Leadership and Management Insights

All blog posts © Bob Emiliani.

• Cancelling Lean Culture
• Mechanistic Approach to Status
• The Satisfying Spectacle of Classical Management
• The Machine Paradigm
• Lean’s Culture War
• Addition Still Beats Subtraction
• Two Lean Journeys
• From Thought Leadership to Banal Thoughts
• Cuckoo for Kata
• The Problem with Lean Thinking
• Taiichi Ohno the Businessman
• Great Expectations
• Apparent Problems More Profitable Than Actual Problems
• Misusing the “Respect for People” Principle
• Perpetuating A Lean Mystery
• Ohno’s Theory of Nonproductivity
• Twenty-Four Books
• Helpful Feedback to “Another Lean Fan”
• Who to Blame for Leaders’ Declining Interest in Lean?
• Go See? What For?
• Lean and Learning
• Lean and Lying
• Courage and Bravery
• The Back Story – Wheel of Fortune
• How My Work Has Evolved
• Lean and Iconoclasm
• The Disaster of Lean Training
• The Fraudulent Claim of High Wages
• Cold, Crass, and Graceless
• Norman Bodek (1932-2020)
• The 737 Max and CSCU Board of Regents
• Banished from Lean World
• No Santa Claus?
• Stupidity at Scale
• Mass Producing Happiness
• Process-Results Dichotomy
• Lean — Survival or Decline
• Guide to Books
• Are Lean People Stupid?
• Move Over Lean!
• Wonder No More
• The Back Story – Improvement
• Lean HE2020 Global Conference Presentation
• Second Virtual Lean Mini-Conference
• Betting It All On Leadership Behaviors
• Confronting the Arguments Against Lean Management
• Methods for Changing Leaders: A3 or Kaizen?
• Tired of Hearing About Toyota?
• What Happened to Lean?
• Recent WTFU Articles
• Picking Winners
• Akio Toyoda’s View of TPS: A Critical Analysis
• First Virtual Lean Mini-Conference
• Ahead Yet Still Far Behind
• Lean Management Seen as Corruption
• The Awesomeness of Lean
• Get Real: Most Students Hate Classroom Teaching
• Lean’s Tragic Path Dependence
• Critique of “5 GUIDING PRINCIPLES TO TRANSFORM HEALTHCARE”
• How Lean Induces Debilitating Cognitive Dissonance
• The Enemy of Lean is Classical Management
• What Comes After Lean?
• In Praise of Experts
• Love for Ohno, Hate for Taylor?
• Boeing 737 Max and Lean Transformation
• A Consistent Message
• Energizing the Lean Movement
• Petition to End Classical Management
• Lean Must Learn From Black Lives Matter
• What If….?
• Dr. Emiliani’s No’s for Lean
• The Lean Whiners
• The Case Against Lean
• Comfort in Knowing
• Means and Ends in Management Systems
• Classical Management Cycle
• The Transformation of Lean
• Appearance vs. Reality
• Lean Anguish
• Lean’s Crumbling Foundation
• What is Lean’s Future?
• The Back Story – Management Mysterium
• Is Lean Toast?
• Lean and COVID-19
• Lean Got a Bad Start
• Management IQ
• Narrow Thinking, Narrow Results
• Wanting to Know, Preferring to Ignore
• The Back Story – Irrational Institutions
• The Yin and Yang of Management
• Criticism of Triumph of Classical Management
• The Back Story – Eliminating Waste in Teaching
• How Many Genbas are There?
• Creating a Lean Culture
• Winning With Lean
• Psychological Safety and Lean
• Documenting Modern Progressive Management
• Management Darwinism
• Data-Driven Delays
• Are You a Lean Expert?
• We Succeed When We All Agree
• Toyota’s Free Riders
• Lean, Agile, and Six Sigma
• Four Types of Lean People
• Understanding the Institution of Leadership
• Radicals Among Conservators
• Lean Fighting Blind
• Waste is a Feature, Not a Bug
• Lean Leaders Impede the Advancement of Lean
• Modernizing the Practice of Management
• Dr. Deming’s SoPK and Dr. Emiliani’s SoPP
• Lean Can’t Fail!
