Book Review: Lean Life

Paul Akers has written several books on how he has applied Lean thinking in business and at home. In his 4th book Lean Life, he applies the key "Lean" business elements he discussed in 2 Second Lean to our personal lives and relationships. It's the simple and practical shop floor wisdom of stopping our personal assembly line of defects and mistakes to come up with new and improved solutions.

Paul believes we think we know what we want in life and the relationships that are important to us, but in fact, most of us are simply clueless. The question is why? Because we don't know our most important customer...ourselves.

My Favorite Words of Wisdom (Quotes):

• You must slow down to go fast.
• Be happy when problems are in front of you. They are the opportunity for you to grow.
• The small act of being totally present when you are with the one you love is the gateway to a life of love and success.
• Simplicity attracts people; complexity repels them.
• The real sign of wealth are individuals with deeply engaged minds and physically fit bodies.
• Things own you and the more things you have, the bigger slave you become.
• If we have abundance, we will choose to buy something rather than use our creativity. We become lazy and miss the very essence of life: hard work, discovery, and resourcefulness.
• Life is all about what you give, but you can’t give what you don’t have. A strong self, with a clarity of purpose and a clear process to achieve it, will allow you to give more abundantly to everyone around you.
• Have the courage to surround yourself with high-quality people who love to improve and take full responsibility for their position in life.
• The daily pursuit of discovering solutions and learning from people will enrich your life beyond anything you ever imagined.

Here are the absolute non-negotiables and most important concepts of this book wrapped into six pithy bullet points.

1. Life is short.

Life is short and the meaning of this book will elude anyone who does not approach it from this critical vantage point. Life is not a rehearsal, it is for living right now. It is a gift that has been given to each of us. Life must be cherished and lived in a deliberate and thoughtful manner.

2. Life should be amazing.

Life should be remarkable, exciting, and forever improving in three critical areas: your work, your health, and your relationships. Remember, every element of life should be remarkable, settle for nothing but excellence and build a remarkable life!

3. Use your brain.

Every life experience gives you the opportunity to gain wisdom. Wisdom is essentially a crystal ball that gives you the ability to look into the future and be a better predictor of outcomes. If nothing is changing or getting better, it’s because you are not gaining wisdom from experiences.

4. Brutal truth equals courage.

Everything of significances starts with a single action…courage. Most people will not muster the courage to step definitively outside their comfort zone.

5. High-quality people.

Have the courage to surround yourself with high-quality people, who love to improve and take full responsibility for their position in life. What I do hope to achieve is to make a lasting and substantive effect on others. What I have learned is when people respect you, they will love you, and that’s a much higher and significant pursuit and infinitely more satisfying.

6. Fall in love with lean.

Falling in love with Lean will enrich your life. The daily pursuit of discovering solutions and learning from people will enrich your life beyond anything you ever imagined. Banish Sloppiness and Fall in Love with Precision. Love the idea of being precise and getting it right. Live your life in a deliberate fashion so every process serves you. This intense desire to refine all of life’s processes will energize you and deliver joy.

Lean thinkers who like to learn about the application of lean in non-traditional settings will enjoy this book. If you have a modicum of curiosity and you want to see how to do life better, then Lean Life is the right book for you.

Paul Akers has all of his books available for free in several formats here. Visit the Lean Life page for a free copy of the book and resources by chapter.

Lean Quote: Leaders Need to Slow Down to Speed Up

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.

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way."   — Rollo May

I think it makes more sense to walk slower and use our eyes and brains in those moments.

It has never been more important for leaders to learn from and respond quickly to economic, political, and competitive changes. In a world where change is constant, that response must be rapid and inspiring.

To lead effectively, one must simultaneously maintain visibility of both the details and the Big Picture. Leaders must constantly find ways to optimize their own efforts, as well as those of their teams. This is easier said than done, and unfortunately, many leaders get caught in cycles of working harder…not necessarily smarter.

