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
Lean Healthcare
Lean Healthcare and Change Methodology Over the past months I have been working rather intensely with a Canadian healthcare organization, the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON). This effort to create a model of lean healthcare has made very clear in my mind two things:...
Lean Culture and Continuous Improvement Require Enabling Structures
Lean management requires a rethinking of the structure of organizations, the formation of teams, and a “whole-system” understanding of the organizational system. Even how we structure the change process may result in a failure to address the root cause of waste and quality problems.
Lean Leadership – The ONE Quality that Matters Most
Rupert Murdoch’s first remark in his testimony before Parliament was that this was the most humble moment of his life. No doubt true. Hubris, rather than humility has led many companies over the cliff of disaster. The quality most required of those leading continuous improvement is the opposite of hubris, it is humility, the antecedent to learning. Lean leaders develop an attitude of science, the ability to experiment, learn from the data, and try again. Lincoln’s victory over General Lee was a victory of humility over hubris.
Survey Results: Execution and Importance of Lean Culture and Leadership Factors
Eighty-two lean implementers contributed their opinions to this survey. I have processed the data from this survey and written a report, which I hope you will find interesting and useful. You can download a report and analysis of the data and you can download the complete survey results and do your own analysis. I think the data on both importance and execution of lean cultural factors will help you in your efforts to convince your managers about the importance of their leadership behavior to your lean journey.
To Believe or To Behave: Which Comes First?
Changing the culture requires both behavior and belief. C.S. Lewis said “The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering [determining] whether you [believe you do or must] ‘love’ your neighbour; [simply] act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
When Small Things Make a Big Difference: Motivation by Tipping the Scales
Even in a lean organization or culture there is a need to provide motivation and correct performance problems. Most behavior in the work setting is a result of the balance of consequences acting on that behavior. A slight shift in the balance of consequences can result in a large change in organization performance.
Company Wide Lean Implementation
Many senior executives have struggled and failed to gain the advantage of a multi-site or dispersed organization. Instead of capitalizing on the potential value of multiple sites for learning, it seems that too often the same lessons have to be learned over and over again without any shared learning. This is a failure of senior management. In a lean organization, managing learning and improvement is THE primary function of senior managers in addition to deploying capital.
Sustaining Lean – The Power of Beliefs
To address the sustainability of the lean process we are looking at this model that defines the different components of a culture. At the core is the system of beliefs among the members of the organization. On the outside is the external environment with changes in technology, economics and other trends to which every company must adapt. The sustainability of any system is based on both its ability to adapt to a changing environment and its ability to stay on the course of its core values.
Operations Management Review
Beyond Tahrir Square: Managing Large Scale Change
In my previous post on this subject I suggested lessons from the Egyptian revolution to the world of corporate leadership. Now I do the reverse.
I would like to address the ruling military officers of Egypt and the other leaders who are now finding themselves in the midst of turmoil in the Middle East. They all are confronted with the problem of “managing large scale change.” This is not a new thing. Many companies and countries have been through this before. So… here is an open letter to the Generals of Egypt, and to all others to whom it may apply.
