Understanding how VSM initiatives can fail over time

While performing research for this book, I had a conversation with Todd Sperl – one of the founders of LeanFITT™, that I found both interesting and disturbing. He noted several examples where an organization makes investments in VSM initiatives and sees great and sometimes fantastic results, only to see the whole thing come apart a few years down the road. Moreover, he noted that when the organizations start to fail, they often fail harder and more quickly than it took to turn them into high-performing enterprises. In fact, they often end up performing below the levels they started at before moving to Lean. How does that happen?

I had discussions on this topic with Todd and later with Al Shalloway – the developer of PMI's FLEX. It's an interesting phenomenon and one that probably requires specific research to understand fully. But a common denominator appears to be new management coming in and not...