Becoming a Better Coach: Some Lessons from The Trillion Dollar Coach
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
Read MoreThe Role of the Lean Team
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
Read MoreA New collaboration between JFlinch and IndustryWeek: Factory Talk
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,
Read MoreErrors of Omission and Commission
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,
Read MoreWhy coaching?
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
Read MoreA Survey of Leadership Traits
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
Read MoreProblem Solving the Whole or the Pieces?
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
Read MoreYour Head Will Get Soft
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.
Read MoreFeatured Video Course on Strategic Thinking
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
Read MoreInnovation is Inefficient Problem Solving (even Simon Sinek says so)
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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