The Power of Removing Waste

Today I took the Ideon Team though a problem solving simulation using a lot of tennis balls.  The purpose of the simulation is to teach some basic problem solving skills but also to show that you can achieve great results by simply removing the waste present in a process.

Think about the waste involved in tossing a ball farther than you need to be; there's waiting, over processing and motion to name the obvious wastes.  Giving a team the freedom to understand the wastes and find ways to eliminate them is empowering, believe me.  Moreover, the game got a lot of people thinking how easily they got amazing results without working any harder and how they could apply it to their roles.

By the time the game was done and we had gone 4 rounds, the team had quadrupled their output in a matter of 45 minutes.  Imagine going to your team now and asking them to quadruple their output...  What would happen?  They would probably think you were crazy.

Give the simulation a try with your team, you don't have to be or know lean to see the benefits and results.  Over time I will write about the 8 forms of waste to give you better understanding of them, but you don't have to wait for me, Google "Lean 8 Wastes".  I've posted the simulation on my LinkedIn profile, check it out here.  

Be Continuous Improvement!

Mike