Have you seen the movie “Tin Cup”? The setting is a driving range that is located out in the middle of no-where. The owner is played by Kevin Costner, who is nicknamed Tin Cup. He ends up qualifying for and almost winning the prestigious US Open by enlisting the help of a psychologist and his caddy as coaches. Along the way, there is a key lesson that directly applies to an organization’s lean journey: Master the management system and master the swing. Only focus on tools and you will get inconsistent results.

There are times in the movie where Kevin, “loses his swing”. When your swing goes bad the golf ball can go virtually anywhere, but rarely will it land where you want it to go. I can personally attest to this! However, when he does find his swing, in an effort to raise money Kevin bets some other golfers that he can beat them while only using one club for an entire round. Of course he ends up winning that round even though the other golfers had their complete sets of golf clubs available to them.

If you haven’t guessed it yet, the analogy is that the golf clubs are the lean tools and the swing is the management system. You can have a full complement of tools in your bag, but you are not going to win unless you have the right management system in place. Companies can implement any one of a number of tools such as 5S, visual controls, standard work, kanban, set up reduction and the list goes on. However, if you don’t have the management system in place to audit, sustain, improve and hold people accountable, all of those tools won’t do much good. You may see some short-term improvement, but simply adding more tools won’t make a significant improvement.

How many of us have been guilty of buying a new golf club that was guaranteed to improve our score? I tried a new driver once, but the improvement I saw was short lived. The fact was that my golf swing was too inconsistent. When I took lessons to improve my swing, my score improved and I had a whole lot more fun!

Have you audited your management systems recently? Have you implemented Leader Standard Work? If you find yourself struggling with sustainment, don’t go out and look for more tools. Fix your management system and the tools will magically become more effective.