DailyKaizen

I spent the last four days on the beautiful Olympic National Park coastline watching rolling waves come to shore, whales chasing salmon, and long walks to reflect.  The last four or five months have been moving at a crazy, exciting, and often overwhelming pace and it felt really good to get away. 

One of the things I spent a lot of time during my walks on the beach was reflecting on my own development and how I can do a better job moving forward balancing my many different work objectives.  Over the last year I have been wearing a lot of hats and am often not sure if any of them fit quite right.  I am currently a manager of a consulting team, a project director (whatever that means) over the Model Line work as well as a Lean consultant working on the Model Line.  I love the fact that my work is so diverse, but there are a lot of things I need to get better at.  Mainly, I need to practice what I preach.  Here is my thoughts on what I need to do better from a Lean perspective:

First, I need to spend more time with my team in the Gemba.  I have often gotten caught up in my own consulting projects and have not spent sufficient time understanding the work that my employees are working on.  I am always telling my clients that they need to spend more time with their direct reports, well so do I!

Second, I need to learn how to say no better.  I have far to many pieces of work in progress, which leads me to cut corners and not do them at the level of quality that should be required. 

Third, we need to invest more time as a consulting team putting in place standard work and visual management systems.  We have made progress in this area over the last couple of months, but we have a long way to go.  We spend a lot of time telling others to follow work, its about time we do as well.

Finally, and most importantly I need to ask more questions and make less statements.  I am coaching a lot of leaders and consultants right now and as time become less and less available I have often cut corners by telling other what to do as opposed to helping them get to the answer through thoughtful questioning.  Thus for short-term relief I have compromised long-term learning.  I need to show those I work with respect and allow them to come to the answers through their own thinking and not mine.  This is the most important improvement I need to make.