What do you read here?

Did you say...?

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

I have been using this trick exercise during Lean trainings for years and a few days ago I also conducted a little experiment on my LinkedIn as well. The result is almost always the same. Jumping to conclusions effortlessly and instantly says our brain.

What it actually said was... are you ready for this?

JIIMRING T9 GONGI IIGI9NS

Don't despair. There is a perfectly fine explanation to it. Our brain is a prediction machine. By instinct it completes the missing information with what it already knows from the past experiences. It also causes us to jump to conclusions on autopilot. And there is also a reason for that. It is just a 'lazy' self-preservation mechanism for the brain to use shortcuts to save time and energy.

If you want to dive deeper into the magical universe of how our brain works, there is a fascinating book out there by Daniel Kahnemann - Thinking, Fast and Slow.

The countermeasure to this is Scientific thinking and the PDCA cycle. We will take you into the universe of PDCA in the next issue of Keen on Lean. Not to leave you hanging for too long let's quickly define what PDCA stands for:

Plan - What to do? How to do? What do you expect to happen?

Do - Do what you planned

Check - Did it go according to your plan? What did you learn?

Act - Evaluate what the next step should be, standardise and sustain

PDCA is all about fostering learning, and it is the Lean method to practice a continuous improvement mindset. Now try to reflect: how much time do we actually spend on Plan-Do cycle vs. the full PDCA? And what a beautiful world it would be if we went the full cycle and reflected on our learnings.

Here is a short video explaining PDCA in more detail.

And if you are into LEGO, here is another fun video showing PDCA thinking in action.

Until next time!

Best,

Kev Shapcott and Ani Movsisyan