What culture are you trying to create in your organization? Your culture will be the result of the values, beliefs, and behaviors of your people. And…this starts with your leaders.

What does a good leader do?

When you hear the word “Leadership”, what comes into your mind? A political leader who pursuing a passionate, personal cause? An explorer who cut a path through the jungle for the rest of his group to follow? Or an executive, who develop his or her company’s strategy to beat the competition? What do these people have in common?

A simple definition of leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Leaders help themselves, and others, to do the right things. They set direction, build an inspiring vision, and create something new. Leadership is about mapping out where you need to go to “win” as a team, or an organization; it is dynamic, exciting, and inspiring.

Lean Leaders embrace and champion continuous improvement throughout their organization. They are committed to ensuring activities are value-added, and that people are empowered to solve problems and improve processes.

The best way to define lean leadership is to compare it to traditional leadership. In the traditional role the leader plans, solves, and acts as the expert. They are the sole problem solver and “go-to” firefighter. In contrast, the lean leader sets the expectation, facilitates “root cause” analysis, and engages the knowledge of those closest to the value-add work for their expertise.

So, how do we ensure our leaders are contributing the right inputs (actions, behaviors) that will give us the output (lean culture) we desire?

The actions and behaviors of your leaders will determine your culture. Since we know this, why would we not want to ensure those actions and behaviors are intentional? Leader standard work does just that. Intentional actions aligned with the companies’ long-term vision will give you the results you are looking for.

Many organizations have little in the way of documented best practices for where and how their leaders are spending their time. This means you must go further than simply creating a job description and hoping your leaders follow it. Leader standard work is much deeper than that. Leader standard work ensures the right consistent, intentional, and incremental actions by leaders at ALL levels of the organization.

Start by picking one or two daily actions or tasks you want to see. Ensure these are aligned with your long-term vision. For example, if your long-term vision includes an engaged workforce, you may want to consider establishing an expectation for a daily stand-up meeting or a tier meeting structure. These meetings can help improve communication and drive an engaged workforce. They need to be consistent and happen the same time every day. If you want to create a learning organization committed to driving out waste, then you may want to establish daily waste walks or gemba walks. Same time, same day. Make them intentional. Utilize a printed leader standard work template and/or time block for those intentional actions and tasks in your calendar.

Now, inspect what you expect. Executive leaders should be involved in auditing the expectation. While their time will be less structured, executive leaders can contribute by supporting the expectation of the right consistent, intentional, and incremental actions by leaders in the organization. This becomes a part of their leader standard work.

Who should be following some type of leader standard work? Everyone.