Lean Tips Edition #294 (#3436 - #3450)

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.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

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

Lean Tip #3436 – Articulate and Communicate Goals Clearly

A great example of setting work goals is being able to communicate them to the team in an effective way. Often, ideas and professional goals may make perfect sense in the mind but when it’s time to share them with the team, it could be incoherent and incomplete.

The professional skills to articulate goals clearly requires leaders to have exceptional communication skills. Before sharing professional goals with the team, make sure it answers the following questions:

• What? (The actual goal)
• Why? (You want to achieve this professional goal because …)
• Which? (Resources and skills that I need …)
• Who? (Who will do the work? The team)
• When? (Timeline/deadline for the goal)
• How? (Steps/plan to achieve it) 

Answering these questions is a great way to ensure that the goals you have in mind are as ready as they can be in their draft version, before sharing them and improving them with your team.

Lean Tip #3437 – Make Goal-Setting a Team Exercise

The difference between a good leader and a great leader is that the former sets work goals for their team whereas the latter sets goals with their team. 

Team leaders that include team members in the process have a lot more to learn and a higher probability of succeeding. 

The reasoning is simple. Open conversations with your team create a constant feedback loop, refining the outcome every time. This can strengthen the communication channel between you and your team and make them feel included and understand how their work contributes towards the overarching goals. 

Lean Tip #3438 – Clearly Define Success.

Determine clear success criteria for your priority so you know what it looks like to achieve the goal. If your goal is a business one, ensure your expectations of success are aligned with everyone on the team. Everyone needs to agree on when we reach the goal to ensure that we are achieving success. We use a simple Red-Yellow-Green method to set clear success criteria:

1. Red = Failure or unacceptable performance on the priority
2. Yellow = Between Red and Green
3. Green = Successful completion of the goal
4. Super Green = Stretch goal

Lean Tip #3439 – Change Your environment to Meet Your Goals

In order to reach some goals that you have, change your habits. If you have organizational goals, then one of the first places you can start is by organizing your office and making sure that everything is ready to use.

Even some of your professional development goals can be tied to regular daily habits. For example, if you would like to increase employee engagement and team collaboration within your organization, you might have to start by simply thanking people for the work that they do.

Lean Tip #3440 – Redefine Your Goals When You Fall Short

Every single person on this earth has failed at some point in their life. What really matters is not when you fail, but what you do to affect change in your life. Ultimately, you have two choices: 1. You sulk when you don’t reach her goal, or 2. You pick yourself up and try again.

Lean Tip #3441 – Educate & Emphasize the Importance of Kaizen

Educate on the meaning of kaizen and emphasize a personal understanding of the philosophy of kaizen across all levels of the company. Building a company culture with a steady focus on improvement is critical to maintaining momentum in your kaizen efforts.

Lean Tip #3442 – Empower Your Employees in the Gemba

Employees who are closest to the problems in your operations are the best-equipped to solve them. They are your greatest assets in your kaizen efforts, so give them the support they need to implement improvements. Developing your team’s abilities through training and support should be as much a part of your continuous improvement program as making improvements to manufacturing processes.

Lean Tip #3443 – Document Your Process and Performance Before and After Improvements Have Been Implemented

In order to evaluate improvements objectively, existing procedures must be standardized and documented. Mapping the process’s initial state can help you identify wastes and areas for improvement and provide a benchmark for improvement.

Lean Tip #3444 – Standardize Work for Improvement to Last

In order for improvements to last, they must be standardized and repeatable. Standardizing work is crucial to kaizen because it creates a baseline for improvement. When you make improvements to a process, it’s essential to document the new standard work in order to sustain the improvements and create a new baseline. Standard work also reduces variability in processes and promotes discipline, which is essential for continuous improvement efforts to take root.

