Lean is Like my Neighbor’s Beloved Lawn Tractor

I have a friend who loves his lawn tractor second only to his family. He talks about this grass cutting machine like it’s so much more than I would ever think of it being. He washes it, waxes it, and keeps the blades sharpened, ready to do their best work. Now this guy doesn’t cut grass for a living - he’s an assistant police chief in a large town nearby. So his reverence for the machine isn’t based on the fact it’s providing for his family; it’s based on something else.

When he talks about mowing he will tell you how it feels to sit in the seat, what it’s like to make the turns, the sound of the engine, and finally he will tell you about the great job it does cutting the grass. He talks about the lawn tractor the way other people I know might speak about a car they’ve always wanted and finally were able to buy.

It’s interesting. To me, it seems funny to talk about a lawn tractor in such a personal way but perfectly reasonable to talk about a car in that manner. Is it because we sit inside the car that we see the human perspective as so central to the quality of a driving experience? Could it be that the simple shift from inside the car, to on-top of the tractor, makes us think of the tractor as more of a “tool” and therefore less accountable for delivering a high quality human experience?

How does this relate to technical business improvement? Are methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma more like a tool designed to complete a chore, or should they be accountable for delivering a high quality human experience? And how would you define that kind of experience for each of the groups involved?  For example:

• the executives who launch the initiatives
• the technical leaders who drive them
• the managers who oversee the various functional changes
• the ground-floor personnel who make them work in the day-to-day business

How would you define a high quality experience for the people in operations, the people in purchasing and supply, the people in product and service delivery, the people in marketing, sales, engineering, IT and HR…?