The document discusses situational coaching as an effective tool for lean leadership. Situational coaching aims to provide a supportive environment for leaders to reflect on their behaviors and develop their skills. It involves identifying potential coaches within an organization who receive training and support to then coach others. This cascaded coaching model spreads coaching across an organization to develop lean leadership behaviors at all levels. When leaders model lean behaviors, it inspires employees and helps close the gap between lean tools and thinking to fully realize the benefits of lean.

1. 18
Darragh MacNeill, a director, and Mark
D. Hughes, vice president from Hitachi
Consulting, the specialist international
management and technology consulting arm
of Hitachi, explore the ideas of lean coaching
that will be an effective tool in the workplace.
Breaking through
the lean wall
with situational
coaching
N
o matter how you look at it, lean
leadership continues to represent
the biggest challenge for
organisations attempting transformational
change. It is challenging because fully
realising the value of lean requires a
change in how we think, work, behave and
lead. Changing behaviours is a long
process, and, just like with kicking a bad
habit, an abrupt change or withdrawal is
rarely effective over a longer period. As
such, behavioural change needs to be
approached incrementally, taking on one
or two behaviours at a time. And because
everyone is different, each individual will
experience their own personal
improvement journey on the way to the
target lean leadership behaviours. All this
requires a real time commitment, and the
support of a coach can be crucial to
creating and sustaining a continuous
improvement culture.
R E A D A B O U T :
New ways of coaching and
leadership training that will
encourage engagement
The roles of those in the
organisation that need to
be respected in order for
responsibilities to be met
W hat is a
situational coach ?
In business, coaching is a key enabler
for individuals and teams to reach
their full potential. But just as in sport,
where the most talented players do
not necessarily make the best coaches,
business leaders often need to develop
the skills required to be good coaches to
their teams.
Situational coaching is a key element of
an effective transformational programme,
aiming to provide a safe and supportive
environment to guide leaders through
their own personal development journey
in the context of their daily activities.
The practice supports leaders to become
role models for lean, giving leaders an
opportunity to reflect on their own
behaviours and identify key points that can
make a difference.

2. principles
& purpose
In that way, situational coaching can
close the gap between lean tools and
lean thinking.
C ascading the
coaching model
Situational coaching is a cascaded
leadership coaching model used
in consulting which deepens the
understanding of lean, provides practical
coaching and builds the overall leader
competence in leadership and management
aspects of their role. It ensures that
improvements are passed down and
tangible benefits are being realised.
It starts with deep and narrow coaching,
with potential coaches within the
organisation identified based on both
their knowledge of lean and their ability
to coach and mentor others. Specific
training and on-the-job support should
be provided as required for client coaches
to start to connect the layers within their
organisation. Once the right behaviours
are established in this narrow cross-
section, coaching can then spread across
the organisation, firstly adding more teams
and then more departments until each
leader in the organisation has received the
required dedicated coaching support.
Once the benefits of lean leadership
behaviour become apparent, the effect
quickly becomes infectious and a pull
is created within the organisation.
Once a critical mass of new leadership
behaviour is reached, the sustainability of
a transformation programme is ensured
even before full deployment.
Though lean thinking can be applied
consistently, it is still important to
remember that individuals at different
levels have different duties, and as such
also have different responsibilities with
regards to implementing lean thinking
within their organisation. Executive
management need to be able to create a
learning environment and translate the
voice of customers and business purpose
into policies, targets and standards.
The management team should be
responsible for defining key performance
indicator targets, and must therefore
be able to specify improvement
processes, and then translate these
into optimising the end-to-end
value stream. Supply chain, or value
stream, managers are responsible for
implementing improvement processes
and optimising cross-functional work
flow. Unit managers must be able
to lead cross-functional root cause
analyses and optimise process flow. And
finally team managers must be able to
develop and support teams, facilitating
continuous improvement. All of the
aforementioned are key pieces in the
puzzle to achieving true transformational
change. As such, it is important that
these different responsibilities are taken
into consideration when cascading the
coaching model through the layers
within an organisation.
The cascaded coaching model targets
rapid but long-lasting cultural change,
wherein lean leadership behaviours
become the norm, by focusing on
developing the coaching capability of the
leadership team. Key elements include
strong executive leadership, expert
coaching capability, trusted coaching
relationships and situational coaching in a
lean context.
When leaders are true role models for
lean behaviour, this inspires everyone
within an organisation to deepen their
understanding of lean, fully engage with
a transformational programme, and close
the gap between lean tools and lean
thinking to fully realise the value of lean.
Figure one: Target lean leadership behaviours
Figure two: Cascaded coaching model
19www.leanmj.com | March 2015