The major tenet of the Lean system is continual improvement. This means never settling, always striving for more and recognizing that improvement is nearly always possible. You can begin this journey using a one-page RIP sheet.
Get your FREE RIP Sheet template, courtesy of Prime Vector.
The value of investing in improvement
Former NFL Coach Bill Parcells once shared insight into his decision-making process regarding draft prospects. He said that if he were considering two different running backs who could run a 4.5-second 40-yard dash, he would want to draft the player with worse running form because that player had the most potential to improve. Both players could run fast, but the player with poor form could run even faster if he improved his form under Parcells’ coaching. The other player had less room to improve.
Between two processes that do the same job with similar effectiveness, if one is much less organized, Lean tells us to embrace the challenge of improving processes.
The Lean Improvement Process (aka Rapid Improvement Process) succeeds because of its unique, nontraditional approaches to problems. The table below cites a few examples.
As you can see, many traditional improvement approaches focus more on patching holes in localized areas of their processes rather than on redesigning the system to avoid stress points.
Processes are best improved at a manual level before automation or other technological remedies are considered.
One principle of Lean is the belief that processes are best improved at a simple manual level first before any attempts at automation or other technological remedies are considered. For example, if you have a poorly designed process and attempt to fix it by automating it, you are essentially just polishing a turd. The underlying process is still bad despite the expensive “fix” of automation.
An absurd example of this, as seen in the above table, is someone who buys a sports car because they are constantly stuck in traffic on their way to work. A sports car may be faster than other cars on the road, but in a traffic jam, every car is subjected to the same situation. The better approach would be to try to find a new route that avoids the traffic altogether or change departure times — that is, to design a new process before spending money on machinery.
What kinds of improvements can be made to a disorganized or poorly designed process? To know this for sure, we need to discern what needs to be improved. If you don’t know what is broken or even if something is broken, there’s no way to fix it. A Rapid Improvement Process sheet, or RIP sheet, can help bring this to light and then lead to action steps.
Rapid Improvement Process Worksheets (aka RIP Sheets)
I use a simple RIP sheet with four simple quadrants. Anyone in the organization, regardless of work experience or education level, can implement this simple form.
The following explains the four sections, starting at the top left and working counter-clockwise:
Business Case: This section is up to three paragraphs long. It describes what is going on and what the issue is. Try to keep it so simple and high-level that you can use this to explain the situation to your mom or dad, or someone with no familiarity with the company or problem.
Current Condition: This quadrant contains three to five bulleted items of conditions that describe the situation today and all aspects of the problem you want to solve. They are statements such as, “There is a 5-minute wait to get a table at our restaurant.”
Target Condition: These are bulleted items corresponding to the current condition that describes the future state of your business. For example, “The Customer is greeted and seated immediately upon arrival to the concierge station.”
Countermeasure (or Action Plan): This is the plan of how you will get from the current condition to the target condition. There are four columns: countermeasures (or tasks), owner, date the task is due, and status. Status can be one of the following: not started, WIP (work in progress), done or late; or green (no issues), yellow (some issues) or red (major issues). This section is intended to be a summary of the project plan. There could be a larger project plan with more details that the project leader may have, but this is an executive summary for use by the team.
In my experience, some managers may initially want a detailed project plan that cannot fit into this section. However, if you do enough RIPs — say, once a week — managers will spend more time writing project plans than doing the work. The objective is not to have beautiful documentation but to get business results, so keep the maintenance and administration of RIP sheets to a reasonable level.
Since these are only one page, they are useful tools to post to a wall for a RIP wall. When the RIP is completed, take the sheet off the wall or move it to a completed section. In the past, I have copied completed RIP sheets onto green paper to show that the work is complete.
Parting Words From President Lincoln on RIP
There’s an old anecdote about President Abraham Lincoln that Seapoint Center founder Jesse Lyn Stoner describes on her website.
I’m paraphrasing here:
President Lincoln used to slip out of the White House one evening a week to listen to the sermons of Dr. Phineas Gurley at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. He tried to do so without being noticed, as he was the president after all, and people would be more than excited to see him in person. So, he often sat in the minister’s study, just adjacent to the sanctuary where Dr. Gurley delivered his sermons.
One Sunday, walking home from that week’s service, one of Lincoln’s aides asked him what he thought of the sermon. Lincoln replied that he thought Dr. Gurley had delivered the sermon eloquently, and that the content of it was excellent. The aide replied, “So you thought it was an excellent sermon?”
“No,” Lincoln replied. “The content was excellent, and he delivered it with eloquence and grace, but Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient to a sermon. He forgot to ask us to do something great.”
Take Lincoln’s message to heart as you work through RIPs. Don’t only strive for great content. Strive to incite greatness from others and yourself.
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