Did you ever look forward to Christmas as a child or some other wonderful event? The building excitement. The deliciousness of knowing a special time of treats and holidays was approaching. Even as an adult, the approach of the holiday season creates a unique sense of anticipation.

I am lucky enough to experience that same feeling of wonderful times approaching in my daily work. Over the last year, our operational leadership team has been working hard with all our team members on a project that has so far resulted in the reduction of over ten days of work in progress. We are almost at the end of the first stage of our long term project to make tomorrow what we sold today. It’s been an exceptionally motivating project and the team here has done a fantastic job.

As we have gotten closer and closer to the end of the first stage, our team has started talking about what happens next and which areas of the process will be worked on next. The resulting plan is so exciting that we all feel like something wonderful is just around the corner. We can imagine how much better things will be as we work on and achieve our new goals and can’t wait to get started.

The rewards of lean thinking are so much more than just those realised on the bottom line. The effect on morale, motivation and culture can be staggering.

Do you have any exciting lean projects in the wind? I’d love to hear about them.

Published by the lean minimalist

Donna Sherriff is a New Zealand based improvement and operations management specialist. Seeing a need for simple, no fuss, improvement advice she started The Lean Minimalist blog in 2017. Donna writes articles offering advice and tips for rapid and sustainable business improvement based on over 15 years in Senior Management roles. Passionate about sharing the lessons of over 20 years on the high performance track Donna offers coaching services to professionals. She also writes about her own personal improvement journey, minimalism, and her life long struggle against the tyranny of cookies and sugar which she overcame in 2020. These days, Donna is pursuing a journey to earn her black belt in Taekwondo after a long hiatus of 16 years away from training. On the side she is an amateur but passionate musician and poet. View all posts by the lean minimalist