Gary Kasparov and the Breakfast of Champions

By Pascal Dennis

Chess is arguably our greatest strategy game.

More books have been written about than for all other games combined.

Chess has infused our language: checkmate, stalemate, opening phase, end game, gambit...

Chess has such a strong hold on the human mind that chess champions are notoriously eccentric.

(Check out the recent, excellent documentary called Bobby Fischer vs. The Rest of the World)

Gary Kasparov, the greatest chess player of them all, is the exception.

After retiring in 2005, he has devoted himself to exposing Vladimir Putin's corrupt regime, and to leading Russia's fledgling pro-democracy forces.

He is also successful entrepreneur and author, and is happily married.

So his recent book about chess and business strategy is especially important.

It's called How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves - from the Board to the Boardroom.
Kasparov's insights into excellence are especially interesting.

What makes a champion?

Frequent, frank - even ruthless - reflection and self-assessment, Kasparov tells us.

Indeed, if we think of elite performers across a range of endeavors - Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods (pre-implosion), Yoyo Ma, Yitzhak Perlman come to mind - we see the same pattern.

What's this got to do with you?

The Lean Business System is about elite performance.

It's best practitioners - Toyota, General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, United Technologies, Alcoa, Danaher and the like - ruthlessly self-assess, and adjust based on what they see.

Our improvement kata - tip of the hat to my pal, Mike Rother, is our driving force.

Here at Lean Pathways we've boiled the kata down - and call it Four-Step-Problem-Solving.

(There are others. I'm not into theology - pick a good one & get going...)

We supplement our kata with Brain Booster Pocket Cards and Apps.

But it's all about reflection and adjustment thereby - the Breakfast of Champions.

More about Kasparov in future blogs.

Sayonara ya'll.

Cheers,

Pascal

Humor in Adult Learning

By Al Norval

We in the Lean community have a unique challenge. We need to be both students as well as teachers at the same time. While we are rapidly learning and applying many new things, we have an obligation to teach others in our work groups or organizations what we have learned. Part of this is the concept of Yokoten, the rapid sharing of information laterally throughout the organization. This requires a mature Lean organization with systems and structures developed to ensure this happens. More on the topic of Yokoten in a later blog.

For today, I wanted to talk about teaching and adult learning. Adults learn differently from children. Kids are sponges for information. Adults on the other hand are full up or overloaded with information. In order to learn, adults have to replace what they have previously learned. To make matters more complicated, adult retention of things they have learned can be as low as around 10%.

In summary, adults are tougher to teach and retain less of what we teach them. This makes it tough for us in the Lean community to fulfill our role as a teacher.

What are some possible countermeasures to this?

The first countermeasure is “Learn by Do”. The act of applying the learning drives it deeper and makes it real. But what is it about “Doing” that drives higher learning and retention? Because people are involved in “Doing”, their brains create more neural connections with the activity than with just passive listening to a talk about the subject. The more active the participation, the more neural connections are formed and the higher the learning and retention. That’s why just listening to lectures has low learning while Learn by Doing has a much higher retention rate of the learning.

But how to drive the learning even higher?

The first is to teach others. We learn by teaching. After all, you’ve got to know a subject before you can teach it. Nothing tests your knowledge of a subject as much as trying to teach others.

Lastly, adults learn best when the learning environment is light and has some humor. Again we can see how humor creates more neural connections by triggering emotions and so enhances the learning experience.

How to add humor to the learning environment – through the use of images. Not all of us are comedians so we need props. Images with a light, humorous touch provide that and help create a learning environment that is conducive to adults both learning and retaining what has been taught.

Putting this all together, a process of a little training using light images, followed by doing, followed by rapid feedback creates rapid learning cycles that drive home the key learning points in adults. Practicing these ourselves enables us in the Lean community to fulfill our mission as being both students and teachers.

For more information on the use of Lean images to add some humor into your training, visit the Lean Pathways Shop.

Social Media & the Lean Business System -- Risks & Opportunities

By Pascal Dennis,

Been thinking a lot about this lately.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, as well as, the abundance of cell phone apps -- what do they mean for Lean thinkers?

Seems to me social media represent a powerful new learning channel -- provided we keep the fundamentals in mind.

Yokoten -- means shared, lateral, experiential learning.

We learn by doing -- not by browsing.

If we spend too much time at our screens -- we sacrifice depth.

