12. Lean Leadership, Culture and Transformation Governance

Introduction and Context

Lean manufacturing is often introduced through tools such as value-stream mapping, 5S, kanban, standard work, visual management and mistake-proofing. Yet the long-term performance of a lean enterprise depends less on the isolated use of tools than on the quality of leadership, organizational culture and governance through which those tools are deployed. A technically sound improvement programme can fail when leaders treat lean as a cost-reduction campaign, when improvement targets are imposed without dialogue, or when gains are not incorporated into daily management and management-control systems.

Lean leadership is therefore a strategic capability. It connects organizational purpose with operational behaviour. It requires leaders to define direction, develop people, remove barriers, make problems visible and establish conditions in which improvement becomes part of normal work. Culture is the pattern of shared assumptions and behaviours that determines whether employees merely comply with lean activities or actively improve the system. Transformation governance provides the decision rights, review mechanisms, resource discipline and escalation processes required to convert improvement intentions into sustained organizational results.

This chapter examines these three dimensions as an integrated system. It presents Hoshin Kanri for strategic alignment, catchball for two-way planning, tiered daily management for operational control, and portfolio governance for selecting and governing improvement initiatives. It also considers coaching, resistance to change, auditing, maturity assessment, digital support and the ethical responsibilities of lean transformation.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, the learner should be able to:

1. Explain the relationship between lean leadership, organizational culture and transformation governance.

2. Formulate an operational-excellence strategy using Hoshin Kanri and catchball.

3. Design a tiered daily-management system that links shop-floor activity with strategic priorities.

4. Evaluate and govern a portfolio of lean and operational-excellence initiatives.

5. Apply coaching, change-leadership and resistance-management approaches.

6. Design audit and maturity-assessment systems that sustain improvement without creating bureaucracy.

7. Critically assess the ethical, organizational and technological implications of lean transformation.

From Lean Tools to a Management System

A lean tool produces a local result; a lean management system creates repeatable organizational behaviour. For example, a 5S exercise may improve workplace order for several weeks, but it will not sustain performance unless standards, ownership, audits, problem escalation and leadership attention are established. Similarly, a kaizen event can reduce changeover time, but the improvement may disappear if production planning, maintenance, quality control and performance measures continue to reward the old method.

Lean leadership has five closely connected responsibilities. First, leaders establish purpose by clarifying the value the organization intends to create for customers and other stakeholders. Second, they develop capability by teaching problem solving rather than simply demanding results. Third, they create alignment by connecting strategic objectives to departmental and team-level work. Fourth, they make conditions for improvement visible by exposing abnormalities and ensuring rapid response. Finally, they sustain the system through consistent behaviours, review routines and resource decisions.

The distinction between a leader as an expert problem-solver and a leader as a capability builder is fundamental. If managers personally solve every problem, employees learn dependence. If managers ask disciplined questions, observe the process and coach teams to test countermeasures, the organization develops problem-solving capacity. This does not mean that leaders should never make decisions. It means that decisions should be made at the lowest competent level, with escalation when authority, risk or cross-functional impact exceeds local capability.

Culture: The Social Infrastructure of Operational Excellence

Lean culture is not equivalent to employee enthusiasm for workshops. It is expressed in everyday assumptions: whether bad news is reported early, whether standards are treated as a basis for improvement, whether supervisors spend time at the process, whether functions cooperate across hand-offs, and whether learning is valued alongside short-term output.

A productive lean culture combines high standards with psychological safety. High standards are necessary because variation, defects, delays and unsafe conditions must not be normalized. Psychological safety is necessary because employees must be able to disclose problems and challenge existing methods without fear of humiliation or retaliation. These principles are complementary. A culture that is comfortable but undemanding produces little improvement; a culture that is demanding but punitive encourages concealment and superficial compliance.

Cultural change is reinforced through systems. Recruitment, promotion, recognition, budgeting, performance reviews and meeting routines communicate what the organization truly values. If leaders speak about continuous improvement but reward only monthly output, employees will rationally prioritize output at the expense of learning and standard adherence. If improvement ideas are collected but rarely implemented, suggestion systems become symbolic and trust declines.

A useful distinction is between event-based improvement and habit-based improvement. Event-based improvement concentrates effort in periodic projects. Habit-based improvement embeds observation, problem definition, experimentation and reflection in normal work. Mature organizations use both: focused projects for significant constraints and daily problem solving for the countless small deviations that otherwise accumulate.

