So, a couple of months back I was reviewing Quick n’ Easy Kaizens with a small group of three accountants. Something pretty cool happened. The situation started with one of the accountants sharing her QnEK of posting the 5 most commonly used expense codes right on her cubicle wall. People were constantly coming up to her to ask her for them – interrupting her work or causing them to wait if she was on the phone or away from her desk. Now when they came to her desk, regardless of what she was doing, they could see the 5 codes right there in front of them.

The interesting thing to me is that it wasn’t till she shared her improvement with the others that they even realized this situation had any opportunity for improvement. It was something that neither of the others had ever given any thought to. The group talked about her improvement and discussed other improvements they could make to the situation. One of the others suggested emailing those 5 common codes around to everyone that used them. They talked about that idea for a while and continued building off of each other. After a few minutes of discussion, the third person in the group very excitedly shared that they could put those codes right on the expense reports. This would completely eliminate the need for anyone to look up the codes because they are right there, where the work happens.

This situation represents one of the hidden beauties of a good QnEK program. When people get in the mood of improving together, their ideas bounce off each other and grow from each other. They actually inspire and drive each other to continue stretching their minds for even better improvements. If these three people didn’t communicate about the situation and the improvements, minimal improvements would have been made. Through collaboration, this team found a way to reduce the defects in the incorrect processing in these reports for themselves, and they also found ways to eliminate unnecessary movement and reduce waiting for many others.