Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With John Knotts

In May 2024 A Lean Journey Blog turned 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up. One of the things I am so fond of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other.  I have learned so much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor.  Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community.  I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

Today, we Meet-up with John Knotts who I met many years ago after I'd been blogging for a number of years. John became a frequent blogger on Gemba Academy's page which I've followed since the beginning. His posts are commonly featured in the monthly round-up because of the valuable information he shares. I'm sure you'll find John's answers to these questions will offer insights for both the new and seasoned practitoners on their journey.

Here are his answers so you can learn more: 

1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

I am John Knotts, a personal and professional business coach and consultant.

I own my own business, Crosscutter Enterprises, where I provide coaching, consulting, training, and professional speaking. I’m also an author of six booms, with two more on the way this year. My wife and I own Fine Print Farms, which is one of the largest equestrian businesses in all of South Texas. We operate on 100 acres and have upwards of 40 horses on property at all times. I’m also a Senior Coach with Gemba Academy.

As a coach and consultant and Fractional Chief Operating Officer, I help business owners start, grow, scale, and improve their business. In Gemba Academy, I am evolving their Lean and Six Sigma training and certification programs. 

2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

In 1990, the United States Air Force started to roll out their Total Quality Management (TQM) training – the called it, Quality Air Force. I was a Security Policeman at the time, but found the courses very interesting and exciting. In 1996, I was stationed at a remote assignment in Turkey, and the Air Force dictated that 100% of Air Force personnel would be trained on the Quality Air Force Awareness course. I was the only person assigned to the location that had any formal training, so I became the local instructor for the program. In 1998, while stationed at my next assignment in Germany, I had the opportunity to retrain into the Manpower and Quality career field. There, I was formally trained and employed as an industrial engineer, process improvement practitioner, and strategic planner. My first job at Ramstein Air Base was to run their 17 quality training programs for the 10,000 military stationed there.

I couldn’t learn enough, quick enough back then. Lean and Six Sigma were brand new concepts and barely discussed at that time. The military taught us whatever we needed to know, so certification back then wasn’t a concern. When I retired from the military in 2008, I almost immediately went to work for Booz | Allen | Hamilton, a top ten management consulting firm in the nation. I was a Lead Associate in the Strategy and Organization functional department of Booz Allen. This was a evolutionary opportunity, and in three years I learned a great deal about all things operational excellence.

From there, I moved to United Services Automobile Association (USAA). Over seven years, I led the engineering of four enterprise programs (document management, process excellence, banking, and human resources). In 2019, I left USAA and went to work full-time in my own business. This eventually led me to a Chief Operating Officer position and then Gemba Academy.

My passion is fueled by success – I’ve adopted the moniker, “Success Incubator.” Lean, and all things Operational Excellence, fuels success for people and businesses. I’m a student of not knowing what I don’t know, which fuels my curiosity for continual learning and application of everything there is to know about this wonderfully-deep subject. 

3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

Lean, and process improvement itself, provides a no nonsense approach to improving anything. Conceptually, data-driven decision making, respect for people, and going to where the work is done are basic concepts of success in anything. If you own a business and you delegate these activities to others, you will fail. 

4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

The biggest problem is trying to solve everything at once. The whole emphasis of process improvement is to sift through all the noise of the symptoms and causes to get to the root cause – that Red Thread, which if you pull will make a major impact on your process. Instead, we brainstorm and diagram our way to a list of causes and fail to narrow them down to a singular focus – fix one thing at a time. The inherent basis of Lean is to standardize, measure, and then take a single step up, improving one thing. Then, we standardize and measure again. This is what continuous improvement is all about.

The problem with trying to chase all the symptoms and causes at once is that process improvement efforts take way too long! Business owners, expecting immediate and measurable returns do not see results. The effort is seen as a waste, and the entire effort is killed before it’s finished. 

5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?