Depth of understanding requires action followed by reflection -- away from your screen.

Use the screen to supplement your knowledge.

Then turn the damned thing off and get to the gemba, where you must practice, practice, practice.

Social media are marvelous, helpful and oh so seductive. Used properly, they're a boon.

But they're no substitute for experience, for the school of hard knocks, of growth & learning.

Regards,

Pascal

Curing What Ails Our Hospitals

By Al Norval

I read this article in a recent issue of Fortune magazine and have to admit it was the catchy title that caught my interest. "Curing What Ails Our Hospitals” went on to talk about a new design for hospitals that dealt with three problems that afflict most current hospitals. That is:

Infections
Energy Efficiency
High Cost

The article stated that infections were the leading cause of death in US hospitals.

In a play on words, the article quoted Norman Cousins saying that “A hospital is no place for a person who was seriously ill”.

I think that one line summarizes the state of Healthcare in North America.

Rather than just stating the obvious, the authors did offer several countermeasures. I’ve summarized the approach this way – improving the quality of patient care by reducing hospital induced infections will result in lower a length of stay for many patients. A shorter length of stay translates into savings and improved patient (Customer) satisfaction. Combine that with energy efficient buildings and a focus on prevention using team based care and the costs of healthcare can be brought back into line. Makes sense to me – I’d be interested in your opinions.

Their ideas for team based care included small neighbourhood hospitals which sounded a lot like SMED and small lot size needed for flow. Flow occurs in the absence of waste and I could visualize many waste reduction ideas in their design. Having the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others involved in patient care work as a team eliminates many forms of waste and more importantly allows the team to problem solve quickly and efficiently.

It all comes back to the basics of Lean:

Eliminate waste
Focus on the Customer
Engage team members in problem solving

By doing this, costs will take care of themselves.

Why Lean in Sales?

By Pascal Dennis

Why indeed? Isn’t Lean a factory thing?

Well, no…

Lean is a business system comprising the entire enterprise.

The Toyota Business System, for example, addresses the three critical “loops”:

1. Design
   
2. Make
   
3. Sell
   

Guess which one is considered most important? Sell – because it’s closest to the customer.

Sales are about information. What features does the customer want? At what price point? What promotions does he respond to? How does she want to receive her products or service?

How was our last promotion perceived? And so on...

Production (Operations), usually our most valuable & expensive asset, runs on information. We only make what our information tells us to make.

If our information is wonky, our most valuable asset is unlikely to operate in its sweet spot. Result: overproduction, inventory and all the associated ills.

So how do we introduce Lean in Sales?

Here are some questions to get you started:

1. What is value in Sales? (Who are our internal & external customers and what do they need from us?)
   
   
2. What is waste?
   
   
3. What are some core mental models in our Sales department?
   
   
4. What are our current processes for delivering this value?
   
   
5. How aligned are they to delivering the value our customers expect?
   
   
6. How do we improve them?
   

Lean is harder outside the factory – because our product & processes are typically invisible.

If you make scrap in a factory, everyone can see it. “Hey, we made a whole pile of junk yesterday…”

In business processes, by contrast, you can’t see the scrap. A good forecast & a bad forecast look identical…

On the plus side, sales folks are usually smart & creative. If you introduce the fundamentals with finesse, they run with them.

For more, check out The Remedy – Bringing Lean Out of the Factory to Transform the Entire Organization, and our Lean Leadership Brain Booster suite.

That’s all for now.

Pascal

Aikido and Lean

By Pascal Dennis

Aikido is the Japanese martial art developed by Morehei Ueshiba -- one the greatest Japanese senseis.

I studied aikido for fifteen years -- hard practice 3 or 4 times a week, as well as, summer camps in New England and beyond.

My aikido training has never left me. When I joined Toyota I felt instantly at home.

"I get it, this is a dojo..."

Now, years later, I'm still practicing the techniques our aikido senseis taught us.

Go slow, stop and fix, repeat...

(I pause here and respectfully bow to the late, lamented

• Kanai-sensei of Boston Aikikai, and

• Kawahara-sensei of British Columbia Aikikai)

Turns out this is the best way to learn -- (see Dan Coyne's The Talent Code for more).

I'll say it again: Go slow, stop and fix, repeat...

So easy to say...

Do we have the guts & discipline to do?

