Key Elements
- The Importance of Time in Continuous Improvement: Emphasizing that time is not the real issue, but rather the prioritization and value of continuous improvement activities.
- Short and Effective Sessions: Highlighting the method of short, focused sessions to gradually integrate continuous improvement into daily routines.
- Human Biological Machine: Explaining the concept that humans operate as biological machines using neural software to make decisions and take actions that ensure survival and improvement.
- Overcoming Resistance: Addressing the natural resistance to change as a protective mechanism and how it can be managed through understanding and small, incremental improvements.
- Continuous Improvement as a Natural Process: Reinforcing that continuous improvement is a natural, ongoing process that aligns with the inherent drive for survival and betterment.
- Non-Trivial Solutions: Acknowledging that solving complex problems often requires understanding the underlying causes and that sometimes simple solutions can lead to new challenges.
- Prioritizing Improvements: Encouraging the reader to see the value in prioritizing improvements and integrating them into their daily workflow without disrupting current productivity.
The first thing we regularly bump into at the beginning of our work dedicated to Continuous Improvement is the feedback from the people we deal with in the Client System: all of them, without exception, after expressing great appreciation for the method and the result samples obtained by the “product” champions, either before signing the contract or after signing it, sometimes after looking at the agenda but more often without even looking at it, burst out in one of the many variations of “eh, but I don’t have time.”
Our method involves short online sessions (no, no chatAI, there’s one of us on the other side of the monitor in flesh and blood), we aim for 20 minutes… short and close sessions, sometimes even 5 a week… eh? Oh no, not at the beginning, at the beginning, it’s a miracle if we manage to do two.
For heaven’s sake, it’s 20 minutes, how can you say that during the day you can’t find twenty minutes (by the way, usually paid by the company, not by you) to take a sustainable step to generate improvement!
We generally deal with extremely serious and responsible people, adults with good, if not excellent, skills, people who certainly do not waste their time… with the most frequent result, more than one would believe, that we spend 20 minutes or more with them explaining in detail why they don’t have 20 minutes for continuous improvement.
Formidable.
This thing doesn’t sit well with me, I can’t stand it. At least I would like to know what and where the problem is, what it is like: it’s not that I don’t know that knowing well what the problem is doesn’t necessarily give you the solution; the two things are correlated, not causally connected.
Sometimes you solve the problem even knowing little or nothing about the problem itself, apart from the fact that it’s a bit annoying and it’s better if we get it out of the way… then the solution found can generate (and often does generate) a new problem, well that’s to be seen later.
And sometimes the most serious and meticulous investigation leads to the disconsolate conclusion: there is nothing to be done, the problem cannot be solved… not that I don’t know that by definition if a problem has no solution, then it is not a problem, not here and now: here and now it’s an alley we can’t escape from, maybe in the future, not now. Maybe we can mitigate it, this is generally possible.
As it stands, my feedback converges on the initial non-solvability; initially, it’s really a wall in favor of some possibilities of mitigation.
Naturally, time has nothing to do with it, this is clear and evident, crystal clear, we all know it… even if this knowledge is mostly common sense… as is common sense, more or less chuckling under the mustache (metaphorically), pretending to know instead what it is about.
If time has nothing to do with it, then what is it about? In the vernacular of my native land, the answers are two: “voja” and “b’sogn,” desire and need, two distinct classes of phenomena extremely popular.
Among the latest more articulated and evolved heard, there is certainly Priority: the issue is relevant, important, the solution is good, more than good, but there are other priorities. It is not difficult to see in this term a much more sophisticated reading than the popular terms “desire” and “need” can offer. Appreciable and generally appreciated.
The result doesn’t change.
And I laugh a bit to myself; in good measure, it was the same first reaction I had a long time ago at the beginning and that I still have now when I come across something that I know I should deal with to improve it in a structured, scientific way from start to finish.
Well, I have other priorities too; not all desires can be satisfied, not all needs can be met, not all at once; I have to go by priorities like everyone else, right? At this moment, I should be dealing with other tasks of higher priority, and the fact of dedicating time to this task annoys me a bit: the only advantage of this condition, in my opinion, is being able to bear direct testimony of a deep and lived sharing of the problem.
