What Would You Do With 32 Hours a Month Back?
By Dustin Thomas · December 11, 2025
Trade a short, focused improvement for recurring waste. Go and See, remove the variation,
lock a simple standard, then measure the hours returned and reinvest them.
Editor’s note: Based on a real incident; nonessential details were changed to protect privacy.
Adapted from Origin Problem Solving.
I kept hearing the same thing: “We don’t have time to fix it.”
So we took 3 days and fixed it.
The situation
On a product design team, we were slipping in small, annoying ways, little delays and rework everyone hated.
A repetitive build step in our design flow kept dragging us down. Nobody “had time” to fix it, so we tolerated it.
What we did (and didn’t do)
No retreat. No week of meetings. We ran a concentrated 3-day Kaizen with short, focused huddles,
one A3 to keep us honest. We stayed at the work, not in a conference room.
During the event we:
- Found the root cause.
- Mapped the step exactly as done, no hero stories, just reality.
- Built a shared cell library and a minimum viable standard for how and when to use it.
- Rolled it across similar design work so the fix stuck.
Once we could see what people actually did, the pattern was obvious:
same outcome, different methods. Variation was the problem, not effort.
One shared, reusable library solved it.
The result
That 2-hour step now takes about 1 minute. Across the team,
that returned ~32 hours per month. Same people. Same tools. Different discipline.
Here’s the point most folks miss: a short, concentrated effort will often give you far more time back than it costs.
“We don’t have time” is usually a symptom. Fixing the work creates the time.
How to copy this next week
- Collect the issues. Put real symptoms on a whiteboard.
- Prioritize one. Write a clear Problem Perception statement (Clarity).
- Run a 1–5 day Kaizen. Go and See, confirm cause, test countermeasure (Cause).
- Lock it in. Standardize the win and set the sustainment so it holds (Control).
- Track hours returned. Reinvest them into the next item on the board.
Clarity → Cause → Control: see the work as it is,
remove the variation that causes the waste,
then lock it in with a simple standard you can audit.
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Solving the Impossible Ask: One Slice, One Standard, Repeat
By Dustin Thomas · December 18, 2025
If you had four weeks and 1–2 hours a week to save $1M, would you go big or start small?
Editor’s note: This account is based on a true event; details edited for anonymity.
Adapted from Origin Problem Solving by Dustin Thomas.
The brief was simple and a little “wait, what?”:
save a million dollars, four weeks, one hour per week, before construction kickoff.
The brief to the breakdown
We Paretoed the pain points across the multi-site build.
There was plenty of noise. Some big-dollar items we didn’t control.
Some smaller levers we did.
What rose to the top wasn’t glamorous.
It was how on-site materials were ordered, dropped, issued, returned, and replenished.
We picked a small, low-dollar $40k lever to pilot.
That choice made me nervous.
When the ask is seven figures, choosing a modest slice feels wrong.
But it was the slice we could prove fast.
Built with the contractor
Crucial move: we brought in the general contractor and site supers,
the people who move pallets, break wrap, and live with the consequences.
We didn’t roll out a fix. We co-designed the system and wrote it into how the work runs.
We rebuilt five basics together:
- Order to a standard.
- Stage to the work.
- Issue and return in seconds.
- Replenish on a signal.
- Make it visible.
What happened
The pilot worked.
We then shared the same system across on-site inventory management.
By year’s end, the run-rate impact was about $1.5M in savings.
The contractor kept the method as their standard
and told us future bids would come in lower
because material flow was predictable.
Why it worked (Clarity → Cause → Control)
Clarity: Pareto the problem, then pick a lever you actually control.
Cause: Go to the site and fix the condition, not the complaint.
Control: Bake the checks into routine management and contracts.
That’s the rhythm in Origin Problem Solving:
define precisely, prove it at the source,
and make it hold under real conditions
with the people who touch the work.
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We React After the Failure
By Dustin Thomas · November 13, 2025
Would today’s fire exist if we had gone to see yesterday?
In Origin Problem Solving (2024), I share a difficult story, “Death of a Friend,”
and what it taught me about the cost of reactive problem solving. In this article, I add a few more lessons
on moving from reaction to daily prevention.
Adapted from Origin Problem Solving (2024) by Dustin Thomas.
The trap
Not long ago I asked a middle manager, “What do you do, day to day?”
“Operating reviews,” he said. “They set the tone.”
“Then what?”
“We go target problem areas and execute.”
“And you, as a manager, what do you actually do?”
“I run meetings.”
That is the trap. It looks busy, feels urgent, and produces decks, but it waits for harm and then responds.
