Real Life Lean 007

(Please excuse the 007 pun in the title) Happy Monday lean construction family and welcome to another edition of Real Life Lean. This newsletter is intended to give construction professionals worldwide 4 quick and easy resources to grow and continue on your lean journey.

Today's Summary:

• Lean Article - How Lean Supports Better Work Life Balance

• Lean Podcast - The Molecular Biologist Builder

• Lean Event - Lean Construction Blogs - Lean Webinars

• Real Life Lean - Lessons from The Pocket Sensei

Lean Article

A lean mindset and lean construction tools support the jobsite and the team onsite, but have you ever thought about how much they improve your work-life balance? These tools help work get completed safer and at a higher quality- this leads to more people going home safe and going home with a sense of pride. It helps cut out the 70-80 hour weeks and reduces burnout from the teams onsite. When done right, lean practices improve everyone's experience both on AND off site. Total read time 5 min.

Lean Podcast

What's my story? Here is a link to a podcast I recently recorded with Adam Hoots and The Lean Builder where I got to share all about my lean journey. As the summary says, we talk about how I implement lean construction principles, tips for adopting lean construction principles and more. I would love for you to give this a listen and share any feedback you may have.

Lean Event

This weeks lean event is not one specific event, but a link to Lean Construction Blogs list of past webinars. This is a great resource to go back and review a webinar you may have missed. There is a ton of knowledge being dropped in each and every one of these webinars. Some of these webinars would make for a great intro to lean construction review with your teams or can help sharpen you skills on a variety of topics.

Real Life Lean - Lean practices in the real world

I recently picked up a copy of The Pocket Sensei per a recommendation from one of my lean coaches. I've made i through the first lesson (Kata) and really enjoyed how it forced me to be honest with myself and break out of my comfort zone a bit. The first lesson was all based on "Give New Ideas a Chance".

This is something I struggle with, as I can talk myself out of new ideas rather easily. During this lesson we were asked to observe ourselves over a week and make note of when we dismissed new ideas and why. I listed out the perceived negative consequences of said idea, as well as the perceived benefits of that idea. It was pretty cool to see how superficial the negative ideas were and how significant the positive benefits were. See photo below for my notes from the first lesson.

In the end, we were tasked with summarizing what we learned during this lesson. About that same time of the week I happened to hear this quote on a podcast, "Action cures fear". I reflected a lot on that quote and I think this was my biggest take away during this lesson. We build up a fear in our head of new ideas, but when you break through that fear with action, positive change takes place. What are you letting fear hold you back from? What action could you take to break that?

Get your copy of The Pocket Sensei here: https://amzn.to/3UZvHuo