PaperWorking Paper No. 25-01
Make Europe Great Again, Economically
What a Company Is Really For, and the Lean Case for Being Profitable Today and Tomorrow
· 8 pages· In English
Ask European business owners what holds them back and you hear taxes, red tape and people who no longer want to work. Ask what their company is for, and the room goes quiet. Drawing on Toyota, Deming, Goldratt and Seddon, this manifesto builds operational excellence as a house: quality and capacity as pillars, competent people as foundations, systems thinking as the beam. Most of it costs nothing but management attention.
What you will find inside
- Why the question “what is your company for?” decides everything else.
- How a company makes money, and how it stops.
- The Phi-Lean house: quality first, capacity without capital, fulfilled and competent people, systems thinking.
- Start again: what a leader can do on Monday.
Who it is for
Business leaders and leadership teams, in Europe and beyond.
“The second question decides the first. A company’s ultimate goal is a higher purpose that its people can see from the shop floor.”
The author
Manuel Gourmand
Founder of Phi-Lean · ENIM engineer · MSc Lean Enterprise, University of Buckingham
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