4 Steps to Ensure Your Resolution Success

This is the time of year when people are trying to turn over a new leaf. The beginning of the year marks a point where people make New Year’s Resolutions. Unfortunately, many fail to keep those resolutions. In fact, 81 percent of resolution's fail within two years. The top New Year's resolutions rarely change year to year. The most popular typically revolve around losing weight, managing stress, getting out of debt, quitting smoking, and learning a new skill.

Setting the right type of New Year’s resolutions is a great way to plan the New Year. But setting resolutions is only the first part. If you are serious about keeping your resolutions there is something you can do about it.

The solution is to have a process that you follow when you need to make a change or solve a problem; A process that will ensure you plan, test and incorporate feedback before you commit to implementation.

A popular tool for doing just this is the Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle. This is often referred to as the Deming Cycle or the Deming Wheel after its proponent, W Edwards Deming. A closed loop system, it emphasizes four repetitive steps:

First, start with an idea and create a PLAN to make it happen.
Then, DO adhere to the plan, and take corrective action when necessary.
Next, analyze and CHECK progress toward your goal and identify the root causes of obstacles.
Finally, take appropriate ACTion. If the outcome matches expectations, then standardize the process to maintain the gains. If the results were disappointing, then modify the process to eliminate the root cause of remaining problems. In either case, repeat the process starting again with PLAN.

While these steps appear in a linear sequence, when implemented the phases are best thought of as concurrent processes that can continually be improved. This is the key to seeing your resolution through to the end.

Keeping your resolution isn't easy but, following the PDCA cycle will yield better results and sustained improvements. Taking the time to plan, check, and act will pay dividends.



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Lean Quote: Expectations are Leftover Praise

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.

"Expectations are just leftover praise. They are a blessing. If you didn't have the capability to meet them, they wouldn't exist." — ~ Chris Shiflett

When a lot is expected of you, it's very easy to let the pressure of meeting those expectations get to you. In fact, it can be paralyzing, and that's not good. We often look at our expectations as something we desperately need to meet—as a possibility for failure—but Chris Shiflett offers another way to look at them.

What is good is that if you succeed and you meet those expectations, the cumulative impact is exponential. That's because expectations are just leftover praise. You've earned them by doing something great.

When someone expects you to do something, it's because they hold you to a certain standard. If that standard is high, it's because they believe you're capable, or should be capable, of meeting it. If you see your expectations as unreasonable, perhaps the problem isn't that they actually are but that you need to believe in yourself as much as other people do.

Employers who recognize and praise their employees raise morale; they also motivate their workers to increase productivity. Praise is a method of keeping focus on the positive of any situation. The reason behind giving praise is to build up self-esteem, to give a belief of personal satisfaction, with the addition of feeling secure within one’s self. There is a sense of confidence that one has when one knows that someone has paid attention and has encourage them with a positive response, due to their efforts. So in praising your employees it will only encourage them to do well at whatever task they are faced with doing.

So, the next time you feel overwhelmed by expectations, just remember that if you weren't capable of meeting them, they wouldn't exist.


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Lean Quote: Forget About Resolutions Concentrate on Goal Setting

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.

"Many people look forward to the New Year for a new start on old habits." — Anonymous

With the hustle of the holidays over we turn to the New Year, where many individuals are honing in on their New Year’s resolution. For many, it may be an opportunity to assess their struggles of the previous year or to wallow in their triumphs. One thing for is sure, many people want to make positive changes in their lives.

Change is hard because patterns of behavior are embedded in the psyche. For many, bad habits provide a purpose. The behavior may provide an emotional benefit to the individual (albeit not in an ideal way) that they’re not even aware of.

Change can only be successful if it’s truly desired. Initially, it is common for the individual to feel stuck. Change may begin by making small behavioral changes. By planning and developing a firm, detailed plan of action the likeliness of success will increase. Behavior is modified the most when the individual is truly ready to take action.

Personally I recommend forgetting the whole concept of resolutions and concentrating on setting goals instead. Resolutions and goal setting may seem similar, but resolutions typically take a let's start something and see what happens approach, while goal setting is about planning a specific path to success.

Lasting changes require continued commitment. It can be motivating to add up and consolidate all the gains that have been made so far and to acknowledge how far you have come. Change isn’t easy but positive changes are always worth the effort.



