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Kien Leong
Helping complex manufacturers to get their product to market faster
Kien Leong is the Managing Partner at KINETICA PARTNERS LIMITED, a role he has held since February 2012.1 He is a management consultant specializing in working with Life Science companies, focusing on planning and operational excellence.1
Professional Background
Kien has extensive experience in helping complex manufacturers improve their product-to-market processes. His key capabilities include:
- Working across disciplines
- Unlocking better performance through a system-led approach
- Assisting clients in developing, manufacturing, and supplying drug therapies and medical device products1
Areas of Expertise
Kien specializes in addressing challenges related to:
- Bringing new products or capacity into production more quickly
- Managing complex processes with knowledge and control spread across multiple individuals
- Resolving resource conflicts and time management issues in project teams
- Improving due-date setting and risk management in production processes1
Approach and Solutions
Kien's approach involves:
- Creating visual representations of entire processes to identify and clear potential blockages
- Identifying leverage points for process success
- Involving process performers in problem-solving to increase ownership
- Developing repeatable, reliable, and continuously improving processes1
Additional Roles
In addition to his position at KINETICA PARTNERS LIMITED, Kien is also:
- Co-Founder of Production-Scheduling.com (since January 2010), where he develops planning tools and systems that can scale using Excel1
- Former Managing Director UK and Ireland at Life Science Associates (March 2013 - April 2021)1
Education and Certifications
- Honours degree in Physics and Philosophy from the University of Bristol (1991-1994)
- A Levels from Wigan College of Technology (1989-1991)
- Certified Demand Driven Planner (CDDP)
- Certified in Production and Inventory Control (CPIM)
- Demand Flow Technology certification1
Kien Leong's expertise lies in helping manufacturing and supply chain companies solve complexity problems, with a particular focus on the life sciences industry.
Highlights
Does accountability get blurry in large organisations?
Tiered accountability can help. But there is often something missing.
Here’s a way to make it complete:
A pyramid is the dominant shape for organisations. This hierarchy has one dimension- up and down the chain of command.
There are strong advantages: the pyramid is scalable and can manage immense detail whilst keeping aligned to the mission.
The trouble is that the value stream runs crosswise and along the bottom of the pyramid.
The higher up in the hierarchy, the further away from creation of value. The less accountable to the customer and more accountable to edicts from the top.
The higher up, the more abstract things become. In this hierarchy, managers push objectives, apply control downwards and provide reporting upwards. They can spend 100’s hours describing the situation using abstract language.
By the time information gets to the top, it is stale. The organisation is unable to respond. People at the bottom can feel disconnected with the strategy from the top.
Here is where lean steps in.
Objectives are aligned at each level, starting with standard work at the bottom. At each level, people define the vital few measures for quality, cost, delivery and safety.
The measures are made visual. Managers are told to go and see rather than sit in meetings, to have conversations rather than write documents.
Everyone has a routine as part of a Daily Management System. They ask the same four questions:
- What is meant to happen?
- What is actually happening?
- What accounts for the difference?
- What can be done, is being done about it?
If visual management has been done right, the answers to 1 and 2 are plain to see. The conversation quickly moves to problem-solving 3 and 4.
This is tiered accountability. And it can be powerful for driving continuous improvement.
But something is missing.
In many examples of these systems, standard work is what the worker is meant to do. Tiered accountability means holding each team accountable.
“What is meant to happen?” turns into “What are you meant to be doing?” This seems fair to the manager because they are being held accountable in the same way.
What’s missing is a fifth question. Leaders need to be asking: 5. “What can I do to help?”
Good leaders feel accountable to their teams as much as they do their boss.
When tiered accountability goes wrong, the unsaid assumption is that people don’t perform because they are lazy, disorganised or unable to think clearly.
When it goes right, there is an understanding that everyone is performing in a system. That system is likely to hinder as well as help.
As Edwards Deming said, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”
True accountability is a two-way process. A good leader feels a balance, up and down. It should reflect in the amount of time spent acting on each.
When this happens, then you can get something even better than accountability: Ownership.
#management #lean
Our management ideas are based on science that is 112 years old.
Scientists know for a fact that it is outdated, yet we still try to use it.
Here’s why:
Mention science and management, soon we will be talking about Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Taylor coined Scientific Management based on his work in a steel company, 1877, to his death as a consultant in 1915.
With Scientific Management, he analysed details of the work, applied time-based standards and then organised employees with strict roles and incentives.
To be sure, this isn’t the only science in management. But there is plenty of evidence that it heavily influences our thinking today.
Here are some examples: • Incentives for the individual and an assumption they will always make rational choices • An expectation that all hours on the job produce the same rate of output • Organisation by a functional hierarchy, from top to bottom
Don’t see anything wrong with these?
This is because we still view the company with the same mental model that Taylor did. We see the organisation as a machine.
It is a very seductive way of thinking. Faced with complexity, we break things down into their parts. Fix the components. Put it back together and it will perform like clockwork.
The trouble is, in the real world, complex systems do not work this way. They are not predictable, like clocks. The whole is greater than the sum of their parts.
The more managers try to control variables and force the organisation to behave like a machine, the more they are tripped up by uncertainty.
Science now has complexity theory to help understand uncertainty. Systems thinking applies these ideas to organisations. And neuroscience can help us better understand human behaviour.
So, it is not like things have stood still in the last 112 years. I imagine there are many differences between Bethlehem Steel in 1911 and a modern corporation.
There is growing awareness of how modern science can apply to management thinking.
But compared the scale of those differences with, say, the synthesis of ammonia (1909) versus modern chemical production.
Or the discovery of vitamins (1911) versus pharmaceutical discovery in 2023.
Management looks glacial in comparison.
Management science has some catching up to do. And we can start by changing the way of thinking.
Let’s challenge that model of the organisation as a machine.
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Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
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Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
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