Lean & Wakefulness

By Pascal Dennis

The Lean Business System, at heart, is about wakefulness.

Philosophers throughout the ages have argued that we are sleepers in a dream, that our grasp of what's actually happening is, at best, tenuous.

Many schools of philosophy and religion include exercises, prayer or meditation designed to "wake" the sleeper.

Lean tools like visual management, 5 S, standardized work, and pokayoke, are meant to jolt us out of our slumber.

"Hey, buddy wake up! There's a problem over here!"

Strategy Deployment, the application of the scientific method to our enterprise, is also about wakefulness.

Our Level 1, 2 and 3 check processes, for example, should be stand-up meetings in front of a board or wall that makes "hot spots" painfully clear.

"Holy cow, look at that! We should do something..."

My books Getting the Right Things Done, Andy & Me and it's sequel, Andy & Me and the Hospital (Spring 2016) all entail the protagonists' gradual awakening.

Let me conclude with a mixed metaphor: In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.

Cheers,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

How Does Lean Survive a Top Management Change?

By Pascal Dennis

Succession planning is indeed the key, but perhaps not in the conventional sense.

Lean thinking entails meta-cognition, which means 'knowing about knowing' and answering questions like:

How do I learn?

What do I know?

What do I know well?

What do I not know very well?

Great leaders tend to know themselves thereby, and can make conscious decisions.

Leaders need to ask these questions of their organization:

How do we learn best?

What do we currently know, and not know, well?

Most important question for leaders:

How do I ensure that we'll continue to learn, after our current leaders retire or move on?

A tough one, to be sure.

Rendering of the new Apple University campus in Cupertino California

The late, great Steve Jobs thought about it a great deal.

Sounds like Apple University is his posthumous attempt to perpetuate the Apple Way.

Cheers,

Pascal