Lean Tip #3445 – Create Your Own Kaizen Guidelines

Reflecting on your kaizen efforts after improvements have been implemented is an important part of the continuous improvement cycle. As you reflect on your efforts, develop your own kaizen guidelines. Start by creating guidelines based on your own experiences improving the workplace. Keep in mind that these guidelines should be for your colleagues, your successors, and yourself to understand the problems you have overcome. These guidelines will ultimately help you as you approach your next challenge.

Lean Tip #3446 – Encourage Leadership to be Open-Minded

Continuous improvement works especially well when individuals are encouraged by senior leaders. Prepare your leadership team by offering special training to encourage new ideas and removing any blockers that may be in a team member's path as they are trying to improve a workflow.

Lean Tip #3447 – Don’t Make Perfection the Goal

One of the hardest parts of using the continuous improvement model is the desire to strive toward perfection. This is an impossible feat, and the philosophy behind kaizen is to make small changes to be better than you were the day before. Focusing on perfection can lead your team to make changes that aren’t actually necessary.

Lean Tip #3448 – Troubleshoot in Real Time

One of the most useful concepts in continuous improvement is the encouragement to confront problems head-on in an effort to solve it faster. If an issue becomes apparent fix it immediately instead of searching for the “perfect” solution.

Waiting will inevitably cost time and valuable resources. Instead, on-the-spot troubleshooting allows production to continue while the new, improvised solution can be analyzed using continuous improvement techniques. You might find that what was first a temporary fix could lead to permanent positive changes. 

Lean Tip #3449 – The Rule of 1% Improvement 

Improvement is a never-ending process. There’s always something that can be improved, and there are many ways of doing so.

The Rule Of One Percent Improvement: The rule states if you improve just one per cent each day then at least three hundred sixty five improvements will have been made by your business by the end of the year. It’s about Marginal Gains and it’s like compound interest but for business results.

This means even small changes done consistently over time lead up to big results! Transforming performance may seem like an impossible task but with kaizens, it becomes much more manageable as we take continuous steps towards our goals through our teams and our people.

Lean Tip #3450 – Challenge the Status Quo

Throw out all your old fixed ideas on how to do things. Replace “sacred cows,” personal opinions, and “it’s the way we’ve always done it” with performance facts and data. Numbers are the language of improvement. Avoid the emotional traps of blaming people or making excuses that prevent you from discovering the real problem. Once you have established the new best-way of doing something, stick with it until a better way is found.

Lean Quote: Retaining Talent

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Hiring and retaining talent in the tech industry is expensive and vital. Those people have real power over their bosses, especially because it is often fairly easy for them to find work elsewhere …"   —  Hank Green

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on retention and employment are undeniable, with the rate of job quitting in the U.S. labor market hitting never-seen-before numbers over the last year.

In 2022, more than 50 million people had quit their jobs. The year 2022 had more than 2x the average of quitting workers compared to 2009.

While COVID-19 did spur the Great Resignation of 2021 upon the U.S. and global labor markets and brought about a record number of workers quitting their jobs voluntarily, this phenomenon has been on the rise for quite some time.

The trend started over a decade ago. According to Harvard Business Review, the Great Resignation is not a pandemic-driven, short-term turbulence, but rather the continuation of the trend of rising quit rates.

The Harvard Business Review provides six suggestions for retaining talent:

1. Incentivize loyalty

Pay and overall compensation is important, but also consider ideas such as one-time bonuses, helping pay down student loans, and providing work-from-home stipends (or return to the workplace stipends)

2. Provide opportunities to grow

Ask each employee what it takes for them to stay and whether their job utilizes good use of their skills; 68% of workers around the world are willing to retrain and learn new skills

3. Elevate your purpose

Make your organization’s purpose clear (vision, mission and goals) and how they can be supported

4. Prioritize culture and connection

Connect and build relationships; social connections have a significant positive impact on productivity

5. Invest in taking care of your employees and their families

Provide health resources (physical and mental) as needed

6. Embrace flexibility

Provide a flexible work environment ex. Location, work hours, paid time off, career options, ask about worker needs, and assess if a four year degree is truly needed (or other job requirements)

Retaining employees is a challenge for any company. Employees are constantly looking for better opportunities and tend to leave a company if they don’t feel valued. So, to retain employees, companies need to focus on the employee’s needs and keep them engaged. This can be done by providing them with challenging work, growth opportunities, and a fulfilling work-life balance.

