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Lean Municipal Government Forum in Grand Rapids

New Videos: Lean Municipal Government Forum

By Kevin Meyer - May 4th, 2018

Is your city’s government using lean? If not, perhaps you should forward this to them! We just released a new video series with the presentations and tours from the Lean Municipal Government Forum recently held in Grand Rapids, M

How do you walk the gemba?

By Ron Pereira - May 4th, 2018

Later this year we’re going to produce a course focused on the gemba walk. We have lots of ideas of how to approach this course but, like many aspects of lean, if you ask 10 “experts” how to go about the gemba walk

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

Where Do I Start with Lean?

By Steve Kane - April 27th, 2018

Where should I start with Lean? is a common question we receive at Gemba Academy. Some say starting with 5S is a must. Others favor eliminating the seven deadly wastes. Others still suggest value stream mapping. A great question

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 Importance of Respect for People in Problem-Solving

By Kevin Meyer - April 13th, 2018

Respect for people is one of the two core pillars of lean, if not the most important. We talk and write about it a lot, and it is a significant component of Gemba Academy’s online lean training programs. When respect for people i

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

The Thinking Rat Race

By Ron Pereira - April 6th, 2018

We’ve recently had some really fun podcast conversations centered around the whole “respect for people” topic. My friend and colleague, Jon Miller, challenged the idea of whether lean is really all about people. Fel

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

Gemba Academy Enhancements

By Ron Pereira - March 2nd, 2018

We’ve recently made some enhancements here at Gemba Academy that I’m pretty excited about. Asset Browser First up is what we’re calling the “Asset Browser.” While we’re likely best known for videos

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 “

Avoid the Ambush

By Steve Kane - February 23rd, 2018

As I’m writing this, I’m attending the Toyota Kata Summit in Atlanta. The early keynotes of the conference touched on several important aspects of Lean leadership. Among them were the general topic of respect for people

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

The Critical Thinking Value of Writing

By Kevin Meyer - February 9th, 2018

Almost three years ago I wrote about the power of writing – by hand. Sure, it’s easy to take notes on an iPad app or on a laptop, but the result is not nearly as beneficial as writing by hand. One of the studies I cited com

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

Learn, Grow, Share

By Ron Pereira - February 2nd, 2018

I had the strangest dream last night. I don’t normally remember my dreams… but I remember this one. I was speaking to a man about continuous improvement. I’m not sure who the man was… but in my dream I see

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

Big Decisions Don’t Lead to Results

By Steve Kane - January 26th, 2018

The Big Idea January’s the month for resolutions–big decisions to make significant changes in one’s life. Celebration of the new year offers a sense of renewal and opportunity for change. While the month of Januar

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

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