A Common Lean Problem: Mismatched Expectations

I am an aspiring golfer who plays less than half a dozen rounds of golf a year. (My translation of aspiring means I have been golfing for a long time without any real improvement.) To gain some perspective about my skills, the average golf score in the US right now is around a hundred. My average is a little higher than that-I’d guess it is somewhere around 105 or so.

Lean Problem Solving With Golf

There is one thing I do extremely well on occasion, though. I can pummel the ball and make it sail down the middle of the fairway. Unfortunately, that occasion only occurs about once every other round or so. It is great fun when I connect like that and the people around me look on in awe. It almost makes up for the countless times I shank the balls into the woods and have people looking at me like I’m the northern end of a southbound mule.

One time when I was out golfing, my partner mentioned that if I only used my seven iron and a putter, I would play the best game of my life. Well, I didn’t do that, but it did get me thinking of how I would improve my game if I applied Lean problem solving principles to it.

I’d define the problem: my score is too high. I’d do a process walk and run the numbers. I’d almost certainly come away with a Pareto chart that shows my driver being the source of the majority of my excess strokes. I could improve by simply pulling my driver out of my bag and using a long iron off the tee. Far less distance, but far more control which translates into better scores. In fact, I tried that and scored a 90.

But that’s where a common Lean problem comes into play. The value I get from the game is not just in the score I walk away with. It is also the fun I get when I connect with a great drive. I really don’t want to give that up. So I put my driver back in the bag knowing I was adding a bundle of strokes back onto my score.