Why Gemba Walks Build Leadership Presence and Performance
Building Lean Culture: Why Relationships Drive Team Trust & Engagement
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Leadership Sets the Standard
A few months ago, I worked with a client that had done everything right — on paper. The leadership team rolled out a new continuous improvement system with clear goals, strong messaging, and full commitment. But something wasn’t clicking. When we visited the floor, it was clear: leaders weren’t present. The system wasn’t visible in…
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Why CI Efforts Don’t Last
Most organizations launch continuous improvement (CI) with energy. There are kickoff events, training programs, and leadership speeches about the importance of change. But six months later? Silence. The boards stop getting updated. The problem-solving cadence slips. The energy fades. And frontline employees go back to the way things were before. So what happened? The Hardest…
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Leadership Development for a Lean Transformation: Cultivating the Mindset and Behaviors for Change
Leadership development is the linchpin of sustaining lean transformation. It’s the behaviors, mindsets, and actions of your organization’s leaders that determine whether lean principles take root and become part of your company’s DNA. While lean transformations often focus on tools and techniques like Kaizen events, 5S, and value stream mapping, these operational improvements can’t thrive…
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The Fallacy of the Silver Bullet: Why a Whole System Approach is Essential for CEOs
Once, early in my career, I was standing above a Toyota assembly line in Japan. Looking down at the plant floor, I realized that at any given time, a hundred different kinds of vehicles were rolling off the line. I felt like being there and seeing all of this was essentially akin to giving away…
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Equipping Your Team: 5 Steps to Leadership-Driven Employee Engagement
SOLUTION AREA: Leadership and Change Management
Whether we want to admit it or not, people are an organization’s most significant asset. The current world environment has made it even more difficult to retain talent, so finding ways to enhance job satisfaction and employee loyalty through employee engagement is critical.
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Leadership in Crisis: Lessons from a Childhood Survivor
SOLUTION AREA: Leadership & Change Management
Now is a difficult time for almost all businesses. Some are shuttered and experiencing the worst economic trauma imaginable. For others, the demand for their products might be soaring, but the health and well-being of their employees seems almost impossible to ensure. Each of these situations have employees, managers, and executives in places that they could not have imagined just a few months ago.
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The most dangerous phrase in today’s manufacturing—“We Leaned it out.”
SOLUTION AREA:Operational Excellence
As many of us already know, Lean is a term that depicts broad concepts within world class operations developed by Toyota following WWII. Over the past two decades, I’ve often heard leaders from different industries describe their successes by stating something along the lines of: We’ve Leaned out our factories. It’s a phrase that seems benign, yet it’s one of the most dangerous phrases a leader can use. Why? What’s wrong with this phrase?
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Finding the ‘Right’ Transformational Leader
SOLUTION AREA: Change Management and Leadership
Organizational success during significant change is dependent on several factors. Assigning the ‘right’ leader to drive that change is one of the most critical factors. Transformational leaders must have the ideal mix of competencies in leadership and business.
Read on to find out the key components that can help ensure successful change.
