Blinders? Why no, these are my new leadership Goggles!

For over a century the leadership of the U.S. Army and Navy were in agreement about how the United States coast would be managed: the Army would defend the beaches and out to the range of their coastal guns, and the Navy would protect anything beyond that range. The advent of the airplane challenged that […]

You Need More Mustangs

I have a great friend and mentor in Michigan who taught me a lot about systems and change. One of the things he talks about is the change that goes on in an organization during its journey from an entrepreneurial adventure to one that is more established. If you think about it, a brand new […]

What is the most important part?

Systems thinking is an important part of Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline. In an organization, it mostly means having the ability to see the whole while balancing the importance of the parts. For me, this has always been a touchstone of lean thinking. Every part has its own role and in any system, their interactions make […]

Steam Will Replace Sails? Madness!!!

An Ohio class submarine slips its mooring next to the Delta pier in Bangor Washington. Silently, she glides down the flat calm waters of the Hood Canal on her way to the open ocean. This five hundred sixty foot vessel will soon submerge and begin her primary mission. For over fifty years, ships like this […]

We’re doing 5S… Isn’t that Lean?

We’re doing 5S… Isn’t that Lean? Good news, bad news. The good news is that 5S (or 6S if you want to lump safety into the pot for convenience sake) is the traditional first step in many lean implementations. The bad news is that if you are doing it as a standalone without linkage to […]

Prepare to Hover

Hovering Submarines are incredible machines that are designed to operate in a number of configurations. One of the difficult ones is something called “hovering”. A submarine has ballast tanks that control its buoyancy. To start descending, the submarine floods these tanks with outside sea water and to surface, you make that water leave in a […]