Hoshin Kanri: Translating Purpose into Action

Hoshin Kanri is a strategy-deployment approach that aligns long-term direction, annual priorities, improvement objectives and daily work. The term is commonly associated with policy deployment, but it should not be reduced to an annual target-setting exercise. Its central question is: how will the organization’s strategic intent be translated into a small number of breakthrough priorities while preserving learning and accountability at every level?

A practical Hoshin cycle contains the following elements:

• Organizational purpose and vision: the enduring value proposition and desired future state.
• Current-state diagnosis: evidence concerning customers, processes, capability, risks and performance gaps.
• Breakthrough objectives: a limited number of strategic changes that cannot be achieved through routine management alone.
• Annual objectives and means: measurable results and the approaches believed capable of achieving them.
• Deployment and alignment: translation of priorities into functions, plants, departments and teams.
• Review and adjustment: regular study of results, assumptions, obstacles and emerging conditions.
• Reflection: evaluation of both outcomes and the quality of the management process.

Objectives should be expressed in a way that distinguishes the desired result from the method. For example, “reduce customer lead time by 30 percent” is an objective; “implement cellular manufacturing” is a possible means. Confusing means with objectives limits learning because teams may continue using a selected method even when evidence shows that it is ineffective.

Hoshin planning should also maintain a balance between breakthrough priorities and business fundamentals. Safety, legal compliance, quality, delivery and financial control cannot be sacrificed to fund strategic projects. A well-designed deployment system identifies both the performance standards that must be protected and the changes required to improve them.

Catchball and the Quality of Alignment

Catchball is the iterative dialogue through which objectives, measures, resources and methods are negotiated between levels and functions. Senior leaders communicate direction; receiving managers test feasibility, identify dependencies and propose means; the proposal returns for refinement. The process resembles the throwing and catching of a ball because responsibility and information move in both directions.

Catchball prevents two common failures. In top-down deployment, targets may be mathematically cascaded without regard to process capability or cross-functional constraints. In bottom-up planning without strategic direction, teams may optimize local priorities that do not improve the value stream. Catchball creates a disciplined compromise between strategic coherence and operational knowledge.

Effective catchball is not bargaining designed to reduce ambition. It is a method for improving the quality of the plan. Questions should include: What condition currently prevents achievement? Which process owner can influence it? What resources or policy changes are required? How will progress be measured? What risks could make the proposed method invalid? Agreement should be recorded in an A3, policy-deployment matrix or equivalent visual plan, including owners, milestones, leading indicators and review dates.

Tiered Daily Management

Hoshin Kanri establishes direction, but strategy becomes real through daily management. Tiered daily management is a structured system of short, regular reviews conducted at different organizational levels. Each tier examines the information appropriate to its authority and escalates abnormalities that cannot be resolved locally.

At the team or cell level, the focus may include safety conditions, quality defects, staffing, equipment status, standard adherence and immediate countermeasures. At the department level, the focus may shift to flow, capacity, recurring problems, cross-team dependencies and support functions. Plant or business-level reviews consider strategic indicators, major risks, resource conflicts, customer commitments and portfolio progress. The precise number of tiers should reflect organizational complexity; additional meetings do not automatically create better control.

A sound tiered system has four characteristics. First, information is current and visual. Second, the meeting is conducted at the place where work is understood, or uses credible evidence from that place. Third, abnormalities are assigned owners and escalation times. Fourth, higher tiers add support and make decisions rather than merely review slides.

Daily management should not become a ceremony in which teams report green status while unresolved problems remain hidden. A red indicator is useful only when it triggers inquiry, containment and learning. Likewise, metrics should include both outcome measures and process measures. Delivery performance is an outcome; adherence to a production sequence, response time to abnormalities or completion of preventive actions may provide earlier signals.

The principle of “go and see” is important. Leaders should observe the actual process, compare actual conditions with standards, ask open questions and avoid premature solutions. This practice, often called gemba leadership, is not surveillance. It is a way to develop accurate understanding and demonstrate respect for the people who perform the work.

