Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

The Whole Problem of End-to-End Productivity

By Jon Miller - July 20th, 2015

As the adage attributed to management guru Peter Drucker goes, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Well, you might be able to improve it by chance or by heroic effort, but not in a sustainable way.

Last Week in Bad Problem Solving, 2016 POTUS Candidate Edition

By Jon Miller - July 13th, 2015

When one spends as much time as I do thinking about the ins and outs of the problem solving process, it soon becomes painfully obvious that the U.S. political system demands very little from our elected leaders in that regard. Last

You Had One Job, Fireplace Poker

By Jon Miller - July 6th, 2015

A fireplace poker has one job: to take the place of the unprotected hand in tending a fire. Normally a rigid metal rod with a curved bit at the end, a poker is used to move firewood, hot coals or whatever else one happens to be bur

The High Cost of Ignoring Standard Work

By Jon Miller - June 29th, 2015

This June marked the 200th anniversary of the defeat of Napoleon by Wellington at Waterloo, which effectively ended his career as a military and political leader. Reading Andrew Roberts’ excellent book Napoleon: A Life, it became app

The Most Dangerous Idea in the World

By Jon Miller - June 22nd, 2015

This week I learned about a new book, Kaizen Forever: Teaching of Chihiro Nakao by Bob Emiliani, Rudy Go and Katsusaburo Yoshino. Mr. Nakao was the first Shingijutsu consultant I met and worked with in 1993. Even just one week spent

Own-Process Completion as the Basis of Lean Quality

By Jon Miller - June 15th, 2015

JKK sounds like something that the young people of today might say. Perhaps a text in reaction to hurting another’s feelings, as in “Just kidding, OK?” In fact, it’s one of the lesser known Toyota concepts that

Bootstrap Root Cause Analysis into Your Strategic Thinking

By Jon Miller - June 8th, 2015

I’ve had some interesting differences of opinion lately about if and how root cause analysis fits into an organization’s strategic planning. Both hoshin planning, the strategy deployment method practiced by Toyota and many other le

Knowing What I Know Now…

By Jon Miller - June 1st, 2015

This week lean thinker, friend of Gemba Academy and American innovator Paul Akers shared an 11-minute video of an answer he gave to the question, “What would you do if starting over with lean, but knowing everything you know now?

What’s Your Dispassion?

By Jon Miller - May 25th, 2015

“What’s your passion?” Lately I’m often asked this when meeting new people socially for the first time. This always trips me up. Shall I name hobbies? Family members? Questions that I am pondering? Issues that make me angry or

Stress is Good for You (But Only If You’re Told)?

By Jon Miller - May 18th, 2015

Most would agree that stress is bad for our health and well being. When we are under pressure, when we are tense or when we feel uptight, these are all signs stress. Although people with many things going on in their lives, under a l

Solution-Jumping in the 21st Century

By Jon Miller - May 11th, 2015

This is a brief review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty with some longer observations on the problem solving process in the book, from a lean management perspective . It is surprisingly readable for a 570 page

Three Tips for More Effective Hansei (Reflection)

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2015

Hansei is a Japanese word meaning “reflection” or “self-reflection”. It has entered the lean vocabulary through the literature on hoshin planning, and more generally through discussions of what actually happen

Thirsty Horses and a Call for Meta-Advice

By Jon Miller - April 27th, 2015

Some of the process-related questions leaders ask during their interaction with front line workers include variations on “What is the standard?” and “What is the actual process?” and upon finding a gap “Why is there a gap?�

Heroin, Ice Cream and Candy Bars

By Jon Miller - April 20th, 2015

One of the many criticisms of the kaizen event approach to implementing lean is its insistence on delivering results in the form of visible changes within the 3-day to 5-day format. When proper preparation has been done and the kaizen

Leading Lean, Like Pioneers or Privateers?

By Jon Miller - April 13th, 2015

Several recent conversations with a few seasoned lean thinkers, authors and experts have made me aware of an emerging belief among them that the corporate “lean initiative” or “lean implementation” or “l

Towards a Culture Free of Fear, Embrace Surprise

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2015

As a founding father of lean management, Taiichi Ohno believed that the enlightened leader is quick to admit being wrong. He said, “If you are wrong, admit it!” and further went on to speculate that even the wisest of us are wrong

How to Be Lean

By Jon Miller - March 30th, 2015

By Jon Miller Most people who come to Gemba Academy are looking for answers to three basic types of questions. The first is the technical question, relating to the practical details, formulas, calculations, shortcuts, dos and don’

Lean Leadership Lessons from William T. Sherman

By Jon Miller - March 26th, 2015

By Jon Miller I just finished reading a book about the Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, titled Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman, by Robert O’Connell. I recommend it heartily for fans of milita

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Caution! Possible Scalding

By Jon Miller - October 10th, 2014

Labeling and signage alone are about as effective in preventing accidents as fences are in preventing birds from flying over them. Warning labels can come across as a mere attempt to minimize a business’s liability, rather than a

Review of Lead with Respect by Freddy & Michael Ballé

By Jon Miller - August 2nd, 2014

Lead With Respect: A Novel of Lean Practice by Freddy Ballé and Michael Ballé is the one book on lean that I will recommend this year to anyone who asks. I am not a fan of the business novel. There is already enough fiction in most b

Why is “What is Lean?” ‘A Simple Question Without An Easy Answer’?

By Jon Miller - June 25th, 2014

This article refers to the Lean.org posting: ‘simple question without an easy answer?’ First of all, “what is lean?” is not a question whose answer can be qualified as “easy” or “hard&

Review of Value Stream Mapping by Karen Martin & Mike Osterling

By Jon Miller - January 14th, 2014

There have been several watershed moments in the development of Western consciousness and practice of Lean management over the past 25 years. Perhaps first was the arrival of Masaaki Imai, Chihiro Nakao and Yoshiki Iwata in Connecticut

Review of Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein

By Jon Miller - December 17th, 2013

It’s a happy day when a favorite author-business philosophers integrates two favorite qualities into 121 concise pages. Edgar Schein has done this in Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. He argues simply a

What does ‘right first time’ mean in an R&D environment?

By Jon Miller - December 8th, 2013

Decades that have passed since anchoring principles of Lean have been published, reworded and republished, from Deming, Liker and others. Lean tools and their results abound, but Lean behaviors evidencing belief in these principles are

Why the Only Way to Think is Long-term

By Jon Miller - November 20th, 2013

Lean principles are hard to live by. It is far easier to use Lean methods to drive for and achieve results, cash in on performance incentives and leverage that success for a promotion or even a new job, quickly before the lack of susta

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