With the strings of public purse facing unprecedented tightening, senior civil servants are under growing pressure to maintain and improve the quality of services with less money. Lean management techniques were developed in  post-war Japan to strip out costly wastefulness in the processes involved in manufacturing a car and in so doing make the whole process cheaper, better and more focused on the customer’s appreciation of the end product.

Lean therefore is a potentially powerful tool for civil servants, and indeed there is a definite groundswell of interest in the technique. Departments such as HMRC, work and pensions and the Ministry of Justice are already using lean to good effect, while, as Civil Service World reported in March, the Cabinet Office is looking to establish a cross-government ‘academy’ to promulgate the ideas and thinking behind leanacross Whitehall.

But what will it take for lean to become more than the hobbyhorse of a few committed enthusiasts? Certainly there are pockets of lean activity appearing across government and emerging evidence that when applied, lean can bring some positive benefits. Yet it would be wrong to say lean has fulfilled anything like potential many believe it holds.

Last month CSW convened a roundtable of senior civil servants to discuss the uptake of lean. As Whitehall spending cuts begin to bite, managers and frontline staff are urgently seeking ways to achieve more for less. Does lean have the potential to be this holy grail? If so how can it become more widely practised? Or is it destined to remain a minority pursuit?

Use the links below to read a summary of the discussion and more detailed outlines of what was said.

Summary 
Benefits of lean
Teething problems
Promulgating lean 
Lean looking forward

Summary
Participants began by sharing examples from their departments and agencies of where lean has been used to good effect. Martin Craske, lean programme manager at the Department for Work and Pensions (pictured above, second from left), said DWP’s lean programme, operational since 2007, had generated many millions of pounds of efficiency savings. In the Department for Communities and Local Government, meanwhile, a number of small-scale lean pilots have suggested that the model is highly effective in “transactional” areas of business – repeatable processes such as ministerial correspondence.

But despite general agreement over lean’s potential, roundtable participants identified a number of hurdles. One, said Peter Hearn, head of business excellence at the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (above, centre), were the necessary in-house skills to take lean thinking from a few pilot projects to something more significant. A further problem, said Phil North, a deputy director in the people and change group at the Department for Education (pictured above on the far left), was that of funding to get lean programmes off the ground.

Participants suggested a number of ways in which departments and agencies could help lean take off across Whitehall. One key requirement, said North, would be for departments such as a HMRC and DWP, which have taken a lead in developing lean methodologies, to help others that are perhaps further behind.

Although participants agreed lean thinking should become more pervasive across government, Craske warned against the Cabinet Office pushing the concept too hard, too fast. However, according to Stephen Powell, a process re-engineer at the Environment Agency (above, second from right), which has been running lean programmes for five years, once instigated the growth of lean practices can become irrepressible.
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The benefits of lean
Where lean has been trialled across government, it has borne impressive results. This is particularly the case in the Department for Work and Pensions, which has had a lean programme in place since 2007. According to Martin Craske, DWP lean programme manager, the effects of the programme have been dramatic, generating many tens of millions of pounds in efficiency savings.

Similarly, in the Environment Agency, a lean project helped cut the time it took people in the organisation’s call centre deal with inquiries, said Stephen Powell, a process re-engineer at the agency. “We went in there and did a mapping exercise, and our specialists said what if we do this and this, and all of a sudden you’ve got the team all over it like a rash. And they drastically reduced number of days it took to deal with inquiries.”

Elsewhere, lean has proved to be effective in transactional areas of government business, for example in the Department for Communities and Local Government, where a number of lean pilot projects have been in operation since 2009. “We’ve found there’s very strong evidence of lean’s effectiveness in transactional areas of business – ministerial correspondence, finance – where we have repeatable processes,” said the department’s lean projects manager, Femi Ojumi (pictured above, far right).

Ojumi said there were now moves in DCLG to begin applying lean principles to other areas of business, such as policy and strategy, though he said its application here would be limited. “In policy areas, of course it can work, but you do need that thinking space, and lean will never ever come into that territory. We need to be realistic about this; it’s horses for courses, tailoring lean to where it can make a real difference,” he said.

However, Craske disagreed with analysis, arguing that lean had as much if not more of a role to play in policy decisions. “A different approach and an emphasis on different tools and a different understanding is required, but the potential is as great if not greater,” he said.
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Teething problems
But while the benefits of lean working seem in little doubt, embedding those practices appear not to be so straightforward. One issue identified by Peter Hearn, head of business excellence at the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, is that of skills.

