Lean & IT « IT Business Alignment (IT2B)
Oops… I accidentally hit “publish” instead of “save as draft.” For a Lean guy, I don't have error proofed, apparently. So that was released as my shortest blog post ever.
The author of the linked post, Glenn Whitfield, makes some excellent general points about Lean for any setting:
Toyota does not have a ‘Lean initiative.' Toyota does not ‘do' Lean, they ‘are' Lean. It's just the way they do business. Implementing the tools of Lean will get you results, and will help move you toward becoming a Lean organization, but Lean is bigger than the tools.
So, as IT organizations move to embrace Lean thinking, the question becomes, “Are you going to ‘do', Lean, or are you going to ‘BE' Lean?”
Great questions for factories, or hospitals….
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Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean.
Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.
For many years Toyota was "not lean" and had to "do lean" to get where they are today. It's important not to forget that most organizations will need to spend years "doing lean" until they gradually become lean.