At its best Lean can be a powerful catalyst for cultural transformation. In the short term, its implementation can change the way teams interact and how they create and deliver value to the customer and each other. In the midterm, new processes beget new routines that together engender behavior change. Over time, if the Lean effort is sustained, that behavior change gives rise to the fabled continuous improvement mindset that [...]
Recently I spoke at the AME conference in Boston and presented Conflict is the Root of All Waste - Continuous Improvement doesn’t stick. The conference brings together people interested in Lean and continuous improvement from over 50 countries and is considered the largest lean conference in the world. In addition to exploring conflict, how we deal with it and how it inhibits our change efforts, we also took a deeper look [...]
There’s an interesting read in this month’s Harvard Business Review (HBR): The Hidden Cost of Inconsistent Decision Making. The article explores the implications of variation in employee judgment and specifically, how to solve for that variation. In essence, the article was about Mura – the Japanese term meaning waste of unevenness / variation. Like many of my clients, the organization featured in the article hadn’t previously considered the impact [...]
I was recently engaged by a VP of Operations to help him make the case for Lean to executive leadership. To that end, I was also tasked with convincing the CEO to revisit (and maybe refine) the organization’s values, purpose, goals. My recommendation was that an airtight business orientation would be essential to driving the organizational alignment necessary for Lean to flourish. While I waited for my meeting to [...]
As a Continuous Improvement expert, I’m a control freak big fan of data. I wholeheartedly believe that you can’t create lasting improvements without 1 - benchmarking and 2 -understanding the context in which the data was derived. But despite the fact that you can quantify nearly every aspect of a process in its current state, when making projections about the future state, stakeholders must understand that even highly detailed projections [...]
Last night I spoke at the Armenian Business Networking summer event on Maximizing Workplace Performance, how behavior, not just product or process is the predictor of business success. Whether you are a large business or startup the fundamentals of how to engage people are the same. To download a copy of the presentation click here [download id="6542"]
If you’re in the Chelmsford area tomorrow, I’ll be presenting my thoughts on how conflict creates waste in the organization and how that – not just process – is ultimately what derails performance.The ASQ Merrimack is hosting the event. Check it out HERE.
I had the good fortune of attending and presenting at AME’s annual conference in Jacksonville last week. As is custom, the event provided a myriad of learning opportunities that I am pleased to say included more emphasis on how organizational culture impacts Continuous Improvement. I think more education, case studies and opportunities to explore the complex people side of the Continuous Improvement equation will have a huge impact on future [...]
