Image by Vaikoovery (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Just this week I got an insight: maybe Lean did take off on the wrong track from the very beginning…
Womack and Jones defined five steps to become Lean. The first one is: Define Value. So far, so good! Then value got defined as:
Value = What the customer is willing to pay for.
That is where it went very wrong!
I am not alone here. For some time already I had the feeling that something was wrong with this definition. Last year Norman Bodek helped me to give it more words. I found this little gem in a video course about The Harada Method made by the Lean Leadership Institute. I asked George Trachilis to make that clip available for all of you to see and I am thankful he did:
Let’s take a closer look on the definition that we are so accustomed to:
Value = What the customer is willing to pay for.
Now we already know from the video that value does not only include the customer but much more. It should be something like:
Value = How we serve the world.
Now let’s zoom in on the customer part. Does the definition of value give you the impression that the purpose of Lean is to really make customers happy? I do not think so. I think the purpose, or at least the understanding of many, is about the latter part of the definition: willing to pay for. It is not so much about the customer as it is about the transaction! Somehow the goal seems to be to make more money.
Does it then come as a surprise that many people are not getting very enthusiastic about Lean? What is the purpose? Make a bigger profit? To what end? Henry Ford already taught that profit is an outcome:
Making money is not the goal, it is a necessary condition to be able to serve the world for an extended period of time.
So, let’s stop thinking so much about making money.
Let’s start thinking more about our contribution to serve the world.