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This post is Part III in a series of thoughts on LEAN practices and your GTD workflow, where we are working on eliminating waste from our productivity practices.

Evaluating our Current Responsibilities

In Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People“, he discusses the roles that each of us plays in the course of our lives. There are times that we must act in different ways, such as Spouse, Employee, Team Member, etc. Covey suggests that in planning for managing our time and commitments that we identify the various roles that we have, and list the responsibilities that go along with them. This is a good place to apply the basic LEAN principles in order to reduce waste and increase our effectiveness:

These steps are essential, in order to achieve any realistic success with your “big-picture” goals. As a set of examples I will put forth some of my own roles (as I have currently defined them) and show how I apply each step.

These roles and current responsibilities are as follows:

• Husband
• Employee
• Personal Development
• Spiritual Development
• Home Manager
• Salesman
• Blogger

Each of these Roles is important to a full and balanced life. Let us work with the Employee role, as that is a role that most of us are familiar with. First, we need to Define the Value to the Customer: I have three kinds of customers in this step -

1. Internal Customers - the staff that I support by maintaining the CRM and acting as a liaison for various service providers and vendors
   • Value - Provide timely contact information
   • Value - Maintain all current reporting
   • Value - Update systems as required
2. External Customers - the clients that want information on our products and services, or to purchase same
   • Value - Provide timely responses to inquiries
   • Value - Connect potential clients with Sales Consultant
3. Myself - I have goals for my career and my finances that need to be serviced and maintained, just as any of my co-workers who rely on me for achieving their own goals.
   • Value - Achieve financial goals by performing assigned tasks
   • Value - Advance career potential by acquiring new skills
   • Value - Increase value of personal brand via Networking

The second step is to Map the Value Stream: for my Internal customers the flow is pretty basic:

• Client inquiry enters CRM via email or telephone
• Inquiry is filtered and assigned to the appropriate sales consultant
• Vague inquiries are manually processed and assigned
• Monitor CRM reports to ensure timeliness and accuracy
• Update sales team with Response Time reports and Sales Tracking reports
• Close out customer account in CRM following completed transaction

I drew out a flowchart of this system, in order to find the bottlenecks and breakdowns in communication that (sometimes) can make this a frustrating process. (The diagram looks more complicated than it is, I need more practice at this sort of thing!)

The largest obstacle to the third step, Introducing Flow, is entering the records of interactions between the Sales Consultants and the Clients. Even in the flowchart, this is obvious. Each consultant is responsible for entering their own information, so the value and accuracy of the reports they receive are their own responsibility. With each iteration the inaccuracies reduce the value of the information that the reports provide.

Introducing Pull as a Solution

Step four in the process, Pull, is about creating an environment where you get what you need, when you need it. Not through forecasting, but by creating a fast production chain that allows you to order what you need when a specific event triggers that order. 

For my Internal Customers, I need to provide them with accurate activity reports, yet these reports are built on data that the Internal Customers provide. I have created a system in Outlook to handle this for me. First I make an appointment in a shared calendar, with a reminder set to inform me that it is time to generate a report one hour in advance. When I receive this alert, I open the appointment, and “Invite” the Sales Consultants. The text of the Invitation is a request for them to be sure that they have updated their CRM accounts for each client interaction. A copy of this Invitation also goes to the department manager, who like to be kept informed. The Sales Consultants then perform their data entry and “Accept” the invitation when it is complete. When I have received all of the “Accept” emails, I know that the report is ready to generate.

Perfection is a Journey, not a Destination

A horrible cliche, but true, true, true. In the proper context though, it isn’t so disgusting. Anyone who has held a supervisory position over a diverse group of adults can tell you that some days teaching Kindergarteners calculus would be less frustrating. Pursuing step five in the LEAN process, Perfection, is a worthy goal. Perpective, also, is a useful thing. As I am not a “manager”, but more of a facilitator, I can only lead so far. I can provide the tools that my Internal Customers need to accomplish their tasks and meet their goals. I can provide some motivation and personal incentives, and that will have to be enough.

I trust that this example has inspired you to evaluate your own responsibilities and roles. Leave a Comment below, or a trackback, I would enjoy seeing your own examples.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6o2vvc. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen