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Leading Change, With a New Preface by Author John P. Kotter

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Leading Change, With a New Preface by Author John P. Kotter

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This seminal book by John Kotter is a must-read for understanding how to create and communicate a vision for change in healthcare settings. Kotter's 8-step process for leading change can help NHS leaders to build a shared purpose and vision effectively.

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The 8-Step Process for Leading Change | Dr. John Kotter

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The 8-Step Process for Leading Change is an award-winning strategy by Dr. John Kotter from Leading Change & has transformed countless organizations.

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Podcast: Building a Shared Vision in Healthcare

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Podcast: Building a Shared Vision in Healthcare

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Tune into this inspiring podcast by Catalysis, where leaders discuss strategies to develop a cohesive purpose and vision within your organisation.

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Inspiring Healthcare Leaders - Accelerating Change

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Mike Rother's Toyota Kata provides practical routines for connecting long-term goals with daily activities. It's essential reading for embedding improvement practices within management systems.

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" Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress--and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture."The Toyota Way
--Jeffrey K. Liker, bestselling author of

"[ Toyota Kata is] one of the stepping stones that will usher in a new era of management thinking."
--The Systems Thinker

"How any organization in any industry can progress from old-fashioned management by results to a strikingly different and better way."
--James P. Womack, Chairman and Founder, Lean Enterprise Institute

"Practicing the improvement kata is perhaps the best way we've found so far for actualizing PDCA in an organization."
--John Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute

This game-changing book puts you behind the curtain at Toyota, providing new insight into the legendary automaker's management practices and offering practical guidance for leading and developing people in a way that makes the best use of their brainpower.

Drawing on six years of research into Toyota's employee-management routines, Toyota Kata examines and elucidates, for the first time, the company's organizational routines--called kata --that power its success with continuous improvement and adaptation. The book also reaches beyond Toyota to explain issues of human behavior in organizations and provide specific answers to questions such as:

How can we make improvement and adaptation part of everyday work throughout the organization?

How can we develop and utilize the capability of everyone in the organization to repeatedly work toward and achieve new levels of performance?

How can we give an organization the power to handle dynamic, unpredictable situations and keep satisfying customers?
Mike Rother explains how to improve our prevailing management approach through the use of two kata: Improvement Kata--a repeating routine of establishing challenging target conditions, working step-by-step through obstacles, and always learning from the problems we encounter; and Coaching Kata: a pattern of teaching the improvement kata to employees at every level to ensure it motivates their ways of thinking and acting.

With clear detail, an abundance of practical examples, and a cohesive explanation from start to finish, Toyota Kata gives executives and managers at any level actionable routines of thought and behavior that produce superior results and sustained competitive advantage.

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Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results (BUSINESS BOOKS)

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Buy Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results (BUSINESS BOOKS) by Rother, Mike (ISBN: 8601400847824) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Virginia Mason Medical Center: A Model of Excellence

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Virginia Mason Medical Center: A Model of Excellence

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Explore how Virginia Mason Medical Center embeds continuous improvement into its daily management systems. This article offers practical insights and examples.

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Learn the basics of lean and the tools for implementation

Foundations of Process Improvement in Healthcare (Foundations of Lean in Healthcare) is a uniquely designed and facilitated 3-day interactive workshop takes process improvement (lean) learning to a new level of creative thinking and exploration.

Join a cohort of diverse health care professionals in an interactive learning experience that teaches the foundational elements, including various principles, methods and tools of the Virginia Mason Production System® from general to complex. Learn how to drive improvements that create value, eliminate waste and reduce staff's burden of work. Participants will build observation skills, demonstrate a basic ability to apply process improvement tools and methods to a process, and describe the importance of thinking and acting in a lean framework.

This workshop will give you an understanding of:

Value-added processes and eliminating waste.

The VMPS® Flows of Medicine and how the concept of flow impacts processes and quality.

How to make improvements by focusing on the patient's perspective.

The basic elements of mistake-proofing and how they can be applied to your clinic operations.

After this workshop you will be able to apply the tools of lean, as adapted into health care through the Virginia Mason Production System ®, and add value and solve common problems in your health care setting.

Who Should Attend:

Health care leaders and frontline staff at all levels can benefit from this foundational training experience, including those curious about learning lean concepts and methods.

Prerequisites - None

Contact us for a custom experience or view our training calendar to register.

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Foundations of Process Improvement in Healthcare

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Discover the foundations for process improvement in health care with our facilitated 3-day training. Learn the basics of Lean in health care today!

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The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership by Jeffrey Liker and Gary L. Convis

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The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership by Jeffrey Liker and Gary L. Convis

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Gain insights into how Toyota’s leadership approach can be adapted to build improvement capability and capacity within the NHS.

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ACHIEVING AND SUSTAINING EXCELLENCE THROUGH LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT By JEFFREY K. LIKER GARY L. CONVIS

McGraw-Hill

Copyright © 2012 Jeffrey K. Liker and Gary L. Convis
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-07-178078-0

Chapter One

Leading in the Toyota Way: A Lifelong Journey

Genchi genbutsu [go and see the actual situation] means imagining what you are observing is your own job, rather than somebody else's problem, and making efforts to improve it. Job titles are unimportant. In the end, the people who know the gemba [where the actual work is done] are the most respected.

-Akio Toyoda, president, Toyota Motor Corporation, 2009

Perhaps the most difficult task in any book on leadership is defining leadership. To use the famous adage, we may not be able to describe leadership, but we know it when we see it. With that in mind, rather than attempting a semantic definition of leadership to kick off this book, let us tell you two stories of leadership to demonstrate what it is and what it is not at Toyota.

What Is Toyota Way Leadership?

In 1970, at the direction of the legendary Toyota research and development executive Masayuki Kato, a young section manager in the overseas sales division named Akira Yokoi was assigned to take over the fledging Toyota operation in Indonesia. The prior manager for Indonesia had become ill, and Yokoi was unexpectedly pushed into action to assume his duties. Indonesia had just emerged from a civil war, and its economy was profoundly damaged. Toyota had made a commitment to the country to help it rebuild and industrialize. Yokoi's orders from Kato did not include specific targets for sales or profitability, but rather were to "always do what is best for Indonesia."

