ManagementSpeak: We have preserved our flexibility.
Translation: We managed to avoid making a commitment until we knew which way the wind is blowing.
This week’s contributor preserved his flexibility by remaining anonymous.

What is it about Lean? It consists almost entirely of excellent and very practical notions, and yet for many of us, our first reaction when Lean ideas come along is an irrational desire to poke holes.

And so, you can imagine my joy: Last week’s column wondered why Lean would invade the hoary halls of accounting with its enlightened, queue-less (no, not clueless, queue-less) approach to process design, and then fail to advocate elimination of period closings as a wasteful batch-and-queue process design.