A midwestern university in the USA implemented a Lean Leadership Graduate Certification Program in the 2018-2019 academic year for current and emerging leaders seeking to extend, enrich, or establish leadership knowledge, skills, abilities in the workplace. The purpose of this chapter is to share the results of an evaluation on the effectiveness of this Lean Leadership Graduate Certificate Program. The results from this case study on the Lean Leadership Graduate Certification Program indicated a need to market to a larger group of emerging leaders. Leadership development findings suggest the need to further advance knowledge development in Lean students and consideration for program goals that include strategies having a significant impact on Lean student's emotional well-being in meeting leadership challenges. A continuous need to reinforce Lean Leadership competencies as a core dimension of the program resulted in the largest impact of the program with the Lean Leadership students.
TopThe Case For Lean Leadership
Many leaders today share stories of silent suffering in their roles as leaders (Dahl, 2020). Job titles are matched with unrelenting deliverables to meet hierarchical needs. The constant pressures of process improvement, evolving technological advances, and overall organization change, creates an uneasiness for leaders who are trying to maintain confidence in their own individual abilities. When leaders have overwhelming feelings of underdevelopment, they may seek opportunities outside of the organization. Some have chosen to pursue advanced degrees aimed at improving their leadership skills. However, leaders are also seeking programs to help inform them of a better understanding of today’s leadership challenges. Lean Leadership has become a favorable option for many who struggle with balancing rapid change in unsteady organizational climates.
The challenge of leadership today is viewed as a multifaceted approach to simultaneously working to improve finance, growth, customer service, quality, and technology (Longenecker & Yonker, 2013). Further, organizations are experiencing tumultuous change at unprecedented levels, due to societal change, Industry 4.0, and tough competition, meaning that complexity is increasing dramatically (Flumerfelt, Schwartz, Mavris & Briceno, 2019). Research also makes it clear that without effective leadership practices, at all levels of an enterprise, performance improvement and achieving better results will be difficult or even nonexistent (Longenecker et al., 2009). Authors Higgs and Rowland (2005) suggested that the inability of organizations to compete with economies of scale results in a condition that “runs the risk of being put out of business” (p. 159). Leadership sustainability requires a skill level beyond what currently exists to compete in today’s market.