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This is a topical walk-over of the first portion of Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean by Andy Carlino. It is the perfect book for any organization wanting to introduce lean principles to their people. It doesn’t bog down in the mire of data and formulas like so many others.

This is an extremely quick glean of highlighted phrases throughout the first section. The book is very easy to read. It will change your organization.
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Understand the fundamentals.
Copycats never achieve success.
Lean must be internalized.
Changed beliefs drive behavior.
Changing only tools and policies is ineffective.
Employee’s beliefs cannot be changed by force.
Employee beliefs must be lead into alignment with company belief.

These principles provide direction.

Observation
Waste elimination
Agreement
Problem solving
Learning

Observation
Most managers believe they already understand the company’s reality and make decisions a priori.

Observation is about how to understand the current reality.
Subsequent principles are adopted more easily when an organization is in sync through observation.

It develops a sense of how work is done, and why it is done a certain way.
Learn how to observe and understand.
Understand and develop value stream mapping.
See the activities, connections, and flows.
Understand that activities are the steps taken, and that produce results.

Connections are paired functions between internal customer and supplier.
The customer wants something.
The supplier provides it.
Both customer and supplier are responsible.
There should be only one path for request and response in paired function connections.

Flows are paths taken by material, information, and people.
The flow bridges the white space between processes.
It must not cause waste.
It should have only one standardized path.

Waste elimination should be the every day thought—a daily test.

Waste is defined in:
Overproduction
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Over processing
Defects

These are the definers of the view into the company’s current reality.
These definers are the tools to organize, identify, and eliminate waste.

People should be utilized to their full potential.

All activity must add value that the end customer wants, that develops the product, and that contributes to the product being right the first time.

Value added activity becomes untouchable. It may only be explored and refined for waste elimination.

Agreement is a foundation for standardization.
It defines how activity is performed.
How an activity is performed must be in high agreement among those involved in those processes.

A common way or process must take priority over an individual’s own way.
Failure to focus on how to perform an activity causes ambiguity and disconnects paired functions.

Problem solving must be seen as opportunity.
The belief system must change to expose and turn problems into tools.
Dig deeper into problems. Surface them immediately. Design work to reveal them. All problems are equally valuable tools.

Contain problems and ask why until there is no why to ask. Attribute a problem to their relevant activity, connection, and flow.

Validate each ‘why’ answer.

This must be embedded to capture root causes.

Learning holds lean principles together.
Learning isn’t only information. Information does not produce results.
Being right is only right when it is effective.
Improvements through experimentation need to be verified. Good experimentation revolves around a good hypothesis.

Ideas must be tested quickly and cheaply. Learn about a process to be able to verify it. Implement it into action and standardize the solution.

Develop a learning environment through reflection and apply it to sequential events.

Base processes on real experience, not theory.

Remove the barriers of fear and comfort zone. Expand the learning zone, but establish good boundaries to avoid chaos.

Reflection and experimentation are real work, and need to be priorities in leadership.

Lean principles cannot be engineered without gaining people’s hearts through leadership.
Leadership moves toward the company’s ideal state.

Good leadership teaches. It transfers ideas and skills. It is managements direct responsibility.

Solutions are right when they are right collectively.

Good work-place tension is a source of energy, not stress. It imparts the sense of urgency with a clear path to help and move forward.

Good tension projects a vision of the ideal state, a hatred of the current state, and the skills and actions to move toward the ideal state. The ideal state is a vision of how the company should function. It provides direction. It is individualized for every process, activity, and person. It presents a clear path.

The leader must choose the path and create a way to drive change through consensus and healthy dictatorship.

Learning mostly occurs outside the comfort zone. The lean leader eliminates the comfort zone and directs people to the learning zone, setting clear goals, providing mechanisms, and experimenting purposefully. Fear can be abated in an atmosphere that provides physical safety, emotional safety, and professional safety. The person who takes risks and learns should be rewarded. This activity should be modeled. Leaders should be ‘learner leaders’.