Yokoi began his time in Indonesia with a tour of the country to "grasp the actual situation," as he later wrote in his memoirs. He was deeply discouraged when he saw the barely functional roads and destroyed bridges: ferries were used to cross most of the rivers that he encountered. Yokoi's 150-mile trip took 14 hours. There were no shops open or places to eat; passersby wore rags. In this environment, he was somehow supposed to sell cars.

Yokoi's challenge was all the greater because of Indonesia's industrial policy. The government wanted complete production done in Indonesia, not just final assembly of kits sent from Japan. Yokoi and his team managed to build a plant and introduced four models: large trucks and Land Cruisers for use in construction, the Hi-Ace van for rural areas, and the Corolla for (relatively) wealthy urbanites.

Things seemed to be going well until January 15, 1974, when there was an outbreak of riots in Jakarta, mostly among the poor. The rioters treated Toyota just like every other international company in Indonesia: as an object of wrath. In fact, Toyota's Jakarta headquarters was set on fire. Yokoi thought deeply about this and concluded that the problem didn't lie with the nature of the Indonesian people or the failure of the government to contain the riots; it was that Toyota wasn't connected to the vast majority of the Indonesian population. "Toyota needs to promote understanding about our activities among the poor," he wrote. More than understanding, the poor who were the majority of the country needed to see tangible benefits from Toyota if the perception was going to change. Yokoi became convinced that Toyota needed to build a product for the poor. Of course, there were huge challenges to such a plan, not least of which was how to design a car that Toyota could sell at a profit, but at a price low enough to appeal to, as we would say now, the base of the pyramid.

Selling to the poor meant producing extremely low-cost cars, which was impossible given Indonesia's industrial policy. Indonesia, like most developing countries at the time, charged very high tariffs on imported industrial goods in the mistaken belief that this would help develop local industry. Corolla parts were taxed at 125 percent. Toyota could build the cars internally, but the tariffs made it impossible for Yokoi to get the parts and supplies from Japan that he would need at an affordable price. Yokoi realized he badly needed a lawmaker in Jakarta to act as Toyota's champion. Fortunately, from assignments in Thailand and Malaysia, he had learned the importance of developing direct ties with lawmakers, and early on he had worked hard to develop a relationship with the minister of industry, who was responsible for automobile policy. The minister wanted to help and said he could win approval to waive the import tariffs if Toyota built a car with 70 percent local content that cost one-third the price of the Corolla.

With this daunting vision, Yokoi returned to Japan to sell the idea and encountered great resistance, largely because of the small projected sales volumes. One sympathetic Toyota leader suggested that Yokoi pursue a multiplatform model, so that a car, a van, and a pickup truck could all be built on it, thus increasing the volume at a reasonable cost. This would make it far more likely that production could eventually be profitable. With this starting point, Yokoi looked for other cost-reduction ideas. For example, he studied die making and learned that costs for boxy cars are lower than those for cars with curves. So Yokoi insisted on a boxy design. Even that was not enough, and he finally arrived at the radical idea of removing the glass from the rear doors and substituting clear vinyl covers instead. Based on all this, his final calculations showed that the project could be viable.

He then had to sell his ideas within Toyota in Japan. Many executives objected to making what they perceived as a substandard vehicle. Afraid that it could "damage the brand," Toyota Engineering refused to supply engines or transmissions. Yokoi turned for support to his executive sponsor, Kato, and got it. Kato, who had been closely following everything that Yokoi had been doing in Indonesia through regular calls and meetings in Tokyo, built consensus in Japan to supply the needed components. The Kijang went on the market in 1977. Starting out at low volumes that were not profitable, over the years it became the bestselling vehicle in Indonesia and paved the way for Toyota to become the dominant foreign player in that market. It was dubbed "the people's car," and one million were sold over 25 years.

Around the same time as Yokoi's project in Indonesia, a young manufacturing manager at Ford Motor Company named Gary Convis was confronting the quality problems that were endemic in the U.S. automotive industry in the 1970s. Quickly rising through the ranks of Quality Control, Convis had been assigned to iron out quality problems with a two-door Lincoln that was about to be launched.

As one example, a large interior panel between the trunk and the backseats was connected to the car's steel exterior with a Velcro fastener that was not always in the right spot. The result of the mismatch was that the interior panel often came loose. To repair the problem after the cars had come off the line, the rear seats had to be removed, the panel trim cover removed, and the Velcro reinstalled in the proper location (which was quite difficult to get right after the car was built). In total, fixing the problem with the interior panel took about one half-hour per side. With hundreds of cars rolling off the line each day, many of them with interior panel problems, that wasn't a trivial amount of time or effort.

Today it can be hard to remember what the U.S. automotive industry was like in the 1960s and 1970s. Quality was abysmal. Labor-management relationships were characterized by mutual distrust. Well into the 1980s, the attitude of management toward workers at GM and Ford was that they were lazy and would cut corners every chance they got. Managers watched the line workers like hawks, always assumed the worst, and placed constant pressure on production lines to simply turn out parts. The workers, in turn, had no incentive to do their best for their bosses or their company; the punitive atmosphere killed any desire they might have had to put in a discretionary best effort based on personal motivation and commitment to high-quality work. Even the threat of punishment was baseless, since union rules built out of distrust made disciplining workers a daunting task. In any case, management wouldn't turn off a production line no matter how many mistakes were made or how poor the quality was, because the only metric that mattered was the number of vehicles produced.

Convis traced the source of the problem with the Lincoln's interior panel to the trim shop. He reviewed the details of the Velcro installation and made sure that the workers were properly trained and that the right tools were available. He then announced that any more defects that came out of that area would lead to the line stopping-a threat that few people, if any, took seriously.

About a week later, Convis made good on his threat, stopping the line because of more mistakes with the Velcro fasteners. When the head of production heard about it, he came to Convis's office, yelling, "Why'd you shut the line down?" Convis explained the situation and asserted that the line would stay down until the problem was fixed. The production head responded by kicking Convis's wastebasket through a plate glass window and storming out. It took 45 minutes to get the problem solved and the line running again. Ultimately, Convis won the battle with the production head, and almost all the repair work from this source was eliminated. As a result, the quality control department gained more power in the plant.