“We’re at very start of this journey, we’ve done some exploration, some small lean projects,” he said. “Now we’re in a climate where trying to progress this is a challenge; we don’t have the skills internally – how do you get them when you can’t tap into external expertise?”

Another problem identified by participants was a lack of funds to get lean initiatives off the ground. “I haven’t got any money, so I was wondering what sort of costs we’re looking at – I don’t know where to begin,” said North. “I’m not sure if it’s something you can do on the cheap.

Powell said what was holding back a greater take-up of lean was buy-in from senior management within the Environment Agency. This view was echoed around the table, with other participants expressing concerns that ministers were not always aware of lean and its potential. Craske said civil servants were partly to blame for this, for not communicating clearly to the political leadership exactly what lean could achieve.

“One of the things we moan about is that leaders don’t get it; actually it’s because we have never taken the time to explain, clearly and simply, that if you’re going to lead in a lean way there are some things that you will need to do differently. We haven’t done that very well,” Craske said.

Ojumi agreed: “The more we can share experience and demonstrate the evidence, the more likely they are to buy in to it. It’s got to be about evidence - what difference is being made.”

Craske also warned against a rush to use lean processes without wider structural reform to align the way departments operate with those processes. He used the analogy of a formula one racing car: if someone without the proper training gets into one, they would not know how to drive it and would therefore lack the necessary skills and understanding to get the most out of it.

“With lean, there is a set of tools you can train people to use, “said Craske. “Tools will get you to a place. But whenever you try and do things in an organisation, there are organisational systems that constrain whatever you do – they might be HR policies, the way you measure things, some of the infrastructure…. If you don’t align those things to a different way of working, then everything you try to do in embedding those tools will be stifled by way your organisation works. So if you don’t change your systems, whatever you get in an island of success with the tools will not be replicated across your organisation.”

Craske said he was concerned at the prospect of “a rush for tools” without this wider reform. “If we don’t get this right, we’ll find lots of people will be frustrated because it won’t last or won’t be repeatable. If systems aren’t organised to support lean, you will really struggle to leverage benefits,” he said.
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Promulgating lean
To encourage lean thinking to take off across government, participants said civil servants needed to learn from each other and from industry. Craske said he had already learned a lot from visits to manufacturing plants and through liaising with bodies such as the Manufacturing Institute in the North West. He also said there was a very strong read-across between the application of lean in industries such as banking and insurance, and the civil service.

And North added that departments that were further advanced in their lean programmes also had an important role to play in sharing their experiences with those that were further behind, something that is likely to be achieved through the academy now planned by the Cabinet Office. “We’ve got some big departments that have got some good ideas,” he said. “There’s so much expertise out there I do not want to go through all of that pain of coming up with something that I think might work for my organisation when we’re just going to end up repeating what’s already been done.”

But participants warned against departments rushing into lean programmes just for the sake of it. “The great risk is that the Cabinet Office push this on to people; and once people adopt a position of resistance, it’s very hard to get them to back down,” said Craske. “I would much rather that people did this because they really wanted to do it rather than because Francis Maude wanted them to.”

He also warned against lean being used simply to generate short-term efficiency savings. “Short-term gains are irresistible in these difficult times,” said Craske. “ But if we want to use lean intelligently, it should not to be lever lean for short-term final gains.”

A further concern identified by participants is that lean somehow becomes an “elitist” pursuit. “There is a phrase in the world of lean – ‘toolheads’,” said Powell. “What it doesn’t need to be is something that ‘other people’ do - a specialist thing that only certain people do.”

Craske agreed this was a risk: “There’s a risk that there’s a group of people who are in the gang and a group of people who are out. We haven’t cracked that, and it is a potential problem.”

Hearn recalled his days at the Vehicle and Operators Service Agency, when a management technique called Total Quality was the flavour of the month. Although he recalls that it was successful in its time, it quickly became outmoded because it became elitist. “The reason it failed in the end was because it became elitist. You were either in or out, and if you weren’t in it, forget it.”
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Lean looking ahead
But overall participants were upbeat over the prospects for lean. Hearn said lean’s power was in its universality, and that this trait would ensure its widespread adoption. “The reason this will be successful – because I think it will be – is because it’s got a meaning for everyone. It’s got an application at every level,” he said.

Powell said he too was confident that lean thinking would gather momentum across Whitehall as soon as people start to see what it can do. “What we’ve found at the Environment Agency is that it becomes viral once a couple of people are doing it and they achieve some wins,” he said. “It can change your outlook on life, your personal life, your working life. When it starts getting deployed, as soon as some people start going on it, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy – I hope!”
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Written by Ben Willis, CSW