Governing the Transformation Portfolio

Operational-excellence transformation usually involves more initiatives than the organization can execute effectively. Examples include setup reduction, supplier development, preventive maintenance, layout redesign, quality-at-source, planning-system changes and leadership development. Portfolio governance is the mechanism for selecting, sequencing, funding and stopping such initiatives.

A portfolio board should evaluate initiatives against strategic contribution, customer impact, risk reduction, feasibility, resource demand, interdependencies and expected learning. Financial benefit is relevant but should not be the sole criterion. Safety improvements, regulatory risk reduction, capability development and resilience may have substantial strategic value even when direct savings are difficult to estimate.

Each initiative needs a clear problem statement, accountable sponsor, process owner, team, expected outcomes, assumptions, milestones and control plan. Governance should distinguish among three decisions: whether to start an initiative, whether to continue it after evidence is reviewed, and whether to scale, modify or stop it. This stage-gate logic prevents weak projects from consuming resources simply because substantial effort has already been invested.

A portfolio view also reveals conflicts. Two projects may require the same engineering specialists; a scheduling-system change may affect a line undergoing physical redesign; a supplier initiative may depend on quality-engineering capability that is already constrained. Without portfolio governance, local managers may optimize their own project list while the total transformation becomes overloaded.

Governance should not centralize every operational decision. Its purpose is to clarify strategic choices and remove systemic barriers. Teams remain responsible for experimentation and local countermeasures within agreed boundaries. Senior governance is responsible for priorities, policy, investment, risk and cross-functional integration.

Leading Change and Coaching People

Lean transformation changes routines, authority relationships, measures and professional identities. Resistance is therefore not necessarily irrational or malicious. Employees may resist because they have experienced failed programmes, fear job loss, distrust management, lack capability, or correctly perceive that a proposed change increases workload without addressing root causes.

Leaders should diagnose the source of resistance before choosing a response. Information gaps require explanation and participation. Skill gaps require training and practice. Resource constraints require redesign or support. Loss of status or autonomy requires honest discussion about roles and decision rights. Historical distrust requires leaders to demonstrate consistency over time rather than relying on motivational speeches.

Coaching is the principal leadership mechanism for building problem-solving capability. A coaching conversation may ask:

1. What is the actual condition?

2. What should be happening according to the standard?

3. What is the measurable gap?

4. What evidence suggests the likely cause?

5. What countermeasure will be tested, by when and with what prediction?

6. What was learned from the test?

This sequence discourages opinion-based debate and premature countermeasures. It also makes learning explicit. Coaching should be adapted to capability: a novice may need demonstration and close support, while an experienced team may need challenge, resources and protection from interference.

Leaders must also manage the human consequences of productivity improvement. If lean reduces labour requirements, ethical practice requires transparent communication, fair redeployment or reskilling where possible, and compliance with employment obligations. Treating people as expendable inputs undermines the respect-for-people principle and damages the credibility of the transformation.

Audits, Standardization and Maturity Assessment

Sustaining improvement requires verification, but audits can either support learning or create bureaucracy. A useful audit examines whether the management system is functioning: are standards clear, are abnormalities visible, are leaders coaching, are countermeasures verified, and are gains reflected in revised work methods? A checklist that merely confirms the presence of labels or boards may produce conformity without capability.

Layered process audits distribute verification across roles. Team leaders check basic conditions; supervisors examine adherence and problem response; managers assess system effectiveness and recurring causes. Audits should be risk-based, with greater attention to safety-critical, quality-critical and unstable processes. Findings should distinguish containment, corrective action and systemic prevention.

Maturity assessment provides a broader view than an audit. A staged model may describe progression from:

• Initial: improvement is reactive and dependent on individual champions.
• Managed: standards and basic visual controls exist, but application is uneven.
• Integrated: daily management, problem solving and strategy deployment reinforce one another.
• Adaptive: teams learn rapidly, improve across boundaries and adjust methods using evidence.

Maturity levels are not labels for ranking employees or sites. They are diagnostic hypotheses. Assessment should use multiple sources: direct observation, performance trends, employee experience, quality of problem-solving records and leadership behaviour. A high score on formal practices with poor operational results should trigger examination of measurement validity and superficial compliance.

Control plans, standard work and training matrices are essential after improvement. However, standardization should not freeze the organization. A standard is the current best-known method under stated conditions; it is a baseline for improvement, not a prohibition against learning.

