<figure><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--F6wkHZfu0s/Tkmrv2W4cgI/AAAAAAAAAXI/5z6C79buaho/s1600/helpful+tips.jpg"><img src="https://media-aws03.caboodleai.net/ame/19a/52fad361e88e47b1a5008fdbb99c5584-contentimage.jpg?size=large" /></a></figure>For my <a href="http://leanjourneytruenorth.blogspot.com/p/facebook.html">Facebook fans</a> you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Lean-Journey/101728393195684">A Lean Journey on Facebook</a> or <a href="http://twitter.com/TimALeanJourney">Twitter</a> I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips. It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey. Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.<figure><iframe frameborder="0" src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Faleanjourney&amp;width=292&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;show_faces=false&amp;stream=false&amp;header=true&amp;height=62"></iframe></figure>Coaching well requires a balance of criticism and praise. If your coaching conversations are completely focused on what&rsquo;s not working and what the employee has to do to change, that&rsquo;s not motivating, it&rsquo;s demoralizing.Your recognition of the things your employee is doing well can be a springboard into how they can build from that to improve. Giving compliments that you don&rsquo;t actually mean can have a worse effect than not giving any at all, so take the time to think about specific things that are going well, and let your employees know that you see and appreciate them!Coaching requires both encouragement and empowerment. As a manager and a leader, your job is to build one-on-one relationships with employees that result in improved performance.Your employees are likely to have a lot of input, questions, and feedback. It&rsquo;s important for them to know you care enough to listen to what they have to say, so encourage them to share their opinions.Some employees will have no problem speaking their mind, while others will need a LOT of encouragement before they share an opinion with you openly. Once they do open up, be sure to respect those opinions by discussing them, rather than dismissing them.When you&rsquo;re coaching employees to improve performance and engagement, approaching things from their perspective, rather than your own, will help enormously with seeing the changes and results you want.Everyone has different motivations, preferences, and personalities, so if you ask questions to help you understand where their &ldquo;why&rdquo; comes from and what their preferred &ldquo;how&rdquo; looks like, then you can tailor your coaching conversations to align the way they work best with the improvements you&rsquo;re both aiming for.If an employee comes to you with a question about a process or protocol, use this opportunity to teach them something new. If you&rsquo;re not able to stop what you&rsquo;re doing right away, schedule time with them as soon as possible to go over it.Better yet, keep a weekly one-on-one meeting scheduled with each employee so you can go over questions and issues regularly, while maintaining productivity. Coaching employees with a goal of improving performance means making them a priority each week!Make a commitment to improve your own skills and competencies. If you&rsquo;re not continuously learning, why should your employees? Lead by example and your team will follow.Show that you are interested in their success (why wouldn&rsquo;t you be?). Ask questions about where they see their career going, or how they see their role evolving in the company. Even if they don&rsquo;t have a plan laid out yet, these questions will make them think about their career and what they want to accomplish within the organization.Show your employees that you don&rsquo;t just want them to do better so you look better, but that you&rsquo;re actively interested in their career, accomplishments, and professional success.My advice is to focus on small gradual changes rather than large changes. Small changes can be made quickly, on a daily-basis, and are typically inexpensive. By focusing on small changes, you can remove barriers from just starting a continuous improvement process. This focus will allow your team to reap the benefits of their &ldquo;small wins&rdquo; right away. As more and more small changes are applied, your team will see an accumulation of benefits from them. This will give them more confidence to suggest more ideas.By going after the ideas that do not require a large amount of investment, you can remove the financial barriers of your continuous improvement efforts. This process can empower the line worker to suggest and implement ideas that can improve their working process because they know that their changes do not need upper management approval. Some ideas such as reducing waste, eliminating unnecessary steps, and re-organizing in the work processes fall into this category.In a Lean and continuous improvement organization employees are your greatest asset and should also be the source of generating new ideas for improvement. No one knows the work better than the person who performs it everyday. No one has more &ldquo;skin in the game&rdquo; about the working process than that person. As a result, the best person to suggest ideas for improvement and to implement them is the line worker.Although employees play a vital part in the continuous improvement process, it is management&rsquo;s role to train and empower them. Most workers are unaware of Lean principles and practices such as 5S, the 8 wastes, value stream mapping, visual management, Kaizen, etc. As a result, they may not realize that many of the processes that they perform everyday and the frustration that they feel at work are due to unnecessary waste. Additionally some workers are modest and reluctant to share ideas. It is management&rsquo;s role to educate their staff on Lean tools and techniques that can be applied to the continuous improvement process and to help their employees overcome any personal or psychological barrier that prevents them from trying out new ideas.Applying continuous improvement requires participation from everyone in the organization. Upper management needs to invest time and money in employee training and empowerment. Managers need to foster an environment of trust, collaboration, open communication, and a willingness to experiment. And finally, workers need to be engaged in their work and be challenged to come up with small gradual improvements each and every day. By applying these principles, your company will be able to start and sustain your continuous improvement efforts. This will lead to a more economically competitive organization, more efficient work processes, and more satisfied employees.Some people go to bed at night with a whirlwind of thoughts rushing through their mind. They hardly have any time to process what they have just done simply because they are so stressed out about what&rsquo;s directly ahead.Self-reflection can aid in tracking changes, challenges that you face and breakthroughs in your life. Daily self-reflection lets you look back on where you have come from and helps you map out where you want to go in the future.For effective priorities management, it&#39;s essential to practice upward alignment before attempting downward alignment. You could be managing the most unified, productive team on the planet, but if the goals they&#39;re achieving aren&#39;t furthering the objectives most valued by stakeholders, what will that get you?If you aren&#39;t clear about overall business goals, not to mention your boss&#39;s objectives for you and your team, it could be a failing on the part of upper management. But sitting back and waiting for clarity to float down from on high will hurt you more than it hurts them.After all, &quot;urgent&quot; is one quality that&#39;s easy to identify, while other qualities can be more subjective. Make sure your priorities management system is designed to keep your team in quadrants one and two most of the time, with extremely rare forays into quadrant four.Sometimes you might prioritize a task only to have expectations or deliverables change on you. At this point it&rsquo;s hard not to be disappointed. But you can&rsquo;t let that skew your judgment.