2023 Northeast Lean Conference Re-cap

Last week I attended the Northeast Lean Conference in Worcester, MA. The Northeast Lean Conference was created by GBMP to provide information and inspiration to Lean practitioners - from those just starting out to seasoned Lean leaders from the manufacturing, healthcare, service and other vital industry sectors.

The theme, It’s About Time, has a double meaning:

• First, the correct use of Lean methods – from 5S to SMED to Standardized Work – absolutely reclaims and repurposes wasted time for the betterment of customers, employees, and the company.  Provide employees with these methods and watch the creativity surge.
• Second, there has never been a better time than today when so many organizations regardless of industry share a common motivation:  How to satisfy increased customer demand in the face of scarce resources?  Doesn’t that sound like Lean?  It’s about time for management to make a visible commitment to continuous improvement.

Andrew Koenig, CEO of City Furniture, kicked off the conference with message about Lean implementation with heart. Andrew’s lean journey started in college with a trip to Toyota in Japan. He implemented Lean throughout all departments in a retail company by creating a culture of mutual trust and respect, teamwork, and a deep sense of urgency to continuously improve. As a result, they have seen many major breakthroughs in turnover reduction, operational process improvement, customer experience, safety, associate satisfaction, strategic planning, and finance. We need to focus on people and teamwork – not just problem solving. “You need to have strong mutual respect among all the associates, so they feel no fear in offering ideas and highlighting problems,” Andrew explained. “Every day, we are pulling problems out of our associates, and leaders, working together to solve them.” For strategic planning purposes, Andrew has a catchphrase: Bottom Up, Top Down, Closed Loop. “We are trying to get everyone in the entire company to participate in our strategic planning processes, give us their ideas, and share that with the senior team, who then share that with me. What I learned from Toyota is that you need to get everyone engaged in improving the business."

Melinda Mante, GBMP Lean Consultant, showcased a set of practical habits you can immediately implement to inspire action from her experience at Intel. There are 3 leadership actions:

• Set direction – challenge the status quo
• Show the way – go first, learn, and demonstrate
• Support – enable, encourage, and care

There is approximately 4000 weeks to live on average. Every day matters. At work its’ much less. Set aside time on calendar for these leadership elements.

Tom Sullivan, Senior Vice President of Operations at Ruger, ended the first day share their journey to develop a Lean New Product Development process.

Highlights included:

• Dedicated formal project management is very important – Obeya Room co-located teams
• Simultaneous product & process development (Single Thought Flow) “Tatakidai” = chopping block, rapid prototyping
• Virtual Obeya Room – COVID pushed this idea but still very effective for dispersed teams
• Leaders Genba with Lean NPD Team – Servant Leadership
• Focus on Lean Thinking – PDCA, 8 wastes for NPD, Mura, Muri
• Standard Work – the one best way to do something

Billy Taylor, Founder and CEO of LinkedXL, got day 2 going by sharing three key principles: Deliberate Clarity, Deliberate Ownership, and Deliberate Practice to achieve success in any organization. Billy says “Winning is not everything, how you win is everything.” Most people don’t know if they are winning and many leaders only know at end of month. If you make people visible, hhey will make you valuable.

