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Articles by Michael Ballé
Tap the Power of Flow to Develop Lean Thinkers
The secret sauce of lean is the development of people. One person after the other, one quality issue after the next. When a person develops their technical competence, they become more autonomous. People who have a greater sense of autonomy will become more confident in their own abilities. When we are more confident in our abilities, we are more willing to try new things, to look for opportunities for kaizen. Kaizen, in turn, develops our technical skills.
Develop Your People Patiently Rather Than Rely on Super Taylorism
What was coined "Greater Taylorism" by Walter Kiechel in his 2012 book The Lords of Strategy has become such a normal part of doing business that we don't notice its existence nor question the results. However, it always ends in tragedy for the companies captivated by its allure of assured success. Follow the plan and you will succeed. How we approach strategy matters if we care about the people who make up the fabric of organizations.
Building a Scale-Ready MVP
Key Takeaways After 15 years of Agile and Lean Startup, most companies - start-ups and large companies alike - launch new initiatives with Minimum Viable Products (MVP) and Build-Measure-Learn loops There are some common traps that organisations fall into when building an MVP Minimum viable is a trade-off, and getting the balance right is hard While the MVP is often planned to be throw-away, there is seldom time or capacity to start from scratch and the MVP becomes the production product...
The Sanity of Just-in-Time
If they haven’t trained themselves to do so, even the most brilliant people can make absurdly wrong decisions because they lack “frame control”. In the early days of the epidemic, experts in epidemiology underestimated the scope of the problem by at least a factor of 10, sometimes 100-fold. Governments around the world shut down their entire countries to protect intensive care units in hospitals.
Why bother with lean when we're all doomed?
FEATURE – When faced with a crisis, like the current one, it is natural to wonder, “Why bother?”. Yet, this is when we most need a growth mindset and a framework like lean thinking to figure out a way forward. Words: Michael Ballé, lean author, executive coach and co-founder of Institut Lean France. What is the point of lean if all is going to hell in a handcart anyway?
How to Develop Healthy Habits for Mindful Coaching
by Lean Leaper August 17, 2020 August 17, 2020 | Comments (0) 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink Developing mindful leadership that boosts problem-solving capability is central to lean, and a key theme of the upcoming Virtual Lean Learning Experience (VLX). Over the years LEI has been exploring this topic, and here is a roundup of resources about developing healthy leadership habits.
Enhancing your gemba skills
FEATURE – Michael Ballé shares a few tricks he uses to escape his default thinking and ensure he makes the most of every gemba walk he goes on. Words: Michael Ballé, lean author, executive coach and co-founder of Institut Lean France. How can I improve my gemba skills? This is a question I’m often asked – and that I ask myself as well. Back in the old days, I was taught that “go and see” had three broad aims: 1.
Overcoming a Fear Of Failure Culture
by Andrew Quibell November 6, 2019 November 6, 2019 | Comments (0) 0 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink Throughout my career I have often hit the ‘fear of failure’ mindset that stops people from taking or making the next step to fixing issues. Folks hesitate, spin their wheels or ponder too long on data in pursuit of perfection. Ever seen that in your organization?
My father is my sensei
FEATURE – In this intimate account, the author reflects on the role of a lean sensei by looking back at what he’s learned from his own… his father. Words: Michael Ballé, lean author, executive coach and co-founder of Institut Lean France. My father is my sensei. It happened by accident, not by design. Back in 1975, he was in charge of product planning at Renault, when he discovered Toyota. He visited one of their plants and saw right away they were doing something radically different.
Lean Thinkers Are Systems Thinkers
Our first daughter was born on March 9, 1984, and a few weeks later, our whole little family went to see the pediatrician for her first well-baby checkup. We had a wonderful first appointment with our doctor. He taught us how he gave shots without tears. He also taught us that babies move their fingers to every syllable they hear until about a year old, thus it is important to communicate frequently with spoken words.
Why Human Beings Aren't Manageable But Work Is
Bestselling business writer Michael Ballé explains why it’s important for leaders to understand that human beings aren’t manageable, but work is.
Rich Noonan Talks About Everything Connects
Video featuring Rich Noonan discussing Everything Connects by Faisal Hoque and Drake Baer. Part philosophy, part business, and part history, Everything Connects is a kaleidoscopic view for thinking out of the box. Faisal Hoque is the author of several books and regularly contributes to Fast Company and Huffington Post. Formerly of GE and other global brands Hoque’s work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal BusinessWeek and Forbes.
