For some years now I have been both an occasional participant and ongoing witness to the practice of Lean management in State governments. I continue to see methodological errors in relation to how Lean is practiced in industry. Those in industry who practice Lean management correctly provide us with a standard by which we can […]

This article, “Giving College Administrators a Business Education” (The Wall Street Journal, 27 August 2015), by Bruce Benson, president of the University of Colorado, has received high praise. Let’s look more closely at his work to operate the university “more like businesses” and to better understand if his fiscal accomplishments are truly worthy of the praise he […]

Top leaders of higher education institutions inevitably hope leave a legacy. Presidents who began their tenure in the late 1980s or thereafter presided over an era of uncontrolled costs, large increases in expensive administrative and other overhead positions, new buildings and facilities construction, and annual tuition increases at double the rate of inflation. This is […]

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 Kata-lyze your thinking Thinking scientifically is a long-held principle of operational excellence but it […]

Email continues to be a popular method of communication, both in and out of the workplace, thanks to its speed and effectiveness. It has numerous applications, such as recapping important meetings, requesting input, or sending cover letters and expressions of gratitude, among other uses. Nine Guidelines for penning professional emails Prioritize the Subject Line. The […]

This is the back story to the book Speed Leadership: A New Way to Lead for Rapidly Changing Times. The basic idea expressed in this book reflects a frustration that most, if not all of us have had to endure. Namely, the boss tells us how important leadership is to the success of the organization, […]

I was saddened to learn today that Masaaki Imai passed away, as announced this week by the organization he founded, KAIZEN Institute. He was 92. Kaizen Institute Announces the Passing of its Founder, Masaaki Imai Mr. Imai was well known for his books, including KAIZEN, his follow up Gemba Kaizen, and his latest, Strategic KAIZEN™ […]

The PPT framework, also known as the Golden Triangle, has been used by many businesses to improve the operational efficiency of their employees and tools. Everything from leadership to digital transformation, organizational talent, and management practices, need to work closely together. This will lead to effective business growth and development. In short, The PPT framework, […]

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 […]

There are many ways to improve your thinking skills. One way is by practicing critical thinking. Teachers require their students, from elementary school on through college and graduate school, to do research to gather information, analyze the validity of data, determine the strengths and weaknesses of arguments, and so on. The product of critical thinking […]

There is an important saying in Lean management: “Without standard there can be no continuous improvement.” That saying should be Interpreted as a rule. Standards are important because they establish the “normal” condition – the way the process should be in order to achieve good results in terms of quality, quantity, time, etc. Lean management uses […]

The Kanban method is a work management approach focusing on visualizing work, limiting work in progress, and improving efficiency. Originating from the Toyota Production System in the 1940s and the manufacturing field, various industries later embraced the approach, including software development.   Its key component is the Kanban board to visualize the workflow. Kanban principles and […]

Lean people, understandably, possess a streak of idealism in how they would like the world to be: No waste, value propositions fulfilled, social well-being, economic prosperity, and so on. It is good to have a dream and strive, over the long-term, to achieve it. Yet, there is a tell-tale sign that most Lean people are […]

How do you grow tomatoes? If you are a backyard gardener, you buy plants (or maybe raise from seed), plant, tend, harvest. Simple as that. However, while the resulting harvest may be acceptable for one’s needs, it will surely be less flavorful and less bountiful than it could have been. Knowledge of the details of […]

Non-academic educational credentials – certifications, badges, etc. – have blossomed in recent years. Credentials have become popular with both prospective employees and employers. What has happened to make them as attractive, if not more attractive in some cases, than academic degrees? I’ll offer some possible answers to this phenomenon, which began to unfold in tandem […]

In the early days, late 1970s to late 1980s, there existed just a few small organizations to help people learn about and implement Toyota’s production system (TPS). They were led by people with decades of hand-on practice at Toyota and its affiliated companies. Some organizations, however, were led by people who only studied TPS and […]

It is time to re-discover Kaizen and Kaizen Spirit, and renew confidence in our abilities and the future. I, along with my co-authors Ralph Wood and Michael Herscher, are extremely proud to bring to you this very special new book: Shingijutsu-Kaizen: The Art of Discovery and Learning. It is a book about how sensei from […]

I’m a big fan of the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement webinar series that’s a monthly fixture on my calendar (and hopefully yours). 

