The huge benefit of the giant Corona jolt
In effect it is a continuous process of removing waste by a combination of critical thinking and continuous improvement.
The biggest impediment to a lean process is always the mind set of those who need to change in order to reap the benefits. Change is really hard, especially when the existing state is comfortable. It usually takes a jolt of some sort to gain any sort of traction. There have been times when I have applied that jolt myself, as a means to remove complacency.
However, we are currently in the middle of a giant jolt delivered by the bug, which should have created the greatest potential for lean traction I have seen in many years.
A lean process will progressively remove any activity that does not add value to the end customer, and seek to compress the time it takes to deliver that value.
In other words, if it is essential it stays, non essential, it is on the list to be dumped.
Suddenly we are all looking at the services we saw as part of life and re-evaluating them with the question: ‘Is that essential, how does it add value?’
We are involuntarily applying a critical eye to everything we do, seeking to identify and line up for removal, anything that is not essential, that is just consuming time and resources for little or no value.
To use lean parlance, the ‘Current state’ as it was pre Corona is recognised as no longer an option, and we are by necessity experimenting with the elements we need to survive commercially. In that process, will seek to understand how the ‘Future state’ might look. In every case, you can make some assumptions, and apply them as guiding principles to the things you are considering.
For example, will it be part of the ‘future state’ for office workers to commute, often multiple hours a day, to sit in expensive offices in a CBD to do their work? For the last 20 years, despite the amazing communication tools suddenly available, it has been for most. The dominating management culture, mostly the child of old white guys like me, who substituted a bum in a seat for useful outcomes, said it was so.
This current experiment with remote working has demonstrated the nonsense of this formerly dominating view. We do need however, to substitute the humanity of the casual conversation and social networks built from personal contact.
We can save ourselves a lot of time and money by working from home, partly from home, or perhaps decentralised mini-offices. Reducing commuting time is like reducing machine changeover time: it releases capacity otherwise being wasted. For no cost beyond a change of mindset and perhaps a few modest enabling tools, we can free up huge amounts of potentially productive time.
Ask yourself the Question; ‘how much time per person can we save by the removal of the necessity to commute’? When you have answered it, ask if there was a better way, for the people concerned, and the stakeholders in your business, to have spent that time.
Header photo courtesy Dominic Freeman
