Toyota is often cited as the inspiration for Lean, but its success is rooted in leadership behaviors, management systems, and a deep commitment to learning—not tools or slogans. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Toyota’s approach to quality, continuous improvement, psychological safety, and respect for people. Many of these posts explore what leaders outside Toyota often misunderstand—and what truly matters if they hope to learn from Toyota rather than copy it.
There’s a new “AI copy writing tool” that I read about called copy.ai. I decided to play around with a free trial and, of course, I tested it by asking the service to write a blog post about Lean in…
A culture of learning makes the difference, not “low inventory” Last year, I wrote a post that criticized those, including the Wall St Journal, who claimed that Toyota was “abandoning” the Toyota Production System or that strategically adding some inventory…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation Deliberate…
TL;DR: Looking for powerful Toyota quotes? Here are verified quotes from The Toyota Way and Toyota leaders on mistakes, learning, psychological safety, and continuous improvement — plus context on what they really mean. Toyota Quotes on Learning, Mistakes, and Psychological…
Gerald Harris spent 25 years leading lean transformations in automotive manufacturing before shifting into healthcare consulting, and his origin story starts with a Toyota supplier in crisis that went from shipping 250 door sets per shift to 2,400. In this…
Podcast interview with Ken Pilone, author of Lean Leadership on a Napkin, discussing Toyota, TPS vs. Lean, leadership humility, and common misconceptions about Lean management. Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #455 of…
This is the starting point for a blog post that I should expand on… after posting these initial thought fragments on LinkedIn. JIT might have been given the wrong name… please hear me out. There has been so much confusion…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation The Waste Land A classic dilemma in process…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #451 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Dr. Alan G. Robinson. He specializes in managing ideas, building high-performance organizations, creativity, innovation, quality, and lean production. He is the…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #450 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Professor Torbjorn Netland, Ph.D. Tor is the chair of production and operations management in the department of management, technology…
Recently, I re-shared a LinkedIn post by Maryam Najafi PhD, a clinical scientist from Germany. I re-posted it and that drove even more visibility (over 100,000 views) and more discussion. You might need to click through to LinkedIn to see…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #434 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Ben Bensaou. He is an INSEAD professor and is the author of Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire…