Cheers,

Pascal

Success is the Enemy of Future Success

By Pascal Dennis

Strategy Deployment begins with True North -- our strategic and philosophical purpose.

True North entails developing a clear picture of

1. Ideal condition, and
   
   
2. Target condition.
   

At the process level, this means answering questions like:

"Is the process behaving as expected?"

Corollaries: Do I understand my process? Is our hypothesis sound? If not, how do we adjust it?

"Is there creative tension in our management process?

Corollaries: Are problems visible? Are we challenging ourselves or simply resting on our oars?

True North works much the same at the broad strategic level.

In my view, its purpose, at each "level of magnification", is to create discomfort, and reflection (hansei) thereby.

Wakefulness, if you will.

Success is the enemy of future success.

What quality do outstanding individuals (and organizations) share?

Relentless self-examination -- after defeat, and more importantly, after success.

As evidence, I'd offer Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, Garry Kasparov, Pablo Picasso, and all great sports teams...

Regards,

Pascal

East Meets West in the Toyota Production System

By Pascal Dennis

Fall is a good time to reflect on fundamental questions.

What's so special about TPS?

Okay, it has a very good track record in manufacturing and has spread into health care, construction, finance and other sectors.

But over the centuries, have there been other successful management innovations?

What's the big deal?

I believe TPS is unique because it represents a magnificent blending of cultures.

The American occupation of Japan after WWII brought the best of East and West together.

American muscle, optimism and engineering prowess met Japan's (and hence, China's) social, psychological and spiritual inventiveness.

The result -- TPS -- represents an entirely new way of managing.

When ideas "mate" interesting things happen.

Scientific Management, as espoused by Taylor, Ford, Deming and others, enriched -- and was enriched -- by Eastern systems of thinking and feeling.

What other management system combines the rationality of time and motion studies, with the humanity and humor of continuous incremental improvement?

Every day a little up...

What other system is as comfortable with Zen-like paradox?

Lead as if you have no power?

Stop production so it never has to stop...

And what other system embraces the impossibility of perfection, while insisting we must work toward it every day?

TPS is a splendid marriage of East and West, of rationality and intuition, of Left & Right brain.

We're lucky to have it.

So here's an overdue tip of the hat to all those half-forgotten dreamers, engineers and managers who first intuited TPS in the 1940's and 50's.

Arigato gozaimashita!

Cheers,

Pascal

Why Images?

By Pascal Dennis

As you may know, we've worked hard to illustrate Lean Thinking, Tools & Leadership with doodles.

We've developed three corresponding suites of Brain Booster Pocket Cards, as well as an App (& more to come).

We're lucky to have a gifted artist in Dianne Caton.

But even the humblest drawings (like mine) can be interesting.

My latest book, The Remedy, is full of my scribbles, which Di transformed charmingly.

Images go directly to the limbic brain -- the timeless world of direct experience, memory & intuition -- where learning happens.

The rational or Left brain is helpful in processing and applying learning.

But we learn largely in our limbic brain.

Our limbic brain likes stories, images, drama, emotion...

Disengaged students don't learn. Accident victims, who tragically have suffered damage here, also struggle to learn.

So...in our own modest way, we're trying to connect with the seat of learning.

Humor also helps. It's a grim world -- the "Light Touch" has always been my ideal.

People learn best when they're laughing.

Cheers,

Pascal

The Value of Images

By Al Norval

What is the value of an image?

We’ve all heard the old adage – “A picture is worth a thousand words” but what is the real value that’s implied by this phrase? We all know that value is driven by the customer so what value do customers see in images?

Let’s start at the beginning - who is the customer of the image? It’s the person who is receiving the information the image is conveying.

What do the customers want? To receive the information in the least waste way; this means understanding it at a glance and to be able to retain the information.


Let’s look at an example situation. We have new hires into the organization and are trying to bring them up to speed quickly and safely without compromising quality. They are the customers of our training process. We use a TWI based process where we have an experienced trainer and standardized work.

Would our customers, the trainees, see value in images so they can tie what their instructor has shown them to the critical elements of the work? Of course! Images reduce training time and take away much of the confusions that occur when using only words even when we show people as well as talk them through the steps.

Would our customers, the trainees, see value in being able to use images to poke yoke their standard work after the training? Again the answer is Yes. Simple images trigger recall of key learning points.

