As you might know, I have always enjoyed baseball and like blogging about ideas and statistics that come from the sport.
I loved this recent article from The Wall Street Journal and there are parallels to Lean and being an effective change agent:
"The Data Wonk Who Became a Coach"
Are minor league games taking longer? Well, yes and no, depending on the league.
My next book, Measures of Success, is about the use of this Process Behavior Chart methodology in the workplace, as applied to our performance measures.
This post explores some data, how asking for more data can be more helpful, and how to use charts to evaluate a metric over time.
Last week, I saw a headline about a drop in NCAA college football attendance.
I wasn't satisfied with the two data point comparisons or other written descriptions of the metrics. I wanted to see data. SHOW ME THE DATA, JERRY! (with apologies to "Jerry Maguire"). I wanted to see a chart. So, I found the data on to NCAA website and created "process behavior charts" that tell you much more about the data than text numbers ever could.
Today's blog post -- it's not just about sports, it's about managing and measuring improvement...
If you watched this year’s World Series, you saw a lot of home runs. There were many dramatic home runs in late innings or extra innings. It might have seemed like a significantly high number. My friend Dan Markovitz asked…
I've blogged about football before - I should say "American football," since I have many international readers.
I should say I've blogged about events on the football field and the approaches of football coaches that remind me of Lean thinking.
Here are a few of those thoughts from last weekend -- topics include "lack of urgency," "that's not my job," and "the process."
Update: See the end of the post with some photos I took at the game yesterday where Beltre got his 3000th career hit – quite a milestone! Those who study and practice Lean often know about Taiichi Ohno, one of…
What if "easier" is less safe? Great question. It begs the question of why Safer isn't first in Shingo's list? Is it because safety is assumed to be such a fundamental pre-condition in the Toyota culture or the Lean approach? Safety is such a non-negotiable point that it doesn't need to be said?
Questions for a baseball game, a hospital or any workplace: What happens when we have rules that are confusing to people? What happens when those rules aren't being enforced? And what if the rule is a solution to a problem that's not really a problem?
If you don't care about sports or statistical process analysis, this isn't the post for you... but it was interesting for me to try to wrap my head around the data behind a headline ("Blazers player secures $500,000 bonus by not taking 3-pointer in final game of the season") that I'll write about here in this post.
Lean thinkers do their best to avoid blaming individuals for systemic problems. This lesson comes also from W. Edwards Deming who was deeply influential on Toyota. It’s easier said than done. Old habits die hard. We all sometimes find ourselves…
Today's Post in <50 words: Lean thinkers don't blame individuals who are in a bad system, whether that's a presenter at Oscars, a kicker in a football game, or a healthcare professional in a hospital.
