Introduction

This book was created for you.

In fact, if you are working either as an employee or as a business owner there’s a good chance you have run into your fair share of frustration over the past year.  A recent study found that nearly 87% of employees are “disengaged” in their jobs*, feeling unhappy and stuck with the work they do every day, and I know at times we would probably even use a stronger word for it than that.  With the average age of retirement currently in the high sixties and rising, that could be a very long time to spend doing something that you don’t enjoy.

This feeling is not just for the majority of employees in the work force either.  Small business owners often find themselves working 12-hour days in their business, with no clear process and no way to make things easier for the future.  Does any of this sound familiar to you?  Perhaps you know someone who is going through the same thing or even someone who feels the same way.  Have you ever come home exhausted because your job makes things more difficult than they should be?  Maybe you’ve been trying to do good work but seem to be blocked at every turn and you think to yourself, “If only there was a better way.”

Well here is the good news: There is a better way, and you’re about to learn it.

What you are about to learn will help make your job easier, faster, and more enjoyable.  It will give you an incredibly simple view of your job or your business and improve it so much that work becomes a pleasure again (or maybe even a pleasure for the first time).  It will help you to think like a leader, and people who think and act like leaders tend to get paid more on average than those who don’t.

Award winning research** has proven that the best of these leaders, in the most outstanding companies around the world, all have the following four capabilities in common:

1. They know how to reveal problems & opportunities in their work
2. They solve the root cause of these problems, building new knowledge
3. They share any knowledge learned throughout the organisation
4. They develop the first three capabilities in others

This book will give you the means to achieve all four of these leadership qualities.

It All Starts With a Standard Process

As you will soon discover for yourself, Lean transformations can see incredible results.  Process and delivery times can be cut in half (or more), and it is not uncommon for quality to improve in the area of over 100%.  But it all starts with a standard process.

Although it might be hard to believe at first, everything in life has a process, whether that process has been properly articulated or not.  And where there is a process, it can be improved.

Because of this, I am 100% certain this book can help you, no matter what industry or area you work in.

Top athletes train a very specific way each day to gain the success they enjoy in their field – they have a standard, repeatable process to get results.  Restaurants such as McDonalds have built themselves into multi-billion dollar businesses, and are run primarily by 16 year olds at the front line.  They can produce food the same way every time, because they have a method that is trained the same way each time to young people on the job.

But it also goes deeper than that.

Surgeons following a process checklist in a study from the New England Journal of Medicine saw death rates drop by almost half (47%).  Serious complications also dropped by around 36%.  A huge and positive impact, all by following a standard process.

How about music?  Surely that is a creative industry, and can’t be put in a “standard process” box?

Well, when Lou Perlman started Trans Continental Records in the 1990s, he studied a previously successful band called New Kids on the Block, and discovered that the use of five part harmonies in a certain way resulted in a large number of Top 10 hits.  He then used that very same process on the Backstreet Boys, *NSync, Take 5 and O-Town, creating a variety of boy bands from scratch and selling well over 200 million albums between them.  It was standard and repeatable and it made him many millions of dollars.

There are many ways standard processes help people to succeed.  Starting with your current process and using the methods in this book to improve it has been proven to be extremely effective.

This Book Itself is a Standard Process

To make your experience as easy as possible, you’ll notice that this book itself is a standard process, which you can reference quickly, depending on where you are on your journey.

Each chapter title is actually one of five individual steps that you can use and see at a glance, based on the five step Lean implementation process at the Lean Enterprise Institute.  These steps are “Specifying Value, Map, Flow, Pull, and Perfection”.  The five sections within each of these chapters are also titled as more detailed instructions for you to reference quickly.  Laying out the book in this way ensures that you and your team-mates have the power to learn and share Lean improvement methods in under five minutes, and it also makes it easier for you to get started and learn by doing, instead of spending time trying to find all of this information yourself.

Included at the beginning of each chapter is also an ongoing story – it is the story of someone improving their job so much that they enjoy it again.  As you read this story some parts may seem unusual at first, but please know that they have been carefully crafted to embed in your subconscious the Lean tools and practices.  Using a book in this way, with a summary and a story means that people with different learning styles can learn quickly and in the way that they most prefer.  Those who prefer a summary can read the summaries, those who prefer a story can read the stories, and those who want it all can read both.

