Karen Martin has joined this podcast five times since 2012. For our 20th anniversary series, we pulled together highlights from all five conversations: clarity versus ambiguity, why value stream mapping needs directors and above in the room, the pattern behind claims that Lean is dying, and the three rules of quality at the source.

Karen is founder and CEO of TKMG and TKMG Academy, and author of The Outstanding Organization, Value Stream Mapping, and Clarity First, among other books.

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Twenty years ago, on July 16, 2006, the Lean Blog Podcast began with a conversation with Norman Bodek.

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Norman was Mark Graban’s friend and mentor—and the person who suggested starting the podcast. To mark the show’s 20th anniversary, Mark revisits highlights from that first episode.

Norman explains the difference between kaizen and kaizen events, why employees should be trusted to implement small improvements, and how one idea at Gulfstream produced thousands of hours in savings when it was copied across the plant.

He also reflects candidly on his own leadership mistakes, including his tendency as a company owner to tell employees what to do rather than ask for their ideas.

Other topics include:

• Quick and Easy Kaizen • Kaizen versus kaikaku • Employee suggestion systems • Respect for people • Trust and employee autonomy • Asking instead of telling • The risks of poorly designed incentives • How supervisors can encourage—or shut down—employee participation • Why organizations overlook the knowledge of their own employees

Norman passed away in 2020, but his influence continues through the people he taught, the books he wrote and published, and the ideas he helped introduce to a much wider audience.

Listen to the complete original episode at leanblog.org/1.

Why do so many Lean implementations struggle or fail to stick? Thomas Cox and Andre DeMerchant join me to work through that question using a verbal A3.

Thomas Cox is a management bench builder, co-founder of the Transformative Leadership Lab, and a certified Harada Method coach trainer. Andre DeMerchant is president of DeMerchant Healthcare Solutions and a former Toyota team member who started as a forklift driver at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and rose to manufacturing manager. He's also a returning guest from episode 307.

The core idea: Lean asks people to surface problems, admit mistakes, and stop the line without fear. That requires psychological safety, and psychological safety has to exist before Lean gets rolled out. It can't be created by the rollout itself. Drawing on Chris Argyris, Thomas frames the problem as Model 1 behavior (controlling, self-protective, blame-oriented, closed off) versus Model 2 (calm, curious, empathic, non-defensive). Under pressure, most leaders default to Model 1, which is the opposite of what Lean needs.

Along the way we get into Andre's contrast between meat-packing management meetings (where having no problems was the goal) and Toyota meetings (where showing up without a problem marked you as the person who didn't understand the work). We also talk about Alan Mulally banning sarcasm at Ford, Mark Fields reporting red and getting applause instead of fired, the carrot-and-stick fallacy, McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y, and the uncomfortable question of whether consultants succeed because of method or because they cherry-pick clients.

Thomas and Andre have published their A3 as a living document and built an assessment for gauging how close a C-suite is to the preconditions Lean needs. Links in the show notes.

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Companies and people referenced: Toyota, Ford, General Motors, Kimberly-Clark, Salem Health, W. Edwards Deming, Chris Argyris, Douglas McGregor, Peter Senge, John Shook, Norman Bodek, Jim Prinzing.