Gemba means “the real place”—where work actually happens, problems become visible, and leadership behavior matters most. These posts explore what going to the gemba really means beyond symbolic walk-throughs, dashboards, or status updates.
Drawing from Lean, Toyota practices, healthcare, manufacturing, and knowledge work, this archive focuses on gemba as a leadership practice: listening more than talking, asking better questions, building trust, and creating the conditions for daily improvement rather than fear or performance theater.
Keeping things light on a Saturday… New York Magazine has a funny photo story series of President Obama on tours of different factories and laboratories (hat tip to @counternotions on Twitter). The series is called “A History of Obama Feigning…
I’m about conferenced out! First was the excellent SHS/ASQ conference on healthcare operations improvement (read my posts), then the HIMSS conference focused on heathcare information systems, now the LEI Lean Transformation Summit that starts today (follow our tweets). As a…
Hat tips to the blogs Lean is Good and Curious Cat… tonight is the debut of the new CBS reality show “Undercover Boss” a show where CEOs go to the front lines to work as their employees do. Will you…
Mark’s note: I’ve known Bruce Baker for a few years as a thoughtful commenter here on the Lean Blog. I was thrilled when he started his own blog, Lean Is Good, as it’s quickly become one of my favorites in…
I had an incredible visit to a hospital in Stockholm yesterday, to walk the “gemba” (the actual workplace) to see their lean improvement efforts first hand. I’ll share some details and highlights over time here on the blog. One…
One project I’m involved with at the LEI is an online video education event on the topic of “strategy deployment,” confusing known also as “hoshin kanri” or “hoshin planning” or “policy deployment.” I know, let’s pick a name already. This…
Note from 2026: I first published this in 2010. The idea that Lean is loving care came from clinicians at St. Elisabeth Hospital in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and it has held up better than most of what I wrote that…
TL;DR: Data is what gets recorded. Facts are what’s actually happening. Confusing the two is how leaders get fooled by faked reports, broken sensors, and decorated dashboards. Deming and Ohno both warned about this in different ways. The fix is…
Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine: There was a fascinating article in a recent WIRED Magazine about Cold War nuclear response and defense systems. This one sidebar struck me as a classic workaround, if the story can be believed. When:…
Womack and Jones video on spread – Blog – ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value From John Toussaint’s blog, this video starts with a question about (I’m paraphrasing) how do you balance continuous innovation (in how “Lean” works in a hospital)…
by Dan Markovitz I took this picture of a UPS truck recently in NYC. (The orange signs say “SAFETY.”) At first I thought, “Great! UPS management cares about safety for its drivers. Terrific!” But then I looked at the signs…
Corner Office – Bad News or Good, Continental’s Chief Wants to Know – Question – NYTimes.com This interview with Larry Keller, CEO of Continental Airlines, had elements of “Like Lean” — ideas that are similar to Toyota Production System or…
