When Lean Goes Wrong

By: Dan Riley, writer and blogger

When a large outside consultancy firm brought lean to the place where I had been employed for 13 years, it landed with all the subtlety of a shock and awe campaign. The disruption to the workplace was alarming and ultimately counterproductive.

I say this as one of the few people at the company who had been familiar with lean due to my long-time friendship with Michael Ballé and my predisposition for lean by virtue of what I knew of Michael's success with it as documented in his book The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround.

So sudden and disorienting were the changes brought to our company in the name of lean that I found myself in contact with Michael from the start to confirm the validity of the lean practices coming our way in such rapid succession.

I believe that many of the bad turns our company took under our lean initiative were due to the specific business model of the outside consultants hired to bring lean through our doors...

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