Lean Continuous Improvement Quotes

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

Chaos is the enemy of any organization the strives to be outstanding.

If you want engagement, you must engage.

Chaos is NOT a condition of doing business.

It’s often the case that teams working in agile processes do not actually go back to improve the user interface of the software. But, as the saying goes, “it’s not iterative if you only do it once.” Teams need to make a commitment to continuous improvement, and that means not simply refactoring code and addressing technical debt but also reworking and improving user interfaces. Teams must embrace the concept of UX debt and make a commitment to continuous improvement of the user experience.

No methodology can guarantee success. But a good methodology can provide a feedback loop for continual improvement and learning.

software delivery is an exercise in continuous improvement, and our research shows that year over year the best keep getting better, and those who fail to improve fall further and further behind.

Much of this waste reduction comes from Lean’s goal of a “kaizen” culture. Kaizen is a state of continuous improvement where people naturally look for ways to improve poorly performing practices.

Summary of Scrum vs Kanban Similarities: - Both are Lean and Agile - Both use pull scheduling - Both limit WIP - Both use transperency to drive process improvement - Both focus on delivering releasable software and often - Both are based on self-organizing teams - Both require breaking the work into pieces. - In both, the release plan is continuously optimized based on empirical data (velocity/lead time)

Once the baseline has been established, the startup can work toward the second learning milestone: tuning the engine. Every product development, marketing, or other initiative that a startup undertakes should be targeted at improving one of the drivers of its growth model.

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

We are still building linear organizations in a world that demands constant change. We are still building silos in a world that demands thorough collaboration. And we are still investing in analysis, arguing over specifications, and efficiently producing deliverables in a world that demands continuous experimentation in order to achieve continuous innovation.

Entrepreneurs are everywhere. You don’t have to work in a garage to be in a startup. The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. That means entrepreneurs are everywhere and the Lean Startup approach can work in any size company, even a very large enterprise, in any sector or industry. 2. Entrepreneurship is management. A startup is an institution, not just a product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty. In fact, as I will argue later, I believe “entrepreneur” should be considered a job title in all modern companies that depend on innovation for their future growth. 3. Validated learning. Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business. This learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision. 4. Build-Measure-Learn. The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop. 5. Innovation accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for startups—and the people who hold them accountable.

How are things going with your brothers?” “The judge set a date to hear me out after graduation. Mrs.Collins has been prepping me.” “That is awesome!” “Yeah.” “What’s wrong?” “Carrie and Joe hired a lawyer and I lost visitation.” Echo placed her delicate hand over mine.“Oh, Noah. I am so sorry." I’d spent countless hours on the couch in the basement, staring at the ceiling wondering what she was doing. Her laughter, her smile, the feel of her body next to mine, and the regret that I let her walk away too easily haunted me. Taking the risk, I entwined my fingers with hers. Odds were I’d never get the chance to be this close again. "No, Mrs. Collins convinced me the best thing to do is to keep my distance and follow the letter of the law." "Wow, Mrs. Collins is a freaking miracle worker. Dangerous Noah Hutchins on the straight and narrow. If you don’t watch out she’ll ruin your rep with the girls." I lowered my voice. "Not that it matters. I only care what one girl thinks about me." She relaxed her fingers into mine and stroked her thumb over my skin. Minutes into being alone together, we fell into each other again, like no time had passed. I could blame her for ending us, but in the end, I agreed with her decision. “How about you, Echo? Did you find your answers?” “No.” If I continued to disregard breakup rules, I might as well go all the way. I pushed her curls behind her shoulder and let my fingers linger longer than needed so I could enjoy the silky feel. “Don’t hide from me, baby. We’ve been through too much for that.” Echo leaned into me, placing her head on my shoulder and letting me wrap an arm around her. “I’ve missed you, too, Noah. I’m tired of ignoring you.” “Then don’t.” Ignoring her hurt like hell. Acknowledging her had to be better. I swallowed, trying to shut out the bittersweet memories of our last night together. “Where’ve you been? It kills me when you’re not at school.” “I went to an art gallery and the curator showed some interest in my work and sold my first piece two days later. Since then, I’ve been traveling around to different galleries, hawking my wares.” “That’s awesome, Echo. Sounds like you’re fitting into your future perfectly. Where did you decide to go to school?” “I don’t know if I’m going to school.” Shock jolted my system and I inched away to make sure I understood. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know? You’ve got colleges falling all over you and you don’t fucking know if you want to go to school?” My damned little siren laughed at me. “I see your language has improved.” Poof—like magic, the anger disappeared. “If you’re not going to school, then what are your plans?” "I’m considering putting college off for a year or two and traveling cross-country, hopping from gallery to gallery.” “I feel like a dick. We made a deal and I left you hanging. I’m not that guy who goes back on his word. What can I do to help you get to the truth?” Echo’s chest rose with her breath then deflated when she exhaled. Sensing our moment ending, I nuzzled her hair, savoring her scent. She patted my knee and broke away. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.” "I think it’s time that I move on. As soon as I graduate, this part of my life will be over. I’m okay with not knowing what happened.” Her words sounded pretty, but I knew her better. She’d blinked three times in a row.