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Top 10 Posts of 2011 on A Lean Journey

As 2011 goes into the history books I want to take a moment to reflect on this past year. Nearly 79,000 people have visted the site this year.  I posted 230 articles on the site in 2011.  It has truly been a very positive and full year. 

Here is a collection of the Top 10 posts for 2011 by views:

10. Lean at Home: My Visual Schedule - posted May 16, was where I shared my family's visual scheduling board at home.

9. Lean Simulation: Your Source for Lean Games and Training Tools - posted June 1, was a post I did sharing a new blog from Martin Boersema which covers lean training, video, and games found online.

8. A Tribute to Eli Goldratt - posted June 13, was tribute to Eli Goldratt, a true pioneer in process and business improvement, after his death.

7. The Stages of High Performance Teams - posted April 11, explains the four stages that high performance teams must follow.

6. 12 Ways to Start Building a Continuous Improvement Culture - post March 15, was from a webinar Jeff Hajek and I did on how to start building a culture of continuous improvement in your company.

5. Book Review: Death By Meeting - posted February 23, was a book review I did on the subject of making meetings more engaging and less boring by Patrick Lencioni.

4. The 6 Pillars of 6S - Free Posters - posted July 6, was a collection of posters that have been used to explain 6S to make implementation easy for everyone.

3. Visual Management Board - posted January 11, was really a guest post by my friend Allison Myers describing her visual management board for marketing activities at Lantech.

2. Personal Kanban Kaizen - It's all Digital - posted March 14, shows a digital version of personal kanban system I use for productivity.

1. Ten Ways to Show Respect for People - posted January 17, lists ten ways to show respect for people in your organization like encouraging them.


Do you have any favorites not on this list that you would like to share?  Leave a comment.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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My Gift to You

http://free-christian-wallpapers.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas-greeting-cards.html

Merry Christmas to all A Lean Journey Fans! Lean is a gift to us individually and to organizations empowering and inspiring improvement all around us. This holiday season I want to take the opportunity to thank all those who share the passion for continuous improvement and share in the learning on this blog. As a way of saying "Thank You" I want to share a gift you, a free copy of Henry Ford's "My Life and Work".


Henry Ford (1863-1947), founder of the Ford Motor Company, lays out the secret of his success in My Life and Work. Pretty much everything in the Toyota Production System can be found in Henry Ford's 1923 book "My Life and Work".

You can download your copy now here.


For those kindle users you can get a copy here

Lean Quote: Give the Gift of Inspiration

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.

"A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves." — Anonymous

The ability to inspire people to reach great heights of performance and success is a skill that leaders need. Passion, purpose, listening and meaning help make a leader inspirational.

So, why must inspiring yourself and others be so high on your agenda as a leader? First, because if you are inspired, you will automatically be more inspiring to others. Second, because an inspired team is an energized team, and an energized team is a more productive team.

If you have managed to capture hearts and minds, excite and engage people, they will in turn feel more motivated and energized to take action. In our fast-moving world where productivity is king and time is endlessly squeezed, focusing on increasing energy levels (your own and your team’s) is a lot smarter than trying to expand time.

To inspire, you must both create resonance and move people with a compelling vision. You must embody what you ask of others, and be able to articulate a shared vision in a way that inspires others to act. You must offer a sense of common purpose beyond the day-to-day tasks, making work exciting.

So this holiday gift giving season give the gift that lasts a lifetime. Give the gift of inspiration. Inspire them to be confident. Inspire them to greatness.



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That's Kaizen - FastCap Style

Many think Kaizen is about some sort of 5 day event where you shut down and make improvement.  Maybe this idea is fed by consultants in some manner but Kaizen in fact is not this.  It is about small incremental change. The type of change that makes it easier to do your job.  Change in which the people doing the task are intimately involved in.

In a new video from the team at FastCap they demonstrate what real Kaizen is all about.



There are so many great lessons in this video including:

• Make improvement in the Gemba (actual place).
• Importance of collecting data (stop watch) along the way.
• Some improvements don't work the way you expect but you still learn from them.
• If your improvement is not successful keep trying.
• Try other peoples ideas even if you think they might not work.
• People on the outside often see things you can't see.
• Importance of a knowledge coach (Paul Akers) to guide and encourage the team to keep improving. Notice he never solves the problem for the team but challenges them to think about what is happening.
• Making improvement is invigorating and rewarding.
• Seconds matter.

This is one of the best explanations of Kaizen I have come across.  I hope you enjoy it and share it with others.


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