Lean Leadership Quotes

In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." (Harvard Business School definition of leadership)

If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.

Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential.

The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don't expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they don't.

Give us a world where half our homes are run by men, and half our institutions are run by women. I'm pretty sure that would be a better world.

Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed.... Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.

I look forward to the day when women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated as Deborah, instead of silenced as Jezebel.

Control your own Destiny or somebody else will

Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires.

With a deep sigh, Lucius resumed pacing. "Honestly, I can't stand this going around anymore. The story is quite simple. You, Antanasia, are the last of a long line of powerful vampires. The Dragomirs. Vampire royalty." Now that made me laugh, a squeaky, kind of hysterical laugh. "Vampire royalty. Right." Yes. Royalty. And that is the last part of the story, which your parents still seem reluctant to relate." Lucius leaned over the table across from me, bracing his arms, staring me down. "You are a vampire princess—the heir to the Dragomir leadership. I am a vampire prince. The heir to an equally powerful clan, the Vladescus. More powerful, I would say, but that's not the point. We were pledged to each other in an engagement ceremony shortly after our births.

Often when a woman exhibits leadership, she’s accused of having that Jezebel spirit. I look forward to the day when women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated as a Deborah, instead of silenced as a Jezebel.

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.

Perfectionism is a disease. Procrastination is a disease. ACTION is the cure.

Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.

Courage is leaning into the doubts and fears to do what you know is right even when it doesn’t feel natural or safe.

We have to change the culture from one in which people simply do their own job in their own function to make their own numbers look good (a vertical focus) to one in which people are focused horizontally on the customer and on improving value streams that deliver value across functions.

The act of deeply thinking through problems, energizing people, and aligning them toward a common goal is the only way to practice and develop real leadership ability.

Don't let your tools become your process.

In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.13

Sometimes, people don’t need our homes to live in or our bodies to lean on. All they need are our hands to lift them up.

Vision without an Action is Illusion. Action without a Vision is Confusion.

The use of a good process that engages people is much more desirable, even if it does not initially achieve all the results.

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. —Ralph Nader, consumer advocate

The sword doesn't change. So you have to adapt to the sword. You can't change your surroundings. They only change once you have changed.

Team performance is directly proportional to team stability. Focus on building and maintaining a stable team. Stability reduces friction and increases credibility and confidence.

This is the ultimate chicken and the egg situation. The chicken: Women will tear down the external barriers once we achieve leadership roles... The egg: We need to eliminate the external barriers to get women into those roles in the first place. Both sides are right.

The bigger problem was that I couldn’t see that I had a problem.” Bud paused for a moment, and then, leaning toward me, he said in a lower, even more earnest tone, “There is no solution to the problem of lack of commitment, for example, without a solution to the bigger problem — the problem that I can’t see that I’m not committed.

Humans are not by nature solitary. They need to connect with other human beings to share dreams and fears, to lean on each other, to enhance each other.

If you want to increase productivity, cut the timeline in half.

We are most effective when we are able to lean in fully to the resource of the other people in our lives.

The ability to shift from reacting against the past to leaning into and presencing an emerging future is probably the single most important leadership capacity today.

QUIT = Quickly Uphold Important Things

Becoming more self-aware is the necessary first step to bridging differences. Without it, you will not be able to identify or understand when you encounter differences that matter.

We often meet someone and think they are “different” but people are not inherently different: our differences lie between us, not within us.

When we understand and appreciate the differences between us, we can leverage them to improve our conversations, deepen our learning, and spur creative thinking.

It is the mentor’s responsibility to create a safe and trusting space that enables a mentee to stretch and step outside their comfort zone, take risks, and show up authentically.

In his latest book, General Colin Powell explains that his vision of leadership rejects “busy bastards” who put in long hours at the office without realizing the impact they have on their staff.

Being a leader doesn’t mean you have people reporting to you on an organizational chart—leadership is about inspiring and motivating those around you. A good leader affects a team’s ability to deliver code, architect good systems, and apply Lean principles to how the team manages its work and develops products. All of these have a measurable impact on an organization’s profitability, productivity, and market share.

Friends who have fallen for Sheryl’s Lean In schtick earnestly recommend going to her with my concerns. I get where they’re coming from—this is an issue she’s chosen to take a high profile on. Around this time she is quoted in a Bloomberg article recommending a zero tolerance policy to harassment and saying, “I think it’s great when people lose their jobs when it happens, because I think that is what will get people to not do it in the future. And I think it’s a leadership challenge. As a leader of a company, there needs to be no tolerance for it. People respond to what is tolerated and what is encouraged.” But having witnessed how she treats her own staff—not to mention her intimate relationship history with Joel, a relationship where he often stays at her house when he visits the Valley—and how often her actions differ from her words, I know that’s not viable.

