There are many reasons why Lean and Continuous Improvement programmes fail to deliver — or fail outright. Below are the three I have seen most consistently, and what to do about each of them.
Lack of Senior Management Active Support
A 2005 Harvard Business Review article by Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin argued that "Somewhere in your organisation, people are already doing things differently and better — and that to create lasting change, you should find those pockets of positive deviance and fan their flames."
It is, unfortunately, rare advice that gets followed. I once stood with an SVP of Quality who had just acquired our facility — largely because of our lean programme — and watched her say: "This is fabulous, we should roll it out across the entire organisation. But we won't because it would be too disruptive and too costly." The same organisation publicly proclaimed its deep commitment to Lean/CI.
If staff don't believe management genuinely supports the programme, they will not invest their own time in it. Active support is not a passive endorsement — it requires visible commitment from the top.
Creating the Space to Actually Improve
Early in one engagement, I was explaining the benefits of Lean/CI to a group of operatives. Their response stopped me cold: "We think this is great — but we're not going to take part." Why? "It's more work, and we're already overloaded."
No time had been made available for improvement work. In another organisation, twelve participants were tasked with delivering a simple project as part of their training. Eight of the twelve needed support from an already-stretched technical team. All eight projects stalled. Enthusiasm evaporated with them.
No Thought Given to Sustainment
Many mid-sized companies assume that trained staff will simply return to their workplaces and start improving processes. What has actually changed? Usually nothing. The day job, as it stands, takes over. If a football team is shown a new play, no one expects them to perform it flawlessly in the next match — not without practice and support. Yet that is exactly the expectation placed on Lean/CI participants.
Without a governance structure to keep momentum alive, improvement efforts die on the vine. Kanban boards, for example, give visibility to every initiative — what has been started, by whom, and where it stands from concept through to completion. Active mentoring, roadblock removal, and regular check-ins keep things moving.