describes ego depletion as the difficulty of maintaining the
exertion of willpower or self-control because doing so is inherently tiring. He notes that
a person sufficiently motivated could overcome this phenomenon, though, to perform
System 2 thinking (p. 42). In the context of lean, this might be the application of a
plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle (Rother, 2009; Duarte and Cruz-Machado, 2013) or other
work practices that require engaged and methodical thinking. To motivate and engage
workers so that they overcome ego depletion, lean companies use framing, anchoring,
priming and mere exposure effects. Implicit and explicit messages that are part of the
daily routine and culture anchor employees to standards higher than the competition’s
(Adler et al., 1999). Whether in team meetings, such as quality circles, during mentoring
or in informal interactions with colleagues who “believe in lean”, workers are positively
biased in their System 1 thinking to support high standards, such as zero defects, which
in turn makes them more likely to make the cognitive effort to attain those high
standards by engaging System 2 thinking in the form of lean work practices