Turning Leader Standard Work Upside Down

I find one of the problems that exist in Leader Standard Work practices is not at the Team Leader Level nor even the Supervisor Level but many times right at the top. In David Mann’s book Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, Second Edition (which I consider the bible for Leader Standard Work), states that Leader Standard Work should break down in this percentage for standard work:

Operator – 95% their time might be devoted to completing leader standard work
Team Leaders – 80%
Department Supervisors – 50%
Value Stream Managers – 25%
Executives – 10%

These numbers will differ according to the environment and whether it is production, office or development work but Leader Standard Work should be consciously designed to be layered from bottom up. The act is what produces results, not the thinking. There should even be a degree of redundancy between the layers to ensure accountability. This is where I believe that the problem starts developing.

Tracey Richardson wrote a blog post, You want a tangible action for your leaders trying to do Lean? Try this! GTS “squared” where she states that one of the fallacies of problem solving is the inability of Leaders to “Go See”. I find that true outside of the factory as well. Leaders seldom do the 10% or 25% of Standard Work required. They even will sit down in a meeting and go over the subordinate’s standard work and instruct him on how to improve without ever observing the process. Even more importantly that shared accountability through redundancy is seldom instituted.

In Lean Sales and Marketing, Standard Work will have a difficult time achieving 95%. In fact, most “front-line” Sales and Marketing workers will have responsibilities that clearly cannot be defined as Standard Work. Leader Standard Work may often only border around 50 to 80% or lower. I think immediately of the conversation I had with Joseph Michelli on Zappos company culture. Joseph’s latest book, The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW discusses the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?. Lean Sales and Marketing is first and foremost about the Customer Experience.

As we progress up through leaders, supervisors, etc., the percentage of Leader Standard Work should not drastically be reduced as it does in a manufacturing environment. It is the Servant Leadership role that must surface. Empowering the front line staff with the necessary resources to enable their actions to deliver an outstanding customer experience becomes Leadership’s primary function. The Leader Standard Work may actually become more standard as we move away from the main influencer and/or disruptor – the Customer.