Today’s podcast is a departure from the usual interview format. As I blogged about last week, the Lean community has lost a young, thoughtful, inquisitive, and reflective member — Samuel Selay.

I regret not having Sam on the podcast to talk about our learning and reflections. He was a guest of Ron Pereira’s on the Gemba Academy podcast in 2016, talking about Lean in the Department of Defense.

Today, I’m doing a reading of a blog post that Sam wrote for this site back in August. I’m also sharing the audiobook version of his chapter from the book Practicing Lean (which is read by our audiobook narrator). It’s not his voice, but it’s his words and thoughts.

As the Marines say (Sam was an active duty Marine for 13 years), Semper Fi. 

There is a GoFundMe page that was set up by Sam’s sister-in-law to provide financial support to the family — his wife and four children under 18. I’ve donated and I hope you might consider doing the same.