Embrace the “red”

It’s pretty simple: you can’t solve problems if you don’t acknowledge them. General Electric’s Larry Culp keeps showing up in this newsletter for a reason. Mark Graban’s latest digs into what “embracing red” actually requires of a CEO, rewarding the accurate bad news over the polished status update, even when it’s your own turnaround on the line. Worth a read before your next steering committee meeting.

Your real-time dashboard will not solve hospital flow

Inpatient hospital beds are really expensive. This means every hospital generally seeks to maximize bed utilization. Running your bottleneck at 100% utilization leaves no slack in the system and creates a condition of consistent system gridlock that administrators seek to optimize. And so it goes.

I spent years helping maligned and pressured hospital administrators squeeze any marginal bed capacity through “real time” (or as close as possible) capacity management. The general solution approach of the health system is to buy a system that shows capacity in real-time, in the hopes that this will somehow force flow-optimal decision making. It never worked. Because it wasn’t really an operational problem.

Fast forward to today and nothing much has changed. Hospitals are set to spend $9 billion on real-time capacity platforms by 2033, and Dr. Barkoudah’s bet is that most of it buys faster chaos, not faster throughput , because the constraint was never operational, it was organizational. Worth reading before your organization buys its way out of a leadership problem.

Every AI strategy is actually a change management strategy

It seems like organizations are deploying AI tools widely, and predictably, some are using the tools to make what they already do more productive. But few are truly using AI to reimagine their ways of working. AI exposes existing organizational weaknesses, and this is not a technical problem to solve.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Are your “wins” creating arsonists?

A wise man once told me that “rewarding firefighting will eventually create arsonists”. I’ve sat in enough “crisis” meetings to recognize the pattern Paul Kreis describes here: the same fire gets fought, praised as a win, and quietly reignites a quarter later because nobody owned the permanent fix. His prescription is refreshingly simple: tag every fix as “new” or “repeat” before closing the ticket, and put repeat counts on the leadership dashboard where they can’t be ignored.

A non-framework approach to prioritization

You can’t do everything at once. Prioritization is critical. But have you ever noticed that we rarely prioritize the work in flight. I mean after all, we had already previously prioritized it, right?

John Cutler’s argument that teams should prioritize around their recurring tensions rather than around frameworks stuck with me. His twelve prompts are worth stealing for your next retro, they surface the avoidance patterns that never make it onto a roadmap.

Need to motivate a global workforce? Be human at the top

How do organizations with large global workforces keep people motivated? It’s not all about the money. Organizations that focus on enablement over engagement, keep things simple for frontlines, and invest in their middle managers are seeing teams thrive. But above all, leaders need to remain human while building the future of work. Alexia Georghiou’s recap of SHRM26 shares the perspectives of four HR executives with one consistent message: people follow leaders who are willing to be visibly human.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

AI is undermining your judgment

I remember when “business intelligence” was the answer to improving leaders’ judgment. Organizations built dashboards and reports with the belief that this will improve leaders’ decision-making and make it more data-informed. Did it work? In my experience - meh. It often created a sort of malaise and deference to the report.

It turns out this is an observable pattern when it comes to cognitive offloading and automation. We increasingly defer to the tools, eventually developing a “monoculture” devoid of original judgment or dissent. What do we think? I dunno. What does the dashboard say?

I’m finding the same pattern forming as I rely more on AI. The AI-tools that are meant to sharpen judgment could easily replace it. Here’s how to maintain original judgment in the AI era.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Your fishbone won’t cut it in the AI-world

Hear me out, analog improvement purists: it may finally be time to retire your fishbone diagrams and SPC, or at least rethink the context in which they are still effective. These tools were conceived in an era that didn’t contemplate big data, modern networks, and machine learning. AI has created new possibilities for root cause analysis, including advances in complex interpretability and explainability. Here’s how to approach root cause analysis in the age of AI.

5 reasons your organization isn’t ready for agentic AI

Agentic AI is at the top of the hype heap in 2026. Don’t get me wrong, it seems like it has real promise in many applications. But as experienced operational excellence leaders know, it’s useful to step back and assess your readiness before investing heavily. Here are five reasons your organization may not be ready to hand over decision-making to AI agents.

AI is still about people and process…for now at least

Most organizations feel like they’re behind on AI. Boards and shareholders continue to pressure firms to accelerate the adoption of AI, not only expecting to gain the promised returns but also from fear of falling behind their competitors. So what’s going on inside organizations? The former CIO of lululemon shares her experience of a steady stream of pilots while exposing “the slow, expensive work of cleaning up the messy data, complex human decisions, and tangled systems.” AI is a game-changer—but it’s not magic.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

“Keep the line running” is hard to quit

Some basic assumptions about production are hard to quit. Quantity over quality. Keep everyone at max capacity. Make the numbers. Over the last several decades, many automotive manufacturers have “fallen in and out of love with quality” many times over. Mark Graban shares what has and hasn’t changed about the culture on the shop floors of automakers in America.

Lean Myth: If leadership “sponsors” transformation, they are committed

It’s a common trope that you need “C-suite” sponsorship for any organizational transformation. But checking that box is often merely theatre. Many leaders start off with high levels of enthusiasm, but that often wanes as difficult decisions are required or they face profound levels of personal introspection. Real commitment is rare. Dr. Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer share an all-too-common four-phase model of executive sponsorship of transformation.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

Ask a better question

There are a few moments in your career that deliver an “a-ha” that alters your basic assumptions. It happened to me once at a coaching seminar over 15 years ago when I had the “mirror” held up to me about my coaching skills. The person holding this metaphorical mirror was Margie Hagene—an early childhood educator and corporate coach. There’s always a better question. If you’re looking to truly improve your skills at developing others, listen to Margie Hagene’s reflections from a lifetime of coaching on Connecting the Dots.

5 ways to wield influence when you don’t have authority

With the pace of change and complexity seemingly increasing in organizations, getting things done with others is no longer optional. But most organizational cultures cling to hierarchical authority models and “chains of command.” So how do you actually get others to move in the same direction when you have no jurisdiction? Here are five ways to wield influence when you lack authority.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

The past, present, and future of lean and AI

Many readers liked the article posted last month, “Who thrives in the AI Workforce?”, where Art Smalley shares a far less dystopian view of the future of work with AI. Smalley returns this week with Gene Kim and Tyson Heaton to discuss how AI is changing lean practice. The discussion mirrors my own experience so far with using AI: paired thoughtfully, it improves many of my work processes, but it also leaves me feeling “superficial” in many cases. The experiements continue though.

Gummy bears and standardized work

There’s what’s written in the SOP, and then there’s what the operator actually knows and actually does. But how do organizations capture this information and communicate it effectively, even when operators speak different languages? Traditional top-down methods are cumbersome and often miss the nuance that drives actual outcomes. Allen Yeung shares how a Dozuki platform can help a large confectionery manufacturer establish clear, digital standardized-work information faster than traditional methods.

GE’s not-so-secret sauce for improving safety

“We tried that Lean stuff 15 years ago and it didn’t work.” Some organizations dabble in tools, while others change the way they think, work, and lead. GE Aerospace, under Larry Culp, is doing the latter, and the results speak for themselves. GE Aerospace in Greenville, SC embraces a standardized lean operating model, FLIGHTDECK, to drive measurable improvements in employee safety.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Bad news first

I’ve witnessed many organizations avoid discussing problems first, or at all; ensuring leaders only see “green” status indicators. Leaders will say talking about problems is “bad for morale” or, worse, will shoot the messenger who dares to raise an issue that needs support or attention. The result? Problems go unsolved. If you truly want a high-performance culture, create the conditions where bad news is welcome.

How leaders unlock innovation on the front lines

Employees have great ideas. Better yet, employees want to share them and be heard. We (mostly) all know this, yet front-line innovation remains a vastly underused capability at most organizations. Here’s how leaders can unlock innovation on the front lines.

Simplicity remains the ultimate sophistication

It’s pretty common for organizations to evolve towards greater complexity, whether by addition or by chasing the latest management consulting fad. The problem? Everything becomes harder: for employees, customers, and leaders. Dr. Ian Hallett shares why demanding simplicity is the defining leadership challenge of our time.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

How to change your habits

“There’s an ‘everyday-ness’ to excellence”, according to performance psychologist Dr. Gio Valiante. It remains tempting to chase the latest innovation, step-change, or bio-hack to shortcut our way to excellence. Dr. Valiante shares the evidence - discipline, habits, and compounding results are the path to sustainable excellence.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Here, in descending order, are the most clicked links of 2026:

1. “Respect for people” might be one of the more nuanced and complex principles of enterprise excellence. So it wasn’t surprising that many readers wanted to learn more from Jamie Flinchbaugh on the 4 myths about the principle of “respect for people”.

