Lean Love Advice

This article was originally published on Leanblog.org. In this version, I have refined my thinking since the original post.

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I’ve written about the four rules of Lean before. Earlier tonight, I was thinking about how they apply to marriage. To refresh those of you who have not read the Harvard Business Review article by Steve Spear and H. Kent Bowen, I will restate the rules here and share how I see them apply to relationships. This is the first in a four part series to apply each of the four rules.

Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.

Rule 1 illustrates the importance of roles in a relationship. As men and women, we need to know how to behave in specific situations. Couples that establish specific roles within marriage are better able to deal with the challenges. In some cultures, men take the role of handling the family’s external matters. They arrange for the children to marry. They typically bring in the food for the household. Women take care of the internal matters. They prepare the meals and raise the children. They direct the household. Together, the man and woman run a family that operates smoothly inside and outside the front door.

Men and women in our culture have evolved a different model through cultural enlightenment. The stereotypical gender roles have been changed to produce a model that shares internal and external duties between the male and female. This is an excellent and flexible model that allows for men and women to serve the family in the most effective ways. The only flaw is that men and women become confused with their family roles and responsibilities. With the added complexity of our flexible system, we have lost the ease of standard work.

Thankfully, getting back on track is easy. We don’t need the traditional gender roles to move forward from where we are. We just need to work with our partner to establish standard work in the relationship. I don’t think this means that only one person works or one person does the dishes. To me, establishing standard work means that there is an easy to follow process so that either person can reliably execute a job regardless of experience.

Rule 2: Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send request and receive responses.

To me, this is the most important rule of all. Communication has to be the biggest problem in a relationship. Isn’t it the premise of several marriage books that communication is the cause of most major marital problems? I believe it. Rule 2 tells me that relationships have a better chance of success when both parties create unambiguous communication paths. Rule 2 gives us the insight to create an effective communication plan. If I need help, I need to specifically request for help preferably using SMART requests:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Acceptable
• Realistic
• Time-bound

What is a good SMART request? “Honey, after you throw that raw meat into the trash, would you take the bag of trash out and throw it into the garbage can right away? I don’t want it to smell up the house.” This is specific (throw trash out), measurable (it is done or not), acceptable (she is not asking me to eat the raw meat), realistic (taking trash out is easy), and time-bound (right after I throw away the raw meat.) A malformed request would be, “The trash needs to go out.”

This may seem excessively formal, but I love this type of request because it makes it so easy to please my wife. I know exactly what she wants and can give it to her exactly how she wants it.

Couples need to establish standard operating procedures for how they will perform day to day activities. This includes activities like spending money, saving money, gift buying during birthdays and holidays. Every man knows that he is expected to perform a certain way on the wedding anniversary. That expectation is not confined to one day of the year though. Standard work should be defined for all expected behaviors. If the standard is that nothing is done, that is fine. As long as both parties agree to it up front, it is standard work.

Rule 3: The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.

What is the product in a relationship? Of course, this is up to the customers of the relationship, but my initial sense is that one of the primary products must be love. I mean, if love is not flowing, that is probably a problem in the relationship. Rule 3 tells us to create simple and direct pathways for product to flow. How do we maximize the flow of love while shunning the wastes? Let’s review the wastes. I’ve learned eight in my training. How do these wastes manifest themselves in relationships and lead to the breakdown of love flow?

