I think another thing about values is that they actually have to help companies make decisions. A few years a study revealed that 48 percent of the Fortune 500 had the same values of respect and integrity. One company had Respect, Integrity, Excellence, and Communication. That company was Enron.

The problem is that most people don’t come to work saying they were going to work “out of integrity” but it’s a corporate value so I will work “in integrity.”

Make principles / values / beliefs that help people make decisions.

Jamie Flinchbaugh
http://www.jamieflinchbaugh.com

In those early years most lean transformations were being driven by a Japanese sensei. To them the lean tools we all spend so much time on where secondary to the human part.

No company can build a sustainable advantage based just on tools, since anyone can acquire a tool. The only true sustainable advantage you can attain comes from people.

Why can a Honda or Toyota order a recall and gain an advantage from it, while one of the traditional Big 3 does it and they lose market.

First Honda and Toyota do it voluntarily as soon as they see a problem. They admit making a mistake and take corrective action. To the consumer it shows the company cares for them. The Big 3 deny making a mistake even after it is totally visible to everyone else.

When an enterprise focuses on people instead of money or tools, they build a focus on human needs and desires. Focusing on the human needs and desires of your people helps you identify the needs and wants of the consumer.

Additionally if you have no integrity and respect for the people in your business, how are you and they going deliver them to your customers and the consumer?

To truly succeed we need to take a few steps back a learn lessons from true industrial leaders. Stop focusing on tools (including capital, money is only a tool to facilitate exchange).

Take a lesson from an industrialist, a free enterprise loving man, and an anti-capitalist, Andrew Carnegie.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

Our greatest challenge is to learn how to work and deal with people.

I’m constantly struggling with changing my company’s “command and control” mentality to a “team of workers who come up with lean solutions” mentality.