Gemba Academy Podcast: Lean Six Sigma | Toyota Kata | Productivity | Leadership

Hanna Bauer, an improvement practitioner and Six Sigma Black Belt with a psychology background, blends culture, emotional intelligence, and systems thinking through her Heartnomics work. She talks about how culture shapes change. She explains emotional intelligence as reading the room and self-regulation. She describes alignment as harmony between mission, values, and daily work. She discusses balancing empathy and accountability.

Noah Waech, a continuous improvement practitioner with a rich background in manufacturing and education, shares his insights on teaching Lean and Six Sigma. His passion for Value Stream Mapping shines as he describes hands-on experiments that engage and transform learners. Noah recounts his rewarding experiences in teaching and mentoring, and tackles strategies for engaging skeptics in the workplace. He emphasizes the importance of setting high expectations to inspire growth and improvement among teams.

In this engaging conversation, Radhika Dutt, a product strategist and author of 'Radical Product Thinking,' dives into the flaws of traditional OKRs, advocating for a puzzle-driven mindset. She introduces the OHLA framework, emphasizing curiosity over goal-driven stress. Radhika compares target mentality to effective problem-solving, revealing how understanding problems can lead to better solutions. She also shares insights from her own startup journey and stresses the importance of measuring development over evaluation in leadership. Her thoughts are sure to inspire.

In this installment, Joel Hugghins, a Lean and performance consultant with 30 years of experience, shares insights about implementing Lean practices in various industries. He tackles the challenges of CAVE (constantly against virtually everything) people and emphasizes the importance of treating employee ideas as intellectual property. Joel discusses the need for balance between vision, culture, and skills for sustainable Lean adoption. He expresses optimism for innovation and collaboration, highlighting how creativity can emerge from empowering employees.

Billy Taylor, a business leader focused on execution and organizational clarity, shares practical views on turning strategy into daily action. He discusses KPAs versus metrics, why hidden truths derail execution, how clarity breaks down, being hard on process and easy on people, and practical uses of AI for leaders. Short, direct, and action-oriented conversation.

This week, we’re sharing a special Christmas episode featuring insights from the Gemba Academy team. Each individual answered the question: What does continuous improvement mean to you in your own life? An MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here. In this episode you’ll learn:  The format of this episode (0:45) A few words from Greg (1:32) A few words from Tomii (4:53) A few words from Alen (6:36) A few words from Jennifer (8:05) A few words from Ricky (9:09) A few words from Brita (11:47) A few words from Michael (13:28) A few final words from Ron (14:42) Podcast Resources Right Click to Download this Podcast as an MP3 Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Our newsletter is a great way to receive updates on new courses, blog posts, and more. Sign up here. What Do You Think? What does continuous improvement mean to you in your own life?

Alexandra Suchman, organization development consultant and co-founder of Barometer XP, explores using play to fix team dynamics. She discusses games as low-stakes experiments to reveal interaction patterns. The conversation covers relational waste, handling personality differences during play, debriefing to learn, and starter games like Count to 20 to surface pacing and cues.

Heather Underwood, a business transformation lead who applies Lean and AI to legal operations, and Adam Marsland, a transformation leader with law firm and finance experience, discuss Lean in law, practical Lean examples for litigation and back-office work, AI use cases for process diagnostics, risks of automating the wrong things, and how multidisciplinary teams and curiosity will shape legal transformation.

Caleb Wilczynski, a design and manufacturing engineer recently certified as a Master Black Belt, shares his journey through continuous improvement and OEE implementation. He discusses transforming neglected machines which saved his company significant costs. Caleb emphasizes the importance of using data to understand performance metrics rather than placing blame. He also delves into the challenges of driving change within an organization, all while staying engaged on the factory floor and planning to share his insights widely. Expect insights on DMADV and the value of experimentation!

This week’s guest is Gemba Academy Senior Coach and Instructor Ricky Banks. Ron and Ricky discussed what it means to lead without authority, working with incarcerated individuals, the importance of building relationships, and more. An MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here. In this episode you’ll learn:  Ricky’s background (3:17) What “leading without authority” means to him (4:15) Whether it’s more or less important today (6:10) Building trust and credibility (7:47) An example of a spectacular leader (10:49) How it feels working with incarcerated individuals (15:02) How these skills work in the coaching context (18:24) The importance of relationships (22:27) The role of likeability (23:32) Podcast Resources Right Click to Download this Podcast as an MP3 Ricky on LinkedIn Ministry Manna Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Our newsletter is a great way to receive updates on new courses, blog posts, and more. Sign up here. What Do You Think? What does the phrase “leading without authority” mean to you?