Learn How to Focus and Accelerate Your Lean Efforts Using Collaborative Learning

by John Shook - Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute

The newly appointed CEO of LEI and author of Learning to See and Managing to Learn, will be the Summit host and closing keynote speaker.

The names are different – consortium, network, partnership. But lean learning-based groups all apply the same powerful strategy of collaborative learning to help members obtain and sustain better business results from their lean transformations.
This year, LEI's annual Lean Transformation Summit will show you how to borrow the learning curve of Lean Thinkers who are sharing resources and experiences through collaborative learning groups so that you too can:

• Fully leverage the positive impact of learning-by-doing, a practical, nontheoretical way of learning that happens at the gemba with colleagues inside and outside your company to accelerate learning and the overall lean transformation. Plus, learning-by-doing develops people who have deep direct experience (not tacit knowledge) in applying lean tools and adopting lean behaviors so that improvements you put in place, stay in place.

• Build credibility for your lean culture change message. When your managers and associates hear the same change message at other companies, it inspires belief in your company's call for change.

• Structure gemba visits around a specific theme such as strategy deployment (hoshin kanri) to ensure that gemba walks are not desultory tours. You'll understand how to effectively design these visits so learning goes in two directions: from host to guests and back to hosts as visitors ask questions and offer constructive feedback. You'll also find out how companies organize teaching so that it comes from all levels of the host organization, from CEO to front-line staff.

• Develop better lean leaders by creating a path for continuously exchanging ideas with managers and executives who are confronting the same challenges you face.

• Bring together insights and resources from collaborative partners about how to implement new behaviors such as leader standard work so you build sustainable capability in people as fast as possible.

• Profit from the knowledge gained by learning group sub-networks pursuing tightly focused special interest topics. Discover how the valuable learning of special interest groups is diffused to the full network for further exploration and broad application.

• Tap the thinking and networks of collaborative partners for guidance on developing a viable lean effort focused on your company's True North. 

>>> see details