It's Spring Cleaning Time

Every spring, I clean out all the closets, cabinets and shelves. I make a valiant effort toward minimalism until… until I reach the garage and panic!!!

To be sure that some of my service organizations are grateful for my donations. But, this year I started to think about how I sort all my “artifacts” for disposal. My basic “rule” is that if I haven’t used something in over a year it’s out like ‘80s parachute pants. Yet, I still hold onto things that I think I may need tomorrow. Insecurity, nostalgia, unwillingness to change and let go… all keep me from just getting rid of “stuff”.

This year, I though about how spring cleaning could be applied to how we work. We all use processes and methods that we cling to not because they actually provide any value but because of our security with them… our nostalgia for things comfortable and our unwillingness to change. What if in our work we did a bit of “spring cleaning”? What if we really sat down, looked at the true value our processes bring to our work, our lives and, most importantly, the lives of our customers and took an honest approach to determining their value? Wouldn’t we find that at least some of what we do really provides us with no value any more? And, like my our old, moth-hole riddled sweaters, if we aren’t getting any value out of the processes as we once did, many ages ago, shouldn’t we toss them?

Maybe, at least, once a year, we should advocate a bit a spring cleaning in our organizations. We should really look at what our customers “now” expect from us and learn whether or not our processes are really meeting those expectations. And, like our old suits we cannot fit into anymore, toss the processes that don’t serve our customers, or ourselves, well.