The Lean Blog Interviews Podcast explores leadership, systems, and continuous improvement through thoughtful conversations with practitioners, executives, authors, and researchers. These episodes go beyond tools to examine how organizations really improve—through better leadership behaviors, respect for people, learning from mistakes, and sound management systems. This archive brings together podcast episodes focused on Lean, healthcare, Toyota, Deming, psychological safety, and what it actually takes to sustain improvement over time.
Jeffrey Liker explains why Toyota’s recalls were not a failure of the Toyota Way, but a breakdown in listening, speed, and customer understanding. The episode explores how Toyota used rigorous problem-solving to learn from crisis and emerge stronger. Episode #111…
Listen: Episode #110 is a chat with Dr. Jack Billi from the University of Michigan Health System and Medical School. Here, we talk about their lean work and how Dr. Billi works with physicians to engage them in lean, tying…
Episode #109 is a discussion with Jim Morgan, Director, Global Body Exterior and Stamping Business Unit Engineering, Ford Motor Company. We will be talking about Lean product development methods in this show. James will be a plenary speaker at the…
Here is Part 2 of our video discussion series about Lean Healthcare Design, featuring Miguel Burbano, an architect and Senior Vice President with The Neenan Company, and Dr. Randall Huss, President of the St. John’s Clinic – Rolla (MO). Today,…
Episode #108 is a discussion with Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, recorded in person at the 2010 Shingo Prize Conference in Salt Lake City. Gwendolyn was previously a guest on episodes #26, 45, and 49. Here, we chat about lean and the…
I’m happy to present a new multi-part video discussion series about Lean Healthcare Design, featuring Miguel Burbano, an architect and Senior Vice President with The Neenan Company, and Dr. Randall Huss, President of the St. John’s Clinic – Rolla (MO).
For episode #106, we have a returning guest, Jim Baran of the firm Career Kaizen, formerly of “Value Stream Leadership.” Jim was previously a guest on episodes #16, 27, and 88 talking about careers in Lean. Today, Jim talks about…
Podcast #105 is a conversation with the co-authors of the new book Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation from Productivity Press. They are Adam Zak, a regular guest blogger here on Leanblog.org and Lean-focused…
Podcast #104 is a discussion with Dr. Peter Patterson (@IDrPete), a friend of mine and the Lean Blog the past few years. He wrote a guest post for me back in 2009 (A Breakthrough in Training: Call it “Near-TWI”) and…
My guest for Episode #103 is Matthew E. May, returning to talk about his latest book, a business fable called The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meaningful Change. I’ve been reading the book and have found it to be…
Episode #101 of the Podcast is a discussion with Keith Syberg, former Chairman of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (see here for more about their 2010 annual AME conference in Baltimore, this November). Today, we talk about consortia (I word…
Listen: Wow, 100 episodes of my podcast since 2006! For this episode, I’m thankful to have the author of one of my favorite books in the last two years – Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing…
