I am a great believer in the power of personal reflection and using problem solving thinking to develop ourselves as Lean Leaders. Problem solving thinking (using the PDSA or A3 thinking process) can be applied in a variety of ways to work on self improvement.
Personal PDSA as applied to skill development and creating new habits
I’ve written about the personal A3/PDSA process in the Lean Post, and it was a key focus for the plenary talks and classes that I taught last month in Australia.
If you want to focus on improving your own capabilities or habits as a leader, I suggest going through the process outlined in the image above and described in more detail in the article I wrote for the Lean Post.
The personal A3 process can help you gain greater clarity on your leadership gaps and to become more intentional about improving your skills as a Lean leader. Create a plan and conduct short experiments for improvement. Focus on getting a little bit better every day.
Learn more about the Personal Improvement A3
Update: To learn more about the Personal Improvement A3 process, check out these posts:
- Coaching for Improvement: Using A3 Thinking For Personal Development (Part 1 – Overview from the Lean Coaching Summit)
- Coaching for Improvement: Using A3 Thinking For Personal Development (Part 2 – Getting Started on the Left Side)
- Coaching for Improvement: Using A3 Thinking For Personal Development (Part 3 — Moving to the Right Side and Action)
Click here to receive a free copy of the coaches guide for using A3 thinking for personal development that was developed for the Lean Coaching Summit.
Personal PDSA thinking applied to succession planning
Not only can personal PDSA thinking be helpful for improving one’s skills and habits, it can also be applied in thinking about career and succession planning.
At the Australasian Lean Thinking and Practice Summit in Melbourne, I appreciated hearing how Mark Reich, the COO of the Lean Enterprise Institute, has applied PDSA thinking to succession planning and career development. This process is a nice compliment to the personal A3 process I’ve described above. You can read more details of Mark’s practice in his article on the Lean Post.
Mark posed that “your job is to work yourself out of a job”. Each of us should always be thinking about the next step in our careers, and to do so, you need to be developing both yourself and your successor.
I would also add, if you are a consultant, you want to make sure that you are developing capability in the people for whom you are working or coaching (not just giving them the answers).
Mark will be sharing his thinking on this topic at the Lean Coaching Summit in Seattle next month (July 2015).
Practicing problem solving thinking makes you a better coach of problem solving
Regardless of what problem you are trying to solve – including your own leadership and coaching capabilities or the next step in your career – applying problem solving thinking to yourself can be a great practice. We are all better coaches and leaders of problem solving when we have struggled with the thinking process ourselves!
What has helped you improve?
What practices have helped your improve personally as a Lean leader or coach? Please share your thoughts below.
