Lean Flexibility

During my first internship, I learned a valuable lesson: the importance of lean flexibility. Flexibility is critical to team success. As soon as resentment builds on a team, you fight an uphill battle.

Leanness is also critical to team success. If your team is bloated, there are key enrichment factors that are lost from the workplace. If your team is too lean, they become neurotic and resentful.

These two complement each other to form a brilliant principle of lean flexibility.

Lean flexibility serves both the employer and the employee. Under this principle, the manager receives the benefits of a tight-knit and motivated team. The employee gets the optionality to perform their function to the best of their ability.

The lean nature of the teams fosters an expectation that to be part of the team, you inherently agree to perform well and provide value to the team.

This principle holds due to the human desire to work. All humans desire to achieve and thrive in something that enriches them. This is what I describe as "work," and it drives the principle by satisfying the balance between the two components.

All this can be boiled down into an easy phrase to remember:

'If you're not flexible, you'll break, if you're too lean, you'll starve."