Lean Blog Audio: Practical Lean Thinking, Psychological Safety, and Continuous Improvement

A title change is not a culture change. In this episode, Mark Graban draws on his early experience at GM in the mid-1990s — where "foreman" became "team coordinator" overnight without anything else changing — to explore why renaming supervisors with Lean-sounding titles so often fails to deliver Lean results. Read the blog post The discussion centers on Ford's Process Coach...

Blog post with links Three years ago,  The Mistakes That Make Us  came out. Around the same time, Elisabeth Swan published  Picture Yourself a Leader . Both books' third birthdays felt like a decent reason to get together and talk. On Thursday, May 7, at 1 PM ET, Elisabeth and I are co-hosting  a live event on LinkedIn called “Still Learning: Mistakes and Leadership Lessons. ” We will talk about w...

Most AI tools answer your question with a 500-word essay full of numbered steps. You nod, close the tab, and carry on doing what you were already doing. The Lean Hospitals Coach is built around the opposite instinct -- asking questions before giving answers, the way good coaching actually works. Check out the blog post In this episode, Mark walks through how the tool works, why it runs on Claude i...

Read the blog post TL;DR: A sound check, live song requests, and a naming regret — what watching Brandi Carlile perform taught me about specific problem-solving, vulnerability, and continuous improvement. My wife and I got to see the amazing Brandi Carlile perform near Chicago on Friday night. She is a multi-Grammy award-winning singer, musician, and songwriter — though calling her a solo artist w...

The blog post TL;DR:  Deming and Toyota's Fujio Cho asked the same uncomfortable question: why do management systems destroy motivation in people who started out wanting to do good work? The answer points to practices leaders can actually change. Check part 1 of this series in episode 464,

Read the blog post TL;DR: In a 1993 speech, Toyota leader Fujio Cho said organizations can create their own Lean systems, but success depends on three principles: leaders going to the gemba, asking “why” to learn from problems, and respecting and motivating people — not copying Lean tools.

The blog post What if a book could become an interactive coach instead of a static reference? In this episode, Mark Graban shares a behind-the-scenes look at his experiment turning the award-winning book Lean Hospitals into an AI-powered chat assistant embedded directly on his website. What started as a Friday afternoon curiosity quickly evolved into a working WordPress plugin, a subscription mode...

The blog post In this episode, I explore the 1987 NUMMI Management Practices Executive Summary — a confidential General Motors report that documented why the joint venture between GM and Toyota was succeeding so dramatically. What’s striking is how clearly GM’s own study team understood the real drivers of NUMMI’s performance. It wasn’t tools. It wasn’t discipline. It wasn’t copying Toyota’s produ...

The blog post In this audio version of the post, Mark Graban reflects on a rare kind of CEO message—one that treats safety not as a compliance checkbox or slogan, but as a core leadership responsibility and a living example of Respect for People. Drawing from the 2025 annual report and CEO letter from GE Aerospace and its leader Larry Culp , Mark explores what it means when safety truly comes firs...

In this episode, Mark Graban reads and reflects on his LeanBlog.org post, “ When a CEO Talks About the Work: Larry Culp, GE Aerospace, and Real Lean Leadership. ” The post examines a rare example of a Fortune 50 CEO— Larry Culp of GE Aerospace —describing operational excellence not through slogans or dashboards, but through safety, trust, and small frontline improvements that compound into real re...

The blog post Many improvement efforts stall not because of poor strategy or missing Lean tools, but because people don’t feel safe speaking up. In this Lean Blog Audio episode, Mark Graban explains why psychological safety is a foundational requirement for continuous improvement. Drawing from his book The Mistakes That Make Us and decades of experience in healthcare, manufacturing, and other indu...

The blog post When Ford and UAW leaders traveled to Japan in 1981, they expected to find better machines, tighter processes, and technical secrets. What they found instead was something far more powerful: a management system built on listening, trust, and respect for people. In this Lean Blog Audio episode, Mark Graban revisits the 1981 Ford–UAW study trip to Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda through the...

The Blog Post Twenty years after Toyota Culture was published, Jeffrey Liker’s lessons still expose why so many Lean efforts stall — and why Toyota’s thinking continues to matter in 2026. In this episode, Mark revisits a three-part podcast series recorded in 2008 with Professor Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way and Toyota Culture . Together, they explored what most organizations miss when th...

