One of my colleagues shared with me a terrific video about lean management. Its a great illustration of how value stream managers and team leaders should think. Its very often difficult to get away from the daily firefights but more managers need to think about the long term. The weekly numbers are important but more important is having a vision for the future state of the value stream.  

1. Control your territory – as a leader its important to have a clear understanding of your boundaries. In what areas am I seen as the leader (not only the areas you manage sometimes!)? Who are my customers?

2. Give meaning to your actions – link actions with results. Visual management is very important here so that your employees understand whether you are winning or losing on a daily basis.

3. Motivating and driving your team – are you coaching and recognizing your team members properly?

4. Delegating simple problem solving – a leader should be focusing on planning, creating a vision and continuously improving. The team itself should be trained and empowered to solve the small day-to-day problems on the shopfloor instead of the leader constantly firefighting. Small problems become big problems!

5. Managing the progress plan – Each value stream should have a CI Plan clearly linked to the site’s Policy deployment.