Coaching well requires a balance of criticism and praise. If your coaching conversations are completely focused on what’s not working and what the employee has to do to change, that’s not motivating, it’s demoralizing. Your recognition of the things your employee is doing well can be a springboard  

Lean Tips Edition #169 (#2746 -2760)

2 Second Lean has been embraced by many leaders worldwide. There is a high demand from Industry to ‘Learn’ from the experiences of leaders that have been practicing 2SL for a number of years with great success. AME, in conjunction with Paul Akers, will host a 2SL leaders roundtable virtual session, consisting of 3 resident 2SL leaders and 3 guest l

2 second lean leaders roundtable

I am reminded regularly how grateful and humbled I am for the opportunity to be part of the AME family. This week was no exception. I was honored to join the AME Champions Club at O.C. Tanner, a global leader in lean culture and employee engagement. We experienced a rich learning week featuring front-line tours, leadership insights, hands-on activi

From the CEO: Reflecting, refocusing and moving forward — a mid-year review

#ICYMI the NAM and manufacturing leaders across the U.S. took to Capitol Hill to make their voices heard on a critical issue: getting the tax bill to the president’s desk.
The region’s plentiful natural gas is making it a crucial location as energy demand surges thanks to artificial intelligence. Read the full story by tapping the link in our bio.

National Association of Manufacturers

Manufacturers’ Monthly is a business-to-business magazine and a valuable reference tool for all members of the manufacturing industry. The magazine is highly targeted and is read by key decision-makers who purchase and specify manufacturing equipment and services. It is also widely read by suppliers to the manufacturing industry.

Soco T402 Packaging Equipment for sale

Stahl 10000 Cranes And Lifting for sale

FBA Fan Extraction Equipment for sale

APC Extraction Equipment for sale

This measure calculates the percentage of inbound contact volume that comes from voice-based interactions (human agent, voice-based virtual assistant, interactive voice response with Artificial Intelligence etc.). Inbound contact refers to any query (related to sales, information, technical support,customer service, or complaints) that is initiated

Percentage of inbound contact volume that comes from voice-based interactions (human agent, voice-based virtual assistant, IVR with AI etc.)

The field of nursing continues to evolve, demanding new approaches in education to better prepare future professionals for the realities of clinical care. Gone are the days when passive lectures and multiple-choice exams were sufficient. Today, programs need tools that measure not just knowledge but also clinical reasoning, problem-solving, and lea

Evolving Nursing Education Through Performance-Based Assessment

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Ask the Experts: Best practices for storing spare electric motors in industrial facilities
EASA electric motor experts highlight how improper storage can lead to expensive motor repairs a

Predictive Maintenance

Haddy 3D prints stylish, sustainable furniture using circular production processes to reduce waste. See how design meets purpose in the IMTS+ Original Series “Passion Project.”
Dive deeper into the latest and greatest updates across four overarching technology areas – additive manufacturing, automation and robotics, digital manufacturing, and metal

Furnishing the Future

An engineering apprentice at global hygiene and health company Essity’s Skelmersdale paper mill, has been named the 2023-2024 Apprentice of the Year by Waterside Training Limited.

The award serves as a major recognition of both Tom Wood’s dedication and the strength of Essity’s industry-leading apprenticeship programme.

Tom was selected from a gr

Essity engineering trainee named Apprentice of the Year

Image: Crusader Caravans

Crusader Caravans has been named Manufacturer of the Year at the 2025 Caravan Industry Victoria (CIV) Hall of Fame Awards – the fourth time in six years the company has taken out the industry’s highest honour.

The award, judged by an independent panel of industry experts, recognised Crusader’s excellence in manufacturing

Crusader Caravans takes home prestigious manufacturing award

LUSH partners with Google Cloud to improve retail operations and support sustainable manufacturing by cutting packaging waste and streamlining checkouts
Lush has built its reputation on packaging-free cosmetics, offering products that avoid the waste tied to traditional packaging and manufacturing processes.
The global cosmetics sector, by comparis

LUSH & Google Cloud: Streamlining Sustainable Cosmetics

OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge Alphabet’s market-dominating Google Chrome, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It wil

OpenAI to release web browser in challenge to Google Chrome

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REF ( 2-s2.0-85069234426 )

Estimate if not using AI - Average customer service inbound call handling time in minutes
This measure was a respondent-provided estimate of measure 110986 had they not implemented AI: that measure calculates the average customer service inbound call handling time in minutes. This Cycle Time measure is intended to help companies analyze this durati