daily kaizen

I am halfway through reading, what I consider (thus far), an important lean book.

Larry Loucka, a close friend and colleague, recently pointed me to a February 16th Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article.

Now, before you roll your eyes and give me the WSJ-isn’t known-for-getting-the-lean-thing-right look, hear me out. What the Journal published is really, really good stuff…even if lean, and 5S in particular, was the furthest thing from their brilliant mind(s).

I see the same cycle in so many places.

What cycle?

This one, more or less:

Step 1. Altruistic leaders sincerely (?) ask the associates for their improvement ideas (a.k.a. suggestions, kaizens, CI’s, etc.) in an attempt to foment some daily kaizen.

Step 2. Associates (not all of them), somewhat skeptically, call leadership’s bluff and submit their ideas.

Last month, I teamed up with Gemba Academy's Ron Pereira and presented a two-part webinar on the subject of

I just contributed a guest post of the same title to Christian Paulsen's Lean Leadership blog. Please visit his site to read my full post and to take in some of Chris' excellent lean content. Chris shared some of his insight with us a while back in his Gemba Tales guest post, 5 Reasons You Need to Do a DMAIC.

Lean culture is largely defined by, or at least manifested in, engaged and empowered employees practicing v