The Lean Edge: How lean is the Lean Startup?
"How lean is the lean startup? The lean startup movement is growing fast, now highlighted in the HBR yet no one in the lean movement seems to comment or connect - how do you feel about the lean startup? What can we learn from it?"

Posted on May 21, 2013

Archive for April, 2012

Art Smalley: Performance Organizations By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Wednesday, April 11, 2012

This month's questions asks why is there such a resistance to creating learning organizations and why are leaders letting the future deteriorate without doing anything about it. I am not sure that I can answer the question with any relevant facts to be honest. In order to answer this question properly I think the proper thing to do in TPS spirit is to "get the facts" and proceed from that basis. In this case for example we'd have to survey an adequate number of executives and measure their responses. Some might have no resistance to creating a "learning organization" while ...

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Sammy Obara: PDCA is the missing element By Samuel Obara, Co-author of 'Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry' - Last updated: Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I'm not sure we are not doing anything about it.  But perhaps what we are doing is not working.  Perhaps the PDCA element is missing. As people say, the problems of today are all solutions from yesterday. One example is the home ownership catastrophe.  Smart people created several avenues to allow millions of people to buy their own home.   Home ownership was solved for people who otherwise would never afford to buy those much-more-than-I-can-afford-mansions.  Those smart people were celebrated by the home buyers, builders, banks, and even the US government.   The great solution for home ownership almost became the great depression of the century. Perhaps it is not that we ...

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Michael Ballé: Where is the blueprint for a manager who wants to create a learning organization? By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

Learning is hard. Particularly in adults, learning requires a determination to learn. This means controlling one’s intuitive “first response.” Learning requires what is called “frame control”, which is a mindfulness about our mental models and knowing how to actively play fit-to-fact with new info or situations. Grown up minds are simply not designed for learning as we know what we know, and believe what we believe. In other words, first “what we see is all there is” – it’s hard to realize that the way we see a situation is only our own perspective on whatever is going on: part of ...

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Jeff Liker: We look at single variable explanations in isolation to get us the quick fix By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

The best way I can explain this is with an analogy to physical health.  We know what it takes to be healthy--exercise and eating right.  Yet America, as the wealthiest in the world, is one of the unhealthiest.  Obesity runs rampant and the large majority of Americans are overweight and out of shape.  We could ask the same question.  Why are we letting our future deteriorate without doing anything about it?  But we are doing a lot.  The wellness industry and diet industry and diet drug industry are investing  tens of billions of dollars if not trillions.  But we cannot ...

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Pascal Dennis: Our business & professional schools teach us to think in a way inimical to learning By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

Why Are Learning Organizations So Scarce? A billion dollar question... There are many root causes, which my Lean Edge colleagues will no doubt explore at length. Here's one that I find compelling: Our business & professional schools teach us to think in a way inimical to learning. Here are some of the mental models I picked up at engineering and business schools: 1) We are very smart and successful 2) We can manage from a distance, by the numbers. Corollary: What can front line people possibly teach us? 3) Everything wraps up nicely -- just like an MBA case study. 4) Problems are bad things -- smart, successful managers like us shouldn't have problems! 5) ...

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Craig Kennedy: Why is there such resistance to creating learning organizations? By Craig Kennedy, Vice President, North American Operations at Merck Manufacturing Division - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012