Musician Diaries

I'm happy to declare that I've practiced the following standard list structure to a point that it has become second nature in me. I use it for music and non-music related stuff: Line 1) NAME OF THE PROCESS Line 2) INPUT: [What we have at the beginning] Lines 3 to x) [ All kind of strange crap to make things happen] Last line) OUTPUT: [What we have at the end] I intend to discuss what goes between the Input and the Output in other posts. But taking in consideration only this  high level definition, we get a world of possibilities already: as I'm running any of these processes, I often find that the beginning definitions were imprecise; every time I run the list, I learn to define the starting and result a little better, or it turns out that it made more sense to cut the 'chunk of activity' at different points... This makes the content of those lines (process name, input, and output) as movable as everything that goes within. At some point, one of these bab...

When you take the waste out of your processes, you obtain flow. If you want a crash course on flow, I haven't ever found a better example than this improvement they made in a clinic to have the next patient prepared (the relevant example starts at 4:19, but I recommend the whole video for everyone with a heart in their chest; this is the way human beings are meant to work together, the way I see it.) The critical point where a lot of waste is created, is in the process between one ill person leaving the doctor's and the next one coming in. But it's a narrow factor, upon which we can exert control. Let's have him ready, by the door. The rest of the people in the waiting room can go at their pace, no big deal. Simple, isn't it? Does your doctor do it? I can tell mine doesn't. The mechanics under this simple example can be applied to any area in our lives. For example, for any item that you have to buy periodically, have the one you're usi...

When I was getting started in the habit of flossing, I remember there was a very ugly first period. My gums bled, and, while I was at it, I sometimes noticed a disgusting scent of halitosis in my mouth, something that hadn't ever happened to me before. If I didn't know better, perhaps I would have thought it was stupid going on with that practice, which, on top everything, was gruesome and took me forever. That flossing thing must be for sure harmful; I felt much healthier before I started doing it! Obviously, it was not that I was healthier, but that before the filth was hidden. A Lean transformation is a bit like that. In the first moments can be overwhelming; problems start to emerge everywhere. But it's like that old adagio, "the first step to resolving a problem is acknowledging you have it". You are free to hide your organizational problems under the mat, but you cannot escape to the consequences of doing that. At some point, they may come and b...

With all its layers of complexity and challenges, there is a kind of waste that manufacturing and services don't have to deal with, but the artist does: personal resistance. When you work in a car manufacturing company, the final goal is having a car, and there is no second guessing about that. If you'd tell to your boss "I'm unsure if we should build a car", he'd probably suggest you politely to start looking for another job. However, in the uncertain world of art, where you work with materials come out you don't know from where, intuitions, strange urges and glimpses, and things that can sometimes be true and false at the same time, self doubt and internal resistances come with the territory. In fact, in some cases maybe they are necessary to get the project right. Sometimes you just know that a song is not there yet, or that its moment is not right, and all you can do about it is wait. Neil Young spoke of that process as 'a window that ...

One of the many stories that circulate about Toyota encompasses, in my view, what Lean is all about. Actually, more than a story, is a saying by one of its executives: "the workers in the company have two obligations. One is following the standard work. The other is improving it". Standard work is not a stiff grid where to bury your intelligence and heart. On the contrary. What the 'grid' takes care of is all that stuff that gets in the way of your creative, best work. You remove one obstacle here, other there, and one day you have accumulated hours, days, years of solving problems into a little job helper. And it looks so simple and easy to follow only because you've taken out all those 13,598 things that didn't work. One at a time. Sometimes, when I have a standard list of a process stabilized, that's accumulated that kind of wisdom for some months, as I use it I feel like there's a "warm hand" that is helping me do the work. I...

Why taking the trouble of writing stuff about how you do stuff? Isn't it a nerdy thing to do? Doesn't madness lie that way? Well yes and no. As with most of what we do, it all depends on what's the underlying motivation. Regarding this science/art of how-we-do-what-we-do, I always find healthy to remind myself that notes, To-Do lists, calendar plans and all the like, have a main motivation: getting us to the fun part as quickly as possible. Human brain has a wonderful plasticity; it quickly rearranges itself to do things completely different. We can be at one moment planting a rose and the next one trying to appease a crowd. To take full advantage of such plasticity, it's a good thing to remember that the change of activity has a cost, in terms of effort --the tiny wheels inside the brain must be replaced, the microscope lenses leave place to the telescope...- By creating guides for ourselves, we facilitate that change of dies. Those guides don't need t...

Waste (="not value") has been fought by countless warriors, who have classified it in different manners in order to develop their strategies better. As the information in the interwebs on the different kinds of waste is a plethora, I'll limit myself here to a brief explanation of each kind according to my division of choice, with an example in a "traditional" field of application, and other more music related, taken from my personal experience when possible. Transportation: taking items (raw material, work in process...) from one place to another without adding value to it. Traditional example: a piece that after being processed at station A must be taken to station B through a long corridor. Musical example: having to move a file from a folder to another when you need it in two parts of the process (for example, a list of instrument arrangements that you need during composition and later during the recording rehearsals). Inventory: any product...