A lean look at… the fight against climate change

Roberto Priolo: The idea of lean and green is not new, but it has not yet fully entered the way of thinking of most lean practitioners. Why?

Michael Ballé: The value of lean is that it is a fully functional paradigm for creating more value for the company by focusing on customers and better engaging employees and suppliers. There are many concepts and tools associated with lean, but to really “get” lean and interpret its tools correctly, you first have to abandon the Taylorist paradigm in which we were all educated. When exposed to new ideas – such as lean and green –, lean practitioners run into two problems: 1) acquisition and 2) translation. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that most senior management is not looking for real, radical change. Most of the time, unfortunately but not surprisingly, they are looking for confirmation: tell me what I am already doing that is lean.

Lean is great. It works. It is fun. But the investment in learning cannot be underestimated. Lean practitioners progress as they learn new tools, one after another, grabbing on to the next concept. The climb is steep, the mountain seems endless, and, understandably, many struggle along the way. For example, as lean practitioners, we now need to understand software, which is now everywhere, as well as sustainability because of the emerging global crisis.

Interestingly, Toyota, our example, is well ahead of the curve on both concepts, but, as has always been the case, its answers are very specific to its culture and industry and, to a large extent, are mysterious. It is hard to get access to them or to hear them from the horse's mouth. So it doesn't surprise me that most people avoid this challenge. A pity, but understandable.

RP: How does the lean and green strategy work in a company?

MB: I suspect the problem runs much deeper. In the West, we can see our political environment shifting in two rather unappealing directions. One is the 24/7 news frenzy, in which we are bombarded with a great deal of news, real and fake, relevant and trivial, and this gets us hooked on the fast and easy, the superficial, the consumable information, the packaged ideas. Strategies need to be simple and already familiar. It doesn't help us think about how to get out of the collective hole we ourselves have dug. As we can see from the repeated financial crises since the end of the Cold War, most people are insensitive to systemic risk because they feel that someone else should do the work (what can they do?) and that someone else will be worse off before they are (we should be fine for a while). Although this has never been a great basis for politics, it is a natural reaction, and the question is how to overcome it.

At the same time (and perhaps for the same reasons), politicians are becoming increasingly authoritarian in asserting their solutions, whatever they may be, favoring their followers at the expense of the rest of us. This revolutionary language is about seizing power and imposing solutions, and it compounds the problem of global inaction – if I don't feel concerned by or involved in any of these proposals, such as changing our lifestyle, abandoning the idea of growth and other things, why should I get myself into this mess? The language of politics has become so brutal and hateful that ordinary people are unlikely to get involved for fear of being caught in the crossfire.

As a result, what is progressively disappearing is a process for finding solutions together when those solutions are not yet known. This is something lean excels at. Its highest values are joint problem solving, going to the gemba, listening to what all the people involved have to say and then creating global responses from local ideas and initiatives. Lean offers us a way to tackle the problem of sustainability, but not a ready-made solution in itself. A lean strategy for sustainability would be:

Let's start there and see where we get – we need to find the right strategy, not adopt a ready-made one hoping it will work for us (or worse, copy and adapt existing “best practices” from consultants' reports and books).

RP: A major sustainability challenge is measuring the cost of “externalities” – the impact of our work and business on the environment. Lean has a way of bringing to the surface information that is hidden… can this help us? The impact of that would be huge.

MB: Absolutely. Lean is a learning system based on practice, on theory and, most importantly, on measurement. The first real commitment to a green strategy is to start measuring green performance, in whatever way is relevant to your practice. Carbon footprint is a good starting point, as is the waste of resources. Measuring specific waste or impacts is the first step toward committing to a green strategy – it is not that easy, but if you compare it with the efforts companies make to measure productivity, you will see that it is not that hard either. It is mainly a matter of facing the problem and rolling up your sleeves.

