My Boss “Blanks” #Lean

As a child of the 70s and 80s, I like classic game shows. Last week, I used a photo from “Family Feud” in a post (albeit the more modern incarnation) and today I have the classic show “Match Game” on my…
Organizational culture isn’t what leaders say—it’s what people experience every day based on management behaviors, systems, and priorities. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on culture through a Lean lens, exploring how leadership decisions shape trust, psychological safety, learning, and performance. Many of these posts draw on lessons from Deming, Toyota, healthcare, and real organizations to show that culture is not a program to roll out, but an outcome leaders create—intentionally or not.

As a child of the 70s and 80s, I like classic game shows. Last week, I used a photo from “Family Feud” in a post (albeit the more modern incarnation) and today I have the classic show “Match Game” on my…

Back in May, I saw news reports about the head of CNN, Jeff Zucker: “CNN boss Zucker shocked by staffer’s fearful question.” Back when I worked for big companies, I had to be an audience member for many “all hands”…

Yesterday’s post was about some of our work at KaiNexus and today’s post is hosted over on the KaiNexus Blog: Challenges to Innovation and Improvement In the post, I share some of the survey reflections that were shared with us…

In November 2012, I had the opportunity to visit Japan for the first time as part of a Lean healthcare study mission. It was fascinating to compare notes with colleagues from the U.S., Belgium, and Holland as we visited factories,…

TL;DR: UMass Memorial Health is working to become a world-class Kaizen organization by engaging all frontline employees in continuous improvement, not just managers or specialists. Inspired by Toyota practices, leaders encourage many small, low-cost ideas–such as a simple Velcro fix…

Why healthcare organizations need fewer heroes–and better systems–according to former ThedaCare leader Kim Barnas. In memoriam: Kim Barnas (1956-2026)I always valued my interactions with Kim and deeply admired what she accomplished–and how she treated people along the way. She stood…

I’ve been amused by the Hotels.com “Captain Obvious” character and TV commercials. Hotels.com is, um, a site where you book hotels. Obvious. It’s often said that Lean is “common sense.” If that’s true, I guess it goes along with the…
On this blog, I write a lot about how to create a “Lean” culture where employees and customers are happy. Engaged employees lead to happy customers — and sustainable business success. It’s often instructive, however, to see or hear about…

TL;DR: GM’s “Speak Up for Safety” program targets the wrong problem. Employees spoke up about the ignition switch for more than a decade. Leaders didn’t listen. The problem at GM wasn’t that employees didn’t speak up. An engineer flagged the…

tl;dr: This post features a rare 1990 video of Steve Jobs describing continuous improvement in ways that closely echo Lean and Kaizen principles. He challenges “we’ve always done it this way,” stresses that people are smart and should own improvement,…

Following up on yesterday’s post that talked about “the old GM” putting cost ahead of quality, I sometimes get flashbacks to my days working for General Motors. I once slammed a greasy connecting rod down on my manager’s desk at GM.…

I wrote an article for LinkedIn yesterday about the recent GM ignition problem controversy and recall. I commented mainly on the video put out by new CEO Mary Barra (which I encourage you to watch). As a former GM employee,…