As simple as walking a dog
I’m a lean nerd, right? My brain never stops thinking about lean and I always try to do things better, faster and with less waste. It even goes automatically these days where I don’t even know that I am actually installing visual management in a thing that I do roughly 4-5 times a day.
When I’m not onsite with a customer (at genba) I work from home. This is great for many reasons, one of them being is it allows me to walk our dogs. We have a 4-year old Nova Scotia Duck Toller Retriever and a 1-year old French Waterdog (Barbette). They’re great for the kids to play with and cuddle, but also good for me to help me get my 10k steps in daily. So when I work from home, I walk the dogs 4-5 times a day with typically a larger walk around lunch time.
The Fear
The biggest fear for dog owners that walk through well organised residential neighbourhoods is… forgetting your poop bag (poepzakje in Dutch). Small plastic sachets that use to clean up after your dog when they do a number 2. I’ve had many instances where I took on my coat, leashed up the two dogs, grabbed my keys, close the door behind me, only to realise I forgot the poop bags. Find the keys, tell the dogs to walk back to the front door, open the door, walk in, find the bags, leave again. Very confusing for our dogs that have only one thing on their mind when I put on their leash.
And when you only find out halfway the walk? Oh my, you’re in some serious sh*t. Few things you can do: first, walk really fast not giving the dogs the opportunity to do a number 2, see if anyone’s around and ask to ‘borrow’ a poop bag or third look around, make sure no one sees you and do the walk of shame as ‘the neighbour who doesn’t clean up after his dog’. To be prevented at all times, right?
The solution is visual management
The solution is as elegant as it is simple. What I started dong is just tying the poop bags to the leashes of the dogs. Nowadays we have very bright coloured bags (orange etc) that are not easily overlooked. So the beauty here is, you can tell very easy if you have your bags with your or not. Before I walk out the door, as I take the leashes in my hand the system will give me immediate and very visual feedback about whether we are good to go.
As I was walking the other day (walking is really good for clear thinking) it struck me how subconsciously I’ve created a piece of Standard Work that allowed for a very simple and effective Visual Management to prevent future mistakes. Less waste created, fear minimised, reputations protected. More time to walk the dogs and think about my next blog post.