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/ Canadian Government Executive
// February 2016
Management
Managing Error:
Craig
Szelestowski
How to Eliminate Defects
R
ushing to keep up with deadlines but never getting ahead is com-
monplace in today’s public service. In traditional thinking, there
never seems to be enough capacity--people, time, budget--to keep
up.
There are ways to free up capacity to beat this crunch. And some of the
clues are right in front of us and within our control. Unfortunately, we are
so close to our work and so busy that we rarely step back to spot them and
deal with them.
Over the years, Lean practitioners have identified a number of these clues,
a set of broad categories of non-value added activities, or “wastes”. If you can
understand what they are, you can take steps to remove them and free up
capacity to finally catch up.