Effective and Sustainable Lean Transformation Requires Effective Change Leadership — Lean Blog

By Mark Graban On Apr 2, 2019 Last updated Apr 2, 2019

I was first introduced to the ExperienceChange simulations about ten years ago when I already had more than ten years of experience trying to facilitate change in manufacturing companies and healthcare organizations.

Playing the healthcare-based “Lakeview” hospital simulation and learning about the ExperiencePoint change model, shown below, was really eye opening and led to a lot of reflection on my part.

This experience made me wonder: Why had some organizations not really embraced “Lean management” principles even though their business was really struggling? Why did some leaders expect others to just follow their command to “get Lean” and to do things differently?

In the course of my early years in healthcare, I worked for a consulting group that had a somewhat implicit model for improvement projects that included change management elements that mapped pretty closely to the explicit ExperiencePoint model — and a majority of those initiatives were successful and sustainable — probably at a higher rate than you’d see out there in general.

It’s one thing to have knowledge about Lean methods; leading people and affecting change in…