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Monday, October 23, 2023

Lean Tips Edition #211 (#3376 - #3390)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.


Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #3376 – Build Trust By Being Vulnerable

Being open about your emotions and showing some feelings can help with building trust. It shows that you care and that you're a person too.

Don’t be afraid to let coworkers know if something has upset you or stressed you out.

This needs to be approached carefully. You don’t want to go telling all of your coworkers' overly-personal details.

A level of emotional intelligence is needed to make sure that you aren’t over-sharing or under-sharing. Begin by sharing gradually. Done correctly, opening up about your feelings can strengthen a trusting relationship.

Lean Tip #3377 – Being Helpful Fosters Trust

Someone who is trustworthy will tend to go out of their way to help people if they can. Not because of some agenda or because they expect to get something out of it. But because they're genuinely a good person.

Maybe you’ve done all of your work for the day. You could just sit at your desk browsing the internet. Or you could be helpful.

If you notice a coworker who is struggling with their own workload, offer to help. Or ask your manager if there’s anything extra you can take on. Also, there is never any harm in giving guidance and advice to that new hire who seems overwhelmed.

Lean Tip #3378 – Stand Up for What’s Right

People respect honesty.

While some bosses may like “yes” people who agree with everything they say, the best leaders value insights and opinions. Don’t sacrifice your values and what you believe just to appease your manager or try to get ahead. This will decrease trust with others.

Lean Tip #3379 – Honor Your Commitments and Admit When You’re Wrong

A trustworthy person does everything in their power to stick to agreements they’ve made. If you make a promise, follow through on it. Avoid making promises that you might not be able to keep.

People don’t like to hear excuses. If you do something wrong, it’s best to just be upfront about it. If you realize you were incorrect about something, own up to it.

Being vulnerable enough to admit fault can humanize you and make you appear more trustworthy. Admitting mistakes is also part of being honest.

Lean Tip #3380 – Building Trust Requires Transparency

As long as you can explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, most people will be able to understand.

Don’t keep secrets or hoard information for yourself. The people you’re building trust with are usually people on your team that you should be working collaboratively with. Share the information with them that they need to succeed too.

Lean Tip #3381 – Invest in Leadership Development

Leadership is culture in action. If your company's leadership style promotes unhealthy practices, your culture is set to become toxic.

Leadership and executive teams are key strategic players in building or shaping culture.

While cultural changes are often pushed from the bottom-up, key transformations are enabled through solid leadership buy-in.

Involving leaders and executives in creating a thriving workplace culture means activating a shift at the core of a company's decision-making nerve and accelerating the transformation across the organization.

Lean Tip #3382 – Add Community-Building to Your People Strategy

Engineering meaningful connections among people at work fosters a sense of purpose and unlocks the potential of diverse personalities coming together.

Community-building helps teams work better together, design more efficient governance (collaboration rules), and build solid synergies that allow teams to leverage how they perform and deliver.

Plus, in an increasingly remote and globally distributed world of work, people value quality relationships that help them grow, exchange knowledge, and feel more connected with diverse personalities at work.

Lean Tip #3383 – Leverage the Professional Growth and Development Strategy

Growth and professional development are key culture enablers, top retention factors, and reasons for people to join and stay in a company.

If you have long overlooked it, it's time to leverage your Learning & Development culture and make it part of your people experience and retention strategy.

Employees who don't experience a solid professional development journey at work are likely to look for better opportunities elsewhere.

Lean Tip #3384 – Improve Your Operational Functions

Frustration and disengagement often arise from experiencing messy and inefficient operational functions. 

These are often caused by a lack of solid leadership, ownership, and accountability frameworks, where employees aren’t able to lead their tasks autonomously, or they need to spend long hours searching or waiting for the right resources.

Many companies underestimate the importance of structured collaboration and communication systems in creating a thriving culture.

Solid operational functions set employees in the position to perform their tasks, grow their skills, and have smoother experiences in their day-to-day working routine.

Lean Tip #3385 – Focus on Experience Design

Culture is the experience people have of a given environment. To build a workplace culture that attracts and retains, you need to focus on designing outstanding experiences for people at work.

Employee experiences aren’t just about building more efficient processes, smoother collaboration and communication systems.

It’s about implementing people-centric workplace practices that aim to make them feel safe, seen, and valued both as humans and as professionals.

Lean Tip #3386 – Highlight Areas That Need Improving

In business, there will always be issues you need to identify and iron out. Risk management is one way to avoid potential disasters, but it’s also important to have a system in place for dealing with issues when they inevitably arise. Process mapping can help you do just that by revealing problem areas and potential choke points in your business processes.

Once these are identified, you can begin to put into place measures to improve things. Maybe you need to add an extra step to a process to ensure quality control. Or maybe you need to invest in new software that will automate a task and speed up the workflow. Whatever the solution, process mapping can help you identify what needs fixing.

Lean Tip #3387 – Boost Efficiency and Productivity

If your processes are running smoothly, you’ll see a corresponding increase in efficiency and productivity. When everyone understands the process and knows their role within it, things tend to move along more quickly.

This is where process mapping can be especially helpful for businesses with multiple locations or departments. By creating a standard map for all employees to follow, you can ensure a level of consistency and efficiency no matter where someone is working.

Lean Tip #3388 – Encourage Communication and Collaboration

How do you know that everyone is on the same page? Communication and collaboration. When all members of a team can see the big picture, they’re better able to understand their role within it and work together to achieve common goals.

Process mapping can help with this by providing a visual representation of how tasks are interconnected. This makes it easier for team members to communicate with one another and identify potential bottlenecks.

Lean Tip #3389 – Use a Process Map to Facilitate Change

Processes evolve over time as new technologies are introduced and new methods are discovered. As such, your process map should be fluid, too — it should be able to adapt as your business changes.

This is where process mapping can be especially helpful. By creating a map that can be easily updated, you’ll save yourself the hassle of having to start from scratch every time something changes.

Lean Tip #3390 – Manage Risk

Businesses are always taking risks, but some risks are more manageable than others. Process mapping can help you identify and manage risk by showing you how your processes work — and where they could go wrong.

This is especially important for businesses that rely on multiple processes to function. If one of those processes fails, the business could be in trouble. Process mapping can help you identify and mitigate these risks.


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