2. Putting up a sign is the most ineffective countermeasure to behavioural risk - but it’s cheap, easy, and lets you abdicate accountability, so it remains the lazy problem solver’s favorite. At least it’s good for a laugh, which is what readers found in Mark Graban’s artfully curated archive of ridiculous visual edicts admonishing employees to be “more careful”.

3. Old ideas about influence — “being right,” “being authentic,” “being the hero” — don’t cut it in increasingly complex organizations. Readers clicked on a lengthy but compelling essay by Richard Claydon on influence in the modern organization.

4. January seems like an eternity ago, but readers entering the New Year were clicking on Daniel Pink’s advice on how to make 2026 the best year of their life.

5. Similarly, readers were keen to learn from productivity expert Cal Newport on the 2 routines to add to your workday in 2026.

6. Will AI lead to a “happily ever after” ending in the workplace? Time will tell. But Steve Denning explains how Cinderella can help CEOs understand AI and value creation.

7. If you build a RACI, then clarity will come…notsomuch. As collaboration increases in organizations, traditional approaches to clarifying decision-rights and accountability are falling short. HBR’s Lindy Greer, Jennifer Jordan, and Maxim Sytch lay out what companies get wrong about decision rights and what to do instead.

8. A lot has changed, even in change management. The old playbooks of linear change processes, project management approaches, and templated change management are failing. PEX Network’s Michael Hill rounds up 7 change management myths leaders still believe. Now, let’s explain what they should be doing instead.

9. Operational excellence is obviously something we should all strive for. Right? Maybe not. A former McKinsey advisor explains why operational excellence may be a liability in the current AI arms race.

10. Who will thrive in the AI workforce? Will the future of work unleash the power of the curious generalist or usher in a dystopia of fully automated knowledge work? Art Smalley reminds AI prognosticators to consider how AI will help all employees think better.

Look for the next regular-format mixtape on July 24. Hope you’re enjoying the summer.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Who thrives in the AI workforce?

“Until organizational leadership can articulate a vision of AI that develops human capability rather than replacing it, expect to hear more boos.” Art Smalley, author of one of my favourite improvement books, Four Types of Problems, sifts through what industry leaders are predicting, and walking back in many cases, about what type of person will thrive in the AI world. Will it be the curious generalist? Will an elite few “control” bots and order direction or will entire workforces become liberated to solve problems? No one knows for sure, but Smalley implores organizations to look beyond a tool-based view and to develop a vision for how to enable its workforce and operating systems.

HR’s dual mandate in the AI-era

AI is expected to change jobs and how organizations help develop people, but are the functions that design job architecture ready to support these shifts? HR needs to transform itself while supporting AI enablement.

All business is problem solving

I’ve been helping organizations improve for 25 years. One seemingly universal truth is that delegating improvement to a small number of people in the middle of the organization will not transform your organization. But engaging everyone in solving real customer problems just might. DJ Kim shares how in the 1990’s Nike turned to Toyota to learn how to drive a culture of improvement.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

You haven’t used a roadmap for years. You don’t need one to start leading change.

One of my pet peeves is the continued reliance on archaic terms like “blueprint”, “playbook” or “roadmap”, especially when describing progressing forward with uncertainty. Seriously, when was the last time you opened up a physical roadmap to plan your trip across the city to a place you hadn’t been before? It’s far more likely that you entered it into an app, started on the preferred route, and adjusted along the way.

Pharma Global discovered that transformation is an adaptive journey, not one where a single pathway is prescribed. Set the destination for your teams and then trust them to progress and adapt their pathway to get there.

The false alignment trap

I’ve been involved in many transformation or reengineering efforts that didn’t even come close to realizing the benefits expected, partly because the problems were overstated or the problem-solving was underestimated. But the biggest reason has always been a lack of total commitment and alignment from the top. It turns out research confirms my experience.

When executives pretend to be committed and fail to address interpersonal challenges, the rest of the organization spins its wheels or end up working on the wrong things. Executives: please get alignment on why you’re changing, what you’re changing (and not changing), and how changes will occur before unleashing chaos on your people.

AI has a leadership problem, not a technology problem

Any seasoned improvement expert knows that simply handing new tools to the organizations and imploring them to improve is not going to generate the outcomes they hope for. Similarly with AI, organizations that are getting real traction are the ones focusing on the hard changes - trust, leadership, and respect for people.

Engagement isn’t a reliable predictor of retention anymore

The employee engagement surveys have been stale for a long time and are increasingly less relevant, with “say, stay, strive” as the basis of engagement survey analysis for decades. But what if engagement is not correlated to “staying” anymore? A survey by Firstup shows what many of us have known for quite some time: engagement is no longer a reliable predictor of retention. Clarity, consistency, and communication are increasingly important for getting employees to think less often about leaving. It’s time to start measuring and paying attention to the things that actually drive employees away.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

People don’t hate “hard goals”, they hate uncertainty

I’ve led many teams, and goal-setting is always one of the most important, and trickiest, exercises. I have often encountered resistance to “stretch goals” in favour of “realistic” goals, but what makes a goal “realistic”? Usually it’s when people can visualize and gain confidence in a pathway to get to a goal.

Your problem isn’t that your goals are hard, it’s that they’re ill-defined.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

IKEA opts for growth over cuts with AI

Last week I shared how Schneider Electric is bucking the “AI-layoff” trend by reinvesting in higher-value work. IKEA is doing the same by shifting customer-service roles away from transactional tasks and toward consultative ones, while using AI to launch a paid consultancy model that opened entirely new revenue streams.

Using AI purely as a cost-cutting tool is a limiting view. The organizations getting it right are treating it as a growth engine.

When operational excellence becomes a liability

Execution is necessary. It's also not enough. Markets move, assumptions expire, and organizations that are heads-down on delivery can miss the shift entirely. The leaders handling pace of change well have learned to do two things at once: execute, and continuously pressure-test the thinking behind what they're executing. Here’s why operational excellence can become a liability in a rapidly changing landscape.

HSBC redesigns compliance process around AI’s strengths

AI won’t save a bad process. It’ll just run it faster. That’s the oldest lesson in process improvement, and it applies here too.

HSBC learned it the right way. Their anti-money laundering process was generating false positives at scale sending compliance teams chasing alerts that led nowhere. They redesigned from the ground up, then brought in AI. The result: a 60% reduction in false positives and a compliance function that actually functions.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

The brilliant jerk trap

Every time a team or organization circles back to a high-results, high-damage leader, the same bias is at work. The Oilers’ reported interest in Mike Babcock is the latest example. I’ve written about this before - the pull toward “brilliant jerks” is strong and predictable. So are the consequences. If culture matters to you, hire like it does.

What companies get wrong about decision rights

The more matrixed an organization becomes, the murkier decision-making gets. And the usual fixes - a dusty RACI, a reflexive escalation -don't actually help. They just slow things down. Here are four mistakes organizations make when determining decision rights, and what to do instead.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

Designing behaviour change that sticks

Willpower and mandates rarely produce lasting change. What does? Designing the right systems and environment. BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, joined Michael Bungay-Stanier on Change Signal to talk about exactly that, and it's worth a listen whether you're working on personal habits or organizational transformation.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

AI doesn’t have to mean layoffs

There is a long-standing habit in organizations of measuring productivity almost entirely through the lens of labour cost. Fewer people, lower costs, better margins. It is a narrow view that has always left value on the table, and the current wave of AI adoption is making it narrower still.

Many organizations are not waiting for AI to deliver its promised gains before acting. They are pre-emptively eliminating roles, cutting headcount ahead of any evidence that the technology has actually improved how value gets created. They are absorbing the human cost before capturing the benefit, and calling it transformation.

Schneider Electric, with a global workforce of over 160,000 people, is making a different bet. Rather than using AI to reduce its people, the company is using it to elevate them. That means deploying AI to eliminate genuinely wasteful and non-value-added work, and to help teams crack problems that have resisted solution for years. One example: optimizing the process for “cooking” silver tips, the precision electrical contacts used in circuit breakers and switches, a technical challenge that had long defied easy answers.