The leader should be in the front of it pulling not pushing. Management buy-in should exhibit a leadership commitment.

The leader’s activity should be standardized. Lean must be applied to management function and convey legitimacy to lean efforts. Leadership is an act.
Mistakes should not be hidden. They should be used for learning.

Lean should be applied across the board, not just to manufacturing. An even order flow must be provided. Suggestions should be all about what is best for the customer, not just manufacturing. Frame everything around adding value that is delivered to the customer with less waste.

Develop lean thinking that applies lean principles and rules as the foundation to apply to any process.
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As I said, this article is just a quick passover of points within the first section of a well written book on lean. You won’t find a better way to train and get people on board. You need this book if you’re even thinking about lean.

Regards.

One of my co-workers is the sort of person that just loves to push your buttons. The more he sees that something aggravates someone, the more he jabs at it.

Even in the face of this, he’s really a very likable person. And he usually gets away with pressing peoples buttons because he is a fun person.

He’s an extremely intelligent person as well. He has a lot of abilities not found in just everyone.

He has a very strong opinion about most things. Especially things pertaining to work and how things should be done correctly.

This can really dig under a person’s skin. But, there isn’t a lot one can say when a stubborn person is right about something. Particularly when they’re right almost 100% of the time. This make him a person with a respected opinion even with his harsh delivery.

All this said, I’ve come to the conclusion that a person is either stubborn or they are an idiot. While I would promote a friendlier declaration of an idea that helps people accept it, I still believe that you’re either stubborn or you are an idiot.

How so?

Mostly, even when the degrees between two choices aren’t that extreme, at the least one way of doing something would be a better choice over another. And in other choices, there is an absolutely right way and a wrong way that is more pronounced.

So, for this discussion, even considering the less extreme choices, we’ll say that there is a right way and a wrong way.

Now, if you are doing something, and someone tells you it is wrong, you should be stubborn or you are an idiot.

Here’s why.

If you are doing something that you don’t think is right, and you’re still doing it, then you are an idiot.

If you are doing something that you know is right, and someone tells you it’s wrong, you should be stubborn about it—because you know it’s right. So until you are proven wrong, if you aren’t stubborn, then you aren’t even worth talking to. You’re a whimsical weenie with no backbone. Get a life.

Now, after you are proven wrong, that flips you to the other side. Then, you would be doing something you know is wrong, and you would be and idiot.

So, trust me in this.

You’re either stubborn, or you’re an idiot.

Regards.

I started this blog in the last week of Feb. 27, 2006. It is now May 17, 2006.

When I started, it was because I had heard you could drive a lot of traffic and make a lot of money with a blog. I have had online businesses before. I usually had to pay for traffic. I had become quite an Adwords expert. The idea of free traffic had enough appeal to get me started blogging.

I use BlueHost.com. I chose it because it was the cheapest I could find that had a crazy package. It has 50gig storage, 999gig bandwidth, and free domain and sub domains. Back to the point, my host had lots of free, one-click to install, software.

I installed and removed them one at a time, not really knowing exactly what I was wanting. Then I came upon Wordpress. It was easy and I liked it. So, here we are. You’re looking at over 2 months of blogging right now.

When I started, it was all about finding an income source. It’s still about that, but I have discovered something that is fun for me to do, and that has almost doubled its income each month.

In February, I went crazy getting started. I made a whopping $3.57 that first week on adsense.

In March, I spent a lot of effort learning my way around Wordpress. I had to know how to do PHP and especially Javascript in a WordPress post. I first used javascript in a post making a BMI weight calculator. Then, I shared how to easily get javascript in a Wordpress Post.

Then, I started seeing that just about everything I was posting was in the top pages on Google, and in fact all the search engines had me in their top pages.

I’m on the first page with ‘javascript wordpress’, ‘wonderful relationship’ , ’sudoku create’, ‘bmi weight calculator’, and on and on. In fact, it’s incredible the ways you get found in the search engines–ways I never expected when I was writing a page. Sudoko has become my highest traffic. But before that it was ’stupid christians’. I was really surprised by how many people search for ’stupid christians’. But, there I am, on the first page in the search engines.

