The 2014 Leany Awards:
“Better-Late-Than-Never” Edition

First, there was The Shingo Prize . . . 

Next came The Silver Toaster Award . . . 

Now, The KaiZone is proud to bring to you the first ever year-end Leany Awards, for excellence in Lean blogging!  In this very special, better-late-than-never edition of The KaiZone Friday Favorites, we’re going to take a look back and recognize the top author, blog and post of the full-year for 2014.

How the Winners Were Chosen

Each and every morning, I kick-start my day by reading the new posts from more than 60 blogs in the world of Lean and continuous improvement.  See the full list on the Best of Lean Blogroll.

Every few weeks, I select the ten most original, thoughtful and entertaining posts to bring to you the TheKaiZone Friday Favorites.

In July of 2014, we took time out to celebrate the half-year Leany Award winners, and the judging criteria will remain the same.

To select the best-of-the-nest, I’ve assigned a point total to each of the 190 posts to appear on the Friday Favorites over the past year.  For each edition, 10 points were given to first place, 9 points for second, 8 points for third, etc . . . I then totaled up all the points from each of the 19 KaiZone Friday Favorites this year to determine the Leany Award winners for the top Lean Blog Author and top Lean Blog of the year for 2014.

On the other hand, selecting the Leany Award for the best single post was a completely subjective exercise by yours truly, based on the pieces that I found most impactful over the past year.  Sorry . . . my blog, my rules . . . 🙂

And now that the formalities are out of the way, it’s time to award the Leany Award to the top Lean blogger of 2014!

2014 Lean Blogger of the Year

Once again, Mark Graban and Bob Emiliani led the way with 13 posts appearing on the KiaZone Friday Favorites in 2014.  However, factoring in the weekly rankings, Bruce Hamilton, a.k.a. the Old Lean Dude, once again comes out on top.

And while we’re reflecting back on 2014, the highlight of my year was getting to meet Bruce Hamilton in person, shake his hand, and thank him for introducing me to the world of lean thinking through his video Toast Kaizen.  And not only is he a great lean thinker, but he could not have been a nicer guy.  I look forward to learning from him, and the rest of the tremendous lineup of speakers and presenters, once again at the 2015 Northeast L.E.A.N. Conference.

Rank	Author	Friday Favorites Appearances	Total Points
1	Bruce Hamilton	12	86
2	Bob Emiliani	13	80
3	Bill Waddell	11	74
4	Mark Graban	13	61
5	Matt Elson	10	46
T-6	Jon Miller	6	39
T-6	Karen Martin	5	39
T-6	Michael Ballé	5	39
9	Daniel Jones	5	35
10	Tracey Richardson	5	34

2014 Lean Blog of the Year

More than twice the points and three times more appearances than the next closest offering . . . the Lean Post  at the Lean Enterprise Institute ran away with the top spot for the best Lean blog of 2014.   Featuring contributions from leading lean thinkers such as Jeffrey Liker, Mike Rother, Daniel Jones (and not to mention yours truly), it should come as no surprise that The Lean Post set the bar in 2014 for excellence in Lean blogging.

Rank	Blog Name	Friday Favorites Appearances	Total Points
1	The Lean Post	37	209
2	Old Lean Dude	12	86
3	BobEmiliani.com	13	80
4	Manufacturing Leadership	11	74
5	Planet Lean	8	61
6	Mark Graban’s Lean Blog	12	60
7	The Journey to True North	12	55
8	The Lean Edge	8	52
9	Lean Leadership Ways	6	42
10	The Karen Martin Group Blog	5	39

2014 Lean Blog Post of the 2nd Half-Year

Editor’s note:  To avoid duplicating posts from the 1st Half-Year Leany Awards, I’ve limited the Best Lean Blog Post category to posts from the 2nd half of the year 2014.  

10.  Analyzing Corporate Lean by Torbjørn H. Netland & Kasra Ferdows.  “If we see lean as a never-ending journey of incremental and continuous improvement, for example, we would expect a linear relationship between implementation and performance.  If we think of all the low-hanging fruits that are present in most factories, we could expect a faster improvement early on, which levels off later on.  Or, considering the notion of organizational inertia (i.e., wherever there is change, there is resistance to it) we could expect a slow start followed by an exponentially growing performance improvement as more and more people are convinced.  Which one it is – or if it is a combination of the patterns, or another pattern altogether – was exactly what we wanted to find out with our research.”

9.  GTS⁶ + E³ = DNA (Break the Code for Standardization, Sustainability, and Kaizen) by Tracey Richardson.  “Does this GTS⁶ + E³ = DNA equation for lean leadership solve every problem for your organization?  No.  But it does describe at a high level of all actions leaders must take if they want to support a long-term, sustainable culture of problem solving.  A culture where people feel empowered to make a difference for their organization and have a stake in the company’s overall success.  Job security = problems solved.”

