In the century of teamwork and shared responsibility, we have found ourselves in a world of inefficiency and management dependency. For a while now, business culture has been shaped by a perfectly vertical hierarchical structure. In the recent years, it has started crashing down as over 80% of business teams globally report inefficiency and failure […]
Should we avoid creating tasks that simply can’t have a meaningful definition of “done”? I stumbled upon this dilemma a while ago. It is a logical question, mostly related to agile software development, but it is more than relevant for all sorts of teams. Especially those practicing Lean and Kanban in particular. In the following […]
Lean was developed for delivering products and services with unquestionable value at the right moment to the end customer. To help you with that, the methodology focuses on identifying value-adding steps in your process and minimizing waste activities. Although it sounds pretty simple, there is a question that has been bothering managers and regular team […]
Have you ever experienced burnout at work? The Chances are that you probably have without even knowing it. Occupational burnout has become such a regular occurrence in the lives of knowledge-work professionals, particularly considering today’s ever-increasing demands. Many of us aren’t even aware of how close we might be to burning out, or – worse […]
Part 1 of this article provided some practical tips about the very basis of practicing Lean management – applying the 5 principles of Lean in practice. In part 2, you’ll learn the characteristics of an effective lean team, and how to achieve them. Characteristics of an Effective Lean Team All managers know that there are […]
One of the key benefits of Lean is that teams are largely autonomous and self-organizing. The assumption is that every team member knows what is expected of them and when, and are able to work independently on tasks and deliver quality work with little oversight. However, this basic assumption of autonomy and self-sufficiency does not […]
How does it happen that all living beings, from a single cell organism to a human body, know how to grow, adapt to an environment, simply keep living? Even if each cell is a complex and relatively independent piece of machinery, a synchronization at a higher level (tissues, organs) is achieved by receiving and processing […]
When I was a senior manager, fresh ways to look at old situations were always welcome. Now that I’m a consultant and coach, approaching new situations in a Lean way is a key part of the job! Let me introduce three organisational perspectives that I have found helpful: Right to left Outside in Upside down […]
The term continuous improvement is fairly self-explanatory. It almost seems too simple, but this industry buzzword is about continually improving your business, processes, and way of working. How you go about studying, planning, implementing and evolving that improvement is where it gets more complicated. You need to encourage a philosophy of constant, logical, and sustainable improvement […]
Lean is focused on delivering value to the customer, but never at the expense of the employee. Lean systems believe that empowered employees, treated with respect, are essential for delivering value. This means that the Lean principles not only can be employed by whole companies or whole teams, but can even be adopted at the […]