Digital Technologies and Analytical Support

Digital tools can strengthen transformation governance when they improve visibility, response speed and learning. Electronic tier boards can consolidate safety, quality, delivery, cost and people indicators; workflow systems can track actions and escalation; process mining can reveal delays and rework; statistical analytics can identify abnormal patterns; and mobile devices can support standard-work confirmation or frontline idea capture.

Technology does not replace leadership. Poorly designed digital dashboards may increase reporting burden, encourage metric gaming or conceal the process behind aggregated data. Automated alerts can also create alarm fatigue if thresholds are not meaningful. Artificial intelligence may assist with anomaly detection, maintenance prediction, document search and action prioritization, but its recommendations require human validation, especially where safety, quality or employment decisions are involved.

Digital governance should address data ownership, access rights, cybersecurity, privacy, model bias, traceability and retention. A system that monitors individual activity must be evaluated for proportionality and fairness. The relevant question is not whether a technology is sophisticated, but whether it improves understanding and enables responsible action at the right organizational level.

Illustrative Case: Meridian Components’ Transformation Portfolio

Background

Meridian Components, a fictional manufacturer of precision assemblies, supplied several industrial-equipment customers from two plants. Its leadership had introduced 5S, kaizen events and a daily production board, but customer lead time remained unstable. Expediting was common, engineering changes were poorly coordinated and improvement projects competed for the same technical staff.

Situation and Problem

The executive team announced a target to reduce average customer lead time by 25 percent within eighteen months. Initial discussions produced twelve projects, including automation, layout change, supplier development, scheduling software and inspection redesign. Plant managers accepted the target but argued that the proposed deadlines were unrealistic. Operators were concerned that automation was being used primarily to reduce headcount.

Analysis

A current-state review showed that the principal constraint was not one machine but the interaction of batch scheduling, late design information, rework and approval delays. The organization also had no common definition of project success. Some projects reported savings, while others reported activity completion. Daily meetings focused on yesterday’s output and rarely escalated recurring causes.

Approach

The leadership team used Hoshin Kanri to define three priorities: reduce end-to-end lead time, improve first-pass quality and build frontline problem-solving capability. Through catchball, plant and functional managers revised the target conditions and identified dependencies. The portfolio board reduced the twelve projects to six, sequenced them and reserved engineering capacity for the constraint with the greatest system effect.

Tiered daily management was redesigned. Cell meetings addressed immediate abnormalities; department reviews examined recurring causes and cross-functional delays; the plant review addressed resource conflicts and customer risk. Each project used an A3 with a problem definition, baseline, target condition, countermeasures, leading indicators and control plan.

Supervisors received coaching training and were evaluated partly on the quality of team problem solving rather than only on output. Operators participated in automation design, and the company committed to retraining affected employees for quality, maintenance and process-support roles. Digital action tracking was introduced, but the number of required fields was deliberately limited.

Outcome

After the first review cycle, two projects were stopped because their expected benefits depended on assumptions not supported by process data. The remaining projects progressed more slowly than the original announcement suggested, but lead-time variation declined and cross-functional escalation improved. Teams began identifying design-release delays and rework patterns that had previously been treated as unavoidable. The transformation board learned that portfolio discipline and leadership coaching were more important than the number of kaizen events completed.

Learning Points

The case illustrates that strategy deployment is not a cascade of targets. It is a process of diagnosis, negotiation, experimentation and review. It also demonstrates that resistance may contain valid information, that project selection must consider system constraints, and that sustainability depends on integrating improvements into daily management and standard work.

Risks, Limitations and Common Mistakes

Several recurring mistakes weaken lean transformation. One is equating lean with workforce reduction. Although productivity improvement may change labour requirements, presenting it as the primary purpose encourages concealment and destroys trust. Another is launching too many initiatives. Overloaded organizations confuse activity with progress and fail to learn from experiments.

A third mistake is relying on lagging financial indicators. Financial results are important, but they may appear after the operational conditions that produced them. Leaders should therefore combine outcome measures with indicators of flow, quality, safety, capability and problem-solving discipline. A fourth mistake is treating standardization as rigid control. Standards must be stable enough to reveal deviation and flexible enough to be improved through evidence.

