From scattered effort to strategic impact: what this conference confirmed about leadership and lean
Wednesday. Manchester. The Lean Competency System Conference and Awards. 1 thread ran through every session I joined: none of this works without leadership!
Himanshu Makhija from Hilti Group opened with a question that stuck. If people believe in continuous improvement, why do only a few come forward with ideas? His answer: human nature. Defensive brains protect themselves. More visibility often just means more perceived work, so people retreat rather than engage.
A good diagnosis, that raises a better question. How do you create the conditions in which a defensive brain feels safe enough to go toward the work, not away from it?
Hilti's data made the case for getting this right: 35% sharing ideas after four to five years, but 71% within one year - once they changed how support was delivered. The tipping point happens when people feel heard and valued.
Their fix was practical: bring help closer to the gemba. Local champions (co-roles), so support is fast, familiar, and doesn't rely on only those confident enough to present their ideas. The people with the best ideas are often the quietest, and if support only reaches the ones who speak up, you lose the majority by design.
The NHS session from Ben Francis and Oli Isaac added the other half of the picture. Their honesty stood out: years of scattered improvement effort, real energy, real activity, not enough strategic impact. Their shift was to stop treating culture as something you build through projects & training, and start treating it as something that emerges from the right conditions.
"Leaders cannot create culture directly, they create the conditions for it to emerge".
An audience comment had weight too "You can have every other part of the system in place, but if leadership behaviour is missing, none of it holds.
That is the whole of BTFA in one sentence.
All that context, then Oliver Conger, from British Rototherm Group made it real. Everyone said leadership matters. Oliver showed it. His beliefs shifted (by necessity). He took help (from Russell Watkins among others) and he connected with his team at Gemba. That's the difference between knowing something technically and believing it. Your actions (Brain output) automatically align with your beliefs (Brain wiring). Team brains react to what you do, not what you say in the slide deck!
Forty years in this space, and I now spend nearly all my time teaching leadership teams the neuroscience behind that shift in belief, because none of the rest works until it happens.
If leaders' brains aren't wired to think lean, they won't act in the ways that build a genuine improvement culture. Belief drives thinking. Thinking drives feeling. Feeling drives action. Get the belief wrong at the top (any level), and no framework, however well designed, survives contact with the shop floor.
It's BTFA - In that order, every time, believe it or not!
