Just do it. Nike!
What if we just did it?
Revisiting the Lean Thinking book I was reminded of the Lean experts who would turn up to a factory, sometimes in the middle of the night, with the company bosses and assess the current situation of the production line. The businesses that they are focusing on are manufacturing things like jet engines and car parts. The type of manufacturing that has have multi-million dollar machines that require lots of floor space and weigh tons. There are no doubt multiple machines too. Other challenges were around the workforce more often than not been unionised and lots of fear around job security.
A challenge environment for any organisation, these organisations were also likely trying to compete in a challenging market that is innovating around it and under considerable pressure as their margins were squeezed my market forces.
As the story goes these Lean experts would turn up the next day. Overalls on and start to physically move these machines around the gigantic warehouses. They “Just did it”.
In my world, I have no expensive or heavy machinery. I have forward thinking team mates that are used to change. So just doing it should be easy! In the past it’s the sort of thing that I would have sat on and thought about, now, instead I quickly weigh up the risks and, if all seems well, make the change.
The next challenge is to encourage my teammates to do the same. A junior developer doing a code review because we’ve got a block, why not empower that individual to do that task. It’s good for them and it’s good for the team.
Now when a lesson is learnt or we’ve failed to achieve something at the micro level, the team is empowered, and importantly, used to just going it. It’s early days but I believe this mindset is much more healthy, I hope we have the courage to keep it up — sometimes it can be unnerving!
