Lean Leadership

Every day, we’re bombarded with lean celebrities and weight loss programs. Now even the new buzzword in organisations is ‘lean’. It’s all about an obsessive focus on delivering the product or service to customers with minimal waste and resources.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? In less prosperous times organisations often pursue efforts to improve efficiency and reduce waste.

So, if you don’t want to read through this wasteful and bloated blog, I’ve also prepared a ‘lean’ summary here.

Still here? Ok, let me take you back in time, a long time ago in 2014. I attended a lean leadership training program where the ‘lean’ expert (he actually was quite trim) led us through a lean 100+ page training book over a lean two days.

He even provided the odd YouTube video showing random slapstick antics, which I’m sure was some clever method to help maintain acute focus on the objectives of the training program. Right?

But excuse my sarcasm, which doesn’t belong in this new lean world…

Research recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology has challenged the notion that we need to rid our offices of waste and ‘distractions’.

Across three studies, the researchers examined the performance of employees in a lean workplace environment versus a ‘green’ one. The lean environment maintained the standard office set-up. The green environment was surrounded by ‘wasteful’ plant life.

Employees who worked in the green environment reported increased job satisfaction and perceived the air to be cleaner. More importantly, their productivity improved. That is, they were more efficient in the green environment.

It isn’t quite understood why plant life seems to boost performance. For example, one idea is that the plants reduce carbon dioxide, thus improving air quality and concentration. The other idea is leaner. Employees simply feel more motivated to know that their managers care about their work environment.

Regardless of the reason, perhaps the message from this research is that people aren’t simply more efficient if they work in efficiently designed environments. They may even prefer to digress from time to time. After all, if you’re reading this, you chose not to jump to the lean summary, right?