The enduring appeal of winners and losers exists in nearly every facet of human activity – sports, education, the arts, politics, and business – and helps assure that anything associated with win-win outcomes, such as Lean management, will struggle. Managers prefer conventional management because winners and losers are clearly defined and plentiful. And it’s fun to […]

As most professors know, grading is the worst part of the job. The task itself is tedious, shortcuts are taken, and passing judgment on students – and what amounts to a reflection of your own work as a teacher – can be difficult. However, I think it is important to recognize that we usually set […]

In this edition: Foundation re-recorded and re-platformed; Looking ahead to the autumn season; Top posts Foundation re-recorded and re-platformed Leading with Outcomes: Foundation version 2.8 beta is now out on a different platform to the previously-recorded version, 2.1. As an experiment, the newer one is to be found not on the current learning management system […]

Thanks, everybody, for reading my blog here in 2023. And for listening to podcasts… oh so many podcasts. I released 13 “Lean Blog Interviews” podcasts. This month marks the 17th birthday of my podcast, which started with this Norman Bodek episode. I was also happy to continue the “Lean Whiskey” podcast series and I released […]

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of July 2023.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.     Conducting A Manual Process Assessment – John Knotts shares seven steps to assess manual processes in your organization to help you prioritize which processes to improve or automate.   The […]

Recently I posted the interim results of two online surveys: “45 Teaching Errors” and “The 10 Percent Problem.” The “45 Teacher Errors Survey” survey contains a result that stands out. It is teaching error #1: “Cannot Teach.” You might be surprised by this result, but I am not. After earning an undergraduate degree, those going on to […]

Some Lean transformations proceed quickly while most others proceed slowly. How does that happen? What drives those outcomes? It hinges in large part on whether or not leaders allow employees to think, ask Why?,” and use their imagination and creativity to correct abnormalities. In Better Thinking, Better Results, I characterized the enormous progress made by The […]

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #481 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is George Saiz. As a coach, writer, and speaker, George Saiz actively promotes enterprise excellence through a people-centric culture to the next generation of leaders.  In his new business novel, We Started with Respect, he […]

Can Lean management – the learning management system, the thinking management system – exist in organizations that do not practice kaizen? In the old days, kaizen made use of various tool and methods (so-called “Lean tools”) to achieve improvements. In recent years, more and more organizations use Lean tools separate from kaizen to make improvements. […]

With my extensive experience as an HR consultant in the manufacturing industry, I have witnessed the evolution of the job market over the years. However, nothing has been as transformative as AI. The combination of AI with the advanced language model, ChatGPT, has the potential to revolutionize the entire job-hunting process. AI is making job […]

Lean manufacturing and continuous improvement go together, hand-in-hand. But, while they work together to create a more productive and efficient shop-floor, each has their own set of core principles. In today’s blog, we detail the three core principles of continuous improvement. But first, let’s briefly get into what continuous improvement is. What is Continuous Improvement? […]

Over the years I have collected students’ excuses for missing class that were sent to me via e-mail. The excuses range from sad to funny to strange to bullshit. The excuses are presented as written, complete with spelling and grammar errors, and slightly edited for clarity or brevity. Click on the image below to view the […]

In our day-to-day life, we often overlook certain actions and conditions that may threaten our health and safety. These unsafe acts or conditions might seem trivial until they lead to a near miss or, in the worst-case scenario, an accident. By understanding these concepts and how they interconnect, we can create a safer environment at […]

Kanban project management is a unique approach to project management that relies on the Kanban method, and it’s suitable for companies of any size. In this guide, you will learn: how to break down your projects quickly, how to track progress, how to get real-time status reports, how to achieve organizational transparency. But first, let’s […]

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 Give me some of that old-time lean Looking for a reminder that ‘old school’ […]

The results of the survey are in! I was impressed by how many answers revolved around the same themes in terms of teacher’s attitude, teaching itself, and delivery. These three categories lay the foundation for good quality teaching. Surprisingly, assessment and follow-up, while, important, were areas of less concern to students when it comes to good […]

The current group-think is that undergraduate students should forego humanities (and most liberal arts) studies and instead major in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). That’s the only way to get a good-paying job in today’s technologically-oriented society. That assumption relies on another assumption: That employers will hire and retain STEM graduates over long periods of […]

