By Kevin Meyer
Once again I'm honored to participate in John Hunter's annual Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Review. Check out the link to read reviews of some of the best management blogs and posts from the past year. As a more frequent compilation, check out the biweekly Management Improvement Carnival.
This year I chose three blogs that I read without fail, although one of the blokes might be a bit surprised by that. Matthew May's Edit Innovation and Dan Markovitz's TimeBack Management blogs take lean out of manufacturing and into personal productivity, which is also a passion of mine. And as I'm exploring new frontiers, Tim McMahon's A Lean Journey provides an almost daily recalibration back to the core. It's been a good balance.
So on to what I consider to be the three or so best posts from each of those blogs over the past year.
Edit Innovation by Matthew May. I first came across Matt years ago when I read one of his first books, In Pursuit of Elegance. The concept of elegant simplicity really resonated with me. Just a few months later I read his short business novel, The Shibumi Strategy, and that book literally changed me. It linked lean and zen concepts to personal leadership transformation, which was exactly what I was beginning to explore in response to some stressful situations. Just two months ago his latest book, The Laws of Subtraction, was published. This book brings it all home, and includes supporting stories from yours truly as well as several other lean-oriented bloggers you'll recognize. Highly recommended.
Some of my favorite posts from the past year:
- The Power of Reflection. Matt tells the story of how the Los Angeles Police Department uses a formal process to review important evens, with one of the most critical components being the AAR – After Action Report – which was originally developed by the US Army. The AAR asks three simple questions: what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, and what accounts for the differences. As Matt points out, this is very similar to the lean and Japanese concept of hansei – reflection.
- The "Less is Best" Approach to Innovation. As you might guess from his focus on subtraction, Matt enjoys pointing out areas where less is actually more. The same goes for the innovation process. Matt describes how successful products "often achieved the maximum effect with an elegant, minimalist approach." Three components of that concept: a lean feature set, loose reigns with a flatter organizational structure, and quiet minds where innovators meditate and are self-aware to stimulate the personal creative process.
- The Greatest Day of Your Life. Are you so focused on your professional life that you are letting your personal life suffer? Do you even know what you want your personal life to be like? I was there once, and I bet I'm not alone. Matt describes the work of Rich Horwath (built upon that of Clayton Christensen) the helps apply the language of business strategy to achieving personal goals. There are two questions: what would be the greatest day of my life, and how would I get there.
TimeBack Management by Dan Markovitz. Similar to Matthew May, I came across Dan's blog years ago while exploring how lean could apply to personal leadership processes. Dan was coming from a different direction – while exploring how personal leadership processes could be improved he happened upon lean. We've since been in close contact and have realized we are of like minds. So much so that John Hunter mentioned that when we were selecting blogs to review, unknowingly we both chose each other's and we both chose Matthew May's. Fortunately I got to call dibs on Matt's, and here's Dan's review of Evolving Excellence. Earlier this year Dan's book, A Factory of One, was published. I highly recommend this book if you would like to apply lean to personal leadership.
Some of my favorite posts from the past year:
- First, Identify the Value. So what is the "deliverable" of your position – or the positions of the people that work for and with you? Or meetings or basically any other business activity? Dan points out that the deliverable is often unrelated to the value that is desired – from the customer's perspective or otherwise. Is the deliverable or value an "open door policy" or increased sharing and communication? Are there other, perhaps more efficient, ways to accomplish that?
- What Will You Be Judged On? Dan relays a story from Tony Blair that reinforces how important taking time for thinking, just thinking, is. We often get so consumed by tactically crisis management that we lose our grip on long-term strategy. How appropriate for this time of the year when many of us look up and ask where the year has gone.
- That's Just Our Culture and We Can't Change It. We relentlessly attack defects and manufacturing process problems, but we seem to just want to accept analogous issues with personal effectiveness. Why is that? It's not any company's culture to accept a 25% product reject rate, so why is it ok to simply accept a 25% reduction in personal productivity because of poor leadership and say "it's just our culture?"
A Lean Journey by Tim McMahon. Unlike Matt and Dan, I don't know Tim very well, but we've both come up through manufacturing and we've both volunteered with The Association for Manufacturing Excellence. What I really like about Tim's posts – which he somehow finds the time to do almost daily – is that they create some grounding for my ruminations about lean in strange places. Through his Lean Quotes and Lean Tips series he brings back the core.
Some of my favorite posts from the past year:
- The Key to Success is Customer Focus. Without the customer you don't have a product, a company, or a job. So why wouldn't everything revolve and align with creating value for the customer. Sometimes we kid ourselves that shareholders and employees are just as or even more important.
- Don't Let Lean Myths Stand In Your Way. Tim nails it with this list, and I really wish it would be required reading for journalists before they use the unfortunate term "lean and mean." Lean is not about cost reduction, it does not make employees feel like robots, it is not about tools, to name a few.
- Debunking Six Common Misconceptions of Standardized Work. Standard or standardized work is critical to the lean environment as it creates the platform from which kaizen, or change, can occur. But the concept of "standardized" can often be misinterpreted as rigid. It is not – it is simply a documented starting point for change. How can you improve if you don't know where you are?