The PDSA cycle and the Power of Prediction - Have you ever been facilitating a project and the team has come to the conclusion that a lack of knowledge is the root cause of your problem and education will fix it? I think this has happened to at least 50% of the projects I’ve worked on. Yet despite us assuring the team that education … Continue reading The PDSA cycle and the Power of Prediction
The problem with problems. - How do you stop people from painting themselves into a corner, by stating a solution, as a problem...? We explore one simple technique to break-away and start thinking about problems, instead of their symptoms. 
Tired of meetings? Try Lean Coffee Hour - This was a screenshot of my calendar last week. Fairly typical of most professionals I’d say; meetings peppered throughout my day, some a simple 30 minutes where various inputs were needed, others half day problem solving sessions I was either hosting or involved with. It also seems fairly common that this doesn’t describe the whole … Continue reading Tired of meetings? Try Lean Coffee Hour
Process Mapping with Toast - Tom Wujec is famous for traveling around the world in order to fix complex business problems while relating those problems to the process of making toast. Corey Niemeyer and myself thought that this activity would mesh well with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich simulation that we developed. It seems that this simulation has gone … Continue reading Process Mapping with Toast
Root Cause Analysis - Getting to the root cause of a problem is the first step taken to understand how to fix the problem. After all, if you do not know what is causing the problem, how are you going to fix it? Ask Why 30 Times Certified Reliability Engineer Mark Galley takes this methodology one step further. Expanding … Continue reading Root Cause Analysis