Slowing down and putting the right systems in place will mean you later go faster than you could ever have imagined. Being organized makes you go fast. Running around trying to do 100 things at once does not make you go fast.

The idea of going slow…to go fast has been around for ages. The core struggle comes from the dichotomy between “Knowing” and “Doing.”

Intellectually knowing something is one thing. Actually, doing something about it is a completely different beast. Knowing requires wrapping your head around something, which most of us can do relatively easily. Doing requires a shift in behavior to act in new and unique ways. Often it takes leaders some time to build new habits around slowing down, and coaching tends to expedite the process and learning curve. This notion of going slow to go fast is critically important for leaders (and businesses) to understand and leverage though.

Business leaders should pause to focus on strategy refinement and iteration across the company. Working together with the management and finance teams, companies should identify its current strengths, understand and fix any potential problems, evaluate various opportunities for growth, and forecast any threats in current and potential markets. It’s also critically important to build in time to listen to customer and employee feedback: Does your company know who its most important customers are? Are your employees aligned with the company’s mission and goals?

By deliberately slowing down and taking time to reflect, think, plan, focus, and refine, businesses can avoid the pitfalls of moving too fast and enjoy long-term sustainable growth.

How Happy Employees Make Your Venture More Productive

Happiness does have a significant impact on the productivity of your employees. It’s not just an empty claim. Science says so.

In collaboration with British Telecom, Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business researched the influence of happiness on productivity in employees.

The researchers have found that when employees felt happier, they did their work faster, made more phone calls per hour, and converted more calls into sales. As a result, researchers reported a 13% increase in productivity.

Work Environment Is a Large Contributor to Employee Happiness

The above-mentioned study proves that the components of employee happiness are not entirely connected to personal life or any other outside-of-work factors. The researchers from Oxford even took into consideration the possible impact of good and bad weather on employee happiness and found no connection.

Thus, the Oxford University study proves that employers should not send their employees seeking for happiness and satisfaction somewhere outside of their workplace.

The workplace environment and personal life of the employees are not mutually exclusive and have a significant impact on each other. While low job satisfaction can have a negative impact on an employee’s personal life, a positive work environment can also significantly improve employee’s health and well-being, thus, contributing to their overall happiness.

Exploring the Connection Between Employee Happiness and Job Productivity

We now know that the work environment has an effect as significant as personal life on an employee’s productivity.

But what does low happiness and satisfaction levels can cost your company?

Harvard Business Review referenced to a study by Queens School of Business and Gallup Organization, which found that disengaged workers had:

●       37% higher absenteeism

●       49% more work-related accidents

●       60% more errors

As a result, the organizations, where these employees worked, after some time had:

●       18% lower overall productivity

●       16% lower profitability

●       37% lower job growth

●       65% lower share price

According to this study, surveyed companies, depending on the size, lost from $100,000 to millions of dollars annually on average from low employee happiness and satisfaction levels.

So, what lies behind employee happiness? What should you do as an employer to contribute to employee happiness?

Let’s take a look.

1. Foster the Atmosphere of Respect

Communication at work is the first thing that you need to take into consideration when it comes to employee happiness.

Unfortunately, whenever there is a disagreement between a supervisor and an employee and among employees as well, people tend to use a passive-aggressive approach to dealing with conflict.

Passive-aggressive communication at work can manifest itself in a variety of ways:

●       ignoring proper direct channels of communication (spreading rumors, using back-handed compliments and other passive-aggressive comments)

●       sabotaging collaboration and healthy communication

●       silent treatment as well as harsh unnecessary criticism, nitpicking

●       complete refusal to praise employees

Furthermore, praise can also be used in a passive-aggressive context. For instance, a supervisor can use the achievements of one employee to shame another employee and their lack of initiative.

That is why the first step on your way to the happiness of your employees would be getting read of passive-aggressive communication and focusing more on a respectful attitude. And in case you need to give a negative comment, do it in a constructive way and offer your solution to the problem.

