Tag: Leadership

Leadership That Builds Better Systems, Better Results, and Better Work

Leadership isn’t about titles, charisma, or quick decisions—it’s about creating systems where people can do their best work and continuously improve. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on leadership through a Lean lens, drawing on ideas from Deming, Toyota, healthcare, and real-world management practice. The common theme: leaders shape culture, influence behavior, and own the systems that produce results—for better or worse.

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: April 17, 2026

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Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly...

What Can a CI Director Do When Executives Undermine Psychological Safety?

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I get this question a lot. Some version of it comes up at nearly every conference Q&A, in coaching calls, and in emails from...

Lean Leadership: Why Asking Questions Is Harder Than Having All the...

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There's a moment every experienced leader knows. Someone brings you a problem, and you can see the answer before they finish the sentence. You've...

Don’t Use AI to Automate a Bad Process — Including Performance...

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Follow this workflow with me for a second: An employee uses AI to write a summary of their accomplishments. Their manager uses AI to...

Anthropic’s Claude Code Leak: Why the Instinct to Fire Someone Is...

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Last week, Anthropic accidentally leaked nearly 2,000 internal source code files for Claude Code, their AI coding tool. Within hours, the code was copied...

Lean Daily Management: What It Is and How to Get Started

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TL;DR: Lean daily management is the system that makes improvement happen between the projects -- visual boards, huddles, gemba walks, leader standard work, and...

Why Employees Don’t Speak Up — and the Subtle Reasons You...

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Every organization has a small number of people who will speak up no matter what. They'll raise the uncomfortable issue in the meeting. They'll...

Strategy Deployment: Are You Playing Catch Ball or Chucking Rocks?

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In strategy deployment -- also known as hoshin kanri -- there's a practice called "catch ball." The metaphor is pretty straightforward. Goals and priorities...

Problem-Seeing Eyes Are Everywhere. Problem-Speaking Mouths Are Rare.

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TL;DR: Organizations invest in teaching people to see problems and solve problems -- but skip the middle step: making it safe and worthwhile to...

Eric Dickson on Building a Management System That Produced 200,000 Ideas...

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Dr. Eric Dickson spent the early part of his leadership career telling people what to do. It nearly cost him everything. What he built...

The One Thing ChatGPT Does That Most Leaders Won’t

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If you've used ChatGPT, you've seen the small text at the bottom of the screen: "ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info." I noticed it...

Leadership Overreaction: The Hidden Cause of Organizational Failure

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Tl;DR: Leaders unintentionally create fear by overreacting to variation, waste, and mistakes. That fear quietly kills improvement. This post connects the threads across my...
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