Recent Posts
The Manager Who Got Kaizen Down from a Day a Week to an Hour a Week
July 6, 2026A new manager went to Joe Swartz, then Director of Business Transformation at Franciscan St. Francis Health, with a problem. Kaizen was...
Why Effective A3 Authors Need Permission to Fail
June 29, 2026Taiichi Ohno was famously direct about experimentation. The story most people know is the one where he drew a chalk circle on the factory...
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....
Why Improvements Don't Stick: It's Not Backsliding, It's a Failed Handoff
June 5, 2026Every continuous improvement professional has heard some version of the same complaint.
"We ran a great kaizen event. We came back ninety...
When Local Improvement Wasn't Enough: How St. Clair Hospital Scaled a Lean Culture
May 29, 2026CASE STUDY
How St. Clair Hospital scaled a Lean culture across 2,400 employees with a two-person improvement team
At a glance
- 328-bed...
Systems Thinking for Continuous Improvement: Seeing Beyond Your Own Process
May 26, 2026Most improvement work starts with a process someone can see: the steps their team follows, the metrics on their board, the problems in...
Trust Doesn't Come First: A Lesson From the Shop Floor
May 21, 2026The standard story about psychological safety runs through the relationship between a worker and their boss. Can the worker speak up? Will...
Why Improvement Programs Stall -- and the Leadership Behaviors That Restart Them
May 18, 2026Webinar preview
Most CI and operational excellence leaders have lived this. The strategy is sound. The methodology is in place. People have...
.svg)
