A few months ago, I spoke with an investment fund manager who invests in companies that practice Lean operational excellence. Both this fund manager and I shared our belief that Lean companies will outperform the general market, and will provide a better return to investors. This fund manager made the comment that if we could prove in an indisputable way that Lean improves the bottom line, then we will have discovered “the Holy Grail.”
Since that conversation, I have followed up with several related conversations on how to prove that Lean organizations really do outperform the general market – mainly with research academics. These conversations led to various discussions about what might amount to “proof,” and how to set up experiments that would be sufficient to provide such proof.
A few weeks ago, I had a similar conversation with some academics from Europe who were visiting the Shingo offices. When I posed the question as to how we can prove this, one of the academics responded by saying, “That’s already been proven.” He then referred me to four articles by Vinod R. Singhal and Kevin B. Hendricks:
Let me give a brief summary of the methodology. The data set analyzed was created by looking at companies that won international (Shingo Prize), national (Baldrige Award), and/or state (24 US states) quality awards. For each winner, the researchers identified the year when the organization won their first quality award. They assumed that award recipients had an effective implementation of TQM, and that the effective implementation of TQM occurred one year prior to the first award. They then looked at the next five years after receiving the award and compared that to the performance of the firm during the five years prior to receiving the award, as well as against comparable (matched-pair) firms (same industry, same size) over the same time periods.
There are two major findings from this research:
These findings are huge! They are, as my fund manager friend noted, “the Holy Grail!”
Somehow, I missed these articles when they were published. Perhaps it is because I was a C-Suite executive at the time and didn’t have time to read academic articles.
Let me conclude with a question and an answer:
Q. How can we convince skeptical Wall Street analysts and reluctant C-Suite executives that Lean will improve company financial performance?
A. Share this data with them. Let them know we’ve found the Holy Grail!
