Lean Blog Audio

This is an interesting article: Inside Toyota's Takaoka #2 Line: The Most Flexible Line In The World I had a chance to visit the 'Takaoka #1" line in February 2018 as part of my tour with Kaizen Institute. This article makes me wish we had been able to see Takaoka #2, but that sounds like a somewhat rare and special opportunity (even more special than visiting Toyota is normally).

From 2013 -- http://www.leanblog.org/audio277 A principle that has been often discussed (and hopefully practiced) in the Lean community over the past few years is usually described as “respect for people.” A certain British rabble rouser recently said the following at a Lean conference: “All this respect for people stuff is horse sh*t,” and it is a “conventional Western management interpretation.” He mocked the idea of “respect for people programs,” although I'm not sure where such a standalone program has ever been attempted. That sounds like a strawman, the idea that a company would have a “respect for people” program. Let me explain why he's wrong — “respect for people” is not horse sh*t” — and we can explore some great links on “respect for people” in this post.

https://leanblog.org/audio276 "Over the past year, I've heard about the “OKRs” methodology that is used in tech companies like Google. OKRs stands for Objectives & Key Results.  The approach (along with examples and case studies) are laid out in the book by venture capitalist John Doerr, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs."  There are things I like about this model... and it reminds me of the Lean "Strategy deployment" practice... but I think it would be better with "Process Behavior Charts." #okrs #OKR #leanstartup #leanmanagement #business 

I always enjoy the KaiNexus User Conference (now called KaiNexicon starting this year) and they ask me to give a talk each year. Last year, I gave a talk called “When Being Right is the Wrong Strategy for Change” and KaiNexus recently shared a nicely-shot video of that talk on YouTube. So. I'm sharing that here... and the blog post has a transcript I had done, annotated with some slides and links. You can also read a shorter summary via the KaiNexus blog. http://www.leanblog.org/audio275

http://www.leanblog.org/audio274 I find it really interesting when scientific facts and truth get superseded by new evidence. Science isn't supposed to be stubborn… it's OK to cast aside the old status quo when we learn something new (pay attention, “flat Earth” crowd). There are a lot of these themes, also, in a book I've been reading, The Case Against Sugar, by Gary Taubes. Some of the established science about low-fat diets being good for us might not really be true. How does this all apply in medicine and our practice of Lean?

I haven't read it, but Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing has been a pop-culture phenomenon the past few years. I've seen some compare her process to the Lean practice of “5S.” Kondo says you should only keep an item if it “sparks joy.”

Here's an interesting column from Becker's Hospital Review, written by Michael Dowling, President and CEO, Northwell Health. I'm guessing he created the headline, since the phrase “give a damn” doesn't appear in the article: "Michael Dowling: CEOs — Give a damn about your people" Who are the CEOs he is speaking to who do NOT give a damn? What inspired him to write this?

Yesterday's blog post was about a situation (with my podcast hosting service) that triggered memories of my time at General Motors in 1995. Today's post is about a recent article on Boeing that definitely caused me to think of that broken, dysfunctional “pre-Lean” culture that I suffered through (and learned from) in my first year at GM. In 1995, nobody claimed GM was Lean so the expectations were low. They were who they were and my new plant manager in 1996 started to change things. Boeing is a company that has been pointed at as a great example of Lean Manufacturing, so it's troubling to read reports that suggest otherwise. From the New York Times: Claims of Shoddy Production Draw Scrutiny to a Second Boeing Jet Workers at a 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina have complained of defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations.

Episode #270 Ever since I started podcasting in 2006, I've been using a company called “Hipcast” to be the “hosting” company for the podcast audio files and feeds. For those of you not familiar with podcasting, that's the website where I upload podcast audio files… and they then serve those files when requested by services like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This has been an aggravating week or so, since Hipcast has been having a lot of technical issues going back to last Tuesday or so. Their website has been down, the podcast feeds (RSS feeds) have been broken. People haven't been able to listen to my podcasts unless they had already downloaded the episodes through their app.

Is "Kaizen" a Slogan or a Methodology for the Seattle Mariners? Here is an interesting article that a few people pointed me toward the other day about the Seattle Mariners team: Mariners Sunday mailbag: Explaining the Japanese origin of the team's new slogan “Manager Scott Servais does have a mantra each year for the team, which is supposed to serve as a reminder of their purpose and responsibility… This year, Servais chose a Japanese word: Kaizen. An avid reader, Servais got it from a book by Masaaki Imai called Kaizen: The key to Japan's competitive success.”