GE’s Larry Culp: Why Lean Thinking Starts with Safety and Respect for People

The blog post

This episode looks at how GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp grounds Lean leadership in two fundamentals: safety and respect for people. Drawing on his recent appearance on the Gray Matter podcast, we explore how Culp applies the core habits of the Toyota Production System—not as slogans, but as daily practice.

Culp traces his Lean development back to Danaher, where he learned kaizen directly from consultants trained by Toyota’s Shingijutsu pioneers. That early exposure shaped his belief that improvement is a behavior, not a program. He still invites those same advisers, including Yukio Katahira, onto GE Aerospace’s shop floors—reinforcing that the real expertise lives with the people doing the work.

He describes how he “kaizens himself” after board meetings and plant visits, using the same PDSA cycle expected throughout the organization. His message is blunt: Lean fails when leaders try to drive improvement from conference rooms instead of going to the work.

The conversation also highlights GE’s SQDC focus—Safety and Quality before Delivery and Cost—and why Culp begins every leadership meeting with a safety moment. Given that three billion passengers fly each year on GE-powered aircraft, he frames safety as a responsibility, not a dashboard metric.

Culp’s turnaround work emphasizes cultural change as much as operational results. He’s pushing GE from a finger-pointing culture toward a problem-solving culture, where issues are surfaced early and treated without blame. Psychological safety is essential to that shift.

The throughline is simple and consistent: continuous improvement requires humble leadership, curiosity at every level, and a commitment to getting closer to the work. Culp’s approach is a reminder that Lean endures not because of its tools, but because of the behaviors it cultivates.