Tag: Deming

Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture." The WSJ says the "model is cracking." Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself).

Yesterday, I saw this headline from the Associated Press: "Tatsuro Toyoda, former head of Toyota, dies at 88" He passed away on December 30, 2017. I offer my condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues. In this post, I share some of his history and some reflections from two Americans who worked with him directly.

Here are a few "quick hits" - similar to my "clearing the backlog" posts, quick quotes and links to articles you might find interesting. Unlike the "backlog," some of these stories I'm linking to are relatively fresh.

In today's post, I share and write about this message from Akio Toyoda that was posted online: “Making Ever-better Cars and Human Resource Development: The Forces That Power Sustainable Growth“

I've been going through the book by the late Peter Scholtes: The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done. His work builds upon the legendary W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff, among others. I often quote Scholtes (something also attributed to Peter Senge and others) as saying: "People don't resist change, they resist being changed." I think that's very insightful and that thought has led me to study change management, "motivational interviewing" and other related topics. It turns out that having the right answer and pushing it on others isn't the best strategy for effecting sustainable change. I had to learn those lessons the hard way and I'm still learning.

Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post that highlighted (if not mocked) so-called "quality posters" that are, I suppose, intended to be helpful: https://www.leanblog.org/2007/04/krazy-kwality-posters/ Ten...

As next week's Lean Startup Week approaches, I'm pretty laser focused on preparation for my: Facilitation of the famed Deming Red Bead Experiment My...

I recently blogged about a healthcare improvement job posting that had me scratching my head when the interviewing process included an process improvement exercise...

This Business Insider article caught my eye the other day: A celebrity chef who owns 26 restaurants explains why he loves when employees shoot down...

I'm teaching a daylong class on Lean healthcare today in San Antonio. It's something I've done twice a year for the past four years...

One book about the late, great W. Edwards Deming that's been on my shelf for a while is The Deming Management Method, which was written by Mary Walton, a journalist who spent some time with Dr. Deming in the 1980s. There's a section that really made me think about Lean over the past few decades (and it might seem familiar to those who use Six Sigma or other methods).

As Eric wrote about in The Lean Startup (and as many others say), time is the most precious commodity anybody has. I think that's true in startups and it's true in other organizations. Everybody says they don't have enough time. So, we have to use it wisely.