Other risks include superficial audits, excessive meeting time, metric gaming, local optimization, weak process ownership, failure to stop unsuccessful projects and inconsistent leadership behaviour. Transformation can also create change fatigue when priorities shift repeatedly or when employees are asked to participate in improvement without time, authority or feedback.

Governance and Professional Responsibility

Lean governance must protect safety, product integrity, legal compliance and human dignity. No productivity target justifies bypassing a safety control, concealing a defect or pressuring employees to work beyond safe limits. Quality data must remain truthful even when poor results threaten bonuses or project status. Leaders should establish escalation channels that permit concerns to be raised outside the immediate hierarchy when necessary.

Governance also involves accountability for decisions made with incomplete information. A disciplined experiment states its assumptions, defines containment and specifies conditions for continuation or reversal. This is particularly important when automation, algorithmic scheduling or AI-supported decisions affect workers, customers or regulated processes.

Current Developments and Best Practices

Contemporary operational-excellence programmes increasingly connect lean with resilience, sustainability and end-to-end ecosystem performance. Organizations are extending value-stream thinking beyond the factory to suppliers, logistics, engineering, service and product life cycles. Environmental objectives such as energy reduction, material efficiency and waste prevention are being incorporated into Hoshin objectives rather than managed as separate campaigns.

Effective practice generally includes a small number of strategic priorities, explicit catchball, visible daily management, capable middle managers, disciplined portfolio review, respectful involvement of employees and evidence-based maturity assessment. Leaders should periodically ask whether the management system is producing better customer value and stronger organizational learning—not merely whether required meetings, boards and audits are being completed.

Chapter Summary

Lean leadership converts operational excellence from a collection of tools into a coherent management system. Leaders provide purpose, develop problem-solving capability, make abnormalities visible and align decisions across organizational levels. Culture determines whether employees conceal problems or use them as opportunities for learning; therefore high standards must be combined with psychological safety and respect for people.

Hoshin Kanri links purpose, strategic priorities, annual objectives and daily work. Catchball improves alignment by allowing objectives, methods, resources and risks to be negotiated through evidence. Tiered daily management connects frontline conditions with higher-level support and escalation. Portfolio governance ensures that improvement initiatives are selected, sequenced, resourced and reviewed as an integrated set. Coaching, audits, standard work and maturity assessment sustain capability, while digital technologies can strengthen visibility when governed responsibly. Ethical transformation protects safety, truthfulness, dignity and fair treatment throughout the change process.

Key Terms

Hoshin Kanri: A strategy-deployment system that aligns organizational purpose, breakthrough objectives, annual priorities and daily work.

Catchball: Two-way dialogue through which strategic objectives, methods, resources and measures are refined across organizational levels.

Lean leadership: Leadership that aligns purpose, develops people, supports problem solving and sustains continuous improvement.

Lean culture: Shared assumptions and behaviours that shape how an organization responds to standards, problems and learning.

Operational excellence: The sustained capability to create customer value through reliable, efficient, safe and continuously improving processes.

Tiered daily management: Linked short-interval review routines through which conditions, performance and abnormalities are managed at successive levels.

Gemba: The actual place where value-creating work occurs and where leaders go to understand conditions directly.

Breakthrough objective: A strategically significant improvement target requiring more than routine management.

Policy deployment: The process of translating strategic intent into coordinated objectives and actions throughout the organization.

Portfolio governance: The selection, prioritization, resourcing and review of multiple improvement initiatives as an integrated set.

A3: A structured problem-solving and communication format that presents condition, analysis, countermeasures and follow-up on one logical document.

Leading indicator: A measure that signals conditions likely to influence future performance.

Lagging indicator: A measure of results achieved after the relevant activities or conditions have occurred.

Psychological safety: A shared belief that people can raise concerns, ask questions and report problems without interpersonal punishment.

Standard work: The documented current best-known method for performing a process under defined conditions.

Layered process audit: A verification system in which different organizational levels examine process adherence and management-system effectiveness.

Maturity assessment: A structured evaluation of the development and integration of organizational practices and capabilities.

Stage-gate governance: Decision control in which initiatives are reviewed at defined points for continuation, modification, scaling or termination.

Respect for people: A lean principle requiring dignity, involvement, development and responsible treatment of employees.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the principal purpose of catchball in Hoshin Kanri?

