Lean Quote: The Winner

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.

"If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win, but you think you can't,
It is almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost,
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will.
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But soon or late the man who wins,
Is the man who thinks he can."

~ C. W. Longenecker

The way you think can affect the outcome - either positive or negative. If you haven’t produced the results you wanted, chances are good that you’ve been thinking limited thoughts.  If you’ve been expecting to lose more than to win, don’t worry. Because today is a new day and you can control and change what you put into your mind.

While it may be hard for you to believe you can actually change your thinking habits this easily, you really can.  It probably won't happen overnight, but if you start reconditioning your mind and expecting to achieve or win at whatever you do, your chance of succeeding will be greatly increased.

Try it. You’ll be surprised at the results.

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Learning from Geese

Living in New England you become accustom to seeing the migration of Geese.  As the leaves start turning colors the Geese head south for the winter.  I came across the "Lesson from Geese" from a colleague this week.

The story was written in 1972 by Dr. Robert McNeish, a science teacher from Baltimore, Maryland  for a sermon in his church. Demonstrating the power of a good idea, his essay spread and has become a classic statement of the importance of teamwork.

We all know how important leadership and teamwork are in today’s organizations.  We can use the five principles presented in the “Lessons from Geese” story as inspiration to practice good leadership and teamwork skills as we implement Lean.

Fact 1: The Importance of Achieving Goals
As each goose flaps its wings it creates an “uplift” for the birds that follow. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.

Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

Fact 2: The Importance of Team Work
When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it

Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others.

Fact 3: The Importance of Sharing 
When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.

Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities and unique arrangements of gifts, talents or resources.

Fact 4: The Importance of Empathy and Understanding
The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

Lesson: We need to make sure honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek.

Fact 5: The Importance of Encouragement
When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.

"Lessons from Geese" provides a perfect example of the importance of team work and how it can have a profound and powerful effect on any endeavour. When we use these five principles in our personal and business life it will help us to foster and encourage a level of passion and energy in ourselves, as well as those who are our friends, associates, or team members.

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The Lean Way to Tie Your Shoes

Visual instructions on how to tie a "Ian knot" show six simple steps.

This is the world's fastest shoelace knot because there are fewer sequential steps and it all happens in a single, fluid movement.  It has been said that the reduction in time could add up to 4 days per lifetime.  Tying your shoes might be necessary but it is hardly value added.  Don't be complacent and take common practices for granted they can be time wasters. 

Even this simple example provides some Lean lessons - everything can be improved, small things can add up, and single piece flow is the ideal process.

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A Colorful Way of Solving Problems

Problem solving is a systematic thinking process to bring about change.  In ordinary thinking, the thinker leaps from critical thinking to neutrality to optimism and so on without structure or strategy.

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint, and this is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at problems from emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoints. This can mean that they underestimate the problem, don't consider all consequences, and fail to understand the feasibility of the solution.

A colleague and friend (thanks Ken) recently introduced me to Six Thinking Hats.  This is a thinking tool for group discussion and individual thinking created by Edward de Bono. The premise of the method is that the human brain thinks in a number of distinct ways which can be identified, deliberately accessed and hence planned for use in a structured way allowing one to develop strategies for thinking about particular issues.

Each "Thinking Hat" is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

White Hat:
Objective, neutral thinking in terms of facts, numbers and information.  With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it.

Red Hat:

Emotional, with judgements, suspicions and intuitions.  'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally.

Black Hat:
Negative, sees risks and thinks about why something will not function. Using this hat, look cautiously and defensively at all the bad points of the decision. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work.  Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans tougher and more resilient.

Yellow Hat:
Positive, optimistic, clear, effective and constructive. This hat helps you to think positively and to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it.  Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

Green Hat:
Creative, seeks alternatives. The green hat is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.  A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.

Blue Hat:
Or Meta hat, thinking about thinking.  The blue thinker's role is to keep an overview of what thinking is necessary to scout the subject.  The Blue Hat stands for process control.

