Developing a Product Your Customers Want

The methodology of “process consultation”, designed by Edgar Schein, serves the ILE team as we support and guide our customer-partners through a Lean transformation process. In order to make the principles of this system available to all, as well...

Can an organization and its decision-making processes be managed under conditions of extreme uncertainty? The chaos surrounding us demands that we forgo our obsessive attempt to control events and learn to view chaos and the tensions evoked as an...

“Be the change you want to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi) Being a Lean Facilitator Hillel says, “Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place” (Sayings of the Fathers 2:4). The work of the Lean...

On the relationship between Steve Jobs, George Lucas, anthropologist Joseph Campbell, the crisis facing the cellular companies, and the construction of a myth.  An alternative perspective on value-creating marketing. What is happening to the cellular companies? The crisis facing...

How contribution to the community provides an opportunity to design of organizational culture and develop skilled and independent workers The field workers that saved the situation A family had rented a car from Hertz for a family trip during...

In most organizations, the high proportion of waste provides an almost infinite source of possibilities for improvement.  Thus, ignorance or no-problem is necessarily a bad thing – rather, it should be thought of as a gap between what is...

In the field of product development, critical thinking is a methodological principle intended to transform an idea into a low risk, successful product Fist-Fights in the Managers’ Meeting At the doctoral seminar at MIT led by Edgar Schein, we...

This month, I had the privilege of visiting Shanghai, China, to lecture on the topic of “Managing to Invent” at the Chinese Lean Institute’s annual conference.  I opened my talk with an invitation:  I called on the audience to...

All too often, the relationship between (fixed) standardized work and (flexible) creativity is viewed as if it were a snail’s attempt to convince a bird that it’s better to crawl on the ground.  The truth is: Standardized work is...

Creating a learning environment that welcomes problems and experimentation and adapts to market changes should be our main objective. So why do we stick to obsolete ways to teach and develop people? Read the full post on Planet Lean:...

Development managers and start-up entrepreneurs are under the illusion that innovation is just the work of especially talented individuals, but in today’s world resource sharing and teamwork are preferable. Read the full post on Planet Lean: the Lean Global...

When it comes to lean product development, it doesn’t matter whether you are making wine or motorcycles. Success comes from our ability to tell a story that engages our customers and a product they would line up for. In...