Why They Fail ... and the Simple Key to Success!

Bad cultures with bad leaders do not fix themselves. They buy their way out. A new warehouse management system. A bigger facility. An expensive digital platform. The same chaos, now running on software that costs a fortune. In this episode of the Why They Fail Podcast, Kevin Clay sits down with Ben Harmsen. Ben is a military veteran with twelve years at Chrysler during the historic Daimler-Benz me...

Over 90% of corporate deployments fail within eighteen months. One of the most common reasons is the creation of continuous improvement silos. When process improvement is locked inside a single department or treated as a leadership checklist, cultural transformation becomes impossible. In this episode of the Why They Fail Podcast, Kevin Clay sits down with Emilio Natalio, a retired military aviato...

Gen Z Grit: How Cheer Stunts Breed Future CEOs   Welcome to another episode of Why They Fail. In this episode, we tackle an exciting angle on organizational health:  gen z leadership development . Many corporate leaders wonder how the next generation will handle complex business dynamics. However, looking at the discipline required in competitive youth environments reveals a clear trend....

Inside Amazon: Why Process Engineers Are Guides, Not Sages Most companies build their continuous improvement programs the wrong way. They train a single green belt or black belt and expect that one person to fix everything. However, studying Six Sigma principles in Amazon's operations reveals a completely different model. At Amazon, process engineers do not own the solutions. Instead, they build t...

Beyond the Shiny Kanban: Driving a Real EBITDA Explosion Most business leaders believe they are running a lean operation. However, if your Kanban cards are still moving to the beat of unstable MRP lead times, you are not pulling. You are running a heavily masked push system. Implementing true pull system vs push operations is what separates an 11% EBITDA crawl from a 30% to 200% financial explosio...

Why Continuous Improvement Leaders Pick Crap Projects Most continuous improvement programs fail within 18 months. The reason is almost always the same: leadership started by avoiding bad Six Sigma projects the wrong way. Instead of using data, they used gut feeling. In this episode of the Why They Fail Podcast, host Kevin Clay sits down with 40-year CI veteran Wade Harper. Together, they expose th...

Fear and Loathing: The Danger of Numerical Goals In this episode of the Why They Fail Podcast , we take on one of the biggest traps in modern management: the obsession with numerical goals. Dr. W. Edwards Deming warned against this decades ago in his famous Point 11, which calls for the elimination of management by objectives. Today, those warnings still apply. Our guest is John Dyer , bestselling...

How Lean Six Sigma Transformed a City Govt.  Can Lean Six Sigma principles truly revolutionize municipal operations? This episode delves into the remarkable success story of Fort Wayne, Indiana , exploring how  continuous improvement in city government  led to over $30 million in savings and drastically improved public services. Join host Kevin Clay as he interviews Graham Richard ,...

Continuous Improvement at Danone: The Shotgun Approach  Welcome to our latest episode! We dive into Continuous Improvement at Danone, a global leader that embeds operational excellence into its culture. In this episode, I talk with Cici Haines, Danone’s Continuous Improvement Manager, who shares insights from her 20-year journey. We explore their “shotgun approach.” Hundreds of employees tack...

Shainin and Six Sigma: It All Comes Down to Leadership Welcome to another episode of Why They Fail . In this episode, we explore the heart of every successful continuous improvement effort: leadership. Many companies invest in Lean Six Sigma or the Shainin Red X method, yet most fail to sustain progress. The reason is rarely the tools. It is almost always the leadership behind them. We sit down wi...