Here's a good post from the Daily Kaizen blog about the need to “stop selling” lean. Remember, “push” is bad, so if you're pushing lean (or pushing tools) on people, they are likely to be defensive.
If you are helping people solve real problems, helping them reduce and eliminate waste (thereby making their lives easier, as employees, and helping customers), then people will start pulling on lean. “Pull” is good. Show some success and people will start pulling on lean methods and your lean help.
But not EVERYONE will just come along once they see the evidence. Since we’re using pull here as an analogy, it does have limitations. SOME people will have to be pushed.
However, go first where there is pull. Why create artificial barriers to progress?
In one of my earlier blogs, I had mentioned the pitfalls of using a ‘Pull Production’ in case of a remanufactured product where there is a combination of new and salvaged percentage of components. Even with a new product manufacturing and pull production, you may not have optimized your global supply chain.
http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/02/pull_production_have_you_achie.html