Both of these stories would seem to demonstrate leadership. Yokoi stepped up to a daunting challenge; through innovation, building relationships, persuasion, and resolve, he overcame it. In the second example, Convis stood up for what was "right" and faced down tremendous institutional pressure. In fact, in lean terms, he "pulled the andon cord" and stopped the line. Many readers who are involved in driving lean and quality concepts at their firms may immediately identify with Convis, recalling very similar situations that they have lived through. So it may come as a surprise that within Toyota, these two stories would be viewed quite differently. While Yokoi's story would be perceived as exemplifying Toyota leadership, Convis's would be seen as a disaster-a failure of leadership, in fact.

Comparing Traditional to Toyota Leadership

Now, a Toyota leader wouldn't blame Convis for the disaster in this story. In fact, stories like this from Convis's experience at Ford, and earlier at GM, are what got Convis hired at NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors in California). But Convis's "leadership" in this instance illustrates the chasm between what has been traditionally considered leadership in many Western companies and what is considered leadership at Toyota.

We've summarized these differences in Table 1-1 , based on the four stages of developing Toyota leaders explained later in this chapter. Leaders at Toyota must develop themselves to a certain level before they can take responsibility for developing others in the Toyota Way and leading the organization to achieve challenging goals. In short, the traditional approach uses the sink-or-swim model to select or hire proven senior leaders who make the right decisions and who either get results through heroic actions or get out. Toyota's approach is to create a challenging, yet nurturing environment that grows leaders from within who follow Toyota values to drive continuous improvement at all levels.

Americans tend to think of leadership as a solo endeavor. We use the word leader to refer to people who stand out from the crowd because of their personality, charisma, and sometimes megalomania. The examples of leaders in popular and business literature tend to be of a heroic man or woman who stands against the tide, the solo visionary or the inspirational speechmaker, with thousands of people following him or her.

Reflecting on our years of working at or studying Toyota, we have recognized that this bias toward the individual leader is in no small part responsible for the struggles and even outright failures that most companies encounter when they try to adopt Toyota practices or similar approaches to instituting a lean or high-quality approach to their work. In these companies, a senior executive typically decrees the adoption of a lean system, brings in a consulting team to help the company redesign a few processes and train some internal lean or Six Sigma black belts, and expects this to do the job. Many of the employees are probably left wondering, "Who was that masked Lean Six Sigma man?" as the consultants ride out of town.

At Toyota, the perception of leadership is very different. Leadership is personal, but it also happens within a system. The failure of leadership that a Toyota leader would see in Convis's story at Ford is a failure both below and above Convis in the corporate structure. Toyota would expect leadership in fixing the problem to have come from the local leaders and workers in the trim shop below him. Toyota would assume that leadership from above would not only make quality the priority, but, more important, expect all work groups to find and deal with the root causes of any quality issue without an individual manager needing to be a hero.

It took Convis several years at Toyota to begin to move past the Lone Ranger model of leadership. At Toyota, the system requires every manager from the shop floor to the boardroom to take responsibility for driving the company toward perfection. Not only will leaders who thrive on individual action and accomplishment not succeed at Toyota, but they can actually damage the whole system by disrupting the deepening of the leadership bench. This is not to say that individuals must subsume themselves to communal action; remember that the existence of the Kijang car in Indonesia was largely the result of the individual leadership of Yokoi. No one at Toyota would suggest that leaders are interchangeable cogs. Leadership at Toyota is personal, but it is also institutional, and it extends from the group leader on the shop floor all the way to the president of the company: both are expected to develop themselves and improve their personal skills while also leading in a way that builds consensus and develops those around them. Put another way, institutional leadership works only where there is strong individual leadership, with a shared driving philosophy up and down the ranks of the company.

Toyota Leadership Is Continually Developing

During the process of researching and writing this book, the Great Recession began, and the global automotive industry has been through perhaps the most difficult and harrowing business cycle in its entire history. With the recession still in progress, Toyota faced the greatest challenge to its hard-earned reputation with the North American recall crisis. And as it was becoming clear that the accusations of runaway cars with computer systems taking control were a myth, the greatest earthquake in the country's history hit Japan, causing severe parts shortages. The challenges facing Toyota certainly attracted a great deal of media attention during these turbulent times. On the one hand, you have lots of companies looking for ways to cut costs, improve productivity, and raise quality-all tasks at which Toyota is an acknowledged master. On the other hand, in the worst year of the recession (2008 to 2009), Toyota announced its first yearly loss in more than 50 years, and in the next year it had to apologize profusely for causing its customers concern during the recall crisis. Many people wondered whether the Toyota Way would continue to excel in this new era.

From what we've seen and experienced over the years, as well as what we've seen at Toyota since this series of crises began, we believe that the answer to this question is a resounding yes: Toyota will continue to excel and will outperform its peers in adjusting to the new realities. The reason we are so confident of this is Toyota leadership-not specifically the leadership of President Akio Toyoda (although we both respect him greatly based on our personal experiences with him), but the system of leadership that the company has at every level of management. This depth of leadership has been painstakingly built up, at what might seem to others to be exorbitant cost, over many decades in Japan and in the United States. In the difficult economic environment of the present and the foreseeable future, the cost of developing such a deep level of leadership capability has become an indispensable investment that many companies are wishing in retrospect that they had also made.

Excerpted from THE TOYOTA WAY to LEAN LEADERSHIP by JEFFREY K. LIKER GARY L. CONVIS Copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey K. Liker and Gary L. Convis. Excerpted by permission of McGraw-Hill. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development (BUSINESS BOOKS)

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Buy The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development (BUSINESS BOOKS) by Liker, Jeffrey K., Convis, Gary L. (ISBN: 9780071780780) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Understand the power of Gemba walks through this essential guide by Jim Womack. Learn how to observe, question, and understand management practices on the ground.

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Gemba Walks 2nd Edition | Jim Womack | Lean Enterprise

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Gemba Walks author and management expert Jim Womack reflects on the past 30 years of Lean, and assesses the current state of Lean today.

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The Heart of Change by John Kotter and Dan Cohen

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The Heart of Change by John Kotter and Dan Cohen

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John Kotter and Dan Cohen explore the emotional aspects of change in 'The Heart of Change'. This book is vital for NHS leaders focusing on the people and culture aspects of improvement.

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In The Heart of Change, the authors have culled from hundreds of interviews the 34 most instructive and vivid accounts of companies undergoing large-scale change. With chapters organized by each of the eight stages of change Kotter identified in Dr. John Kotter's 1996 bestseller Leading Change, the authors deftly contrast success stories with fumbles, then utilize the compare-and-contrast format for lively "how-to/how-not-to" discussion.

