“Agility should not be an end in itself” 

Are lean and agile mutually exclusive? 

Staufen AG has been well known for years for consulting and coaching in the field of Lean Management. Both Michael Metzger and Nicolas Romfeld decisively negate the question of whether agility is now replacing lean or making it superfluous. “Lean and agile are not opposites for us,” says Nicolas Romfeld. Instead, he said, lean has changed the way people think about processes, and for agile, the focus is on collaboration between terms. In this respect, the two approaches build on each other rather than being mutually exclusive. 

Especially when it comes to the continuous improvement process, companies are advised to follow both lean principles and agile approaches. Especially in departments with many repetitive tasks, such as accounting, processes can be greatly simplified through Lean Management. There are modules for this, and they work so well that they can then be digitized, thereby greatly streamlining the workload. “But we also notice that, especially in innovative environments such as research and development or project management, this agility as a building block can help us become significantly better, faster and integrate people,” explains Michael Metzger. Lean Management creates a sound foundation, while agile helps you take the next step in improvement. 

When Michael Metzger and Nicolas Romfeld advise companies on agility as coaches, the first question they often hear is regarding the method. Entrepreneurs often want to know how long it will take them to achieve the desired change. “In the first step, it is very, very important to first understand what the problem is. What is the initial situation of the company?” is how Michael Metzger describes the situation. The first thing to do is to look at the given environment and general conditions before you can respond to customers’ demands. The answers differ from company to company, for which the agile module is ideally suited. 

“We need to understand the problem we are actually trying to solve with agility,” adds Nicolas Romfeld. It should not stand alone – it is not just about the methods, but about different fields of action.

In agile companies, goals are not simply specified, but are developed collaboratively. An agile organization is able to respond quickly and flexibly to new challenges “because it re-forms and adapts around value creation for every new problem that needs to be solved.” The two coaches agree that leadership often comes up short in an agile environment. 

Therefore, managers are not superfluous 

On several occasions, people have claimed that an agile company does not actually need executives anymore. The two experts see it differently: “Especially as an organization changes, whether towards agility or just adapting to the times, when it comes to changing framework conditions, managers are very important.” They are the ones who accompany and support employees during the change. 

Later, when the company has adopted agile methods, the image of managers also changes: they no longer have to know everything and solve all problems on their own. The requirements are also too complex for that. Instead, the focus in this context is more on empowering employees to organize themselves.