Right now, I’m being upset by something I read in Lean Thinking—a wonderful book by James Womack and Daniel Jones—under the section titled “Smashing Inertia to Get Started”:
there’s a […] very serious paradox inherent in introducing lean thinking in real organizations to pursue perfection. […] the catalytic force moving firms and value streams out of the world of inward-looking batch-and-queue is generally applied by an outsider who breaks all the traditional rules, often in a moment of profound crisis. We call this individual the change agent.
Womack, James P., & Jones, Daniel T. (2003). Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation.
In fact, there is no way to reconcile this paradox, no way to square the circle. The change agent is typically something of a tyrant […] hellbent on imposing a profoundly egalitarian system in profoundly inegalitarian organizations.
Yet there are tyrants and there are tyrants. Those who succeed in creating lean systems over the long term are clearly understood by the participants in the firm and along the value stream to be promoting a set of ideas which have enormous potential for benefiting everyone. […] Because lean systems can only flourish if everyone along the value stream believes the new system being created treats everyone fairly and goes the extra mile to deal with human dilemmas, only beneficent despots can succeed.
The argument made by the authors can be paraphrased as follows:
- Lean thinking is superior (in some agreed sense of the word “superior”) to batch-and-queue thinking;
- Lean thinking is not compatible with the establishment (rules, processes, culture) of organizations which operate in a batch-and-queue fashion;
- Therefore, lean thinking can only be introduced by breaking the rules.
Simply put, what I learn from the argument above is that, sometimes, you have to break the rules in order to introduce an improvement in your corporation. Still, breaking the rules is not the most appreciated trait of a professional. For sure, so far I’ve never seen a job posting where a company was looking for candidates with “proven experience in breaking the rules”. Neither I have seen an executive praising an employee for his exemplary inclination to break the rules. Should we conclude that, if we constantly strive for improvements in our organization, we will ultimately have to give up being professional? Or rather that, if we want to be professional at all costs, we will ultimately have to give up pursuing improvements? If we agree with what we read in Lean Thinking, “there is no way to reconcile this paradox, no way to square the circle”.
I think there is a way to reconcile this paradox. But in order to square the circle, we need to get a bit philosophical—just a little bit. First of all, if we abstract a bit from the usual large-scale interpretation of the concept, we can use the term “revolution” to denote the type of change discussed by the authors of Lean Thinking. Here, a revolution is simply a change, within an organization, which involves breaking the traditional rules of that organization in order to be introduced. Now, one general way of classifying revolutions is by distinguishing peaceful revolutions from violent ones. While the notion of violence may seem inappropriate to analyze the organizational changes that we usually see in modern corporations, another bit of abstraction will make that notion useful to reconcile our paradox—at least if we assume that violence is something we want to avoid at all costs. An old teacher of mine once said: “Violence is when you get out of dialogue”. I find this definition of violence incredibly inspiring, as it keeps reminding me that the only way to avoid violence is by engaging into dialogue. But then, here is the thing. If it takes a revolution in order to make the lean leap, and if it takes dialogue in order for a revolution to be peaceful, then it takes dialogue in order for the lean leap to not end up in tyranny. A successful change agent, as Womack and Jones call it, is one who effectively engages into dialogue with all of the stakeholders. How else could the change agent be “understood […] to be promoting a set of ideas which have enormous potential for benefiting everyone”, if not because of the stakeholders being involved in an effective dialogue with the agent? And here, the dialogue is not an easy one to entertain, as it is about breaking the rules—the most subversive type of dialogue you can have within a corporation. If that’s the case, then we should always be mindful of John Kennedy’s maxim: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”. Promoting and preserving dialogue, especially inconvenient dialogue, is an essential part of allowing for positive change within an organization.
Durissima Coquere 