As both a participant and witness to the practice of lean management in higher education, I’d like to point out methodological errors in relation to how lean is practiced in industry.

People in industry who practice lean management correctly provide us with a standard to which we can compare the practice of lean in higher education. This comparison is fair because lean management, fundamentally, is a system for processing information. All organizations process information, whether for profit, not-for-profit, government, or NGO.

With the industry standard in mind, here are 12 methodological errors in the practice of lean management in higher education that need to be corrected:

1. Program or initiative: Lean is seen as a “program” or “initiative.” It’s not a program or initiative. It’s the replacement of your university-wide batch-and-queue information processing system with a flow (i.e., lean) information processing system. Lean is a new management system in which improvement has no end, not a program or initiative which has an endpoint.

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