Problem Solving

Many processes are linear. They occur with defined steps in a defined order. You would traditionally improve a linear process utilizing a process map, or value stream map, to map out the flow and then start taking the waste out. Quite a bit of continuous improvement has been achieved in

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

Plan Do Check Act (PDSA)  is a well known approach to continuous improvement and problem solving.  I propose you consider the PDSA approach that includes study and adjust to truly understand why you are getting the results you are.        

In 2016 I am trying, with my column Lessons from the Road, to stretch people’s thinking and not just refine it. I hope that most of my columns will generate some disagreement or at least some questions. This month in White space for important work I am addressing Leader Standard

Email comes in. React. Issue gets raised at a meeting. React. Customer calls. React. What do we call it when we spend all day reacting to the events around us? FIREFIGHTING! We all do it. It’s how most people spend the majority of their day. Sometimes one of the biggest

Darrell Damron, Enterprise Lean Consultant from the Office of the Governor for the State of Washington, generated a Prezi presentation of my ebook, A3 Problem Solving. You can find links to the book here. Since he shared it with me, I thought I would share it with you, so here

Lean is not all about waste, despite what we see in most definitions and applications. If it were about one thing (which oversimplifies things) it would be about problem solving, at all levels of the organization. We take problem solving for granted. Why? Because we’ve been doing it since we

I want to thank Enterprise Minnesota and the Center for Business & Industry for hosting me during the Lean Enterprise Summit held today. The following are my slides from my talk on building a problem solving organization.  

We are still very proud of our book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean, that has done very well over the past few years. The book publishing world is changing, very rapidly. I’ve had one of the big publishers ask me about doing another book. I’m not ready for that yet.

The Economist had an excellent article detailing the difference between Kodak’s historic bankruptcy and Fujifilm’s equally remarkable success, in The last Kodak moment?, and expanded on in Sharper focus. Both companies faced the same problem statement: digital photography would replace film. But Eastman Kodak, founded in 1880, despite it’s major