As you may know, the U.S. Department of Education’s College Ratings Framework defines higher education quality as consisting of three elements: Access, Affordability, and Outcomes. I was curious to learn how undergraduate and graduate students define quality in higher education. So, I conducted a survey in the second week of January 2015 (click on the […]

Today is the official release date for the Kindle version of my new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation! The book has been a #1 New Release in categories including Organizational Learning and Small Business! Thanks to all who have pre-ordered. The special pre-order promotional price of $2.99 […]

Regular readers of this blog, as well as my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds, will know that in recent months I have posted many critiques on various aspects related to the products, promotion, and practice of Lean management. Why now? The reason is that 20 years of engagement in Lean offers the unique opportunity to reflect back on what […]

I have received a lot of criticism* for some recent blog posts and images that I posted on Twitter and LinkedIn. Often, this means that one has revealed some uncomfortable truths. Perhaps clarification is needed, particularly with regard to the images shown below. It seems many people missed the message that I was trying to convey. […]

Let’s assume that online courses are or will soon be as effective as in-person education. Is that a stretch? Probably not, because face-to-face teaching is, on average, is not very good. University-wide professors’ ratings are typically 3.0 to 3.75 on a 1 to 5 scale – a score of just 60 to 75. Teaching can be improved by […]

My 3-day training Leading in a Transforming Organisation went really well last week, can’t wait to do it again1! Inevitably, the question of what relates Agendashift, Leading with Outcomes, The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, etc came up, and while my answers were reasonable enough, I realised I still had a bit of work to do. So […]

Tomorrow is the official release date for the Kindle version of my new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation! The book has been a #1 New Release in categories including Organizational Learning and Small Business! Thanks to all who have pre-ordered. The special pre-order promotional price of $2.99 […]

Too often, management’s raison d’être for adopting Lean is to cut operating costs within the framework of their existing economic model: batch-and-queue material and information processing. The industry that sells Lean is all too happy to accommodate management’s desire to serve buyers’ markets using batch-and-queue, the method that was designed for sellers’ markets. Do you understand […]

by Pascal Dennis Hank Williams & the Seven QC Tools As I mentioned in the first blog in this series, when I was a young, green engineer in the 1980’s & early 90’s, the Seven QC Tools were everywhere. I inhaled the works of Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum and other great senseis. I especially liked complex […]

Having worked for years in manufacturing businesses, I find there are many things in common with other types of organizations including colleges and universities. For example, the production activity in manufacturing is defined by upstream design work performed by engineers. Their product is a blueprint, which tells production management and production workers what to make, […]

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to […]

There remains a pressing need to overcome barriers among both administrators and faculty about the application of Lean management to higher education. Please consider sharing my work with your faculty colleagues and university leaders to help gain awareness of how Lean can significantly improve things for students, payers, employers, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders. If you […]

Long ago when I first started teaching Lean leadership to M.B.A. students, I defined Lean management as: “A non-zero-sum principle-based management system focused on creating value for end-use customers and eliminating waste, unevenness, and unreasonableness using the scientific method.” While lengthy, this definition contains the significant elements of Lean management that distinguish it from conventional management. I […]

Want to know what happens when higher education is treated as nothing more than a game? Here is what happens: “How to Raise a University’s Profile: Pricing and Packaging” (The New York Times, 6 February 2015). The president responsible for increasing tuition price and improving the packaging at George Washington University is Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. […]

Where did the phrase “kaizen event” come from? Or, more accurately, who added the word “event” to the word “kaizen?” In Japan, the word “kaizen” is used with no additional modifier. Kaizen means “change for the better.” But, the context for “change for the better” is multilateral, meaning change must be good for everyone (non-zero-sum outcome […]

You may be interested in a short paper I have written, “Engaging Faculty in Lean Teaching.” It was published in International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, Vol. 6, Issue 1, 2015. You can view the paper here. The paper identifies the challenges of engaging faculty in the Lean teaching pedagogy, beginning with the first early adopter and […]

I posted the image at right on Twitter on 20 February with the caption: “Lean efforts not going so well? Try reversing The Toyota Way #Lean.” It conveys much more information than is readily apparent, which I will explain to help you gain a better understanding of its significance. What we know today as Lean […]

