As an engineer, my natural tendency is to look at things from the perspective of how something failed rather than why it worked (though in my writings about lean, I do both). However, the factors that cause failure are merely the antithesis of why things worked.

With that in mind, I offer you some guidance on how leaders fail in organizations striving to practice lean management. By its converse, you can figure out what it takes to succeed with lean:
• Preserve organizational stability and order
• Keep power and sources thereof
• Retain large gaps in inequality or inferiority of status
• Foment internal competition
• Conform to existing metrics, policies, and practices
• Promote intolerance of ambiguity
• Remain closed-minded to new experiences
• Change only when politically expedient
• Require conformance to the leader’s worldview
• Retain executive team prestige and distance from workers
• Avoid compromise
• Sustain fear, blame, and threats
• Discourage or ignore feedback

These are big challenges for the leaders of organizations. Why? Let me explain it this way.

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