On Monday MIT hosted a webinar with Steven Spear on the topic of “Creative Experimentation.” A key theme woven throughout Spear’s work is the world today is orders of magnitude more complex than it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Where, in the past, it was feasible for a single person or small group [...]
Mike Rother and Bill Costantino have shared a presentation titled “Toyota Kata Unified Field Theory.” I think it nicely packages a number of concepts in an easy-to-understand flow. I want to expand on a couple of points but first listen to the presentation. (Yes, it has a sound track, to be sure to hit the “Play” [...]
I have been touting Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch for some time now, so it I thought I ought to actually write about why. If you are in the role of a “change agent” this book is your manual. Up to this point, the bible for “organizational change” has been John P. Kotter’s book [...]
This sketchcast from Dan Pink covers the same ground as his TED talk that I posted a few weeks ago, but it is more succinct and direct so I wanted to share it. When we look at what drives kaizen and continuous improvement, it is important to understand what motivates people to find a better [...]
Mike Rother shared an overview presentation on the “Improvement Kata.” Introduction to the Improvement Kata View more presentations from Mike Rother. The words on one graphic really jumped out at me: Aside from his intended point that you never get good at anything but “business as usual” if “business as usual” is what you [...]
In a recent blog post, Why C level executives don’t engage in ‘lean’…, Steven Spear makes a really interesting observation. He cites two main reasons. 1) “Lean” is regarded as a tool kit. There has already been a lot written here, and elsewhere, on this fallacy and how it continues to be propagated. Spear’s most [...]
Michael Ballé made me aware of a new site, http://theleanedge.org, that he has started. Its tagline is “a site for lean dialogue with the authors.” He has assembled a panel of some of the most prominent names in the field including: Michael Ballé Art Smalley Jeff Liker Mike Rother Robert Austin where they are discussing [...]
Background – In my original comments on The Lean Manager, I compared The Lean Manager‘s story structure to that of Eli Goldratt’s classic The Goal. This started a rather deep email exchange with Michael Ballé that goes far deeper into the book and the thoughts behind it than any review I could ever write. With [...]
In a previous post, I talked about Steven Spear’s observation about how a sensei saw a process and the problems. Jeffery Liker, Mike Hoseus and David Meier have done a good job capturing how a sensei teaches and summed it up in a diagram in the book Toyota Culture. (for those of you following at [...]
LEI is hosting an executive seminar with Steven Spear on June 4 in Cambridge. It looks like it is $1500. If you are a senior executive who wants to “get” what this lean stuff is really about, I would strongly encourage you to take any opportunity you can get to talk to this guy. It [...]