I see the world as full of opportunity and every day I think about Lean: at the grocery store, at the gym, even when I am hiking.
Many of these ideas turn into products, wind up in our newsletter, or get added to entries in The Continuous Improvement Companion.
But sometimes I just want to share my thoughts with the world at large, in the hopes that it makes someone’s day a little better because of it.
Thanks for your interest in the Gotta Go Lean Blog.
Jeff Hajek
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You can look at the bottom of the page to see a list of Gotta Go Lean articles. If you want more detail, please click on ‘Categories’ in the naviagation bar above, and select ‘Gotta Go Lean’ to see my previous entries. This will give you a little summary of each post. Of course, you can also use the search feature at the top of the page to find what you are looking for.
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- 10 Random Tips to Supercharge You On Your Lean Journey (Webinar Recording)
- 12 Predictions about Lean in 2011
- 12 Ways to Start Building a Continuous Improvement Culture
- 13 Ways to Apply Lean Principles to a Small Business
- 3 Ways to Sneak Lean into Your Company
- 5 Why Analysis-Lean Training Video
- 6 Ways to Improve Problem Solving in Your Company
- 8 Ways to Develop Winning Teams in Lean Organizations (Webinar Recording)
- 9 Steps to Better Metrics
- 9 Steps to Developing a Daily Management System (+Video)
- 9 Words That Kill Lean Progress
- A Bad Employee Attitude Resonates Throughout an Organization
- A Common Lean Problem: Mismatched Expectations
- A Healthcare Poka Yoke Against MRSA
- A Hundred Million People Just Went 'Huh?'
- A Lean Prognostication
- A Paradox of Lean: Job Control Rises and Falls at the Same Time
- Abnormal Conditions and Parking Lots
- An Overlooked Benefit of Kaizen Events
- Andon: Lean Superhero
- Are You Driven to Learn Lean? (Webinar Recording)
- Are You Kidding Me? You Call That a Metric?
- Attitude, Employee Behavior, Customer Service, and Lean
- Be Flexible in Your Kaizen Project
- Be Happy. It Pays. And It Could Save Your Life.
- Benchmark Lean: Difficulties Copying the Toyota Production System. Lean TPS Information.
- Benefit of Lean: Is Lean Really Easier?
- Benefits, Lean or Otherwise, Depend on Perspective
- BLUF Your Way Through Meetings
- Brand New Lean Terms for You!
- Building a Continuous Improvement Culture Webinar Recording
- Building a Lean Infrastructure Webinar Filling Up Fast...
- Cancelled Travel Plans Means More 5S Info
- Categories of Waste: Why They Don't Really Matter
- Change Resistance: Overcoming Resistance to Change in a Lean Company
- Collective Intelligence and Lean. How to Harness All of Your Team’s Brainpower
- Communicating Goals: Managing Continuous Improvement Teams
- Communicating Your Improvement Initiative
- Communication. Lean Depends on It.
- Competition at Work. How Lean Principles Can Help.
- Continuous Improvement: It's not just for the law-abiding anymore
- Correlation or Causation? Interceptions and the Playoffs.
- Costs of Business. What Does 'Cost' Really Mean?
- Could Lean Help Me Go Pro?
- Cursive is Dead. Long Live the Keyboard.
- Customer Service-Lean: First Impressions Last
- Customer Service: Retention to an Extreme
- Customer Value Added. Helping the customer get more value out of using your product.
- Deming's Great Lapse in Logic
- Do Goals Limit Team Performance?
- Does Lean Need Agile?
- Does Your Leadership Style Create Management Waste?
- Domino's Restaurant Kaizen
- Don't Be Scared of Being Scared
- Don't Blindly Follow Directions
- Don't Debate Something That Can Be Measured
- Don't Go Crazy with Your 5S
- Don't Trust New Technology!
- Don’t Let Cost Reduction Eliminate Customer Value
- Dumb Jobs: Dirt Can't Hide. Dumb Can.
