Toyota’s settlement with the U.S. Government over misleading investigators about the sudden acceleration problem illustrates that nobody is immune from information flow problems. According to published reports, Toyota people misled investigators by denying the problem existed, but internal company records showed Toyota knew of the problem. It is unfortunate when people are harmed by products, […]

In a previous post, I described how managers’ view of college graduates’ unpreparedness for work could instead reflect problems with internal processes related to hiring. The focus of that post was technical knowledge and work skills. The focus of this post is interpersonal and related skills that are needed for valuable higher order skills such […]

Big-name Lean consultants, trainers, thought leaders, educational organizations, etc., talk a lot about the importance of making mistakes as a prerequisite for learning. Yet, you rarely hear them talk about any mistakes they’ve made and what they have learned from them. You hear them talk only about successes – lots of successes – but you almost […]

I have previously written several blog posts questioning the conventional wisdom that new college graduates are both technically and socially unprepared for jobs. I’ve also called out employers for not doing the kinds of basic things they should be doing after they hire new college graduates. If one follows the conventional wisdom, the traditional 3-credit course, based […]

We all know that Lean is mostly learned by doing (which includes observation), but it would be a mistake to think it is not necessary to read books. Why? We read books to help us understand new ideas and practices, evaluate our thinking, and make sure we are headed in the right direction. The most capable […]

One exciting feature of the Amazon Kindle format is the ability for readers to see what other readers have frequently highlighted. It’s also fascinating, as the author, to see this. It’s a form of feedback about what seems to resonate with readers. I’ll share some of the “early returns” from the first few weeks, realizing […]

A goal of many manufacturers is to optimize efficiency in the workplace. Fortunately, there a several lean concepts that can help. By applying these tools and principles to your assembly line, production processes, or mindset, this can result in a boost in your productivity levels. Not only can implementing lean ideas help you to reduce […]

Hult International Business School in Boston recently released the results of a survey asking business leaders about the current state of MBA education. Read the summary report here and the full report here. I am skeptical of what business leaders say they want from graduates for reasons cited in previous blog posts. Remarkably, as self-proclaimed […]

This is the back story to my 20-plus years of Lean leadership research and practice. I became interested in Lean leadership soon after I participated in my first kaizens led by Shingijutsu consultants in the summer of 1994, when I was a business unit manager at Pratt & Whitney. After a few kaizens, I noticed that […]

A previous blog post, Learning From Mistakes, described a failed Lean leadership training activity at a large and successful technology company. People liked that story so much that I decided to share another mistake, vintage 2003-2005, which also learned a lot from. The vast majority of the Lean leadership training that I have done with […]

I hope you are planing to attend the 2014 Lean Six Sigma Higher Education Conference at HAN University, in Arnhem, The Netherlands, on 2-3 June 2014. For more information, visit the conference home page. In addition to speaking at the conference, I am presenting a paper “One is Good, More is Better: Engaging Faculty in Lean Teaching.” […]

I recently took an informal poll of some undergraduate students and asked them what they liked about online courses. Their responses are: Don’t have to leave one’s dorm room Do the work in your pajamas Flexible Convenient No teamwork Work at one’s own pace Don’t have the pressure of answering questions in class Shorter duration […]

When you talk to the boss, are you actually talking to the boss or are you talking to a small part of the boss? In  most cases, you are talking to a small part of the boss. That is why many conversations, especially those about Lean, often do not go the way you expect them […]

        In an engaging episode of the podcast, host Jamie Flinchbaugh welcomes distinguished guest, Mark Graban. The conversation provides invaluable insights into management, problem-solving, and risk mitigation methodologies, drawing from Mark’s wealth of experience and expertise. Mark begins the discussion by emphasizing the importance of failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), a […]

The people who advocate new models of higher education, principally variants of online and competency-based education, often characterize the benefits to students as many, and the drawbacks as few or none. Almost nothing is all upside and no downside. Most people in need of something new are easily drawn into the marketing hype that presents […]

Business leaders often criticize academics as being “theoretical.” I would like to point out a few examples of business leaders being “theoretical.” Specifically, pie-in-the-sky theories that guide leader’s thinking and decision-making, which no diligent, thoughtful, knowledgeable, and unbiased (fact-based) academic would ever advise leaders to follow. Here are some leaders’ theories related to business: The […]

