While other labor-intensive industries have seen efficiency improve since the 1960s, today in the United States a whopping 70 percent of construction projects are delivered late and over budget, and, more concerningly, eight hundred construction-related deaths and thousands more injuries are reported each year. The LCI sees lean principles as being

There is rarely a need to go that second mile beyond what’s essential. It’s better to go just the first mile than to not go anywhere at all.

As sportswriter Andy Benoit observes, most geniuses “prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities.”

Outdated goals, suggestions, or ideas that snuck into your brain long ago and took up permanent residence?

“For after all,” as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “the best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain.”

to protect ourselves.

Mistakes are dominoes: they have a cascading effect. When we strike at the root by catching our mistakes before they can do any damage, we don’t just prevent that first domino from toppling, we prevent the entire chain reaction.

Break down essential work into three sessions of no more than ninety minutes each.

What could happen in your life if the easy but pointless things became harder and the essential things became easier?