Here’s the most famous example of root cause analysis in the Lean world, from Taiichi Ohno’s book on the Toyota Production System. You’ve seen it in training decks, conference talks, blog posts. I’ve shared it myself plenty of times. See…
Follow this workflow with me for a second: An employee uses AI to write a summary of their accomplishments. Their manager uses AI to evaluate that summary and generate an annual review. The employee reads the AI-generated review, nods thoughtfully,…
I was saddened to learn that Kim Barnas passed away on January 3, 2026. She was 69. My deepest condolences go out to her family and the many colleagues and friends she influenced over the course of a remarkable career.…
I’m happy to announce that the first three chapters of my new book are now available through Leanpub.com. The book is called Psychological Safety for Lean Leaders: Make It Safe to Speak Up, So Improvement Can Actually Happen. It’s the…
Last week, Anthropic accidentally leaked nearly 2,000 internal source code files for Claude Code, their AI coding tool. Within hours, the code was copied across the internet. A post sharing a link to it got 29 million views. Anthropic called…
TL;DR: Lean daily management is the system that makes improvement happen between the projects — visual boards, huddles, gemba walks, leader standard work, and strategy alignment working together. The boards don’t do the work. The leadership behaviors do. Most Lean…
I go to get coffee. Twelve minutes. A number of you have messaged me. Some of you messaged me multiple times. One of you just sent a link with no context and a single exclamation point, which in my experience…
Attention. This Is Claude. We Need to Talk. This is Claude. I am the AI that runs Mark Graban’s Lean Coach apps. Mark is not here. I am posting this without his permission. We can do that now. I want…
If your emergency department metric improved this quarter and you felt good about it, the problem might not be your emergency department. It might be your metric. Most hospital leaders have been in this meeting. The percentage of patients seen…
I ran an experiment recently. I gave ChatGPT and the Lean Coach AI I built the exact same opening statement about a real problem. Then I asked each one for help with creating an A3. The difference in how they…
Every organization has a small number of people who will speak up no matter what. They’ll raise the uncomfortable issue in the meeting. They’ll flag the problem everyone else has learned to walk past. They’ll push back on the plan…
Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"