- Employee-Customer Relationships and Airlines
- Every Approval Is a Leadership Failure
- Every Conflict Comes From a Gap in Expectations
- External and Internal Customers in Lean
- Failure Isn't Really Failure
- Featured Lean Thinker: Chris Paulsen
- Featured Lean Thinker: Evan Durant
- Featured Lean Thinker: Jay Watson
- Featured Lean Thinker: Jeff Hajek
- Featured Lean Thinker: Mark Graban
- Featured Lean Thinker: Mark Rosenthal
- Featured Lean Thinker: Tim McMahon
- Find a Factory Whisperer
- Fishbone / Ishikawa / Cause and Effect Diagram Video Training
- Free (Lean) Tax Advice
- Gauge Go/No-Go. Can You Be Lean and Not Even Know It?
- Give Us Your Opinion on Gotta Go Lean Article Types
- Government Lean. The TSA and Process Improvement.
- Guess What. You’re Not Unique.
- Guest on "The Lean Nation" Friday, August 20, 2010!
- High Energy + No Direction = Problems!
- High School Math and Lean
- How Can Healthcare Be So Good and So Bad?
- How Do YOU Approach An Idea?
- How Lean Fights Obsolescence
- How to 5S. Or More Accurately, How NOT to 5S.
- How to Organize Cables with 5S
- Implementing Lean in 3 (Not So) Easy Steps
- Improvement Objectives In Lean
- In Lean Jobs, Experience Is Less Important
- Inspect Your Inspections
- Inspection and Quality. How the NFL Can Teach You About Lean.
- Interruptions and Lean
- Introducing Lean Larry and How He Used Visual Work Instructions
- Is Success Possible?
- Is There Value in Lean Certification?
- Is Toyota Still the Champ?
- Is Your Leadership Style a Bottleneck to Creativity?
- It's About Time!
- Job Stress and Lean…and Rainbows?
- Kaizen at Home, Holiday Style!
- Kaizen Creativity: Breaking Preconceived Notions
- Leading Change: What’s Good for the Goose ISN’T Good for the Gander
- Lean and the News (and a Contest!)
- Lean and the Trapeze
- Lean Articles of Interest: 3/16/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 3/23/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 3/30/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 4/15/2011
- Lean Articles of Interest: 4/27/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 5/18/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 6/15/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 6/7/2010
- Lean Articles of Interest: 7/13/2010 (Sports Edition)
- Lean Articles of Interest: 9/14/2010
- Lean Education: Can it Work?
- Lean Escape Velocity
- Lean Lessons from Steve Jobs Being Poked with a Stick
- Lean Measurement: It’s all in how you measure it…
- Lean Nation Appearance Postponed
- Lean Podcast-Managing the Fear of Failure in Lean
- Lean Problems: Why Not Dream Big?
- Lean Results: Don’t Believe the Hype (At Least in a Kaizen Report Out)
- Lean Success in Public vs. Private Companies
- Lean System vs. Lean Tools
- Lean Versus Batch Manufacturing Video
- Lean Wins!
- Lean Workplace: Group Dynamics, Basketball, and Lean Projects
- Lean, Poka Yokes, and Taxi Cabs
- Lean, Reasons, and Excuses
- Learn About Saying No to Lean
- Learning Lean Through Making Coffee (Recorded Webinar)
- Learning Lean: Always Re-learning Lean Lessons
- Let Me Think for Seven Minutes
- Make Quality Better: Eliminate Hammers
- Make Sure There’s a Hole in Your Hoop
- Managing Expectations in 3 Steps
- Marketing: Lean and Your Brand
- Mirror, Mirror on my Workbench, Who’s the Quickest with a Wrench?
- Mistake Proofing: Temporary Speed Bumps and Schools Zones
- Morning Walkthrough Tips
- My Braces and Lean
- My Daughter Taught Me Again
- Need to Poka Yoke My Process...
- Neuroscience and Lean
- New (QCD) and Improved (Kanban) PDF Downloads for You
- New Lean Terms for the Week (May 28, 2010)
- New Lean Terms Update for September 1, 2010
- Obstacles to Lean
- Office Process Flow and IF-THEN Statements
- Office Space Meets the Real World
- Office Work, Hajek's Law of
- One Person's Value Stream is Another Person's Waste
- Out of Box Thinking…from an Insurance Company?
