Most workplaces have a task that everyone quietly dreads. It might be approving an invoice, arranging a new starter’s access or producing the monthly report. Whatever the task, somebody will eventually send an email beginning, “Just chasing…”
That email is worth paying attention to. It often tells you something about the process: work is waiting, information is missing or responsibility is unclear.
Lean and continuous improvement start with noticing these everyday problems and taking them seriously. The aim is to make work easier to get right—and to deliver something useful to the person waiting at the other end.
Start with the work, not the toolkit
Lean has plenty of tools, diagrams and Japanese terminology. They can help, but introducing them before understanding the problem is rather like buying a fully equipped toolbox because a door squeaks.
Begin with three questions:
- What does the customer need?
- How does the work currently get done?
- What gets in the way?
Lean approach is grounded in customer value, the work itself and the people doing it. Continuous improvement gives that approach an ongoing rhythm: investigate, test, learn and adjust.
Cost savings may follow. But simply cutting resources or asking people to work faster can make delays and mistakes worse. A process needs enough capacity, clear information and appropriate safeguards to work reliably.
Be clear about what “better” means
Before changing anything, establish what matters to the customer.
Someone buying an online course wants accurate information, straightforward payment and access that works. They are unlikely to be impressed that their query passed through four departments, each meeting its own response target.
Look at the whole experience. When does the customer first ask for something? When do they receive what they need? How much effort do they have to put in along the way?
Ask customers directly, and examine complaints and repeat enquiries. These often reveal a gap between what an organisation believes it delivers and what people actually experience.
Keep necessary controls in view. A privacy check may not excite the customer, but removing it would hardly qualify as progress.
Look for the work around the work
Much wasted effort hides in activities that feel normal.
There is the spreadsheet updated from another spreadsheet. The request returned because nobody explained which information was required. The document reviewed by several people, although nobody is quite sure who makes the decision.
Then there is ‘FINAL_final_v7’, a filename that expresses hope more than certainty.
These are clues. Look for waiting, duplication, avoidable handovers and corrections. Ask what makes each activity necessary.
Be careful, though: not every check is redundant and not every handover is a problem. Understand its purpose before removing it. Otherwise, you may save one team five minutes and give another team half an hour of repair work.
Find out what happens before deciding why
A common mistake is to move straight from frustration to a solution.
“We need new software.”
Perhaps. But first, follow a few real examples through the process. Speak to the people handling them. Compare the written procedure with what they actually have to do.
Describe the problem precisely. “Bookings are inefficient” is difficult to investigate. “Twelve of the last 40 bookings needed a follow-up request for missing information” gives you somewhere to start.
That still does not explain the cause. The form might be unclear, customers might lack the information, or different staff might interpret the requirements differently.
Treat explanations as possibilities to check. Blaming people too early discourages them from sharing the workarounds and difficulties you need to understand.
A fictional example: fewer booking enquiries
Imagine a training provider with those 12 incomplete bookings out of 40.
Staff review the cases and notice that customers repeatedly miss the same details. They inspect the form with a few users and find that the instructions are ambiguous.
The team proposes clearer labels and a short explanation beside the relevant fields. They retain a way for customers to ask for help.
It is a modest change. That is useful: it can be tested without redesigning the entire website or forming a committee with its own logo.
The team has not yet demonstrated an improvement. It has a plausible idea and a way to investigate it.
Use PDCA to learn from the test
Plan: Agree what you expect the clearer form to achieve. Record the current rate of incomplete bookings and decide how to measure the test.
Do: Run a small, agreed trial. Make sure staff know what has changed and record any difficulties.
Check: Examine the results. Did fewer bookings need follow-up? Did customers receive confirmation sooner? Were more people abandoning the form?
Act: Decide whether to keep, adjust or stop the change. If it helps, update the working instructions and continue monitoring.
Avoid declaring victory after one good afternoon. Compare similar work, note differences in staffing or demand, and collect enough observations to judge whether the improvement is holding.
Try one small investigation this week
Choose a recurring frustration and follow five recent examples from start to finish.
Ask the people involved where they waited, searched, repeated work or corrected something. Agree one issue to investigate further.
Before testing a change, check:
- Is the customer’s need clear?
- Do we have evidence of the problem?
- Have we checked the likely cause?
- Can we test safely on a small scale?
- Will we measure quality, effort and unintended effects?
- Who will review the results, and when?
You do not need to fix everything at once. A well-understood problem and a carefully reviewed test are a worthwhile start.
To develop these skills further, explore Compound Knowledge’s Lean and Continuous Improvement course. Build your confidence in understanding processes, investigating problems and testing practical improvements, so less of the working day disappears into ‘just chasing’.