Neptune made a dramatic turnaround, but the company’s rocky experience with lean isn’t isolated. In fact, most lean initiatives will fail: 73% of lean initiatives fail in the first year.

Why do lean project fail when companies invest significant time, money, and effort into making them a success? More importantly, what steps can you take to turn around a lean initiative that’s not performing well?

Reason #1: Leaders Are Not Aligned with the Objectives of the Company

One the biggest reasons lean initiatives fail is that they’re not tied to the company’s larger objectives. As Simon Sinek says in his iconic Ted Talk, it’s important to know your “why.” If you bring the leaders of a company together in the same room and ask them if they all have the same shared mission, the vast majority will agree verbally. However, if you ask those same executives to write their vision and mission on a piece of paper, less than 5% of their answers will be in line with the others.

What this means is that at most companies, the leaders are not on the same page when it comes to their vision and mission for the company. Without a clearly shared and communicated vision and understanding of a company’s True North–its most important objectives–lean initiatives can’t have the desired impact. Your company’s leaders must be able to answer the question, “Is this lean effort bringing you closer to your company’s goals?”

Reason #2: Your Lean Program Is a Series of Projects, Not a Lean Culture

Often, companies implement lean initiatives as a series of projects or process-level changes. Each lean project has its own focus and everything is a quality-focused, tactical effort. When you take this approach, you may have quick wins or make a small impact, but it won’t lead to long-term sustainable change or make the major improvements you hope for.

Instead, companies must focus on changing their culture. By building a lean culture of leaders and teams that are excited to commit to continuous improvement and who see lean as a way to actively problem solve, it’s possible to transform the way a company operates.

Reason #3: Employees Are Not Engaged

Without an engaged team, a lean initiative will never succeed. Time and again, companies roll out lean programs without communicating to and training their staff. There must be buy-in and understanding at all levels of the organization. It’s important for your leaders and workforce alike to understand why a lean initiative is important and how it benefits them to participate.

Successful lean deployments require extensive training, practice, and oversight. Often, there can be cultural obstacles to overcome. People may be resistant to change, protective of their functional areas, or concerned that a new way of doing things renders them obsolete. It’s important to get your workforce excited about lean and about actively taking part. Not only can strategic approaches like engaging them in dynamic activities help them connect with lean initiatives, but it makes your overall efforts more grounded and successful.

Reason #4: The Training and Program Design Is Too Theoretical

In many ways, lean has become diluted. Much of it is taught in a classroom setting, far removed from where the ideas will be implemented. This goes against the very core of lean thinking, which suggests that change must happen where business takes place. The core separation of a dry training session that’s seen as separate from the actual workplace and something that workers have to cross off a list won’t yield the engagement and results desired. It’s important to move lean strategy from the theoretical to the applied world of business.

Instead, companies need to look for ways to share ideas that are hands-on and to create a working classroom. Ask how you can show your team these ideas in action, in a way that helps them understand and practice the concepts in a real way. The best approach to set up your team for success takes them through procedural changes with active hands-on training, case studies, and different ways of learning that leave them engaged and excited. From there, behavioral and cultural change will follow.

Reason #5: There’s a Leadership Gap

Your company’s leaders have to model the right behavior when it comes to lean– and when that breaks down, it’s hard to get teams on board and excited. When a new lean initiative launches, everyone is ready to participate. The executive champion who’s driving the lean initiative garners support, throws necessary resources behind the project, and leads the way. However, as momentum dies down and projects fail to generate the results the company hoped for, leaders may stop investing or even actively distance themselves from the failing initiative.

A leadership gap is typically present when lean initiatives fail. Companies need to evaluate how lean initiatives tie into their bigger objectives and determine how leaders can best support the development of a lean culture. From driving top-down change to being present at meetings where lean efforts are discussed, a company’s top executives set the tone for how those efforts live out their mission.

Reason #6: Lean Solutions Are Not Customized to Your Unique Needs

Lean solutions frequently fail because they’re not customized to a company’s unique needs. There are a vast number of different lean tools–hundreds, in fact. However, not every solution is right for every company, challenge, or phase of lean initiative they are in.

Companies that try to follow a rote process without any customization usually find that cookie-cutter approaches are too general to really engage workers, solve problems, and provide the sustainable change needed. Instead, when you’re implementing a lean strategy it’s important to slow down, step back and ask, “Is this really right for us? How can we customize this process to our needs?”