In safety, quality, and reliability, waiting for harm is how you miss.
Reactive problem solving is a lagging control
Reactive loops start with an adverse event: injury, outage, defect. Then the root cause analysis,
action items, and follow ups kick in. By design, they spin only after damage exists. Fine for post mortems.
Not fine as a management system.
Five signs you are stuck in reaction
- Your strongest metrics are lagging.
- Reviews center on “What happened?” more than “What is about to happen?”
-
Action logs close symptoms (patches, reminders, emails) instead of causes
(design, method, training standards, sustainment, controls).
- Leaders spend more time in rooms and email than at the work.
- Improvements show up as one offs, not as standards that prevent recurrence.
The shift: from incident response to risk discovery
You do not need more meetings. You need a daily system that discovers risk before it bites.
-
Put eyes on the work (Go and See). Block non-negotiable leader time at the point of work with a short script,
not a sightseeing tour.
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Replace “updates” with triggers. Define clear escalation triggers that force action before failure:
backlog age > X, torque out of range, clearance red, near miss count ≥ Y, first pass yield below target,
procedure steps skipped.
-
Standardize manager work, not just operator work. Leader Standard Work, times, routes, checks,
and follow ups, makes risk visible daily and auditable. If it is optional, it will not happen when the day gets noisy.
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Layered process audits that teach. Short, rotating checks on the critical few behaviors that control outcome.
LPAs verify the standard exists, is used, and still works, then harvest learning to improve the standard.
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Kata beats heroics. Use Coaching Kata to keep improvement scientific and bite sized:
grasp current, set target, see obstacles, run one step, learn. Managers coach. Teams own.
-
Fix design over discipline. If a procedure requires memory under stress, the design is weak.
Error proof the method, tool, or interface so the right way is easy and the wrong way is hard to do unnoticed.
Redesign the operating review
Stop performing a post game show. Make it a pre failure control room.
- 5 minutes: leading signals, today’s triggers, constraints, predicted hot spots.
- 5 minutes: decisions, remove constraints per area, one owner, one due date.
- 5 minutes: learning, what a Go and See found yesterday, what standard changed today.
The punchline
Reactive problem solving is necessary, but it is not the best or only way to solve problems.
Build discovery in. Then operating reviews finally set the tone for the day, because the day stops being a surprise.
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A Near-Miss, a Saw Blade, and the Standard Behind It
By Dustin Thomas · November 20, 2025
At the job site, under pressure, when the easy move is to blame a person and move on, what do you do?
There is another way. This story shows the other path: Go and See, check the standard,
fix the work and the standard. Read it and think about the last time discipline replaced
finding the true root cause.
Editor’s note: This account is based on a true event; details edited for anonymity.
Adapted from Origin Problem Solving by Dustin Thomas.
What decides whether we get lucky or get hurt can be the presence and quality of the standard.
On a renovation job, a saw hit an underground electrical line. No injuries, thank God, but it could
have gone the other way. Blame flared fast: the worker who followed instructions, the project manager,
the GPR tech who scanned days earlier. I have seen this movie end with discipline all around and no change to the system.
We chose a better path.
What we did instead: Go and See
We left the conference room and went to the point of work. With the standards in hand, things cleared up fast:
-
The GPR request form looked “detailed” on paper but was vague in practice. No precise dig area,
no required marks or photos, no pre job verification step.
- Last minute plan changes never flowed to the GPR request.
- Visual controls were weak. Markings faded, and there was no layered check before cutting.
- None of this pointed to a “bad” person. It pointed to an inadequate standard and a lack of control.
What changed (and stuck)
We rewrote the working rules and raised the baseline:
- Tightened the GPR request.
- Added a pre cut Go and See step.
- Standardized visuals and layered checks.
- Captured the lesson in the standard.
Result: a steadier job site, fewer stoppages, and an incident that did not repeat.
The principle that saved the day
You can not have a problem unless you have a standard. If you do not define the best known method,
all you have is opinion. If you define it and keep improving it, problems become visible, solvable, and preventable.
Why this matters
At the job site, under pressure, when the easy move is to blame a person and move on, you need to choose to be different.
Do the right thing and solve the true cause.
Clarity: everyone is solving the same problem.
Cause: verified with facts at the point of work.
Control: today’s fix does not fade into tomorrow’s memory.
OPS Summary
-
Best OPS Tools™ for this story:
SIPOC Lite to clarify the GPR request process,
and
Fishbone Diagram
to capture causes in the standard instead of in memory.
-
System link:
Use PROVE Loop™ on your Tier 1 board so the new pre cut checks and visuals are verified daily.
