How To Improve Your Life With The Principles Of Lean Thinking
Self-inflicted chaos overwhelms our lives.
We're in a constant battle of more, more, more, because we care about I, I, I.
We start with a few pairs of clothes, to end up with a bunch of junk we never wear.
So goes our life.
In my company, we start with one piece of technology in the pursuit of systematized perfection. Now, we have more than we need, which slows us down.
In the pursuit of perfection, there's a long trail of waste.
That's why the principles of lean thinking apply to every area of our life.
There are two lean concepts you must become intimate with—eliminating waste and continuous improvement.
Recognize humans are wasteful creatures who desperately need to follow the principles of lean.
Lean thinking presumes that everything in our life can be improved continuously, without end.
It's difficult to grasp this at first. You're likely going through a series of excuses in your head.
"I'm certain this has been perfected."
"There's no way I can improve this."
"What's the point?
Or the worst one of all,
" We've been doing it this way for the last thirty years."
Cognitive biases cloud your judgment. They stand in your way of admitting perfection is unlikely, and waste is active in your life.
Toyota still makes millions of improvements to their processes, and they've been thinking Lean for over 50 years.
So why, after 50 years, are they still executing the principles of lean?
The answer is simple — because we're wasteful.
"Waste is like gravity; it pulls at you 24/7 and if you don't have a method to overcome it, you will lose and it will win!"
Here's a simple exercise to determine your level of waste.
Open a notebook and for one week keep track of all the activities and processes you do every day that might have waste in them.
For example, "I have to get my workout clothes out of multiple drawers when I wake up."
Or, "It takes me five clicks to get to the screen I need to update an order."
Whatever it is for you, write down all your wasteful activities.
If you're struggling to find waste, read the next section. It means you're human and waste blind.
At the end of the week, review your list of wasteful activities. Then compare them to areas that should be profitable, productive, and efficient.
The first lean thinking pillar is people must see waste.
One principle of lean thinking is seeing waste.
You get it. Waste is terrible, but what is waste?
The Lean Way defines waste as “any action or step in a process that does not add value to the customer. In other words, waste is any process that the customer does not want to pay for.”
Waste is broken down into eight categories.
The reason things don't change or innovative projects fail is because we make things complicated. We overthink. We over-process.
When a task or project seems difficult, we procrastinate and keep doing what we've always done.
Let's look at each of the eight wastes and how they apply to our everyday life.
You can think of waste as the acronym TIMWOODS.
1. Transportation
Transportation waste is the movement of inventory, people, tools, equipment, or products, further than needed.
Excessive movement of materials increases the risk of damage and defects.
Excessive movement of people and equipment can lead to unnecessary work, which leads to the 8th waste—wear, tear, and exhaustion.
The countermeasures of transportation are:
In the office, team members who collaborate should be close together. You can apply this to the virtual world as well.
This doesn't mean to form department silos. If two people are in the same department but rarely work directly with one another, don't silo them into departmental groupings.
Instead, intermix departments who work closely with one another.
A lean manufacturing example, “materials necessary for production should be easily accessible at the production location and double or triple handling of materials should be avoided.”
2. Inventory
In accounting, inventory is seen as an asset, and suppliers will often give bulk purchases discounts.
According to The Lean Way,
"having more inventory than necessary to sustain a steady flow of work can lead to problems including: product defects or damage materials, greater lead time in the production process, an inefficient allocation of capital, and problems being hidden away in the inventory."
In the office, inventory waste is filing waiting to be worked on, clients waiting for service to take place, "unused records in a database," or "obsolete files."
In manufacturing, "inventory waste could include broken machines sitting around, more finished products than demanded, extra materials taking up work space, and finished products that cannot be sold."
To avoid this, purchase material on a just-in-time basis, reduce buffers between production steps and create a queue system to prevent overproduction.
3. Motion
Wasted motion is when you're sitting on the toilet and have to walk to another room to get a roll of toilet paper.
What a pain in the ass—literally.
The analogy applies to every area of your life that involves wasted motion.
Wasted motion includes unnecessary movement of people, equipment, or machinery.
