The boss is a mentor

Dhe special relationship between employees and their managers - a mentor-mentee relationship - is at the core of sustainable lean management success. This requires a company-wide culture of continuous improvement that allows the company to become a constantly learning organization. Successful companies are characterized by the fact that their workforce performs at its best and constantly raises its performance level. This behavior is an integral part of their corporate culture.

The mentor is socially competent

The culture change can only come from the management. To this end, leadership style and methods must be rethought, because how leadership is ultimately perceived and practiced is often left to the interplay of the skills of professional competence, social competence and the methodological competence of each superior.

Understanding leadership anew

However, the tension triangle of a superior's competence balance is never balanced. The reasons for this are manifold. In lean management, social and methodological competence are at least as important as professional competence. A manager in a lean company must not regard and treat his employees as mere followers of orders. Their experience and knowledge must be incorporated into the continuous improvement work and their problem-solving skills must be constantly expanded. It is the task of managers to create a climate that allows everyone to do what needs to be done without fear. The motto is: "Coaching instead of issuing orders". But what does coaching mean in management?

The mentor does not command, but coaches

The role of a coach in management is much more difficult and demanding than that of a person issuing orders: not only must a manager be able to draw on professional skills. It is crucial that they have great social and leadership skills.

A prerequisite for the role as coach is that managers discard "linear-causal ways of thinking". Problems must no longer be squeezed into simple cause-and-effect schemes, which in turn produce simple solutions, but do not solve the problem in depth or worse: relocate it within the company. Instead, problems have to be recorded, analyzed and solved "systemically-cybernetically", in their entirety, i.e. affecting the entire company. Today, for example, purchasers are under increasing pressure due to rising material prices, falling sales prices and the intensification of global competition. However, one-sided price-oriented action, as would be dictated by linear-causal thinking, is not the solution here. Instead, purchasing must no longer make decisions based solely on the price of materials, but must act in a value stream-optimized manner "from customer to customer", i.e. systemically.

Managers as coaches view problems and challenges in their uniqueness, because in the systemic-cybernetic approach, problems are subjective human constructs and therefore only perceptible to each individual in his or her own reality. Shortening delivery times, for example, may be perceived as a great urgency by the top management of a company, while for the group leader on the assembly line it is merely the lowest priority on his long to-do list.

Triggering the solution process

When confronted with a problem, managers, as coaches, are more likely to stimulate new patterns of thinking and behavior instead of enforcing goals with a crowbar. They do not look for causes or culprits, but develop sustainable long-term solutions and empower employees to continuously improve their processes. The core activity of coaches is to raise questions, summarize answers, and ensure the flow of the continuous improvement process. In this sense, a coach supports employees in solving problems on their own responsibility and in testing the solutions in reality.

This means: The coach does not present the individual with solutions, but helps him to recognize where his problem lies and supports him in finding his solutions. The responsibilities in the

Coachee: responsible for the content

Problem solving are clearly assigned: The coach is responsible for the process and the achievement of goals, the coachee for the content.

Shopfloor management saves time

How does the manager know which problems exist in the company and where support in the form of coaching is needed? And above all: Where can a manager find the necessary time to coach his employees? The Shopfloor Management leadership philosophy makes exactly this possible.

The term stands for improved management on the way to a learning organization and extends to all areas of the company. Shopfloor management offers methods for implementing a culture that aims to optimize the interaction between managers and workforces in order to align all operational activities from development to quality assurance in such a way that production, as the actual place of value creation, can be designed to be as efficient, flexible and trouble-free as possible.

In recent years and decades, many managers have moved away from the workbench - the place where value is actually created - towards desks and computers. Decisions have increasingly been made based on abstract data and ERP systems. Shopfloor management reverses this development and brings managers back to the place where the problem occurred.

Central elements of shop floor management are daily brief meetings - in the style of coaching - and the so-called shop floor board. This is where all the important information on various relevant aspects such as occupational safety, employee occupancy, quality or output can be found. The motto here is: slide pen instead of PowerPoint or SAP. All key figures visualized in this way follow the principle of the traffic light function. If, for example, there are too few people in an assembly island compared to a target value, the line manager places a red magnet next to the figures. The same applies to the output: The line managers not only record whether they have produced too much or too little, they also indicate the respective reasons for this. The problem is displayed directly behind

Slide pen instead of PowerPoint or SAP

of the current figure is noted and recorded in detail on a separate sheet. This is also where it is recorded how far the problem-solving process has progressed.

This principle enables what is known as three-minute management: managers do not have to fight their way through countless e-mails and notes or work through presentations to identify the status quo and any need for action. The time saved can be considerable and frees up resources that can be invested sensibly in strategic work or employee management and development. It also enables immediate action.

Trust remains the basis

One thing above all is important when introducing Shopfloor Management and Coaching: to create trust. Shopfloor management with its transparent visualization of key figures could all too easily be perceived as control. To counteract this, managers must show that this is not the goal. They must prove that Shopfloor Management and coaching are aids and bring added value for the company, but especially for the employees: Problems can be tackled quickly and efficiently. Quick decisions motivate to actively participate in the problem-solving process and to creatively shape the respective areas of competence.

In this way, coaching and shop floor management support the long road towards a corporate culture of continuous improvement, which is indispensable to allow the effects of lean management to unfold in their full depth. Enthusiastic and not just "satisfied" employees are the result because they are involved in the responsibility.