Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Do Not Title this Blog Post

By Jon Miller - November 23rd, 2015

One of the unexpected pleasures of business travel over the years has been stumbling across well-intentioned but poorly executed visual controls. As a result I’ve written more than twenty posts based on “ambiguous visual co

What We Talk About When We Talk About Overburden

By Jon Miller - November 16th, 2015

We place high expectations on lean. Lean will make customers happier, empower employees, enlighten leaders, spur business growth and deliver bottom line results. Lean can certainly enable organizations to accomplish all of these th

What We Have Here is a Fluid Dynamics Problem

By Jon Miller - November 9th, 2015

This weekend I attended a community recital to hear my daughter play piano. There were 23 children playing solo and duet pieces on the piano, violin, cello, clarinet and saxophone. There were even a few singers. At the conclusion

Another Good Reason to Walk the Gemba

By Jon Miller - November 2nd, 2015

From factory floor to hospital floor, the people who work on the gemba have long suspected the existence of a negative correlation between how much time management spends in the office and the quality of the decisions they make. Now

What is the Opposite of Irony?

By Jon Miller - October 26th, 2015

Suppose you are passionate about vacuum cleaners. New models. Vintage models. Sales. Repair. Perhaps you are even a genius when it comes to servicing vacuum cleaners. An artist. You find purpose in enabling others to move dirt and debr

Review of The Lean CEO by Jacob Stoller

By Jon Miller - October 22nd, 2015

[Full disclosure: Jon Miller was involved in proofreading and providing suggestions to the author Jacob Stoller. Jon was not compensated and has no financial interest in the book.] Most books about lean management are written by

Problem Solving Paradigms

By Jon Miller - October 19th, 2015

There is a story about an executive team of a certain U.S. automotive company that is very revealing about their problem solving paradigms, related in the book Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler. The au

Change Management Lessons from Big Trees Transplant

By Jon Miller - October 14th, 2015

This may be the best unintentional video on nemawashi ever. For those new to nemawashi, it is a Japanese word meaning “preparing roots of a tree for transplant” but is known to us as part of the consensus-building and chang

Toolkits or Aids to Knowledge and Creativity?

By Jon Miller - October 12th, 2015

The great mystery in the history of lean is not so much how and why Toyota and a handful of Japanese companies were able to make large strides in business excellence, but why so many have failed to follow their example. In a word, th

United by Problems

By Jon Miller - October 5th, 2015

Nothing divides people like a solution. It seems the larger the problem, the larger the divide. I am reminded of this painfully with every mass shooting, as we had this past week at a community college in Oregon. We grieve as a natio

A Rational Plan is a Prediction

By Jon Miller - September 28th, 2015

One question that I hear a lot is, “Can you show me an example of success in my specific environment?” with lean, continuous improvement, agile and so forth. My most common answer is, “No.” Although I would lik

Mindset KPIs

By Jon Miller - September 23rd, 2015

By S.M. Junaid [Admin’s note: our friend Junaid has contributed articles on TPM, on wet blankets, the cost of poor quality, kaizen for energy-saving and team member motivation.] A Quote by Eiji Toyoda san: “Before Cars, M

Missing the Soil, or The Inadequacy of Our Lean Management Metaphors

By Jon Miller - September 21st, 2015

The purpose of lean is to build an organization that creates value for people – its customers, employees, shareholders and community members – on a sustainable and long-term basis. If we asked a farmer, “How do we g

How to Gain Insight from Customers and Gemba

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2015

Lean thinking places a focus on the customer and on the gemba. These are two great sources of information for innovation, increased revenues, and problem solving. The way to gain more insight from customers and from the gemba is to be

Why We Do Things This Way

By Jon Miller - September 7th, 2015

I have spent much of my career in pursuit of answers to the question, “Why do you do things this way?” When I am getting to know a client, either an individual leader for coaching purposes or an business for the purpose o

The Pursuit of Imperfection

By Jon Miller - August 31st, 2015

One of the widely accepted guiding principles of lean thinking is to “pursue perfection”. This is rather broad and imprecise when compared to the other guidelines of identify value, map value streams, flow and pull. Pursue

The Cosmology of Meetings

By Jon Miller - August 24th, 2015

After a particularly interminable session of the Roman Senate, the emperor Marcus Aurelius is said to have observed, “He who does not know what the meeting is does not know where he is, and he who does not know for what purpose t

The 20 Words Most Often Spoken in a Lean Organization

By Jon Miller - August 19th, 2015

Customer Value Problem Why Standard Process See Cause Team How Experiment When Data Check Result Learn Better Sustainable Purpose Thanks

Knowledge of Work is Key to Better Knowledge Work

By Jon Miller - August 17th, 2015

One of the questions and concerns most often raised by people in position to lead continuous improvement efforts in their organizations is, “Where will I find the time?” It is rarely the case that this person has a full tim

Respect for Humanity… of Your Boss

By Jon Miller - August 10th, 2015

The notion of “respect for people” is widely recognized as an essential pillar of lean management. It stands out among lean principles by being the most important yet least clearly defined. As such, it is most often at the

Review of Management Lessons from Taiichi Ohno by Takehiko Harada

By Jon Miller - August 7th, 2015

I had previously read and enjoyed the Japanese version of this book by Toyota veteran Takehiko Harada. Therefore I was curious to see how its idiosyncrasies would be handled in the process of editing and presenting it to a Western aud

Toyota’s 8 Step Practical Problem Solving, Revisited

By Jon Miller - August 5th, 2015

The practical problem solving steps… It is too early to talk about solutions. It is still too early to talk about solutions. It is still too early to talk about solutions. It is still too early to talk about solutions. Did som

There’s More to Nemawashi than Consensus

By Jon Miller - August 3rd, 2015

A local grocery store has been doing some major remodeling. This summer they redesigned their parking lot, including new landscaping. A number of young oak trees were planted in the soil beds dividing the parking area into sections. Th

There’s More to Nemawashi than Consensus

By Jon Miller - August 3rd, 2015

A local grocery store has been doing some major remodeling. This summer they redesigned their parking lot, including new landscaping. A number of young oak trees were planted in the soil beds dividing the parking area into sections. Th

Jidoka, Self-awareness and the Value of a Lean Coach

By Jon Miller - July 26th, 2015

How do you feel? It’s a simple question that isn’t always easy for some of us to answer without a reference standard. Not too long ago, I didn’t always recognize exactly how I felt. This has changed now, thanks to my tran

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