Are You Humble Enough to be a Lean CEO?
“Oh Lord, It’s Hard to be Humble … When You’re Perfect in Every Way” Mac Davis If you’ve answered the question with, “Absolutely yes, I am a very humble leader”, you probably are not. But don’t get me...
View ArticleThe Middle Manager Problem
It is common to hear senior managers say that the company’s Lean transformation efforts have been slowed by middle managers. They usually attribute this to resistance to Lean or a fear of change....
View ArticleLean is the Strategy
Recently I wrote The Lean Turnaround: How Business Leaders Use Lean Principles to Create Value and Transform Their Company from McGraw-Hill, in order to pass on an approach to implementing lean in any...
View ArticleThe Human Case for Lean
Over the decades, many people have tried to make the business case for Lean in an attempt to gain senior management support. They typically start with arguments based on removing waste or improving...
View ArticleStart a Campaign for Clarity
Ambiguity. It’s an increasingly common space within which most organizations operate. Rapid change, increased complexity, and competing interests all make predictability and certainty tougher to...
View ArticleA Lean Leadership Lesson from Marrakech
My wife and I are currently in Marrakech, Morocco, on one of our increasingly frequent trips to explore new locales. Truly a remarkable place, and with the tall snowcapped Atlas Mountains only an hour...
View ArticleLearning by Writing… by Hand
I’m an early adopter tech geek at heart, and generally am among the first to embrace a new technology. I love my gizmos, although I focus on how they can be used to streamline and simplify life, not...
View ArticleImagination and Creativity
Like many others, I found my first experiences with Lean management to be personally liberating and the most fun I ever had at work. We were finally able to think “outside the box” as managers had for...
View ArticleTop Ten Signs Top Management Doesn’t Get 5S
For some reason, my “Top Ten” articles about senior management not understanding processes they should know always seem to draw more readers. Perhaps readers are curious to know how many of the 10...
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The Process of Exploring Out of the Box
On the long series of flights back home from Bhutan and Nepal last weekend I came across an article on CNN on Mark Zuckerberg’s Bizarre New Self-Improvement Goal. I haven’t really been a fan of the...
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