Lean Blog

Deming’s Long Shadow: Twenty Years of Conversations

Mark Graban — Mon, 18 May 2026 08:40:00 +0000

Mike Stoecklein recalls a story secondhand. It was, he thinks, at one of the last four-day seminars W. Edwards Deming ever gave. Deming was frail by then. Someone later told Mike that when the seminar got to the Red Bead Experiment, Deming stood up slowly in front of the executives in the room and said something like: “Young Jerry Stoecklein, nine years old, he understands the lessons of the red beads. Why can't you?” Mike […]

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Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: May 15, 2026

Mark Graban — Fri, 15 May 2026 18:14:00 +0000

Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. Ryan McCormack's latest mixtape circles a common theme: the leadership habits and shortcuts that got organizations here are increasingly the ones holding them back. Expect sharp pieces on why root cause can't be discovered […]

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GM Wrote It Down in 1987. They Still Didn’t Get It. [Lean Coffee Talk]

Mark Graban — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:04:00 +0000

Formerly known as “Lean Whiskey” Listen: In Season 2, Episode 8, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh settle in with single-origin coffees, and circle back to a topic that's been bouncing around the lean world for forty years: NUMMI. But first, the customary check-in. Jamie reports back from a busy stretch close to home, including a Center for Supply Chain Research symposium at Lehigh on AI in supply chain (with Penske, NFI, Crayola, and Sharp Services […]

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The Magic of Small, Odd Experiments: What Rory Sutherland Can Teach Lean Practitioners

Mark Graban — Wed, 13 May 2026 18:29:09 +0000

TL;DR: Rory Sutherland's Alchemy is a useful provocation for Lean practitioners. Lean already knows how to test small, low-cost ideas without demanding an airtight ROI in advance. We sometimes forget. A Small Idea, Quietly Killed A few years ago, I was in a hospital workshop when a nurse mentioned she had an idea for a small change to her unit's supply layout. Her manager, who had been nodding along all morning about Kaizen, asked what […]

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MLB Walks Are Up With Robot Umpires. The Skill Is Knowing What to Ignore.

Mark Graban — Wed, 13 May 2026 01:11:30 +0000

MLB's first month with robot umpires gave us a 7.3% jump in walks, a five-minute increase in average game time, and a series of headlines asking you to have an opinion. Most of the leaders I respect would shrug. That isn't apathy. It's a skill, and it's harder than it looks. When a workplace metric jumps 7.3% in a month, the reflex is to do something. Praise. Punish. Call a meeting. Most journalists write the […]

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What a “Perfect” Process Map Missed: A Lesson From Third Shift

Mark Graban — Tue, 12 May 2026 08:32:00 +0000

A food company had a flowchart any auditor would love. Every step mapped. Every step mapped. Every critical control point identified. The HACCP plan (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, the standard food safety framework that identifies where contamination can enter the process) reviewed, signed off, and approved by the people whose job it is to look for trouble. And then they had a major food safety failure. That's a story Deborah Coviello shared on […]

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What Jim Womack Kept Telling Us

Mark Graban — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:26:00 +0000

In March 2007, Jim Womack told me about his biggest disappointment. The Machine That Changed the World had been out for more than sixteen years, sold around a million copies, and was about to be reissued with an updated subtitle: “Why Toyota Won.” Jim was calling in from Melbourne, where he had been speaking about lean in healthcare. I asked why bother with a new edition. He answered, and then drifted toward something that seemed […]

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Mistakes and Leadership Lessons: Still Learning, Three Years Later

Mark Graban — Fri, 08 May 2026 11:55:30 +0000

Three years ago, The Mistakes That Make Us came out. Around the same time, Elisabeth Swan published Picture Yourself a Leader. Both books' third birthdays felt like a decent reason to get together and talk together and bring in some special guests. On Thursday, May 7, at 1 PM ET, Elisabeth and I co-hosted a live event on LinkedIn called “Still Learning: Mistakes and Leadership Lessons.” We talked about what readers have shared with us, […]

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