Several years ago, I did a lot of search engine optimization, but I had never had such easy success as I was having in WordPress. I finally figured out why I was having so much success with the search engines. I’ll share that in another post, or write an e-book (ha).

Anyway, with only my Adsense income:
$3.57 in Feb,
$9.52 in March,
$18.89 in April,
and now, as of the 17th, I’m over $1.00 per day, I’m headed for over $30.00. I’m at $18.19 at this moment.

My pages viewed is doing the same thing. It’s not doubling, but its adding about 5000 pages each month. This month is heading toward 21,000 pages viewed. It’s right at 12,000 pages right now.

So, at the present growth, this thing should become my full time job in under 1 1/2 or 2 years.

I couldn’t do it with the adsense alone. I’ve actually made over $100.00 selling games from free traffic to my game site from this site in the last two months. You can see all the ways I’ve monetized my blog at the top, the side, in the content, and at the bottom.

My whole point with this article is how I have evolved in these short 3 months. This is actually fun. Sure, I’m still doing this with the money as a goal. But, it’s really fun tweaking a page and seeing it on the first page of Google. Particularly, when it is on the first page ahead of 60,000,000 web pages! That’s just cool.

Do, you think the lottery pages are a competitive group? Right now, if you type ‘lucky powerball’ in Google, I’m the first one on the first page. And none of this is to mention the directory traffic and direct link traffic. Also, don’t forget the feeds traffic like technorati, wists, de.licio.us, furl, and others. Having those links on my pages is really viral.

Well, so far, I’m writing all my own material. I don’t know if you have to do that or not. It seems to me that original material is the best material. I’m sure you could reach a point where it may not be practical.

Well, I’ll try to come back and update this as things change over the next months. I’ve added two new money sources in the last two days. Things are changing quickly.

Hope you have success with what you are doing as well.

Here is more about online marketing.

Regards.

I’m 47 years old. That’s young to some and really old to others.

I am a cut above the rest when it comes to problem solving and skills. I’m very good with my hands. I make good decisions. In short, I am an employer’s greatest hope for a productive employee that will make money for the company.

That is what I have done all my life. I have been brilliant for someone else’s pocket book.

I was once on my way to being very well off financially. I partnered with a friend to build homes in West Virginia. We were having great success. We were well on our way. That is when the coal mines in West Virginia went out on strike for an entire year in the late 1970’s. Their economy crashed and burned along with our dreams.

Now, I’m stuck in the rat race. I could have lived life. But I chose to work life.

This article is a sad extension of my mid-life crisis.

This article is also a proclamation of new direction–the acceptance of a challenge. It is also to issue a challenge to those of you in my condition and a message or warning to those of you who are younger, especially if you are just starting your adult career.

Here it is in a nutshell: Live life, don’t work life.

I have told my daughter to pursue what she loves and hope to get paid doing it.

You don’t want to pursue money, things, and power. Yes, there are benefits to these things. But the yield isn’t happiness–at least not the kind that was in the dream.

What is the condition I am in that is so terrible? Mostly that I have things that force me to make a certain amount of money to keep them. I earn this money doing things I don’t love. This makes my work a chore that is all about having things. And things don’t yield happiness. The net result is an un-fulfilling life. I’m working life. I’m not living life. Beyond that, my brilliance is making my employer the bulk of the money my effort returns.

This brings us to the second part of the challenge. Work for yourself. At least get the bulk of the return for your effort. This is your life you’re giving away.

So, this isn’t a complete list by far. But this is a challenge and a warning that will bring you a happy life.

Pursue what you love.
Hope to get paid doing what you love.
Work for yourself, or seek the highest benefit for your effort.

Cap these life pursuits off with maintaining your spiritual self, and you have the tools for a happy life.

Regards.

PS. Don’t worry if you don’t get paid well doing what you love. You’ll still be happy. Doing what you love is more important to happiness than having a bunch of stuff.