What a “Good Team” Does
"Your team is far more important to achieving excellence than any new technology and likely more important than brilliant product ideas. We agree with Ed Catmull, computer scientist and president…
The Power of Teams and the Tower of Babel
In my blog post last week Using the Minds of the Many, I described the power available when people THINK as a team. Team thinking is called "collaboration" and requires…
Use the Minds of the Many
The foundation of Lean is thinking people. Human beings have a set of mental skills that enable them to think thoughts, develop plans, trouble-shoot problems, and experiment with ideas to…
Who “owns” Standardized Work?
"Toyota does not want individual employees to 'own' their standardized work, and uses job rotation so no one employee owns any one job.… Once the process is operating at some…
“Co-destiny”…What Is It?
"…successful organizations must develop a sense of 'co-destiny.' A key leadership responsibility is to establish a sense of common purpose and enroll the enterprise in its pursuit. Although individual talents…
You Get what you Challenge
"There is a famous saying, 'You get what you measure.' It may be more appropriate to say, 'You get what you challenge.' Teams will respond to challenges if they are…
The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Teamwork
“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology.It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage,both because it is so powerful and so rare…If you could get all the people in an…
Lean = Learning Together
"The breakthrough thinking that Lean offers is that of better individual competence and better teamwork. This means taking responsibility when things go wrong (as they do daily) and not explaining…
Individual Accountability…or Rely on the Team? Both.
"Critical to Toyota's success is single-point accountability. One person's name goes up next to each item in an action plan. But in order to succeed, the individual responsible must work…
The Power of a Great Team
"Your team is far more important to achieving excellence than any new technology and likely more important than brilliant product ideas. We agree with Ed Catmull, computer scientist and president…