It’s Simple: Find a person you can trust implicitly. Be prepared to lean on them in times of great stress. Accept both their support and criticism with equal grace. Be a swim buddy to others. Someone out there needs you!

term Lean was coined by John Krafcik in a 1988 article based on his master’s thesis at MIT Sloan School of Management1 and then popularized in The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking summarized Womack and Jones’s findings from studying how Toyota operates, an approach that was spearheaded by Taiichi Ohno, codified by Shigeo Shingo, and strongly influenced by the work of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Henry Ford, and U.S. grocery stores. Lean Thinking framed Toyota’s

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.

Millennial women are less likely than Millennial men to agree that the statement "I aspire to a leadership role in whatever field I ultimately work" descried them very well. Millennial women were also less likely than their male peers to characterize themselves as "leaders," "visionaries," "self-confident," and "willing to take risks." (p.16)

We have to remember that the ancient faith communities that set a course to change the history of the world did so without church programs, without paid staff, without Web sites, and without brochures, blogs, or buildings. They were lean! The point of going without all the stuff is simple but profound. When you don’t have all the “stuff,” you’re left with a lot of time to spend with people.

I lent my ear to the patient's lips - so close that I could feel his fetid, warm breath on my skin. "Can you tell me where I can find Señora Jucinta Coronado?" I asked for the last time. I was afraid he'd bite me. Instead he emitted a violently loud fart. His companions burst out laughing and clapped with joy. I took a few steps back, but it was too late: the flatulent vapours had hit me. It was then that I noticed, close to me, an old man, all hunched up, with a prophet's beard, thin hair, and fiery eyes, who was leaning on a walking stick and gazing at the others with disdain. "You're wasting your time, young man. Juanito only knows how to let off farts, and the others can only laugh and smell them. As you see, the social structure here isn't very different from that of the outside world.

I made a lot of mistakes along the way and wish I had access to the information in this book back then. Common traps were stepped in—like trying a top-down mandate to adopt Agile, thinking it was one size fits all, not focusing on measurement (or the right things to measure), leadership behavior not changing, and treating the transformation like a program instead of creating a learning organization (never done).

Kate leaned toward me. “What I need most when I’m in the box is to feel justified. Justification is what my box eats, as it were, in order to survive. And if I’d spent my whole night, and really a lot longer even than that, blaming my son, what did I need from my son in order to feel ‘justified,’ to feel ‘right’?” “You needed him to be wrong,” I said slowly, a knot forming in my stomach. “In order to be justified in blaming him, you needed him to be blame worthy.

At last, somebody in line steps forward. “I can commit,” he says. He’s a tall, lean young man with a rifle slung over his back. “What’s your name?” Chris asks. “Andrew,” he replies. “And I’m in.” Chris nods. A few other guys step forward and, after a few moments, the entire crowd of ex-POWs takes one step, signifying their decision. My chest swells with pride – pride for Chris’s leadership, pride for the people willing to give their lives to take down Omega. It’s a rush.

declaring that he had made Virginia, under his leadership, “a misery, a ruine, a death, a hell.”18 The real hell was yet to come. In the winter of 1609–10, five hundred colonists, having failed to farm or fish or hunt and having succeeded at little except making their neighbors into enemies, were reduced to sixty. “Many, through extreme hunger, have run out of their naked beds being so lean that they looked like anatomies, crying out, we are starved, we are starved,” wrote the

Many have argued with me that ambition is not the problem. Women are not less ambitious than men, they insist, but more enlightened with different and more meaningful goals. I do not dismiss or dispute this argument. There is far more to life than climbing a career ladder, including raising children, seeking personal fulfillment, contributing to society, and improving the lives of others. And there are many people who are deeply committed to their jobs but do not - and should not have to - aspire to run their organizations. Leadership roles are not the only way to have profound impact.

Nearly two decades later, on his final day in office, President Clinton had issued Rich a highly unusual pardon. It was unusual because the pardon was given to a fugitive, which was, to my knowledge, unprecedented. It was also unusual, and suspicious, because it had not gone through the normal review process at the Department of Justice. The pardon had only been seen by then–Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who, without seeking input from the prosecutors or agents who knew the case, cryptically told the White House he was “neutral, leaning positive.” The New York Times editorial board called the pardon “a shocking abuse of federal power.

Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive—listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff—a lean, mean fighting machine.

There are several explanations offered as to why women have lower aspirations than men, including that women feel there is a lack of fit between themselves (their personal characteristics) and senior leadership positions, which are often characterized in highly masculine terms; women feel there are too many obstacles to overcome; women do not want to prioritize career over family; women place less important than do men on job characteristics common to senior roles, such as high pay, power, and prestige; gender role socialization influences girls' and women's attitudes and choices about occupational achievement; and women are more often located in jobs that lack opportunities for advancement and they lower their aspirations in response to this disadvantageous structural position. (p.191)

Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double bind,” she said. “We believe not only that women are nurturing, but that they should be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable.”7 If a woman is competent, she does not seem nice enough. If a woman seems really nice, she is considered more nice than competent. Since people want to hire and promote those who are both competent and nice, this creates a huge stumbling block for women. Acting in stereotypically feminine ways makes it difficult for women to reach for the same opportunities as men, but defying expectations and reaching for those opportunities leads to being judged as undeserving and selfish.

It’s my proof that others are as blameworthy as I’ve claimed them to be — and that I’m as innocent as I claim myself to be. The behavior I complain about is the very behavior that justifies me.” Bud placed both hands on the table and leaned toward me. “So simply by being in the box,” he said slowly and earnestly, “I provoke in others the very behavior I say I hate in them. And they then provoke in me the very behavior they say they hate in me.” Bud turned and added another sentence to the principles about self-betrayal: “Self-betrayal” 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.” 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted. 4. So—when I betray myself, I enter the box. 5. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me. 6. By being in the box, I provoke others to be in the box. 7. In the box, we invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. We collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.

investigations and reported the completion of significant investigations without charges. Anytime a special prosecutor is named to look into the activities of a presidential administration it is big news, and, predictably, my decision was not popular at the Bush White House. A week after the announcement, I substituted for the attorney general at a cabinet meeting with the president. By tradition, the secretaries of state and defense sit flanking the president at the Cabinet Room table in the West Wing of the White House. The secretary of the treasury and the attorney general sit across the table, flanking the vice president. That meant that, as the substitute for the attorney general, I was at Vice President Dick Cheney’s left shoulder. Me, the man who had just appointed a special prosecutor to investigate his friend and most senior and trusted adviser, Scooter Libby. As we waited for the president, I figured I should be polite. I turned to Cheney and said, “Mr. Vice President, I’m Jim Comey from Justice.” Without turning to face me, he said, “I know. I’ve seen you on TV.” Cheney then locked his gaze ahead, as if I weren’t there. We waited in silence for the president. My view of the Brooklyn Bridge felt very far away. I had assured Fitzgerald at the outset that this was likely a five- or six-month assignment. There was some work to do, but it would be a piece of cake. He reminded me of that many times over the next four years, as he was savagely attacked by the Republicans and right-leaning media as some kind of maniacal Captain Ahab, pursuing a case that was a loser from the beginning. Fitzgerald had done exactly as I expected once he took over. He investigated to understand just who in government had spoken with the press about the CIA employee and what they were thinking when they did so. After careful examination, he ended in a place that didn’t surprise me on Armitage and Rove. But the Libby part—admittedly, a major loose end when I gave him the case—

Agile Methodology: Learn from how terror networks work. AGILE methodology is about being able to iterate and reiterate till you get it right. You are always at the start and the end at the same time till the launch. You are more nimble than the waterfall method and more resourceful than the lean method.

great leadership is “conscious” leadership.

Surprisingly, this divergence continues despite the deep influence of Agile and Lean thinking on general—that is, non-IT—management. The disciplines continue to evolve separately even though corporate strategy is increasingly about both agility and IT strategy. The two worlds do not converge, even though IT leadership books advise CIOs to pull themselves closer to strategy formulation and claim a “seat at the table.” But while the other C-level executives around the table are discussing the need for agility, senior IT leaders, eager to gain or retain a seat at the strategy table, are pursuing the path of demonstrating the value of IT ... by locking in old-school practices that encourage rigidity.

How could any debutante consider him dull merely because he refused to play whist? To her, all his ancestors’ lineage of fighting knights, keen leadership and stern authority were encapsulated within his lean, muscled body which pulsed with vigour and power. Sans tailcoat, she could appreciate his…attire: immaculate white billowing shirt sleeves, an equally immaculate burgundy waistcoat that enhanced his broad chest, immaculate cravat with a spanking diamond, immaculate black breeches which clung in all the right places and immacu– actually, no, his hair appeared scruffy, as though he’d been heaved through a hedge.

