Skip to Content

Unleashing Personal Power

Your Time, Optimised with Lean & Kanban

This is the second article in our "AI with Purpose" series.

Unleashing Personal Power: Your Time, Optimised with Lean & Kanban

In the last 18 months, my work in AI Change Management has led to one key question: "Okay, AI saves us time, but what do we do with it?" My answer is to leverage powerful methodologies like Lean Thinking and Kanban.

We established in the first article that AI gives you back precious time. Now, it's about using that time purposefully.

Lean Thinking: Finding and Eliminating Waste

Lean Thinking is all about identifying and removing waste from your workflow. In our context, waste is anything that consumes time or effort without adding value. The eight types of waste in Lean are:

  1. Defects: Errors or mistakes that require rework.
  2. Overproduction: Creating more than is needed, or doing it too soon.
  3. Waiting: Time spent idle, waiting for something else to finish.
  4. Non-Utilised Talent: Under-utilising people's skills and creativity.
  5. Transportation: Unnecessary movement of materials or information.
  6. Inventory: Holding more stock or information than is immediately needed.
  7. Motion: Unnecessary movement of people.
  8. Extra-Processing: Doing more work than is required by the customer.

I encourage you to list your daily tasks and classify them into these categories. Then, use Generative AI tools to experiment with reducing or eliminating this waste. For example, use AI to automate the creation of draft reports (reducing 'Extra-Processing') or to summarise long documents (reducing 'Waiting').

Kanban: Visualising Your Improvements

Kanban is a visual system for managing work as it moves through a process. At its simplest, it involves a board with columns, like 'To Do', 'Doing', and 'Done', where you place cards representing tasks.

A personal Kanban board is a great tool for this. Use it to:

  • Visualise your main processes to identify recurring bottlenecks or waste.
  • Create a dedicated 'swimlane' to track your efforts to reduce or eliminate waste with AI.
  • Manage your workload so you don't get overwhelmed.

This isn't just a system for continuous improvement; it also brings significant psychological benefits, like reduced stress and increased focus.

Actionable Steps for Personal Optimisation

  1. Map it: List and classify your daily tasks or processes according to the eight types of waste.
  2. Visualise it: Create a simple Kanban board to visualise your current workflow and a separate 'swimlane' for your waste reduction goals.
  3. Experiment with AI: Use a Generative AI tool to experiment with streamlining a single task or process at a time.

By starting at the individual level, you're building a foundation of purposeful efficiency that can eventually be scaled to your entire team and, in time, the whole company.

Tip: If you want to know more about Lean Thinking or Kanban ask AI.

Now, I'd love to hear from you! What's one thing you're going to try this week to optimise a personal workflow with AI?

Beyond Busy
How AI Gives SMEs the Ultimate Competitive Edge – Time