When Strategy Lives in PowerPoint, Nothing Aligns
June 24, 2026Most organizations have a strategic plan. Most also have the experience of watching that plan fragment as it moves downstream. Priorities...
Two Questions Kim Barnas Wanted Every Leader to Ask
June 22, 2026The continuous improvement community lost Kim Barnas earlier this year. She passed away on January 3, 2026, after several years of...
No, You Can't Disband Your CI Team After Two Years
June 16, 2026Not long ago, an organization told us it was dissolving its continuous improvement department. The reasoning sounded almost responsible....
Voice of Customer Has a Blind Spot: The Signals Your Customers Send Without Saying Anything
June 15, 2026Voice of Customer has been part of the Lean and Six Sigma vocabulary for so long that the phrase mostly goes unexamined. We gather customer...
Most People Aren't Resisting Change. They're at a Different Stage of It.
June 15, 2026The standard story about why improvement initiatives fail goes like this. The team designs the change. The team plans the rollout. The team...
Running In Dress Shoes: A Cautionary Tale
June 13, 2026A lot of organizations hold off on continuous improvement software for the same reason: "We're not ready. Our culture needs work first."...
How to Read "Best Continuous Improvement Software" Lists (And What They Don't Tell You)
June 11, 2026Search "best continuous improvement software," and you'll find roughly forty pages of "Top 10 CI Software for 2026" articles. Click into...
The 5 Whys Mistake That Stops Your Root Cause Analysis Three Whys Early
June 10, 2026An employee falls on the floor. Someone investigates. Why did they fall? They stepped on a wet spot.
That's a true answer. It's also the...
DMAIC in Action: A Real Example from Define to Control
June 9, 2026Most explanations of DMAIC read like textbook chapters. Here's what the framework looks like, here's what each phase does, here are some...
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