The foundation of Lean is thinking people. Human beings have a set of mental skills that enable them to think thoughts, develop plans, trouble-shoot problems, and experiment with ideas to make things work better. These are the “image-of-God” abilities that we were all created with. Getting people to use their brains AND their hands is a key step when a company decides to adopt Lean.

An even more valuable step is getting people to THINK as a TEAM. This requires team members to share their thoughts and ideas freely with each other, but at the same time be humbly open to be persuaded by one another. The word “collaboration” captures this back-and-forth group activity. It literally means to “co-labor together.” Teams that collaborate have higher output than adding up individual results.

Here are two quotes that capture the power of team thinking:

“Teams outperform individuals acting alone or in larger organizational groupings, especially when performance requires multiple skills, judgments, and experiences.”

“Next we have to set the expectation of team-based collaborative problem-solving. We have to celebrate effective teams above superstar individuals. This is the infrastructure needed to use the minds of the many not just those of the few.”

In my opinion, team-thinking is the most powerful force in Lean.

Notes:

The first quote is from The Wisdom of Teams by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith (Harvard Business Review Press, 1993) p. 3

The second quote is from The Lean Management System (The Murli Group, 2015, Joe Murli) p. 40