Lean Quote: Start the New Year Off Right

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.

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." — Bill Vaughn

The New Year is upon us and it’s the perfect time to make a change. Good intentions tend to fade out after a month or two, so let’s approach the New Year properly, with a manageable plan that’s focused, realistic and achievable. To start off the New Year on the right foot let’s review three ways to do it properly. 

1) Do a Yearly Review
Take stock of where you’ve been and appreciate all of the accomplishments you’ve made in the last year.  In a typical yearly review, you should answer these types of questions:

• What went well for me last year?
• What accomplishments did I have?
• How did I improve my life?
• How did I improve my relationships?
• What did I remove from my life that is now making me happier?
• What do I wish I had taken more time for?

Ask these types of questions about all the important areas of your life, such as family, relationships, financial, career, home, etc. These  questions will help you appreciate all you’ve accomplished in the previous year, and you can use this information to start the new year off right, and set better goals for the next year.

2) Finish What You Started
Which projects, errands, and general list of to-do items do you have left over from the previous year that you can complete in 2 hours or less? Do them now to clear your mind of the old items.

Keeping projects around like pets doesn’t do us any good—they just weigh on our minds, and people will spend hours thinking about something that will only take 10 minutes to take care of. Cross those things off your list and give yourself a fresh start.

3) Focus on What You Really Want
Dreaming is fabulous and highly recommended, but if you want to accomplish some improvements in your life, you need to be realistic. As much as you may want something, it’s very likely you don’t really believe you can have it. (If you did you would already have achieved it.) We have to turn a dream into something we can picture accomplishing before it can become a reality.

Take your dream and start breaking it down into milestones. Break those steps down further so you can create a game-plan and start working towards accomplishing that dream.

A new year inspires renewed energy and excitement for what could happen. It’s a fresh start and the perfect time to reflect on the past and plan for the future–to set goals and figure out how to meet them.

Lean Tips Edition #118 (1771 -1785)

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 #1771 - Encourage Gratitude Sharing Within Your Team

Kick off your monthly meeting by going around and sharing something at work that each member feels thankful for. Or do what Plasticity Labs did, and ask your employees to devote time to writing down the things about their job that make them thankful. Researchers saw immediate improvements in morale and lower turnover in the group that did the exercise regularly.

Lean Tip #1772 - Be Grateful Yourself.

If you want to have grateful employees, you’d better be saying them too. Half of employees said they would switch jobs for one with more recognition. Thanking your employees will make them more satisfied with their jobs. Plus, when you say “thank you” people view you as a warmer person and want to engage with you socially.

Lean Tip #1773 - Provide Many Opportunities for Gratitude

When people are thanked for their work, they are more likely to increase their helping behavior and to provide help to others. But not everyone likes to be thanked—or likes to say “thank you”—in public. They may be shy or genuinely modest. The key is to create many different kinds of opportunities for gratitude.

Lean Tip #1774 - Catch Your Co-Workers Doing Something Right

We’re pretty good at catching people doing things wrong, but don’t always put the same energy into “catching” people doing something right. Be on the lookout for your co-workers doing great things, and then point them out in a very clear, specific way. With this positive feedback, your co-worker knows that you are being sincere and can then go on to share their own gratitude.

Lean Tip #1775 - Provide Training Opportunities for Employee.

People want chances for training and cross-training. They want to participate on a special committee where their talents are noticed. They like to attend professional association meetings and represent your organization at civic and philanthropic events. Do you currently have only your executives attending these events? Spread the wealth of opportunity to all employees. They will genuinely appreciate the opportunities.

Lean Tip #1776 – Remind People Why Their Work is Important.

Especially in lines of work when the impact of the work is less obvious, team leaders should continuous remind their members on why their work is important. People are more likely to stay focused on tasks when they are convinced that the results matter. Under the pressure of time and expectations, it is easy to lose faith, confidence and focus. Constantly assuring them about the importance of their work, as well as their skills and contributions to the big overarching goal will keep them motivated.

Lean Tip #1777 – Recognize Accomplishments.

Not only do you celebrate little successes along the way, but even if the final product falls into the “can be improved” category, don’t forget to still recognize the accomplishments. Recognizing the little things that your teammates have done well encourages them to stay focused and continue to do better next time.

Lean Tip #1778 – Maintain Good Relationships.

A good team needs great bonding to work well together. Good relationships need to be maintained, so trust is increased. This is especially important when deadlines get nearer and the stress level of the team increases. It eventually leads to complete reliance on trust of each team member to deliver their respective work, so each team member can focus on just completing their own jobs.

Lean Tip #1779 – Keep Up the Positive attitude.

