Gemba Academy

Speed Will Come

By Steve Kane - May 27th, 2022

The US Navy SEALs are credited by many with coining the expression “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” The idea here comes from training people to perform technical tasks correctly in an environment where there is no room

Why Traditional Measurement Approaches Do Not Change A Culture

By John Knotts - May 20th, 2022

If you are a student of business, then you have probably heard all the quotes around measuring what you do. The bottom line is if you are not measuring what you are doing, you cannot improve it. Trust me…many organizations that I

The Hierarchy of Action

By Steve Kane - April 22nd, 2022

Ryan McCall is a continuous improvement engineer at FECON. He and I have been collaborating on continuous improvement and leadership over the past couple of years. We’ve explored the works of Mike Rother, Simon Sinek, Jocko Willi

Engaging Partners and Suppliers on Your CI Journey

By John Knotts - April 15th, 2022

In my first blog on the subject of Continuous Improvement, I highlighted the proverb, “many hands, make light work.” The concept of a culture of continuous improvement is to orient everyone in the organization toward one common g

Have Faith & Trust the Process

By Ron Pereira - April 1st, 2022

My family and I are going through a difficult time right now with a personal situation. Thankfully everyone is healthy…but we have been dealt a blow. After I shared the situation with a close friend, who knows me very well, they

Why Lean Programs Don’t Work

By Jon Miller - March 22nd, 2022

While reading a Knowledge@Wharton article on the subject of why employee wellness programs don’t work, I found myself thinking about why lean programs don’t always seem to work. Management professor Iwan Barnakay found, “Well

Developing Leadership Through Tours

By John Knotts - March 18th, 2022

In my last article, we had a great discussion, in our continuing series, regarding Continuous Improvement Development for Leadership and Professionals. Leadership development is extremely important if you are trying to change or create

Top 8 Reasons Teams Abandon Their Visuals

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2022

Reader Dan made a great suggestion in a comment to a recent article on using artifacts to make thinking visible, “Next you might delve into why visuals are sometimes abandoned by teams.” Abandoned visual controls, outd

5 Ways to Be More Grateful and Why Lean Thinkers Should Care

By Ron Pereira - March 4th, 2022

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” -Cicero I’ve been thinking about gratefulness a lot lately. Being grateful is something I try to do…but often fail at. There are many

Using Artifacts to Make Our Thinking Visible

By Jon Miller - February 28th, 2022

In sports, statecraft, gambling, and other competitive endeavors, it often pays to hide one’s thoughts and true intentions. What we indicate and what we actually intend are often different. We hold our cards close to the chest an

Continuous Improvement Development for Leadership and Professionals

By Steve Kane - February 25th, 2022

This article was written by John Knotts. John is a senior coach at Gemba Academy. If you have studied anything about change management, you will have seen some type of change model; I embrace the change continuum model shown below bu

How to Let Small Things Bother You

By Jon Miller - February 21st, 2022

An interesting New York Times article points out how many of us have become desensitized to the dangers of this pandemic over the past couple of years. This is due to the constant alarm bells that ring, without always seeing real dange

Formalism for Forms

By Jon Miller - February 14th, 2022

One thing I’ve been doing a lot lately in my job at Gemba Academy is preparation. Specifically, I’m making sure that we have the graphics, figures, and forms our video editors need to do their job smoothly. The audio portio

Leverage the Power of Safety to Drive Cultural Transformation

By Kevin Meyer - February 11th, 2022

Earlier this week our good friend Mark Graban at Lean Blog reminded me of an article on how former Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill focused on improving workplace safety, which contributed to driving growth from $3 billion in 1987 to $27 b

Towards A Practice Pattern for Gratitude

By Jon Miller - February 7th, 2022

Between food, family, and the feeling of gratitude, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s easy to be thankful when our blessings cover and surround the dining room table. Even when we have little, or when we face stru

The Continuous Improvement Culture Model

By Ron Pereira - February 4th, 2022

This article was written by John Knotts, a Senior Coach here at Gemba Academy In September, we started our journey of Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement. In that first article, I discussed the concept of my model I use to

Leader Standard Work for Time and Contingency Planning

By Jon Miller - January 31st, 2022

Many of us make plans or set intentions to improve some aspect of our lives early in the year, or after a break or period of reflection. We may want to prepare healthier meals, exercise more, increase our earnings, get better at guitar

Building A Culture Of Continuous Improvement Part Two

By Steve Kane - January 28th, 2022

This article was written by John Knotts, a Senior Coach here at Gemba Academy. This is the fourth in a series of five articles written by John. The previous three are hyperlinked below: Over the last three months, we have covered th

From Lean Workplaces to Empowered Work Spaces

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2022

We could describe what lean management does as an exercise in threefold rearrangement. First, we rearrange what’s in our minds. This often begins with our attitude about what is our isn’t “my job”. It includes h

Continuously Lubricating Processes

By Kevin Meyer - January 14th, 2022

As I push through my later 50s I’m finding that I value flexibility and balance far more than strength and endurance. This is augmented in my case as I’ve always had very high calcium levels, and even after removing dairy

Lean Thinking and Extending the Mind

By Jon Miller - January 10th, 2022

It’s well-known that the the particular method for combining manpower, materials, and machinery known as lean manufacturing matured at Toyota in the latter half of the 20th century. Many organizations, both industrial and not, ha

Crafting Your Continuous Improvement Strategy

By Ron Pereira - January 7th, 2022

This article was written by John Knotts, a Senior Coach here at Gemba Academy Two months ago, we started our journey on building a culture of continuous improvement. We know that continuous improvement brings many benefits to an organi

How Lean Practices Adjust the Difficulty Level of Work

By Jon Miller - January 5th, 2022

One sentence caught my attention around the midpoint of the episode of Hidden Brain, titled Work 2.0: Game On! This was after setting the context of how people often view work as pointless or tedious, while enjoying playing games, even

How to Think About Breakthrough Objectives

By Jon Miller - December 13th, 2021

It’s the time of year when many organizations begin their final review of the past period, and begin looking ahead to the next one. Before setting goals for the coming year, it’s common to zoom out, looking at the big pictu

Continuous Improvement of Learning and Development

By Jon Miller - November 29th, 2021

I was reading through some research on how businesses are evolving their approaches to learning and development. A figure caught my attention: $1,111. This is how much businesses spent per person on training in the year 2020. What stru

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