When I asked fellow Lean practitioners on March 13th how they were reacting to COVID-19, I was surprised that they thought I was “overreacting” by quarantining myself and being worried about the global impact. Not only because people were dying and workers were being exposed to unsafe working conditions, but also because the Lean community stands for exactly the opposite thing: for better health and safety.

First reactions

Of course, we all had a good laugh at the toilet paper memes circling the Internet. Part of the Lean community came up with advice to reduce the number of necessary toilet sheets, some created online calculators to plan the right number of rolls for a household.

Others tried to focus more on educating the wider public on common technical misunderstandings about Lean, i.e. that Just-In-Time (JIT) production leads to not having safety or buffer stock.

There were also numerous initiatives of Lean companies changing their manufacturing to produce much needed masks, respirators and other emergency necessities and offering practical support.

But apart from these particular examples, as a whole the community missed an opportunity to show how Lean can help us deepen our understanding of people and systems, as most people still think that Lean is about increasing efficiency and helping organisations “scale” in relatively stable, predictable environments using standardisation.

Respect for people

After years of thinking and discussing principles, frameworks and tools in the Lean world, a consensus has emerged that its core is respect for people; and its main purpose, to support humans in creating more sustainable systems. These systems are meant to support people leading lives they want. That’s the simplicity and beauty of this virtuous loop. 

Agile, DevOps, ToC, systems thinking, new work, consent, self-organisation etc. all point to this respect for people. And all of them bring their own principles, frameworks and tools to support this work on designing, maintaining and improving better systems. How do they complement each other, and how can we learn from them?

Thought leaders and media

In the last four weeks I have been analyzing articles, comments and threads by influencers and thought leaders in these areas; from the Lean Enterprise Institute, Paul Akers and Nigel Thurlow to Dave Snowden, Nicholas Taleb and Charles Eisenstein, from entrepreneurs in the US and Europe to scientists, politicians, economists and even artists, the question I was trying to answer was this one:

how does their thinking deepen our understanding of the current crisis?

This will be my goal over the course of the next days, taking a tour to find that deeper understanding –and sharing it with you all.