What I Learned about Writing from Lean IT
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Lean IT comes from the manufacturing world and is based on the Toyota Production System (TPS). Key values and processes have been added to the service and technology industries through the years. Recently, I took a class on how Lean improvements can be added to IT’s service delivery, and I realized that the key principles can be applied to the writing world, too.
Continual Improvement (in small steps) is one the key principles of Lean. Revising, editing, and critiques are ways that writers can improve their craft. It needs to be a continuous cycle.
Focusing on Long-term Goals helps deliver a solid product and involves continuous improvement. Writers need to focus on where they want to be and work toward this.
Quality, Delivery, and Costs are key to production. They’re important in the writing world, too. You need to balance your writing, time, and monetary outputs to reach your goals.
The Deming Cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) is integral to the continuous improvement cycle. Writers plan, draft, review, and then finish/publish. The writing cycle needs to include all the elements for revising, editing, and proofreading to improve your writing process and your output.
The principles of Lean center around Customer Value. The output and delivery of the final work is always centered around the reader and his/her experience. The ultimate goals are to sell books and bring readers back for more.
Flow is a key component to the manufacturing process. You need to have the right parts at the right time to keep the process moving. I would argue that flow is key to the writing process too. You need to make time to write. It’s often good to write your first draft and then work on the revising and editing stages. Sometimes, writers get bogged down with the first draft if they edit as they write.
In the Lean world there are value-add, necessary non-value-add, and non-value-add activities. You want to optimize your value-add work (writing, editing, etc.) while minimizing the necessary non-value-add tasks (building your platform, maintaining your social media sites, keeping accounting records, paying taxes). You also want to look at your writing life and try to remove any non-value-add activities. (For me, I cut back considerably on TV and movie-watching.)
Lean philosophies also focus on cutting Waste which results in financial gain. Cutting out ineffective purchases (software, services, retyping handwritten pages, marketing efforts that don’t show results) can help you to focus your efforts on what does work.
Overall Performance focuses on delivery and the right skills and capabilities to do the job. As writers, we need to make sure that we are learning new things and honing our craft. Make sure to build in time for learning that doesn’t consume all of your writing time. When I started writing, I bought every how-to book on the craft that I could find. I spent so much time reading about writing that I wasn’t doing. I kept a few key books, donated the rest to my library, and started writing.
While the Lean methodology is primarily for manufacturing, it has been adapted and implemented in other industries. Many of the principles apply to the writing world, and they’re good reminders to constantly strive to improve and to reach one’s goals.
