It’s Not Always About the Big Improvement

With any improvement philosophy, people always want the BIG improvement.  When there are none to be had a re-organization or a shift in direction is implemented.  This may work for a short period of time, but eventually the results normalize back to their old levels.

A uniqueness with lean is creating a focus on getting better each day.  Even it if is just a second or two better.  Saving 1 second each day while maintaining the savings from the previous day will yield 8.7 hrs of savings after a work year.  What would you do with a full extra day of capacity?

Paul Akers has called this 2 second lean.  It is extremely powerful.

Focusing on small improvements means focusing on what bothers you and your customer and fixing it.  It could be as simple as always having to search for a stapler when doing paperwork.  Or moving the placement location of a label.  This saved a group I worked with 1 second per label…we timed it.  Over the course of the year, that was a savings of over 30 hours for the team!

People don’t like to focus on small changes because it isn’t “sexy”.  Guess what?  Sexy falls apart quickly and usually has no substance.

Build lasting change a little at a time.  It takes patience and understanding but two years from now you will have better actual results than people chasing only the “big” improvements that never get completed.

Learning Happens When Realized Value is Verified

A project is proposed.  Most projects have an return-on-investment (ROI) associated with them to help sell the idea.  The ROI lists out the benefits of completing the project.  The project gets approved.  People work on it until it is completed…hopefully.  Congratulations are given on good work.  People move on to the next project.  The End.

Notice anything missing?  Arguably the most important part?

No one goes back to verify if the project produced the benefits that were stated in the ROI.

How does the organization know if the investment was a good one?  A bad one?  Or a great one?

Checking the benefits isn’t the “sexy” part of the project, but it is the rewarding part of the project.

Why don’t people go back and check the benefits?  Is it because it is a month to a year after the project is complete before they are seen and people forget?  Is it because people put inflated benefits on the ROI statement and they don’t want to get called out on it?  Is it because putting a value to some of the benefits is extremely difficult?

Whatever the reason, it can’t stop you from checking the actual value realized from a project.  What if you didn’t reach the realized value stated?  Can something be done to increase the realized value.  What if you exceeded it?  Don’t you want to celebrate it?  Use the learnings to sustain the extra value realized.  The learning from verifying the realized value is immense.

Inspiration Update

In January, I posted a blog titled “Create Inspiration“.  In that post I stated a goal for myself.

I want to post 51 blogs in 2016, so I am going to use Seth’s example and every day until the end of February I am writing a topic in my notebook.  Some may never get written about.  Others will end up here on Beyond Lean.

The experiment has worked.  Here are the results:

• I wrote an idea down on 17 of the 21 working days in February.
• I documented 25 topic ideas
• Every post since the start of February has come from that inspiration list

I still have room for improvement.  I didn’t get an idea added everyday, which was my goal.  I could also increase the average ideas/day.

There is a well wish people give to others sometimes, “I hope inspiration finds you.”

Don’t wish for inspiration to find you.  Go find inspiration!

Try Q-Storming Instead of Brainstorming

Have you ever been stuck on a project?  Don’t know where to go?  Looking for ideas?

A common tool people will use in groups to help with get things moving will be to brainstorm.  The problem with brainstorming is it helps people converge on a particular answer.

People will put up any and all ideas they have already thought about.  Then ideas are voted on to narrow the field.  When finished the group ends up with a handful or less of ideas from the person with the strongest voice in the room.  Typically, these ideas are along the lines of the current direction of the work.

What if you don’t want to limit yourself in your thinking?  Come up with idea(s) that haven’t been thought of yet.

Have you tried Q-storming?  Instead of ideas, think of as many questions as the group come up with.  In a recent exercise, the group came up with over 30 questions about the work to be done.

It caused the group to dig in more and find answers to some very good questions.  The door was opened to several different ways to attach the problem.  Some of which were not even on the radar before the q-storming.  The team was able to shatter some assumptions.  Allowing them to work in a new way.  It was very freeing.

If you want your thinking to diverge from norm then try Q-storming.  Or if you have a need to converge your thinking use brainstorming.

Collaboration Does NOT Equal Consensus

Two words that seemed to get interchanged in business are consensus and collaboration.  These words are not the same.  Definitions pulled from the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Consensus: a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group

Collaboration: to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something

Consensus means getting everyone to agree.  This is what happens when a jury goes to deliberate on a case.  They must come to a consensus or it is a hung jury.

Collaboration is working together towards a common goal.

People can work together towards a common goal without agreeing on the method.

In today’s world, collaboration is a must for much of what people do.  People must work together to understand a customer’s needs and then develop and manufacture that product.  If consensus had to happen before any work was started, work would never get completed.

Have you ever worked on a team where someone tried to get consensus before moving on?  It can be painstaking.  Especially, when there are varying opinions.  This is where a leader steps in and makes decisions that sometimes are very tough.

Good leaders know the difference between collaboration and consensus.  They know when consensus is important and when it is not needed.

Do you interchange the two?