All Deadlines are Made Up

Today’s post is going to be short. I have been trying to collect my thoughts on why we tend to look for workarounds rather than use defined processes and I am struggling to collect my thoughts. Hopefully next week I will have it figured out. Here is something for you to think about in the…

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Empowering the Workforce: Navigating the Final Step of Lean Implementation for Continuous Improvement in Knowledge Work

This is the last post defining the four-step process to implement Lean manufacturing principles in knowledge work. The previous posts were defining the workflow, defining the connections, then defining the work of one. The last step is continuous improvement. Continuous improvement can only come from a place of stability or a defined standard. For instance,…

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Optimizing Knowledge Work: Streamlining Connections through Lean Principles

Continuing on from last week’s post, once you have all of the key processes identified and flow defined, the next step in implementing Lean manufacturing principles in knowledge work is to analyze the connections between people. The individual providing the product is the supplier and the one receiving the product is the customer. These connections…

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Some Ideas to Make Work More Enjoyable

As a teenager, I loved hanging out with friends but sometimes they had to leave to do chores. I figured out that if I helped them with their chores we could continue to hang out and the time spent would be more enjoyable for both of us. This was reaffirmed when I worked on an…

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Work Does Not Have to Suck

We accept a lot of stupid things at work. Too much of the job is checking emails, spending too much time in meetings, and having to fight fires due to lack of obvious planning are three that come to mind. I’m willing to bet that if you ask anybody about these they would agree that…

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Reduce Stress At Work-Use More Paper-Based Productivity

I use a task management system which I have been improving since 2007. Over that time I have crafted it to be primarily electronic because of the ease of note transfer, the ease of moving priorities around, and the ability to sync across mediums. I have started to feel that the electronic-based process is creating…

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Pseudo Vacation Days, The Gateway Drug to Focused Productivity

I had a crazy idea the other day. What if we pretended to be on vacation to get work done? There have been times that I’ve scheduled vacation, found people to cover for me, and turned off email. Then the appointment I had planned for was canceled so I decided to work without anyone bothering…

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Better Processes Can Replace Meetings

I am often in meetings that serve three primary purposes which are held by upper-level management. To share information so the managers can speak intelligently about the problem to their peers, to provide help, and to recalibrate priorities. There should be better methods to share information with higher levels of the organization If help is…

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Discipline Equals Freedom

Stealing the title from Jocko: When I was an engineer most of my tasks were defined. It was easy to work on those tasks as long as I followed the process that someone else had developed and I had less stress due to ambiguity. Now that I am a manager my tasks are less defined…

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Software Reliance is Making it Harder to Improve Processes

There is significant overhead required to create/improve software-based workflows. You need a specialist trained to create it and you need to ensure that you are not impacting other systems. Could a workflow be created with a paper process or (as painful as it is to say) a spreadsheet? Are we so used to software that…

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When Do Start From Scratch?

Do we continiously improve or do we blow it up and start over? When does continuous improvement add layers of bureaucracy, bloat, or myopic improvements?

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Calm Critical Work Manifesto

Below is a listing of principles collected and developed while determining the best methods for low-stress, impactful work over the last 18 years. This is the first revision of my Calm Critical Work Manifesto. I will revise it over time as it develops. Maybe you can use some of these principles in your own work…

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Stop Encouraging “Heroes” at Work and Encourage Processes

We encourage a frantic work culture rather than encourage building and maintaining work processes. How often do typical tasks become emergencies that require extra effort to meet the deadline? Then after the urgent deadline is met congratulations are given to the “heroes”. If it was a typical task, shouldn’t there be a process for it?…

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