Is it really a problem? In all conscience, yes, it is. By saying desire, need, priority, we have only scratched the surface; the knot is much more complex and arduous to solve: I don’t think I can solve it in the space of this article; I hope to help start it on the way to a solution; we’ll see shortly. Let’s try to move towards the root; the other direction is less promising; we would find ourselves dealing with culture, customs, habits, rules of civil living, traditions, innovation, in short, with materials very slippery to handle without the necessary precautions and warnings.
Moving towards the root is less risky; we move in the direction of gemba, observing real processes: we have something real to consider, to observe, even if this is a kind of “asynchronous conversation” the “fact” to observe is that now you are reading here and now there is a “biological machine” alive and able to read, that machine is you, certainly, absolutely you. At the moment you are reading, I could certainly be dead; what you are reading could be the graphic translation of a recorded message that reached you and that you “decided” to read, and this is a second fact, not observable but inferable, conjecturable, the result of a falsifiable hypothesis… yes, I can make it very hard, but I will not.
What does this have to do with anything? The fact that you are a living biological machine, a living creature here and now, is indubitable, firm, and certain. From this starting point, kaizenists would go to look for something else; we, on the other hand, try to tell ourselves in the most concise and truthful way possible why you are still alive.
Oh yes, I know we could spend hours describing everything related to our observational feedback; we don’t have time (eh eh), I try to indicate the way and do a piece with you: you are still alive because you (your biological machine) have made decisions and acted in a way that has allowed you to stay alive.
We have little time left, corresponding to about 800 words, how was it possible that you made those life-saving decisions and performed those actions that saved your life (so far)? Again, I’ll cut it short: you have a neural network, the CPU of the biological machine, you have many programs, many apps, neural software that you use to make decisions, to formulate judgments, and guide the actions you perform; this allows you to finely govern the interaction with your environment and survive, continue living.
The fact that you have succeeded is proven beyond any reasonable doubt by the observable fact that you are here and now a living creature: this proves beyond any reasonable doubt that your apps, your neural software have been effective so far; they have worked well.
Could it have gone differently? Certainly yes, obviously yes, but it didn’t. Your neural software has proven reliable, “good,” effective, safe at least from the point of view of the most important feedback of all: here and now you are a living creature… oh yes, we don’t forget the rest: others, money, popularity, affections, relationships, there’s a lot of other stuff, and maybe for you, the situation is favorable even in these other important aspects.
But the first would be enough; the others increase the strength with which, more than understandably, legitimately, humanly, you protect your good neural software as all biological machines, all living creatures do.
It would be totally senseless not to do so. Some call this “resistance to change”; well, I detest that; this is life protection, nothing more, nothing less.
And then someone comes proposing a nice continuous improvement program, no less than microKaizen, doesn’t sound bad, advantages here, advantages there, nice, isn’t it? You, your biological machine, immediately know there’s a danger, a risk here: after all, you deal with continuous improvement of your life every day, all the time, this is just a way to describe the effects of the “life drive” that all living creatures from viruses to homo sapiens undergo all the time, whether they know it or not, whether they want it or not.
And since here and now you are a living creature thanks to your neural software, the ones you already have, well maybe we’ll think about it if we have time (eh eh)… and if you have also had other forms and proofs of success (always thanks to the neural software you already have) well yes, better think about it well, always if we have time, life goes fast, we are always in the middle of so much stuff to do, half of it is enough and more.
I am pretty sure you haven’t already thought about all this; it’s stuff for specialist-specialists, even specialist-once work like this without knowing it, but work like this…. oh yes, I specialist-specialist-twice work like this with the only small difference that I notice it and know how to name and reason what happens to my biological machine, in short, to me.
Does this change anything for you? I can’t know, I am not here, and even if I were, I probably wouldn’t know. I can only tell you that without changing priorities, initially maintaining (then it increases) the current productivity without resorting to extra time, the time to deal with continuous improvement with us, not surprisingly with our help, jumps out. And suggest a couple of things: the first is that it’s never a matter of having or not having time, never; the second is that it’s worth not running too fast: true, your neural software has proven to be good software so far; you can increase your degree of satisfaction and benefit from improving your software and that of those you work with. Oh no, before you ask, it’s not about “time management” at all, but about quickly acquiring greater ability to get rid of what has no value… a small software upgrade, nothing more.