1. Overproduction – Can you love too much? Yes. It is called being “needy” or “clingy.” Everyone needs a break. Even the biggest extrovert needs to be alone sometime. A relationship that produces too much love in the form of constant and unending attention or closeness is overproducing.
2. Overprocessing - When I think of overprocessing, I think of a system with too many rules and regulations to get any work done. When you have to sign a paper eight times before a product can move out the door, that is overprocessing. In the love arena, overprocessing is making excuses to not express love. In more psychological terms, overprocessing is creating conditions to withhold love as a punishment. You didn’t do the laundry, so he won’t talk to you all night. You dropped a bowl of tomato soup on the rug? Move into the dog house, man. Couples overprocess all the time. Removing overprocessing is another way to increase positive reinforcement. Rather than look for a way to withhold love, a better approach is to find ways to express it.
3. Motion – Before I married my wife, we lived in two different cities. Having to move back and forth between cities was a nuisance to the relationship. When two people are far apart, it impedes flow.
4. Transportation – This is the waste of moving the product from supplier to customer. To maximize flow, the movement of love from person to person needs to be minimized. This waste manifests itself in bad communication. When people can directly communicate love, the movement is excruciatingly slow or non-existent from one person to another. It reminds me of the shy teenager that is unable to confess his undying devotion to the girl next door. All you have to do is make some type of unambiguous move and the communication is sent. Without it, no flow, dude.
5. Injury – When feelings are hurt, that is an injury and it impedes the flow of love.
6. Waiting – If I made my wife wait two days after our anniversary to give her a card or gift, that would be a big problem. Love needs to be delivered when it is expected by the customer. Note to customer: You must submit a purchase order in order to receive love (see Lean Love Advice: Rule 2).
7. Defects – If you give your vegetarian husband a steak dinner to show about much you care, that is a defect. The love doesn’t flow. The thought may count, but the full effect of all that effort to show love is impeded.
8. Inventory – Having an inventory of love is like having an inventory of money. It really doesn’t do you any good in the bank. Spending money is where you derive all benefit from having it. Some die hard savers, like myself, might say that they value the peace of mind. Still, the peace of mind is based on the knowledge that you have it when you need to SPEND it. Love is not like that. If we spend 10,000 units of love, we don’t have any less. There really is no reason to keep inventory. When you feel it, you should immediately spend it.

These eight wastes all impede flow. By removing them from your love behaviors, flow can be increased. Other Lean tools can also be used to increase love flow. For example, let’s look at level loading. By level loading the expression of love, we keep it moving at a regular pace. How do we level load love? Routines and standard work are a good start. This may not be a popular suggestion, but you can make a schedule to express love at defined intervals. We also want to change up the love we express. You need to vary the expressions between dates, flowers, gifts, phone calls, letters, talks, walks, and other activities. That is level loading. How about work cells? To me, this is establishing your routines in ways that maximize the expression of love. In order to do this, you need to obtain value from the customer’s perspective. Once obtained, you can then structure your dates, letters, and other expressions in ways that create maximum love value in the least effort. No sense in having to write 50 letters to get the output of one really good one. I would much rather write 50 really good ones. Try other tools. Lean is a diamond in rough of love.

Rule 4: Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

The basic advice of Rule 4 is that improvement to the relationship is achieved through a partnership between the members. In a marriage or partnership, the couple is the lowest possible level in the organization. This pretty much says that appeals to parents or friends to help intervene are not going to be as effective as working with your partner directly. How true. The rule also talks about the scientific method. What is the scientific method? The scientific method is commonly explained through the following algorithm:

1. Define a question
2. Gather information and resources about question. Understand your present knowledge.
3. Form a hypothesis that answers the question through a logical thought process. 
4. Perform an experiment and collect data
5. Analyze and interpret data. Draw conclusions that serve to test the validity of your hypotheses.
6. Publish the results.
7. Repeat the process

An important point to make about the scientific method is that it is a predictive process. In love, it means that we become amateur behavioral psychologists. Perhaps I find out that my wife likes roses. I make a hypothesis that buying her roses will result in positive reinforcement from her. I test this hypothesis by buying roses. What was the reaction? She got hives and tossed them in the trash. Interpreting this data, I realize that she is allergic to roses. I revise my hypothesis to say that she likes to LOOK at roses. If I buy her a rosebush and plant it near the end of the property, she will be able to see many roses without getting hives. I do this and analyze the data. I receive praise for the solution and she very much enjoys her new rosebush. Then, the most important part is to make sure everyone knows that you planted a rosebush for your wife. You got to publish those results.

The main point of the scientific method is to make sense out of your actions and develop behaviors that lead to more love. I think it is safe to say that couples that fall out of love have not observed and reflected on the consequences of their actions. This is something that is required by the scientific method.

I hope this has helped paint a new light on Lean and shows that it is not just applicable to making cars and cutting metal. The rules and principles of Lean can apply to all aspects of life if you let them. Lean is not a panacea, but it is an effective framework with which to solve problems of all types.