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.

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...

What a Brandi Carlile Concert Teaches About Practicing Continuous Improvement

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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...

Before “Just Culture,” There Was NUMMI: Learning Instead of Blaming

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TL;DR: NUMMI proved in the 1980s what healthcare is still learning today: you can't punish your way to safety. Real improvement comes from mutual...

Mutual Trust and Respect: What Really Made NUMMI Work

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TL;DR: NUMMI's success was not driven by Lean tools alone, but by leadership behaviors that treated people as partners in quality and improvement. When you...

Safety First Isn’t a Slogan: What GE Aerospace’s CEO Gets Right...

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TL;DR: GE Aerospace's annual report treats safety not as a compliance topic or a communications slogan, but as a core leadership responsibility. By putting...

Ray Zinn on Learning from Mistakes — and Why “Fail Fast,...

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Ray Zinn argues that effective leadership isn't about failing fast, but about learning from mistakes by acknowledging them quickly, fixing them early, and not...

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: January 23, 2026

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News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. This Operational Excellence Mixtape underscores a simple but often-missed point: new technologies...

Inside the 1987 NUMMI Management Practices Executive Summary: Why Leadership Mattered...

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TL;DR: In 1987, GM accurately documented why NUMMI worked--and it wasn't tools, techniques, or discipline. This internal report reveals a management system built on...

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Continuous Improvement, Respect for People, and...

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Let's commemorate today's national holiday for Dr. King with a look back at my post from 2012: A Lean Lesson from Dr. Martin Luther King,...
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