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The COVID pandemic has delayed and deferred many important activities from projects to learning to networking. Many companies and individuals are facing decisions about what to do with those important but on-hold items. In this video, I provide a framework for sorting through options and making decisions, with the criteria

Does everyone on your team understand their role? Do your partners and other functions know there? Does role ambiguity lead to either gaps or overlaps in work? Most of you answered yes, and you are not alone.  Role clarity gaps are one of the easiest ways to drive waste into

Lean systems and processes can help take the personality out of a process. For much of our work, our personal styles and preferences can have a great impact on our work. However, this is based on what suits us based on our personality and not the needs of the work.

In Episode 18, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh return to our tried and true format of “just the two of us”, although that won’t last long as Mark will soon have a guest co-host and then we will record an episode live as part of the Colorado Lean Network Summit.

Whether it’s problem-solving, or kaizen, or process optimization, or waste elimination…no matter what you’re trying to accomplish, you must have a firm understanding of the current reality. This doesn’t mean just the results, but the process or work or causes that lead to those results. Every lean thinker understands this.

This article first appeared on JFlinch on 10-12-09. Problems will always be with mankind, read as Jamie asks some basic yet key questions to help you get to the root of your problems.   Do you have a starting point for your strategic plans? A very short post today, but

Your lean team isn’t the only group that supports the company. Others do as well. You hope that you all have a unique value proposition, but there is likely overlap, and perhaps even the potential for greater value. Who should you partner with? How should you partner, and how might

You’ve decided to organize your people to help drive lean. Who should you select? Should you build (grow internally) or buy (hire experience)? How many people do you need? And what are the alternatives? In this 3rd video in the Organizing Your Lean Team series, we explore these questions. Watch

While I try to practice a lens for waste in all of my work and passionately eliminate what I can, I haven’t done an actual waste walk on my work in a while. So I thought I would do a waste walk on the part of my work that has

There is no universally best way to organize those resources who identify as lean or continuous improvement people. Should you have them centrally located in one team? Should you embed them throughout the company in a decentralized way? Should you do a hybrid of both? What matters in making this