I recently saw an article where Toyota is teaching young kids how to work on automobiles. I watched a video of young girls taking apart an engine. We need to evolve our education system to teach problem solving, process improvement, and process management in schools. Lean and Six Sigma certifications shouldn’t be a coveted designation, it should be the foundation of business existence. These are business transferable skills that should be taught to everyone in school.

Through their answers to these questions hopefully you will get a sense of the thinking behind those who are shaping the Lean landscape.  I continue to keep learning and thankfully with the willingness of these practitioners to share I am positive you will, too.

Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With Jamie Flinchbaugh

In May 2024 A Lean Journey Blog turned 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up. One of the things I am so fond of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other.  I have learned so much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor.  Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community.  I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

Today, we Meet-up with Jamie Flinchbaugh who I met through online blogging community when I started 15 years ago. I read Jamie’s fist book “The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road” which gave great insights into my journey. We’ve met a number of times over the years at various conferences and have kept is touch on various thought projects over the years as he is always trying to learn and engage others. I think you’ll find his insight valuable.

Here are his answers so you can learn more: 

1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

I am Jamie Flinchbaugh. I act as an advisor to executives across a wide-range of roles and industries through my company JFlinch. My engagements are called ACT with Purpose, where ACT is an integration of Advising, Coaching, and Thought-Partner. The majority of time lean is not the topic, but the how, where I help people think through the biggest decisions and problems leveraging lean thinking. A significant portion of my clients are change agents, often responsible for driving lean across the organization, in which case lean is very much the topic. For many years I’ve produced practical video courses specifically for the needs of my clients, ranging from problem solving to culture change to management systems, and I’ve recently made those available to any company via the Learning Lab product. And along that journey I also wrote a book and started a podcast, both called People Solve Problems.

2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

The seed that got me going was a project I did where I (a) saw tremendous waste that I was essentially solving for and (b) experienced how many unchecked assumptions still exist in work. I described that experience in this video, but it helped make me more curious very early on about how we can improve. As far as a true introduction to lean, that happened not much later at Harley-Davidson where I helped install and improve one of the first large-scale pull systems in the US. I learned a lot about how much behaviors matter when designing and executing a system, and that shaped my thinking for the rest of my lean journey. I described that experience in a chapter I contributed to the book Practicing Lean. 

My passion is all about people, but perhaps in two different but specific ways. First, giving leaders who truly want to build a powerful and resilient organization a direction and a means to get there. Second, in building those organizations, unleashing the power of every person, every day being to make improvements and solve problems. There is so much untapped knowledge, creativity, and just plain energy out there. 

3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

First, I think it’s the very idea of not being a victim. You don’t just wait for the tide to turn, you solve the problem in front of you, no matter how hard or how new. Tsunami wipes out your supply chain? Go solve that problem. Economy tanks? Go solve that problem. 

Second, I think that it’s not just asking people to be more engaged but creating space to do that. By that I mean that 80% of lean methods and tools are meant to simplify decision making, reduce drama, reduce friction, etc. Why that has it’s own benefits, one of the primary reasons is that now we have more capacity of energy and mindshare to use the rest of lean thinking to go do hard stuff. 

4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect is that there is one and only one way to do it. You must instead walk the tightrope by maintaining the true intent and first principles of lean, with experimenting and adopting new approaches and thinking. Just adding new tools is wrong, if they aren’t consistent with the central ideas of lean. But maintaining those ideas but not letting anything touch them or never considering new approaches is also wrong. There’s a balance, and we’re meant to stay uncomfortable as we explore that tension. That’s where the learning and growth is found. 

5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?

It’s the same opportunity that existed when I started over 30 years ago: how do we make it more accessible for people to get engaged and start their journey, without oversimplying it and throwing out the messy nuance and complexity where some of the magic is found. I remember a conversation with someone who believe, way back when, that the book The Machine That Changed the World was just Japanese propaganda designed to help American companies destroy themselves. Today, while there are fewer people that resist engagement, some of the barriers to engagement are just as baffling and massive. 

Through their answers to these questions hopefully you will get a sense of the thinking behind those who are shaping the Lean landscape.  I continue to keep learning and thankfully with the willingness of these practitioners to share I am positive you will, too.

Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With Paul Critchley

In May 2024 A Lean Journey Blog turned 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up. One of the things I am so fond of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other.  I have learned so much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor.  Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community.  I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

In today's edition, we are going to meet-up with Paul Critchley. I met Paul through the Northeast Region of the Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME). I used to serve on the BOD for many years. Any way AME offers great networking opportunities for Lean practitioners. Over the years Paul and I've kept in touch and even collaborated a couple of projects together. 

Here are his answers so you can learn more:

1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

I'm Paul Critchley, and I'm currently the President of New England Lean Consulting. After 20 years in industry (mostly as an ME Manager or Ops Manager, I started NELC in 2012 with the goal of helping small-to-medium sized companies embrace Lean principles. I figured that there were plenty of places that wanted & needed Lean, but couldn't figure out where to start, nor could they afford to hire someone full time to do it.

2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

I got introduced to Lean in 1999 when I took a Project Engineer role in South Carolina when my employer had won some work from Toyota. It's safe to say that we got a "crash course" in TPS back then, and I was hooked immediately. It was so far removed from what I'd learned in college, and from how we had been operating, that it really caught my attention. Been practicing Lean ever since!

3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

In my opinion, it's Respect for People. Gallup polls routinely show that 67% of workers are not engaged with their work/employer. It's awfully hard, if not impossible, to get folks excited about changing things when they've already decided that they don't like the place or their manager(s). We have to make caring for our associates’ job #1. When we do that right, the rest will come.

4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

For those who follow me, they'll know that my biggest pet peeve is this misnomer that Lean fails at extraordinarily high rates. I've read articles that state 70% all the way up to 99%, and it's all B-O-L-O-G-N-A. Those numbers are misquoted often from a survey that's almost 20 years old now, and included about 400 anonymous respondents, so right out of the gate I'd say that the data is 1. old and 2. not statistically significant. Likewise, the question that was asked was (and I'm paraphrasing) was: "Did you get everything out of your Lean event/transformation that you'd wanted?" We rarely get everything that we want, and respondents agree, but that doesn't then equate to "failure". I'd say it more aptly implies that "we're not done yet" or "we're still learning". As a Lean community, we need to stop proliferating this misnomer. If people who are new to Lean hear this enough, it may cause them to not attempt Lean in the first place, and that's far more dangerous than trying and failing.

5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?

In my opinion, the biggest advantage Lean provides is that it focuses us on long(er) term goals. I've seen first-hand the damage short-term thinking has on an organization, and it's detrimental. As long as we continue to reward that behavior, then I don't believe that we'll be successful. We'll continue to have turnover, continue to struggle with adaptation and growth, and we won't see the successes we desperately wish for.

If we focus on those internal things (caring for one another, helping each other, learning, growing, challenging), the external things (Cost, Quality, OTD, etc.) will come. We've shifted our focus from managing causes to managing effects, and it's not going to yield what we want it to in the long term.

Through their answers to these questions hopefully you will get a sense of the thinking behind those who are shaping the Lean landscape.  I continue to keep learning and thankfully with the willingness of these practitioners to share I am positive you will, too.

Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With Ron Pereira

In May 2024 A Lean Journey Blog turned 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up. One of the things I am so fond of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other. I have learned so much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor. Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community. I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

In today's edition, we are going to meet-up with Ron Pereira, Co-founder and Managing Director of Gemba Academy. I met Ron online early on in my blogging journey from his online blog and early days at Gemba Academy. The value of continuous learning has been a lifelong pursuit of mine and something we've shared. Listen to Ron's words of wisdom regarding Lean and the scientific method.

Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With Tim McMahon Re-visited

As you’ve seen I have been revisiting a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up.

One of the things I am so found of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other.  I have learned some much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor.  Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community.  I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

Today I thought it would be fun to share my responses and thoughts.

1.  Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

I'm the founder and principal contributor of A Lean Journey Blog, a site dedicated to sharing lessons and experiences regarding Lean thinking, improvement practices, and leadership.  

