Article

Ask Art: How Do You Motivate Managers to Adopt Lean?

Leading an enterprise-wide lean transformation requires everyone at every level to adopt new approaches to their work. Here are some tried-and-true strategies that leaders can…

by Art Byrne

Article

Expanding the Purpose of Catchball

Learn how catchball, the process of colleagues tossing ideas back and forth to improve them iteratively, helps get the job done while building capability simultaneously.

by Josh Howell

Article

What is your psychology of change?

Dear Gemba Coach: Do you have a psychology of change? And if so, what is it? Where should we start?

by Michael Ballé

Article

I Don't Know What I Don't Know, But Spread the Word

In her first piece for the Post, Lesa Nichols reflects on one of her most powerful learning experiences while working as a powertrain manager at…

by Lesa Nichols

Article

Riding the Goodyear Wheel to Innovation Excellence

Norbert Majerus of Goodyear shares the Womack and Jones-inspired model that helped his company overhaul its product development operations.

Article

Why 'Yes Chef!' Is No Longer the Answer

In order to meet the changing demands of today's restaurants, chefs must learn to evolve from old-school methods of the "brigade system" and learn to…

Article

Lean Consumption, Lean Provision, and Lean Solutions

Here’s some good news for the Lean Community. I was recently in Spain where I toured a facility belonging to an American company whose U.S.…

by James (Jim) Womack, PhD

Article

What would "process points" be in software development?

Dear Gemba Coach: Thank you for your previous column that has raised profound questions for me to work on with my software development teams. For…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Lean and Forecasting

Dear Gemba Coach: I’m in charge of the forecasting department in my company. My colleagues in production have been doing lean for several years and…

by Michael Ballé

Article

How do we deal with a command-and-control boss?

Dear Gemba Coach: Our boss always says, “It’s not my job to tell you how to do yours!” But then he tells us what to…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Should we plan according to what we can do, or the other way around?

Dear Gemba Coach: Should we plan according to what we can do, or the other way around?

by Michael Ballé

Article

I’m not sure I understand solving problems one by one.

Dear Gemba Coach: I’m not sure I understand solving problems one by one. I thought listing problems and pushing hard to get them solved faster…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Is "lean" now just an over-hyped word that is losing its value?

Dear Gemba Coach: I have spent the day with a group of people in the LeanIT, Agile, ITSM, IT4IT, DevOps, etc. worlds.  We were all…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Learn from the Error, Every Time

It's an awful feeling when you think everything is going just fine and then discover you've made an error. But errors are inevitable. It's what…

by Joshua Rapoza

Article

Just Trying “Stuff” Is Not A Real Experiment

"Today it seems like you can’t throw a stick of butter without hitting someone who is “running a lean experiment” on one thing or another,"…

by Brent Wahba

Article

Calling a Time-Out for Coaches

What's the most effective approach to coaching? Lean coaches Mark Reich and Laura Mottola share practical approaches that include methods such as invoking struggle, providing…

by Masia Goodman and Mark Reich

Article

Not So Simple: Pioneering Lean Product Development

Jean Cunningham, LEI’s executive chair, offers lessons from her time as CFO of lean management pioneer Lantech when it successfully deployed lean principles to product…

Article

Is momentum loss normal during a lean transformation?

Dear Gemba Coach: One of our outpatient wards reduced waiting time by 75% and got an award for their lean improvement project. But then momentum…

by Michael Ballé

Podcast

Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn: A Podcast with Katie Anderson and Isao Yoshino

Join us for this WLEI podcast with Katie Anderson and Mr. Isao Yoshino on his experiences with Toyota that formed the basis for Katie's new…

by Katie Anderson and Lean Leaper

Article

People First Leadership: A Conversation by Jim Morgan with Alan Mulally

Alan Mulally is a brilliant engineer who led historic transformations as CEO of Boeing Commercial and then Ford Motor Company. But just as important as…

by James Morgan, PhD