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.
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 CI practitioners. Sometimes it’s about an executive who blames people whenever something goes wrong. Sometimes it’s…
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 been in this situation before. You know what to do. And so you tell them. It…
Follow this workflow with me for a second: An employee uses AI to write a summary of their accomplishments. Their manager uses AI to evaluate that summary and generate an annual review. The employee reads the AI-generated review, nods thoughtfully,…
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 across the internet. A post sharing a link to it got 29 million views. Anthropic called…
TL;DR: Lean daily management is the system that makes improvement happen between the projects — visual boards, huddles, gemba walks, leader standard work, and strategy alignment working together. The boards don’t do the work. The leadership behaviors do. Most Lean…
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 flag the problem everyone else has learned to walk past. They’ll push back on the plan…
In strategy deployment — also known as hoshin kanri — there’s a practice called “catch ball.” The metaphor is pretty straightforward. Goals and priorities flow down from senior leadership. Ideas and feedback flow up from frontline staff and managers. Both…
TL;DR: Organizations invest in teaching people to see problems and solve problems — but skip the middle step: making it safe and worthwhile to speak up about them. I’ve seen blank huddle boards in hospitals. Cards and markers sitting untouched.…
Dr. Eric Dickson spent the early part of his leadership career telling people what to do. It nearly cost him everything. What he built after that failure — over 23 years and eventually across a $5 billion health system —…
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 again the other day and thought (and wrote on LinkedIn) — I need the same…
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 four books to show why leadership reaction — not tools — shapes the system. You review…
TL;DR: A sound check, live song requests, and a naming regret — what watching Brandi Carlile perform taught me about specific problem-solving, vulnerability, and continuous improvement. My wife and I got to see the amazing Brandi Carlile perform near Chicago…