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The Heart of Change - Kotter International Inc

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In "The Heart of Change", John Kotter compares and contrasts how lasting change efforts are created after a fumble.

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Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Improvement

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Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Improvement

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2 minute read

Continuous improvement (CI) is not about tools, techniques and projects applied as a formula, it’s about principles and behaviours...

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Cultivating Continuous Improvement - Catalyst Consulting

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Continuous improvement (CI) is not about tools, techniques and projects applied as a formula, it’s about principles and behaviours

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Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process by John Shook

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Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process by John Shook

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John Shook's 'Managing to Learn' explores the A3 management process, offering valuable lessons for developing leadership behaviours that drive improvement.

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John is an industrial anthropologist who divides his time between teaching & research and advising individuals and organizations who wish to understand and implement the collection of principles and practices known as the lean enterprise. He contributes periodically to online journals Planet Lean www.https://planet-lean.com/, the Lean Post at www.lean.org/shook/, as well as LinkedIn.

John is author of "Managing To Learn", awarded the 2009 Shingo Prize for excellence in manufacturing research and publication, which exposes Toyota's management, problem solving, leadership and mentoring processes. He is co-author with Toshiko Narasawa of "Kaizen Express", and with Mike Rother of "Learning To See", winner of the 1998 Shingo Prize. John was lead author of the "Lean Lexicon" and "Mapping To See". Other notable writings include Sloan Management Review articles, "How To Change a Culture -- NUMMI" (recipient of the Richard Beckhard Award for best article in SMR in 2011) and "Toyota's Secret: The A3 Report", notable book chapters "Bringing The Toyota Production System to America" in "Becoming Lean" edited by Jeffrey Liker and "Lean Product and Process Development" in the "Routledge Guide to Lean Management".

For 11 years John worked for Toyota in Japan and the United States. He joined Toyota in 1983 in Toyota City to help with the process of transferring the company's management and production systems to NUMMI and subsequently to other operations around the world. During his seven-year stay at Toyota's headquarters, he became the company's first American 'Kacho' (manager) in Japan. In the United States, John became a part of Toyota's North American engineering and R&D center in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1991 ss general manager of administration with responsibilities included strategic planning, purchasing, public affairs, and general administration. His last position with Toyota was as senior American manager with the Toyota Supplier Support Center in Lexington, Kentucky, the company's organization to assist the efforts of North American companies to implement TPS.

John is president of two consulting groups, the Lean Transformations Group, LLC, which focuses on the application of lean principles in services, health care and other non-manufacturing settings, and the TWI Network, Inc., a consortium of lean manufacturing experts. John as been Senior Advisor with Dr. James Womack's Lean Enterprise Institute Since its inception in 1997. John was Director of University of Michigan's Japan Technology Management Program, and taught in the university's Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering. He is a lifetime member of the Shingo Academy, member of the Shingo Prize Board of Directors, and frequent presenter at academic and industry forums and is periodically cited in major publications such as Forbes, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Business Week, Time, Automotive News, and others.

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Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor and Lead (Managing to Learn: Using Th A3 Management ... Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead)

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Buy Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor and Lead (Managing to Learn: Using Th A3 Management ... Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead) Version ed. by Shook, John (ISBN: 9781934109205) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Leader Standard Work: Extending Lean Practices to Executives

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Leader Standard Work: Extending Lean Practices to Executives

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Examine how Leader Standard Work can be applied to senior NHS executives for sustained improvement. This article provides a detailed overview of the practice.

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Fundamental Components: Gemba Walks, recurring meetings, strategic planning, communication cascade, and monitoring performance indicators.

Implementation: Standardizes leadership activities across all levels, from frontline supervisors to executives.

Benefits: Reduces variations in management practices. Enhances problem-solving and accountability. Establishes operational control. Fosters continuous improvement.

Managers bring plenty of technical knowledge to the table, but without structure in place, their talent risks being wasted. For example, they might put essential leadership activities on the back burner in favor of tackling issues on the production floor.

Undoubtedly, mastering hard skills doesn't necessarily translate into possessing soft skills. Not to mention that senior and newly promoted supervisors will certainly adopt different behaviors. This situation is quite challenging for organizations facing workforce turnover and labor shortages.

Typically, organizations standardize their employees' work and daily activities with schedules, operating procedures, and performance management. But senior and newly promoted supervisors often choose to implement their own SOPs, and organizations dealing with turnover and staff shortages can quickly begin drowning in process variation.

So - how can you standardize management across different shifts and sites? This article provides detailed answers to these questions.

What Is Leader Standard Work (LSW)?

Leader Standard Work (LSW) Components

Routines: Standardizing daily, weekly, and monthly workflows

Skills: Developing leadership aptitudes and establishing priorities

Tools: Equipping leaders to successfully navigate their routines

Accountability: Creating accountability for performance targets

Importance of LSW

Standardization

LSW provides a framework for how team leaders, supervisors, and managers should execute daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.

Example: In manufacturing, implementing LSW involves standardizing checklists for equipment care. Maintenance teams know exactly when and how to conduct inspections, as well as how to escalate any issues they encounter along the way.

Leadership

LSW enables leaders at every level to prioritize the right objectives while actively supporting their teams. It also boosts performance by equipping them with operational routines, checklists, and structured tasks.

Example: Healthcare facilities use LSW to train senior personnel in coaching junior doctors, nurses, and administrators, fast-tracking onboarding and enhancing skill development.

Proactive Management

Proactive tasks like planning, coaching, and team support are the antidote to reactive "firefighting" mode. These processes guide managers around the workplace to identify issues and nonconformities, capture data, and log ideas for improvement before disaster strikes.

Example: Within a production line, leaders dedicate time to actively supporting assembly line workers. By conducting daily Gemba Walks and providing real-time guidance on process improvements, managers can optimize performance and encourage continuous skill development among their teams.

Continuous Improvement and Problem-Solving

Relevant Tervene Solutions

Implementing LSW

Leader Standard Work (LSW) for Different Levels

Team Leader focus: Standardizing tasks like shift handovers, problem-solving methods, and daily routines. Team leaders spend around 80% of their time on standardized activities like process confirmation and coaching.

