Blog | Management Meditations

Lean & Meta Principles 2: Empiricism and Humility

Dec 12, 2012 | Corporate Culture, Lean Culture, Lean Management, Lean Manufacturing, Managing Change, Team Development

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.

Lean and Meta Principles: The Unity Principle

Dec 6, 2012 | Corporate Culture, Leadership, Lean Culture, Lean Management, Lean Manufacturing, Managing Change, Organization Design and Process Improvement, Organizational Behavior Management

Some companies have engaged in what they think are “lean implementations” by reducing lean to component parts and experimenting with one component over there, another over here, and a third somewhere else. That is guaranteed to fail. The very idea of reducing lean to its component parts fails to “get it.” I believe that the first principle of meta-lean is what I called in a previous book, The Unity Principle. Honda took this principle to heart and sought to apply it in their U.S. operations.

Lean Lessons from the Hawthorne Studies

Nov 2, 2012 | Corporate Culture, Leadership, Lean Culture, Lean Health Care, Lean Management, Lean Manufacturing, Organization Design and Process Improvement, Organizational Behavior Management, Team Development

The Hawthorne studies have been a frequent source of misinterpretation over the years. It happens that they also have significant implications for the implementation of lean practices in organizations.

Understanding the research can help one develop a system that is sustainable and not merely a short term boost in performance. The power of feedback, reinforcement and teamwork are the real lessons of Hawthorne.

Teamwork In Healthcare – Keys to Continuous Improvement

Sep 4, 2012 | Lean Health Care, Lean Management

There are many models of excellent health care service and they have a few elements in common – teamwork and collaboration. Assess the quality of teamwork in your organization.

The Practice of a Lean Management Systems: Achieving Economic Efficiency and Social Intimacy

Aug 19, 2012 | Corporate Culture, Leadership, Lean Culture, Lean Health Care, Lean Management, Lean Manufacturing, Organizational Behavior Management

Lean Management Systems: The New Modern Management Lean management systems are becoming the twenty-first century standard. Many years ago one of the first books I read on management was Peter Drucker's The Practice of Management. In it Drucker defined and extolled the...

Stephen R. Covey, R.I.P.

Jul 16, 2012 | Corporate Culture, Corporate ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Leadership, Spiritual Capital

Stephen Covey died today. Stephen was a truly “good man” in every reasonable sense of that word. He did his best to practice what he preached and what he preached was not simply good management, but moral, spiritual, ethical conduct in the board room, the workplace and in the home.