Stop digging

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

not sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_holes

The beauty about Lean Business is that in many cases, it’s just common sense, but rigorously applied. The ideas aren’t necessary groundbreaking, the biggest part is just about doing what makes sense and not let yourself be distracted by random other things.

Another Lean mentor once told me:

If you’re in a hurry, just stop and think, you’re late anyway

This is about tracking an action plan for a project but also about business. If you’re in the last two weeks of the quarter and you’re massively behind, don’t beat up your teams to ‘do whatever it takes to make the quarter’ <cringe>. But stop, think, look and observe. What is causing the miss, where is the miss occurring? Are we doing what we said we’d do? Is our Standard Work still followed? If not, is it still relevant? What are customers telling us, directly or indirectly through their behaviour?

And that, that is the beauty about problem solving. It’s not about chasing your own tail to make the quarter, it’s to make sure you’re setup to make the year. And the next, and the next….