Lean Enterprise

Chapter 15. Start Where You Are

If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.

Steve Jobs

A year from now you will wish you had started today.

Karen Lamb

Our goal with this book is to inspire you to envision an alternative future for large organizations. A future that puts employees, customers, and products at the heart of its strategy. A future where a renewed culture and environment enable the organization to adapt rapidly to changing market demands.

We have shared stories and lessons learned from a diverse set of organizations with varied backgrounds and circumstances to highlight that even in complex environments, you can thrive and address the most challenging problems. However, the path to success is not likely to be linear, with defined instructions, milestones, and KPIs. Organizations needed to get comfortable moving forward with uncertainty and imperfect information, while learning, adjusting, and developing their people along the way.

The biggest barrier to success in changing the way you work is a conviction that your organization is too big or bureaucratic to change, or that your special context prevents adopting the particular practices we discuss. Always remember that each person, team, and business that started this journey was unsure of what paths to take and how it would end. The only accepted truth was that if they failed to take action, a more certain, ...