As a Lean person, you are an iconoclast — a Type 1 iconoclast. Type 1 iconoclasts seek to attack or destroy settled ways of thinking and doing things. You disrespect certain traditions and believe it is important to dismantle that which stands in the way of needed progress in both leadership and management practice. Yet, […]

The image below visually depicts how the books that I authored or co-authored have evolved since 2003. The main line pertains to Lean transformation and Lean leadership, proceeding to critiques of Lean leadership and Lean management, and then on to planning for Lean in the future. Above the main line is a second major line […]

This is the back story to the book Wheel of Fortune. Several years ago, Massimo Torinesi, who had read and liked several books I had written, ventured to contact me to get to know me and inquire about working together to deliver workshops and seminars in Italy. After a while of getting to know each […]

A common bit of feedback that I receive now and then is that I am “courageous” or “brave” to say the things that I say about Lean management, the Lean movement, business leaders, and the like. I don’t see it as courage or bravery. From my perspective I am simply sharing the facts as I […]

Business is not known to be a citadel of truth-telling. Bargaining, salesmanship, exaggeration, misstatements, omission, flattery, puffery, and deception are common in the conduct of business. Leaders commonly analogize business to war or sports, but business may be closer to the card game poker. In both poker and business, bluffing, misdirection, concealment, duplicity, and the […]

University Boards of Trustees are populated mostly by business leaders, followed by former politicians and other community leaders. As such, Boards tend to reflect business needs and interests. Only rarely are experienced classroom teachers and researchers (i.e., academics) found on Boards of Trustees. Isn’t it odd that those who preside over institutions devoted to the […]

Problem-solving is an essential skill that enables us to navigate through the challenges that life throws at us. When faced with problems, we often feel overwhelmed and struggle to find effective solutions. But what if there was a step-by-step guide that could help us overcome these obstacles with ease? Today, we will discuss an 8-step […]

There is a need for a vision more grand than just process improvement. Please read The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review TPS and EarthDownload

“Go See, Ask Why, Show Respect” is the phrase made famous by former Toyota president and chairman, Mr. Fujio Cho. He was referring to how managers should interact with workers and address problems that occur at the genba. “Go See” means to go where the problem occurred to thoroughly understand the situation, “Ask Why” to […]

Business leaders’ declining interest in Lean in recent years is a problem for the Lean movement and those who promote Lean management. How might this important problem be solved? Is there a quick and easy way to do it? A solution one can jump to? Business leaders are skilled creating canards and diverting their biggest […]

Dear @ALF: You have provided an excellent example of attacking the person and avoiding the argument, yet you lecture on “Respect for People.” Tsk tsk. @Michael – I don’t always agree with your takes. And, to be frank, you can kinda come off like a jerk sometimes too. It is easy to come off sounding […]

What was the purpose of writing 24 books? It was equal parts an intense personal curiosity, a desire to share what I have learned with others, and to make it easier for leaders to understand and practice progressive management. It is the last of these — to make it easier for leaders to understand and […]

Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation SPC > ERP ERP systems: the ‘do everything’ systems we love to hate. ERP […]

Mr. Taiichi Ohno had a theory of nonproductivity that people know but which they do not truly understand. In the image below, Ohno-san makes a clear differentiation between the types of work that workers do: Work that is waste Non-value added work that is necessary under present conditions Net work By “net work,” Ohno-san meant […]

Aside from the compulsory obsequity, what is notable about this comment from my esteemed colleague, Dr. Michael Ballé, is his mistaken view that it remains a mystery as to why CEOs are uninterested in Lean management. This so-called “mystery” has been comprehensively unraveled in the three books shown below. They are the result of 13 […]

Empathy is often misunderstood as simply feeling for others or sharing their emotions. However, empathy is much more profound and more complex than that. It is the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings from their perspective, and it can be a powerful tool for fostering connection and growth. In this blog post, we […]

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Lean manufacturing is a widely recognized and practiced business philosophy as many manufacturers have implemented some variation of practice into their operations. But, what are the benefits of lean manufacturing? In today’s blog, we’ll first detail what lean manufacturing is and then we’ll get into why companies use lean manufacturing. What is Lean Manufacturing? Lean […]