The Six Thinking Hats tool  can be a powerful technique used to look at problems from different points of view. All of these thinking hats help for thinking deeper.  This helps us move away from habitual thinking styles and towards a more rounded view of a situation.

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Lean Quote: Character Matters!

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.

This post was inspired by Christian Paulsen's post on Character and Leadership.

"Character is the firm foundation stone upon which one must build to win respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a weak foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built on a weak character." — R. C. Samsel

Achieving short-term results doesn't require great leadership.  Those kinds of results are easy to get.  Some may threaten employees, pay more, entice with contests, or manipulate the politics.  But for employees to follow long term, the number one requirement is that a leader by trustworthy.  It's even more important than having a great vision, being a great communicator, or being innovative, wise, courageous, inspiring, intelligent, or any other trait.  The first question every employee asks is, "Do I trust my boss and the other members of management?"  If the answer is "no", then they start looking for someone else to follow - someone they can trust.  This trust issue is a big deal.  It's a by-product of leadership integrity.

Without integrity, a leader can never develop trust.  Without trust, a leader will never develop people. Without developing people, a leader will never maintain a following.  And without followers, there is no one to lead. It all begins with integrity.

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Get More Done by Doing Less

Most of us get paralysed when faced with a large and complicated undertaking.  Jason Yip gives some tips on how to get it done from Ignite Sydney this past August.  Jason is a Principal Consultant with ThoughtWorks focused on Agile and Lean Software Development.

Stop Starting and Start Finishing



Some keypoints from the video:
1. The more projects you work on the less time you have for any one project. (A recent study showed that office employees who were interrupted while they worked took an average of 25 minutes to get back to what they started.)
2. Can make more mistakse mulititasking.
3. We can't see things piling up so the first step is to visualize the work load.
4. Next step is to limit the number of things we are going to do simultaneously.
5. Get stuff done quicker by doing less at one time.
6. Shoving more stuff into the process doesn't help anyone.
7. Limiting workload creates an environment of teamwork.
8. Measure cycle time of certain types of work so you can give a lead time.
9. Use root cause analysis to fix problems so they don't reoccur.
10. Doing more stuff is not important, finishing them is.

On Jason's blog he shared a version of the presentation from Sydney which he subtitled An Introduction to Kanban.

(Agile Sydney version) Stop Starting and Start Finishing: An Introduction to Kanban

View more presentations from Jason Yip.

Jason expands on his previous steps adding several new points.  For performance measures he suggests several that are not just time based:

1. Productivity - cycle time, ROI
2. Quality - defects, customer satisfaction
3. Cost - burn rate, cost per item, total project cost
4. Morale - engagement, employee satisfaction. 

As you work to improve your efficiency and that of your organization I think Jason provides a number of great concepts to consider in your process.  Multitasking in this sense is really the essence of Muri.  Muri is a Japanese term for overburden, unreasonableness or absurdity.  Stop the maddness.  Start focusing.  Accomplish more.

The Lean Logistics Blog

My friend Kelley Dodd recently shared a new lean resource, The Lean Logistics Blog.  This blog is place to discuss lean logistics and lean supply chain best practices, industry thought leadership, and continuous improvement.  It is written by LeanCor in-house and on-site lean logistics managers, engineers and consultants, this blog contains lean tools, tips, and tricks from lean practitioners doing the work every day. Robert Martichenko, the author Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream, created LeanCor to drive the next step in the evolution of lean by addressing the unmet logistics needs of lean manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.

The first several posts focus on some central Lean elements in supply chain:

They define waste by eight logistical wastes that need to be eliminated.  When you focus on total logistics cost, you are essentially making the supply chain work in your favor. 

Alignment between the floor and senior management is critical to support continuous improvement.  The key to balancing the effort of front line employees with the knowledge and vision of management is a solid Hoshin Kanri Strategy planning process.

Going to the Gemba makes the problem simpler to tackle.

The use of a tool like a swim lane diagram is effective to target and eliminate the waste in your supply chain.

This blog is off to a great start and I look forward to their continued contributions to Lean and logistics.  While checking out this site don't miss the Lean and Six Sigma Resource Room for more learning opportunities.

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