The distinction matters. AI used to eliminate waste creates capacity. AI used to eliminate people creates fear. One builds an organization’s capability to solve harder problems. The other hollows it out.

Leaders have a choice about which story they want to be part of. Schneider Electric is showing that the more ambitious path is also the more human one.

Has Lean really failed? Or are we asking the right question?

Critics of lean often ask “why hasn’t the lean community created more ‘Toyotas’?” to offer proof that it “doesn’t work”. It’s a reasonable question, but a flawed criticism. For example, Toyota has taken many decades to develop its systems and culture, and rather than being a “destination”, is an organization in a state of continuous becoming. A hospital that dramatically reduces patient harm, or a manufacturer that halves its defect rate, is a lean success story even if it never appears on a business school case study.

John Shook challenges us to reframe the question in an expansive conversation with Katie Anderson on Chain of Learning Episode 74: What Problem Are We Solving?

Resolve the conflict between efficiency and resilience

Think about a hospital operating at 100% bed capacity. Everything runs smoothly, until it doesn’t. A flu outbreak, a mass casualty event, an unexpected spike in admissions. With no slack in the system, there is nowhere to absorb the shock. Patients wait in hallways. Staff are overwhelmed. The system doesn’t just strain, it fails.

The same dynamic plays out in supply chains, road networks, and manufacturing lines. Any system designed and operated for maximum utilization is optimized for the best case and catastrophically fragile in every other case.

I’ve worked across many different industries and while the details vary enormously, this principle holds almost universally: don’t design your system for 100% utilization.

Deming understood this deeply. His work on systems thinking was a persistent reminder that optimizing individual parts of a system, squeezing every last drop of efficiency from every node, reliably produces a system that is worse overall. Slack, buffers, and the capacity to absorb unexpected fluctuation are not waste. They are the architecture of resilience.

The pressure to maximize utilization is real and often comes from legitimate places: financial constraints, shareholder expectations, competitive intensity. But operational excellence ultimately requires holding two things at once: the discipline to eliminate genuine waste, and the wisdom to protect the buffers that keep your system standing when things go sideways.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

How to hold onto your beloved organization

Fifteen years ago, Eric Ries gave leaders and founders a new playbook with The Lean Startup: start small, iterate fast, and scale what works. Many did exactly that, building valuable, meaningful organizations from the ground up. And then, quietly or sometimes suddenly, lost them.

Ries spent the years since observing this pattern and asking why. What he found is a paradox: the very qualities that make founders successful are the same qualities that make them vulnerable. Ries calls one of these mechanisms “financial gravity.” As companies grow, the pull of short-term financial performance becomes harder and harder to resist. Decisions that once centered on people and purpose slowly bend toward the numbers. And founders, often without realizing it, find themselves running something that no longer resembles what they set out to build.

His new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great is a warning and a guide for leaders who want to protect what they’ve created. The reminder at its core is uncomfortably simple: you are one meeting away from turning something you love into something you hate.

Ries joined Dave Stachowiak on Coaching for Leaders episode 784: How to Protect the Organization You Love, with Eric Ries, where they discussed the book, including concepts like redefining profit as “human flourishing”, and why viewing principles as opportunities rather than burdens helps protect your organization in the long term.

Small experiments, super teams

In the spring of 2022, the Oklahoma City Thunder sat near the bottom of the NBA standings after a grueling 58-loss season. What happened next became one of the more remarkable turnaround stories in recent sports history. They didn’t chase a blockbuster outcome or overhaul everything at once. They got relentlessly better, incrementally, over time.

Ron Friedman, a psychologist and researcher who has spent his career studying high-performing teams, points to this kind of trajectory as the signature of what he calls a “superteam.” In a world where complexity is rising and organizations can no longer afford the long, slow cycles of team formation, the question of how good teams get great has never been more important. Friedman’s research points to a consistent answer: superteams experiment often and stay focused on overcoming obstacles through continuous improvement rather than chasing grand outcomes.

Over 25 years of working across many different organizations and industries, I’ve seen this play out consistently. The best teams I’ve been part of or worked alongside are the ones that seek feedback constantly, run small experiments weekly or even daily, and rally around problems rather than avoid them. The worst teams I’ve encountered go to great lengths to sidestep problems, resist feedback, and preserve an artificial harmony that slowly hollows out their capability.

Continuous improvement isn’t always exciting. Neither is compound interest. But both have a way of producing results that nothing else can match.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

The cost of easy answers

Last week I wrote about the risk of reaching for AI before giving our own thinking a chance to work. Anne-Laure Le Cunff put her finger on exactly why this matters. A colleague told her he remembers the content of papers he wrote before AI tools far better than recent ones, and she recognized the feeling immediately. The journey of earning an answer through slow, uncertain exploration leaves a mark that easy answers simply don't. The deeper risk, she argues, isn't that AI becomes more capable than us. It's that when every gap in understanding gets filled instantly, we lose the conditions that make human curiosity possible in the first place. Her antidote is simple: delay the lookup, use AI to expand your thinking rather than replace it, and protect the unstructured time where slow and unexpected questions can actually emerge. When answers are this abundant, the scarce resource is the quality of your questions, and the willingness to stay with them long enough.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

You don’t uncover a root cause in the boardoom

I’ll admit it. I’ve done it too. Sat in a boardroom with a group of cross-functional stakeholders to brainstorm the cause of a problem. We set the timer at 15 minutes, ask “why?” a bunch of times, create a beautiful fishbone diagram, and boldly declare that our problems are due to a “lack of training”. Without any evidence. Without any testing. Without any direct observation.

And the worst part? This is the norm in most organizations. Predictably, we will be back in that boardroom in three months, staring at the same problem, having burned through time, budget, and whatever trust our teams had left in the process.

Mark Graban reminds leaders that we cannot think or talk our way to root cause, and that anything “discovered” in the boardroom is merely a hypothesis that needs to be tested in the real world.

AI and the Cinderella test

Every organization has a choice to make about AI. Use it to replace human judgment, squeezing more output from fewer people, or use it to multiply human capability, freeing people to do work that actually matters.

The choice leaders make reveals something deeper than a technology strategy. It reflects how they fundamentally see their people.

Steve Denning uses an unlikely lens to explore this: the fairy tale of Cinderella. The story, it turns out, is a surprisingly sharp mirror for how executives think about value creation, and whether the people around them are assets to be developed or costs to be managed.

The real payoff of Operational Excellence

I’ve heard it many times from leaders partway through a transformation: “It’ll be great when we mature and have no more ‘problems’ to solve.”

It’s an understandable thought. Teams are knocking out improvements at a rapid clip, burning through years of accumulated improvement debt, and it’s natural to wonder , “will there be anything left to fix someday?”.

But here’s the thing: that finish line doesn’t exist. Especially not in an era where the pace of change keeps raising the bar. The organizations I’ve seen thrive aren’t the ones with fewer problems, they’re the ones that have gotten remarkably good at solving them.

John Dyer and Dr. Mohamed Saleh put it precisely. The payoff of all this improvement work isn’t peace and quiet from having fewer problems. It’s peace and calm - the quiet confidence of a team that meets problems with capability and composure, rather than the exhausting chaos of constant firefighting.

Those are two very different places to work.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

What got you here won’t get you there

I’ve had the meeting before the meeting, before the meeting. Making sure everyone has all the answers in case the Executive asks any question at all. Not only must we have all the answers, we must have a concrete 3 month action plan that will definitely resolve any potential concerns. Slide decks. Rigorous analysis. No surprises.

This worked, sort of, when the pace of change was slower, domain knowledge was stable, and the future was relatively predictable. But the world most leaders are operating in today looks nothing like that.

In an era of continuous change and increasingly complex organizations, omniscience, control, and self-assuredness are becoming liabilities. Humility, curiosity, and collaboration are taking their place as the more effective path forward.

And yet, many senior leaders got to where they are by mastering precisely the former. This is how they were taught to lead. This is how they were rewarded. Unlearning it is no small ask.

Nilofer Merchant has thought deeply about what leaders need to let go of, and what they need to pick up, to thrive in this new environment. I found her conversation on HBR Ideacast so valuable I listened to it more than once.

Why cooperation beats competition for innovation

Early in my career, I worked at an organization that embraced the hyper-competitiveness of Welchism, complete with the infamous “rank and yank” system. As a young engineer trying to prove myself, I didn’t mind it. But when I moved to a healthcare organization, that same competitive instinct became a liability. I found myself competing against colleagues who shared my goals and my outcomes. Worse, the laser focus on winning narrowed my thinking. I stopped exploring ideas that felt too risky to fail at publicly. It quietly held back both my effectiveness and my growth.

