Bridging Generations and Breaking Barriers: Insights from Recent LEI summit 2025 Future People at Work Symposium

In a world where technological disruption and generational shifts are transforming the workplace, how do we ensure improvement methodologies remain relevant and impactful? This question formed the backdrop of our recent Future of People at Work (FPW) workshops, where practitioners across industries came together to tackle the persistent challenge of sustainable organizational improvement.

Why This Matters

The landscape of continuous improvement is at a critical juncture. As veteran lean practitioners approach retirement, a new generation enters the workforce with different expectations and communication styles. Meanwhile, organizations continue to struggle with balancing quick wins against sustainable transformation. The intersection of these challenges creates both risk and opportunity – the risk of losing decades of hard-won improvement knowledge, and the opportunity to evolve our approaches to meet the needs of today's rapidly changing work environment.

This isn't just a lean issue. Whether your background is in operational excellence, agile, design thinking, or six sigma, the fundamental challenge remains the same: how do we engage people across generations and roles to create lasting positive change?

Bridging the Generational Divide

One of the most striking insights from our workshops was the urgent need to bridge generational gaps. "Stop being old farts - communication needs to be understood by them, not us," remarked one participant, highlighting a fundamental disconnect.

The workshop revealed three key elements to successful cross-generational knowledge transfer:

Shifting communication approaches: Today's workforce responds to different engagement methods than previous generations. "The next generation's hierarchy of needs is changing with financial environment as well as attention span," noted a participant, referencing the influence of social media and digital communication formats.
Technology democratization: "The 'we' is becoming 'all of us', not just IT," observed another participant. This democratization of technology requires improvement professionals to adapt their approaches, embracing digital tools while maintaining focus on core principles.
Concept over terminology: Several groups experimented with the idea of "doing a training where there's no lean term at all, we're just talking about the definitions and the concepts and why it's important." This focus on practical application over jargon resonated across generational lines.

Breaking Leadership Barriers

A persistent question emerged during our discussions: "If we keep waiting for senior leadership, are we just gonna be waiting forever?" This challenge to conventional wisdom sparked rich dialogue about driving change from the middle.

Workshop participants identified several strategies for overcoming leadership barriers:

Demonstrate value through small wins: Focus on concrete, measurable results that address immediate organizational pain points.
Build networks of influence: Create communities of practice within organizations that can demonstrate success across departmental lines.
Translate improvement language: "At the end of the day, lean is a people-first approach. I think oftentimes we take a tool-based approach," reflected one participant. Reframing improvement in terms of organizational priorities creates better leadership alignment.

The most powerful insight came from a participant who stated simply: "Lean isn't the final answer, it's how to get there." This perspective shift – from methodology as goal to methodology as path – opens new opportunities for engagement.

Application Strategies

How can improvement professionals apply these insights in their organizations? Workshop participants suggested several practical approaches:

Reimagine onboarding for new improvement leaders: Create structured pathways that combine reading, coaching, and hands-on practice. "I need to get coached and learn by doing, and that is, at least in my mind, irreplaceable," shared one participant.
Start with problems, not terminology: Focus initial efforts on addressing specific organizational pain points rather than introducing improvement jargon.
Celebrate success more broadly: "I don't think we do a good enough job of highlighting the changes that we've made up and down the organization," noted a participant. Expanding celebration beyond immediate teams increases visibility and interest.
Embrace multi-modal learning: Recognize that different generations and learning styles require diverse approaches. Combine traditional training with digital tools, experiential learning, and peer mentoring.

Community Connection

The workshops themselves demonstrated the power of collaborative learning across organizational boundaries. By bringing together diverse perspectives, we uncovered common challenges and generated innovative solutions that no single organization could have developed alone.

This is the core mission of the Future of People at Work initiative – creating spaces where improvement professionals can share knowledge, experiment with new approaches, and collectively advance the practice of continuous improvement. As one participant noted, when improvement culture is working well, "It can be life-changing, and people who are in it wouldn't do it any other way."

Join Us on the Journey

The challenges we face in organizational improvement aren't going away, but together we can develop approaches that work for today's evolving workplace. We invite you to join this ongoing conversation:

Join us at the Future of People at Work (FPW) Symposium, June 26-27, 2025, at OC Tanner's facility in Salt Lake City, where we'll explore these and other innovative approaches to improvement methods. Learn more at https://www.fpwork.org/

Connect with us:

Follow the FPW LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/future-people-work/
Register for monthly FPW conversations: https://forms.gle/yXPbCXURdfvYtjmn9
Check out this FPW related event from our partner organizations: https://www.fpwork.org/fpw-events
Also check out the Central Coast Lean Summit 2025 for another great FPW related event: https://www.purpose-ccl.org/

#FutureOfPeopleAtWork #ContinuousImprovement #LeanEducation #Performance #LeanSixSigma #Innovation #VisualManagement

This post was developed through collaboration between the authors and synthesized with Claude.AI assistance, demonstrating the potential of human-AI partnership in knowledge sharing while maintaining authenticity through author review and validation.