365QOD- Day1016

Eliminating or Adding Steps

“Toyota is known for eliminating any steps that are intermediary or unimportant”- Tim Ferriss

Many times we tend to make things for complex by adding steps.  Companies are very good at adding hurdles on the path to execution.  They do not tolerate risk and by including extra steps they feel that they have better control of the system.  However, this often creates frustration because it lacks common sense of what needs to be done in order to execute a job.   

The quote illustrates that some of the most efficient companies do the opposite.  They want to eliminate the 

unnecessary work and steps in order to get better quality.  To most American companies the extra steps are needed to guarantee quality. 

I believe that intermediate steps are needed in order to assure people know why a particular step is needed. This is very obvious when one watches a martial artist perform a kata form.  Most forms consist of anywhere from 10+ to 100 individual steps.  Just remembering the steps for some of the complex ones requires months and years of learning.  The level of knowing how to do one without thought takes even more time.  

Eventually, you learn the pattern and you can perform it without mistakes. This is just information that has become knowledge.  It is not mastery.

Mastery requires one to go back and look at the intermediate steps that are missing.  As an example consider that the transition from one position to another requires the turning of the head from current position to the new position without turning the body.  This is awkward for most students.  However, would you ever turn the body into danger before you have to by simply rotating the head to see what is coming at you from that direction? Most students do so because they do not know the intermediate steps.

Today’s question is:

“Do you know the purpose of the intermediate steps of your job?”