tl;dr: In this post, Mark discusses the concept of “Model Lines” and “Model Cells” as strategies for Lean transformation. He outlines how these designated areas serve as experimental zones within an organization, allowing for the focused implementation and testing of…
In this post, I’ll present a parody video of Keith Olbermann‘s “worst persons in the sports world” videos. I don’t know how much overlap there is between people who read my blog and people who are fans of Olbermann. I’ve…
TL;DR: A re-aired episode of This American Life on NUMMI highlights enduring lessons about leadership, learning, and Lean. While critics like Labor Notes frame Lean as “management by stress,” my experience inside GM–and later in healthcare–points to management systems, not…
I love the show “Silicon Valley” and I just “binge watched” all ten episodes of Season 2 while traveling home from vacation. A few scenes from two episodes made me think about continuous improvement (yeah, even while on vacation). When…
As I wrote about last month, I love newspapers, so I felt like I fit into the culture last week when I spent five days of my vacation in London, a city I really love. People in England seem to…
Before I head out on vacation, here is a reader question that I am sharing for your input.I’m sharing this with permission and I’m obscuring a few details at their request. Please read and leave a comment below the post.…
My wife and I are getting ready to leave tomorrow night for a two-week vacation, so it jogged my memory about this story I saw back in December in the WSJ: Airlines Try to Make Coach Classier. Anything that makes long…
I’m a big nerd in that I love reading newspapers basically cover to cover. I’m a nerd in many ways, I guess. You don’t have to be a survey nerd to take my short reader survey (and you might win…
The Wall St Journal loves writing about how “Just In Time” (JIT) is a risky inventory strategy. See my past posts about how the WSJ is so often wrong on this. The WSJ seem to only understand Lean as JIT, as opposed…
I’ve been intrigued by the “Lean Startup” movement since I first saw Eric Ries speak at MIT back in late 2009. I’ve read his book The Lean Startup, have attended a bunch of the conferences (speaking at two of them –…
When I teach about Kaizen and continuous improvement, I try to use scenarios and cases to help people think through how they would respond to, coach, and collaborate on employee ideas. One key point is that leaders have to thank…
Editor’s note (2026): This post remains highly relevant as organizations increasingly rely on algorithmic scheduling, utilization targets, and AI-driven workforce planning. TL;DR: Zeynep Ton’s Good Jobs Strategy shows that cutting labor costs creates a vicious cycle of poor performance. In…