In the office, a wasted motion could include walking, reaching, searching, sifting through something to find what you need, excessive mouse clicks, and double-entry of data.
How many times does that happen in your daily life? Thousands?
A lean manufacturing example, wasted motion can include non-value added repetitive movements, reaching for materials, walking to get a tool, and making adjustments.
To combat wasted motion, the countermeasure is to redesign tasks and processes that require excessive motion.
Make sure the workspace is well organized.
Everything has a place and everything in its place.
Keep everything near the area of work and in an ergonomic position to reduce stretching and straining.
4. Waiting
Waiting is when people have to wait on materials or equipment.
In the office, this could include waiting on others to respond, having to wait for files to be reviewed or approved, ineffective meetings, and waiting for a computer to load a file.
In manufacturing, waiting waste could be waiting for materials to arrive, waiting for proper instructions, waiting on equipment due to insufficient capacity.
The countermeasure to waiting is "designing processes to ensure continuous flow or single piece flow, leveling out the workload by using standardized work instructions, and developing flexible multi-skilled workers who can quickly adjust in the work demands."
5. Overproduction
Overproduction occurs when something happens before it's needed. A lean manufacturing example is when a product is manufactured before it's required.
This is the Just In Case philosophy.
It prevents a smooth flow of work and adds cost throughout the process. Some of these costs are seen in higher storage costs, hidden defects, increased need for capital, and excessive lead times.
In the office, "overproduction could include making extra copies, creating reports no one reads, providing more information than needed, and providing a service before the customer is ready."
In manufacturing, "overproduction involves producing more products than demanded through a 'push production system' or producing products in higher batch sizes than needed."
Here are three countermeasures to overproduction.
The Lean Way recommends to first use a 'Takt Time' that ensures the manufacturing rate between stations is even.
Second, execute your process or manufacturing in small batches, or what is known as one-piece flow.
Reliable Plant defines one-piece flow as "parts are moved through operations from step to step with no work-in-process WIP in between either one piece at a time or a small batch at a time."
Third, if you need some WIP, use a Kanban system to control the amount of WIP you hold.
These are perfect lean manufacturing examples but can also apply to the office with slight modifications.
6. Over-processing
Over-processing is a huge pain for most people, yet, they're not aware that the problems they encounter are resulting from this type of waste.
"Over-processing refers to doing more work, adding more components, or having more steps in a product or service than what is required by the customer."
In the office, over-processing will take the form of:
Generating unnecessary reports.
Unnecessary steps in the purchasing process.
Requiring signatures that aren't needed.
Double-entry of data. Or in some cases, triple entry.
Using more forms or technology than is needed.
Having extra steps in a workflow or process.
In a manufacturing environment, "this could include using higher precision equipment than necessary, using components with capacities beyond what is required, running more analysis than needed, over-engineering a solution, adjusting a component after it has already been installed, and having more functionalities in a product than needed."
The critical question is, are you doing anything that doesn't add value to the client?
If so, you're involved in some form of waste, and it's likely over-processing.
Here's a simple fix to stop over-processing and think lean.
Always understand your work requirements from the standpoint of the client.
Before you start work, think about the client, so you produce the level of quality and expectation that they desire and require.
7. Defects
Defects occur when the product or service isn't fit for use.
There are four lean concept countermeasures to help combat defects.
First, find the defect that happens the most often and focus your attention on it.
Second, create a process that detects abnormalities and don't pass defects down the production line.
Third, redesign the process to reduce defects.
Fourth, standardize your work, which is a principle of lean called 5S, to ensure consistency throughout the process.
8. Skills: Wasted Potential
The 8th and final waste is the waste of unused human talent and ingenuity.
This happens when companies separate the role of management from employees.
It's nearly impossible to improve a process without tapping into the frontline worker's knowledge and expertise. "The people doing the work are the ones who are most capable of identifying problems and developing solutions for them."
In the office, wasted potential could include inadequate training, not asking employees for feedback, placing employees in positions below their skills, and ineffective management and leadership.
A lean manufacturing example could be poor training, employees not knowing how to use the equipment, using the wrong tools, and when employees aren't challenged to develop ideas to improve the work.
