On-line Training Partnership with Liker Leadership Institute

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Jeff Liker, the author of The Toyota Way, Lean Culture and Lean Leadership has developed an online training program in Lean Leadership. I have agreed to  serve as a coach to those taking the Lean Leadership course. The course is self-paced and online. There are two levels of the course, one leading to a Yellow Belt Certificate and the other leading to a Green Belt Certificate in lean leadership.  This is a good way to engage a large number of managers who may not have the time to attend on-site training and who can progress through the course on their own time. This can be supplemented with on-line Webex discussions about application among the managers in your organization.

BookWho Should Attend

  • Executive Leadership Team
  • Managers
  • Lean Project Sponsors
  • Team Leaders

Why

This course is designed to give participants a deeper understanding of what it means to be a true ‘Lean Leader.’ Through this interactive series of videos delivered by 11-time Shingo Prize winning author Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker, you will learn directly from Dr. Liker all aspects of Lean Leadership. You will be taking frequent quizzes and getting feedback to gauge your progress throughout the course. Training like this is not available anywhere else.

Liker Leadership Institute (LLI) offers an innovative way to learn the secret to lean leadership

Dr. Jeffery K. Liker

“When I wrote “the Toyota Way to Lean Leadership” with Gary Convis we knew that “lean leaders” would finally have a way to live the company values, become excellent at process improvement following the disciplined approach of Plan-Do-Check-Act, learn to coach others in process improvement, and lead both horizontally across the company and vertically within their area of responsibility. This allows them to achieve the challenging targets the organization needs for success.

“My online course provides an overview of each step in the lean leadership development process: Self-development, Developing and Coaching Others, Supporting Daily Kaizen, and Creating a Vision and Aligned Goals. Throughout the course you will learn more deeply through exercises, case examples, quizzes. and actual projects in your workplace under the guidance of talented lean coaches (LLI Coaches).”

  • Administered in 15-minute sessions.
    Online and on-demand, the course can be taken from anywhere in the world, at any time of day, and on any computer or smartphone with internet access.
  • Distinguished through accessibility.
    Students select a code and are paired with a coach that suits their interests, their preferred language, or their geographical location.
  • More opportunity.
    Students are also given the opportunity to access the LLI WebOffice, making available to them all the resources that Jeff Liker and the LLI Coaches use.

Sign up here at Liker Leadership InstituteLOGO-LLI-Clear

Decide whether you want to take the Yellow Belt or the Green Belt course.

  • Be sure to put in the following code for Yellow Belt course: Either DC or MD
  • For the Green Belt course: Either GDC or GMD (this will assure that I will serve as your coach)

If you have any questions, please contact me at LMMiller@lmmiller.com.

 

Transformational Change vs. Continuous Improvement

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It may sound like sacrilege to hear someone say that continuous improvement may not always be the right answer. Of course, it is the core process of lean management. But, there are times when more significant and more rapid change is required – sometimes revolution rather than evolution is called for.

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“Respect for People” and “The Design of the System”

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Michel Baudin, a fellow blogger and author, posted a video link of a panel discussion that included Jeffrey Liker (The Toyota Way, Toyota Leadership) in which British consultant John Seddon makes the comment that “This respect for people stuff is horse shit.” Seddon argues that what leads to improvement is the system and not an intervention to respect or deal better with the people. Respect for people is the result, not only of personal patterns of communication, but also the result of the nature of the system.

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Transformational Change Management

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Getting to Lean – Transformational Change Management is now available on Amazon.

There is continuous improvement, and then there is transformational change. Transformational change involves rethinking the whole-system of the organization, creating alignment to the external environment and among the internal subsystems of the organization.

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Creative Destruction and Transformational Change

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This is about lean management and organizational change. It is about adaptation to disruptive technology and markets. The ability to adapt your organization’s capabilities to changing technology and markets is, in itself, a core competence required of every organization today. And, continuous improvement will not get you there. Disruptive technologies and markets require transformational change, revolutionary rather than evolutionary, not simple problem solving or continuous improvement.

The lean management process or Toyota Production System is founded on continuous improvement. But that continuous improvement is built on top of a stable platform that is aligned with a relatively stable market. Cars still have four wheels, for the most part still have an internal combustion engine; but, they don’t fly and they don’t travel over the Internet. But, what if technology completely disrupted the business model. And, how do you transform to adapt to disruptions?

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Quality of Work Life and the Toyota System

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Books on lean management and the Toyota Production System are too often presented as if this system has been a virtual heaven of production efficiency and worker satisfaction. In the author’s enthusiasm, questions about stress and work life are rarely raised or they are glossed over. In Japan there have been serious issues raised about the quality of work life at Toyota plants and Toyota has openly addressed this issue itself, along with its union, and conducted its own whole-system system redesign to improve the attractiveness and reduce the stresses of working within their system.

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Socio-Technical and Lean Systems: Design for Sustainability

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The goal of this article is to bring together socio-technical systems (STS) thinking and methodology and lean management thinking. There is a huge advantage in combining the two along with an important third and missing piece of the “whole-system.” Without understanding the nature of these systems, lean or STS implementation are likely to not be sustainable.

Organizations, whether public or private, are all organic, living, changing things. Most will die, sooner or later. The cause of failure is rarely the external threat, the attack of the barbarian or the fierce economic competitor, rather the cause is most often an act of suicide, self-inflicted by one’s own hand. Or, as Jerry Harvey said, “How come every time I get stabbed in the back my finger prints are on the knife?”

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Dr. Deming’s Joy at Work, Happiness, & the High Performance Organization

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Dr. Deming was fond of promoting the idea that every employee should be able to achieve joy at work and that joy would lead to improved quality and performance for the organization. The research on happiness supports the value of his intuition. Seeking happiness is consistent with seeking a high performance organization.

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Fast Cycle Lean and the Rebirth of American Manufacturing at GE’s Appliance Park

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The return of jobs by GE to its Louisville Appliance Park is the best evidence yet of a new trend and it is important that every company engaged in manufacturing consider the key elements that make this a sound business decision. It is an example of “macro-lean”, the creation of processes that unite major functions in the organization.

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The Lean Culture Challenge: Can You Graduate from the 5S’s to The 7S’s that Really Matter?

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Doing 5S is easy because it requires nothing of executives and very little if any change in the behavior of managers. It does not disrupt their world. And, that is exactly why it does not address the big issues that drive the culture and competitiveness of any organization. Real competitive advantage is derived from internal strategy, building the capabilities of the organization, and that requires managing the Big Seven S’s of organization culture.

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The Fiscal Cliff and Life in the Freshman Dorm, or why “The Pigeon is Never Wrong!”

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The behavior of Congress and getting to the edge of the cliff is no mystery. It is a phenomena well known to freshman college students and every mouse or pigeon subjected to behavioral psychology research.

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Teamwork at the Cleveland Clinic

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Today’s New York Times editorial focuses on the advances made at the Cleveland Clinic through the development of teamwork across functions. Having long promoted teamwork, through both formal structures and changes in behavior, it is nice to see its importance recognized in the press.

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Meta-Lean 2: Empiricism and Humility

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The primary task of a manager is to think. The future success of the organization is dependent upon his or her ability to think clearly, critically, and creatively.

The greatest enemy of continuous improvement is arrogance, particularly on the part of leaders, and the opposite quality of humility is a requirement of learning and improvement.

In my previous post I introduced the idea that there are “big thoughts,” or over-arching cultural principles that are essential to creating a genuinely lean culture. I suggested that the principle of Unity was the first. The second is what I will call the principles of Empiricism and Humility.

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