2.  Take Care of Your Employee’s Safety

The second contributing factor is making sure that your employees feel safe at work. You might think about the physical safety of your employees right now, but we refer more to safe communication.

While eliminating passive-aggressive attitudes at a workplace is the first step to communication, based on trust, it still isn’t enough to get your employees to feel comfortable enough to share, and this is your end goal.

Trust in a leader is one of the components of employee happiness and job satisfaction. When a leader has their employees’ best interest at heart, it motivates the workers to contribute more.

The research published in the Organization Science journal showed that employees that trusted their leader and safely communicated their issues directly, learned faster, and had better performance.

That’s why trust should be incorporated in the corporate culture and nurtured from the very beginning. Whenever there is a newcomer in your company, you should notify them that your workplace environment should foster empathy and interpersonal kindness, rather than a passive-aggressive attitude and disregard of others.

3. Don’t Encourage Working Overtime

The last tip is concerned more with work ethic than with communication, however, it has a great impact on employee happiness.

There are many companies across the U.S. that have high turnover. While high turnover is not necessarily a bad thing and can be connected to seasonal work and high competition in the industry, in most cases it is caused by overworking and workplace-related stress.

There is a number of high-stress jobs, from insurance advisors to marketers. “After our first marketing campaign, we had a high turnover, which prompted us to hire freelance marketers to help our team cope with large amounts of work,” says Estelle Liotard, senior editor and the head of content marketing at BestWritingAdvisor, a writing services review site, sharing her company’s experience dealing with high turnover.

To help your employees cope with all their tasks within working hours, you can:

●       Reduce the number of daily meetings. Project status updates, for instance, can be unnecessary, if you use project management software, available to all your employees.

●       Introduce flexible work schedules. Different people have different high-performance and low-performance times. Some people work well early in the morning, while others have a performance boost after 4 p.m.

●       Establish an overtime policy. Overtime work should be an exception rather than a rule. Forcing your employees to work overtime almost every day can lead to burnout, which inevitably will have a negative impact on the productivity of your venture.

Your employees may also be forced to work overtime because they don’t have the right tools and resources to complete their tasks within working hours. Encourage your employees to share, which tools they require to do their job best and equip them with everything they need to do their work efficiently.

Wrapping Up

Science confirms that a happy employee is a productive employee. Moreover, it is your task as an employer to contribute to their happiness.

Help your employees work smart, not hard, and encourage open communication in the company, where there is no place for a passive-aggressive attitude. Nurture honesty and interpersonal kindness, and you will see, how the productivity of your employees rises through the roof, making your venture a dream place to work at.

Author bio: Melanie Sovann is a professional writer, a blogger, and editor at EssaySupply, the site which provides best research papers online. She also loves writing about smart business models and facilitating a healthy work environment. 

Motivating Employees Is Not About Carrots or Sticks

The "carrot and stick" approach is an idiom that refers to a policy of offering a combination of reward and punishment to induce good behavior. It is named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind it. The mule would move towards the carrot because it wants the reward of food, while also moving away from the stick behind it, since it does not want the punishment of pain, thus drawing the cart.

Thus, an individual is given carrot i.e. reward when he performs efficiently and is jabbed with a stick or is given a punishment in case of non-performance.

Leaders are encouraged to rely on the carrot versus stick approach for motivation, where the carrot is a reward for compliance and the stick is a consequence for noncompliance. But when our sole task as leaders becomes compliance, trying to compel others to do something, chances are we’re the only ones who will be motivated.

Are people and donkeys the same? Do rewards and punishments work at work?

Research shows REWARDS work best to harness ACTION. 

