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.
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…
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 —…
I’ve had some cartoons on the blog before, including a few “Doofus & Leanies.” I can’t draw at all, believe me (although I sometimes do my own simple digital graphics). I’ve been fortunate to partner up with other artists before…
In our Healthcare Kaizen books, Joe Swartz and I have tried to make the case that the Kaizen style of continuous improvement isn’t just a nice way to treat employees… it’s smart business and it’s good for patients. It’s a practical…
What happens when a mistake is made in your organization? How do you react when an error occurs? A lab specimen gets mislabeled. The wrong product is shipped to the wrong customer. A patient is injected with the wrong medication.…
I was happy to see this article in FORTUNE’s recent issue: “Brad Smith, Intuit CEO: How To Be A Great Leader: Get Out Of The Way.” Smith (@IntuitBrad) talks about the Lean Startup concept often called “getting out of the…
At KaiNexus, Dr. Greg Jacobson and I have been doing new webinars each month (see the library here). Our most recent one was hosted by our friends and partners at Gemba Academy, so thanks to them for that and all…
PDSA, back to the days of Dr. Deming, has stood for Plan Do Study Adjust. A key point in the application of PDSA (and a key to A3 problem solving), is to avoid jumping to solutions. We Plan — and this…
