“…the outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one question grew before.” – Thorstein Veblen in “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,” University of California Chronicle, Vol. X, No. 4, October 1908, pp. 395-416 Is Lean management research serious? … [Read more...] about The Outcome of Serious Research
Archives for August 2018
The Leader’s Prerogative
There is a continuing, decades-long, lamentation in the Lean community, that leaders do not understand Lean and that they misuse Lean for cost cutting which results in layoffs and other zero-sum outcomes. There is a belief that if only leaders understood the true intent of Lean, then they would … [Read more...] about The Leader’s Prerogative
How to Never Run Out of Ideas
"Every organization constantly deteriorates. And this is especially true of a business organization. It loses customers -- through death, through change in location, through the lures of competitors. It loses its personnel from the same causes. Its physical equipment is constantly wearing out and … [Read more...] about How to Never Run Out of Ideas
Why Do CEOs Hate Operations?
Prior to around 1980, the leaders of large corporations had a strong affection for manufacturing operations -- the part of the business that makes money for the company by producing the goods that people want and pay for. Operations was widely seen as a noble part of the company that employees were … [Read more...] about Why Do CEOs Hate Operations?
One Strategy, Two Paths
For many years, certain people have proclaimed that Lean is a corporate strategy. In support of that claim, a book titled The Lean Strategy: Using Lean to Create Competitive Advantage, Unleash Innovation, and Deliver Sustainable Growth was recently published (click here to read my book review). … [Read more...] about One Strategy, Two Paths
Management as an Engineering Problem
What has been Lean's contribution to business and society over the last 35 years? Has it been great or small? And for whom? I recently read a fabulously informative and beautifully written 1992 doctoral dissertation by Carlos E. Pabon, titled: "Regulating Capitalism: The Taylor Society and … [Read more...] about Management as an Engineering Problem
Lean and the Burning Platform
Corporate financial distress -- the so-called "burning platform" -- has long been cited as the crisis necessary to propel a management team to adopt Lean management. Is it? In my book, Triumph of Classical Management Over Lean Management, I said: "Even Lean’s supposed savior, 'the burning … [Read more...] about Lean and the Burning Platform