In the first ever edition of Friends of The KaiZone, we are honored to welcome Jens R. Woinowski as a special guest contributor.
Jens R. Woinowski has been in the IT business for more than 20 years and is currently quality and risk manager at a major IT company. While studying and applying lean principles as part of his job, Woinowski discovered that lean management principles were as relevant in personal life as in business. In his blog Lean Self he shares insights of this discovery to the public.
One core principle of Lean is continuous improvement. While in theory the idea is simple and tools like A3s support it, the reality is much more complicated. As long as non-trivial processes are involved, the risk of slow or failed improvement is high. Agile Kaizen, which is suggested in this post, may be the answer to speed up and raise the chances of sustainable change.
If you have seen enough continuous improvement activities in real life, you may have seen this anti-pattern: