Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond

Episode #109 is a discussion with Jim Morgan, Director, Global Body Exterior and Stamping Business Unit Engineering, Ford Motor Company. We will be talking about Lean product development methods in this show. James will be a plenary speaker at the upcoming Lean Transformation Summit, presented by the Lean Enterprise Institute, in Dallas this March 9th and 10th. Hope to see you there! Visit www.lea...

Episode #108 is a discussion with Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, recorded in person at the 2010 Shingo Prize Conference in Salt Lake City. Gwendolyn was previously a guest on episodes #26, 45, and 49. Here, we chat about lean and the "respect for people" principle, following up my talk with Dr. Stephen Covey (episode # 91) and we also touch briefly on her new book "Work That Makes Sense." You can find G...

Show notes and more: https://www.leanblog.org/107   Remastered January 2022 Episode #107 is something I've been looking forward to for some time now – an interview with  Dan Pink , the author of some  outstanding books including  Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us  and  Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself , among others. Today, we're talking about  Drive  and a n...

For episode #106, we have a returning guest, Jim Baran of the firm Value Stream Leaders. Jim was previously a guest on episodes #16, 27, and 88 talking about careers in Lean. Today, Jim talks about a new offering called "Career Kaizen™," a service that combines coaching and personalized career management. With him today is Rick Pederson, one of the early people to go through this process with Jim....

Podcast #105 is a conversation with the co-authors of the new book Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation from Productivity Press. They are Adam Zak, a regular guest blogger here on Leanblog.org and Lean-focused executive recruiter and Bill Waddell, a Lean consultant and frequent blogger over at EvolvingExcellence.com. Here, we talk about their book...

Podcast #104 is a discussion with Dr. Peter Patterson, a friend of mine and the Lean Blog the past few years. He wrote a guest post for me back in 2009 (A Breakthrough in Training — Call it "Near-TWI") and I blogged about our presentation at the 2010 Society for Health Systems conference about Lean and TWI in healthcare. Here, we chat about his background with Lean in multiple settings, including...

In my latest Video Podcast (here as audio podcast #103), my guest is Matthew E. May, returning to talk about his latest book, a business fable called The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meaningful Change. I’ve been reading the book and have found it be a thought-provoking about your own personal effectiveness in a complex world. You can read more about the book at Matt’s website: www. S...

My guest for Episode #102 is Ron Wince, the President/CEO of Guidon Performance Solutions. We talk here about his views on lean healthcare and the impact of healthcare reform on the healthcare landscape. Prior to founding Guidon, Ron held senior leadership positions within world-class organizations, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Freudenberg-NOK, and Lear Corporation. You may have seen Ron as a gues...

Episode #101 of the Podcast is a discussion with Keith Syberg, former Chairman of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (see here for more about their 2010 annual AME conference in Baltimore, November). Today, we talk about consortia (I word I really struggled with) and collaboration efforts among manufacturing companies and the possibility of sharing across industries. To point others to t...

Episode Page Wow, 100 episodes of my podcast since 2006! For this episode, I'm thankful to have the author of one of my favorite books in the last two years –  Dave Crenshaw , author of  The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done , a book I  blogged about  back in 2009. Dave's new book is called  Invaluable: The Secret to Becoming Irreplaceable,  a book I'm hoping to read soon....

For episode #99 of the podcast, I'm talking with the authors of the book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany. My guests are Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, both are experienced entrepreneurs from California. We had a great discussion and I'm happy to bring a topic that will stretch the minds of Lean thinkers in many industries... s...

Episode Page Podcast #98 brings us Pat Bergin, President of  Aerofil Technology , a manufacturer based in Missouri with 400 employees. Aerofil has been on its Lean journey since 2007 under Pat's leadership – first as a consultant and now as President. With more than 30 years of operations, finance, sales and marketing experience, Pat has brought both a broad and deep understanding of continuous im...

Episode Page Episode #97 is a discussion with  Bob Sutton , a Stanford University Professor of Management Science and Engineering and the best-selling author of  The No A-hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.  Other  books  by Bob include The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action and Weird Ideas That Work: How to Build a Creative Compan...