The only way to eliminate wasted potential is to see the waste and begin to eliminate it.
The second lean thinking pillar is every person must continuously improve everything.
A lean concept is you must continuously improve everything, every day.
It's worth repeating, Lean is about eliminating waste and continuous improvement.
It's about approaching everything in your life to make things simpler.
Yes, it's okay! Your life can be simpler.
Humans LOVE to make things complex. It's the complexity bias, a logical fallacy that leads us to give more importance to complex systems.
The best way to overcome your complexity bias is through Occam's razor, which "suggests that the simplest solution or explanation is usually the correct one."
Go figure!
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. — Confucius"
By focusing your life on making things simpler, your quality of life will instantly improve.
Be ruthless in cutting out waste.
If it takes you an hour to do something, ask yourself, how can you cut that in half and do it in thirty minutes. It's not the run around with your head cut off, frantic thirty minutes. It's thirty minutes of ease because you eliminated the eight kinds of waste.
You'll continue until your initial hour goes from 60, 30, 15, to 7 minutes.
Lean is the art of subtraction, not addition.
Toyota never attempts to remove the waste out of any process unless they can cut it in half.
The first step in reducing waste is to become intimate with the eight kinds of waste and have an effective process for identifying them.
First, ask yourself, "What is it that we're trying to do for the customer here? What value are we trying to flow to the customer?"
Continue to ask yourself, "Is the activity that I'm doing delivering value to the customer—or is it just a process that's been added on? Am I trying to eliminate waste even though the process is delivering no value?"
You don't want to do anything unless you're delivering value to the customer.
The next step is to ask yourself, "What bugs me about this process? What takes too much time?"
Start to document the eight wastes in your processes and develop a plan for eliminating or reducing them. Remember, focus on the areas you can reduce by half.
Lean is built upon a daily commitment, which is why your days are organized around the 5Ss of Lean:
Sort: sort everything and remove what's not needed to do the job at hand. Get rid of all the clutter and junk.
Straighten: prioritize and organize your tools, so everything has a place and everything in its place.
Shine: a clean environment improves morale and makes it easier for you to identify equipment deterioration and/or malfunctions.
Standardize: build a consensus for best practices that everyone understands what to expect and what's expected of them.
Sustain: find a way to keep the changes in place. This becomes much easier if everything has a place, and every place has a thing.
All of this can become overwhelming. The goal isn't to flood you or your team with lean thinking information.
Lean will turn into Mean.
To get maximum buy-in from your team, start with simplicity. Lower the barriers. It should be ridiculously easy for you to begin executing these lean concepts.
Paul Akers of FastCap explained in his book 2 Second Lean, that he asked his people just to give him "a single 2-second improvement a day."
Can you and your team find 2-second improvements every day? Of course, you can.
Don't look at a process in isolation. Interdependencies are your roadblock to cutting waste.
When you start to take the initial look at any process, you have to look at it from a global perspective.
Most processes have interdependencies (or handoffs) that require other things from other people and teams. Often, handoffs are a crucial area for waste, but the changes you make to a process could negatively impact someone else.
If you can reduce a process from sixty minutes to thirty minutes, but it adds forty-five minutes to someone else, you're delegating and deferring waste to someone else.
Don't be that person!
In my company, the sales and purchasing teams were optimizing departmental procedures. They made some significant changes to their silos.
Over time the new procedures added countless hours to the warehouse team's daily processes and became highly inefficient.
What was an improvement in one area was a disaster in another.
You must look at a process globally and how interdependencies impact everyone.
The process itself might be waste.
As I mentioned, Toyota doesn't try to remove the waste unless it can reduce it by half.
You shouldn't try to reduce a small amount of waste from a particular step, as the step itself might be the waste.
If you ask yourself, what would happen if we removed this step, and it wouldn't impact the client or an interdependent team member, why are you doing it?
You can remove all the waste out of a process, but if the process itself doesn't deliver value to the client, then it's likely waste. A clear example of over-processing.
To continuously improve everything, ask yourself,
Is the activity that I'm doing delivering value to the customer?
