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.
“Simply put, we cannot get to zero harm without psychological safety.” I wrote that as part of this page on the Value Capture website: Psychological Safety and Its Essential Link to Continuous Improvement I’ve come to understand that psychological safety is a…
I’m sure I could be more mindful. To be honest, I’m not really sure what that means, though. That’s why I’m happy to have hosted a webinar that was presented by Dave Kippen as part of the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #461 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Gauthier Duval, the Director of the Lean Center of Excellence at Veryable. He’s applied and taught Lean for over…
For the second week in a row (after this one), my latest episode of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is one with deep Lean content that readers here might likely enjoy: Manufacturing Executive Martina Kuhlmeyer Had Too Many High-Priority Initiatives…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation Does…
Psychological safety is often discussed as a single concept, but in practice it develops in stages. The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety framework–popularized by Timothy R. Clark–offers a practical way to understand how inclusion, learning, contribution, and challenge build on…
You’re invited to view the recording of webinar that I co-presented on Tuesday, October 18th, with Ken Segel, the CEO and co-founder of the healthcare advisory firm Value Capture. Seizing the Healthcare Safety Opportunity: Using the “Playbook” of Paul O’Neill…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #460 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Philip Holt. He is currently Senior Vice President, Operational Excellence at GKN Aerospace, the world’s leading multi-technology Tier 1…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation What’s…
Gerald Harris spent 25 years leading lean transformations in automotive manufacturing before shifting into healthcare consulting, and his origin story starts with a Toyota supplier in crisis that went from shipping 250 door sets per shift to 2,400. In this…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation Compliance vs. Creativity “Standardization kills creativity”. “It’s an…
TL;DR: Workarounds are not a sign of employee resistance. They are signals that standardized work or supporting systems make the “right way” harder than an alternative. I’ve spent years using a single photo in presentations to make a simple Lean…