Golf, like Lean, looks a lot easier to do than it really is. How hard can hitting a little ball be? How hard can improving processes be?
While golf and Lean look easy to do, they are in fact difficult to do. They both require a lot of practice, and success is largely determined by one’s proficiency with the many nuances and details. In short, you have to know a lot and be able to do a lot. Yet, one can go quite far in both golf and in Lean if one does a few fundamental things very well.
In a previous blog post, I described eight fundamental things that leaders must do well in order to enjoy better than average success with Lean. Let’s map the eight fundamentals onto the five fundamental things that one must do well in golf (and repeat in a PDCA-type cycle):
Sadly, there have probably been as many great Lean leaders as there has been great golfers. We need to improve that. Nevertheless, leaders can take organizations far if they do the eight Lean fundamentals very well. They key to success is daily practice.