From the monthly archives:

August 2010

First Steps Video: Stay Out of Your Inbox

08.30.2010

Each Monday we are releasing small ideas that require only 15 minutes of effort to try, but they can still serve as your first steps on the lean journey. The First Steps Video Series is meant to make it easier to begin the journey – get some improvement, and some learning, and then take another [...]

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Focus on your core work

08.27.2010

So many things can distract us from what the core of our work is all about. Email is often a distraction, but there are so many more – Facebook and Twitter, consuming news whether on the internet or TV, politics inside your industry or company, promotion and self-promotion, and the list goes on. Too often, [...]

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Get Lean Blogs Bundled on Your iPhone

08.24.2010

Want to check out some of the latest lean thinking from Mark Graban at LeanBlog.org, Jon Miller at Gemba Panta Rei, Kevin Meyer and Bill Waddell at Evolving Excellence , John Hunter at Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog , Matthew May at In Pursuit of Elegance , and Ron Pereira at Lean Six Sigma Academy, [...]

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First Steps Video: Improving Email

08.23.2010

Our First Steps Video Series continues this week with thoughts on email. People spend so much time in email, that even minor improvements can have a big impact. Do you have standard work for how you manager your inbox? Here are some thoughts on getting a quick start. If you can’t view the video, try [...]

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Small-i ROI as Applied to Strategy

08.20.2010

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are all in search of a big return on their investment. How best to maximize my ROI? Many investing are looking for the big-R, the giant market. Where is there billions of dollars of opportunity? Surely, with billions on the table, we can grab a slice of it. There are [...]

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Increase ROI by Focusing on I, not R

08.18.2010

Everyone wants a good return on investment. It’s no way to run a business, as many lean thought leaders have written about. But whether calculated or just a mental impression, we want a high return on investment, or ROI. But why does everyone only focus on the R? When I see projects, problems, initiatives, and [...]

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First Steps: Understanding Value

08.16.2010

As promised, this is our first video in the First Steps series I introduced last week. In our first video where we look for 15 minute investments in our own personal lean journeys. This installment focuses on how you can get closer to your customers inside the organization and understand value more clearly. If you [...]

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Focusing on strengths

08.13.2010

This week in class (I’m running a session of Leading Lean at a client) I asked a question: What’s better between focusing on your strengths or improving your weaknesses? It’s one of those unanswerable questions designed to generate some dialogue and thought. What surprised me, although only a little, is that no one wanted to [...]

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Your own worst enemy

08.11.2010

I witness lean change agents get in their own way all the time. I’m sure I do it too. This is a common example that really can hold back an entire organization on the journey. It is the response to an inflection point. Change agents, of any kind of change, often begin by pushing against [...]

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Introduction to First Steps Video Series

08.09.2010

This week I introduce a new weekly video series, First Steps. Sometimes the journey of a thousand steps begins with one step. Sometimes, just a shuffling of the feet. However small the investment, it is still a step in the right direction. This video series is meant to describe small ways in which you can, [...]

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