Since the grand awakening of the Lean community to the “Respect for People” principle in 2007, and especially post-2014, it has been interesting to see how it has been both used and misused. When used correctly, in its proper context — the management of business enterprise, in the workplace — wonderful things happen. With these […]

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on […]

It is common knowledge that the biggest management consulting businesses go from company to company “solving” the same problems using the same or similar “solutions” whose trade names change over time. The long-lived success of top tier consulting’s business model is significantly aided by the short-lived tenure of CEOs who think the problems they face […]

WEB SERIES – Episode 3 of our docuseries on lean in Brazil takes us to the second largest bank in the country. Learn how Bradesco is striving to improve its processes to provide more value to its customers using Lean Thinking. Scripted, edited and narrated by: Roberto Priolo In January, I visited Bradesco in its giant […]

Our most ardent promoters of Lean have great expectations that business leaders will magically see the need to care for people — employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. That they will develop employees through the coaching and improvement katas rather than treating them as disposable assets, that they will put customers first rather than viewing them […]

So much chatter these days about “Respect for People,” developing people, learning, worker appreciation, and so on. All good stuff, but do people correctly understand the context? Yes, perhaps, but only superficially, in my view. Mr. Taiichi Ohno was a senior executive of a large corporation — not just an “operations guy” focused on process […]

What is Operational Excellence? Executing a business strategy more effectively and consistently than the competition is called Operational Excellence. Ideally, every employee can see the flow of value to the customer and fix it when the flow is interrupted. We are often asked if continuous improvement and operational excellence are the same. They are not, […]

It’s not so much the word “Lean” that is the problem. It is the word “thinking” that is the problem. “Thinking” is a chronic problem among non-Lean people, but it includes Lean people as well. We cannot or do not want to think. Or we think we think, but we do not think. On top […]

In “Beyond Strategic Kaizen: Performing Synchronous Profitable Operations,” Mihai Posteuca provides a fresh perspective on the concepts of Kaizen and continuous improvement by integrating them with the principles of synchronous operations. The result is a compelling blend of Eastern and Western management philosophies that promises to reshape how organizations approach productivity, profitability, and employee engagement. […]

“Can’t see the forest for the trees.” An expression [describing] someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole. (Source: Dictionary.com) Click here to learn the context for this post. I continue to be confounded by the supposed great problem recognition (observation) and problem-solving skills […]

The late 1970s and 1980s were an exciting time for those who studied Toyota’s production system and Japanese management practices. Authors such as Monden, Cusumano, Schonberger, Suzaki, Hall, Imai, Womack, Jones, Fujimoto, and others — particularly the great Norman Bodek (1932-2020) who published classic works by Ohno, Shingo, Sekine, Hirano, and others that will forever […]

At KaiNexus, we practice what we preach when it comes to continuous improvement. One thing I do for the software company is managing the continuous improvement webinar series, playing the role of host and moderator. As I blogged about recently, we started some experiments around providing a more engaging “audience view” for our webinar presenters, […]

People often talk about their “Lean journey,” a never-ending quest for learning and improvement. But if you look closely, you will see that there are actually two Lean journeys. Most people are on the Lean Journey 1. It is a quasi-random journey with some success and laden with hype. But it is largely a journey […]

There are seven very distinct elements or clusters to put in place in the Fundamental Phase. The elements are in a natural “make sense” order; some can be completed simultaneously with available resources. The last one, “Basic Maintenance Management,” can and should be inserted at the right time to aid the other clusters’ success. We […]

Everyone who has engaged in kaizen using industrial engineering methods to analyze work always finds there is more of this or that than is necessary to do the work. Steps are added to a process whenever problems occur. Constant worker, supervisor, and middle-manager turnover assure that problems are always “new” to someone and need something […]

What is a culture war? “A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices.” If you have paid close attention over the past twenty years, you may have noticed some actions that promulgated a bit of conflict within the Lean community. I assume it is not intentional. But the effect […]