methods of making this more effective. Any organization who fails in learning will fail in lean. Lean is a process. It never ends. So more you learn, better you become. But one point of caution though. There is no need to learn everything by experimenting yourself. In other words there is no real point of reinventing the wheel. Unnecessary experimenting will take time. Time is money. So do not waste it. Sometimes spending $100,000 in buying the required experience and the skill might be worth than spending 10,000 hours in experimenting with something.

So learn. Do not be afraid nor be lazy to invest some of your time and money in learning new things. More skilled you and your organization become, better it will get.

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  They have their own agendas. When I asked some of my friends the question “Why you think implementing lean is difficult?” vast majority of them, in various forms told me the same answer. Answer was, “different people have different requirements”. So they do not simply want to implement lean for personal reasons. Some just do not like change. Some just think they will lose their jobs with the implementation of lean. Some managers, especially middle level managers, just do not like you giving suggestions and coming up with new ideas. They look at you as a threat or as a nuisance. They just do not care. So real lean lovers fail to find a place to implement their ideas. Unfortunately even though these valuable ideas can be implemented to earn more money for the organization, save hours and hours of time and make the organization healthy or sustainable, their ideas fail. They fail just because you cannot find a proper place to implement them. They fail because you do not have the control of the things. This is one of the reasons for failure of lean

Never let these things to stop you from progressing as an individual and as an organization. Start small. The first step may be something very small like arranging your own drawer or cleaning and arranging your table. But the important point is starting it.

Start it from a point where you have the high level of control. Higher the control, better it is. No one can destroy your efforts for their personal gain when you start this way. You are in full control.

Lena may fail due to many other reasons as well. If you think otherwise, you can leave your thought as a comment to this post. As always, I really value your comments.