Is it just a process that's been added on?
Am I trying to eliminate waste even though the process is delivering no value?
Become keenly aware that you don't do something unless it delivers value to the client.
Build a lean culture that embraces the principles of lean.
To succeed, these lean concepts must become apart of your culture, whether that's at work or home.
Building a Lean culture requires you to standardize and simplify everything.
First, leave everything better than you found it. If you do that, then everything is continuously improving.
Second, have a deep respect for other people.
Paul Akers gives a great example, the toilet. "Simple things like leaving the toilet seat down is a basic courtesy that shows respect for others. When you leave everything better than you found it, you are naturally cleaning up after yourself, and therefore, making things better for others, which is a sign of respect for others."
Third, create a standard that is accessible to everyone.
For my company, we have a standard procedure that is the ultimate example of how a Lean procedure should be executed, which everyone can go-to as a source of inspiration and guidance.
To build a Lean culture, you must first improve,
the individual.
the process.
the product.
It's a common mistake most companies make. They focus 90% on the process and 10% on the people when it should be the other way around.
Developing your team is a daily requirement, and "every employee is oriented every day they come to work," suggests Paul Akers.
Paul's team spends the first hour of their day sweeping, sorting and standardizing.
This sets the standard that Lean Thinking is the most crucial part of the day.
For something to stick, you must S-I-R it,
SET the expectation.
INSPECT the expectation.
REINFORCE the expectation.
This is where management by walking around plays a crucial part in Lean. Sitting in your office, pounding at a keyboard won't drive a lean culture.
Ask your team,
"What's your improvement for today?"
"What are you working on?"
It won't always be easy. People will get stuck. That's okay.
When people make mistakes, they become better problem solvers in the process.
They have to think about how to resolve the problem and avoid it in the future.
"In order to do Lean correctly, you must trust that the system will produce the desired outcome. Even if you hit a pothole (or rabbit) along the way, the number one way people learn is by making mistakes."
When someone gets stuck, assist them in finding a 2-second improvement. Then, reinforce that behavior by celebrating the improvements in team meetings or internal messaging systems.
Finally, the last step in building a Lean culture is realizing; you're dealing with humans.
Each person brings their unique genius and personality to the table. Tap into their uniqueness. You don't want a company or culture filled with a bunch of sameness.
To succeed with these principles of lean, then measure what matters.
As mentioned in the previous section, which bears repeating, you must set the expectation, inspect the expectation, and reinforce the expectation to develop a lean culture.
One of the best ways to do this is by developing Objectives and Key Results for your teams and individual team members and publishing critical KPI dashboards.
It's important to note that every person must continuously improve everything, every day.
Objectives are what you want to accomplish.
Key Results are concrete, specific, and measurable. Or, as 15Five puts it, "they should describe how you will accomplish the objective and measure whether you are on track, behind, or at risk of accomplishing an objective."
Finding 2-second improvement every day is apart of the culture, but setting OKRs for significant Lean initiatives helps keep everyone focused on the same quarterly mission.
At Skylink, many of our processes have been overcome by waste, so we set our quarterly theme as "Lean Thinking." Each department and team member has OKRs to improve a critical process by 50%.
Measure what matters.
Use great questions to start thinking lean.
Great answers start with great questions, and these lean concepts are no different.
Here are a few great questions you and your team can ask yourselves every day.
What's your improvement for today?
What are you working on?"
What are the eight wastes, and which ones can you see in the process you are doing right now?
What bugs you?
Is everything perfect? You wouldn't change a single thing?
How would you fix this?
What is it that we're trying to do for the customer here?
What value are we trying to flow to the customer?
What is it that I need to improve?
Where is my waste?
What do you see?
What am I missing?
I have a core value in my life, which has bled over into by businesses. It's quality over quantity, which leads to doing more with less.
Our lives are consumed with more. More this, more that, more, more, more, but as Lean has taught us, more is waste.
Every day we have to be ruthless in cutting the waste from our lives to live our best life without the garbage.
If you want to improve your quality of life, seek the principles of lean in everything you do.
