Leader Standard Work (LSW): An Overview
From small daily tasks to major job responsibilities, manufacturing frontline workers perform their duties according to a set of standard operating procedures, guidelines, and best practices. But what about managers?
Managers at every level bring plenty of skills, but are typically left to cultivate their own management style, which may or may not clash with others in the organization. Standardizing these responsibilities, otherwise known as Leader Standard Work (LSW), can result in more consistent and efficient work performance on a daily and long-term basis.
In this overview of Lead Standard Work, we’re going to discuss why LSW is so important, how to implement it, and how it benefits organizations.
What Is Leader Standard Work or LSW?
Lean Standard Work is an essential lean manufacturing practice consisting of a set of structured practices that managers perform on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
This ensures operational efficiency, drives continuous improvement, leads by example, and offers consistent and comprehensive support to frontline workers.
Typically, this is what we’re talking about when we say tasks, routines, and procedures:
- Gemba walks: Doing a walkthrough of the plant floor to see firsthand how processes and tasks are being carried out; checking to see if there are any issues; and engaging with employees on the floor.
- Meetings and checklists: Documenting tasks like checking metrics; structuring daily huddles; reviewing 5S; and checking employee adherence to safety and quality standards.
- Training and support: Conducting standard skills, processes, and knowledge training to ensure consistency, quality of work, and efficiency; coaching staff as part of a greater drive for continuous improvement and streamlined operations.
- Skills development: Bolstering their own skills as a part of personal continuous improvement; refreshing and fine-tuning knowledge to meet evolving best practices.
We’ve discussed what LSW is in principle, but what does Leader Standard Work look like in practice?
Learn the simple rule that differentiates management from leadership: Expert Insights From 30 Years on the Factory Floor.
Leader Standard Work Example Schedule
A shift supervisor’s LSW schedule might include the following tasks (this is an over-simplification, but gives you an idea):
8:00 a.m. – Attend morning huddle
9:00 a.m. – Walk the line, check on yesterday’s issues
11:00 a.m. – Review production metrics
1:00 p.m. – Employee one-on-one meeting(s)
2:00 p.m. – Check safety compliance and 5S
4:00 p.m. – End-of-day analysis
Why LSW Is Important
Leader Standard Work helps team leads prioritize their daily management activities to support their employees and greater organizational goals. By standardizing work, LSW sets up departments and teams to take a proactive approach to problem-solving; for example, addressing small issues and non-conformities before they become bigger problems that are more complex and more expensive to resolve.
By implementing standard management tasks, routines, and processes, LSW supports a culture of process improvement, encouraging team engagement and more collaboration between management and employees.
Benefits of Setting Team Leader Standards
Encourages Strong Management Skills
Completing a task is often just as important as the steps it takes to do it. This is especially true when safety, quality, and accountability are essential aspects of an operation. The standardization of routines helps leaders develop good habits, sharpen their skills, and better perform their duties.
Leads to Better Communication
Leader Standard Work involves tasks (like Gemba walks) that naturally promote better communication between leaders and their frontline employees. With more opportunities to engage with staff members, LSW builds a stronger sense of trust, which leads to quicker and more honest feedback.
Fosters Accountability
If you don’t have a set of standards, how do you measure management practices? How do you know if it’s effective? By standardizing leader work practices, managers can be held accountable and better understand their roles and responsibilities. With clearly defined deliverables, standard work promotes better accountability.
Offers Team Leads a Better Sense of Control
Routine and predictability give managers more control over daily operations. When leaders can implement control periods — e.g., quality checks — into their daily schedule, they’ll be consistently engaging with frontline workers, observing daily work processes firsthand, and uncovering and addressing small issues or inefficiencies before they lead to greater operational problems.
Promotes Workplace Safety
Workplace health and safety underpins every process, task, and routine on the plant floor. Standardizing safety checks on a regular basis through scheduled audits can reduce the risk of preventable injury and promote a safer workplace environment for everyone.
Simplifies the Onboarding Process
Your current management team already knows what they’re doing, but how do they pass that knowledge onto new recruits? Without standard work processes, it can be difficult to coach new managers and provide the basis for a solid daily routine. Coaching new leaders from the very start with SOPs will teach them good skills from the very beginning, preventing bad habits from creeping in.
Promotes Continuous Improvement
Implementing LSW promotes clear communication, daily checks, and overall collaboration. Leader Standard Work fosters a culture of continuous improvement by ensuring teams work with their managers to find and resolve small, structural problems as part of a daily practice.
Helps Companies Stay Compliant
Regularly planned inspections and audits are systematically built into the process. By having clearly documented and standardized lean leadership routines, Leader Standard Work helps companies demonstrate their compliance with various regulations, from health and safety all the way to AS9100.
Implement Leader Standard Work for All Levels
There are three or four levels of management across an organization: team leaders/supervisors, middle managers/senior managers, and the C-suite. Each level requires its own set of standard work practices.
Team Leads: Supervisors and team leads will spend most of their working hours on this kind of standard work — up to 80%. These activities will include daily management, identifying and solving small problems, worker supervision, training, and ongoing coaching.
Middle Managers: Around half of middle management’s time is dedicated to structured activities, and their tasks are focused on resource planning, goal alignment, and reporting.
Senior Managers: Executives and senior managers will spend the least amount of time on standard tasks, and their activities will be focused more on big-picture processes to achieve organizational goals.
How to Standardize Leader Tasks, Routines, and Behaviors
Step 1: Define Standard Management Tasks
Each management level will have its own set of routines and responsibilities, so your organization should have more than one set of SOPs and a list of activities. In addition to SOPs, detailed lists of instructions to carry out daily activities should also be documented for every management level. Lists of Leader Standard Work should include items like daily checks, regular inspections, training, meeting structures, etc.
Step 2: Give Managers the Tools They Need to Ensure Efficiency
You want your team to have all the resources they need to lead efficiently. Unfortunately, disparate, disconnected, and manual systems don’t always cut it. Text messages, sign-in sheets, and whiteboards aren’t without their uses, but they won’t help managers achieve a level of efficiency quite like an online or digital management platform will.
Step 3: Build Out Management Routines
One day, one step at a time. Use a calendar to spread out your managers’ recurring daily, weekly, and monthly activities. This not only helps executives monitor performance more easily, but also gives managers a structured framework to build better routines. This consistency is what frontline workers can rely on and anticipate.
Step 4: Provide Coaching on LSW Methods
Train your management team on Leader Standard Work, and communicate with your staff why LSW is so important. When leaders understand their role in achieving company efficiency, they’re more likely to take responsibility and ownership of their tasks. Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) can also help managers stay motivated while also giving them the data they need to identify and address issues.
Step 5: Encourage Continuous Improvement
The goal of LSW is not to achieve standardization for its own sake, but to pursue maximum productivity and effectiveness. Standards shouldn’t be static, and members of staff should feel encouraged to provide feedback, suggest areas of improvement, and actively make changes to established procedures where needed.
Implement LSW
When combined with daily practices, Leader Standard Work upholds the principles of lean management, and helps companies focus on continuous improvement and organizational growth.