What I didn’t have language for at the time, research has since made clear. New research by PhD student Valentino Chai and Nir Halevy, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that cooperative workplaces generate greater feelings of autonomy than competitive ones. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, the reason is straightforward: when people feel safe to explore wider hypotheses without fear of failure or criticism, they think bigger and take better risks.

Unhealthy competition doesn’t just damage relationships. It shrinks the thinking of the people you’re counting on to solve your hardest problems.

If you want a culture of innovation and autonomy, the lever isn’t individual ambition. It’s psychological safety and shared purpose.

Leaders have better lives, but worse days

Leadership carries a weight that doesn’t show up in the job description. The unpopular decisions. The ambiguity. The responsibility for outcomes that depend on people, circumstances, and forces well beyond your control. The leaders I’ve worked alongside who struggled most weren’t necessarily the ones facing the hardest problems. They were the ones who had quietly lost their sense of purpose.

This is what makes a recent finding from Gallup so important. Leaders, it turns out, experience greater emotional burden than individual contributors, but that burden is significantly reduced when they are more engaged in their work. Engagement isn’t a perk. For leaders, it’s a buffer against the chronic stress that comes with the role.

And engagement for leaders isn’t abstract. Gallup points to specific investments that move the needle: purpose, people, and performance. Leaders who stay connected to why their work matters, who invest genuinely in the people around them, and who maintain a clear line of sight to meaningful outcomes are better equipped to carry the weight of leadership without being crushed by it.

The leaders who last aren’t necessarily the toughest. They’re the most intentionally engaged.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

What we lose when work gets too easy

As AI promises to remove friction from nearly every corner of our work, a quiet but important question is emerging: what do we lose when everything becomes effortless?

Neuroscience professor Moshe Bar has a sobering answer. Humans don’t just tolerate challenge and struggle, we are wired for it. Engaging with difficult problems, navigating uncertainty, and pushing against resistance are precisely the conditions that generate what Bar calls “vitality”: a state of aliveness and capability that comfort simply cannot produce. Remove too much friction, and you don’t liberate people. You quietly diminish them.

This has direct implications for how we design work and processes. The instinct in operational excellence is to eliminate waste, reduce complexity, and smooth out every rough edge. And often, that’s exactly right. But not all friction is waste. Some of it is the productive struggle that builds judgment, deepens expertise, and grows the problem-solving capability of your people.

The goal was never frictionless work. It was meaningful work. Those are not the same thing.

How to use AI without turning your brain to mush

I’ve been using generative AI a lot lately. When I find myself staring at a blank page, or circling a problem without making progress, I reach for my AI assistant to get unstuck. And it works. But I’ve noticed something unsettling: I feel less connected to the thinking that comes back to me so readily. Less ownership. Less depth.

It made me wonder whether I’m quietly losing my ability to think hard about hard things.

According to Adam Green, a neuroscience professor at Georgetown, that concern is worth taking seriously. Twenty years ago, fears about “digital dementia” from over-reliance on search engines and GPS turned out to be largely unfounded. But Green suggests AI may be different. The speed and completeness of what it hands back to us may be eroding something more fundamental: our capacity for sustained critical thinking.

His prescription is simple, if uncomfortable. Add more friction to your thinking. Sit with the problem a little longer. Struggle before you reach for the shortcut.

My mother, who passed away long before generative AI became part of daily life, had an instinct for this. She was slow to hand me answers as a child. She wanted me to figure things out myself, and she was clear about why: she didn’t want to rob me of the joy of getting there on my own.

I suspect she was protecting my brain from turning to mush after all.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

How AI reshapes continuous improvement in supply chains

Continuous improvement has served supply chain well for years. But the need for real-time feedback loops across the value chain mean that traditional improvement efforts need to leverage new tools, like AI. Here’s how AI is elevating human roles in supply chains.

Signals over specs

When problems occur, we tend to tighten the inputs we control, adjusting things we can change, only to find the inputs look fine. Meanwhile we miss obvious signals in the process itself that would have let us respond much sooner. Dr. Wheeler emphasizes that watching how a process behaves over time gives better insight for solving problems than simply checking whether outputs meet specifications.

Reducing medical waste and emissions by auditing the trash can

Improvement can be a dirty job, but the team at UMass memorial embraces it. A team of medical students conduct “trash audits” to identify opportunities to reduce waste and emissions. Talk about “going to the source” to collect data!

Creating a Culture of Improvement

CEOs lean in on “resilience”

It looks like CEOs arrived to the party on the human and cognitive impact of continuous change and uncertainty, and the need for organizational resilience and adaptation, albeit a little later than the rest of their people. This (should) change the perspective of what we expect from leaders, and how we develop and promote leaders - and hopefully put an end to “suck it up, buttercup” approaches to building resilience. The ability to stay calm and lead through shock is the new normal for leaders.

Just how dead is change management?

Change just feels different these days. Faster. Never-ending. Disjointed.

It seems like leaders come and go, the org structure is in a continuous renovation, and there’s nothing left that you can reliably “hold on” to. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the tidy, templated, methodology-heavy approach to change management is just not cutting it - and truthfully, it probably never did.

Caroline Kealy, who declared change management dead in 2025, shares that what people need in 2026 isn’t more communication and training plans, but rather greater agency, belonging, and - yes - even some certainty.

If you’re wondering what we can do to actually create better conditions for people to thrive in an era of continuous uncertainty, listen to Caroline Kealey on episode 73 of Change Signal - Just How Dead is Change Management.

Engineering stability through organizational change

To reinforce the point above, organizations are seeking to engineer greater stability in order to reduce the “cognitive tax” related to continuous change. Stability is the new change management.

Favourite management tips on organizational change

Demonstrating perhaps that a one-size-fits-all change methodology is not desirable, or more likely that we know very little about how to lead organizational change, HBR published a list of organizational change management tips from a variety of sources.

“Aim for clarity, not total transparency” resonated with me. What are your favourite tips?

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

John Wooden’s coaching principles continue to drive excellence and inspire

Principles are principles because they stand the test of time - and the most enduring coaching principles in sports (and excellence) belong to John Wooden’s. Wooden’s pyramid of success continues to be the pinnacle of coaching models.

Wooden’s legacy lives on in 2026 as evidenced by Cori Close leading UCLA women’s to its first NCAA title using Wooden's coaching principles.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

The human side of AI adoption

“Why isn’t everyone using AI? We’ve given them all the tools?”. Adoption of AI, as with other technology, won’t fail because of the tools, but because we continue to underestimate the context in which they are introduced. It’s far more effective to meet your people and processes where they’re at, rather than emulate the early-adopters. To drive greater adoption, demystify with simple analogies and integrate into existing processes and incentives.

Elevate rather than eliminate

When tools and technology are used to help people reach their fullest potential, rather than replace them, they become engines of growth and innovation. Removing non-value-added work yields benefits, but focusing solely on replacement narrows thinking and creates a zero-sum mindset.

With pressure on leaders to adopt AI quickly, it’s worth pausing. Resist the urge to start by eliminating human judgment. Instead, prioritize high-leverage improvements that amplify human judgment and strengthen the skills that make us effective. In episode 69 of Chain of Learning, Barry O’Reilly, author of Artificial Organizations: Build Better Judgment, Speed, and Results with Human and Machine Intelligence, joins world-class improvement coach Katie Anderson to explore what leaders need to learn and unlearn about AI.

The problem with optimization

I’ve always had a bit of a love–hate relationship with “optimization” in organizations. As an industrial engineer, I was trained to hunt for the perfect answer, the local or global optimum in a complex system. Clean, elegant, definitive.

Then I started working inside large, messy organizations.

Reality check: there’s almost never a single, neat solution. And the belief that there is can actually do more harm than good - shutting down options, curiosity, and growth in the process.

That’s why this line from Harish’s The Shape That Does Not Return hits so hard: “An irreversible optimization forecloses inquiry in exactly this sense. It is efficient in the short run and anti-adaptive in the long one.”

If you’re working to improve complex organizations, take this as a nudge: stop chasing the “perfect” solution. It doesn’t exist, and pretending it does can quietly stall progress.

Instead, treat your work as a series of thoughtful experiments. Stay curious. Keep multiple paths open longer than feels comfortable. Test, learn, adjust, repeat. Progress in complexity isn’t about getting it exactly right, it’s about getting it less wrong, over and over again.

