I've been browsing through my feed reader, mostly marking and scanning things without reading in detail when this one from Jamie Flinchbaugh caught my eye, Lean won’t work in MY field:
What is the hardest field to apply lean? It doesn’t seem to matter what field you’re in, they all think theirs is the hardest. And they can back it up with evidence. One of the most frequent questions I get is “who else in my industry is doing lean?”, because no one wants to be first, and no one wants to be last.
Of course, this sentiment doesn't just apply to Lean implementations. It applies to just about any change effort - the bigger the change (for the people asking the question) the more these kinds of comments arise.
I could take this in many directions, but something I wanted to highlight is the idea of helping people see what is happening in their system. If they can see it (on a wall preferrably), they can separate the system from themselves and provide some guidance on how to change the system. Sure you might use a specific methodology or toolset to make the change happen, but the visualization helps people see where the changes can be made. So - put up a board with sticky notes up on the wall, and get people to start talking about why things are the way they are and how they could be better.
[Photo: "End of the trail? Here's your sign." by Alan English]