Management Meditations
on Leadership, Learning and Culture
For those implementing change management, lean leadership, and the essential skills of managing people, teams and processes in today’s workplace. We provide online learning reinforced by one-on-one and team coaching to support your continuous improvement.
Please see both my own course platform Leadership-Academy.Online and my courses on Udemy.
Over 400,000 students have enrolled in our courses in more than 195 countries.
On Change Management – “Valuable content, delivered by a very experienced professional. Successful change management doesn’t happen by accident. This course has explored a structure along with the techniques required to adapt and change with increased success. Lots of common sense applied and that makes sense to me. Should be mandatory learning in every dynamic organization that wants to remain relevant in a sea of constant change.” Peter Rowan
Searching a best course for Team Leadership ends here. “Awesome! Lawrence Miller is a Highly experienced author, created topics in a very systematic manner and providing his stories of experience from Industry. Very colorful and meaningful slides once we start the course we never feel to miss any of his lectures. Thanks a lot!!
“Its just fascinating. Every second, every minute. I’m learning so much. It’s opening my eyes to so many things! Larry is just great. The way he explains things, the examples he uses, his speech, well¦ Everything is just marvelous. I loved and enjoyed every second of this course, and I’m gonna make the best of it. THANK YOU.”
“To me this is an exceptional piece of coaching which is very well presented. Very clear communication which is easy to understand as examples are numerous to get to the main point. Deep diving is done to prepare the course and practical examples are given which is close to day to day operations in any business. Hani Ul Nasir
Featured Courses
High Performance Teams, Lean Culture, Leadership, and Management Skills
From Business Thought Leader & Change Management Expert
Our instructor is Lawrence M. Miller with fifty years of experience implementing lean management, high performance teams, and creating more participative company cultures. He is author of eleven books on business management, and creator of sixteen online training courses that have seen enrollments of more than 400,000 students.
Recent Blog Posts
New Year’s Wishes – To Be Challenged – Not “Happy”!
I hope you all had a great Christmas, or any Holiday you celebrate. And, I hope you are ready for a wonderful New Year. Not a "happy" New Year, but a New Year filled with great challenges. More about that in a minute. I have been very quiet on this blog for the last...
Toyota Kata, Team Kata, and Levels of Complexity
Implementing lean management, or any other change in the culture of organizations, requires a zoom lens to see the different levels of complexity required. Toyota Kata, lean tools, and other methods operate at some focal lengths and not at others. The well informed manager will have the ability to understand complexity and to use simple methods when appropriate. If you are photographer with only a 300mm lens you will miss a lot of great photos.
The Coaching Kata and The Science of Positive Interactions
Neuroscience now confirms why both learning and motivation on the part of employees is optimized when the ratio of positive to negative interactions with managers lean toward four positives to one negative. Higher rates of negative interactions reduce learning, increase fear, increase avoidance behavior, rather than problem-solving and experimentation.
The Coaching Kata
I developed my Team Kata Udemy.com training course to provide a solution to training a large number of people, self-paced and over an extended period of time. But, coaching is essential to the learning process. Here are examples of the coaching kata that follow well proven methods of behavior based training.
Lean Training: An Efficient Solution
The problem for most organizations developing lean management is two fold: first, how to change the culture in a significant way, in a reasonable period of time; and second, how to provide the needed training to a large number of people in a consistent and quality manner. Team Kata is an effort to solve both of those problems.
The Lean System of Motivation
One aspect of lean that has not been given enough attention, in my opinion, is how lean is an organization wide system of motivation that creates a high performance culture. Too many lean implementations suffer from a focus on problem solving skills, but a failure to attend to the system or culture of motivation. Too many rely on the “they oughtta wanna” assumption which usually results in disappointment.
A highly motivated work force is not an accident. It is not the result of being in one part of the country or another, have having a union or non-union. It is the result of systematic efforts on the part of management to design and improve a system of motivation. The most effective systems optimize both an ennobling purpose, the social bonds of strong teamwork, and the availability of individual incentives. They all contribute unique elements to a holistic system of motivation.
Abraham, Isaac, and the Ethics of Followership
In this post I would like to discuss the cultural root of obedience in the great church of our organizations and how we need to rethink the assumptions of loyal followership. Or to put it another way, a bit more disloyalty may be advantageous to the leader’s reputation and bank account.
Governor Christie and How the CEO’s Fingerprints Came to Appear on the Knife Planted in his Back
Every CEO or leader owns the behavior of his senior team. The challenge for every leader is to gain understanding of how one’s own behavior influences subordinates, and how their behavior in turn, may result in the unforeseen knife flying through the air to land in one’s own back.
Social Capital: Families and Teams Form the Social Capital of Our Culture
Healthy families in which there is high trust result in high academic performance. This is “family social capital.” Similarly, the team at the first level is the foundation of social capital in the organization. This social capital is a key factor in generating continuous improvement and achieving high job satisfaction and retention of employees.
New Year’s Wishes for All Leaders – Corporate and Country
Two years ago I published what I thought would be worthy New Year's resolutions for managers. Below I am both repeating some of those and adding a few new thoughts. I hope they are worthy of your consideration. You might want to challenge your management team to agree...