Recently, l’ve been writing some blog posts on my new book’s website — mistakesbook.com/blog. I’m still blogging here, but you might find some of these posts interesting (or that’s my mistake for thinking so). Podcasts I’ve also been a guest on some podcasts recently, talking about mistakes. The first was with my friend Jamie Flinchbaugh […]

As someone who has studied Lean leadership for 20 years, I have sought to answer the most important research questions. I would love to know what you think the remaining unanswered research questions are. This will help identify what needs to be studied or further studied to advance our understanding and practice of Lean leadership. The goal […]

A student of mine was unhappy with his performance in course he took called “Decision Failure Analysis in Technology Management” (where we use my A4 failure analysis method, which includes the 5 Why’s). After the course was over, he sent me an e-mail saying that he enjoyed the course, liked my innovative approach to the topic, […]

I’ll be hosting and participating in a live online panel discussion on Thursday as part of the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinar series. Click below to register and attend live: Panel: Cultivating a Culture of Learning from Mistakes We’ll email you a link to the recording if you cannot attend. I’ll be joined by four other […]

This is the last post on my short series on continuously moving assembly lines, where I will look at some special situations unique to the continuously moving assembly line. These lines have some interesting features for covering fluctuations within the line, for processing time that needs no worker or machine, and on the distance between […]

BREAKING NEWS: Global management consulting firm McKinsey&Company finally recognizes Lean as a management system that applies to any organization in any industry. It turns out Lean isn’t just a manufacturing thing! The next frontier for Lean is to manage the entire life cycle of a product, just as Frank George Woollard, the great pioneer of progressive […]

McKinsey’s recent high-profile embrace of something approaching REAL Lean is significant and noteworthy – and abnormal. Historically, large management consulting firms have ignored the “Respect for People” principle in progressive management. Why? Because that was not what their customers, top executives, wanted. Nor were executives interested in a new system of progressive management. So, consulting firms […]

One of the things I was determined to do when I became a professor was to not make the kinds of basic teaching mistakes that I experienced from my professors when I was a student. If I didn’t like something as a student, chances were good that most other students did not like it either. […]

For too long people have thought of kaizen as something that leads to job loss. Let’s turn that around and think of kaizen as job security. As computers inevitably and successfully replace people in the workplace over time, only those who have clear value to an organization will remain. They are valuable because they can […]

Hoshin Kanri, sometimes called “strategy deployment”, is an approach that helps companies achieve breakthrough goals over a three to five-year time horizon. The methodology is effective because it allows leaders to keep their eye on the long-term objectives that will change the game, without losing sight of the day-to-day improvements that can add up to […]

Hey Professors – Let me know if you are interested in me speaking to your undergraduate or graduate students about Lean leadership, Lean culture, The Wiremold Company’s Lean transformation, or related topic. We can arrange a one-hour guest lecture via Skype. The offer is for non-profit institutions of higher education, for full-time and part-time faculty. […]

By Pascal Dennis Hi folks, recently I spoke with Brad Jeavons and the fine Enterprise Excellence podcast. Topic: Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World: Protecting The Core Business Is Not Enough Hope you enjoy it! 1 minute-40 second Tip: Best regards, Pascal In case you missed our last few blogs… please feel […]

Many people think that because Toyota has been en exemplary Lean practitioner for decades that they have perfect processes and few problems. That’s not true; none of their processes are perfect and they have many problems. What they do have is a willingness to be accept the existence of problems and the discipline to correct […]

Message to the Next Generation You will soon occupy positions with increasing levels of responsibility. It is my hope that you will develop a passion for Lean management, learn it well, and practice it well. Lean is a better mental and physical fit for your generation than the previous generation, who could see only cost […]

What do today’s business leaders want in recent graduates? According to yet another survey, business leaders feel that students do not graduate with appropriate knowledge and applied skills. Having worked for many years in industry, part of what drives this view is surely the desire among business leaders to reduce training costs for new hires […]

Progressive management began with Scientific Management in the late 1800s and has evolved and improved through the years into what we now call Lean management. The rationale for changing from conventional management to progressive Lean management is not to lay people off or cost reduction. It is, instead, to grown and improve, and to do […]

Ever since the beginning of progressive management, starting with Scientific Management in the late 1800s and all the way to Lean management today, workers have had the same six criticisms. Progressive management is bad because it will: De-humanize me Speed me up and burn me out De-skill me Take away my knowledge Take away my creativity Cost me […]