So the next time you feel the pull to optimize and lock it in, pause. Ask yourself: What might I be closing off? Then choose the path that keeps learning alive.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Make accountability a habit, not a reaction

Leaders and managers tend to agree on one thing: holding people accountable is an area where many senior leaders fall short. And that matters. Managers who say their leaders excel at accountability are three times more likely to be engaged. It’s a clear reminder that everyone benefits from clear expectations, specific direction, and consistent follow-through.

So how can leaders strengthen accountability right now? It starts with simple, consistent routines that reinforce priorities, coaching, and direction. If you’ve worked with me or followed my work, you’ll know I strongly believe in regular huddles and check-ins, whether daily or weekly. These moments create structure, keep everyone aligned, and, most importantly, turn accountability into a habit rather than an afterthought. But for leaders who continue to declare they “don’t have time” for such routines, I ask them when will you have time to lead? Make the time. Tomorrow.

8 ways AI-driven change is different

Organizations everywhere are telling their people to “use AI.” As if it’s that simple. We already know that pushing change without real thought or support is a fast track to failure, and AI is no exception. In fact, it raises the stakes. With all the hype, fear, and nonstop evolution surrounding AI, strong change leadership isn’t just helpful, it’s essential.

So yes, AI-driven change has its quirks. But it also follows some familiar rules. Here are eight ways it’s different, and exactly the same.

Roger Martin’s Play to Win/Practitioner Insights All-Stars Book Club

Roger Martin has set up a “book club” where a randomizer selects from an “all-star” archive of Play to Win / Practitioner Insights articles, where Martin invites us to ask questions and get answers. Check out the first half-dozen here:

Chapter One - Michael Porter’s Three Greatest Contributions

Chapter Two - Why Planning Over Strategy

Chapter Three - Strategy & Artificial Intelligence

Chapter Four - Decoding the Strategy Choice Cascade

Chapter Five - The Business of Strategy Consulting

Chapter Six - The Lost Art of Strategy

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

The Illusion of Clarity

I’ve been there. Someone asks me, “the expert”, to explain a topic in simple terms, and suddenly I’m fumbling over the basics. That’s usually the moment the internal spiral kicks in: Do I actually know this? Am I really an expert?

Turns out, this is more common than we’d like to admit. It’s easy to mistake familiarity for understanding. We rely on repetition, jargon, and surface-level thinking - and call it expertise.

A better test? Try explaining the concept clearly and simply. Wherever you get stuck, that’s your signal: there’s more to learn.

‘Do Not Disturb’ maximalism

Buzzing. Pinging. Pop-ups. The never-ending notifications of constant connection are at the same time anxiety-inducing but also reassuring. So what would happen if you simply turned off notifications? A week of “do not disturb” may make things blissful for you and annoy the people around you. This is impractical for most jobs, but an intriguing experiment nonetheless.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Kraft Heinz and the cost of narrow capitalism

Sustainable operational excellence doesn’t come from short-term wins, it comes from leading with purpose, creating lasting value for customers and stakeholders, and unlocking the full potential of people. Yet too many organizations still gamble their future for near-term financial gains.

The consequences are well documented. Companies like Enron, Lehman Brothers, WorldCom, and Carillion prioritized short-term performance and used financial engineering to mask deeper issues only to fail spectacularly. More recently, the rise and unraveling of Kraft Heinz stands as another cautionary example of what happens when financial synergies take precedence over purpose, customer value, and people.

The message is clear: unchecked short-term optimization creates long-term risk.

Toyota vs. Tesla: What manufacturing mindsets reveal about quality and culture

When Tesla took over the former General Motors plant in Fremont - home of the NUMMI experiment that proved Toyota’s culture could thrive in the U.S. - it offered a chance to see how new thinking might transform auto manufacturing. But did it?

Tesla’s quality has improved, yet its mindset and culture remain fundamentally different from Toyota’s. Tesla emphasizes automation, speed, and rapid iteration, often fixing problems after the fact and pushing hard to meet targets. Toyota, by contrast, focuses on building quality in from the start, developing people, continuously improving systems, and fostering a culture where speaking up is expected and valued. Both approaches produce results, but whether both will succeed over the long term is still an open question.

How AI is delivering on digital health’s promise

Over the past 25 years, healthcare has invested billions in Electronic Health Records (EHRs), promising to transform care delivery and eliminate non–value-added work for clinicians. In reality, most systems were built to optimize billing and data capture, not to give clinicians more time with patients.

Now, a new shift is underway. In A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future, Bob Wachter argues that generative AI is finally beginning to deliver on that long-standing promise. In conversation with Thomas Lee, he highlights how genAI can reduce administrative burden, translate complex medical jargon into plain language, and improve both clinician workflow and patient understanding.

Adoption won’t be seamless, and challenges remain. But Wachter estimates that roughly 5–10% of clinicians’ tasks could realistically be automated, and importantly, that this represents progress, not loss. By offloading routine work, clinicians can refocus on what matters most, delivering high-quality care. Something the EHRs and shift to digital failed to do.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

In Memory: Bob Chapman - Truly Human Leadership

In March the business world lost a visionary people-first leader: Bob Chapman, former CEO of Barry‑Wehmiller and author of Everybody Matters. Once a conventional manager who treated people like line items, Chapman had a life-changing realization - that every employee is someone’s beloved child entrusted to his care. He responded by founding Truly Human Leadership, a radical, human-centered management philosophy that helped transform Barry‑Wehmiller into a $3.6 billion industrial leader and proved that caring for people drives extraordinary results.

If you’re in, or aspiring to be in, a leadership role, read Everybody Matters. Short on time? Watch this short documentary based on the book, and for a deeper, moving look at Truly Human Leadership, don’t miss Simon Sinek’s interview with Bob Chapman and Barry‑Wehmiller employees.

What helps makes a company innovative? Cash and practicality

Nearly every large organization claims innovation in its mission, vision, or values, framed as a survival imperative or competitive edge. Many chase the latest shiny trend, but most efforts amount to “innovation theatre,” quickly swallowed by the inertia of the status quo. How can big organizations create real, lasting conditions for innovation?

Bell Labs offers a useful model: in the mid-20th century it paired deep, sustained investment with a focus on practical, often unglamorous business problems—an approach that produced outsized, enduring breakthroughs.

Lead change rather than managing it

Leaders are operating in a state of constant change, expected to deliver stronger results faster than ever while also supporting employee well-being and driving adoption. Yet trust in leadership continues to decline, engagement remains persistently low, and only 8% of executives are seen as strong change leaders. It’s clear: leaders must move beyond managing change with tools and instead learn to truly lead through it.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

How to stop procrastinating (according to science)

I usually write this newsletter at least a week in advance of when it gets sent out. But I put it off to the last minute this time. Not because I was “too busy”, but rather I was avoiding the anxiety of feeling like I had nothing to say or offer.

So how did I get unstuck? I started by writing one passage. Procrastinating is not about time-management, but rather emotional regulation.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

So far, AI seems to intensify, rather than eliminate, work

AI dominates the conversation about operational improvement across industries, but consensus is elusive. Some proclaim the death of traditional methods for doing and improving work; others hail a new era. My view: we’re past the peak of the GenAI hype cycle and much remains unresolved. For as long as people do the work, the fundamentals of operational excellence still matter.

Executives are already forecasting radical productivity gains, and whisper networks and research labs push doomsday timelines for white‑collar jobs. Yet those of us deploying AI at the process level aren’t seeing mass job elimination, just shifts in how tasks are done and intensified demands on judgment, oversight, and change management. Are we moving toward a trough of disillusionment, or simply through the messy phase of large-scale adoption?

In manufacturing, reports vary on whether big gains to the bottom line are being currently realized. In the near term, it’s more likely that the big gains will come from cross-functional AI in enabling value streams, like Order to Cash.

What does AI mean for the future of business process management? Not surprisingly, BPM leaders appear skeptical about AI as a panacea for process improvement, and advocate for “human in the loop” for decision-making for the time-being.

For now at least, AI seems to intensify work, rather than reduce it.

How do we win in an AI World?

