Team Members Late to Meetings During a Kaizen Blitz? Not Anymore!

I’m going to try out a new style of article to see how well-received they are. Please let me know if you like this ‘quick tip’ format. I am going to be addressing one simple problem or giving an easy tip to add to your continuous improvement arsenal.

So, here goes…

Tired of having one or two team members show up late to meetings during a kaizen? It doesn’t matter if you are the team leader, a leader assigned to the team, or a frontline employee. Having coworkers late to meetings is demoralizing.

Tick, Tick. Tick, Tock.

And it can be anyone who is late. Supervisors are often tardy because they are trying to deal with a problem. Or a frontline employee is not used to working in a flexible environment and loses track of time while working on a task.

An easy solution is to create a ‘time bank’ and start the day with five or ten minutes in it. Write the time remaining up on a white board. Use it to let the team off early or to add some time to a lunch break. Whenever anyone—and I mean anyone—shows up late to meetings, start counting down the time. (Even if you are not in charge, you can score points by suggesting this idea to the team leader or facilitator.)

Nobody wants to be the one responsible for taking away personal time from the rest of the team by being late for meetings. It even becomes something of a game to get the chronically tardy to change their ways. And you’ll see team members starting to wrangle their coworkers into the meeting room well in advance of the designated time.

Try this technique out and let me know what you think. Or help out other people in the same Lean boat that you are, send me tips of your own (at Info@Velaction.com) for me to include here.

And don’t forget to let me know in the comments section below what you think about this focused ‘quick tip’ format.