Tag Archives: Implementation

Changing Routines

This video by  Charles Duhigg is promoting his book The Power of Habit . I haven’t read the book but there is a lot of study that draws the same basic model. A habit is based on an urge to do something that triggers a reward (dopamine shot) in your brain. Every time it happens, [...]

Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard

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 [...]

Nancy Bruner: “Do They Really Want a Change Agent?”

Nancy Bruner blogs on Word | Rap. Her first (and as of this writing, only) post is titled Do They Really Want a Change Agent. Since most lean practitioners are, rightly or wrongly, expected to be change agents, the points she makes caught my eye. The harsh reality of this is summed up in her [...]

The TPS vs. Toyota’s Production System

Up to this point I have resisted weighing in on the Toyota quality story largely because: I don’t have anymore insight than anyone else. The signal-to-noise ratio in the story seems really low, and I didn’t feel I would contribute much. But there is another story in the back channels of the “lean” community. Many [...]

Job Shops

“We are a job shop.” “We never do the same thing twice.” These are common truths spoken by people who are struggling with how to apply lean production principles to their operation. They want to do better, but don’t see how something that originated in the relentless repetition of an automobile assembly line can work [...]

An Exchange with Michael Ballé

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 [...]

The Lean Manager: Part 3 – People, Purpose, Problems, Process vs. “Systems”

This is Part 3 of a multi-part review. Part 1 is here. Before I get into it, I will break the rules of blogging and acknowledge a time gap here. I did finish the book shortly after I wrote part 2, in fact, I didn’t want to put it down. So now I am going [...]

The Lean Manager: Part 2 – The Basics

This is Part 2 of a multi-part review. Part 1 is here. In my review of Kaizen Express back in May, I took LEI to task for two things – First, I didn’t feel Kaizen Express contributed anything really new to the body of knowledge. I would have been satisfied if it had more clearly [...]

The First Steps of The Lean Journey

“Where do I start?” seems to be one of the most commonly asked, and most intensely discussed and debated, topic on the various discussion forums over the years. Yet a clear consensus hasn’t really emerged. Normally I don’t wade into those discussions when the question is asked generically. The reason is that without specifics about [...]

Dennis Goethals, Learning and Leading at DesignOnStock Furniture

During my visit to The Netherlands, I had the pleasure to spend a couple of hours with Dennis Goethals, Managing Director and CEO of DesignOnStock, a furniture manufacturer in Tilburg, The Netherlands. What I saw and heard were all of the critical elements I have seen in organizations that pull this off in a spectacular [...]