change agents

Learning what works and what doesn’t work is driven by experimentation, real-world trials that inform us about cause and effect. How do we improve the ability to experiment? By reducing the cost, the effort, the friction required to test what works. As we continue my effort to de-jargonize (ok, that’s

In the flow of a manufacturing plant, the bottleneck should often be the most valuable, or at least most expensive asset. We actually should be designing our processes around that fact, and then ensuring there is no unnecessary waste in the process that affects that bottleneck. In the Theory of

Do you feel a little out of control of your lean journey? Good. The lean journey is not one that can be so self-contained that one person or team can keep their arms around it. If they can, it either hasn’t reached that important transitional point, or you are choking

A question frequently asked of me is “what do I do about the people who won’t get on board?” This is too broad of a question, because there isn’t a single answer to the question, except “it depends.” What does it depend on? Primarily, the reason for people resisting is

In my coaching, many of my conversations begin with a source of frustration by the individual. The source of frustration could be rooted in another person, or a team problem, or in their own abilities. But nonetheless, the frustration is there. This is a good thing. The philosophy that I’ve

I’ve enjoyed connecting the fables of Aesop to lessons in lean and leadership. You can read my previous posts here. Here is a lesson about change management. How do you get engagement? How do you get compliance? The North Wind and the Sun A dispute arose between the North Wind

I witness lean change agents get in their own way all the time. I’m sure I do it too. This is a common example that really can hold back an entire organization on the journey. It is the response to an inflection point. Change agents, of any kind of change,

Last week I was visiting a very large operation in Costa Rica. As the strategy was being discussed, I noticed that we were going to review 5S efforts later in my visit. I started questioning this line of thought, because they had so many things going on in their organization

  Do you have a lot of room in your organization for people to learn? Or as soon as they step out of their comfort zone, do things get a little scary? What you do as a leader has a huge impact on the behaviors of others in terms of

Do you have a group of people leading lean? Whether formal or informal, there is often such as group particularly early in the lean journey (meaning the first several years). I get a lot of questions by email, some by clients and others by readers. Many are two specific to