Allegedly Lean practices have been introduced to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The staff have voted for industrial action over their complaints of:

• attempted deskilling of their jobs
• hourly, public, intrusive monitoring
• a claim that Lean has been introduced to cut 8000 jobs
• measures such as removing family photos from their desks

Something has gone seriously wrong. Here’s a few telling quotes from a BBC Radio 4 interview.

Mark Serwotka, president of the Public and Commercial Services Union:

We’ve had a number of Lean experts contact us saying that what we’ve described as being applied at HMRC is nothing to do with Lean and I’m happy to take that at face value, because the output…. is not just dehumanising and deskilling but is now a backlog of 1,134,108 pieces of post that have not yet been opened from taxpayers….

Professor Daniel T Jones, chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy:

I think we saw exactly the same things when Lean was first introduced in manufacturing 15 to 20 years ago….. managers looking for a tool for cost reduction will grasp anything that is going around….. that is in fact a complete mistake because Lean depends on people in the process being involved in the redesign of the flow of work themselves and that cannot take place without their willing involvement….. Lean cannot be misused – it intrinsically depends on the involvement of people.

Agile is a close relative of Lean. As we cross the chasm, expect stories like this. The Agile backlash is coming, and much of it will be justified.

UPDATE: Some links around HMRC and Lean.

• A view from the inside (scroll down to “The curious case of the Inactive Banana”)
• John Sneddon comments
• The consultants view

Sunday, December 03, 2006 | Permalink | 0 Comments