Last week I wrote about the difficulty people have in unplugging from their email:
I've preached the gospel of setting aside uninterrupted work time to my clients, but with limited success. Environmental factors -- among them, the (perceived) need to seem immediately responsive, the fear of missing an urgent email, the desire to have one's direct reports jump when called -- and long-established work habits overwhelm the new ideas.
So what is to be done?
That's not a simple question to answer. There are many ways to improve the situation, depending on your particular work environment, your particular work requirements, and -- most importantly -- your idiosyncratic personal needs.
“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought” – Michael Crichton
NY Times columnist Tom Friedman looks forward to it. The VP of product development at a large software company looks forward to it. My wife looks forward to it. So do a host of other businesspeople. Despite the TSA check-in hassle, the cramped seats, the lousy service, and the inevitable delays, all these folks -- and probably you, too -- look forward to business travel. And it ain't for the free pretzels.
It's for the hours of uninterrupted work time. No cell phones, no email, no pop-ins to see if you if you want to join the baby shower for Laura in the break room. It's remarkable how much work people seem to get done during this time -- and how much they treasure it.
If it's so important and so rewarding, why do we find it so difficult to make that time for ourselves (and our colleagues) during the work day? Why do we foster environments in which interruptions are the norm, while the uninterrupted blocks of quiet work time are rarer than a Coelacanth?
Due to some hectic travel this past week, I didn't have time to write one of my long, elegant, beautifully reasoned blog posts. However, Mark Graban, a good friend of this blog and a mentor of mine, has done a wonderful job of making me sound moderately intelligent with a podcast on his website. Check it out here.
And if you'd rather read than listen, Simpleology is running an article I wrote on three things you can do to help you focus on what's really important. (Hint: it's not checking email.) Simpleology is an interesting site with some wonderful tools and advice to help you crawl out of the morass of your day. It's worth poking around for awhile.
Now, go out and vote.
Poor Dan Brown. He's the "5S Cop" at Kyocera, responsible for hounding employees into compliance with the company's "Perfect 5S" policies. Unfortunately, the way Kyocera implements 5S is, in the words of Mark Graban, more LAME than Lean.
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured a disappointingly credulous and simplistic article on Kyocera's 5S initiative that completely missed the fact that what Kyocera is doing is not, in fact, 5S. It's obnoxious, anal-retentive rule enforcement that breeds resentment, frustration, and cynicism among workers.
5S is a philosophy and an organizational tool to improve efficiency by reducing waste in the workspace. It is not simply neatness for the sake of neatness. But you know you've got problems when Kyocera policy
One-piece flow (or single-piece flow) is one of the core concepts of lean manufacturing. The idea is that we should produce one item at a time, when the customer needs it. This concept stands in opposition to batch-and-queue production, in which we make a whole bunch of one thing, then make a bunch of the next thing, etc. A lean car factory might make one green Corolla, then one blue Camry, then one red Yaris, for example, while a mass production factory would make 100 black Wranglers, then 100 purple Cherokees. For many reasons, it's way more efficient to run the factory the first way rather than the second.
But while batch-and-queue production isn't the best way to run a factory, in many respects it is the best way for you to work. Why? Because unlike the single-task machines on a production line, you perform many types of operations: talking on the phone, writing emails, building spreadsheets, reviewing proposals, solving a problem with one of your colleagues, dunking Krispy Kremes in your latte, etc. The need (and ability) to do so many types of things makes you a "monument machine."
Today's post is a question that I'm grappling with, rather than an answer (or any theoretically profound advice).
As I've written about before (here and here), 5S is fundamental to a lean transformation. A lot of people who wear more expensive suits than I do would probably go further, and say that it's the most important step: without the discipline of 5S embedded within the workplace, there's no hope of creating a sustainable improvement.
A very thought-provoking quote from Toyota's president, Katuaki Watanabe in HBR (via Mark Graban, via The Association Renewal blog):
There’s no genius in our company. We just do whatever we believe is right, trying every day to improve every little bit and piece. But when 70 years of very small improvements accumulate, they become a revolution.
In lean terms, there are two kinds of improvement. The familiar one is kaizen, which refers to steady but incremental improvement. The other is kaikaku, which means revolution, or radical improvement.
Kaizen is boring and laborious. Kaikaku is sexy and exciting. Kaizen is your spouse of 15 years. Kaikaku is the smoking hot blonde on the barstool next to you.
Value stream mapping (VSM) is a Lean technique used to analyze the flow of materials and information required to bring a product or service to a consumer. Companies use VSM to help them identify and eliminate waste and inefficiency in a process. If you've ever wondered why it takes four weeks for your company to reimburse your travel expenses, or why you have to give your bank account number to a customer service rep after you've already keyed it in on your phone, you're looking at processes that could seriously benefit from value stream mapping.
Long-time readers of this blog understand the connection I draw between Lean manufacturing and methods for making knowledge workers more efficient. A key element of lean is the elimination of waste in all forms -- from the trivial (the waste of paper clips) to the major (the waste of repairing defective products) to the tragic (the waste of human potential).