It takes a strong source of positivity to influence the attitude of the entire team. Good team leaders always keep a positive attitude. Always. They need to maintain the positive attitude to motivate the rest of the team to stay confident. Do your work by anticipating problems and planning ahead, instead of discovering problems only when they come and having to respond to them. Keep your team well informed of such potential situations, so they can be well prepared. This can help to keep problems small, so teams can continuously stay focused on working on the main project without getting too flustered along the way.

Lean Tip #1780 – Enjoy the Success.

It is easy to focus on the problems and the negatives along the way, before the final goal is achieved. However, do remember to smell the roses as your move along, no matter how small the patch and how tiny the roses are. Celebrate these small successes along the way, so team members get to enjoy the adrenaline rush that comes with achievements. Boosting the adrenaline levels with these little successes will go a long way in keeping team members excited and focused on the final goal.

Lean Tip #1781 – It’s OK to Dream, But it Takes Motivation to Accomplish Your Goals

It's OK to dream and have big goals. But if you're actually going to accomplish them, you have to DO something about them, and that takes motivation.

The very first thing you need to achieve a goal is a reason and deep desire to achieve it. The path to achieving goals is fraught with boredom, excuses and difficulty. You will have a lot of opportunities to talk yourself out of the goal. But if you can keep going back to the reason and your desire for the goal, those will help you stay on track.

Lean Tip #1782 - Devise a Plan to Meet Your Goals. 

This is vital in making the goal a reality. Without a plan, your goal has little chance of success. Write an overall summary of the goal, including details such as timing, cost and location to make it authentic. Decide where to begin, and then make a detailed step-by-step plan of the major tasks needed to achieve the goal. If in doubt, work backward in stages from the final result. Make deadlines if you like, but keep them realistic to avoid disappointment.

Lean Tip #1783 - Do Something Daily Toward Your Goals

Nothing replaces repetition and creating momentum like doing something to get you closer to your goal every day. You will naturally take some time off, but if you don't take seriously the first 30 days of work on the goal and use them to create momentum, it's almost guaranteed you won't get there.

The first 30 days are critical to convincing your B.S. monitor that you're serious. Organizationally, it convinces colleagues you're serious.

Lean Tip #1784 - Adapt and Adjust Your Goal

As you work on your daily mini goals and toward the bigger goal, be willing to adapt. Make the mini goals more difficult if they seem too easy. Make them easier if they become too taxing.

The main thing is that if your brain deems the mini goal to be too difficult, you'll quit. If it's too easy, you're running in place. Find the middle so you have advancement each day.

Lean Tip #1785 - Regularly Reassess Goals.

Frequently re-examine the goal to ensure it’s still what you really want. Recognize and celebrate each small success along the way. Adapt it if necessary, but keep to your main objective. Work hard and stay focused on the result.

Lean Quote: Follow Effective Action With Quiet Reflection

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.

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action." — Peter Drucker

Great leaders pause and reflect on a regular basis; leaders at their best renew themselves daily. Without time for reflection, a leader is likely to miss important cues, to forget to do the more important things. They don’t see opportunities because they are hidden by the busy and trivial things. Over time, the leader without time for reflection is doomed to run out of ideas, energy, and the ability to serve those that we lead. We simply “run out of gas.”

Unfortunately, there’s not enough emphasis in the business world about the need for leaders to make time in their day for reflection. In fact, thanks to today’s accelerated pace in the workplace, a greater focus is being put on a leader’s ability to react fast to changes and making quick decisions for their organization. While the ability to think quick on one’s feet is certainly a valuable trait for a leader to demonstrate, it’s also important that leaders develop the habit of putting aside time during their day to reflect not only on current decisions their organization needs to make, but also to review past mistakes to see what lessons their company can gain from that experience.

For many leaders, the acknowledgement that slowing down for some part of the day is necessary, desirable and valuable is in itself transformative. Even the very practical leader will discover that regular time spent in reflection will bring greater perspective and new levels of emotional clarity.  This is the time to step back and take an unhurried look at daily challenges, past “mis-takes” and future visions.

The more you reflect, the more you realize that it comes naturally, and that without it, you are not able to do your job. You will discover that we all reflect, most of the time. By relearning how to use your reflecting skills as a tool in your leaders toolbox, you can increase your ability to see possible challenges early, and seek alternative solutions before you are forced into a corner. You become pro-active.

Making time to reflect on past decisions and mistakes, and allowing yourself the opportunity to learn from it, is a critical step to continued growth and development and your ability to effectively lead others.

Top 10 Lean Leadership Quotes of 2017

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 cannot improve.

These are the top 10 quotes on A Lean Journey website in 2017.