Chapter 11 of my book We Can Do It! describes the concept of Continuous Flow University, in which all administrative and academic processes are converted from batch-and-queue to flow. The reason for doing this is two-fold: First, to eliminate expensive queues that both create and hide problems Second, to balance cycle times to eliminate bottlenecks […]

Is there pride of ownership among the leaders of organizations who practice Lean? Are they proud if their management practice? Have they done something noteworthy, perhaps even remarkable, that most others others have not? Are leaders’ mistakes and errors few and mostly insignificant. Do people like their leaders? Are they proud of them? Would they […]

The headlines are alarming: “Lean Production: Inside the Real War on Public Education” and “Lean Production Comes to Public Education (Parents and Teachers Must Fight This Process).” Has Lean really come to public education? No, that has not actually happened, and it will never happen until people – education leaders, union leaders, teachers, and staff […]

The role of professor is more than just teaching. It involves guiding students, young and old, through the many small steps needed to complete courses and degree programs. Faculty defend their role in providing the “human touch” to people whose futures depend on what courses they take and what they learned in school. But, sometimes […]

[Discuss on LinkedIn] Following the success of June’s first 3-day Leading in a Transforming Organisation, I’m initiating a resequencing of the Leading with Outcomes curriculum. It will take a while to implement in full (in particular, re-recording video-based content takes time, and I won’t be doing that for this reason alone), but consider this now […]

When organizations run into financial problems, educated, experienced, and highly paid leaders immediately proceed to do things that someone with no education, no experience, and paid minimum wage can do: lay people off. This is true for public non-profit universities as well as private for-profit industry. Invariably, the cuts maximally impact those who desire the […]

One of the things that impresses me about Lean done right is that there is no need for a “change management” program. Change management programs are a structured process whose intent is to achieve lasting organizational change. But they almost never do because it is complex, confusing, and transparently self-serving. While intentions are good, outcomes […]

I hope you’ll join me and Katie tomorrow at 2 pm ET… Mark and Katie will discuss his new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, as he marks a milestone with a Daruma doll that Katie gave him before he started writing. We will also discuss the third […]

A recent article in The Economist, “Is College Worth It?,” takes the usual narrow view of the value of higher education as a return on investment – graduates’ earnings minus the cost of college – at various institutions for different types of degrees (humanities, engineering, science, etc). Making this this type of information available to students […]

Most top executives do little more than voice support for Lean. It is an example of talking big, yet doing mostly small things. If that is the reality in most organizations, then maybe senior managers can do one more small thing that could help Lean move forward faster: Get to know your internal continuous improvement […]

How do you create a culture of respect? What does a culture of authentic leadership look like in real life? Where do you start with organizational transformation? I’m happy to host George Saiz as the next guest in my author interview series, and to talk about his new book We Started with Respect, which was […]

Has interest in Lean peaked? If so, how do we know? The answer, of course, comes from Google. The image below is from Google Trends. It shows the level of interest in Lean as determined by global keyword searches on the web from 2004 to April 2014, including a 12-month forecast into April 2015. You can […]

Today I’d like to point you to two excerpts from my new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. One was published on the Value Capture website since it includes a story from their CEO, Ken Segel. The Way Leaders React Makes the Difference: An Excerpt from “The Mistakes […]

Anyone who closely observes what happens in organizations cannot help but be frustrated by problems that go unrecognized, problems that are recognized but never corrected, problems that are recognized and poorly corrected (band-aids), and the illogical thinking and decision-making that often takes place. In my view, this reflects the limitations of the basic level of […]

Let’s assume that we are now experiencing peak interest in Lean management, and that we will face declining future interest in Lean – principally driven by the prevalence of Fake Lean and of crazy, complex, and confusing combinations like “Lean Six Sigma” (as six sigma fades, Lean becomes a helpful façade), Agile, AgileLean, etc. Declining interest […]

Continuously moving assembly lines have a lot in common with other types of assembly lines. However, there are also some differences. This third post of this small series on continuously moving assembly lines looks at how to distribute the work along the line. The key point is that you can distribute the work along the […]

Use the Lean Spectrum to help you improve. Click here to see your standard for comparison. Lean SpectrumDownload

It seems I am the rare person with years of Lean management experience in industry and who is also a full-time academic that has written dozens of peer-reviewed research papers. I occasionally get asked the question: “Have your published papers have been influential?” You may have heard that half of all academic papers are read by no more […]