The blog post How should organizations think about using AI in Kaizen and continuous improvement? In this AudioBlog, Mark Graban argues that there are no clear answers yet—and that uncertainty is exactly why AI should be approached through small, disciplined PDSA cycles rather than big bets or hype-driven rollouts. Instead of treating AI as an expert or decision-maker, Mark frames it as a thought...

the blog post Why do Lean practices like pull systems and heijunka fail to take hold in so many organizations? In this AudioBlog, Mark Graban argues that the problem isn’t the tools—it’s how Lean is applied. Too often, organizations cherry-pick visible practices like 5S, huddles, or kaizen events while avoiding the harder work of adopting Lean as a complete management system. This episode explores...

The blog post In this Lean Blog Audio episode, Mark Graban reflects on an unexpected leadership lesson learned on the pickleball court. As a beginner unlearning decades-old tennis habits, Mark experiences firsthand how execution errors, muscle memory, and self-criticism can quietly undermine learning. A kind instructor and supportive playing partners provide timely feedback—without blame—turning m...

The blog post In this episode, Mark reflects on a visit he made twenty years ago to the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California — the Toyota-GM joint venture that became legendary in Lean circles. What stayed with him wasn’t flashy tools or so-called Lean perfection, but a series of small, human moments that revealed how Lean actually works as a management system. Through six short stories — a broken e...

The blog post Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson once joked that his incredible physical transformation came from one simple routine: working out six hours a day, every day, for twenty years. In this episode, Mark explores why that line from Central Intelligence mirrors how organizations misunderstand Lean. Many admire the “after” picture of Toyota, ThedaCare, or Franciscan St. Francis Health, but far fewe...

The blog post In this episode, Mark Graban flips roles and becomes the guest—answering five core Lean questions posed by longtime Lean thinker Tim McMahon of the A Lean Journey blog. These questions have been answered by many practitioners over the years, and they cut straight to the purpose, the misconceptions, and the future of Lean. Mark shares how he first encountered Lean as an industrial eng...

The blog post In this episode, Mark Graban explores one of the most misunderstood — and most essential — principles of Lean: the commitment to no layoffs due to improvement . Drawing from his work with Johnson & Johnson’s ValuMetrix Services team and stories from Lean Hospitals, Mark explains why Lean cannot thrive in a culture of fear and why protecting people’s livelihoods is foundational to...

The blog post In this episode, Mark Graban explores why so many organizational change efforts stall—not because people are resistant, but because leaders rely on telling instead of asking. Drawing from his recent Lean Blog article, Mark introduces five Motivational Interviewing questions that shift conversations from compliance to genuine commitment. He explains how MI, a framework rooted in empat...

The blog post This episode looks at how GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp grounds Lean leadership in two fundamentals: safety and respect for people. Drawing on his recent appearance on the Gray Matter podcast, we explore how Culp applies the core habits of the Toyota Production System—not as slogans, but as daily practice. Culp traces his Lean development back to Danaher, where he learned kaizen direct...

The blog post In this episode of Lean Blog Audio , Mark Graban reads and reflects on his post “Fred Noe of Jim Beam: Leadership Lessons on Mistakes, Innovation, and Long-Term Thinking.” What can a seventh-generation master distiller teach us about leadership, experimentation, and learning from mistakes? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Drawing on two in-person encounters with Fred Noe—at the Jim Beam...

The blog post In this episode of the Lean Blog Audio podcast, Mark Graban reads and reflects on one of his classic posts: “The Biggest Lean Six Sigma Myth: ‘Lean Is Just About Speed.’” Far too often, consultants and trainers claim that “Lean is for speed” while “Six Sigma is for quality.” Mark calls out this false dichotomy and explains why both Lean and Six Sigma—when properly understood—aim to i...

The blog post In this episode of Lean Blog Audio , Mark Graban reads his reflection, “I’m Still Dreaming About My Meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro’s Sushi in Tokyo.” Join Mark as he shares a rare dining experience at the legendary Sukiyabashi Jiro — the Michelin-starred Tokyo restaurant made famous by Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Beyond the extraordinary craftsmanship and taste, Mark explores what this meal reve...