Leadership Archives | Page 32 of 37

10 Characteristics of Great Coaches & Learners

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2013

Throughout my professional career I’ve been fortunate enough to learn – and teach others – about leadership, lean, and six sigma. As I reflect back, I believe I’ve uncovered some characteristics of what makes a good coa

5 Powerful Techniques for Dealing with Setbacks or Total Failure

By Ron Pereira - June 11th, 2013

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right. -Henry Ford It’s 9:25 PM on a Friday night and I’m currently sitting in the Seattle Tacoma airport due to my flight being delayed. Latest estimates have me arriving home in Dall

How Do You Document Your Processes?

By Ron Pereira - May 13th, 2013

At Gemba Academy we’re constantly doing our best to “practice what we teach.” Now, to be honest, we’re far from perfect (who is?) but we’re always trying to find better ways to take care of our customers and develop better pr

Going to Gemba vs. Statistical Analysis

By Ron Pereira - May 6th, 2013

Early in my professional career I worked as a Process Engineer at Nokia (in their mobile phone division). I had many responsibilities but, ultimately, my most important job centered on ensuring all of the equipment was producing cell p

The Problem with A3 Reports

By Ron Pereira - April 22nd, 2013

The A3 report may be one of the most misunderstood lean thinking tools of our time. Why do I say this? Simple. It’s Just a Piece of Paper The A3 report, in and of itself, is nothing more than a piece of paper. But, for some reaso

A Factory of One

By Ron Pereira - April 26th, 2012

If you missed our most recent webinar called “A Factory of One” you can watch a replay of it here. It was excellent and I highly recommend you take the time to check it out. It’s free to view until May 15, 2012. Aft

Perseverance & PDCA

By Ron Pereira - March 13th, 2012

“Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). The ability to persevere through the tough times we experience as lean and six sigma practitioners is extremely important. In fact, the ability to persev

And with your spirit

By Ron Pereira - January 3rd, 2012

Roman Catholics around the word recently saw a huge change to the way Mass is celebrated. Specifically, there were several changes to the prayers we say. For example, prior to the change if you walked up to any Catholic and said, “Th

The Courage to Try

By Ron Pereira - December 1st, 2011

I was recently speaking with a Gemba Academy customer who’s looking to start a small lean consulting company. I’ll call this person Bob for the sake of this article. About Bob Bob explained that he doesn’t have a college degree b

How to Not Demotivate People

By Ron Pereira - October 31st, 2011

Here is a short, but excellent, video on how to not demotivate workers. The person speaking is Jim Collins, author of the bestseller Good to Great. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on whether you agree with everything Mr. Col

Training Wheels

By Ron Pereira - August 30th, 2011

My son, who just turned 5 years old, recently taught me a valuable lesson. Like most young people my boy was itching to take the training wheels off his bicycle. We had told him that Daddy would take the training wheels off this weeke

3 Things You Can Do When Your Manager Doesn’t Support Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - August 2nd, 2011

We lean bloggers like to preach the importance of senior management support as it relates to continuous improvement. To be sure, having senior management support is extremely important and without it the hill to continuous improvement

Help! No Management Support!

By Ron Pereira - July 19th, 2011

Most will agree that having top management support is crucial to succeeding at any form of continuous improvement – lean, six sigma, TOC, etc. But what happens when management isn’t behind the employees who are attempting to use le

3 Ways to Break Through Productivity Ruts

By Ron Pereira - July 12th, 2011

We’ve all been there… stuck in rut. Unmotivated. Bored. Possibly even a bit down in the dumps. And, to be sure, when we’re in this dip it’s easy for our personal productivity to hit rock bottom. With this said, here are 3 thing

Hustle

By Ron Pereira - July 6th, 2011

It’s 12:43 AM and I’ve been in the zone working on some Gemba Academy projects. I can’t explain it… but I love working late into the night from time to time. I do think getting adequate sleep is supremely impo

Great, here comes Mr. “Oh – No!”

By Ron Pereira - June 28th, 2011

As I mentioned in a recent article I had the great honor of meeting Mr. Masaaki Imai, the founder of the Kaizen Institute and author of several lean related books. As it turns out, Mr. Imai knew Mr. Taiichi Ohno – the chief architect

What Challenges Are You Facing?

By Ron Pereira - June 7th, 2011

A quick question… what challenges are you currently facing as it relates to building a culture of continuous improvement within your organization? These challenges can be related to people, processes, or anything else in between.

Character & Integrity

By Ron Pereira - May 30th, 2011

Those that follow American college football likely know that Jim Tressel, Ohio State’s football coach, resigned today. It’s a sad, although not totally unexpected, day for Buckeye nation. Of course the rest of the college football

The Secret to Living a Happy Life at Home and Work

By Ron Pereira - April 27th, 2011

I’m confident that I’ve found the secret to living a happy life. I’m serious. I really do think I’ve figured it out. You see, I know many people who are unhappy since they spend most of their lives at jobs they don’t lik

Let’s Dance

By Ron Pereira - April 11th, 2011

A few months ago I wrote about my experiences coaching my daughter’s U7 soccer team. Specifically, I shared how lots of practice and hard work resulted in our girls winning their indoor league championship. Well, I’m very excited

Leader Standard Work – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - March 18th, 2011

Here is part 1 (of 7) of Gemba Academy’s Leader Standard Work course. If you’re reading this via email or RSS reader you’ll likely need to click through to the website in order to watch the video.

Stealing Monkeys

By Ron Pereira - February 16th, 2011

I love learning new things… as such yesterday was a very good day as I had the privilege to hear Mike Wroblewski deliver training on Leader Standard Work, TPM, and Time Observation. For those interested, all of this live training was

This is the worst it’s ever been

By Ron Pereira - February 10th, 2011

I’m typically a glass is half full kind of guy. But I also believe the phrase “This is the worst it’s ever been…” just may be the mission statement successful people and organizations live by. You se

Does Master Yoda Wisdom Contradict Lean Thinking?

By Ron Pereira - February 4th, 2011

In this famous Star Wars Dagobah swamp scene Master Yoda challenges Luke to raise his sunken starfighter with the power of his mind. I’ll Try Luke replies like many of us might when he says, “I’ll try.” Master Yoda then sco

Practice Makes Champions

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2011

A few months ago I wrote about my soccer coaching experiences with my daughter’s U7 team. To conclude that article I mentioned we were about to start playing indoor soccer. Well, that indoor season ended Friday night… and I’m hap

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