From the monthly archives:

September 2010

Lean helps drive innovation from top to bottom

09.29.2010

Today I’m delivering a presentation on innovation, and how lean can help drive innovation at all levels of the organization. This is a topic perhaps worth several blog posts in the future, but in the meantime, here is the presentation: Innovation from Within View more presentations from Jamie Flinchbaugh.  

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First Steps Video: Standard Questions for Your One-on-One Meetings

09.27.2010

Do you meet with the members of your team one-on-one? Does your boss do it with you? The one-on-one meeting is a staple practice in effective management. How can you make it more effective? By developing a list of most-effective questions that you can use. This is the next topic in our First Steps Video [...]

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4 ways our value stream training may be different than yours

09.23.2010

Value stream mapping training is almost like six sigma training these days – a dime a dozen. There is so much content out there, and so much of it is the same. At the Lean Learning Center, we’ve always focused on solving problems that had not yet been solved, or solved well. Value stream mapping [...]

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Finding the hidden “mouse” skills in every team member

09.22.2010

It’s too bad everyone isn’t just like us, isn’t it? Wouldn’t the world be a better place? Of course not. But our behaviors often suggest that we do hang on to this belief. We are far more likely to recognize the skills and talents of others if those skills and talents are much like ours. [...]

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First Steps – Improving Your Meetings

09.20.2010

As we continued our First Steps video series, I remind you of our purpose. Many organizations apply lean to their collection processes. But many individuals don’t apply lean to their own work. Sometimes all we need is a small push, a first step. That’s what these videos are meant to demonstrate – a small step [...]

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Lean Confusion? You can say that again

09.17.2010

Recently Industry Week published an article called Lean Confusion. In it was the following data from their surveys: What really shocks me is that 25 percent of companies feel that their lean journey is “complete”. How is this possible? Here’s my real struggle with this idea. If they have gotten far enough down the lean [...]

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The relationship between the CEO and the Board of Directors

09.15.2010

Recently a lot has been made of the relationship between a CEO and their board of directors. Mark Hurd recently ousted by the HP board is a case in point. This had nothing to do with performance, and everything to do with the relationship, communication, and trust. Last week I attended a discussion hosted by [...]

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Support startups – they lead to jobs

09.14.2010

A jobless recovery – that is perhaps the most optimistic I would describe today’s environment. I’m not very optimistic about the economy on the whole. For starters (and we could go on), there is $535 billion in commercial real estate loans coming due over the next year. What do you think that will do to [...]

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First Steps: Build a Customer Map

09.13.2010

Lean is both an organizational journey and a personal one. Can you take 15 minutes to begin your lean journey? Or continue it? In this installment of my First Steps video series, I talk about the idea of building a customer map. Besides our external customers, there are many internal customers that we personally serve. [...]

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When to coach the process, and when to coach the solution

09.09.2010

Do you think of yourself as a coach? When I ask this question, almost every single hand goes up. But what does that really mean? Do we have a process? Or do we confuse sharing our little bits of wisdom with coaching? To be an effective coach, you must combine process with intention. Today I [...]

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