See the Origin Thinking™ system page for how the loop works.
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Trailer Fire: From Crisis to Process
By Dustin Thomas · November 25, 2025
How often has a write up improved a process?
Write ups buy compliance through fear and kill the facts you need to rebuild the process.
If you want the issue solved, remove the fear, go and see, and fix the standard so the change sticks.
Editor’s note: This account is based on a true event; details edited for anonymity.
Adapted from Origin Problem Solving by Dustin Thomas.
A wheel bearing failed on a blistering summer day. The trailer caught fire. When the flames were out,
only a black outline of a semi remained. No injuries (thank God), but fear moved in fast: blame, discipline,
fallout across multiple departments. A union teammate was at the center, speaking through representation.
Tension was thick and everyone braced for the worst.
We chose a different path.
What happened next
Two safety consultants, Daniel Tate and Zachary Cooper, and I (in the Lean role) brought everyone together.
The goal was not to blame. It was to understand the process.
That first meeting was fragile. Instead of “Who messed up?”, we asked, “What is the standard?
Is it clear? Is it reachable under these conditions?” The atmosphere began to shift. Without accusations,
we received facts. Our union colleague opened up and became central to reconstructing events and understanding procedures.
Fleet stepped down from a defensive posture. Supply Chain leaned in to help.
The next sessions kept the same structure: learn what happened, improve the system,
and do not make a spectacle of the people who were in the middle of it, but instead treat them as the key witnesses
with the best knowledge for permanent resolutions.
We stabilized the immediate risks, walked the sequence step by step, and made the standards the subject.
That gave us options we could not see when everyone was protecting a position. Curiosity beat fear.
Why this became a turning point
The culture moved a notch. By centering on the process, trust went up and noise went down.
People volunteered what they knew because they saw it used to fix the work, not to punish the worker.
Meetings got shorter and clearer. The next time something went sideways, no one froze or fought. We had a way to respond.
This is the point: the specifics of each countermeasure fade over time, but the capability you build by handling a crisis
this way does not. You create a team that can think under pressure.
How we worked (without the drama)
We stabilized first. We made the standard visible. The person closest to the work helped reconstruct the sequence
and shape the fix. Then we protected the improvement by building the check into routine management so it would not
rely on memory or heroics.
The takeaway
This was not luck. It was a choice to stay curious under pressure, make the process the subject,
and let the people who live the work help fix it.
OPS Summary
-
Best OPS Tools™ for this story:
Use the Origin Charter Template
and Detailed Action Plan
to structure cross functional crisis work so it outlives the incident.
-
Protect the gain:
Build your checks into management with the
Kaizen Audit Form
so the new standards are verified, not assumed.
-
System link:
Route repeat risks into Tier 2 Help Chain and PROVE Loop™ so they are owned at the right level.
See the Origin Thinking™ system page for how the tiers connect.
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The Missing Link in Lean: Middle Management
By Dustin Thomas · November 30, 2025
When your calendar is full of reviews and updates, are you leading a system?
Make the process the subject: write your leader standard work as it is, then spend roughly a third of your time
at the point of work verifying standards and coaching supervisors. Turn daily gaps into small experiments and
lock the wins into routine checks so problems stop stacking.
By Dustin Thomas, Author of Origin Problem Solving: The Lean Approach to Complex Problems.
The story
Not long ago, I asked a middle manager a simple question:
“What do you do on a day to day basis?”
He said, “I attend operating reviews. They set the tone and direction for the day.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Then we go out and target the areas that need attention and execute where we need to execute.”
“Right, but what do you actually do as a manager?”
He paused. “I hold a variety of meetings.”
That was it.
Weeks later, I told this story to someone else. He laughed: “He is not setting direction, he is chasing fires.
Every day is a new one. He is solving issues four days old while today is already blowing up.”
What we call management has drifted into fire control.
The real problem
Middle managers are stuck reacting. They manage symptoms, not systems. Days fill with reviews, updates,
and meetings that at best document problems instead of stabilizing them.
By the time they circle back to Monday’s issue, three new “top priorities” have arrived.
Urgent wins. Important waits.
We taught them to work this way.
In many Lean deployments, we train the front line to see waste and ask executives to sponsor the change,
then skip the layer in between, the clay layer everything rests on.
Where the change has to happen
Front line employees do not need to become Lean experts. They need access, permission, and support to improve
the work they already know best.
Executives do not need to be on the floor every hour. They need visibility and confidence in a system that
links daily work to strategic goals.
The middle layer is where Lean either lives or dies.
