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Dr. Deming shared this 42 years ago, and despite intermittent progress, his proposed paradigm shift hasn’t been embraced. Unfortunately, common sense remains uncommon—especially at the top. Corporate executives can talk all they want about their organization’s profound purpose, majestic mission, and vibrant vision, but when ‘push comes to shove,’ it’s ‘Short-term profits over long-term purpose, baby!’ Thought leaders like Stephen Covey, Edgar Schein, Simon Sinek, Brené Brown, and Adam Grant have served as much-needed evangelists opposing this mindset. What can we do to transform the credo to: ‘Show your commitment to the company’s purpose through your behaviors, take care of your people, they’ll take care of your customers, and long-term profitability will follow?’ I recommend that more leaders embrace the Toyota Way’s first principle: ‘Base your management decisions on long-term systems thinking, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.’ It’s time for more of corporate America to finally follow suit.”

Explore how proactive leadership in Lean organizations, through A3 problem solving and scientific thinking, prevents crises. Learn practical tips for fostering transparent communication, rewarding problem identification, empowering stakeholders, encouraging collaboration, and cultivating continuous improvement

t’s a prevalent practice among “knowledge workers,” including senior leaders, managers, engineers, sales, and marketing professionals, to initiate improvement initiatives and establish standardized processes for production without directly engaging with the frontline operators at the Gemba – where the work is done.

Celebrate July 4th with an overview of how ECRS can be a game changer in the Star Wars universe!

This quote always makes me chuckle because it’s so true. Inevitably, the companies Dr. Shingo is criticizing consistently fail to achieve their desired results and soon abandon their Lean initiatives. I see it all the time.

TPS and lean thinking are not a set of tools. They are organization-wide strategies that promote systems thinking, anchored in the pillars of continuous improvement and respect for people. Their sum is far greater than their individual parts.

Before any real improvements can be made, companies need to create and maintain stability—processes that are capable of delivering consistent value everyday. Additionally, process instability makes it very difficult to get employees to believe that the company respects their time and contributions.

Lean Jax's Lean Visual Glossary for Service Organizations

For executive leaders committed to begin leveraging (or revitalizing) lean as their organization's long-term continuous improvement strategy and system, this is our recommended sequence of objectives and actions to execute during the first 12 months.