What is it that makes images so powerful in learning a new concept? Images are much deeper, richer and convey more information. Our brain reacts differently to images. Images cause an emotional connection to be formed in our brains so we form more neural connections with images than with words only. This means we have a greater rate of retention with images and a faster recall of the learning point.

My observation from working with many different organizations is that most training consists of slide after slide of PowerPoint? Why? Because it fits into computer systems better. In reality, our minds work so much faster than the words appear on the screen that we become bored and don’t retain the key teaching points. I believe that images are undervalued in training and we in the Lean community should be striving to change this as part of our work.

For more information on the use of Lean images in training, see Lean Pathways Images.

The Purpose of True North

By Al Norval,

Many companies as they implement Lean and go through a Lean transformation, develop a continuous improvement system modelled after the “Toyota Production System”. These come in all kinds of names and formats ranging from …Production System to … Business System and all manner of variations in between. Often these are just a collection of tools and other stuff and really don’t make up a true system.

If we zoom out and look at the definition of a system, we see that a system can be defined as:

“an inter-related set of parts with a clearly defined outcome”

So the parts of a system are all connected to one another and have to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. Standardized Work needs to have 5S and Visual Controls in place for it to work. Without them, we could never get repeatable cycles of work. We would be endlessly searching for things. Even with them, there are many interruptions and disruptions to the standard cycles of work which we need to turn into problems and launch problem solving.

So we can see how the parts of a system are related to one another but what about the purpose? A system must have a clearly defined purpose. True North gives us that purpose.

True North defines the outcomes of the system and where we want the system to take us in the future. In essence it pulls us into the future.

True North defines the Philosophical and Strategy Objectives of the organization. It is comprised of two parts:

- Hard Goals that speak to the head and define the hard business targets

- Broadbrush Hoshins that speak to the heart and define direction, purpose and values

Together these are deployed through the organization to align and focus the organization. An analogy I like to use is one of river. The river flows to the ocean which is True North. The broadbrush Hoshins define the banks of the river. The river can take many paths to get to the ocean but we want it to remain inside it’s banks. Along the way it encounters rapids which are problems which must be resolved for the journey to the ocean to continue but all the time the river continues to flow to the ocean.

For more on True North and Lean Leadership, please see Lean Leadership Brain Boosters at http://leansystems.org/cart.php?page=pocket_cards

Lean & Green

By Al Norval,

A topic that doesn’t get as much time as it deserves is the relationship between Lean and Green.

We know that Lean is based on Team Members driving the elimination of waste to provide our Customers with more value. Toyota has summarized these in three key principles:

• Continuous Improvement
• Elimination of Waste
• Respect for Humanity

Green has become the symbolic color of environment protection and social justice. It was chosen for its association with nature, health and growth.

But how are they related?

One of the key tenets of Lean is “do more with Less”
– less human effort, less time and less resources so we’re able to turn our inputs into outputs faster with less waste.

Normally we think of this as the waste of production materials but let’s look deeper and see what other wastes we can uncover. This means less waste in:

• The water & energy used to produce the materials
• The effort, equipment & energy required to move the materials
• The man-power, materials and energy needed to build equipment that over-produces to customer demand
• The energy required to heat & cool buildings built to house these over-sized pieces of equipment
• Information systems needed to track the materials and transactions
• The effort needed to maintain all this extra stuff

The list is almost endless. The truth is our current cost systems don’t track these types of wastes very well, if at all, so they form part of a large, barely visible mountain of waste. The Remedy to this is to begin to see waste with a new set of eyes and that begins with developing a new set of Mental Models to guide us. The Lean Thinking Brain Booster pocket cards are a great starting point for anyone beginning this journey and for people who need a quick refresher.

Elimination of Waste – great for customers, Team Members, Shareholders and good for the environment.

 

Safety -- Our Window on the Process

By Pascal Dennis,

Why do leading organizations like Alcoa, Dupont, Toyota and others put safety first?

Aren't private organizations about maximizing shareholder value?

Isn't profitability number one? Without it, after all, you're soon out of business, no?

The great Paul O'Neill, former CEO of Alcoa and Secretary-Treasurer coined the title of this blog.

If we can manage our processes such that nobody gets hurt -- quality, delivery, cost & profitability will surely follow.

Safe workplaces are invariable productive. They have standardized work, visual management, good ergonomics, flow and pull.

