Lean principles work in knowledge work too, but the waste is hidden. Instead of chasing Jira tickets, teams should run small experiments with spreadsheets and simple tools to find what actually works, then keep it and ditch the rest.
That it's not that a shared pattern will slow you down, it's something that might actually speed you up.
And that's the idea, right? Is reduce waste. So, reduce waste in time, reduce waste in waiting, reduce waste in rework, reduce waste in handoff. I mean, it's effectively bringing lean thinking into knowledge work, right? It is. It is. And we often don't do that because we can't see the knowledge work. We can watch a factory floor and we can see the machines, we can see the movement of parts and goods. Right? We can see the humans, we can see the stoppage time, we can see the waste because that's what lean processing gives us, right? In knowledge working and data working, often we can't. And again, it's not the people doing the work's fault because they're incented to take another Jira ticket and get it out to the stakeholder, right? They're not incented to look at their way of working, to look at their technology and say, actually, I'm just going to reduce one piece of waste this week. Because it will pay us back. And they're not incented to experiment, right? They're not incented to say, try a spreadsheet with 10 fields, see if it improves the process or makes it worse. If it improves it, keep it. If it doesn't, throw it away, right? Try something else. But you know, it's a wasteful part of the process. So go fix it.
Watch now | Recording of AURA - Anna Bergevin & Shane Gibson 21st September 2026
Watch now | Recording of AURA - Chris Gambill & Shane Gibson on 11th September 2026