He accepted a cup of ale from his brother-in-law, sat back, then sighed. "Get on with the bludgeoning." "Me?" Miach asked innocently. "Why would I bludgeon?" Runach pursed his lips. "Because you are whoyou are, and you know Soilleir of Cothromaiche very well. I am continually appalled by the simialarites between the two of you." Miach only watched his steadily, a small smile playing around his mouth. "You know what she is, don't you?" "Who?" "Aisling." Runach shot him a look. "A girl, thank you. I haven't been so long at Buidseachd that I cant recognize one when I see one." He finally leaned on his sword, and looked at his sister's husband. "I'm biting. What is she?" "A girl." Runach growled. At least he thought he growled. It was difficult to tell what he was doing when all he wanted to do was wipe the smirk off Miach's face. "You know," he said shortly, "you annoyed me when you were a lad. You haven't improved since then." Runach looked over his shoulder to make sure no observant gel with shorn hair was standing behind him, eavesdropping with abandon, then leaned closer to his brother-in-law. "Let me lay out for you King Mochriadhemiach, all the problems that sit arranged pleasingly on a trencher before me. Perhaps then you can stop smirking long enough to examine them with me." "You're testy.

The doctors found one electrode contact that greatly relieved the woman's symptoms. But the unexpected happened when the electric current passed through one of the four contact sites on the patient's left side, precisely two millimeters below the contact that improved her condition. The patient stopped her ongoing conversation quite abruptly, cast her eyes down and to her right side, then leaned slightly to the right and her emotional expression became one of sadness. After a few seconds she suddenly began to cry. Tears flowed and her entire demeanor was one of profound misery. Soon she was sobbing. As this display continued she began talking about how deeply sad she felt, how she had no energies left to go on living in this manner, how hopeless and exhausted she was. [ . . . ] The physician in charge of the treatment realized that this unusual event was due to the current and aborted the procedure. About ninety seconds after the current was interrupted the patient's behavior returned to normal. [ . . . ] Why would this patient's brain evoke the kind of thoughts that normally cause sadness considering that the emotion and feeling were unmotivated by the appropriate stimuli? The answer has to do with the dependence of feeling on emotion and the intriguing ways of one's memory. When the emotion sadness is deployed, feelings of sadness instantly follow. In short order, the brain also brings forth the kind of thoughts that normally cause the emotion sadness and feelings of sadness. This is because associative learning has linked emotions with thoughts in a rich two-way network. Certain thoughts evoke certain emotions and vice-versa.

With time, the ‘wheat bargain’ became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows. The average person in Jericho of 8500 BC lived a harder life than the average person in Jericho of 9500 BC or 13,000 BC. But nobody realised what was happening. Every generation continued to live like the previous generation, making only small improvements here and there in the way things were done. Paradoxically, a series of ‘improvements’, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers. Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated. People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions. Whenever they decided to do a bit of extra work – say, to hoe the fields instead of scattering seeds on the surface – people thought, ‘Yes, we will have to work harder. But the harvest will be so bountiful! We won’t have to worry any more about lean years. Our children will never go to sleep hungry.’ It made sense. If you worked harder, you would have a better life. That was the plan. The first part of the plan went smoothly. People indeed worked harder. But people did not foresee that the number of children would increase, meaning that the extra wheat would have to be shared between more children. Neither did the early farmers understand that feeding children with more porridge and less breast milk would weaken their immune system, and that permanent settlements would be hotbeds for infectious diseases. They did not foresee that by increasing their dependence on a single source of food, they were actually exposing themselves even more to the depredations of drought. Nor did the farmers foresee that in good years their bulging granaries would tempt thieves and enemies, compelling them to start building walls and doing guard duty.

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle, a cornerstone of continuous improvement. The Japanese term for continuous improvement is kaizen and is the process of making incremental improvements, no matter how small, and achieving the lean goal of eliminating all waste that adds cost without adding to value.