• Lean Graft Incompatibility
• Static vs. Dynamic Lean
• In Search of Lean CEOs
• System T and Lean
• Bookmarks for Your Favorite Lean Books
• The Worst Lean Advice
• Business as a State of Confusion
• How Soft Skills Impair Problem-Solving
• The Bad Boy of Lean
• Promotion of Lean Must Evolve
• The Shingo Experiment
• Fulfillment by Status Quo, Inc.
• What About the Past State?
• Where Scientific Thinking Lives and Dies
• Passing the Lean Baton
• The Elephant in the Room
• Sharing the Knowledge
• Profoundly Antagonistic Systems
• Dismantling Classical Management
• Escape the Ideological Bubble
• Lean Football
• That’s Not My Job
• Lean is an Intangible Asset
• Business as Experimental Science
• Truth Has Consequences
• Selling Lean to Business Leaders
• The Outcome of Serious Research
• The Leader’s Prerogative
• How to Never Run Out of Ideas
• Why Do CEOs Hate Operations?
• One Strategy, Two Paths
• Management as an Engineering Problem
• Lean and the Burning Platform
• Lean Retrospective
• Why Business Leaders Vote “No” for Lean
• Reimagining Lean
• Lean People Never Understood CEOs
• How Leaders Sabotage Lean
• Money vs. Process View of Cost
• Business Leaders’ Case for Ignoring Lean
• The Problem Lean May Never Overcome
• Is Lean Too Arrogant to Save Itself?
• What’s Holding Lean Back?
• Lean Transformation is Not Difficult
• Lean and The Corporation
• Lean Warning Label
• The Seven Laws of Lean Disillusionment
• The Business Philosophy Triangle
• My Contributions to Lean
• The Back Story – The Triumph of Classical Management
• Solving the Lean Transformation Problem
• The Role of a Professor in the Lean Movement
• Lean Fatigue
• Lean Parody Advertisements
• Freeish Trade, Economic Nationalism, and Lean
• Why University Teaching Rarely Improves
• The Rewards of Teaching
• What Gets Measured Gets Managed?
• Maintain Academic Excellence?
• Creative Graduation Ceremony
• The Toxic University
• Book Review: THE LEAN STRATEGY
• Excellence in Teaching
• Feedforward to Students
• The Back Story – Conversations with Taiichi Ohno
• It’s Time for Colleges to Cut Costs
• Learning to See
• Professor Emiliani’s “Nos” for Teaching
• Handmade Visual Controls
• How Would You Answer These Questions?
• Wacky Lean House
• Why Aren’t You Solving Ohno’s Problem?
• The Back Story – Critique of Lean
• Comparing TPS and Lean
• Producing Business Results With Lean
• Why Lean Keeps Thriving
• Reusable Processes
• Shingijutsu Super Kaizen Workshop
• Coaching Lean Without Knowing
• Higher Education’s Ultimate Failure
• The One Difficult Thing Hypothesis
• History Matters
• Critic and Conscience of the Lean Movement
• Teachers, Trainers, Coaches, or Faculty?
• Lean: Past, Present, and Future
• Critique of “Let’s Ban the Eighth Waste”
• Digital Transformation & Lean Transformation
• Digital Transformation vs. Lean Transformation
• How to Introduce Lean to People
• Final Exams, Final Mistake
• Leadership Development for Business Impact
• Mother Kaizen
• The Greatest Business Problem Ever
• Improvement in Higher Education, Circa 1912
• Evidencing Improvement
• New Mindset for Higher Ed Leaders
• Why Universities Don’t Improve
• Introducing Lean in Your Organization
• Do University Leaders Care About Teaching?
• Hopes and Dreams
• Economists, Economic Growth, and Lean
• Is Lean Now “Baked In?”
