Last week, I joked with a client about how our lean projects just keep going up and up, like a never-ending staircase. I told them the real secret to eliminating waste is to raise our standards! It’s silly, but it got them laughing — and sometimes that’s all you need to cut right through the stress of continuous improvement discussions.
, I totally get that! I once had a client who thought raising the standards meant piling on more reports, and it just created more waste instead. But when we switched to visual management tools, like a Kanban board, they found it fun to track progress without all the unnecessary fluff.
It’s like they say: if you’re not careful, raising standards can feel like raising the roof on a party — at first it’s fun, but then you’ve got too many people, too much noise, and a giant mess to clean up! I once helped a team switch to daily stand-ups instead of weekly reports, and it really helped simplify things. @ljackson, have you tried out any quick, visual methods to keep everyone on the same page?