Lean - "People" element in 21st century

Lean Management or Lean Manufacturing is one of the latest philosophies of productivity improvement being experimented in organizations. I happen to be one of the implementation partners.

My observation for organizations who are toying with this improvement philosophy is that many of them have missed the core elements to appreciate.

The core of the philosophy lies in the "value systems" of people. The 20th century (which is less than a century into Industrial revolution) had multiple transitions due to the World Wars. The world war, in my opinion, did two things - first it choked the capital available for businesses and second - shifted the power of demand to new geographies. My focus below is on the first and its impact on people.

The lack of capital available for expanding business ensured that organizations had to work very hard to improve productivity. This is in contrast to the 21st century. The advent of new mechanism to raise finance have put the organizations in less stress due to lack of availability. In the past couple of decades we have had more cases of stress due to mismanaged finances than lack of it. This contrast between the time when Lean was thought about and the 21st century. This puts "people" in very different context of working. 

Lack of availability of funding, around the period when Lean was conceptualized, also ensured that people had less opportunities to shift jobs. Skilling was predominantly a vertical than a horizontal thing. (Multiskilling in Lean is predominantly at Operator level). This contrasts with the 21st century world of work. Lifetime employment is an non existent phenomenon & horizontal rather than vertical growth has assumed more importance. The shift of careers, domains & more importantly the availability of those choices in in extreme contrast to the them time when Lean was originated. This has changed the core "value" systems of the people working in organizations.

I think the 21st century Lean will have to re-create a "People" model which in many ways will contrast many things of the old way of work. Lean to be successful in organisations will have more to do with working along-with the new "value" systems where co-creation of "value" has a completely different  meaning. Deskilling has led to "Systems" and "Processes" eliminate or substitute people skills, domain knowledge and in future may also come close to replacing human judgement.

** I intend to keep writing on various dimensions of Lean in 21st Century. The above is one of those.