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 [...]
The Lean Enterprise Institute has recently published Kaizen Express, an overview of the classic characteristics of “lean manufacturing” and, by implication, the Toyota Production System. As I set out to review the book, I found myself heading in two directions. One is the content of the book itself. Over the years, there have been a [...]
The Lean Enterprise Institute is taking up a “Back to Basics” theme. But what, exactly, are “the basics” of the Toyota Production System? This is critically important. Permit me to cite an analogy. Look at a house. What do you see? What would you say are “the basics?” At first glance, all houses have walls, [...]
John Shook’s latest column on LEI’s site is about coaching and whether it is better to give them the answers or just ask questions. Asking questions in a way that actually teaches is a skill that we, as a “lean” community do not foster very well. Certainly in U.S. corporate culture, we are expected to [...]
When communicating ideas and concepts, a quick sketch or visual is usually much more clear than a bunch of words. A lot of us, however, never developed the skill to get a picture in our heads onto paper. Enter Dave Gray who has a web site with instructive videos, devoted to this. It looks like [...]
Greg Eisenbach, in his Grassroots Innovation blog, cites a article that gets to the very root of organizational learning, respect for people, and a myriad of other issues. The article, Teaching Smart people How To Learn was written by Chris Argyris back in 1991. What struck me about it is that it packs a double-whammy [...]
Managing to Learn by John Shook is the latest in the classic series of books published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. It is subtitled “Using the A3 management process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor, and lead” and that pretty well sums it up. Like many of the previous LEI books, it is built around [...]