Lead With Respect, a novel of lean practice, by Michael Balle and Freddy Balle, Lean Enterprise Institute 2014
In this business novel based in Europe, authors Michael and Freddy Balle, father and son consultants, choose to focus on the hard-to-pin-down concept of respect by taking us through the ugly side of a struggling company where pain and conflict mix with explosive interpersonal problems, lack of respect among them. Southcape software development CEO Jane Delaney experiences pushback from team members when she bears down on deadlines communications in what turns out to be a series of eye-opening learning experiences for her and other employees.
Software development is a hard business to imagine, certainly challenging to measure, but what is intriguing about this big challenge is that it involves workers who have been pretty much neglected up until now in most kaizen and continuous improvement novels – degreed engineers and developers, for instance. It’s a different breed of problem, one in which communications and project tracking don’t tell the whole story.
Although the characters and situations in this story are of course fictitious, they will remind readers of their own difficult teaming situations. When engineers appear not to be following standards, for example, it takes a bit of digging for management to understand - and respect - their reasons. And when a bank software customer complains about time to resolve service issues, rather than shoving the problem over to another area, manager Cindy steps up and remembers a promise she made to customers to offer more innovation, as well as higher quality. It’s a breakthrough that causes her re-think a lot of white collar service issues.
Lead With Respect is a novel focused on workers seldom mentioned in our early kaizen work – white color, backroom, creative and technical, engineering teams. The book would be a great discussion piece for senior managers wondering how to transform their service operations. It would also help create a common language among team members, but because dictating white collar change, or respect, is not a workable approach, we’d recommend that managers and team leaders read this novel before they wade into this different approach.