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.
TL;DR: Not every question is actually a question. Some are directives, some are blame in disguise, and some are just declarative statements wearing a question mark. If you mean to say something directly, it’s usually more respectful to say it…
Tomorrow, at 1 pm Eastern, Dr. Greg Jacobson and I are giving a KaiNexus-sponsored webinar: Daily Management with KaiNexus: From Huddle Boards to Web-Based Technology I’ll be talking about daily Lean management practices, such as: Strategy deployment Process audits /…
Mark’s note: Christina Kach is our guest blogger today, with a post about the recent North East Shingo Conference, where she was an attendee. See her past posts here. Recently, my coworkers and I had the opportunity to attend the North East…
Last week, I taught a pilot session of a new class on Kaizen and continuous improvement that I taught for visitors to the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. Unlike other workshops that have assumed people are starting from scratch, this…
I wrote about Ebola earlier this week and have been following the news closely. It’s a fascinating story on many levels, including many leadership failures. I wrote a piece for LinkedIn, written for a general public audience: A Lack of…
Time magazine recently featured GM’s relatively new CEO, Mary Barra, on the cover and in this story: “Mary Barra’s Bumpy Ride at the Wheel of GM“ Also, here is a USA Today summary that says “Five things ‘Time’ revealed about GM…
My friend Pete Abilla has started a nice series of “Lean Leadership Interviews” on his site, shmula.com. I enjoyed his most recent interview with Jeff Liker. I agree with Pete and Jeff in the assertion (shared by Mike Rother) that…
Today’s post is something that I wrote for a broader LinkedIn audience, but might have meaning and significance to my Lean readers: “What Bad Managers, Good Managers, and Great Managers Do“ You can also read this on Medium.com. You might…
Our theme this month on the KaiNexus blog is executive leadership. We are concluding that series with a new webinar that will be hosted by me and our CEO, Allan Wilson. Learn more and register: How Continuous Improvement Helps The C-Suite…
Joining me for episode #208 is Michael Bremer, author of the recently released book How to Do a Gemba Walk. Michael is president of The Cumberland Group, a business improvement consulting firm based in Illinois. In today’s episode, Michael talks about…
As I wrote about in Healthcare Kaizen, one of my favorite Lean transformation stories is the realization of an experienced medical technologist, John, that Lean leadership was about being “a coach, not a cop.” He had repeatedly said “no” to…
People often talk about the need for senior leadership support for Lean. If we’re going to really transform our culture, workplace, and performance, “quality starts in the boardroom,” as Dr. Deming said. Lean is not about “fixing” the employees —…
