Our Mission: Advance lean thinking throughout the world

Lean management is neither a top-down nor bottom-up process. Rather, it is a system in which processes are well-defined, and individual responsibility is clear and placed at the lowest possible level, where the work is taking place.

As a result, responsibility and authority, which are generally assumed to be tightly connected, are revealed as separate and distinct. Thus, lean managers focus on responsibility and ownership, which means keying on "doing the right thing," as opposed to authority, which deals with who has the right to make certain decisions.

To make the shift from an authority-based to a responsibility-based organization, leadership and the management system has to shift the focus from a debate about who owns what (authority) to a dialogue around what is the right thing to do (responsibility). That's why lean managers avoid relying on their authority to instruct others, striving whenever possible to lead by influence and example, as if they have no authority.