Traditional Work: How you work is probably how you worked.
When I looked at that line in my notebook (after reading Daniel Markowitz's book, A Factory of One) I thought about the busy-ness that many people talk about as they relate to their workday. As you consider what you get done in a typical 8 or 10 or 15-hour shift, do you stop to consider HOW you get that work done?
Over the 145 pages of this well-written and well-documented book Dan shows very specific methods you can use to apply "Lean Principles" (traditionally reserved for manufacturing and production lines to remove wasted movements thereby increasing overall productivity) to the "Knowledge Work" that keeps so many of us busy and focused on working overtime.
I was pleased to see Dan write about Parkinson's Law of work: Namely, that the work you have will generally fill the time you have available to do that work. If something is due in a week, it'll take about a week. If it's due later today, well you get the point.
The point of applying Lean Principles to improve personal performance is two-fold:
1. Create a flow of working: so that once you get there, you stay there and produce something (a thought, a product, etc) of value
2. Reduce the stress of wasted movements to focus on more meaningful activity
If you're thinking of getting this book, here's just one of the themes you can expect to explore while you're reading:
Dan asks you to define your "value;" the value of your service or product to the market. Once you've identified that value, then you can work on making things as efficient as possible in order to make that value available to those that matter: clients, community, organization, family, friends, etc. Oh, it might be helpful to know how Dan defines value. I'm walking away with three indicators:
What does the customer pay for?
What are you doing to transform the product or the service?
What activity seems to be done "correctly?"
Of course, you'll walk away from reading this with your own ideas of what "value" means to you, your business, your work. I loved this prompt, though, as it made me think a bit longer about all those "extra to-dos" that have piled up around my own work station lately:
"Should you do better what doesn't deserve doing in the first place?"
Consider what you do, as an entrepreneur, manager, associate of the business you're in. What are the specific activities that you "do" that provide value? The ideas that Dan gives you on (a) how to think about those activities and (b) what to do to make those activities as efficient as possible may be exactly what you need to take not just what you do but HOW you do it to the next level. Imagine being MORE productive without having to buy new technology, hire more staff or change (radically) your business or product.
What WILL you have to change? Your approach to work. To get you think about what that might look, sound and feel like, identify very specifically WHERE your time goes:
fixing
delegating
waiting
over-doing
reviewing
re-doing
explaining
etc
Once you identify WHERE your time, energy and focus is "spent" during the day, then it's time to apply Lean Principles to YOUR work. I hope you enjoy reading (and thinking about) this book as much as I did!
These concepts will be very familiar to people familiar with continuous improvement and more specifically Lean and Six Sigma. However, you do not have to be a practitioner to understand or read the book. When trade terms are used they are explained in simple everyday language without losing a beat. The author demonstrates an in depth knowledge of the Lean Principles. There may be others with his depth of knowledge but I have seen few transfer it into such simple, practical and useable terms. I found myself reading a "how to" book like a novel, reminding myself more than once to bend a corner or mark a page for future reference.
My favorite part of the book was the part on living in your calendar versus your inbox. Quick look at your screen and see what is open! That comment in itself added more than a few minutes to my day of productivity. Another example is his description of a personal A3 for problem solving was absolutely flawless in its description and the use of it.
Are you going to get 2 hours a day of time saving tips from the book? I doubt it. What you will get is more productivity and feeling better about what and how you accomplished it. It was my New Year's Day read and I have picked it up every day since then. Not saying you won't be able to put it down but at this point it looks that way for me.
Buy A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance Now
I read Factory of One when it first came out and I was intrigued and impressed by it. I decided to try it out. And it works most of it. I was already accustomed to 5S in the office; maybe not that good at it, but accustomed. The "Spotting the Waste" chapter gave me some useful tips. I started creating an index to the handwritten notebook I use everyday. I moved the current customers and current prospect folders on my PC to the top of my hard drive directory. I subsequently moved them to the cloud so I can access them on iPads and phones. Both these little things have saved me a few minute each day ..... and it all adds up.
