Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

The Lean Leader as Player-Coach

By Jon Miller - July 15th, 2019

Player-coaches are far less common today than they were in professional sports a few decades ago. A few notable superstar players informally perform a similar role today, but under a dedicated head coach who guide the team. In modern b

The Guessing Game of Lean Leadership

By Jon Miller - July 8th, 2019

“Eliminate slogans and exhortations asking the workforce for zero defects” or other such improvement targets, Dr. Deming set down as one of his fourteen principles. Yet this piece of advice ignored by even the most dedicate

Six Month Reflection Questions

By Jon Miller - July 1st, 2019

A colleague recently suggested reflecting back seven years on what we learned and what we would do differently today based on that. Seven years is so long ago. It almost makes me dizzy to consider. The big issues and questions from bac

Standard Work for Solving Crossword Puzzles

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2019

Lately I have been having fun solving daily crossword puzzles with my family. By reflecting on both mistakes and successful approaches, I have arrived at a strategy, even something like standard work, for solving crossword puzzles. Ste

Review of The Lean Sensei by Balle, Chartier et al.

By Jon Miller - June 17th, 2019

The Lean Sensei by Michael Ballé, Nicolas Chartier, Pascale Coignet, Sandrine Olivencia, Daryl Powell and Eivind Reke collects the co-authors’ wisdom to answer, “what is a lean sensei and what do they do?” The auth

A Surprisingly Simple Gemba Story

By Jon Miller - June 10th, 2019

During a recent workshop, a customer asked me to share some inspiring Lean conversion stories. It was an impromptu request. I did my best but didn’t quite nail it. In hindsight, I think there is a difference between stories abou

How to Choose a Continuous Improvement Approach

By Jon Miller - June 3rd, 2019

Most business leaders are at least familiar with one or more of the popular modern management improvement approaches such as BPM, TQM, Six Sigma and Lean. In many large organizations, several of these are being attempted at the same ti

First, Make a Human Connection

By Jon Miller - May 20th, 2019

A recent conversation with a friend of mine who is a continuous improvement director at a sizable North American corporation yielded some personal insights for him and general ones about being a technical change leader. This story is s

An Introduction to Kaizen

By Jon Miller - May 13th, 2019

Kaizen (改善) is a Japanese word meaning “improvement”. The symbol kai means to change, to renew, to correct something that is wrong, and zen means “good” – there is no relation to Zen Buddhism. The w

The Pursuit of True Pull

By Jon Miller - May 6th, 2019

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day with Jeff Kaas at his company Kaas Tailored. We discussed their approach to hoshin kanri, gemba walks, visual management, creating flow in a high-mix low-volume environment, and how they are adapti

Akio Toyoda Gets Real

By Jon Miller - April 29th, 2019

The New Year’s message to Toyota employees on January 8, 2019 by CEO Akio Toyoda’s was that times are changing. The automotive industry is in a once-in-a-century technological revolution. Products will need CASE: Connectiv

How to Balance Broad Deployment of Lean Tools with Development of Depth of Capability

By Jon Miller - April 22nd, 2019

During his keynote speech at KataCon 5, Jeff Liker shared a question that he is grappling with lately; how to balance the broad deployment of Lean tools with the development of depth of capability of people? By his own admission, his c

Building Lean Habits, in a Lean Way

By Jon Miller - April 8th, 2019

Our podcast with Atomic Habits author James Clear posed some interesting questions that we can ask ourselves when striving to practice and become Lean. Chiefly among them is, “Who is the type of person who could be Lean?”

Breaking the Weak Link in the Value Chain

By Jon Miller - April 1st, 2019

In the lean way of thinking, the value we deliver to the customer increases in proportion to effort when we connect processes and keep the activities moving along smoothly. Instead, Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira wri

Avoiding the Productivity Paradox

By Jon Miller - March 25th, 2019

Lean thinking and practice have the potential to improve outcomes in healthcare, software development teams, government services, business performance and even individual growth and well-being. For something that is so powerful and eff

Introducing the Value Stream Management Resources Page

By Jon Miller - March 20th, 2019

When Mike Rother and John Shook wrote the book Learning to See, it represented a major step forward in the awareness among practitioners in the lean community. Prior to the activity of Value Steam Mapping, it was more challenging for

Lean Literacy

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2019

Michael Ballé wrote a thoughtful reply to the question of what should be included in an MBA-level course to teach Lean concepts. It is a tough question because as Michael points out, there are some deep differences that must be recon

What Meetings Reveal About a Leader’s Beliefs

By Jon Miller - March 11th, 2019

One of the simplest and most impactful things an organization can do in the pursuit of excellence is to reform how they hold meetings. And yet this is one of the most challenging changes. A recent conversation reminded me of this. The

Amazon’s New Waste Reduction Strategy: Batching

By Jon Miller - March 4th, 2019

Amazon is trying something new in an effort to reduce packaging materials as well as the amount of fuel burned by making fewer deliveries. According to the article Amazon’s new waste reduction strategy: deliver only once a week, whe

What is the Right Amount of Slack?

By Jon Miller - February 25th, 2019

The Kraft Heinz company reported poor financial performance this past week, causing its stock price to dive more than 20%. It has lost nearly half of its value over the past year. A Wall Street Journal article said of Kraft’s man

Words of Taiichi Ohno: Build a System that Loses Money

By Jon Miller - February 18th, 2019

At one level, a lean transformation means improving existing systems and building new systems where required. People and organizations cannot avoid systems. We all work within systems, be they regulatory, financial, logistical, politic

Not All Costs Exist To Be Reduced

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2019

Taiichi Ohno declared, “Costs don’t exist to be calculated, costs exist to be reduced.” His point was that traditional accounting can fool us into justifying inefficient operations, building up inventory or acquiring

The Life-Affirming Science of Tidying Up

By Jon Miller - February 4th, 2019

When book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was published a few years ago, I read it with interest. It describes an unintentional application of 2S principles in the home (sort & straightening / set in order). Author and consu

How Wrong Should We Be?

By Jon Miller - January 28th, 2019

A Scientific American article titled How Wrong Should You Be? offered an answer to a question that has been in the back of my mind for a long time. Like many answers, this one raises further questions. Taiichi Ohno’s wrote in Wor

How to do Direct Observation of Knowledge Work

By Jon Miller - January 21st, 2019

Knowledge workers are people who make their living primarily by thinking. They include software programmers, scientists, academics, physicians, lawyers, engineers, managers, architects, designers, accountants and various other white-co

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