An application of Occam’s Razor to all the fluff and consulting clichés around lean thinking and implementation, brings lean back to its simplest form possible.
It has only 2 elements.
Learn to see waste.
Once you teach yourself to observe the waste in a process, you see it everywhere, from the big things in your work life, to the simple things. Ever lose your car keys at home? It takes some time and frustration as you try and remember where you left them? Waste. Put a hook, or bowl, or have specific place that you deliberately put your keys in every time you walk in the door, and you will not lose them again. After a short time, it becomes an automatic action. Fail to do it one day, and the frustration at the wasted time and effort in finding them comes home big time.
Eliminate waste by continuous improvement.
Once seen, take some action that reduces the waste. In the keys example above, it may be that you try the hook, but from time to time, you come into the house with armfuls of shopping. It is hard to reach a hook with an armful of shopping, so you adjust by putting a bowl on the hall table specifically for the keys, which is waist height, so more accessible. In time, it may be that one set of keys near the front door adds extra walking when you need to go out the back door, so you add a specific back door key to a bowl next to the back door.
Continuous improvement, to everything you do.
Incrementally improving a range of these small things, bit by bit, creates momentum and delivers compounding results.
Everyone knows about the race to the South Pole between Scott and Amundsen. They also know that Amundsen won the race, and lived to talk about it, while Scott and all his party perished. What few know is the manner in which the two parties attacked the challenge. There were significant differences in the logistic tactics used by each party, and many played a role in the eventual outcome, but one is not always quoted in the literature, which may have played a key, but little understood role. ‘Continuous compounding’
Amundsen broke camp each day early, and was travelling by dawn, and every day, he covered 15 nautical miles (28km) sleet, blizzard, or sunshine. At that point he made camp, even if it was still early in the day, preserving the stamina of his men and dogs. This created a rhythm that converted to momentum, every day getting closer to the goal, to win the race and return safely.
Scott did neither.
By contrast he made a choice each day, to hunker down in bad weather, or at the other extreme, travel 30 miles, or more, creating no cadence or momentum to the task of achieving the twin goals. There are many other ‘lean’ lessons in the race that are relevant. For example, Amundsen used dogs, which could eat the abundant penguin and seal meat collected on the way. Scott used ponies, which required much more looking after as they sweat with effort, and eat only the grain that had to be hauled.
Little things removed, add up very quickly to big things, and when combined with organisational cadence, create momentum.
How long would it take for you to change a tyre on your car? 20 minutes? an hour? 2 hours after waiting for the NRMA to turn up?
The F1 record for four tyres is 1.8 seconds. Over the course of a race, often won or lost by hundredths of seconds, a few tenths several times during the race can mean the difference between a podium, and a straggler. All the F1 titleholders have done is remove waste, and work as a team, with a few tools to automate the repetitive actions.
‘Lean thinking’ has been turned into a complex toolbox by many, requiring expensive services to implement. However, in its most basic form, it is really just critical thinking, common sense, and simplicity.
Header photo credit: Tim Chong