From his book “The Winning Link” Billy outlines how we win:

• Deliberate Clarity - You can not manage a secret, Define Winning
• 10ft and 10sec rule – ask people close to board what the board means to them
• What is your leadership standard – What you tolerate, you cannot change
• Walk by and not say anything and then that is new standard
• Deliberate Ownership
• Strategy + Execution = Results
• In the absence of ownership comes blame
• Celebrate the red so you can harvest the green
• Deliberate Practice – Daily Management Process, Let’s people know if we are winning or losing.
• Enables problem solving, drives ownership
• Physical Safety is needed
• Take action
• Be hard on the process so you can lead easy on the people
• Trust
• Earning the Right to Change
• Create a safe environment for change
• Behaviors are visible, Mindsets are hidden
• Critical to measure what matters…Everything that matters cannot be measured?

Allan Robinson, Professor at UMass Isenberg School of Management, discussed strategies for managing change. It is said that 70-80% of change initiatives fail because:

• Poor execution of the chosen change methodology
• Current methods require time, effort, and patience
• They require extremely strong leadership

Most methods (from the 1940s) don’t incorporate modern understanding in continuous improvement, innovation, and lean. The limitations of traditional approaches to management of change:

Perhaps our management approach makes a difference: How can we make our organizations more adaptable to change. A big part of the answer emerges from feedback loops and dependencies discovered more recently by the lean, continuous improvement, and innovation communities. Front-line driven important is a powerful way to make your organization is more adaptable.

80% of organization’s improvement potential is from front-line ideas

Frontline driven improvement is very sensitive to poor leadership and misalignment, so it forces managers and leaders to significantly change their behavior, and address misalignments that are normally ignored. It cannot happen without also getting high levels of trust and respect between management and the front lines. It cultivates a culture of constant improvement and problem-solving.

Helen Zak, Director of Research at The Shingo Institute, closed out the conference with tips, words of wisdom, and learning from 38 years as a change agent. Helen’s Top 5:

• It’s All About Time – the most valuable resource on the planet
• Psychological Safety – free from fear of acknowledging problems and comfortable tackling problems
• Team Sport – transformation requires alignment and teamwork
• Dissatisfaction with status quo – good enough is not enough
• People Development – lean leader’s job is to develop people

There were many other great presentations, but this is a brief highlight. Mark your calendars for next year’s conference Leveraging Lean to Thrive in Uncertain Times in Providence, RI November 7-8, 2024.

Lean Tips Edition #207 (#3316 - #3330)

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.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

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

Lean Tip #3316 – Practice Positive Thinking 

Having a positive outlook on workplace changes can greatly influence your ability to accept and adapt to them. To take on a positive outlook, consider the purpose of changes within your workplace and how they can positively influence your job role and work environment. By looking for potential benefits to changes within the workplace, you make it easier to accommodate them. 

Lean Tip #3317 – Ask Questions Frequently 

As you incorporate changes into your daily work routine, you need to ask as many questions as possible to those in charge of overseeing new procedures or activities. Asking even the simplest of questions can help you gain a better understanding of how to complete new tasks and help you learn more about why these changes are necessary.

Lean Tip #3318 – Help Your Coworkers Adapt to Changes

Once you start to understand new practices or routines, it's important that you assist your coworkers with adapting to the changes. This demonstrates teamwork, encourages positive relationships and ensures you can go to them for help when you need it as well.

Lean Tip #3319 – Celebrate the Old

All too often, old policies, programs, strategies, and work are dismissed out of hand as a new direction unfolds. For employees who worked hard on those items, this can be a major slap in the face, erode morale, and lead to more concern. During a period of change, leaders should recognize that such work happened, was important, and had meaning. Underappreciated employees will have a harder time embracing new initiatives.

Lean Tip #3320 – Find Key Influencers

Every organization has key players who have earned the respect of their coworkers, have longevity (and therefore perspective), and are influential. Getting key players on board and letting them act as a sounding board can help senior leaders better understand how change is being perceived, refer recurring issues, and become advocates for the change. Walking these influence-leaders through the change process and getting them on board can help with communication and confidence during the change period.