Chapter 3 about Flow. I have worked on the 4D (when work comes it, either Do, Delegate, Designate, or Discard). I have not mastered this yet , but it has improved the way I work. Especially with emails. I have now set times each day for emails and do not constantly review them. It was quite freeing to realize that emails are not urgent. I have had success (when I am in the office) with setting aside chunks of time for particular tasks and sticking with it (mostly). I have set up checklists for routine yet troublesome tasks. The most successful for me a constant traveller has been a checklist of packing for a trip. Another has been my weekly review of billings.
Visual management has been the most useful thing I learned from the book. I have used visual management for many years in one form or another, and I have worked with many manufacturers helping them to introduce visual management. But I had never thought about applying this to my own work. Typical consultant, some people a saying!! When I was in the office I posted my work visually, but when I am on the road or working with customers I had the old fashioned MS Outlook todo list.
It took me a while to figure it out and I went through several steps to get there. I started with mimicking the board on page 106, but using an 11x17 sheet and small post-it's. I then developed an elaborate mindmap on the iPad. Then I moved to a slim, pocket sized note book with even smaller post-it's. All these worked well because I use the principles; visualize the backlog, limit the WIP, designate times. I expect that I will keep refining this, but I am very happy with the way it works.
I recommend this book highly, because the methods and ideas work and have helped to make me more productive and more importantly a little less frantic. Go buy this book.
Read Best Reviews of A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance Here
"A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance" by Daniel Markovitz is an interesting and new look at an old topic, productivity improvement. I'm not sure there was much "new" here, but rather some solid concepts presented in a different manner. I liked the book, and feel is deserves a place among the productivity and business books that line the shelves.
It's just under 150 pages long, which makes it a quick read. It's well organized and flows from topic to topic, providing solid advice on improving personal performance and productivity through the use of Lean principles originally designed to help Toyota factories outperform their competition. Thus, the title, "A Factory of One."
Using this Lean Thinking model, Markovitz addresses the topics of What's Your Job; Spotting Value, Spotting Waste; Flow; Visual Management; and From Bad to Good, and From Good to Great. All of these are important.
I liked the concept of gemba, in the chapter on defining what your job is. I think it is very important to determine what you should be doing that creates value vs. the incidentals and wasteful things that sometimes occupy our time. This chapter does a good job of getting you to look at that. The chapter on spotting value and waste introduces a 5S model which is okay for looking at how you are doing things. There are many of these kinds of models and this is no better or worse than the others. The key is to actually use a system and prevent your office from looking like the picture of Al Gore's office used in the book for illustrative purposes.
The author uses 4Ds to help process work and make it flow. Again, this will work if you actually use it. I did like the part about multitasking, but again, this is not really new. A number of books these last few years have looked at how inefficient multitasking is, but the other's take on the topic is good and I hope people listen. The chapter on visual management provided some good ideas for making one's tasks easier, more streamlined. This is probably something I had not thought to use outside of places such as the garage, but I see now how the concept and idea can be expanded to other areas.
And of course there is a bit on kaizen, the Japanese term for continuous improvement. Much has been written about this, but the section in this book is well done with some of the basics.
Bottom line, "A Factory of One" is a short, direct, and good book on increasing your personal productivity through the use of Lean principles. If you need a little boost in this area, give it a read and try out the principles. You're bound to increase your personal performance.
Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of the "Tough Guy Wisdom" series and others.
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Most personal productivity books will tell you to stop checking email so frequently, or not to multitask. Dan Markovitz's book goes beyond the platitudes and explains a comprehensive theory of how to become more effective as a business professional. Drawing on his thorough knowledge of Lean principles popularized by Toyota and embraced by factories Markovitz shows how asking similar questions can help individual executives determine their priorities and eliminate annoyances, hassles and waste from their everyday activities. His book tells you both the "how" and "why" of productivity and in the process, will make you a better business leader.
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