Lean for Small Businesses: Personal Kaizen

Darren suggests a personal kaizen to free managers' time and align metrics with customer outcomes in small firms.

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Episode notes

On this episode of Quality Time with MoreSteam, Darren Walsh joins the show. Darren is a Lean leadership coach and author with over 30 years driving transformations across industries like medical devices, aerospace, and healthcare. Oh, and also video games. We definitely talk about video games. Darren wrote the book Making Lean and Continuous Improvement Work: A Leader's Guide to Increasing Consistency and Getting Significantly More Done in Less Time. It's been getting a lot of buzz in the world of Lean.

Darren wrote his book after seeing the same struggles everywhere he went. Teams want to improve. But they can't seem to make it stick. There are thousands of certified Green Belts and Yellow Belts, but most organizations still struggle with day-to-day problems. Darren spent years researching why that happens and how to fix it.

Darren shares stories from his time at Sega in the 90s. As a member of Generation X, host Dan Swartwout finds this topic especially interesting. Darren also talks about building sustainable improvement cultures as opposed to chasing quick wins. It's a great conversation with one of the foremost leaders in continuous improvement.

What should daily management actually accomplish? Why do frontline managers play a bigger role in continuous improvement than most people realize? Learn the answers to these questions and more. And of course, because it's Quality Time with MoreSteam, there are some laughs along the way. Plan. Do. Check. And act by downloading this episode!

In this episode, you will hear about:

1:46 - Darren's background

5:23 - Why Darren wrote Making Lean and Continuous Improvement Work

9:06 - The number one takeaway from Darren's book

11:44 - Continuous Improvement at Sega

16:55 - The first 30 or 60 days at a multi-site transformation

20:16 - Implementing Lean in smaller businesses

22:26 - Frontline managers who spend time on the wrong things

25:18 - Visiting the Gemba with the right mindset

28:50 - Organizations that want to improve but get stuck

33:31 - The standard work of Lean management

37:12 - Darren's next book (and how you can help!)