Lean Tip #3321 – Listen Carefully

Employees are going to have a lot of questions, ideas, feelings, and emotions. It is important for managers, from front-line supervisors to c-suite leaders, to openly and actively listen to these concerns, validate them, and address them as clearly and frankly as possible. Even if you are unable to address their concerns, it is important to express that the employee concerns have been heard and will be addressed at a later date.

Lean Tip #3322 – Articulate Challenges

All changes come with risk of the unknown, uncertainty, and other potential challenges. It is important that companies are upfront about the challenges that may be faced. Even if those challenges have not been fully identified and planned for, it is a good move to try and discuss the potential challenges, the range of those challenges, and what the company is doing or will do to address them.

Lean Tip #3323 – Defining the Change

Change is often not fully articulated at the beginning of a change management process. Due to the iterative nature of change, it may be necessary to not just define the change at the outset, but redefine the change at various steps along the way. Updates should be provided frequently to mitigate rumors, answer questions, and provide reassurance. The faster change is happening, or if it begins to accelerate, the more frequent updates should be.

Lean Tip #3324 – Make change Compelling and Exciting

Employees can better understand the rationale behind a change when organizations prioritize purposeful, clear and consistent communication. This targeted communication strategy provides the context to understand the why, what and so what of the change. Effective communication answers the most important question people are thinking: What does this mean to me; how will it impact my work? With a deeper, clearer understanding of the change, employees are much more likely to ask, “How can I help?”

The shift from rote compliance to true engagement and belief is powerful. Strong employee support deters change resistance that could hold the organization back.

Lean Tip #3325 – Don’t Ignore Resistance

Change resistance is poisonous to an organization’s transformation. Resistance is much easier to counter when it’s identified early. Leaders should pay attention to the signs of change resistance, including inaction, procrastination, withholding information and the spread of rumors. Communication is the key to identifying resistance. Create feedback loops with employees, like surveys, feedback channels and input sessions to proactively identify signs of resistance, then take fast action.

Lean Tip #3326 – Daily Management Board Belongs to The Team

As a manager, you may have a burning desire to create our own vision of an information center or visual management board in the middle of your factory or workplace. It is important to resist the temptation. However, the goal of visual management boards is for front line teams to understand operational performance and engage in improvement.

Therefore your role as a manager is to coach your teams to understand their performance and measure it themselves. This starts with a conversation about “what does a good day look like”? Ask the team how they measure performance. They may have simple indicators such as numbers of jobs completed or boxes packed, which make sense to them. 

A simple throughput measure like this is usually the start. You may only initially track one metric and then expand this to include metrics in safety and quality. Keep the number of metrics low – ideally three or four, but no more than six or eight.

The board also should not only be a collection of graphs but instead should show problem-solving activities aimed at improving the performance and list current issues that the team is working on. It is a communication board for the team, not just a place to record data on performance.

Lean Tip #3327 – Choose Effectiveness Over Good Looks

One of the greatest frustrations with implementing visual management boards is managers’ preoccupation with aesthetics – how the board looks. I strongly advocate for handwritten graphs and problem-solving strips because this shows that it is the team itself that is updating the data. Using the “green pen = on target, red pen = off-target” approach really communicates strongly to the team how they are going. The team leader has to pick up the red pen to record off-target performance. 

This is a very conscious act and makes the Team Leader and the team very aware of the problem performance area. It then inevitably prompts a problem-solving discussion about how to turn the red line into a green one. 

Lean Tip #3328 – Make Engagement a Priority Instead of Standardization

Another obsession of some managers is “standardizing” the appearance of the boards. Again the drive behind this is aesthetics rather than employee engagement. The boards are located in different work areas and managed by teams who perform different functions and therefore the boards should look different. They should reflect on the particular priorities and issues of each team. You can have some common themes such as requiring each team to record metrics for safety, quality, performance, and morale.

