Taking a LEAN of absence

Have you ever noticed how going on vacation is simple and coming back to reality is a challenge? There’s no weening into relaxation, you kick your shoes off and leap into a comfortable position, and that’s how you remain for your entire vacation. Yet, when it comes time to go back to your routine it takes some progressing.

This is a concept we are all familiar with, regardless of the length of our “vacation.” I am especially familiar since I just got back into the office last week from being a counselor at a girl scout camp. It was a wonderful week to simply be engulfed by songs, kids, and adventures, but it also took my mind away from being a lean practitioner for seven days. At first I tried to catch close calls, but with 100+ people I gave up pretty quickly and my lean mind was put in the shadows. Once Monday rolled in and I had to dive back into my usual routine, I found myself absolutely dumbfounded and bewildered. This was overwhelming and stressful because I felt as though I had lost my touch. Stepping away from a lean mindset didn’t only affect my work, it affected my everyday life beyond the office as well. This happened because I have been working on implementing lean into everything that I do and when my “core” was removed everything else felt as though it crumbled around me, which made me feel vulnerable, exposed, and distressed. Although I felt as though I lost my touch, I still had lean lurking in the shadows of my hibernating mind and I figured what better experiment then to see if lean really does work as well as it’s argued and to see how important sustainment is to the idea of continuous improvement. This became my first practice with lean since arriving home and I can say, yet again, I am in awe of the power of lean. Before I recognized that this could be an experiment, my apartment was a disaster and flipped upside down, my car became a “enter if you dare” zone, my notes from my classes were disorganized and irrelevant to the material, and my concentration at work was befuddled, all happening in a matter of three days. Now (only a week later), my apartment is no longer chaotic but rather rearranged AND labeled, my notes have been rewritten and deciphered, and my work is on task and on time.

From the start of my lean journey about five months ago, I could tell right away how powerful lean was, and I’ve shared this many times through previous blog posts. However, I hadn’t had enough time for my practices to fall apart and for me to appreciate lean for all that it is, nor did I really understand the importance of sustaining the changes or sustaining a mind to continuously make changes. I came into the Office of Continuous Improvement with no previous knowledge or comprehension of lean; I remember asking Nate what “kaizen” meant and him shaking his head. However, now lean is like the friends I made when I started college–one of the most important things in my life that has only been a part of it for a short period of time, but has made the largest impact thus far. Just like my new friends, I plan to continue to kindle my relationship with lean so that it will never burn out on me entirely.