The Gemba Academy hosted a webinar with Dan Markovitz of TimeBack Management around the topic of his new book, A Factory of One. The book is about applying lean principles to your worklife (and personal) performance. It is particularly relevant for knowledge workers and dovetails nicely with my interests in personal knowledge management and personal effectiveness.
The recorded webinar is available for free until mid-May at Gemba Academy: A Factory of One:
Most people spend all their time applying lean tools to external processes and systems. But what about the fundamental machine of production: you? How can you reap the benefits from applying lean concepts to your own work?
Indeed, you can apply lean principles and tools such as visual management, flow, pull, 5S, and kaizen to your individual work to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and link yourself ever more closely to customer value. While it's true that applying lean at the individual level won't lead to an overnight revolution in organizational performance, it can lead to success stories that make you more effective, and can get your leadership to sit up and pay attention.
Dan Markovitz will share specific strategies from his new book, A Factory of One, that will help you use lean principles to make yourself and your teams more effective.
We will record this webinar and make it available to all registered attendees within 2 business days. The recorded webinar will also be available to all subscribers to the Gemba Academy Complete Lean Package.
The discussion during the webinar sounded very familiar. Take the Lean principles that people apply to organizations and look at your work. (But bon't be LAME and try to 5S your desk.) Make sure that your work makes sense and that you aren't wasting your time - or the time of your colleagues - through misguided policies and practices. Use the tools available to you to improve your situation.
I loved that he said you don't need to ask for permission to improve your own work and practices. Of course, as your improvement ideas expand beyond your direct sphere of control, you need to have conversations with people about how your work together can change to help one another.
I also enjoyed this quote from Phil Libin of Evernote,
We always try to ask whether a particular policy exists because it is a default piece of corporate stupidity that everyone expects you to have, or does it actually help you accomplish something?
I've already added the book to my queue.