Steal Shamelessly

So, I got a little feedback about my earlier post about lean and six sigma. I love the feedback - it tells me people are actually paying attention and this stuff does not just disappear into the internet back hole.

Anyway, the feedback was that there was a tone of sarcasm and cynicism in the post that the reader wanted to point out. I’m glad they did. Because I had intentionally put those remarks in.

If you are posting on-line or coaching or consulting, you can’t be wishy-washy. You can’t be middle of the road. You need to have an opinion. You need to take a side. It’s like the daytime talk show hosts - they are there and successful because they take a side and express their opinion. The fact that you may or may not agree creates the dynamic. That’s what sells - that’s what creates traffic (viewers).

One of the keys to becoming successful very quickly is to find someone who is where you want to be, observe what they have done, and model their behavior. It goes with my moto in an earlier post - steal shamelessly - find what works and apply it in your business - fast.

There are two sad parts about this process that I have observed.

The first sad part is when someone takes the ideas, forgets where they came from and claims it as their own. Now I understand that our thoughts are simply a mashup of our education, experience and readings, but outright plagiarism and corporate ladder climbing by stolen ideas is inexcusable. Unfortunately in this world we have to rely on Carma to correct this injustice. Just don’t do it - give credit where credit is due.

The second sad part is when we “fix” the idea before we apply it. “Great idea, but I’ll just apply these few tweaks before I implement it here”. Be careful that you are not tweaking out the very thing that made the idea successful. Remember who is the one that is successful here - it ain’t you - yet. So model the idea exactly as you observed it until you see some success implementing it. Once you see success, then you can tweak it.

Consider lean standard work as an example. We don’t let a new person working in our area tweak the way things are done right off the bat. First you learn how we do tasks by following standard work. It’s ok to ask why, and presumably the people working there can adequately explain why, but follow the standard work. Once the standard is mastered ie: you are proficient in doing the work at takt time and can teach others how to do it as well, it is our RESPONSIBILITY to explore how to tweak it.

The essence of Lean is to continuously improve how the work is done (kaizen) by engaging the people that are doing the work.

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Norm Bain
http://normbain.com