Leader standard work is at the heart of a lean management system. The four elements are shown below, but it all starts with what leaders DO.

Click on each element to see more details.

It’s easy enough to talk about taking a systems view of your organization’s work, and it makes sense to define the good habits that you would like to build through your leader standard work, but where do you start?

You start with the end that you want to achieve and work backwards.

Here’s a basketball story to help illustrate the point…

The basketball coach is using daily actions to build habits. By repetition of actions, he’s purposely changing thinking – working backwards to mental models. And by establishing the right mental models he builds a durable system that yields predictably favorable results.

There’s a popular saying about the power of actions to develop habits:

It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.