I'm the Senior Manager of Strategy & Operational Excellence for Mirion’s Technologies North America Group. Currently, I am leading the continuous improvement initiatives to proliferate a “Lean” culture at Mirion’s Technologies Group, offering radiation measurement, personnel protection, advanced safety and search, and decontamination and decommissioning solutions for a variety of worldwide applications. I have a passion for teaching problem solving skills, Lean philosophy, and quality improvement methods by actively learning, thinking and engaging people.

For over 25 years, I have been implementing lean within operations management, continuous improvement, and quality disciplines for innovative high tech manufacturing companies such as Lucent Technologies, JDSU, Legrand Wiremold, and Mirion. I've held a number of leadership positions within operations management, Lean, and quality disciplines of innovative high tech manufacturing companies.

2.  How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

My introduction to lean manufacturing is probably somewhat typical.  After coming from a research and development role to an operations role I discovered Lean.  In 1999 I started learning what Lean manufacturing was all about and I have been learning about it ever since.   In the beginning Lean was a way for me to meet operational objectives. Now I know it is a profound way of thinking that encompasses all I do. Lean is the best business performance system I have seen.

Looking back now I was so fortunate to have a number of great coaches or sensei as we call them. One of my early teachers was David Stec. He was the co-author of “Better Thinking, Better Results” with Bob Emiliani, who is a great Lean practitioner/teacher in his own right (plus he is a local guy to me) David taught me Lean basic.

I was also fortunate to have had Toyota Production System Sensei named Motoo Usui-san who taught new TPS correctly. He worked in the same office as Taiichi Ohno. Usui-san never gave you an answer only a question. I had to solve the problem myself.   

I had the pleasure to work and lead lean efforts and Wiremold a Shingo Prize winning facility. There are a number of books and a great many practitioners who cut their teeth in that factory who went on to greatness. It was a great sandbox of learning and development.

I have sought out many opportunities to learn along the way.  I hold a Lean Certification and a Six Sigma Black Belt from Central Connecticut State University, Lean Bronze Certification from Society of Manufacturing Engineers, a Master Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from the Management and Strategy Institute, and is a Shingo Institute Alumni.

By drawing on my experience in Lean, Six Sigma, and Quality Management Systems I co-authored ASQ's Lean Handbook, an educational reference guide to support Lean Certification. I have also published 12 articles. I’ve had the pleasure of presenting at 6 conferences, doing 2 radio shows, and hosting more than a dozen webinars.

My passion is fueled by those wonderful "a-ha" moments.  Those times when I see the light turn on for someone, a new lean thinker, a new problem solver, someone that can see wastes and opportunities all around them.  I also enjoy the opportunities I get to meet some great people on similar journeys of their own.  Everyone you meet is another opportunity to learn more.

3.  In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

I think my answer to this question has probably changed over last 15 years. While there are a number of powerful aspects of Lean if done well, I am going to focus on two: 1) Use daily management to engage employees in the Gemba and 2) Empower improvement with Kaizen.

 Lean organizations make use of Daily Management systems, a structured process to focus employee’s actions to continuously improve their day-to-day work. Daily Management empowers employees to identify potential process concerns, recommend potential solutions, and learn by implementing process changes. Daily Management, if done right, can be a critical tool in any organization’s toolbox to engage frontline staff in problem-solving and to deliver customer value.

Lean Daily Management includes three components: (1) alignment of goals and effort; (2) visual data management, daily huddles, and problem-solving; and (3) leader standard work.

Kaizen events are a powerful improvement tool because people are empowered to come up with new ideas to help the business. Employees are isolated from their day-to-day responsibilities and allowed to concentrate all their creativity and time on problem-solving and improvement.

The purpose of kaizen is to involve everyone, everywhere, every day in making simple improvements. These small improvements add up overtime and result in an extraordinary and never-ending transformation of processes. Companies which use Kaizens have found they generate energy among those who work in the area being improved and produce immediate gains in productivity and quality.