Lean Tip #3329 – Boards are for Conversation Not Wallpaper

If you think just putting information on a Visual Management Board on the wall will get people to engage, then you will be disappointed. I’ve seen many big immaculate visual displays sprawling across entrance halls and walkways with literally dozens of metrics displayed. Here is the bad news: no one looks at them. In many cases, the job of printing the graphs and posting them is delegated to an administrative staff member and not even the business leaders notice or read the graphs.

I call this type of visual management board “wallpaper” because that is the only function they serve. The boards need to be the focus of structured daily conversations about how the team is going, what are the barriers to improvement and how these barriers can be overcome. Therefore visual management boards go hand in hand with daily meetings.

Lean Tip #3330 – Focus on the Critical Few

Be sure to narrow your focus. Too many measures create clutter and detract from what is most important. Hopefully, your organization has developed True North metrics and your team has specific measures to impact these targets. Items you put into your visual management should be the things you are actively working on and talking about. If this isn’t the case, then you don’t have visual management, you just have wallpaper.

Lean Quote: March is a Month of Expectations

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"March is a month of expectation."   —  Emily Dickinson

March gets a lot of hype. More sunlight. More green. A more perfect breeze begins to blow. The ground begins to warm. Perhaps we smile more because we have gotten some rest in the winter. Flower faces turn toward the sun. Last year’s cold snap is forgotten. We don’t mind those coming disappointments, of tempting warmth and sun, because that is part of March’s thing. Gently inching us toward summer. Dusting off winter. Moving us toward imagination. Toward creating. From seed to bloom.

Low expectations are all around us and successful leaders know it. One of your challenges as a leader will be in raising the expectations of those around you. People tend to be creatures of habit and can be quite comfortable with the status quo. Challenging for any leader is the ability to cast vision high enough and realistic enough that people can catch on without being overwhelmed. You can raise expectations for a better future by making the case, showing the way, and explaining the advantages. Sometimes people around you settle for what they have because no one has shown them a better way. Your leadership should inspire others to reach for new heights, look beyond their present circumstances, and believe that they can achieve on a higher level. You can raise their expectations as you raise your expectations. Don’t just settle – go higher!

Maybe we can let March be March? Filled with hope and expectation as the birthplace of new life and possibility. Like a new year. I like that idea.

Top 10 Lean Tips From 2022

As 2022 comes to an end and we look toward 2023 I wanted to revisit some tips. The Lean Tips published daily are meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledgeable tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey. Here are the top 10 Lean tips from this past year:

Lean Tip #2970 – Show Employees That You Care

When you listen to their issues and solve it, they believe that you care for them as an employer. When they know you care, then they work harder and aim higher than expected results.

 Employees love to work under leaders who care for them, they do not want to be looked as tools or resources utilized for the success of the organization. Employees always want to have a good relationship where employers listen to their concerns at times of professional hardships.

Lean Tip #2992 – Set the Right Targets to Challenge Your Team

Your team members may not be as unmotivated as you think; they probably don't have the right targets to challenge them.

When tasks are too easy, employees become complacent because they know they'll be fine with the barest minimum. Don't give them impossible tasks just because you want to challenge them. You'll end up killing their morale.

Aim for a balance. The idea is to make them stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones to get the job done. The outcome might surprise you

Lean Tip #3015 – Train the Managers to Coach Effectively

Coaching is one of the greatest methods to build an employee’s confidence level as well as competence. Managers need to know how to apply the right blend of “clarity coaching” and “skills coaching” to their employees, two of the critical elements that organizations need to provide to their managers while training them. Having the ability to coach others is one of the core skills in the 21st century, required by every manager to be regarded as a successful leader. Long gone are those days where the managers used to command and control leadership in order to get their work done. Today, the most effective way for the managers to lead is through coaching and collaboration. If the managers are not skilled enough to coach their employees, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to achieve positive results for the organization or even themselves in the long term.

Lean Tip #3085 – Keep on Keepin’ On

The part of continual process improvement that can feel overwhelming is the continuous aspect. With continuous improvement there is no perfection, and there is no end, but one of the first rules of project management is that every good project should have a start and end date. Where process improvement differs is that there is likely to always be more we can do, and things we can change. Don’t get defeated by this, but see it as a chance to break up the monotony, and keep innovating.

