TXM Lean Minute – Lean Leadership – Effective Senior Leadership Sponsorship

Senior Leadership support is a critical success factor for a Lean implementation. In this Lean Minute, TXM Director, Ron Spiteri explains the critical sponsorship role that senior leaders play in a successful Lean deployment.

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Senior Leader sponsorship of Lean transformations can make or break the outcome.

Hi, I’m Ron Spiteri. Welcome to this TXM Lean Minute, where we’ll explore how senior leaders achieve sponsorship of Lean transformations when they are unable to afford the time to get involved in the detail.

The challenge is in efficiently applying the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle to this sponsorship responsibility.

In the planning phase of a change program, senior leaders must understand the objectives of the program. Less energy is required in understanding how the team plan to achieve the change, but rather, apply the energy in understanding “what good looks like” when they get there. That is, what is the desired end state and what are the key milestones along the way?

Participation in the doing of the plan can be as little as showing support through communication or engagement in specific events.

Applying your traffic light convention improves the efficiency of checking progress of the plan, allowing for focused exception reporting.

Upon identifying exceptions, the most important contribution a transformational sponsor makes is their decisive action. Senior leaders must support their team by celebrating success and removing any blockages to ensure that the plan recovers and the agreed definition of “what good looks like” is attained.

Call us at TXM and see how we can help you achieve effective transformational sponsorship. I’m Ron Spiteri and thanks for watching this TXM Lean Minute.