I’ve recently launched a new front in my personal quest for knowledge. Inspired in part by Dave Brock’s continuing series on applying lean principles to selling, I’ve begun dusting off some books I read years ago about lean production, total quality management, six sigma, etc. In fact, I believe that sales is an area that’s definitely ripe for more work in the field, and I’ve begun gathering additional reading material and notes for some writing and learning of my own on that topic.
However, as I’ve been getting deeper and deeper into the topic, I’ve begun noticing applications in unexpected areas, and I’ve started thinking about how to apply those principles to my own work. Being self-employed, I am supposedly in complete command of what I choose to work on and when, so I should have everything organized and arranged for maximum personal productivity, right? Ha!
The lens of lean methods, when applied to your own work, acts like those chemicals that forensic scientists apply to a surface—all kinds of ugly evidence comes to light for all the world to see. Think about it, how much time do you waste in a given day?
A clear goal won’t help right now
By now, it’s no secret that mastery in any field requires thousands of hours of hard work and deliberate practice. We know that there are no shortcuts, and that we have to work hard all the time. Yet, it’s possible to work harder than anyone and still go nowhere. It’s equally important to identify and focus on the right things to improve. As Anders Ericsson says, “the critical variable for performance improvement is identifying areas of desired goals of achievement (my italics) and engaging in effective training and practice to attain the associated improvement.”[1]
I was inspired to write this post by three stories I’ve read recently:
The first is the most recent. It comes from last week’s Sports Illustrated story on Tiger Woods. “Last Saturday night, less than 24 hours before he won on the PGA tour for the first time in 30 months, Woods was the only golfer on the Bay Hill range.” That sentence says a lot. His opponents no doubt wanted to win just as much as Woods did, but he was the only one out there on a Saturday night. What’s even more instructive is the reason he was out there: his third round had ended badly, and he and his swing coach had identified the problem: too much weight on his left foot. “Woods hit balls until dark, stopping only to change clubs and sip on a Diet Coke. The more balls he hit, the more the fog from the late-round mistakes lifted.”
