Could a learning organization also be 'lean'?

I love going to events where I meet new, like-minded, HR people or catch up with people that I have not seen in ages. I also enjoy being so completed riveted by what the speaker is saying  that I lose track of time.

I went to one such HRINZ (Human Resources Institute of New Zealand) event this week, organized by the Industrial Organisation SIG (Special Interest Group). The topic was learning organisations and it was a case study of Refining NZ (New Zealand  – so many acronyms!). Coincidentally I had also caught up with an ex-colleague from the University of Auckland at this event and we had got talking about lean manufacturing. ‘Lean’, in a nutshell, is a system of work design supposedly designed to engage and empower the workforce. ‘Lean’ is also a bit of a pet topic because I did my Masters research on it last year with interesting results. I will share more of my results in a future blog, but I’ll touch on a few things here.

At this SIG Dr Harold Hillman (Sigmoid Consulting) and Anna Meyer (Refining NZ) presented key learnings from the development of a learning organization at Refining NZ. I wrote three pages of notes, which is quite impressive for me because I usually prefer to sit back and absorb but there were so many interesting things I wanted to make note of. I will, however, summarize my key ‘takeaways’ into two areas: Leadership and “slaying sacred cows”. What have these got to do with lean you ask? Because I sat through this SIG thinking, “this is what ‘lean’ should look like!”

Let’s start with leadership. The development of a learning organization requires leaders to be completely onboard with changing the existing paradigm. Change comes from the top. What has this got to do with lean? Well my research found that leadership was integral to the successful implementation of lean. Leaders need to be motivated, equipped with the skills and given the opportunity to apply the principles. Senior leadership also needs to be onboard, and driving change through their words AND actions.

Secondly, the “slaying sacred cows” part. To become a learning organization you need to be able to challenge and change the way things that are always done, everyone knows about and nothing is done about. The organizing system has to support disruption and leadership needs to demonstrate that the cows are slayable, the status quo needs to be challenged. I’m not sure if traditional models of lean fully support slaying sacred cows. But why not? If it does, employees need to be empowered to do this.

In summary, Learning is required in order for businesses to not only stay abreast of change but also anticipate and respond to change. There are similarities between learning organisations and lean organisations. Both rely on a model whereby the business is a fully integrated system, feedback is driven upwards and the destiny of the business and its responsiveness to change is reframed. There is a lot of argument around whether a lean organization is truly a learning organization, but it really does depend on how this is done. I'd love to see someone make 'lean' and 'learning' one and the same (or do it myself).