April Lean Objectives and WIP limits at the ARC Nassau

I facilitated a productive Lean Objectives meeting with the Arc Nassau’s leadership team on March 24th. The Arc Nassau is a non-profit agency providing programs and services for individuals with developmental disabilities who are 18 years and older. The Arc is a LeanJax member and committed to continuous improvement and respect for people.

One of the leaders at The Arc displays a quote each week on her desk. This week’s entry says,

“My brain has too many tabs open.”

When I saw this I laughed and we discussed how this is an issue facing workers at most organizations. There are multiple things we need to accomplish on a daily basis and at times it can be overwhelming, with unproductive multi-tasking adding frustration to our days. Much like keeping too many tabs open on our screens at one time, our brains can only navigate through so much information.

Prioritizing the most urgent work tasks is a valuable exercise to counteract this Information overload and ensure the right tasks are completed at the right time. Work teams can accomplish this by creating and maintaining reasonable WIP limits. The Arc committed to complete six Lean tasks during the month of April, establishing WIP limits of three in-progress tasks at a time. This will allow them to move forward with their Lean transformation incrementally, without becoming overwhelmed trying to complete too many projects at once.

Establishing agreed upon WIP limits is also an effective method to use when conducting daily huddles, stand-up meetings, and weekly work plan meetings. This is often displayed on physical or electronic visual Kanban boards with four columns: parking lot, to-do, doing, done.

When planning my work tasks, I use a high-level physical board above my desk and a more in-depth electronic version with the online application Kanban Flow. These boards me stay on track and I recommend this simple method to everyone at each organization I work with. Kanban Flow is cool because you can set WIP limits in each column.

My boards have the four columns I listed above with WIP limits of four in the doing column. I can only place a new task in that lane after I moved a completed task over to done. I’ve used this method for the last three years and has made me feel calmer, efficient, and more productive.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you were in or whether you work virtually or on-site, the kanban board method is an excellent way to close the open tabs in your brain and enhance the productivity and overall well-being of you and your teams. Heed the advice of Ned Stark.