I had a problem. A small problem, but an annoying problem. It’s been something that’s bothered me for months. Actually, now that I think more about it, it’s bothered me for years.

When people give me a business card, I like to jot a note or two on the back. The note might be the date or event where I met them, an additional phone number, or a something we talked about. From time to time I run into trouble, since the backs of some cards are a dark color, rendering my blue or black ink pen useless.

Thanks Becky for your most recent post. I'm happy that you are seeing a benefit. The improvement is something I have had success with for a while. I probably should have forwarded it along sooner but to be honest it just didn't occur to me. The "A-Ha" moment came when there were a number of emails piling up in my "Waiting" email folder that I wanted to close out. I wish I could say that I forwarded the improvement idea for purely altruistic reasons but I simply wanted to encourage the people with whom I collaborate via email to act more quickly. Now I didn't conduct a Good 5 Why (TM). I presumed that this was an email organization issue. I've forwarded the improvement idea, and I'll check in three weeks time to determine if this countermeasure is successful. I'll adjust as necessary and this may include performing a Good 5 Why at the source of the issue if my hypothesis is proven wrong.

One of my colleagues shared a Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen with us the other day. It was certainly quick, as well as easy – and very effective. It was a simple organization system for his emails. He found the tip on the internet some time ago, and put it in use for himself. He set up 5 folders in his email: action, archive, hold, respond, waiting. A few times a day, after reading his new emails he moves them into these folders. Whatever doesn’t fit in any of the folder descriptions below, he puts right in the trash. Action folder - for emails that he must complete an action before responding or archiving Archive folder – for emails that he wants to save but don’t require further action Hold folder - for emails that he will need to reference at some point in the near future, such as links for meetings, etc. Respond folder – for emails that he will respond to but don’t require any action other the response Waiting – for emails that he has sent to others and is now waiting for a reply or other action I guess some time ago I had come up with a similar system – quite possibly from another tip on the internet. But my system didn’t include the same folders as his. So I copied his folders and was able to eliminate several other folders I had (that contained 1 or 2 emails each). Now my email inbox is clean and refreshing – it doesn’t overwhelm me when I open it up. I can quickly find my actions, things I need to refer to, and responses I’m waiting for. And then I started thinking…..How else could I use this idea? I have a 5-compartment desktop file sorter on my desk. I usually put things in there when I don’t really know where else to put them. I always have a lot of papers that don’t really have a home, so it gets a little bit….um….jumbled. What I decided to do was label my 5 compartments similar to the email folders. Not quite all the same labels, but close. Thanks to my colleague sharing his QnEK, my file sorter is now organized too!

In the world of blogging, it seems like there have been several posts about rewarding, incenting and motivating employees recently. In fact, just 2 blog posts ago I wrote about the very same thing as it relates to Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen.

On July 1, I ran across http://tinyurl.com/Creativity-sForbiddenFruit that addresses this as well. Matthew May refers to rewards as “Creativity’s forbidden fruit.” I think he hit the nail on the head with his post. He talks about making kaizen (continuous improvement) the daily work. I couldn’t agree more and especially when it comes to workers continually improving their own work.

I was fortunate to have worked for a company that decided they wanted to harness the power of employee creativity. With some guidance and coaching, when they rolled out the Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen program they didn’t offer “incentives” for employees’ contributions. They gave us a few months to get used to coming up with, implementing and sharing our improvements while helping us through internal and external coaching. They told us by the following spring, they would be asking each employee to implement three or more improvements each month.

•    Did they tell us that we were “expected to contribute?” Yes.
•    Did they tell us if we didn’t do them we would be fired? No.
•    Did they tell us that we would get paid for these? No.
•    Did they put up with a lot of half-baked improvements? Yes.
•    Despite getting some (or many) half-baked improvements, did they get some excellent ideas they could implement company wide? You bet they did!
•    Did many of the employees develop both personally and professionally through creating and implementing improvements on a regular basis? Yes!!

In fact, on a weekly basis the corporate office would send out an email with a few QnEK from the week that would be easily transferable. Then monthly each division would submit those that were the most impactful and had the farthest reach.

We had almost 500 employees, and the majority of us were contributing to the improvement system. And you know what? The more small improvements you make on a daily basis, the easier it becomes for you to spot the opportunity for more. Like most things in life – the more you practice, the better you become!

I’ll admit it. I’m a complete coffee addict. I never really saw much harm in drinking 6-9 cups of coffee a day…or maybe I chose to be ignorant about any harm it may cause. Until recently when my doctor informed me that 2 cups a day was fine, but 4 or more definitely was not! Faced with this conversation, I could no longer choose to be ignorant on the issue, and I had to change my ways.

To avoid cutting back so significantly, I made all kinds of excuses to myself. What was I going to do? Nobody else in my house drinks coffee, just me. The thought of making half a pot of coffee just doesn’t seem right. And what about when I want to have one cup in the morning, and my second in the afternoon? With me, the last cup in the pot is always cold. And I certainly didn’t want to make a whole pot, only to pour half of it down the drain. The batch size is just too big. How wasteful!