People understand their jobs, what can go wrong, how to avoid it -- and how to excel.

A health care colleague told me that industry CEOs believe they can delegate patient safety.

He also said that patient safety is not usually in the top 3 priorities of a typical health care CEO.

If so, I believe we have a root cause of the health care catastrophe.

The Remedy Wins the Shingo Prize

By Pascal Dennis,

The good people at Shingo Prize have seen fit to give The Remedy the nod.

They do important work & I'm humbled and deeply obliged for all their efforts.

It's an odd feeling. After finishing a book, I often forget I what I wrote.

(Maybe because the process is so intense & exhausting -- you need a break from the damned thing...)

"That's the other Pascal," I joke. "I'm his idiot brother."

Still, it's a footprint in time, a nod, a tip of the hat -- a sign that somebody finds your stuff helpful.

For that I am deeply grateful.

Pascal

P.S. BTW ya'll, be sure to attend next year's International Shingo Prize Conference, May 7 - 10 in Atlanta (http://www.shingoprize.com/).


I'll be there for sure!

Ford’s Mulally: It's OK not to be OK

By Al Norval,

I saw this article in USA Today and thought it was such a great example of Leadership exhibiting the Mental Models, that I wanted to share it with you. Allan Mulally, Ford CEO, was talking about his experience at one of his first management meetings with the Executive Leadership team at Ford after he joined the company. Allan had enjoyed a successful career at Boeing and had recently joined Ford as CEO.

Quoting Allan from the USA Today article,

“In one of the Thursday management meetings, where managers are supposed to show color-coded charts, red for serious problems, yellow for lesser issues, green for all OK, "all the charts were green and I know — we're going to lose $17 billion. I stopped the meeting and I said, 'Is there anything that isn't going well? We're losing $17 billion.'”

Imagine that, Ford was losing $17 Billion and not one Executive raised a problem – everything was OK in my area – it must be the other guys.

The culture at Ford at the time was one where you didn’t surface problems. The underlying Mental Model was problems are to be hidden in closets or swept up under the carpet. Don’t admit you had problems. Mulally realized that it was perfectly natural for organizations to have problems and that the only way to get better was to surface the problems and engage people to work on resolving them.

He went on to say "The next week here comes Mark (Fields, now president of Ford's North and South America operations) and his charts are all red. Everybody else's were green. I started to clap, and I said 'That's great.'

As a Leader, Mulally was exhibiting the Mental Model of “Problems are Gold”. It’s OK to surface problems – everyone has them. He understood the way to improvement was to surface problems and get to root cause. Only then could countermeasures be put in place which strengthened their systems so the problems didn’t surface again and again.

Problems are Gold is a Lean Mental Model which is the opposite of the Traditional Mental Model of hiding problems so they can’t be seen.

Leadership is about changing Mental Models which enable our behaviors to change. As senior leaders change their behavior the rest of the organization watches and begins to change their behavior as well. The changes rapidly spread throughout the organization.

It’s OK not to be OK.

See the attached link for the complete article.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2011-07-26-mulally-bad-news_n.htm

 

For more on Mental Models, please see our Lean Brain Booster pocket cards.

Cheers

Root Cause of Health Care Crisis?

By Pascal Dennis,

Health Care is a disaster North & South of the border.

Neither Americans, nor Canadians can look on their situation with any satisfaction.

Costs are exploding -- and crowding out other critical expenditures like education, R & D and infrastructure.

Health care outcomes are disappointing. Miracles occur within the silos, catastrophe across them.

What's the root cause of this sorry state of affairs?

Why can't smart, skilled and caring medical professionals do what they're trying to do?

Deming taught us that the problem is in the system -- and he's right again.

Mis-medication, wrong site surgery, infection and other nosocomial calamities occur despite the heroics of nurses, doctors, pharmacists and the many other specialists who keep hospitals going. Indeed, things would likely be much worse but for their heroics.

So what's the root cause of our health care crisis?

Tom Papas, the protagonist of the business novel, The Remedy, tries to answer this question in chapter 13.

He is in rough shape -- he might be losing his father to a mis-medication.

Tom's conclusion: the customer is not the customer.

Only patients, he concludes, can arbitrate the millions of daily decisions that comprise the provision of medical care.

Yet the patient is not the customer in these transactions.