• Lean Without Drama
• Spooky Historical Parallels
• Lean Strategy
• Generic Brand or Name Brand?
• A Little Bit of Knowledge Can Be…
• Lean Thinking vs. Kaizen Thinking
• Interview in Production Manager Magazine
• Unbundling Higher Education
• Toyota’s One Best Way
• Eight Questions I Get From My Students
• Kaizen Evolution
• Kaizen: A Comprehensive Business Strategy
• Kaizen: A Simple Leadership Development Strategy
• Kaizen: A Simple Innovation Strategy
• Kaizen: A Simple Employee Wellness Strategy
• Kaizen: A Simple Tax Abatement Strategy
• Critique of “Dealing with Lean’s Crazy Relatives”
• Thoughts on “Lean Thinking at 20”
• Lean Leadership Training: From Batch to Flow
• Thoughts On “Lean Thinking – The Making of a Book”
• Fear of a Lean Planet
• 20th Anniversary of Lean Thinking
• The Yen, the Dollar, and TPS
• Flipped Classroom? Yawn.
• What is Lean Without Respect for People?
• The Great Lean Mystery
• The Start of Lean Leadership
• Copying Toyota
• The Improvement Mindset Is Rare
• Performance-Based College Funding
• 3P for Lean Transformation
• Smart Leaders, Dumb Decisions
• Evolution in Lean Teaching
• What Leaders Won’t Do
• Lean is Illegitimate. Or is it?
• Fealty to the Lords of Lean
• Time to Refocus on Kaizen
• The Humanity of Shingijutsu-Kaizen
• Shingijutsu-WOW
• Lean’s Next 25 Years
• Lean Transformation Variation
• Employees Goofing Off
• Lean Success and Lean Failure
• An Engineering Approach to Leadership
• Breathtaking Higher Education Innovation!
• Is Lean the Same as TPS?
• Improving How Universities Improve
• Lean’s Holy Grail
• Toyota-Style Kaizen
• Improving Leadership Processes
• Motivations and Aspirations
• Personalizing Discovery and Learning
• The Trouble With Tenure
• Criticizing Lean
• Teaching Lean Leadership
• Evolving Out of Need
• Lean Transformation Failure Analysis
• How Economics Disrespects People
• How Kaizen Restores Craftsmanship to Work
• Lean Can Learn from History
• Lean’s Bad Timing
• What is Lean Management?
• Lean’s Promise Broken
• What’s Your Lean Provenance?
• Lean and State Government Agency Leaders
• Lean Management and the Public Good
• Why Business Schools Should Teach Lean Management
• Lean MBA or Conventional MBA?
• Higher Ed’s Big Lie: Academic Excellence
• Existential Threats to Lean
• A Critique of LeanCT
• Lean Hypocrisy
• What Went Wrong?
• The Power of Kaizen
• Lean Management (1988-2026)
• Lean’s Midlife Crisis
• The Back Story – Evolution of Lean Leadership Training
• The Illusion of Understanding
• Something Revolutionary Seen as Ordinary
• The Lean Movement’s Strategic Errors
• A Marker of Lean Success
• Books for Teaching Lean Management
• Shingijutsu Super-Genba-Kaizen Workshop
• Inept vs. Immoral Leadership
• Higher Learning and Lean Management
• Riches of Embarrassment
• The Back Story – Lean Leadership Research
• Lean Governor, Anti-Lean Board of Regents
• Reefer Sanity
• Additive Leadership
• Where Unqualified Means Qualified
• University Annual Budget Process
• Research and Teaching: A Great Pairing
• Teaching Across the Curriculum
• Treating Management Psychosis
• What Do Professors Actually Do?
• Resources for Teaching Lean Management
• Back to Basics
• The Back Story – Shingijutsu-Kaizen
• New Book: Shingijutsu-Kaizen
• The Lean-Industrial Complex
• The Rise of Credentials
• Growing Tomatoes
• Searching For Lean Sustainability
• Standards for Faculty
• Observe and Ask “Why?”
