Stop worrying about waste, and strive towards something positive
Raise your hand if you’ve been trained on the 7 deadly wastes (or 8, depending on your trainer). This is so core to operational excellence that it’s the first concept most people learn when they delve into Lean. It’s an incredibly helpful lens, especially on the shop floor. See a pile-up of inventory, unnecessary motion, or waiting time? Find a way to eliminate it. It feels productive, tangible, and straightforward.
And yet… if Lean is oversimplified to waste reduction alone, it vastly shortchanges the real power of continuous improvement.
Because waste is just the stuff we’re not supposed to be doing. We’ve lost sight of what we’re supposed to be doing instead – which is creating ever-increasing value.
The Problem with “Just” Solving Problems
When I was first taught Lean, it was all about problem-solving. Hunting for wastes, writing problem statements, chasing down root causes—that was the craft. And don’t get me wrong, those skills are vital. You do want to catch deviations from standard quickly, and work to eliminate their causes.
But if everything is framed as a problem, the work starts to feel negative. And that’s just a downer. Years ago, I had a boss who told me as much. I pushed back, arguing he just needed to reframe his attitude towards the word “problem” as a “gap” or “opportunity.” But looking back, I see what he meant: it simply isn’t motivating to always be in the mindset that something is wrong.
It’s like playing whack-a-mole with issues all day long. Even if you get good results, it doesn’t feel particularly energizing. Fun fact: our CEO at the time short-handed our operational excellence efforts with that cute poop emoji:💩. I’ve tried never to utter the phrase “waste elimination” at work since.
A Better Question: What Do We Want to Improve?
Russell Ackoff once said: “An improvement program must be directed at what you want, not what you don’t want.”[1]
That shift—from reacting to what’s broken, to striving toward what we’re building—changes the entire mood. Instead of starting with “What can we cut?” we start with:
What outcome do our customers truly need?
How well do our products and processes currently deliver that outcome?
What would “better” look like, if we aimed high?
This way, reducing waste might become part of the journey towards crafting that future state, but is not the destination itself. If the customer doesn’t want the product, making it faster or cheaper doesn’t help. It’s like clearing every leaf off the lawn when really, all you needed was a path from your door to the mailbox. You’ll be more motivated to get started, and more likely to finish, with your sights set on that reward at the end.
Why Positive Goals Work Better
There’s also a human side here, which is perhaps even more important. Sustaining a Lean culture depends on whether the people involved want to keep going. Results alone aren’t enough. Even daily practice isn’t enough. People need to feel positive emotions about the work—like they’re striving toward something meaningful, not just getting rid of something bad.[2]
This was a huge paradigm shift for me, which I first experienced as a new learner with Kata Girl Geeks. I learned to flip scientific problem-solving into scientific goal-pursuit. Instead of asking “What’s broken and how could we fix it?” we ask: “What bold, meaningful challenge would be worth pursuing? What better future could we imagine?”
Of course, when you aim for a big goal, you will encounter obstacles. But it’s much more energizing to overcome obstacles in the pursuit of something great than to spend your days “eliminating waste” in the abstract. I’m working with one client right now whose challenge is to figure out how to make more precise and consistent bimetal products for customers by using a robot-guided laser welder. Every day, they run into new obstacles as they push their threshold of knowledge. But like the Japanese proverb “fall down 7 times, get up 8”, they are motivated to work through each one quickly, so they can keep going on the path of discovery.
What this Means for Leaders
If you’ve already started down the waste reduction path, don’t worry—it’s a fine way to get started on your Lean journey, especially because it will result in more time available for improvement work. But eventually you will hit diminishing returns. And if you take it too far, you risk undermining morale.
Ever talked to someone who worked at an Amazon warehouse? Being timed on your bathroom breaks might make for efficiency gains, but it violates the first principle of Lean: respect for people. Efficiency is nice, but it’s not an end unto itself.
As a leader, your job isn’t to squeeze out waste—it’s to create conditions where value can flourish, where people are engaged, and where the team is energized to pursue a better future. That only happens if you give them something positive to strive toward.
A Fresh Take on Improvement
So yes, learn to see waste. Eliminate it when you find it. But don’t stop there.
Lean is not about meandering around and bopping problems on the head. It’s about setting a vision people care about getting to, and making the experience of working towards it kind of fun. When you frame improvement as the pursuit of something your customer needs and your people believe in, waste reduction happens naturally as you clear out the leaves on your path.
And that’s where the magic happens: not just less waste, but more value. Not just fewer headaches, but more interesting and relevant improvements, that keep your business competitive and your people fired up about the future.
[1] Give this oldie-but-goodie a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqEeIG8aPPk
[2] Landry, Sylvain. Bringing Scientific Thinking to Life, 2022.