Gary Peterson spent almost 40 years helping O.C. Tanner build a continuous improvement culture, work that earned the company the Shingo Prize in 1999. He joins me to talk about psychological safety, autonomy, leading change from the middle, and the…
Mike Stoecklein recalls a story secondhand. It was, he thinks, at one of the last four-day seminars W. Edwards Deming ever gave. Deming was frail by then. Someone later told Mike that when the seminar got to the Red Bead…
A Florida surgeon, Thomas Shaknovsky, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge on April 13. The charge followed the death of William Bryan, a 70-year-old Alabama man, during what was supposed to be a laparoscopic splenectomy in August 2024. Instead…
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…
TL;DR: GE Aerospace’s annual report treats safety not as a compliance topic or a communications slogan, but as a core leadership responsibility. By putting safety first–literally first–in SQDC and embedding it into systems, structure, and incentives, the company offers a…
TL;DR: Larry Culp’s GE Aerospace CEO letter is a rare example of Lean leadership in practice, showing how safety, Respect for People, and small frontline improvements–not slogans or dashboards–create measurable operational and financial results. Most annual reports and shareholder letters…
What if stronger operations don’t come from doing less–but from leading with more meaning, optimism, and connection? In this conversation, Kathy Miller shares insights from her new book More Is Better and decades of experience leading large-scale manufacturing operations. Scroll…
One of the most overlooked–and most powerful–principles in Lean management is also the very first principle of the Toyota Way: “Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.” This principle is foundational.…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #535 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Gregg Stocker, a seasoned Lean practitioner, consultant, and author. Over the past 30+ years, Gregg has worked across industries,…
In Episode #530 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, I’m joined by Ken Segel of Value Capture to discuss what it really takes to build a comprehensive Lean healthcare operating system, starting with safety. Scroll down for how to subscribe,…
Many Lean transformations stall not because of poor execution, but because respect for people is treated as an attitude rather than a system. In this conversation, Scott Gauvin explains how the Respect for People Roadmap turns respect into a deliberate…
This is an edited excerpt from my book, Measures of Success. Many organizations embrace the idea of setting objectives and key results (or OKRs). Where we see a performance measure in an organization, we usually see a target. That’s the reality…