• The Back Story – Speed Leadership
• A Shameful Legacy
• Run Universities Like Businesses
• Methodological Errors In Lean Government
• Outsourcing Fallacies in Higher Education
• Bet On A Boiler
• Abnormal Conditions and Lean Oddities
• Methodological Errors in Lean for Higher Ed
• The Back Story – Kaizen Forever
• Terrific Blog Posts!
• Winning Over Business Traditionalists
• I Called It!
• Seddon’s Amazing Discovery
• Shared Values for REAL Lean
• Toyota’s Supermarket Method
• Kaizen for Higher Education
• What’s Not To Like About Lean?
• Lean Higher Ed Conference Presentation
• New Books: Lean Teaching and Lean University
• New Book: Kaizen Forever
• Managerialism In The University
• The Most Important Thing
• Kaizen Your Political Skills
• Graduation Day
• Removing Confirmation Bias Against Lean
• Need My Help?
• Lean’s Kiss Of Death
• Finding Great Teachers After Graduation
• Flaws In Lean
• Lean Intellectualism
• 2015 Lean In Higher Ed Conference
• Lean Overproduction
• How To Get Started With Lean In Higher Ed
• Exploring Leadership
• Political vs. Merit-Based Change
• The 5-Day Kaizen
• Politics and Public Universities
• Coaching Leaders
• Good For You To Know
• Third Lean Higher Ed Conference
• What You Should Get Out of College
• Abnormal Condition Alert!
• Why Skills Matter
• Big Data, Leaders, and Lean
• LEI/LEA Lean Transformation Model
• Student Success
• Reverse Toyota Way
• Engaging Faculty in Lean Teaching
• Origin Of The Phrase “Kaizen Event”
• When Higher Ed Is Just A Game
• Defining “Respect for People”
• Share The Knowledge
• Course Blueprint
• The Economic Benefits of Lean
• Effective Online Courses
• Just-Too-Late
• Political Correctness Comes To Lean
• Higher Education Quality
• Who Is Your Leader?
• Lean for University Leaders
• The Lean Refinery
• Imaginary Customers
• The Back Story – Lean Behaviors
• College Productivity
• Evolution and Future of Lean
• “All Deans Are A**holes”
• Toyota’s Secret
• A Lost Decade
• Grants For Improving Teaching
• Much Study, Little Understanding
• Educating Minds Online
• Chihiro Nakao: An Amazing Teacher
• Buyers’ Market Changes Everything
• Ohno’s Problem-Solving Methods
• Professors’ Credibility Problem
• Perfect Misunderstanding
• Third International Conference on LSS for Higher Ed
• Leading With Respect Is The Old Standard
• Students Must Demand Change
• 64th Japan Genba Kaizen Seminar
• Weekly Learning Reflections
• The Human Case For Lean
• Bosses Flunk Critical Thinking
• Yasuhiro Monden
• Quality Education Charade
• The Back Story – First Lean Leadership Course
• Education and Satisfaction
• Shifting Definitions of “Lean Thinking”
• Enrollment Goals and Tuition Revenue
• Stasis In Teaching
• Leading Without Respect
• The Squeaky Wheel
• Class Participation
• Graduating Defective Products
• Restoring Symmetry
• Breaking Symmetry
• Is Teaching A Profession?
• Better Than Shared Governanace
• Despoiling The “Respect For People” Principle
• The Value Of Higher Education
• Lead With Respect
• Taming The Faculty
• How I Teach Lean Leadership
• Spotting Great Teachers
• Imperiling Student Success
• The Back Story – Writing In A Tough Tone
• Culture of Success
• Treat Students As Adults
• Two Paths To Lean Leadership
• Hire More Faculty
• Focus On Flow
• A Better Way To Teach
• The University As Manufacturer
• Reflecting On Shingijutsu-Kaizen
• Skype With The Lean Professor
• Nakao-san and Shingijutsu-Kaizen
• Right Effect, Wrong Causes
• Lean In Higher Education
• Selling Change to Finance VPs
• Opportunity To Do Good
• Priceless Small Improvements
• No Call, No Response
• Fat Behaviors Forever
• Who Needs to Improve?
