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!

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!

10.  The LEANable Wife* by Raechel Gross.  “So why the passion for home application of Lean thinking?  Well, it’s sort of simple: We value time spent together both as a couple and as a family above everything.  Lean is helping us to rid our schedule of waste and to replace it with family connection and fun.” (*Yes, this is a shameless plug for my wife’s blog, but honestly, she’s one of the best Lean students I have had the pleasure of teaching, and I thought the piece took a unique perspective on Lean.) 

9.  Lean, It’s All About the Customer by Tim McMahon.  “Customer “satisfaction” does not simply happen; it is an effect. Quality is one important cause of the customer satisfaction effect, along with price, convenience, service, and a host of other variables. The more our daily actions and long term plans are driven by meeting customer expectations, and the more we evaluate our work based upon these expectations, the more we improve customer loyalty and advocacy. This relentless focus on the customer is the path to sustained growth and profitability.”

8.  The Age of Manipulating Customers is Over by Boaz Tamir.  “You just can’t manipulate all of the customers all of the time. The time when you could build a long-lasting market based on a strategy of reductions and sales thought up by an advertising agency and marketing departments is long-gone. Business policies based on manipulations are like the gambler’s addition to the casino; it can’t last. The price to the consumer must be set according to its suitability to the subjective value of the product or service.”

7.  Three Steps Toward Lean Culture Change by Erin Urban.  “Leadership involvement, education, cultural dynamics. Check, check, check. All of this sounds easy enough, right? Of course not. Paying attention to all of these things, let alone trying to change them, is challenging. But take a deep breath: just the fact that you’re aware a culture change is needed makes you light years ahead of everyone else. Step back and appreciate the current collective mental state to determine what lean concepts you must educate employees on first (with leadership present!) in order to take that next step forward.”

6.  Uber Lean by Dwayne Keller.  “Is your new software an enabler to the best known methods to deliver excellent quality and service at the lowest cost?  Have you done the process improvement work needed to solve business problems before deploying the software? If your software is automating poor processes laden with waste, consider applying Lean tools and principles to improve the outcomes.”

5.  Video: Toyota Helps Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and their Eye Clinic by Mark Graban.  “You can tell the doctors, nurses, and others take pride in their involvement in the improvement process. The video is a bit staged, of course, but people seem to take pride in labeling themselves as “problem solvers” – they’re making things better! “It’s completely changed the way we work here,” says one resident.”

4.  Leadership Behaviors that Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement by Allan Wilson.  “A famous golfer once said, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” The words “professional golfer” on your bag do not make you a great golfer; it’s the practice and dedication that impact your skill level. In the same vein, the title Team Leader, Manager, or VP on your business card does not make you a great leader. Leadership is a learned skill that needs constant refinement and adjustment based on real experience over time.”

3.  The Case for Kaizen Events by Karen Martin.  “The bottom line? Don’t reject a concept just because it’s not executed properly much of the time. Nor because it’s used indiscriminately instead of purposefully. Instead, vow to help the organizations we touch learn how to harness the power that Kaizen Events offer and used them as a balanced approach to creating organizational transformation.”

2.  If You Want to Lead, Make Your Vision Actionable by Hollie Jensen.  “With the vision – every employee problem solving– the goal state is obvious. You can ask yourself what the current state is (is every employee problem solving today?), and then ask why/why not. If they are problem solving actively, great, how do you sustain those activities and behaviors and that kind of organizational culture? If people aren’t problem solving, why not? What are the barriers? Do they understand what problem solving really means? Do they have the tools and knowledge to do so? Do they have the support do so?  Once you know these things, then you can think about ways to close that gap. “

And this week’s Friday Favorite goes to . . .

1.  The Simple Power of Lean Culture by Bill Waddell.  “If you can get all of your people thinking that they can come together; and respecting the fact that none of them know everything, but that everyone of them knows something; and that they all have a common purpose; and that they all have people riding on them; and that thousands of lives are going to be better because they figured it out . . . then it’s amazing what people can accomplish.”

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, friends!