2. Distinguish between an outcome measure and a leading indicator in daily management.

3. Why is psychological safety important to lean culture?

4. What decisions does transformation portfolio governance control?

5. Explain why a standard should be regarded as a baseline for improvement.

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how Hoshin Kanri, catchball and tiered daily management form an integrated deployment system.

2. Discuss the leadership behaviours required to build a culture of continuous improvement.

3. Describe how an organization should select and govern a portfolio of operational-excellence initiatives.

4. Evaluate the role of coaching, audits and maturity assessment in sustaining lean transformation.

5. Discuss the ethical responsibilities of managers when lean improvement affects jobs, performance measures or employee monitoring.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A plant has excellent visual boards but recurring defects are rarely escalated. Diagnose the likely management-system weaknesses and propose corrective actions.

2. A company has announced ten improvement projects but has limited engineering capacity. Design a portfolio-governance approach for prioritizing, sequencing and reviewing the projects.

3. Using Hoshin Kanri and catchball, develop a deployment outline for reducing customer lead time while protecting safety, quality and employee development.

22. Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

What is the central purpose of Hoshin Kanri?

A. To replace daily management with annual planning

B. To align strategic intent with coordinated organizational action

C. To calculate the financial return of every kaizen event

D. To standardize all processes without further experimentation

Correct Answer: B. To align strategic intent with coordinated organizational action

Question 2

Catchball improves strategy deployment primarily because it

A. allows targets to be negotiated without evidence

B. transfers all planning responsibility to frontline employees

C. combines strategic direction with operational knowledge and feasibility feedback

D. eliminates the need for performance measures

Correct Answer: C. combines strategic direction with operational knowledge and feasibility feedback

Question 3

Which activity is most appropriate for a frontline tier of daily management?

A. Approving the organization’s five-year investment strategy

B. Reviewing immediate safety, quality and equipment abnormalities

C. Selecting the entire transformation portfolio

D. Revising corporate employment policy

Correct Answer: B. Reviewing immediate safety, quality and equipment abnormalities

Question 4

A project portfolio board should stop or modify an initiative when

A. the project team has completed substantial effort regardless of results

B. the initiative’s assumptions are unsupported by evidence or its strategic value is inadequate

C. the project has an A3 document

D. the initiative requires cross-functional cooperation

Correct Answer: B. the initiative’s assumptions are unsupported by evidence or its strategic value is inadequate

Question 5

Which leadership behaviour best develops problem-solving capability?

A. Personally solving every problem immediately

B. Avoiding abnormal conditions to protect team morale

C. Using disciplined questions to help teams study conditions and test countermeasures

D. Rewarding only short-term output

Correct Answer: C. Using disciplined questions to help teams study conditions and test countermeasures

Question 6

Why must psychological safety accompany high performance standards?

A. It permits teams to ignore standards when under pressure

B. It encourages early reporting of problems while maintaining accountability for improvement

C. It removes the need for leadership review

D. It ensures that all proposed countermeasures are accepted

Correct Answer: B. It encourages early reporting of problems while maintaining accountability for improvement

Question 7

Which statement best describes a mature audit?

A. It confirms only that visual labels and boards exist

B. It evaluates whether standards, escalation, coaching and corrective actions are functioning

C. It ranks employees according to the number of findings

D. It replaces process observation with electronic reporting

Correct Answer: B. It evaluates whether standards, escalation, coaching and corrective actions are functioning

Question 8

A lagging indicator in an operational-excellence programme is

A. response time to a production abnormality

B. completion of preventive actions before their due date

C. customer lead time achieved during the reporting period

D. percentage of employees trained in problem solving

Correct Answer: C. customer lead time achieved during the reporting period

Question 9

What is an ethical risk of presenting lean primarily as a workforce-reduction programme?

A. It may increase experimentation and trust

B. It can encourage concealment of problems and undermine respect for people

C. It eliminates the need for portfolio governance

D. It guarantees faster customer delivery

Correct Answer: B. It can encourage concealment of problems and undermine respect for people

Question 10

Which is the most appropriate use of digital technology in lean governance?

A. Replacing gemba observation with automated dashboards

B. Using analytics to improve visibility while retaining human validation and accountability

C. Monitoring employees without privacy or proportionality controls

D. Adding data fields to every meeting regardless of usefulness

Correct Answer: B. Using analytics to improve visibility while retaining human validation and accountability