How to Spread Innovation: 3 Farcical Lessons from IBM 

When a creativity consultant told executives at a consumer healthcare company that they needed to suit up in spandex superhero costumes to...

HROs: Reliability at 30,000 Feet

I’m sitting on an airplane right now. Over the next hour or so, I’m going to write this blog post. I really want to write a blog that you...

9 Signs that Your Organization Could Benefit from Hoshin Kanri

I once saw a cartoon that depicted two knights from the middle ages in a sword fight.

Incremental Improvement: Not Just for the Factory Floor.

If you do a bit of reading about  improvement methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, or Toyota Kata, you might come...

Simon Sinek Shares an Opinion of Lean on the Gemba Academy Podcast

I've written about Simon Sinek on this blog before, and if you've read those posts, you know that he is my hero. He's an author best known...

Who’s Responsible for Improvement Management?

Make Your Next Kaizen Event a Hole-in-One

Anyone who plays a little golf can attest to the fact that what you do with the club before and after hitting the ball is every bit as...

"Build a Change Platform?" Yes, We Did

I first got introduced to the thoughts and teachings of Professor Gary Hamel back in 1997 or so, before I headed off to MIT for grad...

Gemba Walk Your Way Back to School

When I was in elementary school I loved field trips. What kid doesn’t? We took field trips to the natural history museum, the planetarium,...