In the KaiZone Friday Favorites, I present my top ten favorite articles from the last two weeks in the world of Lean, continuous improvement 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!

Note that due to the Independence Day holiday in the U.S., The KaiZone Friday Favorites are being brought to you a day early.  I hope that you enjoy!

10.  Lean Training Lineage Matters by Bob Emiliani.  “Does training lineage matter? Yes, I think it does, in particular when it comes to  tacit knowledge. Something that is difficult to copy or understand necessarily embodies lots of  tacit knowledge. These nuances and details are critical for the development of an accurate understanding which, in turn, leads to correct practice.”

9.  The Science of Positive Interactions – Key to the Coaching Kata by Lawrence Miller.  “Both learning and motivation on the part of employees is optimized when the ratio of positive to negative interactions with managers lean toward four positives to one negative. Higher rates of negative interactions reduce learning, increase fear, increase avoidance behavior, rather than problem-solving and experimentation.”

8.  Lean Government by Jim Womack.  “When I look at governments at every level today I observe that most issues are not clearly stated, regulatory and service provision processes are not designed using lean principles, and regulations and services are not administered or provided using lean methods. So what can be done?”

7.  Practice Seeing to be a Better Leader by Karyn Ross.  “Deliberately practicing a skill over and over again is the way that we learn by DOING. And learning by DOING—especially with the help of a coach to guide your practice—is the key to continuously improving.”

6.  Is Assessing Lean Wasteful? by Gregg Stocker.  “It’s important to remember that the effort is about continually improving toward perfection rather than “adopting lean.”  Using an assessment to gauge progress on the journey can easily shift the focus away from this and toward the idea that lean is another trendy business initiative that will eventually go away.”

5.  5 Skills to Strengthen Your Coaching Practice by Lex Schroeder.  “How do we support the work to get done? The primary motivation for the majority of people is not money, promotion, or flexibility; it is the ability for each person to feel that they are performing challenging, meaningful work.”

4.  Kaizen and Lean: Experimentation vs. Implementation by Jon Miller.  “When people practice kaizen, they learn to observe reality, see the facts and to solve problems. People learn better when experimentation is encouraged.”

3.  A World Devoid of Common Sense by Bill Waddell.  “I was planning to write about the silliness of annual budgeting, then thought – no, variance analysis is even sillier – then – no three way matching of invoices is sillier yet and found myself in a bit of a quandary. The solution? Let you decide which is the biggest waste of time and the most glaring evidence of the irrelevance of accounting.”

2.  Where is the Frontline? by Bruce Hamilton.  “In recent years it’s become fashionable to talk about management’s support for the “frontline,” a peculiar idiom as frontline is technically defined as “that part of an army that is closest to the enemy.” Sometimes, however, the idiom fits.”

And the #1 Friday Favorite for July 4th, 2014 goes to . . . drum roll please . . . 

1.  Why is “What is Lean?” ‘A Simple Question Without An Easy Answer’? by Jon Miller.  “Whatever the causes, there is something that is cognitively jarring about a lean community who seem completely happy to fail to agree on a simple, clear, standard definition and an answer to the question, “What is lean?” Lean requires improvement. Improvement demands standards. Standards demand clarity. Clarity demands removal of ambiguity. Accepting ambiguity in the definition of lean is not lean and the lean community should not accept it.”

Do you have an article that you’d like to share with The KaiZone community?  Post it in the comments section below.  Have a great weekend, and for those of you in the U.S., a terrific holiday, friends!