Satisfied employees through Lean (1): Striving for meaning

Striving for meaning is a basic human need. Of course, this also applies to our daily work tasks. If we don’t see any sense in it, frustration and dissatisfaction arise. It is very difficult to motivate someone through external incentives – as we now know from motivation research. What does that have to do with lean management? The basic idea of ​​lean management is “to create value without waste”. “Creating values” means that it is systematically checked for whom a service is provided or a product is manufactured, i.e. what is actually needed. This raises the question of the meaningfulness of our work, so to speak. The next step in lean management is to systematically remove all superfluous and pointless activities from our everyday work. This can be duplication of work or idle work and also leads to a relatively quick relief in terms of time for the employees. You can also call it ‘lean for lazy people’, in that we only use our energy where it is actually necessary. So you kill two birds with one stone: We are satisfied when we recognize the meaning of our work – at the same time we are relieved of superfluous ballast. To be continued (Part 2: Happy through a sense of achievement)