This episode of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast explores psychological safety in Lean leadership through the lens of Toyota’s culture, with insights from Mike Hoseus, former Toyota leader and co-author of Toyota Culture. We discuss how respect for people, andon…
Happy New Year! As advocates of Kaizen, the philosophy and practice of continuous improvement, we recognize the value of each new year. We value each employee and each improvement idea. As the late Masaaki Imai taught, Kaizen means everybody improving,…
TL;DR: Gemba and genba are the same Japanese word (現場), meaning “the actual place.” Japanese speakers, including native speakers and bilingual Lean professionals who’ve lived in Japan, all confirm: it’s a romanization difference, not a meaning difference. The Lean world…
Thanks, everybody, for reading my blog here in 2023. And for listening to podcasts… oh so many podcasts. I released 13 “Lean Blog Interviews” podcasts. This month marks the 17th birthday of my podcast, which started with this Norman Bodek…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and…
It was a real treat to hear Larry Culp, the CEO of General Electric and CEO of GE Aerospace, speak at the AME 2022 annual conference in Dallas. He recently reached the four-year mark of his tenure as GE’s first-ever…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #454 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Damon Baker. He is the founder and CEO of the firm Lean Focus. He’s also a Private Equity Partner…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #451 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Dr. Alan G. Robinson. He specializes in managing ideas, building high-performance organizations, creativity, innovation, quality, and lean production. He is the…
TL;DR: Kaizen isn’t a Japanese buzzword or a suggestion box–it’s a practical, scientific way for healthcare teams to solve problems, reduce frustration, and improve patient care every day, with leaders acting as coaches instead of gatekeepers. We’re coming up on…
Here is an interesting article that a few people pointed me toward the other day about the Seattle Mariners team: Mariners Sunday mailbag: Explaining the Japanese origin of the team’s new slogan “Manager Scott Servais does have a mantra each…
My guest for episode #321 of the podcast is Mark Hamel, He is a partner and COO with The Murli Group. Mark is a two-time recipient of the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for his books The Kaizen Event Fieldbook and his most recent book Lean Math, the reason we got together for this episode (although we talked about other things too).
I hope you enjoy the discussion, which is about people as much as it is about math.
Thanks to posting about the trip on LinkedIn, I learned that Mike Bukowski is now working for Sazerac, the parent company of Buffalo Trace, in a process improvement role. Last year, Mike attended the site visit and class that Joe Swartz and I hosted at Franciscan St. Francis Health.
Mike has embraced might call "lessons from Toyota," as taught to healthcare people, and is now training and coaching people who make some very fine bourbon, including Aaron Krentz, Processing Supervisor (at right).
