Lean Thinking

The image and metaphor we like to convey a key thinking mistake and opportunity is the sport of relay racing.

 

Consider the relay racers standing around waiting for the baton from their running colleague. The accountant in the finance department, looking aghast at this terrible underutilization ‘waste’ indicated in some report, would probably mandate a policy goal of “95% utilization of resources” to ensure all the racers are busy and ‘productive.’ Maybe—he suggests—the runners could run three races at the same time to increase “resource utilization,” or run up a mountain while waiting.

 

Funny…but this kind of thinking lies behind much of traditional management and processes in development and other domains.

 

Of course, in contrast, here is a central idea in lean thinking: Watch the baton, not the runners

Results

Results… are the outcome of a process. What we want are good results from a controlled process because they will be repeatable. Bad results from an uncontrolled process simply mean that we’re not doing our job. Good results from an uncontrolled process…only mean we’re lucky. Today, a bad result from a controlled process just says that we’re stupid: We expect different results from doing the same thing over again.