Building an adaptive organization, in other words, requires executive leadership to sponsor and support the process.

After an entrepreneur has incubated a product in the innovation sandbox, it has to be reintegrated into the parent organization. A larger team eventually will be needed to grow it, commercialize it, and scale it. At first, this team will require the continued leadership of the innovators who worked in the sandbox. In fact, this is a positive part of the process in that it gives the innovators a chance to train new team members in the new style of working that they mastered in the original sandbox.

Toyota’s concept of a good process is one that expects and reveals problems, without blame, not one that is problem-free.

Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say “We have done this ourselves.” —Lao-Tsu, founder of Daoism

Wasted motion is not work. Taiichi Ohno

Small minds want more space. Shigeo Shingo

Ohno went on to say, “If you can repeat why five times, things will gradually become interesting.

The same as yesterday isn't good enough. Shigeo Shingo

Voltaire said “best is the enemy of better” or “perfect is the enemy of good.

The essence of Lean is learning — learning that is tightly coupled with action. The best way we know to do that is by putting the scientific method to use through PDSA.

It takes focus to avoid spending all our time on only what is urgent. Better today is the important work — the work that we must perform to achieve our ambitions.

Start each day and every task with the PDSA mindset. Choose to make today different from yesterday.

Our invariable response to, “It can’t be done” is, “Do it!” Henry Ford

Illusions can easily turn into conventional wisdom. Taiichi Ohno

The Lean Kanban community has a focusing expression: Stop starting, start finishing.

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.

We will not be able to blaze new trails unless we boldly turn our thinking processes upside down, and unless everyone participates in that revolution. Taiichi Ohno

We use checklists so not to forget that we have forgotten. Shigeo Shingo

The first Lean Thinking principle is to establish what is of value to the customer from the customer's perspective and in the customer's language. [16]  When you keep that value in mind, you will avoid the confusion.

Usually mass production raises costs. Taiichi Ohno

All our knowledge and understanding won’t get us anywhere unless we are able to act on it. Shigeo Shingo

Ooba-san, we have now shown you the whole factory and told you about our work on lean, which we are very proud of. We are wondering now if you consider this to be world-class lean?” Ooba-san’s answer was short and to the point. “It is impossible for me to say. I wasn’t here yesterday.

Managing for learning and improving — every day, always — rather than managing for results, is the path to Lean.

If we don’t understand what it is that we don’t understand, we have no idea what to do about it. Shigeo Shingo

Mind-field Kata Read mathematics. Read philosophy. Read The Economist. Read Cosmopolitan . Read about projects. Read about Korean entrepreneurs. Subscribe to Harvard Business Review and to Fast Company . Subscribe to Engineering News Record and to Wired . Watch a TED video once a week for nine months. Talk to people about what you are reading and watching. Visit other businesses. Create a mind-field.

Know-how” alone isn’t enough! You need to “know-why!” Shigeo Shingo

Standard work and good job instruction are foundations for sustaining know- why in the organization. Are they in place in your organization? How can you build a know- why culture?

Know-Why Kata It’s now time to go back to gemba . This time you are out to learn what people understand or don’t understand about why they do what they do. You’ll want to bring a mood of curiosity to your questioning to avoid having your intentions be misinterpreted. Use the simple question, “Why do you do that?” to discover the know-why. Follow that question with, “How did you learn that?” to see the extent to which people know what they know. Make this part of your daily visits to gemba

Understanding alone isn’t enough to get people moving. Shigeo Shingo

We act on what we think is true. Don’t act on assumptions. Shigeo Shingo

Find waste! Shigeo Shingo

Not speaking and not listening produces stagnation — no progress is possible in the presence of these Two Great Wastes.

Eliminate waste!” is a nonsensical slogan. Shigeo Shingo

Transportation is a crime. Shigeo Shingo

The source of information is always the customer. Taiichi Ohno

If you don’t know why defects are occurring, make some defects. Shigeo Shingo

We must always grasp the real facts — i.e., what is — rather than what ought to be. Shigeo Shingo

Going to gemba to grasp the real facts is one of the most respectful actions leaders and managers can take. When we learn directly from the problems people encounter, we not only learn quicker, but it indicates the seriousness one has for supporting people doing the real work. Genchi genbutsu is not just the practice when something has gone wrong — no, “Go and see for yourself ” is the way to grasp how different the situation is from the ideal.