KaiNexus: Continuous Improvement, Leadership, and More

Tracking the impact of a continuous improvement program is one of the most difficult challenges that an incoming consultant may face. As difficult as tracking impact is, it is also one of the most important metrics to measure. Organization leaders want to see a return on their investment of a consultant and being able to capture the results of the improvement program is the easiest way to do so.

Behind every improvement technique and tool, there is a winning spirit. There is no downside to the ideas that processes can always be made better and that positive change is the business of everyone. But today we are going to focus on one common improvement tool, the idea board, and make the case that there is a better way. After all, why would the force of Kaizen not be applied to improvement it...

Gemba walks can be one of the most enjoyable and powerful learning opportunities for leaders, but only if they are done in a way that promotes learning and avoids creating tension between managers and frontline staff. I have written about Gemba walks before, but I wanted to delve deeper into what NOT to do on Gemba walks. If your Gemba walks aren’t going as well as hoped, or if they are causing te...

Hosted by KaiNexus and Mark Graban In this webinar, you will learn: - What creativity is (and isn't) and what service excellence is (and isn't) - Why changing behavior first leads to mindset changes, not the other way around! - How to develop creative problem solving and critical thinking skills in daily 15 min coaching sessions - How using creativity combined with The Toyota Way to Service Excell...

As you can probably tell from reading this blog or others about the Lean approach to business management, most of what is written about the subject is applied to manufacturing and healthcare organizations. We know, however, that its application is not that limited. We have clients in technology, education, agriculture, professional services, and more. One sector that is starting to embrace the Lea...

March madness is in full swing, and we are not going to lie. We have basketball on the brain. The level of talent and dedication that players display even when they do not win the game is truly inspiring. As spectators, we see the game. What we do not see are the countless hours of practice, the sacrifice, the workouts, the strategy sessions, and all of the other hard work that goes into competing...

It is important in any discussion of standard work to talk about what it is not, as a poor interpretation could mean results that inhibit improvement rather than supporting it. Leaders have an obligation to promote standard work in the correct way, so that staff will both respect the need for it and invest themselves in improving it.

Karen and David are the founders of Gimbal Canada Inc, a Lean practice management advisory firm that specializes in the legal industry. For the last three years or so, Gimbal has been working with law firms across North America on improving the way lawyers deliver legal services. They teach, write, and speak about Lean and the benefits of legal process improvement for law firms and in-house legal...

Lean organizations target 8 types of waste in an effort to create the perfect flow of value to the customer. Ideally, no resources are used unnecessarily and every task contributes something for which customers are willing to pay. Of course, achieving this is much more challenging than just saying it. That is why a set of Lean tools and techniques have been developed to aid Leaders who embark on t...

In the United States, multiple estimates say over 100,000 people die each year in hospitals as a result of medical errors. There are an estimated 1.7 million care-associated infections each year and adverse medication events cause over 750,000 injuries and deaths per year. Beyond the human cost, if you look at the financial cost of these mistakes, we are looking at almost $20 billion annually.

Lean organizations target 8 types of waste in an effort to create the perfect flow of value to the customer. Ideally, no resources are used unnecessarily and every task contributes something for which customers are willing to pay. Of course, achieving this is much more challenging than just saying it. That is why a set of Lean tools and techniques have been developed to aid Leaders who embark on t...

When we write the improvement cycle as linear, we start at P, which places the emphasis on the plan (noun) you intend to implement. But if P is understood to mean planning (verb), the emphasis is on first constructing a plan. Thinking of the P in this way, it becomes clear that you must first understand the current circumstances and make an honest appraisal of what can be done, given the way your...

Gemba walks give leaders the opportunity to observe the processes that add value in their natural habitat. After all, talking about what happens on a factory floor or an emergency room in a board room is very different than observing work at the source. But like any other continuous improvement technique, the devil is in the details when it comes to Gemba walks. The best of intentions can be under...

Continuous Improvement in Education has been rapidly growing over the past couple years. Jake Sussman has recently talked about continuous improvement in higher education at KaiNexus, but one group that deserves mention is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered by Congress in 1906, the Carnegie Foundation is an independent policy a...

Before they started using KaiNexus, JC Cannistraro used their own internal continuous improvement program, in which they tracked improvements with Google Sheets, but at some point this program went dead, flatlining in the number of improvements adopted over time. To combat this, they started using 5S training to make new improvements. Cannistraro stressed that the important thing 5S gave their tea...

The education system in America faces an enormously complex set of challenges. Educators find themselves faced with community and government pressure to improve student performance, but often without corresponding funding or influence over policies and expectations. In short, our school administrations and teachers are being asked to do more with less. That is why it is not surprising to find that...

Mark Graban interviews Karyn Ross, coauthor, with Jeff Liker, of the Shingo Award-winning "The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organizations." Karyn is doing a webinar on March 28 titled "How to Coach for Creativity & Service Excellence." To register, visit www.kainexus.com/webinars.

I was not up-to-speed on continuous improvement, or Lean, or any of those concepts. So I was learning with the organization, and basically they said, we are doing Lean, and here are the tools, go do it. Tools work, people use them, we do not really have a lot of overall vision or direction.

Those who have been working in and around construction for quite some time will know the construction industry has suffered deeply from a lack of innovation and systems improvement for as long as most can remember.

Here at KaiNexus, we believe that each person in our company plays a critical role in the success of our company - and our customers. We’ve grown rapidly over the past couple of years, but we’re still a small team, making each person’s contributions critical. When most people think of a tech startup, they envision a bunch of dudes in the break room wearing virtual reality headsets chugging Red Bul...

All my life, I have been an avid basketball fan. In my younger days, some would say I was a decent player, though many moons have passed since then. Every time we stepped on the court, one of my team’s goals was to get into a rhythm. The dictionary definition of rhythm is a regular repeated pattern of beats, sounds, activity, or movements. For any non-sports aficionado reading this, imagine a grou...

The best part about being involved in a Lean Community is the community - and we have been thrilled to discover a thriving Lean community here in our own backyard in Austin, Texas. KaiNexus is part of the Austin branch of Lean Construction Institute. Lean Construction Institute (LCI) is a non-profit organization, founded in 1997. The Institute operates as a catalyst to transform the industry throu...

If you are considering investing in strategy deployment software to support your organization's efforts to achieve your most important objectives, we congratulate you. Too many leaders talk a big game when it comes to strategy, but fail to provide the company with the tools and information necessary to effectively carry it out. (Here’s a good example of what can go wrong.) There are a lot of sys...

If you are considering investing in strategy deployment software to support your organization's efforts to achieve your most important objectives, we congratulate you. Too many leaders talk a big game when it comes to strategy, but fail to provide the company with the tools and information necessary to effectively carry it out. (Here’s a good example of what can go wrong.) There are a lot of sys...

n improvement culture cannot be created with a “drop and grow” approach. A continuous improvement culture also needs careful maintenance to grow strong. However, it isn’t easy to measure the health of an improvement culture with spreadsheets or sharepoint files. While a plant gives warning signs in multiple ways, a spreadsheet does not. The only way to know if a culture is failing is that th...