How do you recognise low-grade Lean support?

Recognising that 'Lean' as a concept is now well known, at least in outline, by a large number of people, but that the level of expertise in the market to actually deliver high quality support is still very fragmented, I put myself in the shoes of a typical organisation looking to engage a Lean Consultant and asked 'How would you know if you were getting quality Lean support or just average or worse?'

I will start by saying there are three problems that create confusion:

1. People have heard of Lean, therefore consultants think 'I can do that' and open up shop
2. There is no standard accreditation of Lean work that would allow comparison
3. People in organisations underestimate the breadth of expertise required to deliver Lean effectively, and therefore don't ask the right questions

It is fair to say that I believe there is a hierarchy of Lean expertise. For people who have led less than 20-30 'Events' (whether that is a pre-change diagnostic or a Rapid Improvement Event (RIE)) they are 'Users' - people who purely understand how to apply the tools in a limited number of environments. Even their exposure to the tools will be limited.

For people who have led 30-around 75-100 events, assuming this has been gained in high quality projects led by 'Sensei' (see below) rather than the typical 'learn by doing it yourself', they will be 'Practitioners' - able to demonstrate real improvements in a range of situations but lacking the breadth of expertise to deal with all situations and are not experienced enough to develop Users into Practitioners, although they are experts at developing and leading Users.

Most consultants have led something like 30-50 events so bridge the User/Practitioner area, but the reality is that the vast majority that I have met have not been trained by Sensei (see below) and have learnt 'on the job'. This means bad practices are repeated, new approaches are not learnt and the 'correct' (or most effective) way of leading improvements is not used.

For the small majority who have been trained by experts themselves, when they exceed 75-100 events they become Sensei, skilled at developing Users into Practitioners and Practitioners into Sensei - able to deal with any situation in most sectors and environments and possessing a strong understanding of the skills required to deliver improvements across the organisation (rather than at a single point in a process or a single value stream or project).

Therefore, the key to knowing whether you are buying a quality 'Lean Consultant' who will deliver value, rather than just invoices, is to determine how many events they have run, who trained them in Lean and what expertise they have in working at the highest (or Programme) level in an organisation, or whether they have been stuck down at the individual process level.

All of this is explained in more detail in my new e-book 'Lean for Practitioners', an order form for which is available by dropping me a line via our website www.amnis-uk.com.

I look forward to hearing from you!