Dan Pink joins me to discuss his book Drive and the science behind what actually motivates people — ideas deeply aligned with Lean thinking and Deming. We explore why “if-then” rewards backfire for complex work, the dysfunctions of incentive schemes…
Last month, I wrote a post titled “Consulting Case Studies Need Statistical Validity” where I discussed the need to show more than simple “before and after” numbers in case studies. I promised some follow up posts on his topic, so…
One of the books that’s had the biggest impact on my work is Donald Wheeler’s Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos. It’s the best guide for applying simple and powerful “statistical process control” (or SPC) practices to management data…
This is going to seem like a political rant, but I promise this is mainly a post about Lean and healthcare, or at least it’s about dysfunctional parallels in both settings. It was said that President Ronald Reagan and Speaker…
As I’ve been re-reading Dr. Deming’s Out of the Crisis, stuff like this jumps out at me more and more. I saw similar signs at Heathrow Airport last month bragging about the airport exceeding targets for customer service. This is,…
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #71 is part two of a conversation with Patrick Anderson, the Executive Director of Chugachmiut, the Tribal consortium created to promote self-determination to the seven Native communities of the Chugach Region. I met Patrick at a Lean…
By Jason Turgeon: It looks like the Lean + Green movement is gathering steam. In the last week, I’ve seen three pretty big efforts that formalize the relationship. This is great news for members of both camps, as Lean management…
To borrow a theme from Kevin Meyer, here’s some “fun with statistics,” or at least this kind of thing is fun to me, being a big proponent of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and the methods taught by Deming and Wheeler…
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #9 is a discussion with David Mann, the author of the excellent book Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions. In this episode, we will talk about Steelcase’s experience with their lean efforts and the…
NPR : What the U.S. Jobless Numbers Really Mean I heard this NPR story via one of their podcasts, the “Daily Shuffle.” The economist makes a great point — when the government releases numbers that say “unemployment fell from 4.8%…
Bloomberg.com Interesting that imports from China slowed last month, at least if you’re comparing just two data points. Analysts think there is good news to be found here that the economy is not slowing down (which I hope to be…
