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RECENT POSTS

Reflections on Workplace Management

I just finished reading the book Workplace Management from Taiichi Ohno. It has been suggested that his book is not something to read as...

What motivates you?

I have been working with a small team in Atlanta, GA the past couple weeks and used a lot of the skills learned from our Operational...

How hero-minded management breaks systems

This past week I was working with a team on a project looking at some issues that were being seen in our overall surface transportation...

Define purpose, and create purposeful moments

I worked for Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL for just about a year as an Industrial Engineer intern when I was in college. In that time...

What will it take to change a culture?

Changing culture is difficult. I wonder how much frustration companies go through, especially those that have already got a pretty...

A System to See & Learn

I've been collecting many of the learning experienced in our organizational transformation and creating models of what we have been...

Gemba Learning Model

As we go on our Gemba Walks and do our Reflections, we also must step back to try to understand what it is we are doing while on the...

Frustration + Disbelief = Mistrust

I had a few experiences this week that really got me thinking about what was underlying the behaviors I was seeing. There has been an...

What Trader Joe's Can Teach us about Values

I have to start out with the simple fact that I am obsessed, completely obsessed with Trader Joe's. There's plenty to obsess about too....

Management of Distrust

Last week I wrote about a pretty amazing experience one of our plants had with their team. The human side of work was shown and the...

The Human Side of Lean

This week was a special week in one of our plants. I received an excited text and call from one of my colleagues. "Tom, I am having an...

Model Operation or Culture, Which Comes First?

With this experience going through a cultural transformation, I have found that I've gotten into some very interesting and...

Outward Mindset in an Inward Mindset World

Last week I posted about a great book called The Outward Mindset and described what it was about. This past week I started using this...

This is the Mindset that can Change our Culture

I recently went to the LSS World Conference 2018 in Las Vegas, NV. Like most of the conferences I have been to in the past few years, the...

Variation caused by this is the hardest to control

I witnessed this concept happen this past week as I worked with the team with their Gemba Walks. We walked and learned more about one of...

Krav Maga: Lean Leadership in Action

I have had a bit of a rough week. Work has been fun, but personal things this week have left me in a bit of a knotted up state. I have...

Learning to be Kick-ass for the Customer

I want my customers to have a kick-ass experience. When I look at my company's customer scores on Google or Yelp, I see 1, maybe 2 star...

Leaning out the Cleaning

I hate cleaning. It's not that the cleaning part is what I hate, I hate the fact that things get so dirty so quickly and then I spend so...

What is holding you back?

This week I was in Independence, MO working with another team in our company to help learn the skills of coaching and how to see waste...

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