Boards and executives are demanding returns on AI, pressuring organizations to show value right away. We’ve all seen this before: jump to a tools-first approach, unleash chaos, and leave a path of disillusionment across your teams. So how do we win in an AI world? Pascal Dennis reminds us to do what should always be done to improve a process:

• Define the problem rather than diving in with a solution

• Take out process waste before automating

• Don’t forget about the people

Meetings: the wasteful process that may need the most improvement

Meetings. We hate them. They’re ubiquitous and expensive, yet remain largely unexamined. A meeting is a process that can be conjured out of thin air with the click of an button, usually without any specific standard in mind. What if we applied improvement discipline to meetings?

Even novice improvement practitioners know that measurement is essential. But how do we measure the effectiveness of a meeting? Rebecca Hinds, author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done (book review coming next month), recommends using Return on Time Invested (ROTI) as a KPI for meeting effectiveness. Hinds breaks down exactly how to do this on How to Measure Your Meeting’s Success on Coaching for Leaders.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

The “management without managers” moonshot that missed

I was one of the hopeful readers almost 20 years ago who, after reading Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management, expected a revolution in a field that had long resisted change. The idea of empowered teams freed from stifling control, bureaucracy, and Weberian hierarchies felt attainable, especially as bold, experimental organizations in Silicon Valley seemed to prove it.

So what happened? Some adopters, like Google, rose to global dominance, but the promised widespread upheaval never fully arrived. Steve Denning urges us not to abandon the vision: in volatile markets, he argues, “management without managers isn’t chaos—it’s competitive edge.”

Younger people don’t want leadership roles

Denning and Hamel make a compelling case for a world without management, and perhaps this helps explain in part why Gen Zs and millennials are far less likely to aspire to climb the corporate ladder than those before them. But if no one wants to lead, where will leaders come from? Here’s what leaders must do in an age of uncertainty to address the leadership aspiration gap.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

3 things great thinkers do that most people don’t

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

25 years of Agile: it wasn’t uncovered, it was always about uncovering

Twenty-five years after the Agile Manifesto showed up and everyone decided to monetize it, it’s worth remembering what it actually meant. Agile was supposed to be about discovery and community, real teamwork and learning, not an endless parade of scrum masters, product owners, and buzzword bingo. As Allen Holub points out, we lost the plot somewhere between the manifesto and the consultants' slide decks.

Give me that old time lean: Fortune 500 CEO prescribes lean as a pre-requisite for AI

It’s time to dust off the works of Ohno, Nakao, Imai, or Katahira. Is “old school” lean back in the Fortune 500? Unlikely, given where we are in the AI hype cycle, but at least a few CEOs continue to embrace kaizen as a pre-requisite for layering AI on process.

Making sense of observational data

Most operational dashboards continue to be noisemakers rather than signal detectors. Dr. Wheeler demonstrates again how process behaviour charts are often superior to the default displays of data when it comes to detecting performance signals. But your boss will probably still insist on showing traffic lights and pie charts, so, onto the next…

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Socially central leaders drive deeper alignment

Big organizations are messy ecosystems, and the leaders who thrive aren’t the loudest commanders but the human glue between teams. Last month I shared why socially savvy “bridgers” are essential for scaling innovation. Now MRI-backed research adds fuel to the fire: authoritative leaders can secure obedience, but socially central leaders win real alignment and commitment. Translation: barking orders gets you nods; building bridges gets you momentum. Connection actually matters.

What “Respect For People” isn’t

Respect for people is an oft-omitted but essential principle of operational excellence, partly because it’s misunderstood and misinterpreted. Respect doesn’t mean being “nice” or toxically positive. Jamie Flinchbaugh reminds leaders what respect for people looks like by explaining what it doesn’t look like in 4 myths about the principle of Respect For People.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

You’re not lacking presence, you’re lacking a map

Many improvement leaders and consultants are tapped to drive cross-functional change, and we often cast ourselves as the hero who finally cracks the tough nut. But standing before a room of reluctant, diverse stakeholders and trying to align them isn’t for the faint of heart. You can lose the room without being a bad facilitator; people simply experience you in different ways. The problem isn’t your presence, it’s that you don’t have a clear map.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Make values your North Star during turbulent times

Change fatigue is spreading fast, and stopping change isn’t an option. Workflows, org charts, and markets keep shifting. Leaders can’t freeze everything, but they can give people a North Star: values.

Toyota Canada CEO Cyril Dimitris points to customer focus and respect for people as guiding principles in turbulent times. Read his full speaking notes for more.

Stop chasing fixes and build quality into the system

Entropy is the silent saboteur of continuous improvement. Leaders fix one problem, get praised as the person who “gets sh*t done,” then move on, leaving improvements to drift back into chaos. When things slide, audits and compliance theatre get rolled out, but those too decay into checkbox rituals. If you want to beat entropy at scale, treat quality not as an afterthought but as your operating architecture.

Process confirmation at BMW

On the theme of battling entropy, of all the improvement tools I’ve picked up, few pack as much punch at pushing change to the frontlines and cutting through chaos like process confirmation. Trouble is, it’s one of the hardest habits to build as leaders would rather chase the next blaze than leave their offices. Christoph Roser shows how BMW flipped that script at their Dingolfing plant, using process confirmation to hardwire a culture of continuous improvement (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Healthcare needs technology that works together

After 25 years in the workforce, one of the biggest drains on productivity I have seen is the Frankenstein collection of clunky, outdated tools shoved together to give clinicians patient information. The stakes are sky-high yet your barista often knows more about you than your doctor. Dumping in more dashboards won’t fix it. Clinicians need seamless tools that actually help them do their job.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Do “flatter” organizations have stronger cultures?

For decades people have debated whether “flat” organizations outperform traditional hierarchies. Research shows less hierarchical companies tend to have stronger cultures but which comes first: the structure or the culture? The study suggests structure alone doesn’t create culture. Instead, a strong cultural focus lets you remove layers without wrecking alignment. In short: don’t strip out managers hoping culture will magically follow, build the culture first, and then flatten with confidence.

Employees can thrive through change - depending on what it is

Change fatigue is real, and employers rightly worry about burning out staff. Yet Qualtrics found that people who experience major organizational change often report higher engagement, but only when the change genuinely helps them. Employees can distinguish beneficial changes from those that mainly serve the organization. The solution is straightforward: involve employees when selecting and designing the tools that shape their work. It sounds obvious, yet it remains a challenge.

Hard questions about change

What if resistance wasn’t an obstacle to overcome, but rather a signal for you to become more curious? You know it’s going to be good when Michael Bungay-Stanier joins Dave Stachowiak to talk about change leadership. Listen to two of the best in the business as they entertain hard questions about change on Change Signal.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

I prefer feedback from bots over bosses, and so do you

It’s goal-setting season, and I’ve been using AI to mercilessly critique goals - and it’s uncannily good. When asked to review others’ goals, I discovered something odd: people bristle at the same blunt feedback if it comes from me, but swallow it whole when it’s delivered by a bot.

That made me wonder: how broken is trust and feedback from leadership? And would employees actually prefer AI over their own managers for candid reviews? Bots are blunt, blame-free, and less threatening than bosses.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Lean delivers measurably better value at GE Aerospace

It’s pretty well-documented that the lean revolution failed to materialize throughout the 21st century. Why? Pick your reasons. But in general, if you want something to change you need to deliver reliable results.

GE Aerospace released its 2025 Q4 report where CEO Larry Culp credits his lean management system with “driving incremental gains that compounded into meaningful operational improvements”, with revenue and profits consistently up by double digit percentages. In his letter to shareholders, Culp leads his letter to shareholders with a story of an employee-led improvement (such as an electronic tape dispenser called the “Gerald” named after a plant leader) as a proof point of how a culture of continuous improvement is helping drive measurably better value.

What makes Culp’s letter so powerful? He reminds us that respect for people is operational, not philosophical, and that value is measured by the customer, not just financial statements.

Why most continuous improvement programs don’t stick

Culp is the exception and not the rule when it comes to leaders and continuous improvement. Most continuous improvement programs are implemented as something “on top” of the core responsibilities of teams. The results are predictable: improvement becomes optional as sponsorship and excitement fade and the pressures of day-to-day operations crowd improvement efforts out. In other words improvement is not continuous. Continuous improvement sticks when it stops being an initiative and starts becoming the operating system.

SWOT and OKRs are not strategy

Most of us were taught that strategy is an analytical practice, where deduction will lead us to a perfect set of tactics to be deployed to the workforce. Roger Martin, renowned author of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, believes that everything we learned in business school about strategy is wrong.

Martin joins Tiffani Bova to reflect on the hundreds of articles he has posted about strategy on Medium in the first instalment of a 12-part series on strategy. I can’t wait for the rest!

