Eliminating Waste from Your Personal Work [Lessons from the Road]
Everyone performs work, and everyone has the opportunity to improve how that work is executed. In my last 2 columns for Industry Week, I have focused on different aspects of value, the customer, and waste elimination. I continue that theme in this month’s installment of Lessons from the Road in a column titled Eliminating Waste from Your Personal Work.
Here is an excerpt:
1. Define your own ideal state. Just like the customer defines value and therefore waste for the organization, your own ideal state can help define your personal waste. One hotel general manager defined her ideal state as “never to have to talk to a guest again.”
While that doesn’t sound like a good ideal state for the guest business, for her it was perfect. Guest conversations were only an escalation of problems. Her new customer was her staff, and her new definition of value was making processes work for them every time. And waste was anything that wasn’t helping her serve that end.
You can read the rest of the column here.
Reflection question: how have you eliminated waste from your own work?
Eliminating waste would lead to improvement and productivity, and it’s ideal if everyone would do the process to better satisfy work goals.