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Becoming a Better Coach: Some Lessons from The Trillion Dollar Coach

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 07-02-20

I recently read the book The Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell. Besides the fact that he was a coach to Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and others of such stature (hence the title), I loved that (a) he connected his sports coaching with his business

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The Role of the Lean Team

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 06-25-20

Chances are that your organization has some form of a Lean team, but those resources come in all sorts of different forms. In the next several videos, we will explore how to Organize Your Lean Team, starting with this video where we explore the role of lean resources. What should

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A New collaboration between JFlinch and IndustryWeek: Factory Talk

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 06-16-20

I am pleased to announce a new collaboration between JFlinch and IndustryWeek titled Factory Talk : Secrets of Effective Plant Leaders. Many of you have been readers of my long-time column, Lessons from the Road, which we retired last year. In this new project, we will be interviewing factory leaders,

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Errors of Omission and Commission

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 06-02-20

In reading Russell Ackoff’s A Lifetime of Systems Thinking, he shared a key point about mental content that I think relates to lean systems in a way that reveals a weakness in many lean practices.  Ackoff starts by exploring the hierarchy of mental content, which he orders as: data, information,

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Why coaching?

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 05-27-20

There are so many leadership capabilities that we could tie to effective problem solving, why should we focus on coaching? What makes coaching so important? I believe this comparison will make it clear (and here’s a hint: it’s all about your purpose).  When I’m coaching a soccer game, many instances

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A Survey of Leadership Traits

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 05-20-20

Many of us have spent a little time cleaning out our home offices, ensuring it’s ready for maximum focus while working from home. I’ve technically worked from home for 20 years, but given my travel, it was only a couple days a month most of the time. And while cleaning

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Problem Solving the Whole or the Pieces?

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 05-19-20

I’ve always considered Russell Ackoff one of the most persistent and insightful systems thinkers. While sometimes his ideas are elusive for organizations to grab ahold of (I don’t always agree with his conclusions), he expects better from organizations, and I think those ideas are worth delving into. As I prepare

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Your Head Will Get Soft

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 05-14-20

Creativity takes work, along with inspiration. Inspiration doesn’t always strike us when we plan for it, or when we need it. We have to adopt many different strategies to engage our creativity and intuition within problem solving. Yoshiki Iwata is the founder of the famous lean consulting firm Shingijutsu. Mr.

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Featured Video Course on Strategic Thinking

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 05-07-20

We are proud to release another video course, this time on strategic thinking. This 16 video course is titled The Strategic Thinker, the Strategic Process, and Your Strategy. The reason for the title is that we look at strategic thinking multidimensionally, covering the person, the process, and the outcomes. Developing

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Innovation is Inefficient Problem Solving (even Simon Sinek says so)

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 05-06-20

Innovation is about solving real problems. It does NOT require that you solve the problem in a unique or imaginative way. It really is all about solving problems. To be fair, if you don’t solve it in a unique way, then that innovation might not be a competitive advantage, or

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