Scarlet was a colleague I worked with for many years. She was bubbly and very professional. We got on well and I particularly enjoyed our exchanges. In fact, Scarlet, a Franco-Mexican of Polish and Lebanese descent, had also travelled extensively, and I loved hearing about her intercultural adventures. We worked together for more than ten years in a multinational company and gradually she became involved in the implementation of Lean in different units of the group. This often brought her into contact with a wide variety of cultural environments.

One of her first assignments was in Morocco. Enthusiastic about starting a series of Lean workshops with the local team, she soon noticed a conspicuous absence: none of the invited directors were present. At the first workshop, she assumed this was simply a setback and continued with the session, but the situation remained the same for the following days. The directors didn’t turn up.

Each morning, Scarlet prepared the meeting room, revised the agenda and waited for the participants. The operational teams were there, but the seats reserved for the directors remained hopelessly empty. As her concern grew, Scarlet took the initiative to ask a colleague she had befriended about the absence. She explained her perplexity at the absence of the directors from the workshops. With an understanding smile, her colleague explained that they had not received an invitation from their management, implying that an invitation from an external colleague did not have the same value.

In hierarchical cultures, it’s important to understand the status of individuals and what that means. Once this was clarified, Scarlet took the initiative to mobilise the subsidiary’s CEO to extend the invitation to his teams. At the next meeting, she was delighted to see that all the directors were present.

Beyond the need to get Scarlet’s managers on board, the challenge was to ensure that information was disseminated throughout the company. It was a challenge faced by Karidja, a US-trained lean management consultant who works with companies in her native West Africa.

Steeped in Anglo-Saxon culture, Karidja had taken the initiative to try videoconferencing workshops, but was soon disillusioned. During these sessions, the subordinates, who were the players on the ground and therefore a priori the holders of essential information, never expressed themselves spontaneously. She quickly switched entirely to face-to-face meetings as a prerequisite for creating an inclusive climate of trust in which a-hierarchical groups could express themselves. “I need to see in people’s eyes that the message is getting through. To move forward, we need to create an inclusive dynamic. This requires putting all participants at ease enough to say what they didn’t think they could say in hierarchically mixed groups,” explains Karidja.

Aware of the obstacles that lean can pose to certain managers who hold the information that legitimises their status, Karidja was strategic. She knew that information was traditionally communicated from the top down. It was about making sure that everyone had the information they needed to do their jobs effectively but being careful not to give out more than they needed.

Possession of information is an important part of hierarchical status and reinforces it. So, setting up a workshop might raise deep issues of status and power by creating an upward flow of information. It’s a disruptive approach in cultures where hierarchy is important, whereas these issues are virtually non-existent in egalitarian cultures.

This was Scarlet’s experience in Sweden a few months after his assignment in Morocco. Here, not only did managers often arrive earlier, but they took an active part in discussions on an equal footing with their subordinates, without the slightest need for prior framing.

The Lean Cultural Compass can be a valuable tool for visualising and navigating cultural contrasts. In this instance, we can evaluate the approach to hierarchy in three contexts: Sweden, Morocco and Lean management. In Sweden, an egalitarian culture is the norm, with minimal hierarchy and leaders seen as facilitators engaging in open discussions with all team members. In contrast, Morocco has strong hierarchical traditions, placing a higher value on status and formal invitations and top-down communication being critical for ensuring participation.

To gain further insight into cultural differences in terms of hierarchy, it is essential to introduce the concept of system hierarchy, which is particularly suited to Lean management. In contrast to an organisational hierarchy, where authority is linked to individuals and their position in the organisational chart, a Lean hierarchy is based on the primacy of the system and processes. In other words, it is not the individual who holds the power, but the system itself.

In the context of Lean, which draws heavily on Japanese business culture, authority does not derive from individuals, but from the operational framework, which is based on rigorous standards and meticulous planning. This results in a functional hierarchy, rather than a personal one. All employees, regardless of their position, are committed to a common objective: the continuous improvement of the system. This framework encourages a bottom-up approach, whereby employees, regardless of their position, can contribute to process improvement while respecting the defined roles. This dynamic differs radically from that of hierarchical cultures such as Morocco, where respect for individual authority is central, or Sweden, where equality among individuals is paramount.