- 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?