One thing that makes this easier is that there will always be new technology, solutions, software, or cultural changes that enable us to rethink how we do things. This can keep things exciting. The biggest difference with process improvement from your typical project is that there will always be something new for us to consider. If we ignore this, we run the risk of stagnating or falling behind.

Lean Tip #3086 - Start Small.  If Everything is a Priority, Nothing is a Priority

As you delve into a problem, there are many paths for improvement that will open up to explore.  It’s very easy to get distracted from what you set out to accomplish when you start to see all of the potential opportunities for intervention and improvement. It’s imperative to keep your goal front and center and continue to ground yourself in what you are trying to accomplish.

To achieve sustainable, meaningful improvements, rigor (being thorough and accurate) to the process must be maintained. What seems at the surface level to be an “easy fix” requires a thoughtful establishment of the new way of doing things for improvement to truly take hold.

Lean Tip #3098 – Create a Learning Culture

Incorporate learning and growth into your core values and make sure they shine through in your people strategies and business decisions. Talk about career growth throughout the employee lifecycle, beginning with recruitment and onboarding, and continuing during one-on-ones and performance reviews.

Encourage your team members to engage in learning activities during the work day and to share their learnings with their colleagues. Demonstrate the value you place on learning and growth by rewarding your developing team members with recognition, promotions, and raises.

A learning culture enables your employees to grow in their current roles and achieve upward mobility within your organization.

Lean Tip #3119 – Provide Opportunities for Contributing Employees

Opportunities can take many forms. But, all of them are outside of the normal day-to-day requirements of their job plan.

Employees appreciate chances for training and cross-training. They want to participate in a special committee where their talents are noticed. They’d like to lead a team that is pursuing an important objective.

They are happy to attend professional association meetings and proud to represent your organization at civic and philanthropic events. They’d appreciate the green light relative to implementing an idea they have for increasing morale in your workplace.

They are eager to stop doing portions of their job that have become rote in favor of new goals and assignments that stretch their skills and build on their abilities.

Lean Tip #3136 – Organize Your Materials and Parts for Efficient Retrieval

The amount of money (and time) that is wasted through a lack of organization can be staggering.

This particularly true if materials or components are stored at various points in the manufacturing process – with time spent retrieving these items making up a significant portion of your costs.

Making sure your storage and warehouse facility is well organized will improve this “picking” process, which can be further improved through the use of suitable parts or picking bins.

The increased speed at which the parts or components arrive at your manufacturing line will lead to increased productivity, as well as helping to avoid delays and production even stopping whilst waiting for items. This is also true for reducing picking errors, which organization can again help with.

And better organization can also highlight shortages of any stock more quickly, again preventing downtime.

Lean Tip #3151 – Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Having a lean and healthy culture requires many components. One of those is instilling an environment of continuous improvement.

Gradual, consistent change that sustains continuous improvement is critical. It doesn’t mean you have to train staff in strict fundamentals. It does mean you need the idea of continuous improvement to be part of everything you do.

Seek out ideas about how to improve production processes. Making everyone part of the change shows that you appreciate their opinions. It can also increase employee engagement and foster a more inclusive environment.

Lean Tip #3168 – Be Grateful for the Person, Not Just Their Output

Cultivating a positive and engaging environment begins with expressing gratitude beyond what people do at your company.

In short, workers should be appreciated for more than accomplishing their day-to-day responsibilities. Instead, focus on expressing gratitude for their unique insights, skills, contributions, and also for their personality.

Expressing gratitude for someone’s “soft” skills like their contagious positive attitude and sense of humor, or keen ability to think critically, is a great way to ensure gratitude is sincere and genuine.

These 10 Lean tips can help you with your journey in 2023. What advice would you share for the New Year?