We Removed a Shelf That None of Us Could Reach

In a recent report-out session with a hospital department, one of the changes that the group was most excited about was "We removed a shelf that none of us could reach." Among the many other improvements they made, this one stood out for several reasons:

1. "We" removed a shelf. It was the people in the area that made this change, not a facilities department, not a Six Sigma black belt, not a Lean guru, not a project team. "We" did it. "We" owned the change. "We" liked the change. If someone else had tried to impose this change on them, they probably would have resisted.
2. We "removed a shelf". We didn't add a shelf, we removed it. This was a simple, inexpensive change that required no budget and freed up a resource for someone else to use. It goes against the common thinking that bigger is better, more is better, just-in-case is better. In a small way, it goes against the annual budget dance, be voluntarily reducing what they needed. They improved their area by reducing the amount of storage capacity.
3. We removed a shelf "that none of us could reach". Not only was this shelf too high for convenience, it was too high for safety. Getting rid of it eliminating the climbing, the standing on chairs, the reaching, the give-me-a-boost's. They took away one structural factor that might have contributed to an accident, and made their environment safer.

Simple changes like this, taken one-by-one, seem insignificant. We're tempted instead to look for big, dramatic breakthroughs. But taken over time, these little day-by-day changes add up. After ten, twenty, one-hundred little changes, we're surprised to realize that our entire department has been transformed. "We removed a shelf that none of us could reach" is a perfect example of what Continuous Improvement is all about - small changes, made daily by the people doing the work, to make things better, bit by bit.