Me, bad boss
A dubious privilege of being a business writer is that people talk to me. People who do the work talk to me. Their bosses talk to me. I get to hear both sides of the story, which is fascinating and, […]
article
-
-
Lean executive coaching
I often get asked “how do you move from gemba coaching to executive coaching?” which I find kind of surprising because the whole point of executive coaching is to get execs to the gemba, looking into the details, discussing with […]
-
Kanban is a trust machine
Lean started with Kanban, and Kanban is a trust machine. There are four elements elements to Kanban: a Heijunka board reflecting takt time, the Kanban cards, a shop stock, and component Kanbans. You might have come across the short animations […]
-
Lean meets green
We’re burning the planet – I think we all realize that by now. We know the how – too much production of greenhouse gases, too much production of heat through energy use, too much use of natural rare resources. We […]
-
Start with No Win Deals
In the old days, when I watched Toyota sensei help their suppliers with quality issues, the first question they’d ask was: “have you checked the materials?” Or “can we see your ordering pattern?” It always wrong-footed everybody. In a worldview […]
-
The enduring magic of lean thinking
I continue to be amazed by the fact that executives who are genuinely interested in figuring out “lean” have spectacular results with it, while those who want to use lean to fix performance problems in their processes fail within two […]
-
Curiosity is the secret sauce to lean
Okay… it’s taken me something like 20 years but I’ve finally connected some dots. Lean thinking works, lean thinking is hard. Here’s why. One of the main themes of my doctoral research, in the previous century, was the “law of […]
-
The Crucial Battle
Toyota is showing record results again in the car industry both in terms of sales and operational profitability. Yet, Akio Toyoda, it’s President is quoted in several outlets saying: “Over the next 100 years, there is no guarantee that automobile […]
-
How is lean a strategy?
Lean is a full business strategy. But first, a disclaimer: to explain how lean is a specific business strategy, I need to get into a debate about strategy and I want to make perfectly clear I don’t believe military thinking […]
-
Yamazumi! Yes, yamazumi…
I remember one of my senseis asking me one day: can you do one hour of 100% value-added every day? As I write this, I think: “what is going to make this piece interesting?” (that’s a hit and miss) I […]