While traditional Lean improvement tools were used in manufacturing companies, in Five Minute Lean we will also use them further in the world of office processes, food, finance, technology and dozens of other industries.  They can – and should – be used everywhere, from the home kitchen or work-shed through to building a home kitchen or work-shed, from a hotel doorman through to a hotel CEO.

Everyone has the power to improve their work, no matter what that work is.

Teach and Share to Build an Incredible Culture

Five Minute Lean is designed to make it easier for every one of your team-mates to improve their job.  This not only makes the job better and less burdensome on themselves, but it benefits customers with improved quality and delivery speed, and shareholders with increased profits and lowered costs as well.

By teaching Lean to all levels of a company, you can achieve amazing things.  This is because when management is on-board and well versed in job-improving tools, they can support and drive change.  When front-line team-mates learn these problem solving skills, they can often see quick ways to improve their job as they already know the process well.

Lean is the common language that when everyone has, ties this all together.

To quickly implement this common language, there is a key underlying principle of Lean, which is “respect for people”.  Respect for people means that we see problems as an opportunity to improve the process; we don’t consider it as a failing of the people.  Seeing it this way and improving a process also has lasting results – a legacy, even if people come and go.

While we are improving the process, we are also building our people.  This means growing the team-mates you work with and bringing them on the journey with you.  Every time you improve your work, you can share and teach these problem solving tools as well.  With more people around you who can discover and solve real problems quickly, work can become more and more pleasurable over time – even (believe it or not) fun.  This combination of front-line expertise and Lean problem solving ability cannot be bought with money, it must be grown within your business, which is why no one is ever “let go” as a result of a Lean transformation – only grown into new positions.

Finally, the steps in this book will give you and your team huge benefits in your personal lives.  Proof has emerged* that shows it is not always extrinsic rewards like money that increases motivation and happiness, but more intrinsic rewards or motivators.

These intrinsic motivators are:

1.  Autonomy

Where we are given free rein in solving a problem

2.  Mastery

Where we can work continuously toward mastering a worthy skill

3.  Purpose

Where we are contributing to something greater than ourselves

A Lean initiative, when taught to every level of a company, can give you all three.  By putting this book in everyone’s hands, you not only have the power to improve your job, but dramatically increase the engagement of your team-mates across the board as well.  Then, not only will work become a pleasure again, but great financial rewards will begin to flow.

Check out these selected chapters from the teachings within Five Minute Lean:

• Five Minute Lean – Introduction

• Five Minute Lean – Implement With Agile for Fast Iterations and Feedback
• Five Minute Lean – Use Feedback to Fix and Guarantee
• Five Minute Lean – Work Towards One-Piece-Flow (and Reducing Silos or Batching)
• Five Minute Lean – Put it Together With Design for Ease of Use
• Five Minute Lean – Value is Determined by the Customer
• Five Minute Lean – Present and Manage Your Change Using an A3 and LCA
• Five Minute Lean – Get Your Map Started with a SIPOC
• Five Minute Lean – Solve the Real Cause of the Problem
• Five Minute Lean – Map the Value Stream to Reveal Opportunities
• Five Minute Lean – Create a Future State Value Stream Map
• Five Minute Lean – Introduction
• Five Minute Lean – The Power of Incentives – What is Measured and Rewarded Improves
• Five Minute Lean – Use Pareto to Find Where to Start
• Five Minute Lean Summary
• Five Minute Lean – Make Feedback Meaningful with Kano Analysis
• Five Minute Lean – Gather Direct Feedback and Indirect Feedback
• Five Minute Lean: Glossary
• Five Minute Lean – Heijunka: Level the Workload when Demand Fluctuates
• Five Minute Lean – Use Kaizen and Kaizen Events to Help Stakeholder Buy-In
• Five Minute Lean – Build in Quality with Error-Proofing and Autonomation

Selected chapters from the story within Five minute Lean:

• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Makes a Change
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Discovers a New Way
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Performs a Balancing Act
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Pulls the Trigger
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Sets a New Standard
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Becomes a Leader