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How to handle stubborn employees when adopting lean manufacturing

Negative impact can drain the life out of a shop floor's improvement initiative

Stubborn manufacturing worker

Some employees refuse to accept certain changes when it comes to lean manufacturing. How a shop floor manager deals with them can make or break an improvement initiative. Getty Images

A comprehensive lean manufacturing journey has both technical and people components. Most focus on the former, not the latter. You might receive detailed, structured guidance about designing a manufacturing cell, optimizing flow, and implementing 5S. You’ll probably have to use judgment and adapt, because these methodologies do not have cookie-cutter recipes, but having a structure at least accelerates implementation and results.

But what about the people side of lean manufacturing? How you handle people can make or break your lean journey. Even a single, stubborn individual can be highly disruptive to what you are trying to accomplish.

Where the Stubborn Employees Are

Stubborn employees—in this context, those who refuse to accept changes brought about by a lean initiative—can be anywhere in the organization, from senior leadership to the front line. They might have different levels of influence and ability to disrupt the lean journey, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Regardless, the better you understand how people can be disruptive, the better you can address the matter through countermeasures.

Senior leadership has high leverage. Their behaviors are seen by most of the organization. It is uncanny how people interpret and perceive what they see in a senior leader and then fall in line. The senior leader’s influence reaches far and broad.

Supervisory and middle-management personnel have direct impact on the day-to-day performance and on the effectiveness of lean implementation. They provide the workforce with the time and resources for lean deployment, and their actions are visible. Through their actions and decisions, they have heavy influence on the workforce and operation.

Front-line employees may have limited breadth in their influence, but where they have influence, it is deep. They directly affect their immediate workspaces and can substantially influence their immediate upstream and downstream operations. Also, a front-line employee with no official “leader” title or responsibility can emerge as an informal leader who many look to for guidance and advice.

Common Characteristics

No matter where they are in the organization, stubborn employees share certain characteristics. First, they believe that a lean initiative will put their job at risk. If they see that the revised work process will change or eliminate what they do, then they fear they will be out of a job. At the very least, they feel the initiative will impede their personal progress. Such change can be intimidating, spurring emotions that drive what most would think is irrational behavior.

In some cases, stubborn employees simply don’t understand the initiative. A stubborn person in a leadership role, for instance, might not have a general understanding of how lean principles and techniques can alter the way leaders guide and direct the business. Front-line employees might misunderstand how the focus on value-added and non-value-added activities can have a positive impact on their job and the operating results. It really is a win-win.

Other stubborn employees think they’re in a groove (though others might view it as a rut) and feel quite comfortable with the way things are. They like their existing reporting relationships and the way tools are laid out in a workstation. They feel comfortable producing large batches and limiting the number of changeovers. It’s how they’ve always done it, and to them, it just makes sense. In short, they’re comfortable with the current state and fail to look for ways to improve.

Stubborn employees at various levels also might be worried about management’s “hidden motives.” This can have near debilitating effects on a lean initiative’s momentum. Stubborn employees might have some negative past experience, or maybe there was an improvement initiative that caused disruption. Whatever the case, they have a lingering bitterness that still defines their current behavior.

This is not an exhaustive list of characteristics that shape the way a person acts and reacts to a company’s lean journey, but it does provide enough context to help companies appreciate the complexity of addressing the stubborn employee. Sometimes you think you are making progress, but then you find that large rubber band attached to that person’s back (in a figurative sense). These stubborn employees might begin to appreciate and get onboard with the initiative. But remember, that rubber band is trying to pull them back. You have to be sensitive to that rubber band.

Progressive Actions

Ideally, you want all employees, from the top floor to the shop floor, to be willingly engaged and supportive participants in the lean initiative. You may not win over everyone’s hearts and minds, but at least you want tacit support that is not disruptive.

Remember, having respect for people is one of the fundamental tenets of a lean organization. Leaders who lead in a lean way can take steps to handle the situation:

  1. Ask why. Engage the person in a sincere and objective way to understand what is causing them to be against the approach you are taking in your lean journey. This would likely take place in an informal way. At this point, you’re simply trying to learn the other person’s perspective.
  2. Train and educate. If they lack understanding or misunderstand the initiative, provide relevant training and education. Help the person develop accurate and reasonable knowledge of what lean is and how it helps organizations.
  3. Share results. Take time to show the person some of the results that either your company has attained or that other companies have achieved. Put the results in terms the person understands. If you’re talking to a senior person, then financial information may be the language that captures attention. If the stubborn employee works on the front line, share nonfinancial results like number of defects, travel distance, the time to perform work, and space reclaimed.
  4. Demonstrate. Let the person see lean in action. Have other people who are performing their work in a lean way describe how their work changed as a result of an idea developed through lean processes. Let the person ask questions and even challenge what they see (in a professional and courteous manner, of course).
  5. Involve them in improvement. Put stubborn employees on an improvement team, maybe as a member of a focused kaizen event team. Perhaps they could be a part of a less formal, ongoing improvement initiative. This may give them an opportunity to convince themselves that the lean ideas and the lean journey are a logical way to create better, safer work processes and a better business environment.
  6. Coach and counsel. Conduct formal counseling and performance appraising with the person. This may involve setting formal goals and objectives that clearly define what is expected. The formality implies the seriousness of the situation and the career-limiting implications of noncompliance.
  7. Send to HR. At some point, it may be best for stubborn employees and appropriate company representatives to decide if it is time to part ways. In some cases, stubborn employees will determine that this “lean stuff” is not for them and then self-select out of the company. In other cases, they might end up being terminated. There is simply too great a mismatch to go forward.

Remember the Rubber Band

The stubborn person is a monumental test of your leadership’s conviction to the lean journey and of your willingness to step up to make tough decisions. Stubborn people, regardless of their position in the company, can be an enormous drag on your company’s successful transition to a well-tuned lean enterprise. Failure to address the stubborn person situation will come at a hefty cost. Don’t let the rubber band win.

About the Author
Back2Basics  LLC

Jeff Sipes

Principal

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Indianapolis, IN 46234

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