Each New Year is a perfect time to reflect upon the previous year and think about the year ahead. I have spent this time to reflect upon my last year, not just my personal life, but upon my career. One thing that I have come back to and want to share is when I traveled out to a few of our great American canyons around Memorial Day. I was looking through my photos and realized how well nature provides a perfect opportunity to reflect and provide metaphors for our own lives. This photo is from Bryce Canyon's Hoodoos. This canyon has an interesting way it was formed. Unlike many other canyons, this was not created by a river. Instead it was created by water, ice, and gravity - precipitation and freezing and breaking down the rock incrementally through time. There will be a day when these formations no longer exist. I can imagine that day that someone looks at a clean cut canyon and wonders to themselves "this is so beautiful! It's amazing how clean of a canyon was formed on this planet!" There may not be much thought into the beautiful imagery I was able to see, the beautiful incremental process.
While this process is that of erosion, it is still a process, and like all things, incremental changes can create such beautiful things - and the incremental change can be quite beautiful itself! Upon this New Year, I reflect back upon this image and think about the incremental changes I am looking forward to this year in my career. These are my Career Resolutions for 2018.
I seek to Learn more about the Lean Principles.
I seek to Teach others about the knowledge and experience I have.
I seek to have a Positive Impact on the work culture of my company
I seek to Share successes and failures with others
I seek to Focus on my own incremental development
1. I SEEK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE LEAN PRINCIPLES
I have learned a great deal this last year about the Lean Principles. I have found a deeper understanding this year through reading multiple books, going to conferences, visiting other companies, and participating in leadership groups/circles. I have been so lucky to be able to participate in multiple WhatsApp groups sharing videos of improvements with others. Coming out of the AME Conference 2017, a group was formed to share an idea of Lean@Home. In this group we share short videos of how we take the Lean concepts and apply them in our everyday lives at home. This idea spread a bit in my company and we have created a few more of these Lean groups to share short videos with each other. It's so encouraging to have others provide positive (and constructive) feedback in such a respectful manner. It's as though I've joined my own little Lean support group.
This year I plan to participate more in these groups, and help others develop their own as well.
I also want to read a few more Lean books (if you have suggestions let me know!) about not just what Lean is, but how others have applied and learned it. I do this not just for my own development, but so I can better do my #2 Career Resolution.
2. I SEEK TO TEACH OTHERS ABOUT THE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE I HAVE
As I learn more about Lean, and the overarching principles it provides, I want to teach others what I have learned. Part of that includes sharing my knowledge through more posts here and on LinkedIn about the books I am reading. In my own career, I will teach this knowledge and experience by participating in training. I teach onboarding for our industrial engineers to better their Presentation Skills, and among that I typically get the last day to help provide feedback for some of their projects and give general advice. I plan to include more of what I learn as part of this, and try to get more involved with other training opportunities.
3. I SEEK TO HAVE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE WORK CULTURE OF MY COMPANY
One of the big things I have been working on, and will continue to work on this year, is spreading the idea of Operational Excellence. In our case we are focusing on the developing of people based on key Leadership and Lean Principles to positively impact our work culture. We look to increase the overall well-being of all our employees, not just a particular group, but everyone involved. I will do this through Coaching and helping other to try new things and new ways to manage and lead. I think by focusing on these things I will help the entire management system improve to the point where we are creating a learning organization of problem solvers, and where Respecting Every Individual and Leading with Humility become the norms of how we manage and lead the organization. This obviously is not a single year thing, but this is the year where we can really have an impact on small parts of the company, and help create more and more Coaches to develop this in other parts of the company.
4. I SEEK TO SHARE SUCCESSES AND FAILURES WITH OTHERS
I have shared a lot of my own reflections here and on LinkedIn and plan to continue to do so this year. I want to be able to hold true to a once a week cadence to make this part of my own Standard Work though. I missed a few opportunities in 2017 to do this, but I think I can make this happen throughout 2018. I also plan on sharing these successes and failures through the idea of Yokoten, or sharing ideas horizontally with others. We have recently in my organization, started to record videos and video interviews with others to share their improvements. This idea allows others to apply that knowledge and not just copy things on the face value, but to understand the true intent of the improvement (or failure) and improve upon it. More a stretch goal of mine, is to develop my way of sharing videos, perhaps sharing through this medium as a sort of video or audio podcast. We will see if I can make that happen, but for now I think participating in the Yokoten opportunities within my company, and sharing some of my personal weekly reflections here with the world are doable.
5. I SEEK TO FOCUS ON MY OWN INCREMENTAL DEVELOPMENT
I recognize that not everything has to be Lean related, so I too want to explore my own incremental development in other things as well. I read loads of books, and listen to just as many podcasts. I want to read at least 3 books in genres that I otherwise wouldn't read, and listen to more podcasts about design and more specifically, bio-design. I have been listening a lot to 99% Invisible and really enjoy that podcast, so I will try to find something that takes that a step further in the bio-design direction, or how we can use nature as a starting point for our own design - it's 4.5 Billion years of development! I would also like to allow myself to just find and stick to a hobby. I enjoy wood working and have a couple projects ongoing - such as rejuvenating some dining room chairs. I will create time to finish up these projects and try to learn some more on different woodworking techniques.
Well, that's my Career Resolutions for 2018, so tell me what things you plan to do this year! I look forward to the world ahead of us this year, so let's build each other up, support whatever it is we need to feel purposeful, and find our own True North. Happy New Year!