The causal flow of lean
There are many interpretations of “lean” out there, mostly people centering on their favorite aspect of the Toyota Production System, and claiming that this is enough to make a real difference, so why bother with the full, incomprehensible whole? I’ve represented the traditional TPS house as a causal model – the logical path one has to follow, according to the TPS, to improve customer satisfaction.
Rethinking the Model Line
It was love at first sight. The first time I met a model line I fell in love with it. In 1993 I was on a tour at a grimy car-parts factory in the US Midwest with Toyota TSSC advisors, who exposed me to the concept of the model line, which was pioneered in the late 1960s by Taiichi Ohno and the team he created to spread the Toyota production philosophy throughout the Toyota supplier group in Japan.
Integrating Systems Thinking and Design Thinking - The Systems Thinker
As readers of this newsletter are aware, systems thinking is evolving as an alternative to the old paradigms. Richard Mattessich wrote that “systems thinking is first and foremost a point of view and a methodology arising out of this viewpoint” (, “The systems approach: Its variety of aspects,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 33(6), 1982). It is a lens through which you can look at the world. That lens determines what you see and often influences what you do about it.
Dan Jones says lean is the management strategy of the future
FEATURE – Lean is a people-centric system for learning that acts as an alternative to traditional management and financial capitalism. It represents the best strategy a company can adopt to meet the needs of the future. Thirty years ago, Jim Womack and I uncovered a very different management system in Toyota. We called it “lean” to contrast it with the mass-production systems we saw in America and Europe.
A Brief Encounter in Pittsburgh with a Driverless Future
I have seen the future of land transportation, and it’s both fascinating and freakish. While in Pittsburgh recently, I requested an Uber. Minutes later, my wife and I were surprised to see a gray SUV roll up with a LIDAR (light detection and ranging device) on the roof — a driverless car. In the front seat were two Uber staffers, one behind the wheel and the other in the passenger seat with a large laptop that exhibited a real-time, three-dimensional map of the surroundings.
Brewers Need to Benchmark their Products
Every company and industry can benefit from benchmarking, especially in markets undergoing dramatic growth, as customer expectations and competition change overnight. I thought about this recently when heading out to a craft brewery. In 2011, I was given the book Ohio Breweries by Rick Armon. I had hoped to drink at each of the 49 breweries listed within a year, but managed to stop at only a dozen or so. I liked every beer at every brewery I visited.
Ask Art: Is there a formula to predict or evaluate the success of a lean implementation?
This is a great question with many implications. Most people need some way to define success numerically; but what are the right metrics to look at? The ultimate goal for anyone running a business is to increase enterprise value. This still leaves you with the question of “as compared to what?”, and even then, the question remains: is it good enough? Or, should the result have been even higher if I did a better job on my companies’ lean turnaround?
Why Learning Is Central to Sustained Innovation
1. M. Ballé, G. Beauvallet, A. Smalley, and D.K. Sobek, “The Thinking Production System,” Reflections 7, no. 2 (2006): 1-12. 2. “Lean product development” is also referred to as “lean product and process development” to highlight the innovation involved both in new products and in the manufacturing systems needed to produce them. We use the shorter phrase in order to avoid confusion between manufacturing process and development process.
Doing Lean Versus Becoming Lean
We live in a world where organizations address opportunities for improvement by rolling out programs. These programs are defined, deployed, and tracked for adoption. The idea is that cultural mindsets, tools, and policies are things that should be applied to organizations. Programs are often defined at the senior levels of the organization, deployed by the middle managers, and expected to be adopted by the lower level employees.
7 Steps for Leading Lean with Respect for People
With Lean Thinking, Jim Womack and Dan Jones ushered a true (and rare) revolution in management thinking: To deliver a superior order of performance, leaders should lead from the workplace, the “gemba” to use the lean term (it means real place, real products, real people) and not from the boardroom. Like the air we breathe, the established paradigm of 20th century leadership is so ubiquitous that it is hard for anyone to question it.
The 5 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make That Hinder A Lean Startup
By Michael Ballé and Daniel Jones5 minute Read Eric Ries popularized a revolutionary term and inspired a movement in his 2011 book The Lean Startup. In it, he describes a new kind of business strategy–one where startups cater their products or services to the needs of early customers, reducing the need for large amounts of upfront capital. Lean companies outperform their competitors in any sector, from manufacturing to health care, from startups to service giants.
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