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Do you have enough ‘bridgers’ in your organization?

Every organization believes that innovation is something you test in a small corner and, once its proven, scales readily across the organization. And every organization is then disappointed when the scale fails to emerge. I even wrote about my own experience with the failure of ‘model cells’, citing the need for personal connection to drive adoption. It turns out that I may have been onto something.

Effective scaling requires ‘bridgers’: leaders who are adept at building relationships, mutual trust, and commitment.

Employee engagement remains unchanged, lower than 2020 peak

Gallup’s engagement survey shows that US employee engagement remains unchanged from 2024 to 2025 at 31% engaged, down from the 2020 peak of 36%. What can leaders do about it? According to the survey, clarity is caring. Employees want to know that their leaders care about them, set clear expectations, and provide role clarity. Not a tall order in my opinion.

Human oversight and change management are non-negotiable when leading through AI

The world was abuzz after the World Economic Forum 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos, mostly due to the speeches of several world leaders, including a memorable one by my country’s leader. But politics weren’t the only thing discussed. Marie Myers, CFO of Hewlett Packard, shared HP’s AI rollout as a change management journey, and reminds us that the future still belongs to human-centred leaders.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

At some point, you’re going to have to eat a marshmallow

I post a lot about self-improvement, habits, time-hacks etc., and I’ve personally gained a lot of insight from many of these ideas. But many of these techniques start from the premise that there’s something wrong with us that needs fixing. Oliver Burkeman challenges us to simply dedicate more time to things we truly enjoy in 2026.

Discipline isn’t the most common habit among people with self-control

Any improvement professional or influencer knows that simply relying on people’s goodwill to perform well is doomed to fail. This is why putting up the signs and re-educating/re-telling consistently fails to produce change. Prevention strategies beats will power every time. Habit guru James Clear shares that discipline isn’t the key to self-control - creating an environment that prevents temptation is.

For a good chuckle, check out Mark Graban’s collection of ridiculous signs from managers attempting to change behaviours.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

CEOs assume that AI is helping more than it actually does

It’s no surprise that the disconnect between the C-suite and the frontlines extends to the perceived productivity benefits of AI. 40% of “workers” (the article’s term - not mine) indicate that AI is saving them no time, while only 2% of CEOs believe that no time is saved. Leaders - get out of your office and actually go see how your people are benefitting from (or not) using AI.

In the age of AI, what has changed in deploying and executing strategy?

GenAI has made it easy to get quick answers and ideas on setting aspirations, designing OKRs, and even designing dashboards within a few clicks - feats that used to take days of exhausting workshops. But deploying, aligning and executing the strategy remains a messy people-dependent leadership challenge. Getting the right things done still requires the ultimate app - leadership.

The principles of operational excellence age like wine

What does it truly take to have a culture of excellence? Founders or leaders with a deep commitment to improvement, strong shared values that are integrated into ways of working, and combining systems thinking with employee-led experimentation. It’s not enough to do some projects or send people to training.

“We are a dive-in kind of company; when the idea hits, we brainstorm and adjust the process until it works.” Shannon Family of Wines is an innovator-led, closed-loop organization that continually seeks to reduce waste.

AI agents aren’t replacing remote workers anytime soon

The Remote Labor Index is confirming that AI isn’t replacing workers now, or probably anytime soon. AI remains more adept at automating well-defined tasks within a project and not as a replacement strategy.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

The average span of control is creeping up

Organizational culture lives and dies on the strengths and capabilities of middle management, but middle managers continue to be under the gun as organizations drive up the mean span of control to 12.1, while the median remains around 6. What’s the optimal span of control? It depends. Large teams can still thrive - with the right engagement.

Leading change? Avoid the hero trap.

Change often thrusts leaders onto center stage. Makes sense, as they should ultimately be accountable and research shows that employees prefer the top leaders (and their supervisors) to be the key messengers of change. But being center stage means that leaders might start feeling like they are the star of change, leading to extreme psychological ownership and the risk of ignoring input. Leaders need to remember to focus on the change problem, not just the change solution.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

If you want 2026 to be the best year of your life, watch this video…

Don’t hand your first hour over to your phone! This is one of the many keystone habits that Daniel Pink breaks down int his video to help make 2026 the best year of your life.

5 myths that make us quit before we get good

We like to be good at what we do. But expecting to be good at something right away and then encountering struggles can make us fell like failures. So we quit too soon - well before the big payoff. Anne-Laure Le Cunff encourages us to approach mastery as a set of tiny experiments to avoid limiting our potential.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Don’t start the New Year with blank charts

It’s time to set resolutions. January provides us an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch, right? Not so fast - Mark Graban is back to remind us that it’s better to keep updating your charts and dashboards with rolling data rather than start the New Year off with blank metrics - unless you literally started your systems anew in January.

Is it PDSA or PDCA? Interesting, but integration is what’s important

I’m not one to get into debates over which “guru” prescribed which misinterpreted trope, but I did enjoy this brief history of PDSA, PDCA, and Deming, where Jamie Flinchbaugh reminds us that, whether you refer to the Shewhart cycle or the Deming cycle, it’s about integrating the thinking - not clumsily applying a 4 step method.

Get off the “transformation treadmill” in 2026

What’s in store for 2026? More change. But organizations are getting weary from another “change program” or “business transformation”. Get off the transformation treadmill and focus on building a culture of solving problems at all levels every day.

Will 2026 (finally) be the year of productivity?

The world is awash in wealth, but also debt. Could AI be the key to unleashing the world’s lagging productivity? Maybe, but it’s not inevitable.

Forbes predicts 2026 work trends

What’s in store for the workplace in 2026? Who know. But Forbes invited 10 workplace experts to weigh in to predict 5 workplace trends for 2026.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

How a small idea can make lives a little better - the Moylan Arrow

“There are two types of drivers: the ones aware of the Moylan Arrow and the ones who get to find out.”

One day, in 1986, a Ford engineer pulled up to the gas station in the rain to realize he parked on the wrong side of the pump. Inspired to help others avoid this inconvenience, he returned to work and proposed a countermeasure - an indicator on the fuel gauge that reminds the driver which side of the vehicle the gas cap is on. Within a few months, the design team agreed to put his idea into production. Nowadays, its found in pretty much any gas-powered vehicle.

The engineer, Jim Moylan, recently died, and at his memorial service someone remarked “Heavenly father, I don’t know what kind of a car you drive—or if you have a driver”, and as the room laughed, went on: “Jim will always know which side to pull in and fill up.”

The Moylan arrow is another example of where many good ideas come from - first-hand experience, a desire to make things better for customers, and an organization willing to listen.

Leaders need to change their change myths

2025 reminded us that change is the norm, and not some exceptional state that needs to be managed differently. In 2026, let’s confront 7 change management myths that leaders still believe.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

James Clear on building habits

Well, it’s that time of year where we resolve to ditch bad habits and replace them with better ones. But we all know it’s easier said than done, and the half-life of New Year’s resolutions is shorter than this sentence.

So how might we increase our odds of sticking with it this year? James Clear, author of the worldwide best-seller Atomic Habits, shares his enduring wisdom on how to build good habits on the latest episode of the Knowledge Project.

Looking to be more productive in 2026? Add these 2 routines

Many of us resolve to get more out of our day. Productivity expert Cal Newport recommends you add these 2 routines to be more productive in 2026.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Once again, thank you for your continued readership and support. 2025 marked another year of continuous improvement, improving organizational culture, and driving excellence in the workplace.

Here are the Top 10 most read Mixtape articles from 2025:

1. A lot of readers wanted to know what Simon Sinek says are three simple words that could elevate your career.

2. For all you leaders looking to establish better habits in 2026, my friend Didier Rabino challenges the myth that leader standard work stifles creativity.

3. Change management is changing, and will continue to evolve in 2026. Here are 5 components of a more effective change management training program.

4. Protect your time better in 2026 and learn how to say “No” at work.

5. Organizations will still have silos in 2026, but collaboration will remain as important as ever. These are the 3 types of silos that stifle collaboration - and how to dismantle them.

6. Make sure not to manage everything like it’s a crisis in 2026. Firefighting arsonists are making work inefficient and miserable.

7. Want to change your culture in 2026? You can’t do it by email or town halls. To change company culture, focus on systems - not communications.

8. We were all tired from change in 2025, but 2026 is not likely to show us any reprieve. Shift from change management to change fitness.

