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O. C. Tanner: Building Operational Excellence Through Lean Leadership Behaviours

Juliana Salvadorinho, Neha Mittal, Florian Magnani, Peter Hines

Product #:W49554
Supplier:Ivey/Temple
Discipline:Organizational Behaviour/Leadership
Setting:United States, 2025
Details:Case (PDF) • 8 pages • 2026-07-15

Subjects:

Organizational cultureOrganizational behaviorLeadershipLeadership development

Industries:

Fabrication and manufacturing

Geography:

United StatesNorth America
Your Price:$10.54

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In April 2025, at O. C. Tanner Company headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, the executive vice president of supply chain and manufacturing, Gary Peterson, reflected on his upcoming retirement and the legacy he would leave. In the mid-1990s, Peterson had led a Lean transformation to improve efficiency and reduce throughput time, introducing pull-based production, kanban signaling, and sharply reduced work-in-process. The results were clear: average throughput time fell from 26 days to 10. The changes, however, came at a cost. Just-in-time production increased pressure on employees. Bottlenecks emerged and morale declined. Peterson changed how he led, creating a culture of coaching, recognition, and psychological safety. But was the culture he built genuinely institutionalized or did it persist primarily because of him?

Learning Objectives

This case is well-suited for both undergraduate- and graduate-level business courses on operations management, leadership, and human resource management, particularly those examining Lean transformations and organizational culture. It is especially effective for exploring how leader behaviour, coaching, and recognition systems influence employee engagement, change adoption, and the long-term sustainability of operational excellence.

After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:
  • Analyze how leadership behaviours influence employee engagement, psychological safety, and the outcomes of Lean and operational excellence initiatives.
  • Evaluate the trade-offs between efficiency-focused process improvements and the human impact of operational change.
  • Assess how coaching, recognition, and leader routines can be embedded into organizational systems to sustain culture and performance.
  • Examine the risks of leader-dependent cultures and develop strategies for institutionalizing values-based leadership beyond individual leaders.
  • Apply governance and succession frameworks to a real organizational dilemma with incomplete information and competing legitimate priorities.
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Case Study: O. C. Tanner: Building Operational Excellence Through Lean Leadership Behaviours (English version) | Ivey Publishing