RP: Individuals and companies are reluctant to give up their habits to save the environment, and it has been hard to find consensus on the global stage. Any agreement reached will probably have limited results (if any). We need to be more ambitious as a global community! Can lean help us form a united front against climate change?

MB: With the Covid-19 pandemic, we can see where waiting for a global consensus on the environment will take us: more debates with experts, more random government actions (or inaction) and very little progress. The key element in coordinating any response is leadership – the companies that get there first and prove their path is viable will have followers. People are not that good at inventing their own solutions, but they are happy to follow along when a reasonable solution is offered. Look at how Toyota and Tesla changed the picture – and the automotive field – simply by offering more eco-friendly vehicles. Tesla is fully electric. Toyota is generalizing hybrid technology across its entire lineup and phasing out diesel in Europe. This puts pressure on their competitors to catch up and radically changes the market landscape.

Instead of waiting for a global consensus, we need more companies that take on this kind of leadership and actually show that it can be done and that customers prefer greener solutions. Yes, there is certainly an intention-action gap. Many consumers say they prefer greener solutions, but they think with their wallets and buy the most convenient or cheapest products. Even so, the real solution will appear in unexpected ways. Nicolas Chartier, co-author of the book “The Lean Sensei”, founded a company that sells cars online and says that demand for used cars is growing – a key element of the circular economy. As someone who sells cars, he has long wondered how he could contribute to the green movement. Now he sees that by refurbishing cars better (so that people buy something that looks new) and stimulating the growth of this business, he is helping the circular economy take hold more firmly, which, now that we see it, will be a necessary part of the global solution. The point is that we need to discover where future solutions will lie, and not just apply currently known ideas – which will inevitably turn out to be mistaken.

RP: Toyota has led the way in developing greener technology. What can we learn from the company and its approach to sustainability?

MB: Here too, as in lean, Toyota remains a model. Its green approach has been spectacular, even if it is not as radical (or as loved by the media) as Tesla's fully electric strategy. Toyota's green approach does not involve only cars, but also processes. It looks at the impact of its product (cars on the road) and the impact of the company itself (how those cars are made):

These two challenges translate concretely into a multitude of local initiatives, as car designers and plants all over the world look for new opportunities and try out new ideas. The company is developing the concept of “econohito”: environmentally friendly people coming together to invent new paths.

As with car refurbishing, these solutions can be surprising and far from what people usually think of when they talk about “green”. For example, the karakuri kaizen devices built by the operators themselves replace hydraulic or electric machines with simple devices that use gravity – and ingenuity – to move parts. Following Toyota's example, Cyril Dané's company AIO is now teaching other automakers to design and build these karakuri devices to make their production lines greener – while easing the ergonomic burden on operators.

I bought a Prius as soon as I could, more out of activism than because I really wanted the car. It was one of the first models, and I fell completely in love with it (to my surprise) – mainly because of the incredible comfort and quietness of its interior. Now I drive a plug-in Prius – which is not as radical as a Tesla, I agree. At the time, I remember how auto industry executives hated my car. I don't know if they knew it, but something in their unconscious knew what was coming. Toyota paved the way, and Tesla took its revenge (its cars are amazing). Toyota is now trying the bold strategy of hydrogen-powered cars. All the other automakers are struggling to catch up.

This is how I believe we will find global solutions – leaders find the way, others try to catch up, and the world moves on. What lean really has to offer is not pre-packaged solutions. Loving the package more than what is inside is the drama of our times. However, I believe that, as we progressively realize how bad and deep our problems are, this will change, and people will focus again on the deep solution to problems. Lean offers a method for discovering solutions where we thought they did not exist, such as the mass reuse of refurbished cars, karakuri devices at every production site or closed-loop water use (to name just a few examples).

The real lean goal to adopt is not this or that strategy, but econohito – bringing together people with a true passion and an environmentally conscious mindset and helping them realize their insights and achieve their dreams. They will lead us to the greener world we are seeking.