Chaos to Calm - Beginning the journey

First in a series of articles around the journey in taking your organisation from being stuck in short term reactive behaviour to engaging your people in improving their processes and moving to a place of relative calm and control.

Chaos to Calm.

Let’s be honest…outside of the world of the wonderful Paul Akers, most literature on this subject matter is rather dry and not always accessible to people who want an introduction or a starting point to lean (Art Byrne’s Lean Turnaround being a notable exception). Lean, continuous improvement, operational excellence or whatever moniker we choose to give it often means different things to different people - whether they be career long practitioners, at the beginning of the journey or somewhere in between. My purpose for posting is to share my lean journey in a humble, honest and simple accessible way. My journey has been filled with many, many missteps, mistakes and challenges. My path has also shown me the way to success and the ability to share this set of fundamental tools and concepts with people to change the way that they view the workplace and the processes they interact with all day, every day. 

Why is it we look for the magic bullet to improvement through technology, costly assets and infrastructure or other complex solutions such as people in fancy suits with fancy words? (I’m all about external support but not when the teaching doesn’t engage the audience it’s intended for). 80% of the answers are right in front of us! For me, lean is about simplicity and perseverance. At the end of the day, if we simplify anything it becomes easier. I don’t want people to have to come to work for 40hrs per week and encounter frustration and roadblocks to their ability to do the job we pay them to do. There are many factors that contribute to these road-blocks but the overriding reason lean works is that people need and deserve RESPECT as human beings and require meaning for the work that they do. People need and deserve the support required to do their job (this applies at all levels of an organisation). All too often organisations have lost sight or pay lip service to these things – think lovely company values on the wall that are rarely referenced and definitely not lived, blame culture, autocratic command and control leadership, a world of fuzzy and everchanging objectives, silo mentality, petty politics and so on.

The reason I am focusing on the idea of “Chaos to Calm” is that over the years this is the effect that lean thinking applied consistently - in the right way, with the right intent - brings to individuals who lead and interact with a process and changes the culture of the organisation as a whole. It never ceases to amaze me that from the moment I walk in the door of a stressed, chaotic, overburdened and underperforming team, what is possible when the leap of faith is taken and lean thinking is implemented. The same team comes out the other side in a place where the process steps work in harmony with the customer’s needs, the people are calm and happy and any problems become obvious quickly and they are equipped with the structure and tools to attack them. The joy for me as a lean practitioner is to share my knowledge and guide people to a place where they are able to find joy and meaning in their daily work, they feel part of something bigger, they are able to directly influence their work environment and are supported by peers and leaders alike to do so. The power of fundamental management techniques as a foundation layered with lean thinking and the right tools has shows me time and time again this stuff changes peoples lives for the better - full stop!

If an organisation is able to embrace the concepts and apply and execute these principles consistently over time, amazing things begin to happen. People start to engage, leaders actually lead, people smile, customers are happy and the metrics and bottom line just keeps improving.