4.  In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

Too many think Lean is just about apply tools. Most fail to fully understand the people aspect of a Lean organization. This is a myth perpetuated by less than knowledgeable leaders. Most companies miss the point that 90% of Lean is about people and culture change and only 10% is about the tools. They expect Lean to be the “silver bullet”, which, even if it does not solve all their problems, will at least aid in short-term gains. There are thousands of Lean tools, because each problem requires its own unique tool to help solve it. People are needed to solve problems. Tools don’t apply themselves. Basically, leaders have to learn to think differently and see their customers and business differently, that’s people development, not tools development.

Lean which is commonly referred as TPS (from it's originators) is the "Thinking People System" for me. It is about learning to see waste and solve problems through the development of people. This is a frequently missed and even understated purpose in lean. Lean is truly about people because tools don't solve problems, people solve problems.

As in the namesake of my blog "A Lean Journey - The Quest for True North" Lean is not about the destination but the direction or path you take toward this idealistic place. Lean is not something you check off your "To Do List".  It is about the constant, persistent, even relentless pursuit of improving your current situation. And this improvement brings you to the next current state and so on. Usually, it means doing something you haven’t done before because your old habits will not work in your new system. Lean is not technique you apply to your business system but rather a methodology that replaces your business system.

In my opinion leaning out the waste is not necessarily the difficult part but rather the identification of the wastes.  Waste is all around us, yet many cannot recognize it.  I like to say that "activity does not equal productivity".  The real challenge is to break status quo, get out of your comfort zone, and learn to "see". This means observing the actual condition at the actual place at the actual time.

If you can educate and engage your workforce to relentlessly identify and eliminate waste by solving problems, you will be well on your way to embracing the full power of Lean.

5.  In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world?  How can that be accomplished?

Every industry can benefit from Lean process improvement, but I would have to say that the biggest opportunity for Lean is in our service industries.  Lean has a proven track record in many manufacturing operations.  I think we all see things every day in our lives as we interact with businesses that bug us.  These are things that cause poor service, higher costs, less value and more waiting.  It would be nice to live in place where continuous improvement is commonplace.   Maybe that sounds utopian, but this is happening in many service industries already.

Government - Government agencies have found that when Lean is implemented, they see an improved understanding of how their own processes work, that it facilitates the quick identification and implementation of improvements and that it builds a culture of continuous improvement. Lean for government focuses on governing and serving citizens with respect and continuously improving service delivery by cutting out "waste" and "inefficiency" in processes; this in turn will result in better services overall, engaged civil servants as well as more value for tax-supported programs and services.

Education - The demand for schools to operate more efficiently and direct more resource to the classroom means Lean methodologies are becoming more and more recognized in education. They can be used to reduce variance and streamline administrative processes, such as admissions and enrollment, certification, grant administration and repair and maintenance practices.

Healthcare - Instilling a Lean culture and implementing Lean processes vastly improves service delivery. In the healthcare industry specifically, the application of Lean can reduce the amount of time nurses spend looking for wheelchairs, patient records or medicines, and increase the amount of time they spend taking of patients.

Retail - The retail and hospitality industry is reliant on excellent customer service, timely delivery of products, and accurate inventory counts. Lean provides a useful strategy for improving these important elements.

Insurance & Financial Services - As another process-driven service industry, companies in financial and legal services are ideally positioned to leverage the benefits of Lean. An application for a bank loan, a request for an insurance quote, or conveyancing for example, may go through many systems and hands before the process is completed. Removing non-value adding tasks and eliminating errors can greatly increase the ability to meet customer requirements faster and more accurately.

Office - Lean can easily be applied to office environments where lots of non-value adding tasks are being carried out. Insufficient equipment, over-ordering of stationery, duplicating processes, having to wait for multiple signatures and underutilized personnel are all examples of waste. The result of removing this waste and streamlining processes is greater productivity, a happier workforce, and a better service for customers.

