Sharing at Work

Everything can be improved.  That’s my ‘core belief’ that I discovered by reading my team lead’s copy of The Nibble Theory.  That’s what drives this blog.

Tonight marks another in a long series of APICS classes.  This is a professional development sort of activity that I started to round out my ‘IT business analyst’ skill set.  It’s had its ups and downs, but the current course on manufacturing processes is really speaking to that core belief at the top of the page.  Improve manufacturing operations by reducing the distance between machine A and machine B.  Reduce work in process inventory costs by removing unnecessary storage between machines B and C.  Diversify your work force by ensuring each employee rotates to a different job after their lunch break.  Identify the bottleneck that’s holding back your plant and fix it.  Find the new bottleneck and fix that.  Keep doing it.

Bioteams tells us that high-performance teams are constantly improving themselves.  Mimic genetics by simultaneously trying multiple ways to solve each problem.  Splice together the best traits of each strategy to form a new best solution.  Do it again.

The way you get things done today is great.  It’s been working for you for years.  Make it better.  Take a look at who needs to talk to whom in order to spread successful practices.  Watch your teammates to figure out how they are getting things done.  Borrow their most successful tactics.  Improve on them.  Share your results.  Be respectful about it.  Recognize that you can learn from and share with everyone you encounter, whether they’ve just joined your team or they’ve been leading it for years.