Episode page Our guest for Episode #96 is Pascal Dennis of  Lean Pathways, Inc.  Pascal is a  faculty member with the Lean Enterprise Institute  and he's the author of the  books : Lean Production Simplified, Andy & Me: Crisis And Transformation On The Lean Journey, and Getting the Right Things Done: A Leader's Guide to Planning and Execution. Here in this podcast, we talk about his new book,  www...

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/95   Remastered audio June 2021 Episode #95 features Norman Bodek talking about some of the ideas in his most recent book, How to do Kaizen: A new path to innovation – Empowering everyone to be a problem solver . Late in the podcast, Norman asks and answers an interesting question: what if an employee suggests “we should blow up the factory”?? This was recorded...

Episode Page Episode #94 of the LeanBlog Podcast is here and our guest is  Robert Miller , Executive Director of the   Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence . Bob was previously a guest for  Podcast #59 , talking about changes to the Shingo Prize criteria. Here, we are talking as a follow up to my discussion with  Dr. Stephen Covey in Podcast #91 . Bob tells me some of the background and history...

Episode Page Episode #93 is a discussion with Jim Hearn, the Head of Lean and Six Sigma at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust. This discussion was  found earlier online  as part of the  SixSigmaIQ.com  podcast series on  BlogTalkRadio , so thanks to SixSigmaIQ for lining up the interview. Jim talks about his transition from manufacturing into healthcare and he describes some of his hospital's w...

Epsiode #92 brings a returning guest, the always entertaining and thought-provoking Mike Micklewright. He is the author of a batch of two new books: Out of Another @#&*% Crisis! Motivation through Humiliation and Lean ISO 9001: Adding Spark to your ISO 9001 QMS and Sustainability to your Lean Efforts. In this podcast, we talk about his "Crisis" book and why it's important to revisit the teachings...

Episode page Remastered 2023 Episode #91 is a very special one-on-one conversation with  Dr. Stephen Covey , recorded at the  Shingo Prize  Conference in Salt Lake City last week. My main question to Dr. Covey was to ask his thoughts on Toyota's “Respect for People” principle, sometimes called ‘Respect for Humanity.” You can listen to the audio or you can read a transcript below in this post. Afte...

Episode page Podcast #90 features Tim Turner, a team leader at Toyota's factory in Georgetown Kentucky (aka TMMK or Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky). He is the author, along with a team of co-workers, of the new book called  One Team on All Levels: Stories from Toyota Team Members, Second Edition . In the podcast, we discuss the book and the culture of teamwork at Toyota. Tim also comments on...

Episode page ur guest for Podcast #89 is Keith Russell, a Global Continuous Improvement Leader at AstraZeneca R&D. I met Keith at a recent Lean & Six Sigma  conference  for Pharma R&D where we both presented. Keith has substantial in-house R&D experience across the entire value stream and currently works with Global Drug Development. He is particularly interested in Design and Innovation and the a...

Episode #88 is a conversation with a returning guest, Jim Baran of the firm Value Stream Leadership (he is @leanVSL on Twitter, also). His sites include the Lean Career Compass and his Lean Career Guide blog. In this podcast, Jim talks about a shift in his firm's business model away from traditional recruiting and placement to helping companies manage Lean talent within their organization. We've s...

Show notes https://www.leanblog.org/87 Remastered June 2021 Episode #87 is a discussion with a returning guest,  Steven J. Spear, DBA , author of the outstanding book  Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win . The book is due to be re-released in May under a new title,  The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Opera...

Episode #86 is a conversation with David Lawrence Sundahl, PhD, Managing Director of Rule 4 Consulting (www.rule4consulting.com). They are a firm that works with healthcare providers to drive improvements using Lean and what they call "Adaptive Design" methodologies. Sundahl was a contemporary of Steven Spear at the Harvard Business School and also worked with Dr. John Kenagy, author of the book D...

Episode Page Episode #85 is a conversation with  David Meier , a former Toyota Georgetown Group Leader and the co-author of the books  The Toyota Way Fieldbook  and  Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way  We discuss the recent quality problems that Toyota is facing and we get a lean thinker's perspective on how to look for facts and really try to diagnose what is happening in a comp...