If you are a professor, you know that some of your colleagues are very strict, unforgiving, and generally difficult when it comes to dealing with undergraduate students. It seems they have a grudge against students and want to make sure that they struggle, if not fail. In my experience, these kinds of professors are the […]

The Lean Enterprise Institute and the Lean Enterprise Academy have recently created a Lean transformation model whose focus is value. Based on my training in TPS/TW by Shingijutsu, the model is not quite right and lacks important information. But, being a professor, and someone who likes to think and improve things, I thought it might […]

The term “big data” is hot these days, driven by increases in real-time computing power while the costs of software, computing, and data storage continue to rapidly fall. Big data is seen by many as a promising pathway to improve corporate efficiency, lower costs, and understand wants and needs to better satisfy customers. However, big data has […]

Not long ago, employers were happy to hire undergraduates who were simply well educated. Employers would then train new hires in the specific skills needed for the job through training courses, on-the-job-training, coaching, and so on. Over the years, employers increasingly want to hire new graduates who already possess the skills needed for the job […]

Lean people are quick to criticize organizations with no Lean. We occasionally call out and criticize someone else’s bad Lean – their Lean. But we almost never criticize our Lean. This is an abnormal condition: Overproduction of positive feedback about “our Lean.” Look at social media and you will find the Lean cognoscenti congratulating each other […]

To attribute the same cause to a problem after decades of progress understanding the problem is madness. Lship-Behaviors-FixationDownload

We often base our work on assumptions that seem reasonable, only to find out later that those assumptions are not shared by those whom we serve. That major mis-communication affects the how people perceive the quality, effectiveness, and utility of the service that they receive. When it comes to higher education, do students share professional […]

I will be speaking at the Third International Conference on Lean Six Sigma for Higher Education at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 8-9 June 2015. This is going to be a great conference with lots of great speakers. Learn from their experiences and share your own by submitting a paper and by attending the conference. The title […]

Every once in a while I receive feedback that reminds me of how different my work is, as well as my position in relation to the industry that sells Lean. My mission is to advance REAL Lean thinking and practice; to help people better understand and practice Lean management, with a specific focus on Lean […]

The subject of coaching has become increasingly popular in recent years. Its focus is principally the supervisor-worker relationship, the point at which value-creating work is performed. Coaching is normally ex post facto, meaning that it begins after an organization has embarked on its Lean transformation. It makes sense to do that, but much more must […]

Here’s a story I’ve meant to write up for almost two years… some events that happened during pandemic times when I wasn’t writing as much. I wasn’t writing as much, but I was podcasting more, including my newer series, “My Favorite Mistake.” I created and ordered some promotional custom coffee mugs to use as giveaways […]

Public higher education is being pulled in to the illogical world of politics in ways that it has not experienced before. The article, “2016 Ambitions Seen in Walker’s Push for University Cuts in Wisconsin” (The New York Times, 16 February 2015), expresses the problem that  higher education administrators must address: “But to his critics, Mr. […]

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 […]

Nowadays, it seems as though whenever technology is mentioned online (or anywhere really), there is a new buzzword to learn about. Moreover, navigating them can be a nightmare. In this blog, we list eight basic industrial tech buzzwords you need to know and what they mean.  What are Some Basic Industrial Tech Buzzwords? 1. Smart […]

8 Wastes is just the start. There are 492 more. The classic 5-day kaizen was likely created in the late 1980s by Shingijutsu kaizen consultants from Japan as they established their practice in the United States and beyond. Travelling the long distance from Japan to the east coast of the U.S. meant that kaizen consultants should […]

A recent article in The Economist, “The World is Going to University” (28 March 2015), said: “More generally, universities should be able to show that they have taught their students to think critically.” That is what each professor does (or think they do), one student at a time, when they give assignments and evaluate homework and […]

Leadership is a subject that every working person has an interest in because they are either in a leadership position or they are followers subjected to the work and whims of a leader. Because there are more followers than leaders, the quality and effectiveness of leadership has a great impact on the daily work and […]