Plagued by a vague feeling that I wasn’t achieving, but with no proof available either way there were only two choices. I could stick to the plan, find ways to motivate myself and focus on moving forwards in blind faith or I could choose to do nothing, knowing I was making a deliberate choice not to move forwards. Without external feedback, there is no false hope that by some miracle, changes would happen. There is only following the process, or not.
To these leaders, the message is simple. If we waited for others to be doing improvement as a condition for us to do improvement, we would never do improvement. We can only improve ourselves and our own processes and set an example for others. How do we encourage others to improve? By setting the example.
If it wasn’t for this two month commitment to focusing on process, it is unlikely that I would have come to this conclusion. I would have measured my results, found them wanting, reset and just carried on and on, not getting into the details of why I wasn’t succeeding.
Our family recently took a big step on the path to living a more intentional life by purchasing a small piece of land in an out of the way town […]
Without a strong Why for change I believe it’s easy for the part of our brain that prefers comfort, rest and a lack of discomfort of any kind to convince us that our need for change is much less urgent that our need to eat, sleep or watch TV.
The beauty of this tool is that it helps teams to develop all the parts of a process at once, so that measuring and managing is considered at the same time as developing processes and writing procedures. It's also easily communicated to multiple process users, making it much easier to achieve a standard approach.
Motivation is constantly slipping away from us. Sometimes staying motivated is as difficult as picking up the spilled jelly my four year old has dropped on the dining table. You just can’t seem to get a grip on it no matter how hard you try, it just slides through your fingers.
The lean world is fairly divided on the legitimacy of 8th Waste - the waste of untapped human potential. To me it’s pretty clear that if you’re following the principles of respect for people, it’s very hard for this waste to exist and in fact, it’s not really waste, it’s just a sign that your fundamentals aren’t in place yet.
What’s interesting is that on a regular basis we have found that the solution to achieving better flow and simplicity in our house has often been a piece of furniture leaving our possession.
Whether it’s at home or at work, having lots of stuff does not necessarily mean its the right stuff. In fact, too much stuff leads to all kinds of inefficiencies […]
the lean minimalist 