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Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Lean Tips Edition #89 (1336 - 1350)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.


Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #1336 - Support New Ideas Amongst Your Team
Each team member will feel empowered by the opportunity to not only implement day to day tasks, but as well as suggest new ideas and make them a reality. Give people a chance to take initiative and you will be amazed by their ability to create brilliant ideas.

Lean Tip #1337 - Give Challenging Tasks
People can't grow if they are constantly doing what they have always done. Let them develop new skills by giving challenging tasks. At the same time make sure the tasks are reachable and in the frames of the person's interests.

Lean Tip #1338 - Give Employees Opportunities to Grow
If people know that everything is going to be the same way all the time, they will definitely lose the motivation to put their maximum efforts in work. They should be sure that the devotion and hard work will lead to new personal and professional achievements.

Lean Tip #1339 - Give Employees as Much Support as You Can
Even if people in your organization are self-disciplined and creative enough for finding solutions to various problems, anyway they are always in need of your guidance. Support them as much as you can, and they will be inspired to do the same for you and for the organization.

Lean Tip #1340 - Celebrate Each Success
Even the smallest achievements are worth being celebrated. The road to success consists of thousand small steps. Glorify each and every goal achieved. Show to your team that all of you made one more important step forward.

Lean Tip #1341 - Set Descriptive Business Goals
What the mind can’t visualize, the mind can’t achieve. Thoughts are things and the more time you spend describing and visualizing your goals, the better your chances will be to actually reaching them.

How does this work?

Grab a piece of paper and visualize your goals. This might sound silly to some people, but there is real power in visualization. Take the time to thoroughly visualize and describe your goals in as great detail as you can. Use an entire sheet of paper to define just what your life will be like when you achieve that goal.

Lean Tip #1342 - Set Achievable Business Goals
This doesn’t mean you can’t set lofty business goals, especially in the long term. This means you should set goals that you truly believe you can achieve. Regardless of what that goal is, ensure that you at least have a chance in achieving it.

This doesn’t mean you have to know just how you’re going to get there every step of the way. The founder of any successful startup can tell you that they never could have imagined all the steps that would have been necessary to get to where they are today.

Setting achievable business goals simply means that you believe in yourself wholeheartedly enough to see that goal through. It means that you’ll do whatever it takes to get there.

Lean Tip #1343 - Set Time-Focused Business Goals
Always set time-focused business goals. You can’t simply set a goal with no time element involved, or even an obscure one. No matter what your business goal might be, you have to set a clear date on when you’ll achieve it. This will help to add some perspective as you reach towards your goals.

Lean Tip #1344 - Create Goal Milestones
Milestones are a great way to help create some stepping stones as you work your way towards achieving your business goals.

But what are milestones exactly?

Well, think about it this way. Let’s say you’ve set the business goal to become the top salesman in your company within 18 months. In order to do that, you’ll need to hit some milestones first.

So, what are some milestones you could create along the way?

For example, you could create a quarterly goal to contact a certain number of people or reach a certain dollar amount in sales. You could also set these as monthly goals, weekly goals, or even daily goals, that we could otherwise call milestones.

What’s important is to create milestones that will help you move in the right direction and ultimately see you achieving your business goals in the long term.

Lean Tip #1345 - Make a Plan and Act on It
In order to achieve any business goal, we need a plan and we need to act on that plan. The plan is our roadmap towards our goals. How are you going to reach your business goals?

This isn’t something abstract or arbitrary exercise that’s done in the mind and tucked away in your mental filing cabinet. This is something that requires true mental fortitude, and that’s written out and planned in a meticulous fashion.

Whatever your business goals might be, the only way to achieve the ones that we set for ourselves, it to have some sort of plan that we act upon.

Of course, daily massive action is required once we do have our plan. Plan and act. Recycle and repeat. That’s the way to achieve your business goals.

Lean Tip #1346 - Track and Analyze your Goals
Reaching our business goals is next to impossible when we don’t have a system to track and analyze. Find a way to track your results on a daily basis, and create a spreadsheet.

By tracking and analyzing, you can also help to ensure that your plan is working in your favor. What are you doing on a daily basis that’s helping you to move closer to your goals? Are you moving further away?

Setup some metric and system for tracking and analyzing your progress towards your goals. You simply can’t achieve your goals without tracking and analyzing your efforts.

Lean Tip #1347 - Adjust Your Plan When Needed
Although we might set a plan to achieve our business goals at the outset, and act on that plan, when we track and analyze our progress, and we see that we’re not getting the results we’re after, we have to adjust our plans.

Think about it this way. A plane is traveling from LAX to JFK. That plane has a plan to reach its goals. In general, it knows the overall speed, direction, and cruising altitude it wants to travel at.

However, along the way, things might arise. For example, the plane might experience turbulence at 33,000 feet, forcing it to climb higher or sink lower. The plane might also need to avoid a storm system, causing it to change directions to make its way around it.

Of course, the plane has to adjust its plan to arrive at JFK, but it doesn’t change its goal of arriving there. Similarly, you should adjust your plan when needed.

Lean Tip #1348 - Focus on Key Habits
The instillation of key habits are a great way for us to achieve our business goals.
Key habits help in the formation of other good habits. When we focus on good habits, other good habits simply fall into place.

For example, working out for 30 minutes per day is considered a key habit. When someone works out for 30 minutes every day, they’re more inclined to eat right, drink plenty of water, and take their vitamins. Why? Because working out is a key habit.

Similarly, in business, there are plenty of key habits. Find the right habits and focus on those, and watch as other good habits that will help you reach your business goals, fall into place.

Lean Tip #1349 - Leverage the 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule, or the Pareto principle, says that 80% of the results comes from 20% of the efforts. Anything that we measure, we’ll find that 80% of our results are coming from 20% of the work that’s put in.

Find the 20% of your efforts that are producing the 80% of your results, and amplify them. To do this, you have ensure that you track and analyze all of the time that you spend on your work-related efforts throughout the day.

Learn to harness this principle, and watch as all the business goals that you set for yourself ultimately materialize as you slowly but surely achieve career success.

Lean Tip #1350 - Create Profound Reasons for Goals
Do you have deep and profound reasons for wanting to achieve the business goals that you set for yourself? I’m not talking about superficial reasons. I’m talking about meaningful reasons.

What’s going to actually help you here is developing profound and meaningful reasons.

Time, security, freedom, contribution, and family are some of the deeper and more profound reasons we could set to help achieve our business goals.


Put some real thought and effort into why you’ve set the business goals for yourself that you’ve set. If you want to actually achieve them, make sure you associate a strong-enough reason to doing so.



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