After being called out 4 times in exercise class, I became a annoyed with the instructor. I was with a group at my gym. We were all trying to follow instructions. It is one of those practice, not perfect-type routines where giving your all matters, not whether you do it exactly right.

And I wasn't doing it right. The instructor noticed and seemed to be picking on me. I knew she was not being mean; we have had a friendly relationship and really, this is her job. But I started resisting. I didn't make the adjustments she declared I should and pretended not to listen. I stopped getting better.
 
I felt like telling her that I was getting too much personal attention, but just let it slide and let the class end. While walking out I said 'thank you' like I always do and left it at that. I certainly don't want to create a bad experience because I want her help in the future. It would have been okay for me to ask for less help; I have done that in other circumstances.

Next time you are getting too much help, what are you going to do? Don't create a bad experience with him or her. It is ok to tell your coach that you are getting too much attention. With one-on-one coaching the best thing that you can do tell them how you are feeling about the coaching.

My parents’ dining room table has a broken leg.  We need to solve the problem before Thanksgiving.  Here are the alternatives we initially see:  

1)      Use the table as is and hope that Thanksgiving dinner does not suddenly slide onto someone’s lap.
2)      Take the table into the basement, repair it there, and bring it back up to the dining room.
3)      Replace the table temporarily with a borrowed table.

We reject alternative 1) since we have invited guests and we don’t want to embarrass ourselves.

Did you wait to discover the parts of speech before trying to talk? That's a crazy idea. It was when you were a kid and you just got frustrated and eventually learned to speak. You didn't think about learning and you weren't trying to 'transform your organization'. You just got started and got better. But today, you feel like you don't have all the facts. You keep you from getting started because you aren't sure what's next. 

Maybe this doesn't describe you, but it is a common trap. David Sundow, author of Ways of the Hand, wrote albeit a bit cryptically about his experience with learning how to play jazz piano. He stared like any of us would get started. Learning the basics. Figuring out many small processes that he could get good at. But it didn't just tie together like he thought it would when he learned enough.

Seth just said "Win the fight, lose the customer." I contend that it depends on what your customer is buying. "If you want the customer to remain a customer, you need to permit him to believe he's right."

First; some background. Can I assume that you know that lean means learning? Let's say I can. It is the definition that I carry about what lean is. The more learning, the more lean. Anyway, let's move on.

As the"expert" I am compelled to understand learning. Introduce the Japanese word, Hansei. It means self-reflection. Its meaning is to acknowledge your own mistake and to pledge improvement. 

The story that we tell ourselves about what is going on around us help us explain our situation and further our action with progress towards goals. What is the story of someone who causes an accident? Surely they believed that what they were doing was doing whatever was best for them at the time. And was this wrong?

Ten Questions About Human Error: A New View of Human Factors and System Safety by Sidney Dekker deals with this and other critical questions that come up during your first exploration of the New View of safety. Much progress has been made in the way of safety - we more often attribute systemic reasons for failure and choose a path of learning. Yet, the criminalization of accidents happens. And the organization punishes. 

1. Maintain physical fitness

2. Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive

“Don't Put Out the Fire, Let it Burn” This was the title to a post at the Harvard Management Publishing's Management Tip of the Day. I didn't get far into the tip when my mind drifted to the concept of project firefighting. You know this concept. Firefighting is when one project member makes an extraordinary effort to manage some issue that is an imminent threat to maintaining the schedule. What would happen without the efforts of these people? Well, we just might learn something critical to the nature of the project sooner instead of covering the issue up through action and allowing the wrong work to continue to be done.  Projects have become a series of high-stress firefights.

Yes, in some respects it seems counter-intuitive that the easiest way to maintain the schedule is to stop work, but try it.  Pull that metaphorical andon cord when the unexpected arises, collaborate with your team's to correct the understanding of the project through a Good 5 Why (TM) and deliver a more suitable product to our customer on schedule without rework.

I get to have so much fun at work, it makes me want to start a TV show called “People are so Funny”. As humans we naturally resist change. It is deep in our bodies to do so. Think about it: if we went around changing how our blood flows or body temperature regulates, we would be a mess. It is a natural biological function, called homeostasis, which keeps these ole bodies ticking away. This same function keeps people and organizations from accepting change. It is just natural. Yet, if we don’t change, learn or grow in business, we are out of business.

What does this have to do with Japanese words? Anyone in a lean transformation knows it is all about change. Change the behavior, change the culture, change the things done and how they are done and change the words….. to Japanese words!

A superintendant joined a project under way and was openly dismayed and dismissive of “all these Japanese terms.” He could not and would not accept this at that time. This was a few months ago.

We talk about information as though it were a substance - a liquid, actually, something which flows.  This metaphor suggests that information is something we can pour into people, disseminate, transmit, or deliver through a hose.  It draws our attention to the sender or the source of the information.  All we need to worry about is bandwidth or the effectiveness of the spray nozzle.  I question whether this interpretation makes sense. 

Think about information from the point of view of the person receiving it.  They don't care about bandwidth, because they can pay attention to only one thing at a time (OK, maybe a few).  If they are not listening, then they are not being informed.  There's that word again, listening.  It always seems to matter.  I walk around with a set of problems and concerns, trying to take care of them.  When I hear something that opens up a new possibility for addressing a concern or solving a problem, then I am informed - I change.  My nervous system is modified.  Information is that constant process of listening and learning which changes us and increases our range of possible actions.

There's an article over on Golf.com about the struggles that Padraig Harrington is having with learning a new swing in advance of this year's British Open. If you don't' keep up with professional golf, Padraig Harrington has won the last two British Opens and the last PGA Championship.

One might ask after having that success why would he ever want to change his swing. The article quotes him as saying that he wanted to improve his position at impact. I interpret this to mean that he recognized he was doing something in his current practice that didn't add to his ability to control the golf ball and he wanted to stop doing it.

If you have begun your lean journey, you probably can sympathize with him. You might feel as if you were fairly successful working the way you had. It may not have been perfect. It may have been stressful and you may have had to redo work, but at the end of the day projects got done. But you obviously recognized the opportunity for you in changing your approach. Now you are learning, but the project is taking longer to complete than a traditional approach and you aren't immediately successful. It can be frustrating.