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Coaching and Co-Learning — Our Attempt to Improve Starbucks
Three lean practitioners reflect on their pioneering coaching relationship at Starbucks, revealing how co-learning drives transformation—and why it often fails.
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Toyota and radical innovation: a Lean View of Woven City
Toyota's Woven City project offers a compelling view of radical innovation in a lean organization. The experiment combines purpose-driven technology,…
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The Strange New World of AI: My Second Brain Setup
Art Smalley explains how AI removed administrative barriers to decades-old projects, turning weekend ideas into published tools using plain-text knowledge…
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What I’m Talking about When I Talk about Co-Learning
Co-learning means improvement happens when both sides learn—manager and worker, coach and student, supplier and customer. Mark Reich explains the…
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Coaching and Co-Learning — Coach as Mirror
Mark Reich explores coaching as mutual learning with Desh Edirisuriya of Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and LEI Coach Jim Luckman…
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Insource What Matters: A Lesson from Toyota for Lean Practitioners in the Age of AI
Toyota's decade-long journey to insource critical software capabilities offers a crucial lesson: lean practitioners must develop technology fluency now.
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Coaching and Co-Learning — Understanding that Lean Is a Journey
This week The Management Brief kicks off an extended series on the coaching and co-learning that is occurring throughout the…
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20 Years Later: How Toyota’s Product Development Principles Are Still Core to a Lean Enterprise
In this special edition of the WLEI Podcast, hosts Lex Schroeder and LEI President Josh Howell sit down with former product…
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From Fiction to Navigation: Using Cynefin to Choose the Right Improvement Method
Lean thinking doesn't fail in complex environments — it gets misapplied. Nigel Thurlow explains how to choose the right method…
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Bridging Strategy and Execution: How Daily Management and Hoshin Kanri Work Together
Daily management and hoshin kanri serve different purposes — but neither works without the other. Here's how lean leaders connect…
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Wait, That’s My Job | How AI Exposed the Organizational Immune System Nobody Wanted to Talk About
AI isn't just disrupting work — it's exposing the organizational immune system. Tyson Heaton reveals who's blocking progress and who's…
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Better Thinking Faster
Art Smalley draws on decades at Toyota and a national laboratory to challenge the lean community's speed-vs-deliberation debate. The real…
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