Several years ago, when we were in the middle of the baby and young toddler years, we decided to try to refinance our home. Part of that process was having a complete home appraisal where someone actually comes in and documents your home and then decides how much it’s worth, or at least how much they think it’s worth. We prepared as best we could for this: we cleaned, we organized, we picked up everything we could see. We wanted to present our home in the best light possible, and we were pretty proud of what we’d accomplished.
Once complete, we received a copy of the appraisal report - which was several thousand dollars below what we needed. While the results of the appraisal were disappointing, nothing prepared us for what we saw when we looked at that report. When we looked at the pictures he had taken and finally saw our home through someone else’s eyes, we were shocked. There was stuff EVERYWHERE. Piles we had ceased to see years ago, clutter we had failed to notice for a VERY long time. To be totally honest, it was REALLY embarrassing. It was also eye opening.
How in the world could we not SEE what was sitting right there in front of us?
We set out at that point to try and tackle all the seen and unseen junk in our home.
In retrospect, as I thought about this experience, I realized that this unseeing of junk (or waste) is what the entire Lean process is trying to fix. At the heart of the Lean process is breaking down our processes into ‘steps’, then identifying which steps are ‘non-value added waste’. These ‘waste’ or ‘junk’ steps are hindering ourselves and our employees. Just like those piles of clutter around my house, most of this waste becomes so ingrained in what we are doing every day that we don’t even notice them anymore, much less identify them as junk. What Lean set out to do was identify and eliminate that junk so that workers can focus on the pieces of the process that do matter and stop wasting time, money and resources on activities that don’t add value to the product.
Sounds pretty easy and straightforward.
So WHY is it so hard to implement? Why has it taken nearly 100 years since Deming and Toytoa started developing these tools and processes for some people to understand how to implement them?
It’s because we can’t see the waste unless we train ourselves to look at everything differently. Just like those piles and all the clutter that we had stopped ‘seeing’ in our home, everything we do at home and in business is defined by a process that we’ve done over and over and over again. We are so used to how it ‘is’ that we don’t question ‘why’ we do it that way or if we really ‘should’ do it that way. Every one of these processes have steps and pieces that make no sense or could be done better if they need to be done at all -- steps that are just ‘junk’ getting in our way to being more productive.
However, unless we look at those processes in a different light -- we have no hope of ever seeing the junk that is there.
This is the heart of Lean thinking: Evaluate your process, actually see and acknowledge the non-value-added parts of it, then get rid of those wasteful parts. This makes the entire process smoother, and generally more time efficient. This applies equally in a factory, in a restaurant, in a department store, in a pet grooming facility, or in any other business or process in life.
I know you are thinking ‘that’s all fine and good for your manufacturing processes, but I don’t really have any processes in my business’.
Sorry friends, but you do. Your clients are onboarded with a process, they are billed and payments are collected with a process, your notes and documents are filed (or not filed) with a process, you check and respond to emails with a process, you close out your monthly financials with a process. How you obtain and maintain your equipment and tools is a process, how you determine what preventative maintenance is needed and what has been done is a process. These are just a few examples of the processes that abound in our businesses, and I can almost guarantee you that whatever processes you have, there is ‘junk’ in all of them. It’s a human thing to do.
But here’s my hypothesis: If we look at all of these processes in a different light and in a different way and find and eliminate all the ‘junk’ in them, we will find time and freedom we never thought possible.
How do we do that? I’m so glad you asked. This is exactly what I’m setting out to do with my business and this blog. I’m hoping to help us all see the ‘junk’ in our businesses (and maybe even our lives) and figure out how to free ourselves from it.
This applies to the physical junk all around us that we can see, but it also applies to all that ‘junk’ we cannot see.
It’s only when we do this that we can unlock our true potential and the true potential of our businesses! I’m excited to see what we can do together!
Let’s make change happen!
Kathryne
