Over the last 3 months, I have been thinking about this subject while driving back to home through highway connecting my work and home in Baku. The Lean manufacturing subject started from industry and then moved to services. So what is next ?
A lean Person.
A person who does only what is value adding and exiting all what is waste. It sounded simple but once I tried to apply compete set of Lean values and principles it got really shining. It took quite a lot time before I completed this article, since, strived to make sure that approach is valuable.
Here and now want to share with you my view on philosophy of Lean Person. The philosophy of human life with applied methodology of Lean is absolutely new and I have never came across to it earlier. I merged the Lean Six Sigma approach with Human life time value perspective and builded this approach.
Therefore writing this article I want to define this approach as “Lean Person philosophy and methodology by Imran Baghirov” so that it can be differentiated among the other potentially similar approaches. It can include subjects that can be argued and discussed. Therefore I do take it as my first step on this direction while aiming to improve the approach to its best edition over the time allowed to me by Allah.
So lets move ahead to define the methodology. This is the first starting point to define the value definition of human life, without which there is no reason of any Lean application.
What is the Value Adding Life Activity?
Everyone can define it differently depending on Success of Life . Some think that success in world is about being rich and others will argue that the happiness is more important than everything is. You will probably hear propositions like health, good name, spirituality and so many others. I’ll try to summarise those in 3 main batches:
- Bellow the human skin(BHS) – Physical health, Wellness, Beauty, Long Life e.t.c
- Above the human skin(AHS) – Wealth, Money, Leadership, Career e.t.c
- The unseen soul (TUS) – Spirituality, Happiness, Satisfaction, Religion, Enjoyment e.t.c
Even do, our life targets will categorise under the following categories, any human will have a life target consisting of combination of those. You can think about yourself now. What are your coefficients per each of them ?
Success of Life (SOL) = A* BHS + B* AHS + C* TUS
What are you A, B and C’s? Are you aware of them ? If not, it is better to think about it and make your own definition .
Once you have defined your SOL definition then we can think about the Leanness of your life. In what extend each and every activity of you impact the your SOL ?
Definition : The set of activities which are impacting your SOL function positively and in right proportion can be called as Value Adding Life Activities(VALA).
Value Adding Life activities are primary supply of impact to your SOL function. For ex. Going to gym can score differently for separate individuals since their SOL definitions can vary. In most of the cases the proportions of SOL function and activities distribution can vary and in this the case when there are issues with lean.
Once we have mastered the Value part we can move ahead and share with you next 4 principles of Lean.
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The Value Stream –
The value stream is the entire flow of a individuals life time from the birth to the death where every day is linked to previous and adds-up the total value generation. This Principle of Lean dictates that the person should be aware of ordering and planning his life so that there is efficient Value Stream of his life. Random and not planned VALA activities will have low impact on SOL at the end the day. This is also one of the most common pitfalls that is observed around.
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Flow
Is about to keep moving. Never to stop or stuck with something. Life should be like a river. Steady , small , but constant flow. People are always hunting for big jumps in life and that also creates another set of problems. Therefore we have to focus on consistent but solid activities. The big jumps should come as natural, but never targeted exclusively.
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Pull
Do things only when you anticipate that it is going to be the best time for it. This is another key point to success where you spend your time wisely by continuously planning your activities according to environment. For ex. you anticipate by information on your hand that there will be high demand for Data Scientist profession in 5 years and you prepare and get right education to suit this demand. Ignoring the demand and doing life activities is a very popular mistake done around.
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Perfection
Never stop on improving the efficiency of your life. There is always room for improvement even for most value adding activities of your life. Satisfaction with success is poison pulling you down the stage. Continuously asking yourself about the efficiency of your time spent will help you with this principle.
So, Are you ready now to become A LEAN PERSON ?
You can do it in few steps:
- Define your SOL
- Measure your activities against the SOL
- Apply Lean principles to improve your SOL outcome with right set of VALA
- Never get tired and consistently improve your SOL result
Good luck !
You can share with me the experiences you had about the Lean Person methodology. Write your comments here and twitter as it is convenient for you. Lets discuss and share opinions.
Twitter: imranbaghirov