Linking organizations to operational excellence
Connecting strategy, capability and culture through lean
Over eight years, our internal sales and service organizations progressed through several lean deployments across licensing and commissions, solution centers, and support services. Each began at a different point and reached a different level of maturity. Attrition, reorganizations and shifting priorities left leaders facing a difficult question: How could we reconnect these efforts to strategy and create one management system instead of four separate lean stories?
In 2024, our Lean Maturity team partnered with four business units to conduct a 14-week “lean refresh.” This focused redeployment reestablished a common foundation for the Nationwide Lean Management System and aligned it with hoshin, performance measures and operational excellence goals. We conducted a baseline lean maturity gemba to develop an integrated view of four areas: delivering performance outcomes, enabling people and culture, continuous improvement, and aligning work with strategy. We then created an engagement model that connected leaders, lean ambassadors and associates through voice and root cause problem solving.
This session will explore how we moved from deploying tools to building a strategy-driven management system. Participants will learn how we certified more than 70 leaders at the yellow belt level, expanded the Lean Ambassador program, and established governance for voice and root cause problem solving across four business units.
Key Learning Objectives
1. Target middle management as the catalytic layer by defining specific lean expectations for frontline leaders, translating strategy into daily behaviors and measuring their effect on execution.
2. Shape culture from top to bottom by aligning senior-leader messaging, middle-management routines and associate engagement so lean is experienced consistently, not as a project, but as how work gets done.
3. Build tiered skills across the organization by clarifying the capabilities needed by leaders, lean ambassadors and belt holders; sequencing development; and using simulations and coaching to move from awareness to application.
4. Anchor improvement to core processes and standards by using standard work, visual management, voice and root cause problem solving (RCPS) to focus efforts on the processes that most directly affect customers, cost and capacity.
5. Use lean maturity gemba insights to close gaps, strengthen processes and advance operational excellence.
Neil Mead is a lean transformation practitioner who helps organizations build cultures where improvement is part of everyday work, rather than an initiative layered on top of it. His experience includes strengthening management systems, simplifying complex reporting and measurement practices, and helping leaders translate priorities into meaningful daily action. Neil has worked across operational and functional teams to improve clarity, visibility and consistency in how work is managed, improved and sustained.
A core element of Neil’s work is empowering leaders and frontline teams through hands-on engagement, coaching and capability building. He has helped develop ambassador-style improvement programs that reinforce gemba, or “go and see,” behaviors; encourage kaizen thinking; and build shared ownership of problem-solving. Neil emphasizes structured problem-solving as a cultural habit that strengthens trust, learning and accountability. As an early adopter of emerging technologies, he also explores responsible ways to use artificial intelligence to reduce waste in information flow and support lean practices, freeing people to focus on meaningful improvement where the work happens.
