I haven't said much about this here yet, so consider this the announcement.
I'm writing a new book. It's a practical guide for Lean leaders, continuous improvement professionals, and anyone who's ever wondered why their problem-solving training didn't produce more problem-solving. The working subtitle, at least for now, is “Make It Safe to Speak Up, So Improvement Can Actually Happen.”
The Argument, in Short
Most Lean transformations don't stall because the methodology is wrong. They stall because people stop speaking up — or never started. Some of that is fear. More of it is futility: people have learned, sometimes over years, that speaking up doesn't change anything. After enough of that, silence becomes rational. A kaizen board doesn't fix it. A huddle doesn't fix it. What changes things is a small set of leadership behaviors — modeling, encouraging, enabling, rewarding — practiced consistently enough that people start to believe their voice matters.
That's what the book is about. Less theory, more of what to do differently starting this week.
If you've read The Mistakes That Make Us, this one is a companion rather than a sequel. It's a deeper dive into psychological safety, but with a broader application than learning from mistakes. =
Read Along on Leanpub
The in-progress edition is live on Leanpub right now. Early readers get every update through the final release, and reader feedback has already shaped how I'm framing several chapters. If you want to follow along while it's still being written. You can also get a free preview of the Introduction and Chapter 1.
Help Me Pick the Title
I've been weighing four options and I'm honestly torn between them. I posted a poll on LinkedIn with the full titles and subtitles. If you have a minute, vote — and if you feel strongly about one, for or against, please drop a comment. I read all of them.
The four candidates:
- Psychological Safety for Lean Leaders: Make It Safe to Speak Up, So Improvement Can Actually Happen (current)
- The Silence Tax: Helping Lean Leaders Make It Safe to Speak Up
- No Problem, No Kaizen: Building the Culture Lean Depends On
- The Cord Nobody Pulled: Why Good Tools Don't Fix Broken Cultures
The LinkedIn poll is here (now closed, but you can still comment).
Each one emphasizes something different. One names the category. One names the cost. One borrows a phrase from Toyota that Lean people already know. One points at the tool and the absence. I can defend any of them. That's part of the problem.
So, tell me — which one would make you pick this book up (and better yet, not put it down), and why?
Poll Results:
