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.
In an era where it was a “no brainer” to move factories to China, chasing cheap labor, the Lean world has often spoken out loudly against this. Back in the day, people said “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM,”…
I heard a great line from an Emergency Department doc and physician leader yesterday. Talking about his hospital’s Lean efforts, he said, simply: “Data should create light, not heat.” Brilliant. Simply brilliant. What he meant was that data should be…
Listen to my podcast with Nick One of my blog themes is the idea of “Like Lean” – practices that seem very much like the Lean philosophy and management system, but it’s not directly inspired by Toyota or Dr. Deming.…
Article: How Toyota Defies Gravity While researching an upcoming presentation, I found this FORTUNE article from 1997. I was looking for a reference to Toyota letting its competitors (yes, Ford, GM, and Chrysler) tour its factories. Why Would Toyota Let…
Industry Week Webinar – To Register Technical note: I’ve been having some problems where “leanblog.org” gives a “404 not found” error, but “www.leanblog.org” works just fine. I am working on getting this resolved permanently. Thanks for your patience if this…
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…
It has been over 10 years since the publication of the Institute of Medicine’s study on preventable medical errors: To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. So how are we doing? Are there still nearly 100,000 patients dying…
I ‘ve mentioned here, I think, that I was in The Netherlands earlier in June for almost a week. I was invited to speak at an annual symposium for hospitals around the country that was put on by St. Elisabeth…
TL;DR: At GM, fear and poor leadership blocked bad news from flowing both up and down the organization. Executives were shielded from reality, frontline workers weren’t told the truth, and trust eroded as a result. Without leaders going to the…
Tomorrow’s blog post today… not that anyone will be reading anything non-Michael Jackson related. RIP. A modern tidbit… I learned about the news via a friend’s Facebook status update. The new, new media, I suppose. Communications Woes Show at Boeing…
Here’s another Lean Blog reader question from Joe, who writes: Last year I was part of an ERP implementation team at our company, and while part of that I became interested in lean manufacturing. For reference I manage our Field…
New Yankee Stadium a winner, team a big loser to Tribe 10-2 – USATODAY.com If you’re not a Yankees fan, let’s kick them while they’re down (losing 22-4 Saturday). As the kid Nelson from the Simpsons would say, Haw-HA! The…