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 of us (myself included) [...]
I am in the process of going through a lot of old files and filling up recycle bins. Most of this stuff was collected back in first half of the 1990’s when the world wide web was just gaining critical mass, and a half day on Alta Vista, or the brand new search engine, Google, [...]
Grassroots Innovation: The 3rd Way.
Greg captures a concept in 183 words that entire books have utterly failed to explain.
When we are trying to solve a problem, there are always people involved. And people have positions, feelings, and are always emotionally tied to this-or-that outcome.
It is critically important to find “The 3rd Way” when working on [...]
Joe Friel’s Blog: Excellence.
I’m a couple of months late picking this up (it was published in September, and reported by
Greg Eisenbach with the observation that “nothing is listed about talent.” ). But I think it is relevant here because Joe Freil’s predictors of excellence in an athlete translate directly to business performance. Only the [...]
I will be the first to tell you that this is probably repetition of a fairly narrow theme you have seen here before. But I think of different ways to frame it, or get different thoughts, so I share them.
“Problems first” is one of the mantras used by Phil Jenkinson, the CEO character in
The [...]
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 Michael’s permission, here [...]
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 back [...]
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 explained [...]
I just started reading this book, and my initial feeling is that it is a winner. Rather than producing a batch review of the whole thing at the end, I thought I would employ “one chapter flow” and share my impressions with you as they are formed. As I write this, I honestly do not [...]
Mark Grabon’s latest post hits the key difference between metrics that help improvement, vs.
management-by-measurement that destroys trust and possibly drives unethical behavior. He quotes a U.K. hospital administrator as saying:
“We’re trying to shift from collecting data for judgment to data for improvement.”
I agree with Mark’s assessment: “Brilliant.”
Metrics are a “Check” in Plan-Do-Check-Act.
The purpose is [...]