TL;DR: Behavioral nudges can produce real gains in patient experience at almost no cost. They can also be used to dress up a process that should have been fixed. The discipline for CI leaders is knowing the difference and getting…
I have been seeing more AI-generated Lean infographics on LinkedIn lately. So many. It’s annoying. I try not being annoyed, but it’s hard. So, I made one of my own about the trend and posted it on LinkedIn. It collects…
TL;DR: Burger King, T-Mobile, and Domino’s have all built ad campaigns around the same confession: our product was bad, but it’s better now. The marketing is interesting. The leadership lesson is better. In each case, the harsh verdict comes from…
You finally found the perfect hire. The one who did this exact job, at a company just like yours, for six years. No training required. You felt the relief of it. Someone who already knows the work, who can start…
Picking up the thread from the previous post on Toyota’s April 1992 publication “The Toyota Production System.” This one’s about the line-stop rope or andon cord. The booklet describes the mechanism with care. From the jidoka section: “The ‘fixed-position stop…
A lunch, a hand gesture, and the question most Lean implementations are answering backwards. The gesture is the whole thing. The late Hajime Oba held his hands out in front of him, palms down, one higher than the other. “All…
Two questions from a few Toyota mentors — and the Deming idea behind them. You can usually feel it before you can name it. The improvement meeting that used to feel alive is now… polite. People show up. They nod…
In 2006, I started this podcast. Jeff Liker was guest number 3, in August of that year. He has been back on seven more episodes since, which makes him one of the most frequent guests this show has ever had.…
Eric Ries is best known as the author of The Lean Startup — the book that gave a generation of founders a shared vocabulary of minimum viable product, build-measure-learn, and pivot. But when I had him on My Favorite Mistake…
Somewhere along the way in my career, someone handed me a copy of “The Toyota Production System,” published by Toyota Motor Corporation in April 1992. I don’t remember who gave it to me. The document itself is unassuming – a…
Why do so many quality programs fall apart the moment the firefighter walks out the door? In this conversation, Chad Diggs talks about his new book, Below the Surface, and what it takes to build quality systems that outlast the people who…
The public conversation about AI is dominated by cheerleaders and doomers. Both camps are loud. Neither is very useful when you’re trying to decide whether to use AI on a Monday morning. Most working Lean people I talk to sit…
