Tag: Leadership

Leadership That Builds Better Systems, Better Results, and Better Work

Leadership isn’t about titles, charisma, or quick decisions—it’s about creating systems where people can do their best work and continuously improve. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on leadership through a Lean lens, drawing on ideas from Deming, Toyota, healthcare, and real-world management practice. The common theme: leaders shape culture, influence behavior, and own the systems that produce results—for better or worse.

Ray Zinn on Learning from Mistakes — and Why “Fail Fast,...

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Ray Zinn argues that effective leadership isn't about failing fast, but about learning from mistakes by acknowledging them quickly, fixing them early, and not...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: January 23, 2026

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News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. This Operational Excellence Mixtape underscores a simple but often-missed point: new technologies...

Inside the 1987 NUMMI Management Practices Executive Summary: Why Leadership Mattered...

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TL;DR: In 1987, GM accurately documented why NUMMI worked--and it wasn't tools, techniques, or discipline. This internal report reveals a management system built on...

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Continuous Improvement, Respect for People, and...

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Let's commemorate today's national holiday for Dr. King with a look back at my post from 2012: A Lean Lesson from Dr. Martin Luther King,...

Gemba Walks, Daily Improvement, and the Leadership Behaviors That Make Kaizen...

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At our 2016 Kaizen Live! event at Franciscan St. Francis Health, Mischelle McMillin shared practical, honest, and refreshingly human insights on Gemba Walks that...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: January 9, 2026

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Summary: Today's "mixtape" post brings together timely ideas on continuous improvement, leadership, productivity, and workplace culture. From avoiding "blank slate" metrics and rethinking PDCA/PDSA...

“Toyota Culture” 20 Years Later: Why Liker’s Lessons Still Matter in...

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TL;DR Twenty years later, Jeffrey Liker's message still applies: Lean fails when it's treated as a set of tools instead of a leadership system....

From “White Coat Leadership” to Lean Leadership: John Toussaint’s Message Still...

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TL;DR: Dr. John Toussaint says healthcare culture won't change until leaders do--moving from "white coat leadership" (all-knowing, autocratic, blaming) to Lean leadership as facilitator,...

Executive Problem Solving: Are You Learning, or Just Deciding?

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TL;DR: Deciding feels like progress, and learning is what makes a solution hold. This is a working hypothesis about why executive problem solving so...

Five NUMMI Tour Lessons That Still Define Lean Thinking

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A 2005 tour of the NUMMI plant revealed lessons about Lean that had little to do with tools and everything to do with leadership,...

How Don Kieffer Applies Toyota Thinking to Modern Knowledge Work

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Why do so many Lean efforts fail in offices, engineering, and executive work? In this episode, Don Kieffer explains why copying Toyota's rituals misses...

Stop Forcing Change: Use These Motivational Interviewing Questions Instead

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When we think about how change happens in organizations, especially those practicing Lean, we often focus on tools, plans, and communication strategies. But what...
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