1.     "Knowing Is Not Enough; We Must Apply. Wishing Is Not Enough; We Must Do." — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

2.     "Chaotic Action is Preferable to Orderly Inaction." — Karl E. Weick

3.     "Enjoy yourself. If you can’t enjoy yourself, enjoy somebody else." — Jack Schaefer

4.     "Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much." — Helen Keller

5.     "Personally I cringe at the word 'leader.' It's more about getting people do what they're passionate about and putting them in the right context or setting. They're the ones doing the hard work." — Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

6.     "We think it’s important for employees to have fun… it drives employee engagement." — Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappas

7.     "To succeed, one must be creative and persistent." — John H. Johnson

8.     "Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than trying to solve them." — Henry Ford

9.     "Simplicity is the key to brilliance." — Bruce Lee

10.  "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." — Will Durant’s summation of Aristotle’s ideas

Lean Quote: Everybody Wins With a Healthy Work-Life Balance

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.

"We believe in work+life, not work vs. life." — Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot

No matter what career you’re in or how many additional commitments you have, creating a healthy balance between work and play is absolutely essential when it comes to leading a happy and productive lifestyle. But it’s not always easy – especially if you have a particularly demanding career.

A good work/life balance can enable employees to feel more in control of their working life and lead to:

• increased productivity
• lower absenteeism
• a happier, less stressed workforce
• improvements in employee health and well-being
• a more positive perception of you as an employer
• greater employee loyalty, commitment and motivation
• a reduction in staff turnover and recruitment costs

The benefits of a work-life balance initiative are not confined to just the workforce. Work/life policies and flexible working practices can also help you:

• react to changing market conditions more effectively and meet customer demands - for example, shift work, part-time work and flextime can help you open longer without making your employees work longer hours
• meet seasonal peaks and troughs in your business
• boost your competitiveness
• become recognized as a business that people want to work for

By providing enabling work environments, organizations can help employees accomplish work tasks as efficiently as possible, leaving more time to attend to personal responsibilities.

The message for company leaders is that many of the same factors that are associated with a more engaged and effective work force also lead to work environments where employees are more positive about stress and work-life balance issues.

The bottom line? Work life balance can help you increase revenue, cut unnecessary expenses, and improve your organization's reputation.

Top 10 Lean Tips of 2017

As 2017 comes to an end and we look toward 2018 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 #1565 - Don’t Just Talk About it, Do it!

Once you have a Lean strategy in place, put it into fast and thorough action. Naturally, implementation is what ultimately yields results and improvement. The last think you want is to devise and formulate a Lean campaign that then sits on the shelf and collects dust. Run with your Lean plans as soon as you have everything nailed down.

Lean Tip #1566 - Harness the PDCA Strategy

One of the key concepts used in Kaizen is the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” strategy. This is a quality model that can be used when implementing any type of improvement in the facility. As you might expect, the PDCA strategy is a cycle of ongoing improvement that should never end. The steps are as follows:

Plan – This step is where you identify an area where improvement is possible and make an initial strategy on what chance should be made to realize the desired improvements.

Do – Implement the change, but only on a small scale. This may mean having one department make the change in some situations or for larger corporations, having one facility make the update. During this step it is also very important to be gathering as much data regarding the change so it can be properly evaluated.

Check – Review the results of the change including the data that was collected. Looking to see if they had the desired impact or not is critical to know whether you should move forward with rolling the change out to other areas.

Act – IF the data in the check step points to a success, it is time to push the change out on a wider scale. Once the change has been successfully implemented you will go back to the plan step to look for further improvement opportunities. If the data from the check step shows that the change did not work as planned, you go directly to the plan step to either start from scratch or attempt to make the needed adjustments to get the desired results.

Lean Tip #1628 - One of the Best Forms of Recognition is to Provide Opportunities for a Contributing Employee.

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 on 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 #1640 - Build Trust Through Open Communication & Clarity

One of the most important components necessary to nurture and grow workforce alignment is for the leader and management to have a strong relationship with their word. Trusting senior leaders and management is a critical driver of employee engagement.  Integrity and open communication is one of the most crucial behaviors of highly effective leaders. People do not trust a leader of an organization who does not follow through on promises or has a reputation as someone who re-negotiates agreements after the fact.  Creating boundaries and agreements as well as honoring those agreements and boundaries is where the rubber meets the road with honoring one’s word. 

Trust is not about being perfect and certainly not about keeping things static and steady. It is about clearly communicating when and why things need to change, and giving people advance notice of those changes and how they can best adapt.

Lean Tip #1676 - Don’t Measure Everything that can be Measured

Don’t measure everything that can be measured and don’t blindly trust an analytics tool to collect the right data. Instead, use the business goals to choose a small amount of metrics that truly help you understand how your product performs. Otherwise you take the risk of wasting time and effort analyzing data that creates little or no insights. In the worst case, you action irrelevant data and make the wrong decisions.