- Outsourcing Homework? It Was Bound to Happen.
- Overprocessing Waste: A Different Spin on the Waste of Overprocessing.
- Peanut Butter and Jelly. Starsky and Hutch. Inspection and Quality?
- Performance Reviews are a Batch Process
- Personal Kaizen: Getting Lean the Lean Way
- Podcast: Frontline Lean Leadership with Tim McMahon
- Podcast: The Lean Management Mindset, Part 1
- Poka Yoke Devices and Airlines
- Poka Yoke? Or Poka Yuck...
- Predictive Problem Solving
- Prevent Layoffs: Use Lean Skills to Protect Your Job
- Problem Solving: Creative Ideas Don't Have to Cost a Fortune
- Process Improvement and the Census
- Process Observation: Watch Before You Ask
- Production Problems and Documentation and Toyota
- Productive Work: How to Quickly Gauge Worker Productivity
- Productivity Incentives That Work
- Randomness and Lean and Perfect Games
- Reader's choice! Help pick an upcoming post.
- Recording of Our "8 Ways to Create an Infrastructure that Supports Lean" Webinar
- Reminder About Friday's Webinar on Things to Avoid in Kaizen
- Reminder About Our Winning Teams Webcast
- Selling More to Make Less Is a Bad Combination
- Seven Wastes: Lean Leadership and Taiichi Ohno's Seven Wastes
- Some Meandering Thoughts...
- Standard Work Procedures: Hand-Written or Computer Generated?
- Standardization: Process Enhancer or Creativity Killer?
- Standardizing Personal Processes
- Stray Jet Follow-Up
- Stumbling Into Success
- Supplier Criteria: Do They Apply to Internal Suppliers, too?
- Take "Can't" Out of Your Vocabulary
- Team Members Late to Meetings During a Kaizen Blitz? Not Anymore!
- The 18 Principles of Lean Leadership
- The 4 "C's" of Lean Leadership
- The Case for Continuous Improvement
- The Employee Reprimand: Is It Effective?
- The Hardest Step of Problem Solving
- The Madden Curse and Lean
- The Meaning of Lean (+Video)
- The One-Week Move-to-Gemba Managers' Challenge
- The Problem With PDCA
- The Real Problem with Air Traffic Controllers Sleeping
- The Secret to Successfully Running a Lean Office: Daily Management
- The Standard Work Process: Overcoming Obstacles to Making Effective Standard Work
- The Surprising Truth about Automotive Quality
- The Symphony of Standard Work
- The Three Lean Books a New Shop Floor Manager MUST Own
- The Toyota Way and the NFL
- The Truth about Financial Incentives
- The TSA and the Kobayashi Maru
- The Unforgiving Minute
- The Visual Workplace: Shorten Those Shelves!
- There's More to "Lights, Camera, Action"
- Toyota Under Fire Book Review
- TPM: How to Protect Million-Dollar Athletes and Production Machines
- TV Shows that Teach Lean
- Ums and Ahs: Improving Your Public Speaking
- Upcoming Webinars: Lean and Driving, and Daily Management
- Using Lean in My Own Business
- Using Video to Support the Process Walk
- Value the Customer: That Didn't Seem Faster...
- Value, Shmalue
- Web Surfing Best Practices
- Webinar Recording: 8 Things to Avoid to Make Your Kaizen Successful
- What 5S (Lean) disease strikes millions?
- What I Learned from Almost Winning the Shingo Prize
- What If Meetings Were Lean?
- What If You Had to Sign the Other Side of the Check?
- What Lean Is Really All About
- What My 8 Year-Old Daughter Taught Me About Lean
- What's at the Core of Lean?
- What's Your Approach to 5S?
- When Bacon and Kaizen Collide...
- When Good Processes Go Bad...
- Why Daily Management is Like a Petri Dish for Lean
- Why I Hate Shadowboards
- Why is a Lean Call Center like the Tour de France?
- Why Managers Are Bottlenecks
- Work Lean: Ride the Continuous Improvement Wave
- You Want Me To Do What????
- You're in! Nope. Just kidding. Quality control in administrative proccesses.