Clik here to view.
Two Spirals….
Bruce’s recent post on recent post on SMART goals stirred my thinking about another part of annual planning sessions that I have always struggled with internally: The dreaded “headcount” line in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Policy Deployment #2 – Command Goes Down, Control Goes Up
Last week I posted about setting big goals for policy deployment. Now that we have decided to “go to the moon” we need to get serious about figuring out exactly how. Many people think that lean is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Leadership for Lean – Humility
In a Q&A in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge, Harvard Business Professor William George, author of 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis, talks about seven leadership lessons for weathering...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trust
Respect humanity is a key point of lean and trust is at the heart of the concept. How can you empower without trust? How can you build a team without trust? Will you act on suggestions and input from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ambiguous Visual Controls – Denver Airport
Photo by eflon under Creative Commons Attribution I wrapped up a week in a sister plant helping a great group of people improve their PM compliance. I’m not kidding, this was a great group. They were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lean Haiku – A Raised Hand
Photo by Viqi French under Creative Commons Attribution I refuse to give up on something after one try so here is my second attempt at lean haiku. If you missed my first try here it is with a brief...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Respect for People – Corrective Actions
We recently came across a situation in a very long cycle time process. During the “automatic” process an operator is to check the status of the operation every 30 minutes and make any corrections for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Great Jackass Fallacy – Dan Pink and W. Edwards Deming
Image Remixed from abac077 @flickr.com under Creative Commons Attribution, Remix, Share Alike Special thanks to reader Dan Mott who left a link to a TED video on a post from last week called...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Performance Appraisals – A Better Way?
As Bruce points in a couple recent post (here and here), it is performance appraisal season. Bruce provided many great points on how they are used for evil instead of good! But we all aren’t as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Undercover Boss – Going to the Gemba on CBS
Genchi gembutsu. Go to the gemba. The importance of going to the ‘actual place’ to see the ‘actual thing.’ It’s something that lean practitioners value a lot. CBS’s new reality show, Undercover...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Andon Calls and Muri
I’m currently working my way through Mike Rother’s book Toyota Kata. A formal review will follow in the future as I’m approximately half done but I can already say there are many great insights into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Watching the Border: Customer Confusion and Respect for Humanity
Steve Kroft from 60 minutes reported on the US border security with Mexico on Sunday, January 10th. Once again it was basically revealling the inability of the US government and Corporate America to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
22 Rules, Respecting Humanity?
I recently read a plant newsletter that list 22 keys to forklift safety. Twenty-two. Many of these are pretty intuitive and are pretty easy to remember if not somewhat ‘natural’ to someone who is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Consistency is Key for Lean Transformation
Those of you that are parents out there know how important it is to not send mixed signals to your children. The same is true during a Lean transformation, especially early on in the process. It...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Let people make mistakes? Tough Love of Leadership!
While leading an event this week, I came across a common situation that I have faced over the years. The group, very new to pull, wanted to implement a particular piece of the pull system in an exact...
View Article