Middle Management focus: Standardizing meeting structures, reporting mechanisms, and ensuring adherence to established procedures. Around 50% of middle management's time is allocated to structured activities and reviews.

C-Level Executive focus: Establishing consistent goal-setting processes and site visits. Executives allocate approximately 10% of their time overseeing strategy to ensure compliance with established standards and focus on long-term organizational objectives.

How to Standardize Leaders' Work

1. Create Structured Management Practices

LSW is meant to establish daily control, supervise activities, escalate issues, and ensure better communication between teams. It also formalizes how managers detect problems and follow up on corrective actions.
Daily checks (Proactive Gemba Walks) Audits and recurrent inspections Visual management Tiered meetings structure Procedures and Training
2. Equip Team Leaders and Directors with Management Tools

It's nearly impossible to sustain high management standards with decentralized tools like SMS, email, paper-based inspections, whiteboards, sticky notes, and Excel. Over time, the need to transcribe, chase down, and locate information makes it impossible to work efficiently.

A digital daily management system increases supervisors' adherence to management processes through structure and accountability. For example, read about how Kruger Products went digital to manage their day-to-day operations.

3. Establish Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Routines

An LSW Calendar is instrumental in defining managers' recurring responsibilities, including regular inspections, audits, floor tours, and daily meetings. This calendar serves as a framework that defines management rituals and enables top-level leaders to monitor adherence levels, ensuring consistency and efficacy across the organization.

4. Establish Objectives and Performance Indicators

KPIs streamline the process of tracking departmental objectives by establishing clear goals, facilitating effective monitoring through quantifiable metrics, and promoting a sense of ownership and accountability, which leads to improved decision-making and resource allocation.

5. Promote Optimal Management Behaviors

Setting the standard for good management is how organizations boost their entire team's performance. Recurrent 1:1 meetings facilitate objective discussions and prevent stagnation, and regularly refining standardized work keeps the entire operation running efficiently. All of this should be underpinned by structured coaching to help leaders understand their LSW objectives, develop their skills, and maintain accountability.

Personal development enables continual improvement, while initiatives like embracing letdowns for accelerated learning, skill enhancement, and promoting positive behavior contribute to leadership growth.

Standard Work vs. Leader Standard Work

Standard work focuses on operators' and frontline employees' procedures, such as detailed SOPs and 5S principles. LSW structures leaders' schedule and guides their managerial behaviors.

This distinction allows standardization at all organizational levels:

Operators: Schedule, work instructions, SOPs, proactive validation from supervisors, and 5S at workstations.

Team Leaders and Supervisors: Inspections, Gemba Walk structure, daily meetings, supervision routine.

Support Groups: Problem-solving process, issue escalation, and corrective actions.

Managers and Directors: Department standardization, management committees.

VP: Strategic alignment, corporate objectives, site standardization.

Comparison Chart

Focus
Specific task execution for efficiency and quality

Leadership routines and behaviors to uphold a Lean culture and cultivate continuous improvement

Activities
Following detailed procedures (SOPs), schedules, 5S principles, and meeting performance targets

Gemba Walks, strategic direction setting, coaching, mentoring, problem-solving, supporting teams

Standardization
High level of standardization in daily tasks

Less precise, focusing on adaptable leadership actions and behaviors

Impact
Directly impacts production efficiency, quality, and output

Indirectly impacts performance by nurturing a culture of continuous improvement

Examples
Assembling a product, operating a machine, following a maintenance checklist

Conducting Gemba Walks, coaching team members, leading problem-solving sessions, setting goals

Example of Leader Standard Work

Sarah, a newly promoted supervisor, sticks to a well-planned agenda for her first day of operations management on the manufacturing floor. Her morning routine begins with a proactive Gemba Walk to collect real-time operational insights. Then, she leads a quick production meeting to ensure the team is aligned and well-equipped to address immediate concerns.

In the afternoon, Sarah executes a second Gemba Walk and facilitates a seamless shift handover meeting to maintain operational continuity. Later that week, she dedicates time to a health and safety inspection and conducts a comprehensive 5S audit to uphold organizational standards.

For more LSW examples, visit our template hub, where you can explore a variety of structured daily work agendas tailored to different managerial roles.

Benefits of Standardizing Managers' Work

Aligning with Organizational Goals

Establishing standard practices based on your organization's objectives ensures that managerial efforts are directly supporting overarching company goals.

Cultivating Problem-Solving Skills

LSW empowers leaders to use coaching as a springboard for developing problem-solving skills as a team.

Proactively Controlling Operations

System standardization provides managers with a framework for detecting and resolving issues instead of getting caught off-guard.

Streamlining Employee Onboarding and Workplace Safety

Implementing LSW streamlines operations, accelerates employee onboarding, and promotes a safer workplace environment.

Engaging in Continuous Improvement

LSW engages entire teams, from the bottom up, in ongoing process-driven problem-solving efforts. It also cultivates a blame-free environment by shifting focus from individuals to systemic enhancements.

Enhancing Response Agility

By prioritizing process-based problem-solving over individual attributions, LSW cultivates enhanced response agility, eradicates silos, and instills a culture of accountability.

Connecting LSW and DMS

Foundation of Lean Leadership Routines and Culture

As a set of structured routines that guide managerial tasks, LSW creates a foundation for consistent leadership. Integrated seamlessly within a DMS, LSW encompasses essential practices like daily accountability processes, Gemba Walks, and process confirmation.

Catalyst for Accountability and Alignment

Both LSW and DMS reinforce accountability within an organizational framework. LSW's emphasis on setting standards and enabling continuous improvement aligns seamlessly with the accountability-driven nature of the DMS. Additionally, both systems ensure leaders' engagement in activities that align with organizational strategies.

Enabling Leadership Traits through LSW and DMS

LSW shapes leadership behaviors by promoting practices such as Gemba Walks and structured tiered meetings. Furthermore, both systems aim to foster a culture of excellence, aligning efforts toward continuous improvement and problem-solving.

In essence, Leader Standard Work acts as the guiding principle, setting expectations and behaviors for leaders. At the same time, the Daily Management System provides the structure and processes for leaders to enact and sustain those behaviors.

How Technology Can Help Uphold Management Standards

Digital solutions streamline LSW by providing centralized documentation, real-time updates, collaboration tools, and robust data analysis capabilities. They alleviate administrative burdens associated with analog operations, such as transcription and follow-ups, and enable data analysis at a scale that would otherwise be impossible.

