Introducing Colombia to lean management
Planet Lean: To understand the context in which Instituto Lean Colombia operates, can you tell us a little about the Colombian economy?
Juan Ruiz: We are an emerging country that is growing consistently, though not as quickly as we would like. We currently have a negative trade balance – with more imports than exports –, but a lot of diversity in our economy. We have a lot of construction, manufacturing, mining and agriculture. In recent years, the service sector has grown considerably by leveraging Colombia's strategic location between two oceans – despite the lack of infrastructure in our country.
PL: What opportunities do you see for lean in your country? How can it help it grow and prosper?
JR: There is enormous potential for lean in Colombia. I believe it can not only boost our economy but also transform our society. A recent study by the International Labour Organization revealed that Colombia is one of the least productive countries in the world, which in itself creates huge opportunities for lean here.
Conversations rarely focus on value creation and, even when they do, they tend to refer to value for the business – not for the customer. With lean, we have a way to reshape work in Colombia and make better use of our resources.
With globalization and the opening of our economy, we finally have the opportunity to compete with the world. To do so, however, we need to be on an equal footing with other countries. We cannot fall behind: we need to be faster, more agile, more efficient… in other words, more lean.
Lean is an alternative approach to management that allows companies to follow a path of continuous learning and innovation. It is people-centric, as it keeps capability development at its core. In Colombia it is often still regarded as a tool. This has been a common misconception at the early stage in every country where lean has appeared, and we are no exception. As an institute, we are working hard to help the business world in Colombia understand what lean really is and to embrace it fully.
We have good lean cases, of course, but most of them are in large corporations. The problem is that corporations account for only 5% of companies in Colombia… our opportunity is the remaining 95%!
PL: What kind of obstacles are you encountering as you work to introduce more and more people to lean in Colombia?
JR: When we talk to business leaders, we notice a tendency to focus on external problems instead of looking at what each of us can do to improve things. For example, companies complain about poor infrastructure or the government's latest decisions (which are, of course, legitimate concerns), but rarely about which problems they can solve internally to improve their results. Changes in policy and infrastructure will come in the medium and long term, but lean is here now! We can already do something to improve our performance as companies and, consequently, as a country.
There is currently a lot of discussion about productivity in Colombia. This is a welcome change, but I also worry that we may get stuck in what is essentially a Taylorist discussion: finding efficiency and cutting costs is great, but we can never forget the customer. We need to understand that lean is a holistic system.
Another difficulty we face is getting business leaders to understand that they need to lead their companies' transformations. There are many family businesses in Colombia, with deeply rooted cultures that are hard to change. We see an enormous gap between the speed at which organizations make strategies and adapt to new circumstances and the speed at which customers are changing their behaviors and habits.
PL: Speaking for Instituto Lean Colombia, what is your strategy to help Colombia adopt lean? Where do you draw your inspiration from?
JR: Our goal is to guide people and companies in their lean transformations. We do this in different ways. For example, because we are a non-profit organization, we have learning partnerships with our clients. This is fundamentally different from traditional consulting, in which people hire someone to “do lean” for them. We do not believe in that approach. Instead, we give organizations the tools they need to make changes themselves.
We are part of the Lean Global Network (present in more than 30 countries) and we strive to spread lean thinking and practice in our country in every way possible. We organize workshops open to the public, where people share their experiences and difficulties, and events where you can learn from others who are already on a lean journey. We make an effort to share examples of both success stories and failed attempts to introduce lean.
When we created the institute, there were no books on lean available in the country. They already existed in Spanish, but no one had decided to bring them to Colombia. Today, we have 23 more titles available to the Colombian lean community.
The lean community in Colombia is starting to grow. Our goal is to identify the people and organizations that want to be part of this community and support them with the information and practical help they need. Workshops, summits, books and articles like those on Planet Lean are powerful tools at our disposal for spreading the lean word across our country.
PL: Your first lean summit is coming up! Can you tell us about it?
JR: We are delighted to host the first Lean Summit in Colombia, on November 6-7, in Bogotá. The event will be a meeting point for our community. Some of the best lean cases in Colombia will be showcased there. We are also lucky and honored to welcome Jim Womack to the event. He and Dan Jones are the founding fathers of the lean movement. We will also have José Ferro, founder of Lean Institute Brasil, Christopher Thompson, an expert in lean applied to the digital world, and Karyn Ross, an expert in lean in the service sector. Participants will learn a lot from the presentations. They will also have the unique opportunity to network with like-minded professionals: yokoten is one of the effective ways to learn from others and spread lean thinking.