• Lean Curiosities
• Did We Succeed Or Fail?
• Motivating Leaders to Embrace Lean
• Worrying About Worries
• Are College Presidents Overpaid?
• Secrets Of Lean Leadership
• Lean Training Lineage Matters
• Lessons Well Learned
• Early History of CI in Higher Ed
• Settings For Lean Success
• The Value Of A Professor
• No Confidence In No Confidence Votes
• The Clear Solution: Leadership Processes
• More Than Leadership Behaviors
• Leadership Behaviors: The Path To Lean Culture
• Lean Teaching Visual Controls
• The Implied Threat
• Thoughts on Lean Higher Ed Conference
• Lean Higher Ed Conference – Day 2
• Lean Higher Ed Conference – Day 1
• Don’t Wait For Your Leaders
• Human Superstorms
• Skilled Educational Labor
• The Musician And The Manager
• Engaging Colleagues and Administrators
• When Leaders Improve, Everyone Improves
• That’s True, As Far As It Goes
• Metrics Madness
• My Students’ Visual Controls
• Visual Controls To Improve Student Learning
• Transforming The System – Update 1
• Is History Repeating Itself?
• Is Everything We Do Value-Added?
• Why No “Respect for People?”
• Evolution Of The RFP Principle
• Evolution Of The RFP Principle
• My Student Course Evaluations
• The Back Story – Lean Teaching
• The Back Story – Lean University
• Lean Capital
• Leadership Tips for College Presidents
• Shingijutsu-Kaizen Conference: Day 1
• Shingijutsu-Kaizen Conference: Day 2
• A Tribute to Loretta
• Fewer Problems, More Time
• Lean Leader’s Visual Control
• Accreditation Process Improvement
• Influential Research Papers
• Sustaining Lean
• Improving Critical Thinking
• Peak Lean
• Boss, Know Your CI People
• Transparency and Technology
• Ignore Change Management
• Lots of Good Ideas, Except One
• Human Touch vs. Technology
• Labor Unions and Lean
• Quality of Lean
• Continuous Flow University
• Theories Have Consequences
• Students At Risk
• Know Who You Are Talking To
• The Back Story – Lean Teaching
• Students’ View of Online Courses
• June 2014 Lean In Higher Ed Conference
• More Learning From Mistakes
• The Back Story – Lean Leadership
• The MBA: Relevance Lost
• Read To Succeed
• Grasping at Competencies
• Learning From Mistakes
• What Employers Want – Part 3
• “Sales Over Safety, Profit Over Principle”
• Problem-Solving Behind the Front Line
• Surviving the Competition
• Learning To Think
• Competition in Higher Education
• Observing Lean Evolve
• Good Writer or Good Thinker?
• Eliminating the Six Criticisms of Lean
• Same Six Criticisms of Lean
• The Back Story – Lean University
• What Employers Want – Part 2
• Lean For the Next Generation
• Errors Every Day
• Guest Lecture
• Job Security
• Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
• McKinsey&Lean
• McKinsey Finally On Board!
• A Student Applies What They Learned!
• Lean Leadership Research: What Next?
• STEM Imbalance
• What Is Good Quality Teaching? – Survey Results
• Students’ Excuses
• No Lean Without Kaizen
• Fast or Slow: It’s Your Choice
• Why Professors Can’t Teach
• Grading Horribilis
• Winners and Losers
• What Is Good Quality Teaching?
• Higher Education Quality
• One Model for Lean Transformation
• Dear Business School Deans
• 2014 LSS Higher Education Conference
• Fairness for Adjuncts
• Golf and Lean
• Running on University Time
• Better Interview Questions
• Carnegie Foundation Expert Convening
• Look It Up
• Management Innovation
• Disruption in Public Higher Education
• Worse Than Anyone Thought
• Lean in HE in the UK
• The Back Story – Lean Is Not Mean
• Corporatization or Mismanagement?