In the September 27, 2017 Harvard Business Review, Tali Sharot, an associate professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University College London, shares how the reward of praise was more effective to increase hospital employees’ hand sanitizing efforts than the threat of disease (and obvious punishment). In fact, cameras monitoring employees washing or not washing their hands showed an increase from 10% compliance when warning signs about disease were used to motivate employees’ actions versus almost 90% compliance when an electronic board displayed a positive message (“Good job!”) to reward hand washing. Bottom line: immediate positive feedback is very effective when it comes to changing actions. Sharot explains that our brains have evolved over time to be wired such that we think “if reward, then action needed.”

Research shows PUNISHMENTS work best to harness INACTION 

On the flip side, our brains have also evolved to avoid negative consequences (such as drowning, poison, or dangerous areas) by inaction or staying where we are. Most people have experienced the phenomena of freezing in place in a potentially dangerous situation. Sharot believes that “when we anticipate something bad, our brain triggers a ‘no go’ signal.” For this reason, punishments (like getting fired or being legally prosecuted) may be most effective to discourage people from acting in certain ways (like stealing from the company or sharing trade secrets).

Motivating people to do their best work, consistently, has been an enduring challenge for executives and managers. Even understanding  what constitutes human motivation has been a centuries-old puzzle, addressed as far back as Aristotle.

The things that make people satisfied and motivated on the job are different in kind from the things that make them dissatisfied. Ask workers what makes them unhappy at work, and you’ll hear them talk about insufficient pay or an uncomfortable work environment, or “stupid” regulations and policies that are restraining or the lack of job flexibility and freedom. Environmental factors can be demotivating, but even if managed brilliantly, fixing these factors won’t motivate people to work harder or smarter.

It turns out that people are motivated by interesting work, challenge, and increasing responsibility — intrinsic factors. People have a deep-seated need for growth and achievement.

The better employees feel about their work, the more motivated they remain over time. When we step away from the traditional carrot or stick to motivate employees, we can engage in a new and meaningful dialogue about the work instead.

In Drive, Daniel Pink, describes “the surprising truth” about what motivates us. Pink concludes that extrinsic motivators work only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances; rewards often destroy creativity and employee performance; and the secret to high performance isn’t reward and punishment but that unseen intrinsic drive to do something because it’s meaningful.

True motivation boils down to three elements: Autonomy, the desire to direct our own lives; mastery, the desire to continually improve at something that matters to us; and purpose, the desire to do things in service of something larger than ourselves, Pink says. Joining a chorus of many, he warns that the traditional “command-and-control” management methods in which organizations use money as a contingent reward for a task, are not only ineffective as motivators, but are actually harmful.

The carrot-and-stick approach worked well for typical tasks of the early 20th century – routine, unchallenging and highly controlled. For tasks where the process is straightforward and lateral thinking is not required, rewards can provide a small motivation without harmful side effects.

However, jobs in the 21st century have become more complex, more interesting and more self-directed, and this is where the carrot-and-stick approach has become unstuck. The implications for leaders are significant. They must both be cognizant of the latest research on motivation, and take action to make those organizational and relationship changes.

Lean Quote: 5 Ways To Build Positive Relationships With Your Employees

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.

"Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first."   — Angela Ahrendts (Senior Vice President, Apple)

Every manager should know the value of personal relationships with employees. Building a positive and stimulating work environment is your top priority – this is what will help your workers to go that extra mile in completing tasks for their projects. Yet, many executives find it challenging to establish the balance between respect and likeability. Here are a few tips to help you develop meaningful relationships with your employees and build a positive work environment.

Bond Of Trust

The most important part of a boss-employee relationship is trust. Always be honest with your employees and never twist your words. Always tell the truth. Be more transparent while you approach your employees. And never gossip about your employees or share any of their personal information to others. Trust is the building block and makes your relationship with employees sustainable. So trust-building will give you great results.

Merge The Gap With Communication

Communication is one of the most important key aspects of the boss-employee relationship. Open and honest communication gives you the understanding of the employees’ sentiments and needs. A workplace should not only limit to email communication. Weekly meetings and hearing out the employees help you achieve more employee loyalty. Good communication fills the gap between awkwardness and other human complexities.

