In the KaiZone Friday Favorites, I present my top ten favorite articles from the last week (give or take a few days) in the world of Lean – and beyond. With leading content from the world’s foremost improvement authors and future Lean leaders, I do the research so you don’t have to!
- Strategy Deployment & Dieting by Pascal Dennis. When it comes to strategy deployment, “more companies die from over-eating than from starvation”.
- Top 5 Operational Metrics by Matt Elson. “Whether it’s OEE, Indirect/Direct Ratio (I hate that one in particular!) or Sales per Salesperson, metrics can make or break you and your business. So which ones make sense? By using what we call in TPS “The Big 5″ metrics, you keep things simple and effective.”
- Food Bank for New York City Case Study from the Toyota Production System Support Center. “By applying concepts of the Toyota Production System to food distribution, the outside line at the Community Kitchen dropped from 1.5 hours to 18 minutes.”
- Micromanage the Process by Respecting People from the Liker Leadership Institute. “When we view management as a system to control people, then looking closely at what we do feels like too much control. When we conceive of management as teaching, then it is unimaginable that a manager would stay at arm’s length, only paying attention to team members when they are not making the numbers.”
- The Habits of Successful People: They Start Small from The Buffer Blog. “What I’m starting to notice more and more, is that great things almost always start small . . . the reality is counterintuitive: actually, the best things we know and love started as tiny things.”
- Starting the Leadership Journey by Dan Jones. “Start by building the problem solving capabilities to improve the processes or value streams that create value for customers. The one lesson I have learnt time and time again is that lean cannot be “done for you, you have to do it and lead it yourself. “
- If You Don’t Have Time to Do it Right, When Will You Have Time to Do it Over? By Tracey Richardson. “Everyone wants a balance of family and personal time to work time, when the scales become tipped it’s time to pull the andon and ask why this happening is. I can promise you that the time is there you are after, it always has been, and it’s up to you and your team to uncover the treasure! “
- Lean Thinking: We Don’t Blame Individuals for Systematic Errors by Mark Graban. “In the Lean methodology, our mindset is that we respect people as individuals, respecting their human nature, and this means we appreciate that we are fallible and make mistakes. Therefore, we don’t blame and punish individuals for things that are systemic problems.”
- Knowledge Work by Bruce Hamilton. “In my world, all work is knowledge work.”
- Newsflash: Behavioral Benefits of 5S Are Clinically Proven from the Gemba Tales Blog. “The results show that disorganized surroundings threaten people’s sense of personal control, which in turn taxes their self-regulatory abilities.”
Have a great weekend, friends!
~Joel
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