As evidence he reflects on how difficult it has been for his family to get Safety, Quality or Cost information from hospitals.

"And why should they give me info?" he laments. "I'm not the customer."

I've gotten a lot of mail about this chapter!

So what do ya'll think? Is Tom right, or is he not thinking clearly because of his desperate situation?

Are there other root causes that are more important? Any other thoughts or insights?

I'd be pleased to hear from you.

Best regards,
Pascal

Why Brain Booster Pocket Cards?

By Pascal Dennis,

Over the past few years we've spend a great deal of energy on Brain Booster Pocket Cards.

What are we trying to do?

In the spirit of visual management we're trying to crystallize the fundamentals of the Lean Business System.

Less is more -- the cardinal proverb.

We want our three suites -- Lean Thinking, Lean Tools & Lean Leadership -- to complement classic Lean text books.

The Toyota Way, Lean Production Simplified, Managing to Learn, Andy & Me... these are all fine resources -- by they're largely words.

We want to express their essence in pictures.

My personal mission is to translate the profound system of knowledge I was lucky enough to learn at Toyota.

I want to make it available to people all over the world.

So our images will be available in a variety of media: pocket cards, posters, iPhone apps etc.

Next -- how do you use them?

Watch our blog for updates...

Why Lean Outside the Factory?

By Pascal Dennis,


I wrote a book about it --The Remedy.

Why did I bother?

Because Lean is about reducing waste & variation -- and most of it is outside the factory.

Factories, and Operations in general, have continued to improve the past few decades.

Though there is still much opportunity, in many industries they are no longer the bottleneck.

When you buy a new car, for example, most of the lead time is outside the factory.

(Autos usually spend a couple of days in the factory, whereas total lead times are typically several months.)

Sales, Marketing, Design, Engineering and so on are the "undiscovered country".

How do we support the good people in these areas?

Here are a few questions to get us started.

For each zone, ask:

1) What is waste?

2) What is value?

3) What are some core mental models?

If we can build on these to define our Purpose clearly, we'll can start to pull in powerful Lean tools to help us achieve that Purpose.

(For more on how to do this, interested readers are referred to the book Getting the Right Things Done)

Best regards,

Pascal

THE POWER OF IMAGES

By Al Norval,

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s remarkable how true this is. Pictures and images have the power to convey more than the words they represent. They have the power to move us and invoke a connection to our deeper emotions – humour, laughter, sadness even rage and fear. They are able to connect to our emotional core.



Certain images become locked in over time – they become endless. How many of you can recall The Mona Lisa’s smile, Neil Armstrong standing on the moon, Winston Churchill’s portrait and the horrible image of the burning of the World Trade Center. All represent more than a picture or a painting.

Images are more than just photographs. Corporate branding for example, where the iconic images of great brands such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, MacDonald’s and Mercedes all have the power to invoke memories, feelings and thoughts about the products. I’m sure each of you had the brand image dash quickly through your mind’s eye at the mention of these brands.

But what has this got to do with Lean?

Let’s go back to basics. Lean is about engaging our Team Members to solve problems and remove waste every day to create more value for our Customers. To do that we need to not only solve problems but to share the learning rapidly across the organization. By doing this we become a learning organization with the capability of our Team Members getting higher and higher over time. The higher capability people have, the more problems they can solve and so enter a benevolent cycle of learning and problem solving.

The key to sustaining this is the ability of both the organization and individual Team Members to remember what they learned and what was shared in problem solving. Memory is the ability to store, retain, and recall information. But in today’s world of information overload, how do we improve the ability of our Team Members to store, retain and recall information?

Simple answer – we use images.

Images are stored in our brains as Visual Memory. That’s the part of our memory that preserves some of the characteristics of our senses pertaining to the visual experience. We are able to place into memory, visual information which represents thoughts and ideas. The neural connections are stronger if we have an emotional sense tied to the image. That emotional connection is why we can remember images to a far greater degree than we can remember mere facts or words and sentences. As we tie these images into a learning experience that is cheerful, light and engaging, the thoughts and ideas get quickly locked into memory resulting in a higher capability of our Team Members to solve problems.

In summary, we can achieve better recall of key learning points and problem solving if we use simple, elegant images with a touch of humour that ties the message to our soul.

For more on Images and Lean, please see Lean Brain Boosters at http://www.leansystems.org/

Lean Laughs