These tools streamline Leader Standard Work with features such as:

Automated scheduling: Effortlessly schedule and assign tasks based on customizable templates and priority levels.

Real-time progress tracking: Visualize task progress, identify bottlenecks, and proactively address potential delays.

Clear accountability: Assign task ownership, track individual contributions, and foster a culture of accountability.

Activity analysis and improvement: Systematically evaluate activities, identify areas for improvement, and eliminate wasteful practices.

Digital Gemba Walk notes: Capture observations, photos, and insights directly within the platform for data-driven decision-making.

Leader Standard Work Software

FAQ: Leader Standard Work
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Leader Standard Work (LSW) for All Management Levels - Tervene

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Explore how Leader Standard Work (LSW) drives lean leadership efficiency and ensures operational excellence at all management tiers.

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8 minute watch

Initially developed for the Governors and NEDs this session can be a helpful refresher to anyone planning to go on a Gemba visit

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Gemba Walks - micro teaching (Recorded June 2024)

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Berkshire Healthcare - Leadership, change and improvement

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Berkshire Healthcare - Leadership, change and improvement

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40 minute listen

Julian describes his approach to leadership, change and improvement at Berkshire Healthcare since 2011

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Get the basics right to succeed with Julian Emms

Episode Summary

Julian describes the approach to leadership, change and improvement he has seen in Berkshire healthcare since he joined in 2011.

Episode Notes

Formed in 2001 in bringing together mental health and physical health services and staff, the Trust has developed and flourished. There has been continuity and stability in leadership meaning that long term planning and purpose is clear within the organisation. Taking over as CEO in 2011, Julian has focused on accountability, building trust and developing/maintaining a healthy work place culture.

With challenge from non-executive directors in 2012 the executive team embarked on involving staff, getting the basics right and responding to what staff were saying needed changing/developing.

Since this point many initiatives and approaches have improved quality, staff involvement, leadership and driven increasing amount of innovation.

Julian described his career starting in the probation sector and his impact as a leader And the increasing need to look at solutions in other industries that we can adapt into healthcare.

https://www.berkshirehealthcare.nhs.uk

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Get the basics right to succeed with Julian Emms

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Julian describes the approach to leadership, change and improvement he has seen in Berkshire healthcare since he joined in 2011.

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8 minute read

Overview of the Warwick Business School review "Leading change across a healthcare system: How to build improvement capability and foster a culture of continuous improvement - lessons from an evaluation of the NHS-VMI Partnership Spring 2022"

Lesson 1 - Build cultural readiness as a foundation for better QI outcomes

Lesson 2 - Embed QI routines and practices into everyday practice

Lesson 3 - Leaders show the way and light the path for others

Lesson 4 - Relationships aren't a priority, they're a prerequisite

Lesson 5 - Holding each other to account for behaviours, not just outcomes

Lesson 6 - The rule of a golden thread: not all improvement matters in the same way

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Since 2018, I've led the team from Warwick Business School that evaluated the partnership between the English National Health Service (NHS) and the Virginia Mason Institute (VMI) from the USA.

The goal of the partnership was to implement a systematic approach to quality improvement (QI) in five English hospital systems (NHS trusts) and to derive lessons about how to foster a culture of continuous improvement across the wider health and care system. Here, I summarise six key lessons from the evaluation report for health and care leaders looking to build a systematic approach to QI.

This partnership was the biggest and most ambitious experiment in organisation-wide improvement in the history of the NHS. It was set up in a spirit of ' failing forward' - with a collective learning culture in which opportunities to do things differently were proactively sought and failures, large and small were consistently reported and deeply analysed.

The recently published evaluation report reflects this ethos. It c ontains rich and detailed analysis of partnership outcomes, including discussion of what went well, the challenges faced, a quantitative assessment of outcomes, and most importantly what can we learn.

I have set each lesson out separately, but all of them are interconnected.

1 Build cultural readiness as the foundation for better QI outcomes

While each of the five NHS trusts had implemented the same improvement method, at the same time, with the same resources, their journeys and their outcomes were notable for their differences.

The most important differentiating factor between the trusts was the level of cultural readiness to embrace new ways of working. Specifically, we found that where a hospital trust had engaged in 'cultural work' in the years prior to adopting a systematic approach to QI, the intervention had something to 'plug into'.

We define cultural work as planned and deliberate efforts to establish and maintain a shared set of values that all organisational members can align to. At Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT), the CEO engaged a crowdsourcing exercise to co-produce a set of values that everyone who worked in the trust could align to.

At Surrey and Sussex Hospitals (SASH) the CEO told us organisational priorities are directly linked to clinical values, and in every interaction with a clinician he makes it clear they should spend all their time on patient experience, quality and safety.

Michael Wilson said: "The patient is the one consistent thing everybody's got in common. It's the one reason why we're all here and if you keep framing it that way, you can't really lose."

We know that culture doesn't change in a day, but it can and does happen with focused activity that seeks to embed a shared set of values that are clear, concise, constant and meaningful to everyone.

2 Embed QI routines and practices into everyday practice

Organisational routines and practices that are clear, aligned and visible help to foster an unambiguous message about the organisation's long-term commitment to patient-centred quality improvement and the role everyone has to play in making things better for the people who use the services and their families, every day.

Each of the five hospital trusts implemented a continuous improvement infrastructure comprising: internal strategic boards that met monthly to discuss QI; related priority setting, project management and monitoring of improvement activity; a central improvement team was implemented, and newly recruited improvement specialists received training and certification by experts from the VMI.

The role of the improvement team was to design, facilitate and monitor improvement activity aligned to strategic priorities, as well as facilitating a rigorous training programme known as 'Lean for Leaders' (L4L). The L4L training combined classroom and practical assignments across six modules, with improvement activity shared with senior leaders (usually the CEO) on a weekly basis.

L4L fostered the spread of daily management practices such as 'huddles', 'production boards' and 'standard work' that meant conversations about quality and improvement appeared everywhere every day.

As a side note, our analysis found the majority of financial savings derived from the partnership were classed as 'training inspired'. In other words, improvement activity led by an employee who had completed L4L and subsequently led improvement activity within their teams and departments.

This demonstrates the importance of investing in improvement capability, then making that capability part of the everyday work of the organisation, learning in real situations in real time.

