More and more companies are beginning to embrace concepts such as lean management and "act like a founder" - here's why.
The business landscape is undoubtedly changing for every company. Over a year or two, a company may fundamentally look and operate entirely differently. More often than not, this amount of change calls for a change in leadership style. Trends point towards the fact that a future leader will need to possess a new set of skills and mindset to lead effectively. That is why many are pointing to lean management and the founder mentality that comes with it as the future of leadership.
The lean management concept is a popular term used for leaders as its core values positively impact companies' overall performance. However, with popularity comes vague definitions. Put simply, lean methodology consists of 3 very straightforward ideas:
1. Deliver value from your customer's perspective
2. Eliminate waste (things that don't bring value to the end product)
3. Continuous improvement
By implementing the lean methodology, you will get the opportunity to improve your company's performance and align with the output's quality and profitability. With this approach, the essential responsibility for a leader is to serve as a role model for finding new ways of working. The leader needs a perspective that lets them see improvement opportunities for the organization and the entire range of innovations that people are starting to apply both inside and outside the organization. The leader's task is to bring those insights together so the system can keep improving.
In addition to lean management, there is the idea of maintaining a founder's mentality even when you keep growing. A leader doesn't necessarily need to be one of the leaders in the first place. The founder's mentality is not about the individual founders per se but rather about the attitude and behavior typically found in today's sustainably successful companies (think Google and its notorious loyal and high-energy employees). Many believe that having a company-wide founders mentality will help you keep teams and individuals focused on what made the company successful in the first place.