2019 | Gemba Academy

Remain Detached from the Outcome

By Steve Kane - December 27th, 2019

I’ve been working on my Black Belt certification for several months. The past few have been devoted to a project related to understanding how improvements over the years have impacted business performance. Many of the improvement

GA 299 | Lean and Strategy in the U.S. Air Force with Reza Zeinalpour

By Jessica Bush - December 26th, 2019

This week’s guest is Reza Zeinalpour. Ron and Reza talked about applying continuous improvement in the U.S. Air Force, including how they integrate performance metrics, innovation, and virtual reality. A MP3 audio version of this

Was the Standard Clear Enough?

By Jon Miller - December 23rd, 2019

While observing a morning huddle meeting last week, I heard a senior leader ask, “Was the standard clear enough?” several times as they discussed the previous day’s quality, safety and delivery problems. That’s

GA 298 | Defining Standardized Work with Mike Thelen

By Jessica Bush - December 19th, 2019

This week’s guest is Mike Thelen. Ron and Mike explored all things standardized work, including the components, how often it should be improved, and more. A MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here. In thi

Go See, Show Respect, Ask “What Do You Need from Me?”

By Jon Miller - December 16th, 2019

Last week we took a day at the Gemba Academy office in Fort Worth to map and improve our content development process. It was a humbling reminder of the importance of going to the gemba, asking the internal customer what they need and m

Empirical Evidence for the Power of Kata

By Kevin Meyer - December 13th, 2019

We’ve long known that embracing failure with an aim toward learning and improvement can create future success. Organizations that see failure in that light, and support their people with cultures and systems to learn from failu

GA 297 | The Importance of Hansei and Revitalization with Katie Anderson

By Jessica Bush - December 12th, 2019

This week’s guest is Katie Anderson. Katie described what it’s like working with former Toyota leader Mr. Isao Yoshino, and why the practices of reflection and revitalization are so critical. A MP3 audio version of this epi

How to be Tough on Process, Easy on People

By Jon Miller - December 9th, 2019

One of the guiding principles for practicing continuous improvement, or good leadership in general, is to be tough on the process but easy on the people. The idea is to create a blame-free but problem-aware environment. This removes fe

How to Run Kata in the Classroom

By Ron Pereira - December 6th, 2019

If you’re interested in learning how to think scientifically I strongly recommend the Kata in the Classroom (KiC) exercise. I’ve personally run a number of KiC workshops. On one end of the spectrum I’ve run workshop

GA 296 | How Toyota Uses Agile with Nigel Thurlow

By Jessica Bush - December 5th, 2019

This week’s guest is Nigel Thurlow. At the time of this recording Nigel was Chief of Agile at Toyota Connected. He has since moved on from Toyota Connected. Nigel explained how Toyota has used agile, and why it’s so imp

Year: 2019