A successful lean implementation will result in cost savings, productivity increases, sales uplift and increased employee satisfaction

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Facing Up To Home Truths Will Save Money

For those of use who stayed at home this August, it's been a miserable summer - torrential rain and dire predictions about the UK economy, supported by weekly columns in the press on how we should equip ourselves to ride out the storm.

Reading about what we can do and putting it into practic are two very different things - especially when it feels like the quickest route out of the quagmire is to look first at where headcount can be reduced. It may be a quick route, but it is often a short-term simplistic solution to a more complex problem. Tough times merely amplify issues that are simmering under the surface already.

Having the courage to face some brutal home truths can bring valuable insights and results - for instance, looking at your products or services through your customers' eyes and understanding whether your strategy really delivers what they want. Telling a story about your customer, as they were before the credit crunch and as they are now, can help, especially when you discover how many different versions of the story are out there. Efficiency is as much about redicing waste as it is ensuring everyone's efforts are directed towards the same goal.

Hours of wated time can also be reclaimed by tackling those bugbears of ineffective meetings, multiple sign-offs and unclear accountabilities. If it's hard data you need to persuade others to support the case for change, one of the best sources of information can come from outside. Understanding how your costs compare with those of organisations of a similar size and complexity can pinpoint for you where you could improve performance and where resources should be best deployed.

It's a cliche, but it's true : when the going gets tough, the tough get going

It Takes Courage To Transform Culture

In response to your article "Leaders of the counter culture" (Retail Week, last week), cultural change is a term that has long been in use and long been misunderstood.

What used to be thought of as a fluffy, intangible concept is being taken on by today's astute retailers as a challenge that can make or break a company. Often, there is a vicious cultural circle at play, of strategic decisions informing processes and behaviours which, in turn, influence strategy again. Change one thing in that vicious circle and it will have a knock-on effect elsewhere.

In out experience, the most successful organisations are those that are not afaid to hold up a mirror and recognise the vicious circle for what it is, tackling the key components in parallel.

Transforming your organisation's culture requires vision, courage and tenacity from both those leading the change and those who find themselves caught up in the midst of it.