Appreciate Your Employees

Imagine you work in a company and work really hard to meet up the company’s goals and deadlines. Work can make you all exhausted and drained. A simple gesture or a ‘Thank you’ note can lift your mood up and keep you motivated.

Give your employees the appreciation they need, they work for you and dedicate a lot of time and effort for your company’s growth. Pat their backs, make them feel special and let them know how much you value their work. Do it honestly and not just for the sake of it. Though it would take very little time to appreciate their good work, for them this can bring a whole new motivation and engagement in their work.

Respect Your Employees and Give Them Autonomy

Respect your employees and their opinions. Never make your employees feel neglected. Don’t be harsh on their face when you disagree with them. Respect their inputs and try to explain your point of view with a little more empathy.

Give your employees the freedom in your workplace. Nobody would appreciate you if you don’t give your employees enough room and space to complete their tasks. It’s very evident that autonomy in the workplace increases job satisfaction and your relationship with employees.

Have A learning Attitude

Don’t take the proverb “The boss is always right ” literally. Keep a learning attitude and this would help the employees to feel more comfortable while they give their point of view to you. This also helps the employees to realize that they are all the same and gives a sense of oneness.

Forging a meaningful relationship with your team can be a challenge, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to achieve it. A great and open relationship with employees will help you to build a positive work environment, which engages and inspires the team, effectively helping the company reach its key business goals.

Three Ways to Overcome Fear of Failure at Work

Nobody enjoys failing. Fear of failure can be so strong that avoiding failure eclipses the motivation to succeed. Insecurity about doing things incorrectly causes many people to unconsciously sabotage their chances for success. 

Fear of failure is the intense worry you experience when you imagine all the horrible things that could happen if you failed to achieve a goal. The intense worry increases the odds of holding back or giving up. Being successful relies to a large extent on your ability to leverage fear.

Redefine Failure as Discrepancy.

Success is often hard to define. Failure is even harder.

What is your definition of failure? Giving up? Never going after your goals? Not achieving the desired outcome? Not achieving the desired outcome within an expected timeline? You may think that the answer to this question is obvious. But it is important to be clear about what you consider failure, since failure is the object of your fear and the obstacle to your success.

To make your goal pursuit fail-proof, switch from thinking about failures to thinking about discrepancies between what you hope to achieve and what you might achieve. Discrepancies provide you with information that you can study, explain, and learn from so you can recalibrate your future efforts.

As long as you continue making an effort, there is no room for failure. When you give up altogether, for no better reason than fear of failing, that’s a different story!

Learn to Think Positively

In many cases, you believe what you tell yourself. Your internal dialogue affects how you react and behave.

Our society is obsessed with success, but it’s important to recognize that even the most successful people encounter failure.

Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper because they thought he lacked creativity. He went on to found an animation studio that failed. He never gave up, and now Disney is a household name.

Steve Jobs was also once fired from Apple before returning as the face of the company for many years.

If Disney and Jobs believed the negative feedback, they wouldn’t have made it.

Anything Worth Doing Long Term, Is Going To Be Difficult

There’s no way around it.

Fear and failure are integral parts of the recipe. If you are passionate about achievement in any significant area of your life you’re going to have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Do it for your future self.

Take time to understand what’s causing your fear and hesitation. Make peace with it. Develop ways to beat it or use it to fuel your fire.

In the immortal words of Rocky Balboa “that’s how winnin’ is done”.

Accept that failure is inevitable. At some point along the way, you will fail. But here's the critical point: failure is not something to fear. Rather, it is something to learn and grow from.

When we embrace our failures, we learn from them. That knowledge is the key to succeeding further down the line. So, really, the more we fail, the more we will succeed. Freeing up our minds by releasing the fear gives us license to be creative and bold.

Once you have freed yourself from fear, you can change your perspective. You will be more able to recognize obstacles and take them on with a more successful attitude. This will allow you to grow.