Tag: Respect for People

My guests for Episode #300 of the podcast are Tracey and Ernie Richardson, authors of the excellent book titled: The Toyota Engagement Equation: How to Understand and Implement Continuous Improvement Thinking in Any Organization

There's much to admire about Toyota and even regular readers of this blog might throw the "fanboy" label at me. Toyota employees in San Antonio have a lot of positive things ("pros") to say online about working there. But, the overwhelming "con" is the rotating work schedules - being on days for two weeks then switching to nights for two weeks. Where do a priority on safety and "respect for people" enter into the discussion about which shift pattern is safest, most effective, and most fair?

I've been going through the book by the late Peter Scholtes: The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done. His work builds upon the legendary W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff, among others. I often quote Scholtes (something also attributed to Peter Senge and others) as saying: "People don't resist change, they resist being changed." I think that's very insightful and that thought has led me to study change management, "motivational interviewing" and other related topics. It turns out that having the right answer and pushing it on others isn't the best strategy for effecting sustainable change. I had to learn those lessons the hard way and I'm still learning.

I'm not looking for a traditional, full-time job, but a lot of job postings cross my path, as people are looking for referrals. A...

I've blogged about football before - I should say "American football," since I have many international readers. I should say I've blogged about events on the football field and the approaches of football coaches that remind me of Lean thinking. Here are a few of those thoughts from last weekend -- topics include "lack of urgency," "that's not my job," and "the process."

Here's an interesting article from Fast Company: At Toyota, The Automation Is Human-Powered The sub headline reads: While the rest of the auto industry increasingly uses robots...

Are warning signs or instruction signs effective when they just tell people what to do? Should we use error proofing instead? Is it more powerful to explain why when we have be directive. That's what I explore in this post, with some examples from hospitals and a condo gym.

Back in 2012, I blogged twice about aspects of Dr. Donald M. Berwick's 1989 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Continuous Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care.” The full text is only available to subscribers. As I posted on LinkedIn, another aspect of this article caught my eye when I was reviewing it the other day in advance of my talk at the Studer Group "What's Right in Healthcare" conference next week. 

When did the term "concrete head" start getting thrown around in Lean circles? Do people still use this label today? Is it helpful? Should we agree that the term is disrespectful and counter productive?

I've long been skeptical of so-called "Lean Sigma" or "Lean Six Sigma." And not because I'm against Six Sigma statistical methods, which are valid...

The famed actor and comedian Gene Wilder passed away this week at age 83. I think of him primarily as an actor from the classic...

A number of you emailed me about this report in the Detroit News. I grew up in Detroit and my first job was as...