In fact, any administrative function of a business can benefit from Lean, such as Accounting, Operations, Sales, Marketing, HR and IT. Delivery in all these areas involves processes which can be improved with Lean principles.

There are many more opportunities for Lean to be successful.  Lean focuses on processes; has a measurable impact on time, capacity and customer satisfaction; and involves all employees.  This formula will help many organizations to be more successful.

Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With Pascal Dennis

This past month A Lean Journey Blog turned 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up.

One of the things I am so found of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other.  I have learned some much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor.  Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community.  I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

In today's edition, we are going to meet-up with Pascal Dennis. I met Pascal online early on in my blogging journey from his online blog but the real impact of his message comes from his many books. Most of which I've reviewed on this blog. 

Here are his answers so you can learn more:

1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

I'm a professional engineer, President of Lean PathwaysLean Pathways, and co-founder of Digital PathwaysDigital Pathways. My current focus is helping organizations protect their core business while igniting new Growth.

2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

I was introduced to Lean at Toyota manufacturing. I believe that the 'Lean/OpEx' management system is an essential element of sustained, humane, excellence and prosperity.

3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

Total involvement. 

4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

Experimentation.

5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?

Learn the methods & mindset of innovation hot spots like Silicon Valley and Singapore.

 

Through their answers to these questions hopefully you will get a sense of the thinking behind those who are shaping the Lean landscape.  I continue to keep learning and thankfully with the willingness of these practitioners to share I am positive you will, too.

Meet-up: 5 Questions from Within the Lean Community With Guy Wallace

This month A Lean Journey Blog turns 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up.

One of the things I am so found of in the Lean community is the general wiliness to share with each other.  I have learned some much from my very experienced colleagues since I have been an active contributor.  Every month I roundup the best Lean related posts and articles I found particularly valuable from these fellow bloggers and contributors. Each one has their own story and opinions to share.

The goal of Meet-up is provide you an opportunity to meet some influential voices in the Lean community.  I will ask these authors a series of questions to learn about them, their lessons, and get their perspective on trends in industry.

In today's edition, we are going to meet-up with Guy Wallace. I met Guy online of course as we shared a passion for Lean and blogging. 

Here are his answers so you can learn more:

1. Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-oriented activities?

I am Guy Wallace. I’ve recently retired after 44 years in Enterprise Learning & Development.

2. How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion?

I’ve not been in TQM/Lean directly, but I have used the lean/ process streamlining principles learned initially at Motorola in 1981 from my training development work with my internal manufacturing, materials, and purchasing clients, including Bill Smith who taught me that before Six Sigma it was called VR – Variability Reduction. And from Geary Rummler, whose work at Motorola and elsewhere was focused on streamlining work processes to reduce touch times, cycle times, and costs. Then, in 1990, my client at AT&T Network Systems gave me a book that all the executives were reading, The Machine That Changed the World.

After Motorola, I joined a small management consulting firm in 1982 and was asked to create a Training Practice function, where I created Performance Based Instructional Systems Design (ISD) methods that years later led to my 1999 book, lean-ISD.

3. In your opinion what is the most powerful aspect of lean?

The measurable reduced work process cycle times, and costs.

4. In your opinion what is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean?

For me, it was in the early 1990s when Six Sigma practitioners told me that Lean efforts should follow their efforts. They were wrong, of course, and that brought to mind what I had learned from the TQM folks at Motorola, which was that we were still Opportunity Rich.

5. In your opinion what is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished?

With all of the focus on Workflows, Work Processes, or Workstreams today, the notion of “streamlining” (versus “lean” perhaps) is a no-brainer to many clients and stakeholders.

Depending on the client and the language they are familiar with, I’d start the conversation with the word “streamlining” and then “lean” and show them examples of the measured results from lean efforts that are as close to their processes as possible, including the time and resources required.

 

Through their answers to these questions hopefully you will get a sense of the thinking behind those who are shaping the Lean landscape.  I continue to keep learning and thankfully with the willingness of these practitioners to share I am positive you will, too.