Let’s walk down and do them all
My high school swim coach used to love to tell the story of the old bull and the young bull, standing on a hill overlooking a herd of cows. The young bull says, “Let’s run down there and (do) one of those cows.” The old bull replied, “Let’s walk down there and (do) them all.”
I mention this in this series because so far the implication has been that using lean principles to improve personal work means getting more work done faster. So, when we strive to improve personal productivity, it’s tempting to try to pick up the pace of our work. Common sense tells me that if I want to drive from Point A to Point B, I can save time by going faster. But constantly changing from lane to lane to try to get a momentary advantage may actually slow me down, not to mention that my speed may cause me to be pulled over by the police or cause an accident. By trying to do too much, we run the risk of exceeding natural speed limits that exist for good reasons.
In weapons training, you’re constantly reminded that “slow is smooth; smooth is fast.” This speaks to the importance of flow, which brings us to the connection with lean principles. It is the idea of lining up all steps in the value stream so that they get done in a steady continuous flow with no wasted motions or interruptions. The steps taken to improve flow: focusing on the actual object being worked on (make work visible), removing impediments and rethinking work practices, all take time to implement, but the effort can cut work times in half, according to Womack and Jones in Lean Thinking
There are limitless ways of taking time before, during and after your work to improve outputs and ultimately speed up cycle times. Here are just a few examples:
Five whys: When we encounter a problem, we want to solve it as quickly as possible so we can keep going on with our work. But if we treat the symptom and don’t get rid of the root cause, we are likely to have to repeatedly solve it. The Toyota technique of asking why five times (the number is not hard and fat) adds time to the process but forces you to think at a much deeper level and may help you uncover and address the root cause, which saves a lot of time (among other things) in the long run.
Thinking slow: I’ve written here before about the two modes of thinking we all use, popularized by Daniel Kahneman as fast, intuitive, System 1 thinking; and slow, rational System 2 thinking. Most times intuition and instant recognition of what to do serves us well, but we’re all subject to built-in biases which can lead us astray. The trick is to know when to slow down and apply careful, deliberate thinking to the problem or task at hand. It becomes particularly important in a fast-changing environment, because we’re more likely to encounter situations that are different from anything we’ve seen before.
For creativity, start fast and end slow: In my own experience, whether writing an article or completing a sales call plan, there’s a tremendous benefit in doing a first draft early and then putting it aside. Flashes of insight seem to come instantly, but actually slowing down can help here as well. Somehow the flashes seem to come much easier when they’ve been incubating in my subconscious for a while. It’s especially helpful in crafting and rehearsing an important presentation; taking the time to space out the rehearsals will spark many more improvement ideas.
Preparation: Investing time upfront in preparation is one of the best ways that slowing down can help you finish faster—and better. That’s no newsflash to anyone reading this, so I won’t waste keystrokes with the usual examples. What is amazing, however, is that preparation can improve outcomes even in situations that would seem to allow no time at all for it, such as in superfast sports activities like returning a serve in tennis or hitting a baseball. Frank Partnoy in his book Wait: The Art and Science of Delay
Delay and persuasion: Since a big part of getting things done is getting others to do what you want done, this precept applies to persuasion as well. In persuasion, we often find that trying to convince someone before they are ready can be counterproductive. Sometimes by slowing down selling you can speed up buying, and vice versa. A buyer who feels rushed may react or shut down entirely. New ideas often take time to gain acceptance. When you’re trying to sell ideas internally, it can be tempting to go straight to the top and get a decision forced on the organization, but good luck implementing it. In negotiations, impatience and hurry can be your biggest liability. As long as time is on your side, you don’t have to accept a bad deal.
Which one is the customer?
In the first two articles of this series, we examined ways to make work easier using 5S and by making work visible. Later this week we will turn to a much harder topic: reducing waste. But before we do, it’s important to clarify two definitions.
The lean principles term for waste is muda, and it technically refers to any activity that does not add value to the end customer. So, to be precise with our terms, before we can identify waste we must first specify who is your customer(s) for your personal work, and what constitutes value to them.
Who is your customer for your personal work?
First, let’s define “customer” as anyone who depends on the output of your work.
The first customer is yourself. That sounds obvious on the surface, but some people need reminding of it. If you are a caregiver to an elderly parent for example, it’s all too easy to work yourself to exhaustion and ill health by focusing all our energy on him or her. You have to leave something for yourself.
At the same time, you also have an obligation to your future-self. While this is obvious, it helps you to define value and to distinguish between the urgent and the important, in Stephen Covey’s phrase. When you eat less today, or invest some of your income rather than spending it, you’re adding value to your future-self. Any time you devote efforts toward a long term goal, you are building value for your future-self. Keeping your future-self more prominent in your mind guides some of the choices you make today and improves impulse control. Think about it this way: You are now the future-self that “existed” years ago. How many times have you wished you had done more of something when you were younger? (I wish I had saved more money, or made more cold calls, paid more attention in class…)
Future focus is what allows you to make the hard choices to forgo short-term advantage for long term positioning. Robert Caro tells us how a young Texas congressman, who was so poor in 1940 that he had just recently been able to afford his first suit that fit, rejected a very lucrative offer of a partnership in the oil business from a wealthy benefactor. His decision wasn’t based on ethics (as proven by many other questionable deals he later became involved in), but on his future plans. He was concerned that being tied to oil money would hurt him politically. Since oil money was not a disadvantage in Texas, there was only one potential job where it would matter, and 32-year-old Lyndon Johnson gave up certain and immediate wealth for an extremely improbable dream.
Unless you live on an isolated island, there are probably others who depend on the output of your work. In my own case, I have decided to define three customers: myself, my family, and those who pay my bills (my clients). These are not totally separate—taking care of my clients boosts income which adds value to myself and my family; improving myself by learning helps my clients; becoming more efficient in my work makes me easier to live with and allows me to spend more time with my family, etc. This is important because greater alignment of interests and needs among all your customers is a wonderful source of synergy.
What is value to your “customer”?
Value will be highly personal. Donald Trump and Mother Teresa would probably define it differently. Some are driven by wealth, others by power, by artistic achievement, by religion, and so on. Only you can define it, but define it you must.
My personal definition of value is anything that makes me richer, smarter, healthier, or happier. (I see the latter two as being more related to personal life than work, so I will spare you the details in this and future articles.)
Fortunately, because I’ve chosen a career that allows me to monetize my passion for learning, the first two are very well aligned. It’s not always that way—sometimes your different definitions of value may conflict and you must make additional choices about priorities and balance.
By definition, then, muda in my personal work comprises any activity that does not make me richer or smarter. In the next article of this series, we will look at the most common sources of waste in personal work and countermeasures to reduce muda.
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?