A recent interview with Professor John Kotter in strategy+business highlights just how important the elimination of waste really is. In talking about Lou Gerstner's early days at IBM, Kotter says,
I often see people at their desks, struggling to make progress on their large projects. Every time they hunker down to start working on one, they get pulled away by something more urgent ("Hurry! The boss needs you to change the spreadsheet font to Geneva!"), and they don't get back to the project. Or they despair at the enormity or complexity of the project, and they don't get started at all. Or they haven't clearly defined the specific steps involved in driving the project to a successful conclusion, and they wallow in a morass of ambiguity, unable to make any progress. In so doing, they're dooming themselves to a (metaphorical) all-nighter right before the project is due -- and imposing a real burden on their coworkers.
As I've said many times before, you're on a production line every bit as real as one in a Toyota plant. Except that you're not making cars; you're making ideas. (Carbon neutral, and with much better gas mileage.) And this is no way to run a production line.
I see it all the time, and you probably do, too: workers complaining that they can't get everything done. They have too many projects, too many tasks, too many emergencies that need to be handled. The result? They're stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed. They miss dinner with their families. They work on weekends. They miss milestones. And inevitably, some of their work responsibilities just drop off the radar and don't get done.
In lean terms, this is called muri. Literally, muri means "impossible" or "unreasonable." In the context of lean production, muri takes on the meaning of "overburden," as in asking workers to do too much in too little time, or making them comply with onerous policies or practices, or not giving them the tools or the staff to accomplish their work. (Here are two excellent and more detailed descriptions of muri: 1, 2)
Lee Gomes, one of the technology columnists for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a piece last week pleading for the next president to avoid spending too much time on a computer. He poses a succinct, powerful question that all of use would do well to consider: Does anyone who spends all day in front of a PC, forging a river of data posing as information, have any time to think?
He relates the following story:
A group of technology reporters once received the CEO of a midsize, low-tech company eager to impress his listeners with his connectedness. He described his day as one long session checking emails and news alerts, save for the occasional interruption of a staff meeting or a sales call.
The NYTimes reported that Barack Obama met Tory leader David Cameron during his visit to England last week. Cameron asked Obama if he will be taking any time off for a vacation this summer:
Mr. Cameron: Do you have a break at all?
Mr. Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be ...
Mr. Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.
Mr. Obama: Right. ... In 15 minute increments and ...
As I've written about many times before, one of the principles of lean manufacturing is making work visible. Of course, on a production line it's easy to see the toaster go past your station. It's not always so easy for the knowledge worker, whose work goes by in a blast of bits and bytes. But it's no less important. Seeing the flow of the value stream enables you to plan your work, spot places where things are going awry, and focus more clearly on the ultimate goal. This point was made abundantly clear in a recent profile of Steve Schmidt, who recently took charge of John McCain's presidential campaign.
The Wall Street Journal describes Schmidt as a hard-driving, intense man (Sgt. Schmidt is his nickname), who makes everything visible:
I've squandered countless electrons on this blog presenting ideas for working more efficiently. And yet, for all the time I've invested in these posts and in one-on-one coaching of clients, making real, sustainable, behavioral change is difficult. No matter how simple the concepts, getting people to work differently -- to change their behaviors -- is not easy. Let's face it: if it were, there'd be no fat people waddling into Cold Stone Creamery for a triple scoop of Rocky Road ice cream with Milk Duds mixed in.
But what if the key to behavioral change lies in the marketing of the new habits, and changing the environment, rather than in simply teaching the habits themselves?
An article in the NYTimes last week discussed the challenge that Dr. Val Curtis, an anthropologist, faced in getting residents of Ghana to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Her goal was to reduce the spread of diseases and disorders (like diarrhea) caused by dirty hands.
"Standard Work" is one of the key principles of lean, because it helps to eliminate waste and allows problems to be identified quickly. Knowledge workers often bristle at the notion that their complex and highly variable jobs can be described by standard work. But as I've written before, much of the variability and complexity that we assume is intrinsic to our jobs isn't. With a bit of creativity (here, for example), we can begin to create standard work for many of the processes that we didn't think could be standardized.
I just got back from Germany, where I spoke to the European subsidiary of a large U.S. manufacturing company. The audience was composed of both individual contributors and managing directors, and although the speech was well received, it was clear that the managing directors were a bit disappointed: they wanted me to talk more about big-picture strategic issues, rather than on the mundane details of keeping their desks clean, or dealing with emails, or managing meetings.
I could understand their feelings -- they figured that the banality of keeping their desks clean and their inboxes empty had little or nothing to do with the challenges they face on a daily basis. (How do we winnow down the 153 product initiatives we're considering? How do we raise revenue per employee? Should we exit a market we've been in for 15 years but that has diminishing profit potential?)
Yesterday's NYTimes featured an article addressing the steps that some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google, and I.B.M., are taking to stanch the overwhelming flood of email. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge.
And why are they taking this step?
Their effort comes as statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused.
The big chip maker Intel found in an eight-month internal study that some employees who were encouraged to limit digital interruptions said they were more productive and creative as a result.
James Surowiecki of The New Yorker recently wrote about Toyota's astonishing success since the end of World War II. Central to his article is the Japanese concept of kaizen, or incremental improvement. As he describes it,
