The term ‘Natural Born Leader’ is a myth. You aren’t born with leadership skills. You may be born attractive, tall, muscular. You may be gifted by your parents with a brain that fires a lot more neurons than the typical person. Of course, you also may be born to end Read more…
Spend more than 5 minutes with a Lean consultant, and you will hear about building a “continuous improvement culture.” That’s because it is one of the bedrocks of any philosophy about improving an organization. You’ve got to have people committed to change, that believe in the tools to make change Read more…
There’s a common question among people new to Lean. As they become familiar with what this continuous improvement philosophy has to offer, they realize that it will also come at a steep cost in terms on the investment of time. They realize that there is a lot of learning and Read more…
There’s a general feeling that compromise is a good thing. In most cases, in the real world where relationships is the ‘product’, it is. Compromising on how you pick movies, or who does what chores, or selecting meals is pretty important in relationships. But at work, compromise is generally a Read more…
I just saw a rather interesting article on Elon Musk’s rules for meetings on Business Insider.
Success at continuous improvement requires having a Lean infrastructure in place. This comes in two basic forms. There is the traditional view of infrastructure—the physical systems that support an operation. There is also the intellectual Lean infrastructure. This is the collection of knowledge, tools, documents, training materials, and the like Read more…
An important part of conducting a continuous improvement event is selecting a kaizen team that is strong and will get great results. The following factors all play a role. Scope Too few people for the scope of the project and you won’t finish. Too many and you’ll have a lot Read more…
Patient satisfaction metrics are bad for healthcare. There. I said it. I know. It is blasphemy to say something like that in the Lean world. The focus of continuous improvement should be on the customer. The customer tells us if we are doing something right by speaking with their wallets. Read more…
We want people to stay busy, right? Idle people are wasteful, right? In Lean, these are both false. I would rather see a person sit idle than just try to fill the time with busy work. Busy work masks opportunity. It is understandable that people do this. If they sit Read more…
I grew up in Chicago. When it snowed, we had to get drifts over a foot to get school cancelled. At least that’s how the school-aged kid inside of me remembers it. But I do know that we had some pretty bad storms. During the storms, things shut down, then Read more…
I teach a lot of problem solving tools. In fact, much of continuous improvement is just various forms of problem solving. Most of the tools are just standardized solutions to problems that most people face in their jobs. Take andon lights, for example. The first person who came up with Read more…
The ease of making a change is correlated to the willingness to make a change. This is a critical concept to understand when trying to create a continuous improvement culture. A big part of a CI culture is the expectation that everyone contributes. Great Lean companies have participation from people Read more…