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.
If you've been a listener of my LeanBlog Podcast series, you might know that I normally record conversations and then publish them into the podcast feed. Today, I'm going to do my first live broadcast of a podcast discussion via the "Blab.im" streaming platform. My guest is going to be Sam MacPherson...
...this WSJ article caught my attention: "The Coach Who Won't Leave the Locker Room." The sub headline is "Why Carolina Panthers' Ron Rivera has become obsessed with integrating himself into his players' personal workspace." An NFL coach is at "the gemba" during a game, of course...
I've worked with a lot of companies whose primary operational strategy boils down to "cut costs". Others on Mark's blog have written about the many unintended consequences of cutting costs as a myopic strategy. But I'd like to share a trend among small manufacturers I've seen...
Many of you don’t care about football, but you might find it interesting, as I did, to learn that Northwestern’s defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz is apparently a fan of Kaizen...
Today's guest is Eric Dickson,MD, MHCM, FACEP, the president and CEO of UMass Medical Center. Today's podcast is a recording of an interview that I did on stage at the 2015 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, as part of the CEO panel I was moderating.
As a Lean change agent, I've made a lot of mistakes. Some mistakes I recognized early and recovered from; others were a blind spot that affected outcomes and success of the assignment. A few still haunt me from time to time when I suffer a case of "woulda, coulda, shoulda."
Having a model like this helps prevent errors, such as jumping to implement Lean tools before the organization understands WHY change is necessary. You have to engage and enroll people in change, not just force things on them.
I am convinced that the ExperienceChange simulations, either Lakeview or GlobalTech, are a great way to learn and practice.
I was very saddened earlier to receive an email from an employee of a great leader, Dr. Michel Tétreault, informing me that he had passed away. Michel was, since 2005, the CEO of St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg.
And the idea of knowing why... again that's an old desire. It's not just a recent discovery of Simon Sinek and the outstanding book Start with Why (my friends at Gemba Academy have a podcast interview with him coming soon). Why are we doing something? Why are we starting this company? That's an old tale... are you breaking rocks or building a cathedral?
As my breakfast platter was being rung up, I saw this sign behind the register (and came back to discretely take a picture)... click for a larger view.
As is often the case, I have too many open browser tabs full of articles that I was going to potentially blog about. This slows down my Mac (thanks, Chrome!) and it’s mental overhead… So, it’s time for me to…
Mark’s Note: Today’s guest post is by Paul Critchley and while it shares a story from a manufacturing company, I could see a situation like this taking place in healthcare or in any large organization that doesn’t quite get what…