lean transformation

Any transformation has a fundamental challenge embedded, that is you are on a journey into new territory. That’s what makes it transformational. This means that you can’t see the destination from where you stand. You must look beyond the horizon, and know that the destination is out there. This requires

I stumbled upon something I wrote 18 years ago, and I thought it was relevant for current times. I wrote it on behalf of an equipment manufacturer who was marketing to manufacturing companies. Manufacturing, in particular, was in deep recession and times were tough. Today, some of your lives are

Through my IndustryWeek column, Lessons from the Road, I’ve been exploring some of the issues associated with the ongoing maturing of a lean journey. In this installment, Beyond the Lean Initiative, I explore issues with making lean an integral part of the organization. It can no longer be an initiative.

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

I was a clown. Some might think I still am. Let me return to that in a moment. When trying to create change in the organization, we often struggle with ways to motivate people to change behavior. We certainly often aspire to ignite the intrinsic motivation of individuals, and for

Organizational transformation is a tricky challenge. Many, if not most, of the questions I received have to do with how to transform an organization. And a small organization is just as challenging as a large organization, but for different reasons. In the last installment of Lessons from the Road, I

I recently wrote a column for IndustryWeek titled Get the Most from Your Assessments. This was in part inspired by the several assessments I had just completed for clients in the weeks preceding my column due date. But there is also a pet peeve that I wanted to correct: there

I recently highlighted Bruce Hamilton’s blog, titled Old Lean Dude. Yesterday’s post was titled 5S First? I got going with my comments, and that carried over into my own post here. Bruce’s story was between himself and a workshop participant debating whether 5S or kanban should come first in a

Guest Post: Nathan Holt is a highly accomplished executive and proactive continuous improvement leader with experience in driving critical operations and enterprise improvement programs in diverse industries. He currently work as  Head of Continuous Improvement and Process Leadership, Americas at Shell Oil Company. One thing I believe we can all agree