Training for Lean like training for a marathon

“Ideally, I would like runners to be up to 15 to 25 weekly miles before starting to train for a marathon. Not every new marathoner possesses this much base, but that would be ideal, considering that the long run in Mile 1 of my 18-week Novice 1 program is 6 miles.” — Hal Higdon

In deciding how to teach and implement Lean for our clients, we have been influenced by Hal Higdon’s writings on training for marathons. Higdon publishes an eighteen-week programme that begins with six-mile runs, and a thirty-week programme that begins with three-mile runs. How a person gets to running three miles non-stop is, in his framing, up to them.

The reason he gives is that there is wide variation in how an individual works up the skill to run three miles continuously, and the work of getting there is so personal that writing a standardised programme for it does not make sense. Once the three-mile mark has been reached, however, the process of training for the remaining twenty-three-point-two miles is sufficiently similar across runners that it can be standardised, refined, and deployed at scale.

Where does that leave a runner who has not yet run three miles?

Unlike a book with a fixed programme or a large firm with a rigid scaled toolkit, we offer two things: an optimised toolkit refined over decades of work, and a more tailored approach for operators just starting out. The difference between our approach and the approach of larger scaled firms is that we rely on a compelling idea — an epiphany — to ensure change happens and sticks, rather than on a brute-force approach using a repetitive process like a daily meeting. We try to impact belief in order to influence behaviour organically, rather than the other way around.

For operators looking to become aware of what Lean is, we offer Green Belt classes, lunch-and-learn sessions, and one-day problem-solving workshops. If you simply want to talk about the many ways our clients have arrived at their three-mile mark with us, give us thirty minutes by phone or email — or book it directly.

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