How Do You Dry Yourself Off?

From time to time, I start blog articles that never see the light of day. This, dear reader, may be one of them, since the topic is…how should I put it? Well, it’s different.

You see, today I want to talk about the process of drying yourself off after a shower.

Stay with me.

This morning, after stepping out of the LA Fitness shower, I grabbed my towel and started drying off. Nothing unusual about that.

But for some reason, I became aware of how I was doing it.

I started with my face. Then my head and neck. Then my arms. From there, I worked my way down until, eventually, the job was done.

And that’s when it hit me.

I do this the same way every single time.

I don’t stand there each morning wondering where I should start. I don’t experiment with drying my left leg first on Monday and my right shoulder first on Tuesday.

I just do it.

In fact, I’ve apparently developed a standardized process for drying myself off without ever consciously deciding to.

Once I realized this, I started thinking about all the other things we do the same way.

Think about how you brush your teeth. Or how you make your coffee. Or the sequence you follow when getting dressed.

Chances are, you have a method.

And chances are, nobody ever created a work instruction for you.

We Naturally Create Standards

Those of us in the Lean community spend a lot of time talking about Standard Work.

Technically speaking, my towel-drying routine isn’t Standard Work in the traditional Lean sense.

Standard Work has three specific elements: takt time, work sequence, and standard work-in-process.

I’m certainly not calculating takt time before stepping out of the shower.

What I have created, though, is a standard. More specifically, I’ve developed a repeatable work sequence without ever consciously deciding to create one.

And that got me thinking.

Human beings seem to naturally standardize the things we do.

Once we discover a way of doing something that works, we tend to repeat it. Eventually, we don’t even think about the steps anymore.

That’s incredibly useful.

Imagine having to consciously decide how to brush each tooth every morning. Or which leg should go into your pants first. We’d exhaust ourselves before breakfast.

Our brains are very good at turning repeated behaviors into habits, freeing our attention for other things.

But there’s a potential problem.

Just Because It’s Standard Doesn’t Mean It’s Best

I have absolutely no idea whether my towel-drying technique is optimal.

Perhaps there’s a far more efficient method.

Perhaps somewhere in the world there’s a Six Sigma Master Black Belt who can reduce my drying cycle time by 37 percent while simultaneously improving towel utilization.

All kidding aside, there’s an important Lean lesson here.

You see, we can become extremely effective at repeating a process without ever questioning whether it’s a good process.

That’s true in the gym locker room, and it’s definitely true in the workplace.

“That’s how I’ve always done it” is often nothing more than an undocumented standard.

And, obviously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a standard. In fact, standards are incredibly valuable.

The danger comes when we stop questioning them.

A routine may have made perfect sense when it was created. But conditions change. Technology changes. Customer needs change. Better ideas emerge.

This is why a standard should never mean permanent.

A standard simply establishes the best-known method we have right now. It gives us a baseline. Then, when we discover a better way, we improve the process and update the standard.

Put plainly: Without a standard, there can be no kaizen.

Pay Attention to the Automatic

So here’s my challenge.

Sometime today, pay attention to something you normally do without thinking.

It doesn’t have to be at work. Notice the sequence. Why do you do it that way? Could you do it differently? Could you do it better?

You might discover that you’ve created your own standard without realizing it.

More importantly, you might discover that something you’ve done the same way hundreds, or even thousands, of times isn’t necessarily the best way to do it.

And that, I think, is where the Lean lesson lives.

Improvement often begins when we stop doing something automatically long enough to actually see it.

As for me, tomorrow morning I’ll probably step out of the shower, grab my towel, and dry myself off exactly the same way I’ve done thousands of times before.

Except now I’m going to notice it.

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