quotes

“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” These words by Vince Lombardi encompass a great deal of the lean mindset. Mark Graban at LeanBlog.org recently wrote about this quote, and so I was reminded of an article I wrote almost 10 years ago. The

No matter what we do for a living, at some point we are all in the business of learning. Either we are on a learning curve ourselves. Or we are trying to influence others, whether through sales and marketing, or though managing, or through coaching. In any of these cases,

  It was sad to hear of the passing of the legend John Wooden. Of course this can never be validated, but he may be the best coach, of any sport, ever. I don’t really follow basketball, and if I did I would be a Big 10 fan, so this

Yesterday I was working with a team who was working on a very long-term kind of change. They were really stuck, spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to achieve the end state. That is a mistake. Abraham Lincoln said: “The best thing about the future is

Kiyoshi Suzaki, a lean thinker who deserves to be at the top of any lean guru list, wrote: Lean tools are common sense – after the fact. I think that makes sense based on my observations. People see it, and they want to call lean “common sense”. Some organizations and

What do you do when one of those little fires pops up? It’s not a big deal, it’s just a small problem. Put the fire out, move on to what’s next. After all there are many important projects to complete. But of course, before you get to them, another fire

One Small Step for Man Are you building plans for 2010? Strategic plans? Goals? Action plans? Even New Year’s Resolutions? Many of you are. You are told to think big, dream big, plan big. I’m couldn’t agree more. Until… you stall. You start thinking about the resources. You start thinking