(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1205. The title of this podcast will be You Will Never Be Lean Until You Constrain Your Time. What I'm going to talk about in this podcast is how constraining your time will literally force you to be lean and why necessity is the mother of invention. 

So I hope you're into that. If you are, then stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction wanting to take their next step. 

Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life, and expect more. Let's go. Okay, everybody. 

I hope you're doing well and jamming. I'm loving these topics for these podcasts. It's like real stuff. 

We're getting better and better. See, this is the great part about learning about lean. When you master the fundamentals, more things open and more things open and more things open. 

This world just keeps opening up in beautiful directions. I highly encourage you to stick with it, to learn to love this stuff. I mean, it's just absolutely fantastic. 

I couldn't be happier to be a part of these efforts in this industry, and I just absolutely, absolutely love what I do. Okay, so I don't know that I have any other news that I failed to tell you about. Oh, by the way, if you're interested in helping me write or update the fourth version of the Field Engineering Methods Manual, please let me know.

I need help with robotic total station, GPS, laser or robotic or GPS guided machinery, in civil, any advanced technologies, anything that brings the Field Engineering Methods Manual up to date with current technology. If you want to help me out with that, I would love to add you to that group. Oh, by the way, some of you were invited to help with the TAC University, and we had to reschedule that twice. 

It's my fault. I'm so sorry that Danny had to do that and that I frustrated a couple of you out there for that, but we'll get that going as well. Okay, so this is something that I constantly, constantly, constantly talk about, and it comes up with lean tact as well, and it's this dichotomy. 

I should look up the exact definition of dichotomy, but they're seeming opposites or they're seeming concepts that are contrary. You know, like you must be default aggressive, but not overly aggressive, right? Those seem to be in opposition to each other, but it really means that we need a balance. So, sometimes in organizations, we get to the point where we feel like we're being a little, where we're a little bit overburdened, okay? That is natural, and it's always going to happen.

If we don't get to that spot, we're probably under utilizing a resource or not going at the pace that's possible, and so it doesn't bother me. I'm not necessarily like an Elon Musk kind of a guy where it's like, work your butt off, stay at the office, don't bathe, but I'm also not like, hey, you come in and work 34 hours, waste the rest of the six hours, and barely put in a full day's work, and you're never overcapacity. I'm more of like the guy, like, hey, if we're at 48 and feeling a little stretched, this is an opportunity to improve.

So, actually, this is already a really good podcast, in my opinion, because let's just use the 48-hour marker as an example, okay? So, let's say you're at 48 hours, and you're like, I'm barely getting my stuff done. I feel a little bit pressured. There's two things you can do with this. 

One, which is the bad way, is you can enter into a traumatic stress, distress, and you can start working more hours, and you can go into a productivity spiral, and start masking the waste, and starting to fix the problems with more resources, more time, and at the expense of you, your health, and your family. Now, there's a second option here, which I'm sad to say you have to get to the 48-hour overburden to initiate, but this is the door that I want you to walk into. So, let's say that in option two, you've gotten to 48 hours. 

You're still feeling a little bit pushed and overworked. Let me give you the whole Janka Willink good. Now, you get to figure out how to really fit everything into your time by becoming lean, okay? So, the second option, let's say we are not going to overburden ourselves. 

We are not going to ignore our health. We are not going to overburden our families, but we realize that there's waste. We realize that there's an improvement that's needed.

Okay, great. What do we do now? The first step, and I need you to hear me. Oh, my gosh. 

This is such a good podcast. Oh, my gosh. This is such a good time. 

Okay. The problem is not the 48 hours. The problem is not your workload.

The problem is not the stress you feel. The problem is not constraining you your hours. You feel a little bit overworked? Good. 

Go home on time. Be disciplined. Do it. 

Go home and drop the work. And this is, I realize this is just as hard as if I just told you to go jogging for an hour every morning at 4 15 a.m. in the snow. I understand that, but it doesn't make, it doesn't mean that it's not real. 

Constrain your hours. If you decided according to your standard work that you're going home at 4 30, drop everything and go home at 4 30. Drop it. 

And you will leave some things undone. You will screw up a bit. You will be less prepared. 

But what will happen is when your brain, oh my gosh, this is the best podcast ever. As soon as your brain and your body realize, holy shit, this lady or this guy is not going to mask this stuff with waste and extra hours. We'd better go into problem solving to make ourselves more efficient. 

That's what your brain and your body will do. It will realize that you are not going to pander to the sloppiness of habit, old habits, and that it's got to do something different. So to survive your brain and your body with a proper education, I do want to make that clarification, with a proper education, we'll start to think and you will start to intentionally think, oh my gosh, are there any of these that I can tree out? Is there anything on my list of things to do that I can get rid of? Can I prioritize my tasks? Can I automate any of my tasks? Can I standardize any of my tasks? Can I synchronize any of my tasks where I kill two birds with one stone? Can I get training to make some of these shorter durations? Can I create templates? Can I set myself up for success with full kit? Can I get a software to help me? Can I ask the intern to help me? I can just keep going on and on. 

