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The CEO Can't Champion Everything

In my travels from one company to another, I hear many of the following phrases… “We need executive sponsorship.” “We need this to be owned top-down.” “We need the CEO to champion our lean efforts.” These are phrases that I hear over and over as I talk to companies about their lean journeys. I also [...]

Don't Limit Your Sources of Learning

Everyone wants to copy the best. That’s why companies such as Toyota and General Electric have been popular sources of benchmarking. That’s why Chrysler was so highly benchmarked when we were the most profitable car company. In the lean community, I have observed a common practice of filtering ideas based on whether they come from [...]

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

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 [...]

A Call to Action

Don’t generate news; do something newsworthy. Don’t just post on facebook your distaste of political decisions; get involved, go vote, or run for office. Don’t complain at the water cooler; have the courage to have difficult conversations with the right people. Don’t sulk or carry guilt; go apologize. Don’t just wish you were somewhere else; [...]

Everyone is responsible for their systems

In the lean mindset, there is generally an intent to show respect for people, to blame the system instead of the individual, and give people what they need to be successful. But how far should we go to avoid blame? Who is ultimately responsible for the system that generates the results? Must we go all [...]

You must lack common sense!

Kiyoshi Suzaki, a lean thinker who deserves to be at the top of any lean guru list, wrote: Lean tools are common sense – after the fact. I think that makes sense based on my observations. People see it, and they want to call lean “common sense”. Some organizations and I believe even books have [...]

The Fall of the Mighty Toyota

..and other such troubling headlines and comments have been popping up everywhere throughout the news cycle and the blogosphere. The major Toyota recall has stirred up activity every where, from a common leading story on the nightly news, to blog articles of all sorts.

H x V x F > R

This is the first video in our Cultural Transformation series. When trying to lead cultural transformation in any organization, whether tied to lean or not, there is no greater lever than the words, actions, and behaviors of the leader. In this video, we describe 3 key elements that you must be generating. H is for [...]

Test for Actual Use, not Intended Use

When you test, what attributes are you testing for? Most testing begins with design criteria. This is reasonable to include but not the right starting point. You must develop with the user in mind. You must test with the user in mind. You must test for actual use, not just the use you intended. This [...]

Observe with purpose

Direct observation has been an under appreciated aspect of lean for most of its life. It has gotten a lot more attention in recent years, unfortunately this is thanks in part to the use of jargon, such as gemba and genchi genbutsu. For those of you who know me, you know I hate jargon. It [...]

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