Gemba Academy

How to Vaccinate 100 Million People in 100 Days

By Jon Miller - January 18th, 2021

This week the incoming U.S. President Biden announced his intentions use FEMA and the National Guard to establish COVID vaccination sites across the country. The goal is to vaccinate 100 million people his first 100 days in office. At

How to Have a Happy New Year

By Jon Miller - January 11th, 2021

The end of one year and the start of the next one is a time to reflect on a question; how can we make this year better than the last? What have we learned? What do we still need to learn to have a happy new year? Especially this past

Better Living through Algorithms

By Jon Miller - December 14th, 2020

I’ve been reflecting on an article from June of this year. It’s about Daniel Kahneman’s efforts to help organizations to become better at decision-making. He is a Nobel Prize winning psychologist and behavioral econo

Norman Bodek and Respect for People

By Kevin Meyer - December 11th, 2020

Yesterday I learned of the passing of Norman Bodek and I have been reflecting on the impact this great man had on my life and career – and the lean and business world in general. A quarter century ago I was a new operations manag

Simpler Definitions of Muri, Muda and Mura

By Jon Miller - December 7th, 2020

In the Lean lexicon are three Japanese words that describe the nature of losses in a system. They are muri, muda and mura. In English these are often translated as overburden, waste and variation. The seven types of waste are well-know

What is the Biggest Truth in Life?

By Ron Pereira - December 4th, 2020

Earlier this week one of my podcast guests turned the tables and asked me a few questions. I was fully prepared for a few traditional continuous improvement themed questions but, as it turns out, the first question, in particular, was

Gratitude as a Performance Metric?

By Jon Miller - November 30th, 2020

Each year during the November harvest festival, I take time to reflect on thankfulness. This year it’s less about appreciating the fruits of efforts, payoffs from sacrifices, or being grateful for seeds sewn long ago. It feels mo

Change Point Management, Accountability and the Seahawk’s Defense

By Jon Miller - November 23rd, 2020

In a few short years, the Seattle Seahawks’ defense has gone from being historically great to the worst ever in terms of yards allowed, through the first half of the 2020 season. Fans are agonizing over this, calling for the head

Lean Thinking and the Swiss Cheese Model

By Jon Miller - November 16th, 2020

This pandemic has introduced many new terms and concepts into the popular consciousness. We work to flatten the curve. Policies now state that some businesses and jobs as essential. We are aware of the dangers of asymptomatic transmiss

Five 5 Why Fallacies to Avoid

By Jon Miller - November 9th, 2020

I was updating a few old articles on problem solving and came across some notes from a few years ago. These notes were on topics related to root cause analysis that I’ve written or spoken about. I picked out a few old favorites a

The Winning Link with Billy Taylor

By Ron Pereira - November 6th, 2020

Gemba Academy is entering the “live stream” movement. We’ve obviously had some experience with video based learning over the years and we’ve also done many webinars which, technically, is a streaming event. Bu

Learning from the Scientific Skepticism of the Amazing Randi

By Jon Miller - October 26th, 2020

Growing up in Japan in the 1970s, I was exposed to a lot of entertainment about supernatural or extraordinary phenomena. In books and on TV, there were what seemed at the time like serious investigations of UFOs, ghosts, ESP and crypto

Stop Being the Expert and Be a Coach

By Steve Kane - October 23rd, 2020

I wrote the article below a few years ago and wanted to revisit it and include some thoughts on how this relates to coaching. “If I am wiser. . . it is because I know that I do not know.” ~ Socrates Is it possible that expe

Queues These Days as Reminders of Little’s Law

By Jon Miller - October 19th, 2020

I’ve never been fond of queues. It’s not so much the standing and waiting that bothers me. Instead, it’s the reminder that queue exists because there is an imperfection in the process that prevents smooth flow. Of cou

Lean Lessons from Soviet Supermarket Failures

By Jon Miller - October 12th, 2020

I came across the story of How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War while catching up on past episodes of the Freakonomics Radio podcast. It tells of the role the American supermarket played in the downfall of communism in t

Time to Stop

By Kevin Meyer - October 9th, 2020

As we approach the arbitrary end of the year, many organizations are beginning the planning cycle for next year. Part of that process should be identifying what projects and activities should be stopped, for several reasons – p

The Many Methods of Business Process Mapping

By Jon Miller - October 5th, 2020

One of our content goals for the year is to make our learning library more useful for knowledge workers. To this end, we are in the process of building the Business Process Mapping course. What’s in the Business Process Mapping C

Focus on What you Plan to Do (Not What You Want to Get Done)

By Ron Pereira - October 2nd, 2020

Yesterday, during a coaching call with Allen, one of our Black Belt candidates, I had an interesting conversation. Allen asked how to best plan out the next 5 business days and if I had any recommendations on what he should get done.

The Loopy Guide to Getting Started with Lean

By Jon Miller - September 28th, 2020

We often hear the question, “Where do I get started?” from people new to lean, continuous improvement or operational excellence. A simple, universal answer continues to evade us. The answer is rather situational. It depends

5 Tips for Choosing a Lean Certification Course

By Steve Kane - September 25th, 2020

There are many Lean certification courses available from a wide variety of organizations. Choosing the right one to suit your specific needs can be a bit tricky. Here are some tips and considerations to help you find the right one for

The Five-minute Morale and Productivity Booster

By Jon Miller - September 21st, 2020

We love to hear from our customers at Gemba Academy. Sometimes it’s about things we can do better. Customer requests for new topics for our learning library are an important input to our plans. Perhaps the best is hearing about o

COLLECT Questions for Better Gemba Walks

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2020

The purpose of gemba walks is to demonstrate respect for the people who do the work, collect information, and promote actions that continuously improve processes and shape organizational culture. People accomplish this by going to the

Infographic: 5 Best Practices for Online Learning

By Kevin Meyer - September 12th, 2020

Gemba Academy’s latest infographic on “5 Best Practices for Online Learning” is now available! The image is below, or you can download it on our Resources page. The other infographics on Best Practices for Remote

The Stabilizing Foundation of Values

By Kevin Meyer - September 11th, 2020

We’re living through some crazy times and dealing with issues that were not anticipated during planning sessions. Every day we’re confronted with new information, new analyses of facts and opinions, creating new decisions

How to Build High-Performance Teams through Lean Practices

By Jon Miller - September 7th, 2020

Teams are a well-established feature of how we manage, accomplish and improve our work. Yet too often teams at work are no more than a near-random collection of people. If we were building a high-performance car, we would never do so w

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