NO TIME TO WASTE · ISSUE 35
What Do You Do With All the Time You Save?
Lean reviews save time. In Issue 31 we showed how a single process review can return 132 hours a year — with a payback in 13 months.
But here’s the question most businesses never properly answer: what happens to those 132 hours?
The answer to this question will determine whether your Lean culture thrives or dies.
THE BIG IDEA
Innovation Over Headcount
Some businesses see Lean as a vehicle to reduce headcount. On a spreadsheet, it makes sense — fewer people doing the same work means lower costs!
But in practice, it kills the very culture that produced the improvement.
Staff are not slow to work this out. If improving a process means someone loses their job, improvement stops. People protect their time, hide their workarounds, and resist any suggestion that their work could be done differently. As one client put it to me years ago — it’s turkeys voting for Christmas.
The best Lean organisations take the opposite approach. They invest saved time into innovation, capability, and growth. The result is not fewer people doing the same work — it’s the same people doing more valuable work.
“Manpower reduction means raising the ratio of value-added work. The ideal is to have 100% value-added work.”
— Taiichi Ohno · Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production (1988)
IN PRACTICE
Ohno’s point is often misread. He wasn’t talking about firing people. He was talking about redeploying them from waste to value — from activities that consume time without adding anything, to activities that build the future.
Three Examples
Toyota Deeside — Innovation Street
I visited the Toyota plant in Deeside, North Wales last week. The tour included an area called Innovation Street — a series of dedicated work cells where team members develop new ideas, test innovative improvements, and work on sustainable recycling solutions. All of it adding value back into the business.
This isn’t a management lab or an R&D department. It’s staffed by people from the production floor — using time freed up by their own improvements to build the next generation of capability. The message to staff is unmistakable: if you improve your process, you get to work on something more interesting, not less secure.
The NTMA — From Crisis Agency to Innovation Centre
The National Treasury Management Agency here in Ireland offers a striking example from the public sector. NAMA was set up in 2009 in the aftermath of the financial crash. Around 2014, the team adopted Lean thinking and began releasing time for their highly qualified staff.
Instead of reducing headcount, they created an innovation centre and deployed the saved time into new, higher-value work. Today, the NTMA manages multiple business areas — from funding and debt management to the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, the State Claims Agency, and the Future Ireland Funds. Staff headcount has quadrupled.
The Lean investment didn’t shrink the organisation. It grew it — by freeing people to take on work that didn’t exist before.
Paul Akers — Daily 3s – Investment in Improvement
Paul Akers at FastCap takes yet another approach. Every morning, every employee invests time into 3S — Sweep, Sort, Standardise — and daily improvement. No production during this time. No orders processed. Just improvement.
The result is a company that launches 20 to 30 new products a year, has thousands of distributors in over 40 countries, and has built a culture where improvement is not a project — it’s the way the day starts.
Akers’ point is simple: if you don’t invest time in improvement, you’re investing all your time in staying the same.
TRY THIS WEEK
Three Steps to Innovation
Name the reinvestment plan.If the review saves 100 hours a year, where will those hours go? Innovation? Cross-training? New service development? Have the answer before you begin, not after.
“The biggest gap in the world is the gap between knowing and doing.”
—Paul Akers· 2 Second Lean (2012)
Every Lean journey reaches this fork in the road. One path leads to short-term cost savings and a culture that learns to protect the status quo. The other leads to innovation, growth, and a team that improves because they can see where the time goes.
Toyota, the NTMA, and FastCap all chose the second path. Their people didn’t just save time — they earned the opportunity to invest it in something better.
If you’re starting a Lean journey, answer this question first. Your team will work it out either way.
UPCOMING PROGRAMMES & EVENTS
New to Lean? Learn the principles and basic tools on our one day training experience. See how a process can be transformed with the application of Lean Thinking.
Apply Lean thinking in 12 weeks. Start with our Lean Business Simulation training held regularly in Dublin.
Hear from industry experts from home and abroad, across the supply chain, on how a successful Operational Excellence programme in Ireland will be transformative in job creation and investment.
At LeanTeams we help Irish businesses establish a Lean Culture in their organisation — including releasing the innovative capability of the team and treating saved time as an opportunity to add more value. If this week’s issue raises something you’d like to talk through, I’d be glad to help.