I am not super-attached to my career,' Audrey Tautou says in that sultry, Gallic voice of hers, a glint of recklessness in her big brown eyes. 'I have several plan Bs: I want to become a sailor; I like to draw; I would love to learn many things, but I don’t have time…' She trails off, leaving an uncertain silence hanging over the Kensington hotel room where we’ve met to discuss her latest film, a delightful comic confection called Beautiful Lies. 'That is the problem, you know,' she continues, more carefully. 'That is the reason why I will quit acting very soon.' She lets out a strange little laugh, a creaky exhalation, as if her own admission has taken her by surprise... 'I didn’t want to have this power,' she says, with a shrug. 'I would rather have freedom; and to find that you have to stop being in big, exposed movies. I don’t surf on the big waves. When I see them coming, I take my board and go straight back to the beach.'... 'I am always surprised to be chosen by a director for a role because I never understand why they like me,' she says. Surely, I suggest, that is false modesty, coming from one of Europe’s most bankable stars. 'Oh no, really, I am serious,' she says, leaning forward and planting her feet back on the carpet. 'I am always surprised to be cast.' Does her track record – in Jeunet’s hits; or in Stephen Frears’s acclaimed Dirty Pretty Things, or as a compellingly self-possessed Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine’s 2009 biopic – not give her at least a little confidence? 'No,' she says with a scowl, 'pas du tout.' 'A few months ago, I watched one of my old movies and I thought to myself, 'Oh, Jesus!’ Thank God that at the point I made that film I didn’t realise the extent to which I was terrible. Oh, mon dieu! Mon dieu!' But surely, I say, she can take from that the reassurance that she has only improved as an actress. 'Or,' she says, jabbing a finger in the air, 'I say to myself, does it simply mean that if in another 10 years I rewatch the films I am making today I will say, 'Oh mon dieu, how terrible I was then.’ She laughs that odd, breathy laugh again and then looks me dead in the eye. 'You have to be very careful in this life.

The five most highly correlated factors are: Organizational culture. Strong feelings of burnout are found in organizations with a pathological, power-oriented culture. Managers are ultimately responsible for fostering a supportive and respectful work environment, and they can do so by creating a blame-free environment, striving to learn from failures, and communicating a shared sense of purpose. Managers should also watch for other contributing factors and remember that human error is never the root cause of failure in systems. Deployment pain. Complex, painful deployments that must be performed outside of business hours contribute to high stress and feelings of lack of control.4 With the right practices in place, deployments don’t have to be painful events. Managers and leaders should ask their teams how painful their deployments are and fix the things that hurt the most. Effectiveness of leaders. Responsibilities of a team leader include limiting work in process and eliminating roadblocks for the team so they can get their work done. It’s not surprising that respondents with effective team leaders reported lower levels of burnout. Organizational investments in DevOps. Organizations that invest in developing the skills and capabilities of their teams get better outcomes. Investing in training and providing people with the necessary support and resources (including time) to acquire new skills are critical to the successful adoption of DevOps. Organizational performance. Our data shows that Lean management and continuous delivery practices help improve software delivery performance, which in turn improves organizational performance. At the heart of Lean management is giving employees the necessary time and resources to improve their own work. This means creating a work environment that supports experimentation, failure, and learning, and allows employees to make decisions that affect their jobs. This also means creating space for employees to do new, creative, value-add work during the work week—and not just expecting them to devote extra time after hours. A good example of this is Google’s 20% time policy, where the company allows employees 20% of their week to work on new projects, or IBM’s “THINK Friday” program, where Friday afternoons are designated for time without meetings and employees are encouraged to work on new and exciting projects they normally don’t have time for.

Our data shows that Lean management and continuous delivery practices help improve software delivery performance, which in turn improves organizational performance. At the heart of Lean management is giving employees the necessary time and resources to improve their own work. This means creating a work environment that supports experimentation, failure, and learning, and allows employees to make decisions that affect their jobs.

Innovation accounting. To improve entrepreneurial outcomes and hold innovators accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, and how to prioritize work. This requires a new kind of accounting designed for startups—and the people who hold them accountable.

The Innovator’s Dilemma: they are very good at creating incremental improvements to existing products and serving existing customers, which Christensen called sustaining innovation, but struggle to create breakthrough new products—disruptive innovation—that can create new sustainable sources of growth.

organizations often classify HR as a support only function and don’t ask for anything more.

