This edition of Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape focuses on what real, sustainable improvement actually requires: leadership commitment, respect for people, and disciplined learning over time. From reframing “continuous improvement” as everyday improvement, to lessons from Larry Culp’s lived Lean…
Happy New Year! As advocates of Kaizen, the philosophy and practice of continuous improvement, we recognize the value of each new year. We value each employee and each improvement idea. As the late Masaaki Imai taught, Kaizen means everybody improving,…
TL;DR: Masaaki Imai (1930-2023) was the Japanese consultant who, more than any single person, brought the word “kaizen” — and the practice of continuous improvement — to the global business community. His 1986 book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and…
Here is an interesting article that a few people pointed me toward the other day about the Seattle Mariners team: Mariners Sunday mailbag: Explaining the Japanese origin of the team’s new slogan “Manager Scott Servais does have a mantra each…
Monday, I blogged about the sushi-making class I took on my last Sunday in Japan. Later that same Sunday, I did a walking food tour in the Shibuya area. Walking food tours are a great way to explore and learn about a city.
In our small group, there was a couple from Australia and a retired couple from South Africa.
Between stops on the tour, the South African gentleman, a retired mining company manager or executive, asked me why I was there in Japan for work.
Lean sometimes gets, I think, an unfair rap that it’s only a method for incremental improvement. See this article, for example: “Limits of Lean — Transformative Care Redesign Must Go Beyond Typical Lean-Based Improvements.”
This week, Joe Swartz (pictured at left) and I are running a “Kaizen Live” workshop at his main hospital, Franciscan St. Francis Health. Today and tomorrow, we’re running a 1.5-day workshop where attendees will get to visit departments and hear…
I’ve been overdue in writing more posts about our Japan tour that took place two months ago now. See previous posts in this series. I’m going to try to do one post a week on this topic. It’s always fascinating…
A friend sent me a link to this article, “7 cultural concepts we don’t have in the U.S.,” and he told me to check out item #5 in the list – Kaizen in Japan. By the way, if you ever…
The ideas, principles, and methods that we’d recognize as “Lean” aren’t exclusively of Japanese origin. Many of us, myself included, draw inspiration from Toyota, reading books about them and visiting their factories. For me, I’ve had a chance to visit…
I’ll be blogging a lot more about my recent trip to Japan with Kaizen Institute, including the site visits and our lessons learned. I had a few days of tourist / vacation time in Tokyo before and after the trip,…