I have a confession to make. I still haven’t delivered the revised manuscript for my fourth book, but in spare moments I have begun work on my fifth, working title Wholehearted: Inside the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, business agility at every scale. There’s nothing like writing to make you revisit things that you thought were settled, […]

This is the back story to the book Shingijutsu-Kaizen. In 2007 or 2008, a book project was initiated by Shingijutsu USA to write about the method used by sensei from Shingijutsu to teach kaizen. A manuscript was produced, but the project was abandoned. Several months after my work had commenced on the book Kaizen Forever, […]

When discussing business strategy, there is often a debate between OKRs and KPIs. However, is it necessary to choose between the two? Should we prioritize setting challenging objectives with OKRs or constantly monitoring our business with KPIs? When discussing business strategy, there is often a debate between OKRs and KPIs. However, is it necessary to […]

In a  recent blog post, The Lean-Industrial Complex, I said: “Over time, the people with decades of hands-on practice in real-world settings would fall into the background, while the people who merely studied TPS [Toyota Production System] emerged as the arbiters of Lean thought and Lean practice. That such a thing could happen is remarkable give […]

Those of you who teach full-time or part-time in colleges or universities will be interested in the following resources to help teach students about Lean management. Use these books for senior-level undergraduate courses and graduate-level courses in engineering and business school curricula. Corporate training and leadership development professionals will also find these books helpful to teach Lean […]

I’m excited to have received the first “proof” copy of my new (upcoming) book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, as printed by Amazon. Oh, the vertical alignment is off, but that mistake will be fixed for the real printing!! It’s still going through final proofreading, but it’s so […]

This is an op-ed article that appeared in The Connecticut Mirror, a respected nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that reports on government policies and politics. I wrote it in response to the ongoing contract negotiations between the Connecticut Board of Regents and the AAUP. What Do Professors Actually Do? People’s perception of the work that others […]

Lean Strategy Deployment, also known as Hoshin Kanri, is a systematic approach organizations use to align their annual objectives around strategy with the day-to-day activities of their teams. It originated from the Toyota Production System and has been widely adopted in various industries.

Psychosis is a mental disorder in which an individual is disconnected from reality, and which can exist in both medical and non-medical forms. Management psychosis is a non-medical condition that afflicts most managers. How so? They view batch-and-queue processing as the lowest cost, highest quality, shortest lead-time way to satisfy customer demand. That is not […]

In this world of constant changes, the only way to remain relevant is to learn to adapt.  That’s alright. But how do we do that? How do we learn to adapt?  Adapting means changing the way we do things, our habits, our way of thinking. However, not all changes are worthwhile. We need to identify […]

FEATURE – Fresh off a study tour in Japan, the authors wonder if there is anything left to learn from Toyota’s network of suppliers in the age of AI and digital. Hint: it’s a rethorical question. Words: Michael Ballé and Alice Mathieu In a world of digital apps and generative AI, is there still something […]

Many higher education institutions feature a pedagogical element called “Writing Across the Curriculum.” The intent is to require students to write in every course for the purpose of improving their writing skills. The phrase “writing is thinking” captures the rationale for requiring writing across the curriculum – to further develop and improve student’s critical thinking skills so […]

Strategy is not about doing the important things but rather the process of choosing, the responsibility of leaders to grasp the situation and decide the plan forward.  I always tell others that strategy deployment is a focusing mechanism. This is about sharpening your focus by selecting the vital few breakthrough objectives. The strategy deployment process […]

Public higher education is under pressure from politicians, businesspeople, and taxpayers. They think the only thing professors do is teach, and that, being their only responsibility, should teach more than 3 or 4 courses per semester. In fact, we also conduct research and perform many important activities to serve the university and our respective professions. […]

Watch my mind-blowing keynote talk at the Global Lean Summit on 7 June 2023. I’m sure you will enjoy every minute of it! Click on image to view the video (60 minutes).

Below is a university’s process for developing an annual budget. It takes six months to create a fiscal year budget, when the actual value-added time is probably less than two weeks. It is a mind-numbing batch-and-queue process that wastes people’s time and whose owners never think to improve. FY 2017 BUDGET CALENDAR November 2015–Mid-January 2016 – Discussions […]