3 Leaders show the way and light the path for others

The NHS-VMI partnership invested significantly in leadership training and coaching. L4L symbolised a focus on building the QI capability of health and care leaders, starting at the top of the executive tree and then opening up to middle level and frontline leaders.

Senior leaders who 'go first' are sending a message to others that participation is important. In line with lesson one, we found cultural readiness was positively correlated to senior leader engagement with L4L training.

For example, in one of the trusts where shared values were deeply embedded, executive leaders told of a palpable 'excitement' about the training 'opportunity', and a waiting list of leaders of all levels. By contrast, in a trust with less cultural readiness, long-standing cultural issues negatively impacted engagement.

Leaders should be problem framers, not problem solvers. The need to develop a new leadership style was a frequent reflection from the CEOs of the five participating trusts.

Moving from 'problem solver' to 'problem framer' can be hard when careers have been won on the basis of firefighting and problem-solving prowess. Despite this, leaders told us that a more facilitative problem-framing approach is "always more effective".

Put simply, those who do the work know best how to improve the work; when a leader frames a problem, they give permission for employees to lead improvement from the front line.

Leadership behaviour is a system issue. Changes to leadership style are essential for developing an improvement culture within and across an organisation.

However, each organisation exists within a wider system. The efficacy of a coaching style of leadership can be rapidly undermined by a traditional, command and control approach to oversight and governance at a higher level of the system; in the current context, that is integrated care boards, regional and national bodies.

4 Relationships aren't a priority, they're a prerequisite

Systematic QI methods such as the lean approaches promoted by the VMI are socio-technical. In other words, the implementation of lean relies upon individuals having technical capability and social connectedness.

For lean to be effective at delivering QI in a continuous and sustainable manner, you need both the skills of QI and the ability to inspire and collaborate with influential others.

One of the most striking outputs from the evaluation came from our social network analysis (SNA) of individuals who had completed the L4L.

Our objective was to understand what happens after training is completed. In other words, is QI knowledge shared and used to foster improvement or is the training perceived as a mere tick-box exercise, returning to business as usual once completed?

To our surprise the SNA graphs illustrated striking differences in the connectedness of employees between a trust rated 'outstanding' for performance, and one that had gone into 'special measures'.

Both trusts were of a similar size, with similar numbers of employees trained in L4L. The difference: at the high performing trust, everybody was talking about improvement. At the lesser performing trust, relationships were predominantly non-reciprocal, indicative of a culture where interactions are of a 'messenger' type, and information is shared on a need-to-know basis.
SNA highlights the relationship between relational connectedness, an improvement culture and performance
Hence, organisations must pay attention to the social aspect of QI and build their improvement efforts on foundations of strong relationships and shared values.

5 Holding each other to account for behaviours, not just outcomes

Unique to the NHS-VMI partnership was a monthly meeting between all five CEOs and national leaders.

The meeting, known as the Transformation Guiding Board (TGB) took place in central London and was 5.5 hours long. Despite the lengthy duration and the exorbitant cross-country trek that each CEO made from their hospital to central London, this meeting was frequently referred to as "the best day of the month".

Usually, an all-day meeting between national bodies and a hospital CEO would signify an organisation under scrutiny, hence supplanting preconceived notions of the national leaders as something to fear was essential for effective partnership working. To foster this relational change, members of the TGB co-created a 'compact'.

A compact is an explicit (written) document that outlines the behaviours that each partner promises to uphold. The process of co-creating a compact is an important reflective exercise.

However, our analysis focused on how the compact facilitated and sustained new partnership ways of working, even when things weren't going so well. A significant finding was the importance of routine activation of the compact.

Embedding 'reflections on the compact' into the monthly agenda of the TGB triggered conscious appraisal of the promises, goals and objectives that each partner pledged to enact and deliver. Subsequently, this ritual reflection built trust among the partners with frequent reassurance that each member remained committed to upholding the promises made.

Further, when behaviours were not aligned to promises established in the compact, the TGB became a safe space to 'call out' the breach, and openly discuss what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.

Crucially, once the process of completing the compact is complete, its power for guiding relational change can only be realised if conscious and collective appraisal of the promises forms part of an established routine.

6 The rule of the golden thread: not all improvement matters in the same way

A golden thread is present when organisational priorities and objectives align to improvement priorities and objectives.

In other words, improvement activity and specifically improvement objectives should be designed with higher level objectives in mind. Failure to define a 'golden thread' can mean improvement becomes hard to quantify in ways that matter.

Consider the differing approaches of the participating trusts. The trusts that had already built cultural readiness made strategic decisions at a senior leadership level about where the organisation should focus improvement activity.

As there was already a strong sense of shared values, it meant that the priorities of the improvement work and the overall goals of the organisation were aligned. This golden thread allowed the partnership work to be centre stage in the trust's approach to continuous improvement.

By contrast, the trusts that didn't have this foundation of cultural readiness adopted a 'bottom up' approach to selecting areas to focus improvement. Their rationale: "employee ownership...it's that engagement piece."

It meant that the topics selected for improvement were less likely to align with organisational priorities. When these trusts subsequently went into special measures, the performance improvement approaches and priorities associated with the performance recovery regime were different to the priorities determined as part of the partnership and it was hard to give centre stage to the partnership work.

The NHS-VMI partnership involved five NHS hospitals implementing the same methods, with proportionally same resource, during the same period.

Adopting a processual view of the outcomes and impact of the partnership for each of the five trusts presented a unique opportunity to develop deep understanding about what works, what doesn't, and most importantly why (or why not). The findings are rich and compelling, offering important lessons for NHS leaders seeking to navigate challenges ahead.

I conclude by highlighting the important role of QI methods, tools and techniques during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the differential outcomes across the five NHS hospital trusts, we found all five used QI improvement methods extensively, and at every level of the organisation.

To illustrate, below is a quote from an NHS non-executive director, describing their observations of staff using QI methods to manage intense clinical demand at a time of heightened uncertainty and anxiety.

"We had command and control structures in place (like most other trusts) but the production boards, the huddles, the standard operating procedures and standard work that we've utilised as a result of the NHS-VMI partnership, those processes and principles really came to the fore.

"The daily huddle at eight o'clock in the morning really set the tone so we know who's doing what...and there's no duplication of effort...everybody knows what their role is in that incident room."

