article

188 Articles
Uber Lyft

The Value of Uber and Airbnb

By Kevin Meyer - June 12th, 2015

By Kevin Meyer The following is not an advertisement, even if it sounds like it. I will admit I am a big fan of Uber and use the service pretty much anytime I travel. Now that they’re in my relatively small town, I might start us

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

The Power of Essentialism

By Ron Pereira - June 5th, 2015

Greg’s wife was scheduled to give birth to a baby girl on Friday. Upon hearing this wonderful news Greg’s boss explained, in a rather direct way, “Friday would be a very bad day to have the baby.” You see, as it turns out, Greg

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

What Do You Demonstrate and What Do You Tolerate?

By Steve Kane - May 8th, 2015

By Steve Kane I attended the AME Regional Conference in Denver last week and had some great conversations with Lean practitioners from a wide variety of organizations.  It seems the topic of discussion in Lean circles has gravitated a

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

Slow… or Just Observant?

By Kevin Meyer - May 1st, 2015

By Kevin Meyer The recent earthquake in Nepal has led me to reflect a bit on the importance of observation.  Just over a year ago my wife and I were in Nepal, visiting various locations in the Kathmandu valley as well as Pokhara and B

Start your Lean & Six Sigma training today.