• How Could We Be So Stupid!
• Great Lean Leaders
• Why Measure the Cost of Regulation?
• Educated Yet Uneducated
• Instruction, Not Construction
• The Language of Lean
• Teaching Surveys – Interim Results
• Leaders Still Not Leading
• The Department Chair’s Job
• Still Beating Up Suppliers?
• Professors Marketing Programs
• Why Is Lean Important?
• Tuition Prices Too Low
• Lean Must Do No Harm
• Enrollment Recovery Plan
• Lean Heresy
• Criticism of Accreditors
• Teachers’ Grading Tricks
• Confounded by Reality
• Teaching Clearly
• The Back Story – Moving Forward Faster
• Early MOOC Findings
• What It Takes To Succeed
• Kudos to John Seddon
• “Very Innovative”
• Discordant Realities
• Assessing Assessment Methods
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Lean as Decoration
• Responding to Enrollment Declines
• The Back Story – Real Lean
• Undergraduates’ Skills Gap
• Sloppy Drunk on STEM
• What Students Notice
• The Spirit of Lean
• Why I Self-Publish
• The Future of Lean
• An Alien Idea
• Toxic Textbooks
• EH&S and Lean
• Low Tuition Prices or Discounts?
• The Back Story – Practical Lean Leadership
• Leadership, Time, and Information Flow
• Accreditation Critics
• The Lean Syllabus
• Help Myself, Then Help Others
• Celebrate, But Remember
• Improving Public Higher Education
• Early TPS Training
• Machines Must Serve People
• The Historic Kaizens at Rensselaer
• The Toyota Way for Outsiders
• Lean Teaching Q&A #6
• From Quantity to Quality to Value
• Make the Connection
• Sharing Student Feedback
• The Back Story – Better Thinking, Better Results
• Textbook Games
• The Academe and the “Real World”
• Henry Gantt and Lean Accounting
• Feedback Anytime Form
• Henry Gantt and Lean HR
• The Back Story – Real vs. Fake Lean
• Lean Teaching Book Q&A #5
• Eyes on Lean
• Visions for Change
• New Name for Lean!
• The Lean Case for Tenure
• “The Tuition is Too Damn High”
• The Profits Generator
• The Back Story – Finding a Lost Classic
• Respect for Labor
• Mistake-Proofing Teaching
• Toyota’s Amazing Accomplishment
• Just-In-Time For America
• Remembering Key Learnings
• My Favorite Quote
• Rising College Costs
• Reflections on Lean Teaching
• Employers’ Responsibilities
• University Expense Growth
• Tenure is the Problem
• Unbundling Higher Education
• Respecting Part-Time Faculty
• What About Six Sigma?
• Learn From Teaching
• Blame the Teachers – Part 2
• Blame the Teachers – Part 1
• Fixing Higher Education
• The MOOC Effect
• MOOCs: Teaching for the Short-Term
• What I Worry About
• Dealing With Budget Problems
• Into the Crisis
• Clarity of Purpose
• Student Evaluations – Part 3
• Student Evaluations – Part 2
• Student Evaluations – Part 1
• Lean Teaching Q&A #4
• Why Students Should Read Lean Teaching
• Lean in Higher Ed Conference – Part 3
• Lean in Higher Ed Conference – Part 2
• Lean in Higher Ed Conference – Part 1
• Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning
• What is Lean Teaching?
• What Employers Want
• 45 Teaching Errors
• Lean Teaching Q&A #3
• Are You Satisfied With 10 Percent?
• Single Skilled Leaders
• MOOCs and Economies of Scale
• Big Numbers Impress
• Let’s Hear From Some Graduates!
• Lean Teaching Q&A #2
• Lean Teaching Q&A #1
• MOOCs: The Omnibus Solution?
• Student as Customer
• Do We Practice What We Preach?