To our surprise, at Barking Havering and Redbridge Hospitals Trust (where engagement with senior leaders and senior doctors had lagged during the partnership), the crisis gave the improvement system the legitimacy it had otherwise failed to achieve.

One Senior Manager said: "The Pride Way [improvement system] was central in the way that the trust dealt with the pandemic. But the pandemic has been central in getting the Pride Way into everywhere..."
Please join in the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #leadingQI and look out for future tweetchats. Nicola Burgess is Reader of Operations Management and teaches Operational Management on the Distance Learning MBA plus Digital Innovation in the Healthcare Industry on the Executive MBA. Follow Nicola Burgess on Twitter For more articles on Healthcare and Wellbeing sign up to Core Insights here. @DrNicolaBurgess.

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Six key lessons from the NHS and the Virginia Mason Institute partnership | News | Warwick Business School

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Since 2018, I've led the team from Warwick Business School that evaluated the partnership between the English National Health Service (NHS) and the Virginia Mason Institute (VMI) from the USA.

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Rebel Ideas examines the power of ‘cognitive diversity’ – the ability to think differently about the world around us.

It explains how to harness our unique perspectives, pool our collective intelligence and tackle the greatest challenges of our age.

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Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking - Matthew Syed Consulting

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Black box thinking is a new approach to high performance. Highlighting the need for a growth mindset - we can not learn and grow, unless we acknowledge failure, try new things, and alter our behaviours based on what we see.

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Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success - Matthew Syed Consulting

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Dare: Behind the Scenes of the Best Business Transformation Project in the World by Christian Matei et al

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Dare: Behind the Scenes of the Best Business Transformation Project in the World by Christian Matei et al

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This book was born out of an outstanding collaboration between professionals of rather different personalities, expertise and experience. It is about leaders who went all in to achieve a 21st century organisational model, a snapshot into the work of more than 2.000 people as they went above and beyond trying to change their fate for more than 4 years. This book tells the story of a Project that has been designed from the start with the quest for excellence as an objective – it was envisioned to be globally recognized as one of the best business transformation initiatives, not just within the utilities sector, but across all industries.

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How to Go to the Gemba: Go See, Ask Why, Show Respect - Lean Enterprise Institute

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Here are some guidelines I use when doing a gemba walk as an outside advisor.

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Short read (3 minutes) from Forbes of about what servant leadership means to some of their leaders.

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The definition of what it means to be a great business leader has evolved and changed significantly over time. Today, the best leaders are less authoritative and more empathic, often displaying more vulnerability than leaders did in the past.

Servant leadership is a relatively new concept that many leaders are embracing due to its effectiveness in managing and guiding teams. Here, nine professionals from Forbes Coaches Council discuss how they define servant leadership and reasons why it's such a beneficial model for leadership in large enterprises to embrace.

Forbes Coaches Council members share benefits of embracing servant leadership within large enterprises.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.

1. It Encourages Strategic Thinking And Innovation
A servant leader is willing to follow and does not need to always be in charge. They are civic-minded and ethical, and others are motivated to follow them. Servant leadership does not mean being submissive. True servant leadership encourages strategic thinking and innovation and helps develop others, which is why servant leadership is crucial for any large enterprise to embrace for success. - Christopher Fairbank, The Dare to be Different Business Leadership Strategist, Coach, and Speaker
2. Teams Accomplish Great Things Together
Servant leadership is simply about a leader understanding that they are there to serve. This model can be beneficial when the leader understands that it is about working with others to accomplish great things as a team versus simply directing or managing others. Servant leaders understand that completing the task at hand is more important than their individual success. - Donald Hatter, Donald Hatter Inc.
3. Everyone Learns How To Be Supportive
Servant leadership is humbly putting others before oneself through service and doing so without regard to one's title, status, ego or expectations about the work a leader is "supposed" to be doing. A true servant leader goes to their people and asks, "What can I do to support you in this moment?" with the sole agenda of meeting the person's need in whatever form it presents itself. - Wayland Lum, Copperbox Leadership Advisory

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
4. Everyone 'Lives Leadership' And Shares In The Wins
Servant leadership is about dedication to people, principles and the greater good, and it must involve policies and procedures that follow these same commitments. If everyone in the organization considers themselves a servant in this way, they are "living leadership," no matter what level or job title they hold. When everyone contributes their part, then everyone can share in the wins. - Lisa Marie Platske, Upside Thinking, Inc.
5. Small Acts Of Listening And Caring Spread Like Wildfire
The servant leader should really not have to wear the badge and tell people about what a servant leader they are in any organization. Within a large enterprise, small actions as a leader speak much louder than words. Servant leaders at this level should employ empathy and ethics at every-including even the smallest-turn. Those small acts of listening and caring spread like wildfire, but in a good way. - John M. O'Connor, Career Pro Inc.
6. Servant Leaders Build Other Leaders
The job of a leader, at the most fundamental level, is to build other leaders. To do that, you must operate in service of others to multiply growth and impact. Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of a leader is to serve. Isn't that the heart of what leadership is all about? - Jodie Charlop, Exceleration Partners
7. People Are Inspired To Take Personal Responsibility
Servant leadership is a humble style where leaders care for employees holistically and serve them by providing them with autonomy. The style is beneficial for every company because it inspires people to become leaders and take personal responsibility for all of their decisions and actions. Businesses that embrace servant leadership tend to have a great company culture with employees who go above and beyond. - Michael Timmes, Insperity
8. Front-Line Employees Better Project Care To Customers
Servant leadership is the highest form of leadership. It is all about genuine care for people and serving others, not being served. Servant leaders value and add value to others. When servant leadership is modeled by the leaders, employees project that level of care to their customers. This is crucial for large enterprises because employees, not the leaders, are in direct contact with their customers. - Lillit Cholakian, NewGen Global Leaders
9. Staff Members Can Become Their Best Selves
I would describe servant leadership as a style that provides stewardship to the team. It is characterized by a leader having foresight and a strong sense of empathy and actively listening. It is more about persuasion than power. A servant leader makes the best interest of team members a core value and, as a leader-coach, actively helps staff members become the best versions of themselves. - Thomas Lim, Singapore Public Service, SportSG

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Nine Benefits Of Embracing Servant Leadership In Large Enterprises

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Today, the best leaders are less authoritative and more empathic, often displaying more vulnerability than leaders did in the past.