8.  NVLLIVS IN VERBA by Bruce Hamilton.  “Change leaders would do well to remind managers of the motto of the Royal Society, the seat of modern science and philosophy: “Nullius in verba” – a Latin expression meaning “take nobody’s word for it.” This gold standard of objectivity encouraged scientific thinkers not to let status quo politics and prevailing beliefs affect their thinking. If we are truly seeking a culture change to our organizations we need to encourage the same thinking from our leaders.”

7.  Please Bear with Us while We Work to Maintain Our Standards by Jon Miller.  “Maintaining standards is the most respectful and humble yet valuable of actions a leader can take. It is the first action before making  bold improvements. It is also one of the most boring actions. Many leaders, me included, have formed the bad habit of chasing after the new and exciting at the expense of standards on which the health of the business rests. We pay later and dearly for our immature and selfish choices through endless fire-fighting and repair work.”

6.  Organizational Renovation by James Little.  “Organizational transformation is more like a home renovation. Everything’s disrupted for a while. It’s a mess. Bits of the structure are unusable. But we put up with it, because we know we’re going to get a better place to live. When we talk to people at work about “organizational transformation” or “agile transformation,” most people – including us – don’t know what we’re talking about. It’s too big, too vague, too unseen, too magical. Let’s talk about renovation. Everyone’s seen at least one – and lived through it. It’s something real, familiar, manageable, and within our grasp.”

5.  Cars, CT Scans and Cashiers: The Failure of Lean by Matt Elson.  “Over and over again, we see the over-reliance on tools and events not only as ways to teach, but to “accelerate” making improvements. Both are highly doubtful. People don’t learn things from listening to a speaker or reading a reference book or watching a PowerPoint presentation. And things are certainly not improved in these theoretical environments. At the very best, participants should expect to walk out with more questions than before!  Why? These kinds of discreet events, books, tools are easily “saleable” by the lean consulting industry. 5S event? No problem! Value Stream Mapping event? Yup, do that too. Lean certification? Absolutely…what belt colour would you like?”

4.  Why Leadership and “Respect” are Fundamentally Entwined by Michael Ballé. “ respect is about committing to employee’s success – employees have a right to succeed with us, not a duty, and we need to define this success together. In practice, respect is about keeping employees safe from accidents and harassment, about truly listening to the obstacles they face, about developing everyone’s skill and autonomy, and indeed, about using every person to the fullest of their abilities. No debate. But as long as we keep exhorting traditional leaders to be “more respectful” we miss the point. The point is to develop a new kind of leadership which is equally hard-nosed about achieving objectives, but that does this with people, not to them.”

3.  Leading without Respect by Bob Emiliani.  “Whatever has been done by leaders of the Lean movement to denounce Fake Lean has not been nearly enough. There is a long, long history of managers laying off workers as a result of continuous improvement. This is not a secret. It is the normal outcome. Over the last 25 years, Fake Lean has likely displaced a million or so workers in the United States, and more globally. That’s not the reward employees expect for their hard work.  The inability of  the leading figures in the Lean community to powerfully support this fundamental improvement over conventional management, from the very start, is pitiful.”

2.  What Should Lean Mean to Us? by Brent Wahba.  “I am not sure that “What’s Lean?” really matters as much as this forward-looking question: “What Should Lean Mean To Us?” A problem is just the gap between where you are now and where you need to be. If you are working on the problem of how to begin your situational Lean journey, what is the gap between your current mental model of Lean and what Lean needs to be to deliver success in your specific circumstances?”

1.  Art Smalley Interview: Difference between the Toyota Production System and Lean as Practiced in America and Why He Shakes His Head in Confusion by Pete Abilla.  “I see books and stuff talking about how to do value stream maps in product development etc. and Toyota actually does no such thing. They use different tools and techniques to compress lead-time in product development. Shrug. If the tool works I tell people to go ahead and use it. The thinking process and results are what matter. Sadly I don’t see proper thinking on the usage of the tool just blind compliance and minimal results. . . The same is true with Standardized Work, A3 Reports and other stuff. I call it all part of the Lean Wall Paper phenomenon.”

The Year Ahead

Mostly due to the demands of a young and soon-to-be-expanding family, and partly because of the need to come-up-to-speed in my new day job and the  launch of a fresh side-project, the KaiZone Friday Favorites and the annual Leany Awards will be going on an indefinite hiatus to start 2015.  Keeping up with the (literally) thousands of new posts each year demands more bandwidth than I can currently give, and will free up precious hours for me to focus on generating my own original content here on TheKaiZone.

But fret not, you can still keep up with the world of Lean blogging by checking out the Best of Lean Blogroll where you can create your own curated feeds of the best Lean content from the top lean authors.  If you need help getting setup, feel free to contact me!

And to my readers, thanks for a great first year!  I couldn’t have made it this far without each and every one of you!  As always . . .

Have a great weekend, friends!