String Quartet Uses Lean to Support Creativity

"Lean" has spread from the manufacturing floor into the accounting office, order fulfillment and occasionally even the strategy process. But a string quartet?!

According to Benjamin Wolff, Associate Professor of Music at Hofstra University and the member of a string quartet, lean principles help his ensemble and his students make the most of their rehearsal time, by improving the routine processes to free up more energy for the creative process. Professor Wolff gave an insightful presentation at this month's AME Regional Conference in San Diego.

Ben's presentation showed his quartet rehearse a specific piece for an upcoming recital. Without necessarily telling the group what he was doing, Ben began using lean principles to rethink the rehearsal process. For example, all four members of the quartet play string instruments that must be retuned at least once during the rehearsal. Ben has used lean thinking to reduce the amount of time it takes to tune the instruments, and to ensure that the tuning process produces a more consistent result each time.

The major takeaway from Ben's presentation was this: creativity thrives in an atmosphere of disciplined practice and routines. By using lean processes to standardize and improve the supporting processes (the microprocesses), the musicians have more time and energy to innovate where it counts: the musical interpretation.

One Good Use of Product Development Standardization

I spoke to a gentleman yesterday who worked in a corporate office charged with aligning the various engineering teams within a large company that had grown by acquiring a couple of dozen smaller companies, all producing similar products. The company hopes to realize synergies by developing comprehensive solutions that draw products from multiple subsidiaries. However, most of the companies were founded by entrepreneurs, had home-grown processes at best, and could barely communicate about the basics of product development, much less actually collaborate on a new product.

This is an example where a high level, lean stage gate process makes a lot of sense. It's nearly impossible to avoid the waste of reinvention in such a setting. A standardized, high level framework for product development helps by creating a common vocabulary and structure. When I call and say that I'm working towards my first proto tooling release and could use a little of your expertise from the product you just released, you know what I mean.

The risk is that such a process will lead to bureaucracy. In a large company, the temptation is strong to add in everyone's pet action item and report, causing the lifecycle to eventually collaspe under its own weight. However, it seems that this company has avoided such pitfalls.

The teams have the ability to improvise within this framework to create a product development process that balances the needs of the corporate parent with the needs of the specific product's customer. They are not overburdened with proscribed administrative reports and checklists to complete. Teams are not arbitrarily required to batch their work until after they pass a specific milestone, causing reinvention and time-to-market to increase.

How does your standard product development process balance structure and flexibility?