Lean Tip #1692 - By Failing to Plan, You are Planning to Fail

Good planning mitigates risks and promotes learning early. While planning, teams consider, talk through, and eliminate ‘flow’ blockages before they occur. The ROI on planning is huge. A good plan has enough detail for it to be predictive of how much work is really going to be involved, and therefore when you will be done. Records of past plans can also help, as an input into how much work will really be involved in the various tasks, and how much unpredicted work there typically is in a project.

Lean Tip #1693 - Figure Out How the Work Gets Done.

We have lots of assumptions about how work gets done that don’t mirror exactly what happens. After all, during the day-to-day grind, we don’t think about how we do the work, we often just do it. Ask an outside observer to record the steps of the process in a way that he/she could repeat it themselves if they had to, without assistance.

Lean Tip #1701 – Maintain Clear and Comprehensive Communication on a Consistent Basis

One of the most vital strategies that must be employed in order to align employees with the company’s vision is maintaining clear and comprehensive communication on a consistent basis. Not only must a company’s basic vision be communicated to employees in this manner, but the goals and objectives associated with the mission must be conveyed via consistently reliable, clear and comprehensive communication as well.

Clear and comprehensive communication regarding the company’s vision is best ensured by taking advantage of multiple resources. In addition to direct face to face communication with employees about vision related issues, a company needs to take advantage of high-tech resources as well — including email, texts, blogs and related avenues.

Lean Tip #1706 – 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. When confronting old ideas and traditions, apply the Rules of Engagement.

Lean Tip #1718 - Effectively Engage Employees

Listen, listen, listen. If there is another piece advice that a company should take, it’s to receive and respond to the feedback that is provided by the employees. They are the ones making sure that all the clients are happy and that all the work gets done, so keeping them in the loop is vital.

Understanding that no two employees are the same is another important tactic to use when trying to understand the employee’s concern. Being able to realize that there are going to be many different reasons for opposition depending on the person is pertinent, because then managers can tailor ways to work out these problems.

Lean Tip #1779 – Keep Up the Positive Attitude.

It takes a strong source of positivity to influence the attitude of the entire team. Good team leaders always keep a positive attitude. Always. They need to maintain the positive attitude to motivate the rest of the team to stay confident. Do your work by anticipating problems and planning ahead, instead of discovering problems only when they come and having to respond to them. Keep your team well informed of such potential situations, so they can be well prepared. This can help to keep problems small, so teams can continuously stay focused on working on the main project without getting too flustered along the way.

These 10 Lean tips can help you with your journey in 2018. What advice would you share for the New Year?

Top 10 Posts of 2017

The end of the year is traditionally a time to look back and reflect. One way to reflect is to evaluate popular blog posts. I have been taking time to reflect on the year that was and as part of that reflection I have flipped back through the 150 blog posts I have written so far this year and compiled a list of my Top 10.

10. Express Your WARMTH When Communicating

Effective communication is everyone's job. It builds trust, teamwork, and high-performing organizations. If culture drives an organization, effective communication is the fuel.

9. Four Essential Elements for Creating a Lean Culture or Management System

You should build your Lean culture on the following essential elements: make the customer everyone’s business, standardize work for managers, have daily accountability and require discipline.

8. Five Functions of a Team Leader

As a team leader, one of your primary roles is developing the resources, specifically, the human resources of your department, business unit, or team. The tasks of a team leader are classically defined as those of planning, organizing, staffing, motivating, achieving, and evaluating results.

7. 7 Wastes Demonstration From Students

Students participating in an education program at IDEXX Laboratories made a video to illustrate the 7 wastes.

6. The Wasteful Effects of Micromanagement

The effects of micromanagement can be disastrous for a company’s culture. In the best situations, micromanagement is an impediment to progress and in extreme cases it can cause the organization to stagnate.

5. Kaizen Mindset: Key Principles of Continuous Improvement

Kaizen is a philosophy of continuous improvement in which every aspect of the business can and must be improved. It is a process that engages the “human element,” while eliminating all forms of non-value added activity and waste.

4. Use a SIPOC to Scope Your Improvement Event

The SIPOC is a key tool to help the team understand and communicate the current state and the bounds of a given process as well as who might be critical to engage as the project develops.

3. 8 Wastes in the Lean Office

In the office environment, the 8 classic waste types of the Lean methodology manifest in different ways than we see on the factory floor.

2. Busy Does Not Equal Productive

Just because you are busy does NOT mean you are productive. In this post you’ll learn 6 differences between busy people and productive people.

1. 4 Tiers for Daily Accountability

Daily tiered meetings (a series of four brief meetings to review what happened yesterday and assign actions for improvement) are an integral element of daily management system.

What were some of your favorite Lean posts from 2017? Any recommendations for next year?

Thanks for your continued readership in 2017. I hope you enjoy the holiday season and go on to achieve Lean success in 2018.