“Lean is a transformation that builds toward a continuous improvement culture, not just a ‘program’ that’s designed to make tactical gains. Lean can certainly help as a short-term tactical tool, but the big gains are in the creation of a continuous improvement machine inside your own organization that drives both personal and organizational growth. That […]

In the Lean Business Culture, we talk about having ideas for improvement, testing them, and then implementing the ones that work. So, how do we get GOOD ideas? After all, some ideas are (shall we say) ”not-so-good.” I’ve had plenty of “not-so-good” ideas. You can probably say the same. How do we get GOOD ones? […]

Lean works when leaders cultivate and mobilize the creative power of people. Christians believe that people are created in the “likeness of God.” As a result, people have as set of abilities that are similar to those of God. Of course, our abilities are limited, imperfect, and distorted by sin. Despite this, they do have […]

Companies that are serious about the Lean Business Culture standardize everything they can. The most important things to standardize are are the procedures we use to create value for our customers– Process Standards. Here are seven benefits that result:

For the remainder of 2024, I plan to post “juicy quotes” weekly instead of daily. I have several training development projects going, and want to focus on them for the rest of this year. At this point, I expect to do weekly posts on Tuesdays. Blessings to you –Ray Randolph

“… We distinguish Lean from all other process improvement methodologies by the characteristic of collaborative continual problem-solving i.e. organizational learning. This simply can’t happen without standard work.” “…individuals can learn without standard work, but organizations cannot.”  The Lean Management System by Joe Murli (The Murli Group, 2015) p. 67.

Here’s a question that might come to mind when we consider standardizing work procedures. “Will standards turn us into un-thinking robots?” This is a reasonable concern, and it HAS happened frequently in the history of business:Control-oriented leaders have used standards to essentially say to their workers, “Don’t THINK, just DO what we tell you…follow these […]

It’s easy to think that standards REDUCE creativity. One of the big surprises in Lean is the exact opposite: when used rightly, standards INCREASE creativity and flexibility. They do so by capturing the ideas and improvements we make to a process, and spreading them to everyone who performs that process. The improved process then becomes […]

“Standard work is the platform upon which the next improvement is built. Without standard work each individual develops their own way of doing things sometimes narrowly and sometimes widely. The standard way of doing things is the backbone of the team meeting and discussing the next area of improvement. It enables communication on a deep […]

“The establishment of standardized processes and procedures is the greatest key to creating consistent performance. It is only when the process is stable that you can begin the creative progression of continuous improvement. As we’ve shown in the previous chapters, the work of developing standards begins early in a lean implementation and is a common […]