Over the past couple days our blog buddy Mark over at the Lean Blog has been discussing the recent survey by the Lean Enterprise Institute that asked "What are the biggest obstacles to lean implementation at your facility?" The results were:
- Middle management resistance (36.1%)
- Lack of implementation know-how (31.0%)
- Employee resistance (27.7%)
- Supervisor resistance (23.0%)
- Lack of crisis (17.7%)
Management, employees, supervisors… people. Blame. As Mark put it,
I appreciate the work the LEI does, but maybe they should change their survey to a "5 Whys" format to get to the "root cause" of these problems. The format of the current survey seems to ask "Who is the biggest obstacle…?", which reeks of finger pointing, a practice that isn’t supposed to be part of the Toyota Way. Instead of asking "who?" we are supposed to ask "why?"
Very true and I agree, but he didn’t stop there. Mark has taken a stab at a survey that tries to follow the "5 Why’s" format. If you have a couple minutes, take the survey and let us know what you think. We’ll report the results at a later date. There are even some giveaway prizes of books and such!