Thankfully, the wonderful coffee maker companies of the world have been improving the coffee making experience for their customers. Over the past couple of years, the single-serving coffee makers have become quite mainstream. My family, knowing of my plight, kindly bought me one for Christmas. This machine is great – it takes about 60 seconds to brew a fresh cup of coffee.

Now I can brew just one single cup of coffee, as I need it. I have the option of using the pre-filled disposable containers, or I can fill my own little filter with enough ground beans to make just one cup. No coffee goes to waste, and my cup is always fresh and hot! With all of my excuses gone, I have no reason not to cut back to 2 cups each day. Now I can meet the doctor's request, have my coffee just the way I like it, and not have any to waste!

Talk about a change for the better!

One of the keys of a good Quick ‘n Easy Kaizen ( QnEK) program is that we want QnEK to become a habit within the organization. We want our employees to continuously be thinking and acting on ways to make things better. This is a critical step that we can take to reduce the waste of "Unused Employee Creativity." It’s also a great skill that will keep our people taking ownership in their jobs and keep them from becoming complacent.

So, should we pay people extra for these improvement ideas?

There is a lot of debate as to whether or not financial rewards or incentives should be used to “motivate” workers to do QnEK. I’m a firm believer that we don’t need to financially incent people to do QnEK for a few different reasons. I mean sure, it’s fun to give out a prize or two, and it’s always necessary to show appreciation. A sincere “Thank you, we’re going to share that improvement with other projects!” should more than suffice. But I’m talking about more significant incentives than those.

•    Should the fact that someone is making their own job safer, easier or more interesting be incentive enough to keep coming up with improvements?
•    This program helps people take ownership in their work. Does financially rewarding them extra to take the ownership contradict the whole idea of ownership?
•    What I’ve seen happen all too many times, in many different environments, is that when you start offering financial incentives to people for something that is supposed to be part of their job, the second you stop offering the rewards, they stop doing that part of the job! This is counterproductive to building a habit within the organization.

I would love to hear some additional thoughts on this – I know they are out there!

People seem to struggle some with the idea of having a Quick and Easy Kaizen program. There is a fair amount of skepticism, even within “lean” environments. I mean, is it really realistic to expect all employees to contribute to improving every day???

YES! These types of programs can and will work when the people involved really want them to and put enough energy into making them successful. I’ve had the opportunity to see this happen – not to mention all of the examples at companies that we’ve read about along the way. All it takes is a basic understanding, consistent engaging and coaching of the workers, along with the strong desire to see it happen.

Just a few weeks ago I had the privilege of observing a team of construction folks standing around the QnEK board and sharing their improvements with each other. They shared quite a few great ideas that were simple yet very impactful. One of the 5 ideas shared that morning was regarding certain specs for a wing of the building. The workers were constantly referring back to the plans for all of the intricate specs for a particular wall. So the person in this team wrote those specs with a permanent marker right on the concrete sub-base right in the wing. This resulted in less wasted time going back and forth to the plans, as well as helping to prevent mistakes as the specs were now located right where the work is done. The idea was simple and free, yet has a sizeable impact. Now multiply that by the 10 people discussing the idea, who can all take that back to the part of the project they work on! And now add in the value of the other 4 ideas, and multiply by 10 again. Worth taking the 10 minutes to post and share? A sign of a successful program? I’ll say!  

I thought you might want to see this David.

Have you ever gone to a great training class, a conference or a seminar that you really feel you learned a lot from? You know the kind – where you’re feverishly taking notes throughout the day, falling behind in your listening because there is just so much powerful information you want to capture? Well, I went to a one-day training like this a couple of weeks ago. I left this training with over 40 actions that I wanted to take in both my work and my personal life. But see, a lot of these actions were more about developing specific communication skills or changing my perception on things than they were “to do’s.” In other words, I have to practice using these skills or perception shifts over and over until they become second nature before I can consider them “done.”

I’ve had a lot of similar experiences in the past. What typically happens is I’ll remember a few of the skills for a while, and keep them in the front of my mind, practicing when I have the opportunity. I usually forget about most of the others. Ooops. A couple of months down the road, someone will say something that jogs my memory about a skill I vaguely remember. This prompts me to take out my notes from the training and have that same “A-ha” moment all over again. Then, of course, after a day or two, it will promptly slip right back out of my mind. End result: Little to no development achieved.

So I’m going to share with you my absolute favorite action from this recent training session. At the instructor’s suggestion, I’ve taken all of the actions that are about developing skills and jotted them down on their own index cards. She recommended we post these cards where we will see them the most: on the refrigerator, the mirror, back of a sun visor, etc. Since I spend most of my day at my desk, I’ve got them posted all around my monitor, on the wall behind my monitor, and even have one posted right on my desk.

Now I’ve been practicing 12 different communication skills and perception changes for a whole week. I’m getting better and better at them, and they are starting to weave their way into how I communicate. People who know me well are starting to notice some differences. It’s working!

It boggles my mind to see the substantial difference in my learning of these skills as compared to some of the other skills I was taught at trainings in the past. And to think, I owe it all to my instructor and to this one --- teeny tiny --- change she recommended I make! I guess it’s time to dig out my old materials from other sessions and make some more note cards!

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.