Gemba Academy Podcast: Lean Six Sigma | Toyota Kata | Productivity | Leadership

Most lean practitioners know the theory of constraints. Fewer apply it before they start fixing things. Hessam Vali, a manufacturing consultant and MES software founder based in Wichita, argues that most improvement efforts fail because they target the wrong kinks in the hose. His framework is deceptively simple: if the deepest constraint is still in place, no one will ever see your work.

“You are doing firefighting because you’re not doing kaizens, because you’re not pausing, you’re not looking at it, you’re not fixing problem from the cause, and you’re not going to be out of that circle unless you change that behavior.” – Hessam Vali

If Hessam’s point about finding the vital few constraints before launching improvement work resonated, the School of Lean covers the foundational tools for mapping value streams and surfacing the kinks worth fixing.

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When your team is deep in firefighting, what does it take to carve out the time to step back and address the constraint that is feeding all those fires?

Most resistance to lean is blamed on the wrong thing. Ben Morley, an Air Force pilot turned Lean Six Sigma consultant, argues the tools are never really the problem. The breakdown almost always lives somewhere between leadership buy-in and an assumption nobody thought to question. His conversation with Ron Pereira covers cockpit emergencies, a $5 million backlog that dissolved from a single customer phone call, and what a caterpillar turning to soup has to do with organizational transformation.

“Values are your belief. Culture is your behavior. Those are two different things.” – Ben Morley

If the gap between what your organization says it believes and how people actually behave on the floor resonated with you, the School of Leadership addresses exactly that kind of culture-and-conduct disconnect.

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Where in your own organization is dormancy being mistaken for absence of progress?

Most continuous improvement practitioners are using AI the same way they use Google, and getting roughly the same quality of results. David Osagie-Igiehon has taken a different approach. He builds custom agents trained on lean principles, CI methodology, and the specific knowledge domains his work demands, and the gap in output quality is significant. What he describes is less about automation and more about compressing the time it takes to do rigorous work.

“Critical thinking would never disappear because people are superior than machines.” – David Osagie-Igiehon

David describes reaching Master Black Belt as the foundation that lets him know whether an AI output is actually correct. If you want that same grounding before trusting AI-generated analysis of your own processes, structured Six Sigma training is where that foundation gets built.

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If you built a custom AI agent trained specifically on your company’s lean methodology and problem-solving approach, what would you want it to know first?

Most organizations have a strategy. Far fewer can actually execute one. Michael Caito built and sold a food delivery business decades before DoorDash existed, then spent years helping other companies close the gap between where leaders want to go and where they actually end up. His diagnosis is consistent: the gap is almost always an accountability problem, and accountability is almost always the leader’s problem first. The conversation with Ron covers what CEOs truly own, how to know whether you have a strategy issue or an execution issue, and why the cadence of your team meetings matters more than most leaders want to admit.

“Performance is visible and the person that’s not performing or hitting their goals, they’re not gonna be comfortable working there.” – Michael Caito

If Michael’s point about building a real management cadence around goal-setting and performance visibility resonated, the School of Leadership offers structured ways to develop exactly those skills across your organization.

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When was the last time your team reviewed goals together in a structured monthly meeting, and what got in the way of making that a non-negotiable rhythm?

Most lean practitioners spend their careers trying to change the minds of adults who have been doing things the same way for decades. Ted Pendergrass decided to start earlier. Over 20 years coordinating a career technical education program at a California high school, he brought 5S, practical problem-solving, and Yellow Belt certification to students who had never heard of lean. The conversation covers what actually stuck, what surprised him, and what the rest of the lean community could do to help.

“If you have to ask if it’s good enough, it probably isn’t.” – Ted Pendergrass

Ted’s seniors earned Yellow Belt certification as a capstone to a three-year lean program. If that kind of structured progression interests you for your own team or organization, the certification path is worth a close look.

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If you had two hours with a classroom of high school students, which lean concept would you start with and why?

Most organizations measure productivity, absenteeism, and safety incidents without ever asking what all three have in common. Tim Thomas, a former Australian Special Forces soldier turned sleep specialist, argues the answer is sitting in plain sight at the bottom of every performance pyramid. The conversation moves from combat deployments in Afghanistan to corporate boardrooms, and the through line is the same: fatigue is an enemy that most leaders never name.

“If you want to cut the amount of sick days you have in half, improve the quality sleep of the people that work there.” – Tim Thomas

Tim’s performance pyramid puts rest and recovery at the foundation of everything else, and that same principle applies to the people leading improvement work on your floor or in your office.

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If sleep quality were a visible metric in your organization, what would it reveal about how your team is actually performing?

Culture shapes how people receive change, and nowhere is that clearer than on a shop floor where history, language, and moral authority all sit alongside the 5S board. Royden Johnson and Luc van Merrienboer bring two distinct lenses to that tension: Royden from years of leading continuous improvement in South Africa, and Luc from rolling out digital transformation across Asia and now the African continent. Their conversation with Ron covers resistance, influence, and what it actually takes to bring people along rather than drag them forward.

If the discussion about moral authority, influencing strategies, and leading change on a diverse shop floor resonated with you, the School of Leadership offers structured ways to develop those same skills in your own context.

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When you have encountered a CAVE person in your organization, what shifted the dynamic?

Trust in leadership has been declining for decades, and Keith Wyche has the research to prove it. A 40-year veteran of AT&T, IBM, and Walmart, Keith opened up to us about a few mistakes he’s made in his career. The real conversation here is what changed him, and what he thinks it will take to reverse the broader collapse.

“My successes may have inspired me, but my failures taught me.” – Keith Wyche

If Keith’s point about creating followership through trust, listening, and character resonated with you, the School of Leadership is a practical place to build those same skills in yourself and your team.

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When you listen in a conversation, are you listening to understand the other person, or are you already forming your response?

Most leaders assume that the right argument, delivered clearly, will change minds. Owen Fitzpatrick has spent 30 years studying why that assumption is wrong. A psychologist who has worked inside some of the world’s most extreme propaganda environments, from North Korea to Rwanda to his own teenage years, Owen brings a framework to this conversation that reframes how belief actually changes. The implications for anyone trying to lead a continuous improvement effort are hard to ignore.

“Being right is not enough. Having the facts, having the data, having the information, table stakes, you need to have that. But it’s not enough to be persuasive.” – Owen Fitzpatrick

If Owen’s point that buy-in requires more than logic resonates with how you lead change, the School of Leadership builds the skills that close that gap.

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How do you define propaganda?

Most organizations say they want high performers, yet quietly punish them for being too valuable to lose. Kabrina Ashley, a coach and behavioral science practitioner based in Nashville, makes the case that the real barriers to change, growth, and improvement are not strategic, they’re neurological. The conversation covers why good intentions still produce bad outcomes, and what leaders can do differently once they understand what is actually happening inside their employees’ heads.

“The quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions that you ask.” – Kabrina Ashley

If the conversation about habit change, running old code, and why training rarely sticks resonated with you, the School of Leadership covers the human side of building organizations that actually improve.

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When you look at your highest performers right now, are they growing toward their potential or quietly being held in place by how much you need them where they are?