Compare two startups. The first company sets out with a clear baseline metric, a hypothesis about what will improve that metric, and a set of experiments designed to test that hypothesis. The second team sits around debating what would improve the product, implements several of those changes at once, and celebrates if there is any positive increase in any of the numbers. Which startup is more likely to be doing effective work and achieving lasting results?

The purpose of process standards is to act as a baseline for continuous improvement.

its focus needs to be on improving customer retention. This goes against the standard intuition in that if a company lacks growth, it should invest more in sales and marketing.

Vanity metrics wreak havoc because they prey on a weakness of the human mind. In my experience, when the numbers go up, people think the improvement was caused by their actions, by whatever they were working on at the time. That is why it’s so common to have a meeting in which marketing thinks the numbers went up because of a new PR or marketing effort and engineering thinks the better numbers are the result of the new features it added. Finding out what is actually going on is extremely costly, and so most managers simply move on, doing the best they can to form their own judgment on the basis of their experience and the collective intelligence in the room. Unfortunately, when the numbers go down, it results in a very different reaction: now it’s somebody else’s fault. Thus, most team members or departments live in a world where their department is constantly making things better, only to have their hard work sabotaged by other departments that just don’t get it. Is it any wonder these departments develop their own distinct language, jargon, culture, and defense mechanisms against the bozos working down the hall? Actionable metrics are the antidote to this problem. When cause and effect is clearly understood, people are better able to learn from their actions. Human beings are innately talented learners when given a clear and objective assessment.

Much of the time in a startup’s life is spent tuning the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, or operations.

The vision for Lean, I believe, should be achieving operational excellence based on a clearly defined value system and a way of engaging people in Continuous Improvement. The goals can generally be summarized as Safety, Morale, Quality, Cost, and Productivity.

The growth is all coming from an engine of growth that is working—running efficiently to bring in new customers—not from improvements driven by product development.

Someone starts out sedentary, overweight, and somewhat insulin resistant. They set out to improve their health and lose some weight by following a low-carb diet. It works great. They lose weight, their insulin sensitivity improves, and their energy is through the roof. They start exercising, which helps them lose some more weight, as well as build some lean muscle mass. Now they are really into it, and the frequency and intensity of their training increases. This individual is now at a healthy weight (or relatively lean), is exercising regularly, and has better insulin sensitivity. They are a completely different person, metabolically speaking, then when they started. But the problem is they are no longer properly fueling their body and recovering from their intense training sessions (which were once non-existent). They are starting to feel tired and fatigued in the gym, are always in a bad mood, are holding on to stubborn body fat, can’t sleep at night, get sick all of the time, and are maybe having some sexual performance and hormonal issues. Their diet no longer matches their new activity levels and current metabolic condition, because those have completely changed over time. If this person objectively looked at their situation and progress and listened to their own body and biofeedback, they would consider some dietary adjustments. A moderate-to-higher carb intake might be a better fit. But some people will cling to a diet that initially gave them good results, and got them from Point A to Point B, thinking it will get them from Point B to Point C. I’ve been there myself. Part of it is initial experience, part of it is marketing material, and part of it is pure emotion. It doesn’t always work that way for continued progress.

At any time, the company could invest its energy in finding new customers, servicing existing customers better, improving overall quality, or driving down costs. In

Some unfortunate companies wind up following this strategy inadvertently. Because they are using vanity metrics and traditional accounting, they think they are making progress when they see their numbers growing. They falsely believe they are making their product better when in fact they are having no impact on customer behavior. The growth is all coming from an engine of growth that is working—running efficiently to bring in new customers—not from improvements driven by product development. Thus, when the growth suddenly slows, it provokes a crisis.

The benefits of weight lifting on running performance were demonstrated in a 2008 study by Norwegian researchers (Støren et al. 2008). Seventeen well-trained runners were divided into two groups. Members of one group continued with their normal run training, while members of the other group added to their routine three weekly strength sessions consisting of four, four-repetition sets of half-squats using their four-repetition maximal load (i.e., the heaviest weight they could lift four times). After eight weeks, members of the strength group exhibited not only the expected gains in maximal strength and rate of force development, but also significant improvements in running economy (5 percent) and in time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic running speed (21.3 percent). The control group showed no improvement in any of the measured parameters.

