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
Fast Cycle Lean and the Rebirth of American Manufacturing at GE’s Appliance Park
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.
The Lean Culture Challenge: Can You Graduate from the 5S’s to The 7S’s that Really Matter?
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.
The Fiscal Cliff and Life in the Freshman Dorm, or why “The Pigeon is Never Wrong!”
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.
Teamwork at the Cleveland Clinic
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.
Lean & Meta Principles 2: Empiricism and Humility
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