Literally, if you dig deep, there's probably a hundred continuous improvement ideas that you could implement. But you will never delegate, you will never synchronize, you will never standardize, you will never improve, you will never leverage technology, you will never reduce and triage until you constrain your time. And so if somebody said I hit 48 hours, I'm busy, good. 

I hit 48 hours and I feel a little bit of pressure, good. I hit 48 hours and I feel a little bit stressed, good. I'm going to have to make a decision between masking this with waste and working more hours and actually solving problems and being more lean, good. 

And then I'll give you a bad and a good. If the person decides to just work more time, to stay on the job site, and to not actually fix the problem, that's bad. But if the person decides screw this, I've got a problem, I am going home, but I will start to solve this and they lean into continuous improvement, good.

And so you will never be lean until you constrain your time. And I'll tell you, this was the first concept that I ever learned in lean thinking and I had a hard time with it. And the example that the teacher used was if you have a shorter project duration and you've got to figure out how to get it done in the time. 

And I had a problem with it because I've always believed in you have to have enough time. You can't rush and push and panic workers. But I finally realized years later that when they said, when Japan or lean consultants or anybody says, hey, having a milestone is not a bad thing. 

When you have to constrain your time, even with large projects, I finally get it. They're never talking about rushing and pushing and panicking workers. They're never talking about increasing work in progress.

They're never talking about adding too many people. They're never talking about throwing money at the problem. And they're never talking about bringing too many materials to the site.

They're not talking about that. What they're saying is find ways to do it that doesn't hurt people. That's why respect for people is number one. 

Respect for people should be a given. If we're saying hit this milestone, that means hit the milestone up into hurting people, but we will never go hurt people. And so I've realized that I used to see these projects metrics in Germany, where it's like we're doing projects 20% faster, 40% faster. 

And I'm like, bullshit, you're not doing that. And I just give up. But I'm realizing now by implementing tact, you can get a certain percentage there. 

By rezoning within tact, you can get another percentage of the way there. By designing to the work package and really leveraging BIM and prefabrication, you can get another percentage of the way there. There are lean ways without hurting people that will force us to be lean. 

And so there's that dichotomy again. If you have a deadline to meet, you can either take the lazy approach and just work more time and hurt people, or you can actually find real solutions. But that continuous improvement is not triggered unless you constrain your time, unless you have that milestone, unless you actually decide to go home, unless you actually decide this is when we need to finish the project.

And so I would say that you're never going to be lean unless you constrain your time, because necessity is the mother of invention. If you have all the time in the world, what's the motivation? We have people all over the country that are using five-day tact times, and they bid the project that way. And it's great. 

They're hitting the dates, and they got plenty of buffers. But that is not the most optimized way to do the project. That's better. 

Having a five-day tact time and building your project like that is better than the crash-landed resource burden projects that fail. But what's a step even better than the slow-moving, plenty-of-time, five-day tact time projects is actually learning about rezoning, learning about preparing work packages, learning how to accept other tact times and other zone sizes. And so that's the key. 

I'm not going to say the company name, but you probably know what I'm talking about. There's a company I brag about all the time, and their key success is they always plan projects, and they have an uncanny way of being able to get the amount of time they need to get the project done with some fluff, with plenty of time. And so they pretty well do projects well, but they're not open to lean or tact or rezoning or preparing better and designing to the work package. 

And so they will never be the most competitive company. And so I would say the steps here are, first, you have to have respect for people, you have to have respect for people and never be open to overburdening resources. Second in this phase cycle is start planning projects with plenty of time, like how big things get done as states, and don't undercut the duration based on wishful thinking.

But once you have that baseline and you know that you can do it excellently, then you will start incrementally constraining your time forward, never hurting resources, but by implementing production principles and advanced preparation techniques that design and prepare the work that design to and prepare the work package. And so those are really the steps. And I don't discount anyone, if you're like, hey, we got a project, we asked for plenty of time, we got the time, we're cruising through, I have no problems with that. 

But I will say that your next step is getting more lean training. And you can start pulling those milestones forward, you can start pulling those durations forward, because you are really, really learning lean. And unless that's at least a goal, you're never going to truly become lean and improving your situation from your baseline. 

And I'm not talking about a CPM baseline, I'm talking about your baseline execution of excellence on a project. And so you'll never really believe be lean until you learn to constrain your time and do your work in the lean way without overburdening resources. I hope everybody's enjoyed this podcast. 

On we go. Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform.

We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction Podcast.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)