Lean thinking presumes that everything can be improved continuously, without end. If

Over time, the Accumulation of small helpful or harmful behaviors and inputs produces huge results. According to Lean Thinking, by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Toyota’s approach is based on the Japanese concept of kaizen, which emphasizes the continual improvement of a system by eliminating muda (waste) via a lot of very small changes. Many small improvements produce huge results. Accumulation isn’t always positive. Think of what would happen to your body if you consumed nothing but fast food, candy bars, and soda for a decade. Eating a single candy bar isn’t a big deal, but eating hundreds of candy bars is. Fortunately, the opposite is true as well: small improvements in your diet, a little more exercise, and a little more sleep can have major effects on your health over time.

​This is where you should start.  Develop a total system for continuous improvement not just going after the flavor of the month: six sigma, kaizen blitz, etc.  They are all good tools but you should plan what the entire ‘ship’ you will build looks like before you start using the tools to build it.

The authors of This Is Lean [14]  put it this way: The continuously flow-improving organization will always be developing new knowledge, new understanding, new experiences, and learning new things about its customers’ needs and how to meet those needs as efficiently as possible.

A defect presents the opportunity to learn about how the process is failing. Learning is best done with the people who were witness to the defect, at the place where it occurred, and as close to the moment that the defect occurred. This brings together four of the Toyota Way principles: build a culture of stopping to fix problems; respect for people; continuous process improvement; and go and see for yourself.

The collaboration between LPM and TBM is a harmonious blend of strategic alignment, financial responsibility, data-driven decision-making, and a commitment to efficiency and continuous improvement. An excel-lent meal results from the perfect combination of ingredients and techniques. Organizational success is the outcome of the harmonious integration of LPM and TBM. This recipe for excellence satisfies both the palate and the bottom line.

Setting a Challenge is part art and part science. It is a choice that provides direction for improvement but should require high coordination to overcome the natural inclination to decline into division and chaos.

Saad Jalal Toronto Canada - The Science of Healthy Eating Healthy eating is not just a trend; it's a science that holds the key to a longer, more vibrant life. The choices we make when it comes to food have a profound impact on our overall well-being, from our physical health to our mental clarity. Understanding the science behind healthy eating empowers us to make informed choices and lead healthier lives. At its core, healthy eating is about nourishing our bodies with the right balance of nutrients. This means consuming a variety of foods rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber, proteins, and healthy fats. The science shows that such a diet can: Saad Jalal Promote Physical Health: Nutrient-dense foods provide essential vitamins and minerals that support bodily functions. They can help prevent chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. Boost Mental Health: A well-balanced diet can positively impact mood and cognitive function. Nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants found in certain foods have been linked to improved mental well-being. Sustain Energy: Healthy eating provides a steady supply of energy throughout the day, avoiding energy crashes and fatigue. Saad Jalal Toronto Canada said Complex carbohydrates, lean proteins, and healthy fats are key players in this process. Support Digestive Health: Foods rich in fiber promote healthy digestion and regular bowel movements. They maintain gut health and contribute to a strong immune system. Maintain Healthy Weight: Portion control and balanced nutrition are fundamental to weight management. Eating mindfully and recognizing hunger cues can help control calorie intake. The science of healthy eating is an evolving field, continually revealing new insights into the connection between diet and well-being. By staying informed and making conscientious choices, we can harness this knowledge to lead healthier, happier lives. So, let's embrace the science of healthy eating and make every meal a step towards a brighter, healthier future.

Hoshin kanri, however, focuses on people—not the process. It details how people can be developed to solve their own problems.

The psychological theory states that self-measurement leads to self-improvement.

since nearly every company relies on software, delivery performance is critical to any organization doing business today. And software delivery performance is affected by many factors, including leadership, tools, automation, and a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

The rocks and water analogy of Lean is useful for understanding how this is done. The water level corresponds to the inventory level, while the rocks are the problems disturbing the flow. There are many rocks at the bottom of the river and it takes time and effort to remove them. The question is which rocks are important to remove. The answer is given by reducing the water level; those rocks which emerge above the water are the ones that should be removed. At the initiation of the Kanban system, to achieve reasonable throughput, Ohno had to start with many containers each holding a non-negligible quantity of a particular part. Gradually, Ohno reduced the number of containers and then the quantities in each container. If the flow was not noticeably disturbed, then the reduction of the number of containers and quantities per container continued. When the flow was disturbed the Five Why’s method was used to pinpoint the root cause. It had to be fixed before the quantities could be further reduced. It took time but the end result was a remarkable improvement in productivity.

