We’re human. We can strive for perfection, like Lean dictates, but we’ll never be inherently perfect. As someone who has always been weighed on heavily by her potential, I have always been anxious to be perfect. I have to get good grades, I have to make my parents proud, I have to outshine the rest of my peers. With school starting up again in just a mere 17–I repeat, 17–days, the stress to be perfect is much more real than it has been all summer. After coming back from the Michigan Lean Consortium’s annual conference (which was awesome by the way) in Traverse City, MI, my life was quickly turned upside-down. This week has been a tough one, and I feel that I’ve been terrible in the sense of being a continuous improvement practitioner. I have found myself behind on my work, my bedroom a disaster, all my laundry dirty, and impending tuition payments on my doorstep–I’ll admit it, I kind of freaked out and bogged myself down…
But then I remembered something–Lean is a journey. I am still human. These things happen and setbacks are to be expected. I remembered how hard Lean was when I first started back in December; I couldn’t even really wrap my head around it back then. The culture confused me and the tools seemed to be described in a different language (unfortunately none of the ones I know). I was told it would be difficult and that there will be days where I would want to throw away all of my post-its and flashcards with random Japanese words on them… But here I am. I have grown and learned more than I could have ever hoped to in this position in just a few months. I have networked, become more professional, and become part of the best team of practitioners a young lady could ever ask for. Lean is not about where you will get to, it’s about taking that next step that matters. You can’t expect to succeed without failing a few times and that has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn–and continue to learn. Even though this week has been tough, and I am a bit disappointed in myself, I know now what I need to do to be better and will do so! Here’s to fixing what we broke, starting fresh, moving forward. We aren’t perfect, but we can certainly strive for it one baby step at a time.
