BUSINESS EXCELLENCE COACHING
Our Purpose
"To inspire thoughtful leaders, curious people and sustainable business excellence"
How?
Working with likeminded individuals and organisations, we explore the challenges and obstacles that restrict sustainable business excellence and help you become your own catalyst for purposeful, interesting and creative improvement.
Our Values
STRAIGHT TALKING
BE: personable and human. Put common sense talk into actions.
DON'T: use corporate speak. Use real words.
WHY?: Because it helps us to do what we say in a clear and tangible way that everyone can relate to.
SIMPLICITY
BE: curious. It's easy to add something, but it takes real effort to innovate and improve by removing complexity.
DON'T: add complexity. Doing less allows us to do more.
WHY?: Because by removing complexity we free up our capacity to work on what adds value for our customers and increase our productivity.
SUPPORTIVE
BE: collaborative and generous with our knowledge. Not everything is a competition.
DON'T: work in isolation. Learning together is better and achieves faster results.
WHY?: Because when we combine our collective minds and work together, it's surprising what we can achieve. Even more so when we don't mind sharing the credit.
Our Story
Have you ever thought, “why am I doing this?”, everyday doing the same thing, never stopping to reflect, consider, explore or challenge, is this the best way?
If you’re like us then perhaps you have answered yes.
Steve spent over 35 years working within the corporative world very successfully but more often very frustrated with that Groundhog Day feeling. He realised that the traditional hierarchy style of management is stuck in cycles of short-term thinking and decided there had to be a better way.
Steve studied for an MSc in Lean Enterprise at Buckingham University in search of a definitive answer and instead it made him want to further challenge the traditional way of thinking. He realised that the approach that has served us well in the past would not get us to where we need to be in the future and that there is definitely a better way. This was when The Lean Orange was born.
The name The Lean Orange came about following much soul searching around trying to reinvent lean for the 21st century and move away from it being focused on a set of tools that were created over 30 years ago and are no longer enough. The old theory of lean is all about squeezing the last drop of resource rather than looking at other options (as in you could just squeeze all the juice out of an orange, but what if you looked at all the other things you could do with it instead? You could make marmalade, an orange peel face mask (apparently), use it to clean your sink (try it) or use the dried peel as kindling (much more effective than newspaper). You get the idea.
Plus, we have always liked the colour orange.