Managers must become disciplined problem solving practitioners. Their job: coach, enable small experiments,
and stabilize processes before scaling improvements.
A large share of their time, 30–40 percent, should go to verifying standards, observing process adherence,
and developing supervisors through structured feedback.
From periodic to daily
Many organizations still run on periodic problem solving. A few projects each year, often led by a Lean office,
deliver results, check boxes, and move on.
It is a start. It is not maturity.
Daily problem solving is the next step and it only happens when middle managers own it.
- Supervisors and crews run daily experiments to close performance gaps.
- Managers review patterns weekly and invest half their time in coaching and removing barriers.
- Leaders above them review trends monthly.
- Executives focus on annual targets.
Building trust through standards
Coaching in chaos does not work. Middle managers need a clear rhythm, and that starts with Leader Standard Work,
not the idealized version, the honest one.
Before we improve leadership behavior, we need to see it as it is:
- What meetings exist now?
- How is time actually spent?
- What is being checked, and what is ignored?
Write it down. Standardize the current state, especially if it is ugly.
Once you can see the pattern, you can improve it.
Then layer in audits and assessments, not as “gotcha” checks, but as structured conversations:
- What result are you trying to achieve here?
- What is happening right now at this location?
- Where is it off standard, and why?
- What one concrete step will you take next, and when will we check what you learned?
These questions surface reality and align crews, supervisors, and managers.
Over time, people start to see and solve problems systematically.
The shift
When middle managers learn to see variation, coach scientific thinking,
and reinforce stability through standard work, the system changes.
- Problems stop stacking.
- Supervisors stop firefighting.
- Executives stop micromanaging.
That is how we move from periodic, staff driven Lean to daily, embedded Lean
owned by the people who run the business, not by a department that reports on it.
In Origin Problem Solving, I describe this as moving from Clarity (seeing the work) to Cause
(understanding variation) to Control (stabilizing systems). The sequence applies to leadership
as much as it does to the book’s focus, which is process improvement.
When managers apply problem solving to their own work first, they create the conditions for everyone else to do the same.
The outcome
We build trust through structure. When daily, weekly, and monthly routines are predictable,
upper leadership can step back without losing control.
Middle managers become stabilizers. Supervisors become coaches. Employees become problem solvers.
That is maturity: not more meetings or more reviews, but a steady cadence of clarity, cause,
and control built into every level of work.
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When the Fix Isn’t in the Conference Room
By Dustin Thomas · December 4, 2025
How often has another meeting changed what really happens at the point of work?
Leave the room, observe, listen.
Editor’s note: Based on a real incident; nonessential details were changed to protect privacy.
Adapted from Origin Problem Solving.
The story
We were flooding the warehouse with odd lot. Coated paperboard kept coming off the line with wrinkles.
Meetings multiplied, theories flew, nothing stuck. The late night calls kept coming.
So I did the one thing I had not done well: I went to the Gemba.
Go to the machine, not the memory
Instead of debating in a room, we stood at the coater during start up, asked some questions of the operator
and together we watched. The operator had not been able to operate and watch but I followed his lead and
instruction and watched for him. That is where a thread began to show itself: during the sequence,
one end of the applicator touched down a hair early. That tiny asymmetry created a bead in the coating at one end
and the downstream wrinkle we were chasing soon showed itself.
While asking questions to understand, I also learned there is an adjustment wheel under twenty years of coating.
Hidden to me, not to the operator.
Observe first. Listen. Speak second. That moment changed more than a defect rate;
it reset how I thought and how I approached issues.
What we did differently (and why it worked)
- Observed real conditions. Not to command or to control but to listen and understand.
-
Respect for people. Acknowledging workers’ expertise in their processes and respecting their insights is not
only what is deserved, but it is essential.
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Fixed the cause, then protected the fix. Cleaned and indexed the adjustment, verified parallelism at contact,
and documented the check in the start up standard.
Why this story is in the book
Chapter 2 of Origin Problem Solving shows that durable improvement comes from small, disciplined changes built
on real observation, not slogans. The wrinkle story is a clear example: one overlooked contact sequence, one bead,
one standard that needed to be made visible and verified, found only because I went to the Gemba to listen.
OPS Summary
-
Best OPS Tools™ for this story:
Map the flow at the machine with
SIPOC Lite and capture causes in real time with the
Root Cause Analysis worksheet.
-
System link:
Turn the new contact check into a PROVE Loop™ metric on your Tier 1 board so it does not fade back into memory.
See the Origin Thinking™ system page for how PROVE Loop™ holds the gain.
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