TL;DR: A re-aired episode of This American Life on NUMMI highlights enduring lessons about leadership, learning, and Lean. While critics like Labor Notes frame Lean as “management by stress,” my experience inside GM–and later in healthcare–points to management systems, not workers, as the real problem. Episode #403 of the public radio program “This American Life” originally aired in 2010, telling the story of the NUMMI plant that was a joint venture between GM and Toyota (it’s … Continue reading What GM Failed to Learn from NUMMI — And Why ‘Management by Stress’ Misses the Point”