Tag: Psychological Safety
You Can’t Cherry-Pick Lean: Why Pull, Heijunka, and CI Don’t Stick
tl;dr: Lean fails when organizations cherry-pick tools like 5S, pull, or heijunka without adopting Lean as a complete management system. Sustainable results require long-term...
Why Leaders Get Trapped in Firefighting: Nelson Repenning on Lean, Flow,...
Why do capable leaders spend their days firefighting instead of improving the system? In this episode, MIT professor Nelson Repenning explains how poorly designed...
Why Psychological Safety Is Essential to Quality and Continuous Improvement
In this special bonus episode, Mark Graban and C.J. Kaufman preview the ASQ Cincinnati-Dayton 2025 conference and explore why quality, leadership, and psychological safety...
Why Caring Cultures Matter in Lean: Psychological Safety, Respect for People,...
Caring cultures are not "soft" extras in Lean--they are foundational. Caroline Greenlee and Chris Butterworth explain how psychological safety, respect for people, and wellbeing...
Lean Healthcare Leadership: Humility, Psychological Safety, and Sustainable Improvement (with Carlos...
In this episode of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, Carlos Scholz discusses Lean healthcare leadership, psychological safety, and humility--why improvement depends on leadership behaviors,...
Plan, Do, Check, Act… or Plan, Do, Cover Your A**? Leadership...
TL;DR: PDCA is meant to be a learning cycle, but in fear-based cultures it becomes PDCYA--Plan, Do, Cover Your A**. When leaders punish mistakes,...
Speaking at the 2025 Lean Solutions Summit: Why Culture Comes Before...
I'm excited to announce that I'll be speaking at the 2025 Lean Solutions Summit, which will take place September 24-26 in Detroit, Michigan.
This...
Five Years of My Favorite Mistake: Lean, Toyota, and the Human...
When I launched the My Favorite Mistake podcast in September 2020, I hoped to create space for leaders and innovators to share the moments...
KaiNexus Values: How a Startup Built a Culture That Scales (and...
A lot of companies "define" their values by gathering the leadership team in a room, tossing around words like "integrity" or "excellence," and selecting...
Fear and Futility: Why People Don’t Speak Up–and How Lean Leaders...
Fear and futility are two of the biggest barriers to continuous improvement. When people are afraid to speak up--or believe nothing will change--problems stay...
Lean Lessons from Japan: Mindsets, Culture, and the Challenge of Speaking...
This article is based on my recent Catalysis webinar, "Lean Lessons from Japan: Mindsets, Culture, and the Challenge of Speaking Up." The session was...
Three Ways Pressure Warps Performance Metrics–and What Leaders Must Do Instead
TL;DR: When leaders apply pressure instead of support, people don't improve processes--they distort data or hide problems. Real improvement starts when leaders make it...
