Experts Weigh In

“As CEO of my company I have a grasp of lean and have experienced it in my career, but now that I’m CEO, I find it difficult to ask my people to make time for improvement work. They’re already completely busy doing their regular work. Moreover, this company is in the outdoor sports industry, and many people join these companies because they want time to climb, backpack, canoe, etc., and I’m reluctant to ask them to work more hours and sacrifice time for these activities. Any advice?” - via TheLeanEdge.org

“The time to do kaizen is staring you in the face. Check your assumptions.”

“The CEO does not ask people to make time for improvement. The CEO sets a vision. The people convert the vision into aligned improvement activities and targets.”

Read his entire post here

“…it’s a matter of priorities… funny how we don’t have time to make improvements, but we have plenty of time to perform work inefficiently and keep resolving the same problems over and over. Ultimately, I believe it’s a matter of choice, will, and belief in a better tomorrow.”

Make improvement small (don’t pick huge projects to start)

Read his entire post here

“How can we level the workload of time we spend on improvement? The answer is by smoothing it out and doing a little bit everyday (15 minutes).”

“… many small, rapid iterations are more effective then a big blast of implementing and trying to absorb a mountain of information.”

Read his entire post here

“If the workforce isn’t conditioned to see it, waste becomes the norm and that is where your time truly lies.”

“Leaders have to be taught to lead in a way that recognizes those hidden nuggets out there as the conduit to recondition the mindsets of team members at all levels to see lean as developing the people to see find the “coveted time” in the form of wastes.”

Read her entire post here

“Sorry, but answering e-mail, texting, sitting in meetings, sorting, reworking, answering phones, etc. are not all value added work. They are wasteful and can be curtailed immediately or reduced without much effort or additional activity. People go on vacation and work still gets done all the time right? You find time. You make time if necessary.”

Read his entire post here

“Time is relative, what they don’t have is called priority, and Kaizen is not their priority. People who understand the benefit of Kaizens, make them a priority. They make time to exclusively devote to these activities.”

Read his entire post here

“If you want to do it you will find the time.” People seem to want that level of thinking, “just give me the simple fix to my problem”. If you want to find the solution to your problem and you put in the time and effort, you can find a way. If you just want to find a reason to avoid something, that is easy. Just say “No thank you”. At least that is an honest choice!”

Read his entire post here

“We only have 24 hours in a day. We each generally choose to work only X hours. Of those X hours, we’d hopefully be able to spend some time on continuous improvement or Kaizen, otherwise we are a rat who never gets off that spinning wheel. We can let “We don’t have time” be an excuse or we can pose that as a problem to solve. How can we make time? If it’s important, we’ll find a way to make time.”

Read his entire post here

• “… compared to resting on your oars, or milling around aimlessly, kaizen is difficult.

• As Dave suggests, it’s much more honest for a person, or an organization to simply say, “No, thanks. This is too hard.”

• Which begs another question: Is TPS/Lean for everybody?”

Read his entire post here

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