7-Part Video Series on the Toyota Kata

I wanted to have one collection point for the the 7-part series with Brandon Brown where we discussed the the Toyota Kata. Toyota Kata is documented in Mike Rother’s book Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results. The series consists of these 7 videos: What is Toyota Kata Using Kata for Alignment Read More …

Old Style Thinking of Plan – Do

One of my favorite authors (even though he has turned me down several times for a podcast) is Jim Highsmith. Jim has authored, several books with my favorite being Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (2nd Edition) which comes as no surprise to most readers of this blog. One of the items that Jim challenges Read More …

Solutions – Simple Enough for Everyone

Alain Patchong is the founder of the TheOneDayExpert and author of a series of books on Standard Work. TheOneDayExpert is built around the simple idea that in today’s highly competitive environment, industry, which has already harvest low-hanging fruits, cannot rely anymore on single-minded or one-size-fits-all tools. TheOneDayExpert leverages 20+ years of industry experience to offer Read More …

Coaching An Agile Team Virtually

I have coached a variety of teams virtually and wondered how someone else did it. So I asked a could of questions. An excerpt from last week’s podcast, Managing Product Development . Joe: Much of a consultant’s role is relationship and trust building; when we do it virtually, that’s sometimes very difficult to do. How Read More …

Pull Planning

One of my favorite and a podcast that ended up influencing me quite a bit was with Gregory Howell. At the time, Greg was the managing director of the Lean Construction Institute (LCI), a non-profit organization devoted to production management research in design and construction. The Last Planner® (sometimes referred to as the Last Planner® Read More …

Respect in Lean

I asked Michael Balle in a past interview (Related Podcast and Transcription: Pushing Kaizen Beyond the Walls) what the term “respect” means in Lean. Michael Ballé is the co-author of, The Gold Mine, and The Lean Manager. His most recent book is Lead with Respect. Joe:  You touched upon a point there. In “Lean”, can you Read More …