when does anyone start to examine how we do things, to look for inefficiency? If we eliminated that inefficiency, how many hours of unnecessary processing, running around to find things or people, sitting in pointless meetings, etc. etc. could be done away with?
Since I began blogging about ROWE a little while back, I’ve had a few emails from folks who have expressed that they have attempted to introduce ROWE in their own workplaces, only to find supervisors whose minds are closed to the concept (a situation I understand entirely). Typically, the supervisor / manager / business owner will state, even if he or she has bothered to become familiar with the concept is, “That will never work here.” The idea then is discarded, to wither and die on the slag heap of management indifference. Unfortunately, what these folks fail to realize,...
After a long Holiday break – I’m back! I hadn’t planned on letting the blog go for the Holidays, but a lot of good time spent around the house, catching up on unfinished projects and just spending time with the kids, was worth it. On to 2012….. If people are just tools, then any seemingly appropriate tool can be inserted into a process, and the process will run – more or less. (Yes, you can turn screws with a hammer. It’s not the best way – for either the screw or the hammer – but it can be done, even if...
I had a conversation with a seasoned project / program manager the other day, that revealed some fundamental flaws in how people deal with uncertainty, as well as how the failure to embrace constant learning short changes both the individual and the group. A few details have been changed to protect the guilty….. In discussing how to plan for a fairly large and complex engineering development projects, I questioned why the baseline plan in his projects’ detailed schedules were often being done over and overwritten, or only went out a few months (which, inevitably, would be changed every couple...
The focus of improvement, and not just in lean, is in cost reduction and increased cycle time. That focus misses the point entirely, and remains unaware of just how brilliant the Easier, Better, Faster Cheaper methodology - when pursued in that order and that order only, truly is.
My 6-year-old son has show-and-tell at school every Friday. The night before his most recent presetation, I asked him what he wanted to bring to school. He simply said, “Hmmm….I don’t know!” and shrugged his shoulders, waiting for me to give him something he could use. It was then that my improvement genes went into hyperdrive, not to mention my parenting genes, too. “Well, let’s just come up with some ideas.” I told him. “You know, just some brainstorming.” “Umm…geee, I – I really just can’t think of anything.” “Really??” I said, “you have no thoughts at all??” “Well,...
"I Don't Know how" is, usually, a defensive reaction. It's far easier to use ignorance as an excuse for not trying to learn than it is to admit that we might not have the capacity to learn. That, however, might be a matter of self-deception. It's not that we're incapable of learning, it's that we simply don't have enough time to learn what we perceive is needed.
Everyone likes to show off their ability to put their backs into it and come out a winner. In the end, it's all about "Look at me! I am tough, and I can take it." But why do you want to? Any number of organizations have figured out that no one should have to, or want to. From Toyota and its fabled Production System to Best Buy and the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), there are places that have realized that overcoming the "Look what I can do!" aspects of human nature.
Angry Birds, that time-draining app that has spawned a cult phenomenon and a slew of stuffed toys at Walmart, might seem like an odd place to look for wisdom on accomplishing tasks. Nonetheless, the game offers several highly useful examples of how to manage yourself and others in order to get things accomplished:
“Do what you can with what you’ve got wherever you are.” Theodore Roosevelt Those words got me thinking about people who will state that they can’t accomplish something for no reason other than, “I don’t know how.” Ummmm……what? The truth is that the statement is incomplete. The person doesn’t know how to do the task, certainly, but what’s really at issue is that what’s required for the task is a lack of knowledge today. So, all that’s required is a bit of simple curiosity in order to create some ideas as to how the task could be done. It’s important...
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