Lean Consultant Tips

(Read Part 2 Here)

The first two 5S hacks instilled both permanent Lean thinking and visual management into your clients. There’s another excellent hack you can use to get them to metaphorically comb inventory waste out of the work area. Here it is.

Tell your team to treat the work area like “Ocean Front Property.” That is, treat the work area like every centimeter costs a fortune. When this mindset change happens, every member of the team will actively view the workspace with new eyes and, most importantly, they’ll remember it.

And it works – especially because it’s a metaphor. You touch the subconscious with metaphors, and the act of associating valuable real estate with the workplace lands quickly and deeply. And again, even though this one may also sound simplistic, it’s one of the “highly leveraged actions” you can exercise as a Lean implementer to gain maximum traction. When it comes to change work, every little bit helps you. One single person running around openly cheering about results and how they got them, can trigger the watershed moment for the whole organization. Which of course makes your job much easier, and that’s powerful.