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Lean hitting, fielding and
pitching at the same time:
A whole new ballgame for middle
management
ELEC 2015 16-18 September 2015
2nd European Lean Educators Conference
Drs. Freek Hermkens CMC
Background
• Principal business consultant MLC
• >10 years experience as consultant
• financial service industry
• Trainer at MLC
• PhD student at TuE
How and to what extent does middle management influence continuous improvement of organizations in the financial service
industry?
1
Keep in mind the following questions
• What are the pitfalls for Middle Management for
successful implementation of Continuous Improvement?
• How does the role of Middle Management relates to
change management?
• At which specific aspects of Continuous Improvement
Middle Management can play a role?
2
When we talk about … middle manager
“Any manager two levels below the CEO and one level
above line managers” (Huy 2001, pp. 73).
Can be broadly defined as managers holding positions
between the first level supervisors and the level of
executives, below those who have company wide
responsibilities (Herzing and Jimmieson 2006, pp. 628).
The middle manager stands in a unique organizational
position. They are close to the daily operations but far
enough away to see the bigger picture (Huy 2001).
4
Middle Management
• Their unique position between operational and upper
management and knowledge about what motivates
employees in their unit/department allows middle managers to
enhance the chances of realizing change.
• Drawing on an analogy with baseball, middle managers are
typically expected to be able to hit, field and pitch at the same
time.
5
Introduction
• Changes within and around organizations are order of the day, arising from
the need to simultaneously e.g.
• reduce cost
• improve quality
• reduce lead times and
• enhance flexibility (Stewart & Melnyk 2000; Homan 2006)
• Many organizations adopt Lean to establish continuous improvement (CI) as
an approach to cope with (some of) these changes (Bhuiyan et al. 2006).
• However, implementing Lean (or any other CI method) is a challenging
process and demands substantial organizational changes and commitment
of people involved (Drew et al. 2004).
• The success / failure of Lean programs thus to a large extent depends on
the people responsible for implementing the method, such as middle
management (Fine et al. 2008).
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Stuck in the triangle
• Middle Managers key agents in facilitating change
• Stuck in the Triangle
• Top management needs to actively support
• Lead by example
• Focus for cutting cost to changing the organizational culture
9
Demanding Playing field
• Failure of CI methods has been said to be poor leadership (CI)
• Move away from the role of supervisor to the role of coach (PH)
• As culture and values are to a large extent top management driven
(TM)
• Perceive the empowering of their subordinates as beneficial to the
organization but not beneficial to themselves (WF)
• Reduced job security for middle managers and increased work
pressure and peer pressure (PP)
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Filling the pieces of the puzzle
• Process management controlling, influencing, monitoring and
predicting
• Risk of sub optimization on the end-to-end process
• Working a philosophy not just a set of tools
• Visual management is essential if an organizations wants to change
• Middle management can make or break change
• Middle managers have value-adding ideas for making the
organization better
• Commitment and a change in behavior and attitude from the entire
organization,
• Organizations often focus on tools and the change is insufficiently
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Change and Middle Management
Two major angles regarding change and middle
management:
1) The role and influence a middle manager has on
implementing (strategic) change
a. Positive influence
b. Negative influence
2) Impact of organizational change on the middle manager
job and behaviour
a. Positive influence
b. Negative influence
15
Further research
We intend to investigate these outcomes in more detail, as
follows:
• Several case studies of (middle managers’ role in)
Lean initiatives/programs; these case studies are
currently being conducted.
• Development and testing of an instrument, in the form
of practical guidelines that help managers to identify
the conditions and strategies that are likely to enhance
the success of a Lean initiative.
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