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Years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a virtual tour of Cambridge Air Solutions. It gave me a chance to see another company’s lean culture and processes in action. One part of the tour that has continued to stick with me all these years later has been the concept of 2 Second Lean™.
The idea of 2 Second Lean was created by Paul Akers while pursuing lean at his company, FastCap. From what I learned during the tour, 2 Second Lean is a simple, effective method for pursuing continuous improvement. It asks, “What small change can I make today that will help improve the work I am doing?” The focus is on making many small improvements that build up over time to make a huge difference.
During the Cambridge Tour, we got to see a video of team members on the manufacturing floor demonstrating their 2 Second Lean improvements. What stood out to me was how empowered and excited they were to identify and improve their work day and share their implementations.
James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, also touches on the power of small improvements. He tells the story of a cycling coach, Dave Brailsford, who used this strategy to take the 2003 British Cycling team from being mediocre to dominating at cycling events.
From Atomic Habits:
“What made him [Brailsford] different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvements in everything you do. Brailsford said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
Ten weeks ago, I decided to run my own personal experiment - “Each week on my current project, I will implement one 2 Second Lean improvement.”
Since then, I challenged myself weekly to do one thing that will make tomorrow’s work faster, easier, or more effective.
Taking a second to stop and ask “How can I make this process better?”, “How can I automate some of the repetitive tasks I am doing?” or “How can I increase the value I’m delivering to the client?” presented me with many opportunities for improvement. My biggest realization from this experiment is that we can often be so busy and focused on doing the work that we don’t take a second to step back and ask, “How could I make this better?” And that as a result, we end putting up with things that frustrate us, slow us down, or trip us up.
Most of the changes I made were simple things:
- Creating and saving filters in Jira for all the categories of storycards I regularly need to groom and check status on (instead of manually searching for storycards)
- Asking IT to help fix an issue I had that was preventing me from being able to use dual monitors effectively when in a virtual desktop (instead of bouncing between multiple windows on one screen)
- Creating a template of materials next to the digital Planning Game to make putting together each iteration’s plan easier (instead of manually resizing tickets each week)
I often would just “get by” with the way I had been used to doing things, because I didn’t want to slow down. I was “too busy.” But in hindsight, I realize how critical this time to “slow down” in the moment is because it makes me go faster in the long run. And the time I took to slow down wasn’t even that long!
In one case, for my “improvement” for the week, I decided to schedule a 15-minute phone call with a newer client stakeholder - seeking to understand more of his perspective and build a stronger working relationship. That one 15-minute investment has already resulted in a deeper relationship and gave me an understanding of where he was coming from and how I can better support his needs on the project.
In another case, my improvement for the week was to share with two of our High-Tech Anthropologists® how I had been customizing my view of Jira to meet project needs, which helped them better utilize the tool moving forward.
All in all, I estimate that the ten 2 Second Lean improvements I have implemented so far have:
- Saved me 7 ½ hours of time each week - giving me time to take on other important tasks
- Allowed me to be more responsive to client requests
- Helped me to build a stronger relationship with the client
- Given me the space to work further ahead
In 2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Lean Culture, Akers shares, “Lean Thinking presumes that everything can be improved continuously, without end.” I challenge you, readers, to join me in taking a few minutes each week to take a step back, identify, and implement one small change to improve the work you do.
If you want to try 2 Second Lean, start by asking yourself what frustrates you. Paul says, “Lean is about fixing what bugs you.” Think about what in your life annoys you and take one step towards making it just a little better!