Ten lean behaviours
Go Home Go to Lean Transformation
"Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think" Martin Seligman, father of positive psychology.
To be lean is not necessary to work in companies that apply their methods, anyone can develop a personal level with effort and observation, and apply it to their daily lives. (Although the practice will lead you to them and therefore the experience is a help.)
The ten behaviors are the result of applying some of the principles contained in the book "The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey Liker to a personal level. Instead of ‘mission’, we can substitute the word by ‘project’, ‘plan’ or ‘target’.
1. Spend your time on activities that add value, contributing to your mission. First of all, you have to know and write your mission, target.
2. Incorporate people into your mission, which will help you in your goal. Teamworking and respect. You can feel any day involved to the mission of another one, and the roles will swap.
3. Adopt an attitude of continuous improvement (Kaizen). The goal is to feel that the aphorism "I know more today than yesterday and less than tomorrow" is true in your case.
4. Be aware of your restrictions for success: family situations, your weaknesses, your faults ... you should control them. There is a book that is a bestseller with a similar idea on the subject of enterprise, "the Goal" by Goldratt.
5. Keep your environment and resources clean and tidy. Apply the "5S".
6. Schedule your activities and strive to meet deadlines. Monitor the timing and results of your tasks, without which you will not improve. Planning will also help you to be proactive and know your risks.
7. When confronted with a problem or error, stop and solve it. Another way to explain this would be: recover your mood, restore hope and energy to regain balance.
8. Standardize your work. Describe your activities to achieve the mission.
9. Observe your surroundings and yourself: your reactions and those of others.
10. Create flow: to take action only when you need. Do not generate too much work, study ... you are creating waste that does not add value to the mission. To develop a project and have it become successful, you must know when you should adopt a pull attitude and not a push attitude.
I wish to develop more the concept of flow. One of the successes of FC.Barcelona when Cruyff was the trainer, according to his words, was that players enjoyed playing, even in physical training the aim was "fun". Football can not be compared to a work, but to create flow, being optimistic, etc ... you should enjoy working.
Reading the site, you will find some ideas to get these habits. You can also get a short introduction to meditation, a very useful tool to restore power after the "stress" of being lean.
"The notion that we can enjoy unlimited success or live without any emotional pain or failure may be an inspiring ideal, but it is not a principle by which to lead one's life, since in the long run it leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness" Tal Ben-Shahar (This and subsequent references are from the book The Pursuit of Perfect)