SnapTax competes directly with one of Intuit’s flagship products: the fully featured TurboTax desktop software. Usually, companies like Intuit fall into the trap described in Clayton Christensten’s The Innovator’s Dilemma: they are very good at creating incremental improvements to existing products and serving existing customers, which Christensen called sustaining innovation, but struggle to create breakthrough new products—disruptive innovation—that can create new sustainable sources of growth.

I’ve come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated. I call this validated learning because it is always demonstrated by positive improvements in the startup’s core metrics.

To demonstrate validated learning, the design changes must improve the activation rate of new customers. If they do not, the new design should be judged a failure.

Vanity metrics wreak havoc because they prey on a weakness of the human mind. In my experience, when the numbers go up, people think the improvement was caused by their actions, by whatever they were working on at the time.

At the end of the day, your customers don’t care whether you practice Agile, Lean, or Design Thinking. They care about great products and services that solve meaningful problems for them in effective ways. The more you can focus your teams on satisfying customer needs, collaborating to create compelling experiences, and incentivizing them to continuously improve, it won’t matter which methodology they employ. Their process will simply be better.

He concluded that the Lean community missed the most important practice of all, which he called the improvement kata. He explains that every organization has work routines, and the improvement kata requires creating structure for the daily, habitual practice of improvement work, because daily practice is what improves outcomes. The constant cycle of establishing desired future states, setting weekly target outcomes, and the continual improvement of daily work is what guided improvement at Toyota.

of work. Over that period, we were making constant improvements to the

You have to be vigilant in order to stay relevant. If you remember nothing else from this chapter, remember this: if an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a business leader stops leaning into stupid, doesn’t embrace necessary change and continuous improvement, and doesn’t have the courage to start fresh when necessary, he risks obsolescence. He risks setting the stage for others to swoop in and steal the show with their own amazingly stupid (and adaptive) innovations. He risks becoming extinct or, worse, irrelevant.

Knowing this, I have watched with great interest as Kim Barnas and her team at ThedaCare hospitals in Wisconsin worked at transforming their culture by redesigning the system of daily management. After two years of experimentation, discussion, and study, they found a more deliberative approach to leading a lean healthcare system. By changing the expectations of what managers and frontline supervisors actually do each day, Kim and her team pushed the roots of lean deeper into the organization. This encouraged new ways of thinking, which led to new behaviors. Instead of adding continuous improvement to the list of manager’s duties, improvement became the organizing principle of their work. Thus, a new management system emerged and it was clear that this was the secret sauce that so many had been seeking. Kim discovered that changing a leader’s work content changed the leader as well. From frontline supervisors to top executives, new management duties encouraged everyone to become more respectful, improvement focused, and process orientated. Instead of managing by exception—running after today’s unique emergency—they fixed processes. They standardized processes. In doing so, more improvements to clinical processes remained in place. Projects initiated by frontline caregivers were aligned with the hospital’s major initiatives and relevant to the unit or clinic. Continuous improvement became the working method instead of the extra task.

The job of a manager is to get things done through other people. The manager is not usually able to do the job alone. Management defines the system. Workers work within the system. Only management can change the system and the system MUST be changed continually if quality is to be improved!” - Shingo - Zero Quality Control: Source Inspection and the Poka-yoke System ​​To attain the goal of continuous improvement Shingo was relentless in stimulating people to change for the better.  “Can’t be done ”and “ impossible,” were not part of his vocabulary.  He knew there were many ways to solve problems, like there were many paths to reach the top of Mt. Fuji.

In the absence of those predictions, product and strategy decisions are far more difficult and time-consuming. I often see this in my consulting practice. I’ve been called in many times to help a startup that feels that its engineering team “isn’t working hard enough.” When I meet with those teams, there are always improvements to be made and I recommend them, but invariably the real problem is not a lack of development talent, energy, or effort. Cycle after cycle, the team is working hard, but the business is not seeing results. Managers trained in a traditional model draw the logical conclusion: our team is not working hard, not working effectively, or not working efficiently. Thus the downward cycle begins: the product development team valiantly tries to build a product according to the specifications it is receiving from the creative or business leadership. When good results are not forthcoming, business leaders assume that any discrepancy between what was planned and what was built is the cause and try to specify the next iteration in greater detail. As the specifications get more detailed, the planning process slows down, batch size increases, and feedback is delayed. If a board of directors or CFO is involved as a stakeholder, it doesn’t take long for personnel changes to follow.

Some key principles include defining value from the customer’s viewpoint and delivering it, continuous improvement in how value is delivered, eliminating the use of resources that are wasteful or don’t contribute value, and producing what’s needed only when it’s needed.