9. Solving problems in 2026? Perhaps you should learn from Jamie Flinchbaugh on how to use AI to help broaden your perspective and supplement your problem solving skills.

10. Data continues to grow, but making inference from data remains unreliable. Dr. Wheeler reminds us that data have no meaning apart from their context.

Here are my top 5 book recommendations from 2025:

1. The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More by Jefferson Fisher. The way we communicate profoundly impacts our work dynamics, and initiating change demands exceptional influencing skills. While "The Next Conversation" by Jefferson Fisher may not delve into operational excellence, it is an invaluable read for those spearheading significant transformations. A hallmark of an outstanding resource is its ability to draw me back for further insights after the first read. I found myself revisiting numerous sections of this book and implementing its lessons throughout 2025, making it highly recommendable.

2. The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation, by Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner. We’re all getting sick and tired of “business transformations” and Le-Brun and Werner show us why, but do us one better by providing practical tools in a world of constant workplace change.

3. There’s Got to Be A Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work by Nelson P. Repenning and Donald C. Kieffer. Certain principles can significantly enhance any operation, and while they might seem obvious, many leaders and organizations still find them challenging to implement. In "There's Got to Be a Better Way," the book showcases numerous compelling examples of organizations effectively employing five principles of operational excellence to achieve remarkable outcomes.

4. Distancing: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions by L. David Marquet and Michael Gillespie. At times, stepping back is essential for gaining a fresh or clearer perspective. Whether it involves zooming out, considering the well-being of your future self, or engaging in intentional self-talk, creating distance from the issues at hand can be incredibly beneficial. “Distancing” offers practical tools to help you shift your perspective and approach problems more effectively.

5. Revisiting a classic: A History of Managing for Quality: The Evolution, Trends, and Future Directions of Managing for Quality by Dr. Joseph Juran (1995). In this comprehensive historical analysis, Juran explores the significance of quality management throughout the ages, from the Ancient Chinese, Romans, and Greeks, through the Guilds and the Industrial Revolution, to 20th-century American industry. He illustrates how the concept of quality has influenced culture and economies, adapting to each disruption along the way. Juran predicted that in the 21st century, quality would become a commonplace and standardized profession, akin to accounting, though he underestimated the impact of modern technology on this evolution.

Here are my 5 favourite podcast episodes of 2025:

1. Chain of Learning with Katie Anderson - Episode 52: What We Love About Lean and Operational Excellence - And Your #1 Frustration. Leading operational excellence can be one of the more rewarding yet frustrating endeavours. Katie Anderson breaks down the joys and challenges of continuous practitioners in this must-listen episode.

2. Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement with John Dyer and Mohamed Saleh - Unlocking Team Success: Setting Team Goals. Most organizations set goals - but most get it wrong. John Dyer and Mohamed Saleh share some better practices to prevent demotivating your people.

3. Coaching for Leaders with Dave Stachowiak- Episode 740: How to Lead Organizational Change with Michael Bungay-Stanier. We all love MBS, and he’s on one of my favourite podcasts to remind us that change doesn’t follow a linear process and, quoting Emily Dickinson, to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant”.

4. The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Daniel Kahneman: Algorithms Make Better Decisions Than You. With the accelerating adoption of AI in business, this discussion with the late Daniel Kahneman seems extremely relevant. The bad news? Kahneman was bullish on outsourcing decision-making to the algorithms based on his deep knowledge of how people make decisions. What does this mean for businesses? Time will tell, but I suspect this to remain a controversial take as managers desperately cling to their perceived value.

5. People Solve Problems with Jamie Flinchbaugh - Dr. Greg Jacobson: From ER Doctor to Continuous Improvement CEO. Former doctor and CEO of KaiNexus shares his decades of continuous improvement experience and unpacks complex challenges like psychological safety and improving healthcare using technology.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon in the New Year!

Regards - Ryan McCormack

Automating quality engineering at Apple

Apple is working on a way to enhance the learning capabilities of its automated test agents - essentially automating the process of improvement for these agents that detect defects. Apple is using agentic RAG (retrieve, augment, generate) frameworks to help automatic agents continuously learn and improve on their quality engineering processes.

Jidoka in an AI world

Lean practitioners and students of Toyota are familiar with the principle of jidoka - automation with a human touch. But in today’s AI-driven world, is jidoka still significant? Katie Anderson argues that generative AI represents the next evolution of jidoka. However, she expresses concerns about how this technology may affect the growth of future employees and leaders.

Tractors and Tactics: Christoph Roser takes you inside the Fendt factory

Industrial engineers, get ready to dive deep with Christoph Roser, the author and blogger behind AllAboutLean.com! In an exciting discussion, Christoph shares his experiences touring the Fendt tractor cabin factory in Bavaria. He’ll cover fascinating topics like their mixed model assembly line, the use of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), line balancing, and how the factory stands out with its impressive percentage of value-added time compared to takt time.

Don’t miss out on the insights - check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!

Transforming healthcare with Dr. Douglas Slakey on process improvement and patient care

Healthcare professionals often find it frustrating when business consultants or process engineers attempt to oversimplify their work environments—I can relate, having been in that position myself on several occasions. While there are valuable lessons to be learned from other industries, it is crucial to recognize the unique complexities inherent in healthcare. Few appreciate this distinction better than Dr. Douglas Slakey, an internationally renowned transplant surgeon and author of “The Process Manifesto.”

Dr. Slakey recently participated in an enlightening discussion on process reliability and improvement in healthcare on the “Connecting the Dots – The Process Manifesto with Dr. Douglas Slakey” podcast. During this conversation, he emphasized several key points, including:

• The necessity of prioritizing patient care in all transformation initiatives.

• The limitations of linear change frameworks in effectively transforming healthcare processes.

• The profound impact that technology and AI will have on the future of healthcare delivery.

Ultimately, embracing a nuanced approach to process improvement in healthcare, guided by insights from experts like Dr. Slakey, is essential for achieving meaningful and sustainable change that prioritizes the needs of patients.

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Why is year-end reflection so difficult?

‘Tis the season for year-end reflection, yet many leaders and organizations are still too superficial when it comes to taking real stock and learning. Pascal Dennis shares what real year-end reflection looks like and challenges us to up our game this year.

Humble leaders are more effective

Enough with ‘brilliant’ jerks already. Leading with humility is proven to be more effective.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

Interest is everything

Do you find yourself procrastinating? Perhaps you’re delaying reading or writing that report your boss asked you. It’s probably because you don’t find it interesting. Oliver Burkeman encourages us all to pursue what we find interesting and see where it leads us.

Amazon CEO says these two traits are crucial for success

It’s virtually impossible to do anything truly successfully without facing any setbacks or adversity. According to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, building anything meaningful requires resilience and persistence.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Kinds of value

We’ve all heard “time is money”. But is time value? Seth Godin reminds us that the amount of effort spent on something doesn’t increase its value.

Empowering nurses to improve their work

The Cleveland Clinic has been practicing a culture of continuous improvement for a long time, and it appears they have sustained it. Improvement happens where value is created - not in the boardroom. See how nurses at Cleveland Clinic are elevating care through improvement initiatives.

A primer on AI and problem solving

Can problem solvers use AI as coaches to help us get unstuck? Jamie Flinchbaugh shares a set of prompts that a problem solver can use to help coach them along the way.

Amazon workers sign open letter against ‘all-costs justified’ approach to AI

AI is the currently the default organizational fix-all, and Amazon is betting heavily on it to drive massive improvements and cost reductions. Over 1000 workers at Amazon have signed a letter to sound the alarm over the speed and potential damage they fear AI will cause. The move towards greater automation is unlikely to subside, so how are leaders and organizations engaging employees in real discussions on these changes?

Creating a Culture of Improvement

Common mistakes in leading change

I’ve been involved in several organizational transformations - and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. This episode of Change Signal features Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson as she details the common mistakes people make in leading transformational change - all of which I can relate to. If you have led or are leading change, you will find this resonates.

Revisiting Management Systems

You can have a great strategy, and even execute it well, but if your management systems don’t motivate the right behaviours, progress can quickly erode. Roger Martin revisits the importance of management systems in strategy and the role of the CEO as the “Chief System Designer”.

Coaching - Developing Yourself and Others

How leaders can harness the power of stories

I’ve always led with “facts and data”. Unfortunately, spreadsheets, charts, and business cases don’t always influence decision-makers. Stories are often more effective at changing minds than facts.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now