After reading Chapter 6 on Lean Systems one obvious take awa

After reading Chapter 6 on Lean Systems, one obvious take away is that a huge component of successful Lean implementation is teamwork. A case could be made that Lean systems work better in some cultures than in others, depending how that culture values the collective. In essence, it comes down to Teamwork vs. Autonomy. For example, you could make a statement that Toyota is very good at Lean systems because Japanese culture traditionally values the collective over the individual. Think about a culture that you are familiar with and give your opinion on if you think that a Lean System would fair well there and why. A culture could be from a company, school, city, state, country, region, etc.

Solution

A culture where a Lean system would do well would be of my high school - Bishop Cottons. In my high school, importance was given to the collective achievements of the school houses and not on the individual achievements of the students. Students were divided into four houses and these four houses competed with each other for various intra-school events and competitions. For example - a student wins the first prize in an elocution competition. The principal announces the prize by the name of the house which has won it and not by the name of the individual who bagged the prize. This formed the culture of collective over the individual in my high school. There is emphasis on the need to collaborate as a team. Each house works as a cross functional team and hence strives to excel in different fields like elocution, sports, academics etc.

Thus, a Lean system would work well within the culture of my high school.