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15 Lean Failure Lessons from Software Development, 2/3

By Jon Miller - November 6th, 2017

Can it be true that as many as 95% of Lean transformations fail? If so, how? Challenges from the complexities of modern software development offer insights. This post is part 2 of a 3-part exploration, inspired by the article The Comi

Do This and Lean Success Is Far More Likely

By Ron Pereira - November 3rd, 2017

Getting started with continuous improvement is hard. But, I think it’s safe to say that sustaining continuous improvement over the long run is even harder. At Gemba Academy we mentor and coach hundreds of lean and six sigma pra

15 Lean Failure Lessons from Software Development, 1/3

By Jon Miller - October 30th, 2017

Reading the Atlantic Monthly article The Coming Software Apocalypse helped me see the question of “Why do lean transformations fail?” in a new context. This question is usually preceded by statements like “95% of lean

I Feel Better Already

By Steve Kane - October 27th, 2017

A customer recently contacted me to let me know that business conditions had changed and he would be unable to put his Gemba Academy subscription to use. He was consumed with several business problems to solve at once and was working

Why Aliens Have Yet to Visit Earth

By Jon Miller - October 23rd, 2017

Space is big. The scale of outer space is so grand that humans can’t comprehend it. To boot, humans have difficulty with long-term thinking. This has resulted in an emerging tragedy of the commons, in orbital space. About 95% of

How Fresh Starts Motivate Us to Keep Improving

By Jon Miller - October 16th, 2017

When a method works, it works even when we don’t understand how. If we do understand, we can find wider application for the method. So it was interesting to stumble across a human behavior called the fresh start effect as a possi

From Linear to Roundabout Thinking

By Kevin Meyer - October 13th, 2017

Ever since I visited Italy over a decade ago my inner geek has had a fascination with traffic engineering. If you’ve visited Italy, or many similar places, you probably know why. Traffic appears chaotic, thanks in part to wha

Why Don’t You Try TPS?

By Jon Miller - October 9th, 2017

“We need to improve our operation.” “Why don’t you try TPS?” “We don’t make cars.” If I had a dollar for every time a client brought up the “we don’t make cars” objection to trying to learn from the Toyota Product

The Dangers of Benchmarking Lean Exemplars

By Ron Pereira - October 6th, 2017

A common practice for folks getting started with lean is to benchmark lean exemplars in order to see what “good” looks like. In fact, there are benchmarking tours to Japan where you can visit companies like Toyota. I ac

The Definition of Insanity

By Jon Miller - October 2nd, 2017

Insanity is thinking or behavior that is unreasonable or irrational. Albert Einstein is often credited with observing that insanity is doing the same thing over and over a again and expecting different results. This definition seems to

Lean Customer Experience Design

By Jon Miller - September 25th, 2017

Customers are front and center when it comes to lean transformations. We want to win them over, delight them, keep them, strengthen the relationship and grow the business, by continuously improving what we do. Too often for non-service

There’s Value in Simple, Visual and Manual Systems

By Steve Kane - September 22nd, 2017

The advancement of technology of the years has put the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. We can look up pretty much anything we want to know in a matter of seconds. Data systems have enabled us to see details of our busines

A Speedy Recovery to Houston, and a Lesson in Overburdened Systems

By Jon Miller - September 18th, 2017

Mura, muri, muda. Three words that someone should have taught the civic leaders of Houston decades ago. This trio explains how systems break, why we waste our resources, and why people suffer worse than we should from predictable disas

A Spymaster’s Guide to Lean Thinking

By Jon Miller - September 11th, 2017

A person works in intelligence told me a few things about that profession. Here is a summary of a few similarities between good spy craft and good business leadership that come with lean thinking. Go to the gemba. Intelligence gatherin

Chess Masters and Lean Thinkers

By Jon Miller - September 4th, 2017

I found an interesting parallel between lean thinking and game mastery in a book about the history of board games by Tristan Donovan titled It’s All A Game. In a section of the book discussing chess, the author introduced an insi

Monuments to the Lean Journey

By Kevin Meyer - September 1st, 2017

Nearly two decades ago I had left the medical device industry to jump into telecom photonics equipment. My team was responsible for the operations side of a facility that was a recently-acquired startup in the space, with a product t

This Area Closed to Improvement

By Jon Miller - August 28th, 2017

An organization I visited recently surprised me. They are on a long-running and successful continuous improvement journey. They do many things right. They recognize where they have gaps and are open to outside help. And yet they have c

Questions from a Gemba Academy Subscriber

By Steve Kane - August 25th, 2017

When customers start a subscription with Gemba Academy we like to start with discussion about how we can help them meet their Lean goals. A recent new customer was very well prepared for our conversation and had four prepared question

What Lean Leaders Can Learn from the Humanities

By Jon Miller - August 14th, 2017

Leaders in business tend to come with educational backgrounds in finance, business, engineering, medicine or law. It is less common that they bring backgrounds in literature, philosophy, the liberal arts. These fields are viewed as les

Walking (and Swimming, Biking, Running) the Talk

By Kevin Meyer - August 11th, 2017

Many of you know Paul Akers of Fastcap. He’s a very passionate lean practitioner, and Gemba Academy has several videos where we talk to him and tour his company. Almost two years ago I was talking to him and he told me how he,

Solving the Engagement Equation with Tracey & Ernie Richardson

By Jon Miller - August 7th, 2017

The Toyota Engagement Equation: How to Understand and Implement Continuous Improvement Thinking in Any Organization by Tracey and Ernie Richardson has been published by McGraw-Hill Education. The book follows the experiences of Tracey

The SELF Journal

By Ron Pereira - August 4th, 2017

I, along with several of my Gemba Academy colleagues, have started to experiment with something called the SELF Journal. Upon first glance the SELF Journal looks like your normal day planner. And it does a great job of helping you pl

What it Means to Turn the PDCA Cycle One More Time

By Jon Miller - July 31st, 2017

A. It’s the first letter in the alphabet. It’s also the last letter in PDCA. Central to the scientific method, problem solving and continuous improvement, the PDCA cycle stands for Plan, Do, Check, and A is for Act, Adjust

Why I Mow My Own Lawn

By Steve Kane - July 28th, 2017

There are things you should do yourself and other things you should pay someone else to do It seems that, for many people, there is no uncertainty about which category lawn maintenance falls into. This is why lawn maintenance compani

Lessons in Problem Solving from Seattle’s Bike Share Fail

By Jon Miller - July 24th, 2017

In March of this year, the City of Seattle put an end to its taxpayer-funded experiment in bike sharing. The Pronto! bike share program allowed members to pick up and drop off one of 500 bikes from 50 stations across Seattle. When the

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