A Guardian Roundtable discussion held at The Guardian newspaper and sponsored by PA Consulting Group
Our panel agreed shop-floor techniques pioneered by Toyota can transform public bodies into meaner machines. But might they cramp creativity?
Management theory has sought for decades to extract the maximum efficiency from private companies and now public bodies are having to consider fundamental changes. Today’s vogue theory among Whitehall directors is “lean”. Unlike the new public management, which favours outsourcing, this approach aims to change the whole organisation. Developed by Toyota, the Japanese car manufacturer, the idea is that lasting change means reassessing everything an organisation does, rather than simply examining business processes. Staff at all levels should be encouraged, so the mantra goes, continually to improve what they do.
Advocates of lean argue that it holds the potential to cut out waste, improve productivity and drive down costs, while keeping service quality high with few errors. Its detractors, however, see it as yet another change programme designed to reduce headcount and dumb down roles.
Appetite
Despite a widespread acceptance of the principles, participants were sceptical about the extent to which manufacturing management practices could be brought to bear on the public sector. Does government have the appetite to make the changes in culture and behaviour that this approach implies?
It could provide a way for departments to analyse more clearly what they need to do, by focusing on customer requirements and sloughing off some of the anomalies and wasteful practices that tend to accrue over time. Managers should aim to “do as little as possible” in order to achieve what needs to be done.
Is this simply applied common sense? Yes, but getting hung up on the discussion of terminology simply impedes action and reform. The approach could be called business process improvement, activity analysis, continuous improvement – what is important is how it applies in practice, and that is a leadership challenge.
Managers have to be involved. “With hindsight, we didn’t concentrate on getting a really solid buy-in from middle and senior management, and I would advise other organisations to do that,” said one participant who had adopted the technique.
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