Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

How to Civilize an Elevator

By Jon Miller - June 25th, 2018

As recently as four years ago, my worked involved constant international travel. This is no longer the case. I miss very little of that life. One thing that I do miss is the exposure to other cultures, in particular how humans in vario

How to Take a Trail, or Not

By Jon Miller - June 18th, 2018

While shopping for gifts with my family this weekend, I noticed the store had many cards, mugs, printed items on the theme of, “Don’t follow the trail made by others but make your own.” This is spectacularly bad advic

Wellness Programs and the Health of Continuous Improvement

By Jon Miller - June 11th, 2018

Logical. Proven. Life-changing. These words equally describe successful health & wellness programs and continuous improvement programs. But do these programs really work in changing behaviors? Professors David Asch and Shreya Kan

A Simple Hand Gesture that is Key to Goal Alignment

By Jon Miller - June 4th, 2018

Lean management aims to serve others by doing more with less, thereby sustainably reaping just rewards for such service. Among other things, this requires everyone in the organization to continuously improve products, processes, servic

Compassion as a Competitive Advantage

By Jon Miller - May 21st, 2018

“The long-term value of a company is based on the speed and quality of its decision-making.” These are the words of Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. He was speaking to the 2018 graduating business school students at the Univer

Why Have Belts in Lean and Six Sigma?

By Jon Miller - May 14th, 2018

Motorola and the General Electric company made the greatest contributions to introduce Six Sigma across business in the 20th century. The deployment of Six Sigma often relied on “belts” of various colors, people who complet

What’s the Right Way to Do a Gemba Walk?

By Jon Miller - May 7th, 2018

From time to time people ask me a variation of the question, “What’s the right way to do a gemba walk?” They want to see an outline of activities, a step-by-step process for planning, taking the walk and reflecting on

Lean Leadership is Teaching Learned Helpfulness

By Jon Miller - April 30th, 2018

When we use the expression “three-ring circus” we mean that the situation is chaotic and full of activity, not that it is entertaining. Chaotic or not, it takes effort to train animals to perform. Three-ring circuses and d

Too Good to Be True? Sustaining Kaizen for 20 Years

By Jon Miller - April 23rd, 2018

In podcast #211 we caught up with Jeff Kaas, the President of Kaas Tailored. When we first met, Jeff was 30 and I was 27 years old. He had just taken over the family business. Jeff suspected that he didn’t know what he was doin

Lean Lessons from a Do-Nothing Scholar-Bureaucrat

By Jon Miller - April 16th, 2018

The words of the fourth century Taoist philosopher Zhuanzi led to a previous article about Lean thinking and respect for humanity. Another piece of writing attributed to him is titled Geng Sang Chu. It tells the story of a disciple of

The Three Key Metrics for Continuous Improvement

By Jon Miller - April 9th, 2018

There are three key metrics to track our progress when striving for the ideal of continuous improvement. What we call continuous improvement (CI) is in fact unattainable. Something that is continuous is uninterrupted and never rests. E

How Lean Transformations Achieve a Fast Takeoff, Part 2 of 2

By Jon Miller - April 2nd, 2018

In part 1, we learned about recalcitrance and how it could prevent a fast takeoff of a superintelligence. We then drew a comparison to organizations investing effort into becoming smarter by learning and improving on a continual basis.

How Lean Transformations Achieve a Fast Takeoff, Part 1 of 2

By Jon Miller - March 26th, 2018

Superintelligence, as defined in the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom, is “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.” Hum

Lean is All About People – Or is It? 2 of 2

By Jon Miller - March 19th, 2018

In Part 1, we asked whether it was true that lean was “all about the people” and saw that lean was at least as much about flow, batch size reduction, and the various lean methods that enable this. What are the other two mai

Lean is All About People – Or is It? 1 of 2

By Jon Miller - March 12th, 2018

Lean is all about people. Few get very far arguing against this proposition because, when you do, you lose the people. As with any socio-technical system, engaging the people plays a large part in the success of lean. It feels good to

Will the Smart City be a Lean City?

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2018

Today we live in an era in which our phones, watches, household appliances and our homes themselves are getting smart. At the moment, all “smart” means is “internet connected”. This is a bit ironic as when humans connect to tod

Has Anyone Seen My Target Condition?

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2018

Steve Kane pointed out last week in his excellent blog post how we need to be careful when practicing Toyota kata not to “ambush” each other by demanding to know “What’s the current condition?” or “

What is the Most Human Level of Complexity?

By Jon Miller - February 19th, 2018

One of the goals of continuous improvement, or the management of any enterprise, always seems to involve reducing complexity. It is almost an article of faith that simplicity equals beauty and goodness. I’ve always had a vague na

Homo Sapiens Visualis

By Jon Miller - February 12th, 2018

An interesting Phys.org article about abilities and techniques of homo sapiens suggested that the gap in artistic ability between early modern humans and relative Homo species such as the Neanderthals was due to differences in the way

Looking Right at the Essence of TPS

By Jon Miller - February 5th, 2018

My friend Reiko Kano began her career as Taiichi Ohno’s interpreter thirty years ago. She then supported Ohno’s disciples, the Shingijutsu consultants, for decades. She recently wrote a book about her experiences. One of he

The Seven Losses of High IQ Leadership

By Jon Miller - January 29th, 2018

Given a choice between a leader who is dumb and a leader who is smart, most of us would choose the smart one. A smart leader will be able to draw on more knowledge, make better decisions, and find solutions to the group’s more di

Taoism, Lean Thinking and Respect for Humanity

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2018

I’ve written before on the parallels between Taoism and TPS a.k.a. lean thinking. It is not surprising that we find influences from so-called Eastern philosophies, as Taiichi Ohno and the others framers the Toyota Way were were f

The Value of Muda

By Jon Miller - January 15th, 2018

I found some wisdom in a surprising place, on the theme of lean thinking, learning, value, and muda. Ichiro Suzuki is a very successful professional baseball player who at age 44 has played the game for 25 years and intends to play int

How to Win at New Year’s Resolutions

By Jon Miller - January 8th, 2018

It’s that time of year when we reflect back on the prior 12 months, look ahead to the next 12 and set personal priorities. I’ve heard that by February, 80% of New Year’s resolutions are on their way to failure. This h

We Have the Highest Quality Standards

By Jon Miller - December 18th, 2017

My career in the field of lean thinking got started twenty-four years ago while helping Japanese consultants communicate with their American clients. There were occasions when it was as much an education in cultural differences and com

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