This past week we had the opportunity to visit one of the Georgia Tech Lean Consortium companies in Newnan, Georgia for a benchmarking tour. It was an encouraging and energizing visit for me to see the commitment level, and the energy this company had for its Lean strategy. Their Lean strategy, called “Everest”, was presented to us by their Vice President responsible for their global Lean efforts. He had traveled over from Europe to experience the consortium benchmarking process and did an excellent job in presenting their near and long term plans.
After the consortium meeting was over, Georgia Tech had the opportunity to sit down with the company’s leadership to get some honest feedback on the value the GTLC brings to companies such as theirs. The comments were very supportive of our intent of this program for Georgia and the process that we have developed. There was even some very constructive insight to how we can make it more valuable and we look forward to designing those aspects into our organization.
I was going back through some Lean books a few weeks ago. Most of them typically described their own version of what Lean is and what it takes to succeed. I had never noticed this before, but in all the books, one of the more consistent and yet overlooked traits about Toyota and other successful belief systems for business is that you should never stop emphasizing the importance of learning within your organization. This is really the fundamental principle behind our Consortium. When you have an opportunity to see what someone else is doing in your field of expertise or in your area of responsibility, in an environment that expedites and promotes learning & sharing — how do you put a value on that? Can you imagine the sharing and growth that would take place if all companies in Georgia that have engaged in Lean and have world-class operations were to be a part of this united purpose? That’s exactly our goal. We know there is value in this and we know that the process and peer-to-peer relationships that are built through this network will multiply the learning effect for Georgia’s leading companies.
In closing from “Value on Lean Consortiums” blog edition, I’d like to remind our network of some excellent comments made by Mr. Jerry Bussell who came and spoke at our Leadership Event in May of this year. Enjoy!
May 19, 2009
Speaker – Jerry Bussell – Medtonics
Disciplined People
Disciplined Thoughts
Disciplined Actions
Jerry’s 7 “P’s”: I think there are 10 of them, but we don’t have all of them documented but you get the picture. If anyone remembers the other 3 let me know.
- Probity – pro·bi·ty (prō’bĭ-tē)
n. Complete and confirmed integrity; uprightness; honest with self; honest with others; keep your promises; always do the right thing - People
- Passion
- Persuasion
- Preparation – continuous learning
- Problem Solving
- If you don’t have a problem, that’s OK, we’ll help you see it.
- If you have a problem and don’t tell us, that’s a problem.
- Purpose
- WIGS – Wildly Important Goals
- Covey Video
- Habits of Highly Successful People
- Performance: Faster growth through faster improvement.
Till next time –
Derek Woodham
