Improve Something Today

A year of working and living in crisis. So what? Now what? Discussed: the mountain (certainty), the muddle (ambiguity), and the morning after the earthquake (we're all geologists now, friends); Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Experience" and "The Conduct of Life"; Leonard Cohen.

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Respect for people is a pillar of lean. It's also the first thing to go out the window in many botched implementations. A conversation with Fabian Jimenez. Discussed: stepping stones on the path to respect for people. Engaging head 🤖, heart 🫀, and hands 🙌 of people.

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When working with groups, agreement is fine—but consensus is better. A conversation with Andre Helmstetter. Discussed: the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ consensus workshop method, taught as part of their ToP Facilitation Training.

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Checking in with Carl Sandburg's "The People, Yes" before Election Day. "The people have come far and can look back and say, 'We will go farther yet.'"

We're still here, and we're still feeling stuck. Or at least I am. I bet you are too. Reading: William Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned" 

The world has gone off format and so has this podcast. Discussed: it's time to change and/or die; the weird story of Shantideva, the failed 8th century prince, public servant, and monk; and comforting words from Shantideva's "A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life."

The cost and joys of options. Why are options so important to us anyways? Discussed: set-based design and the book Lean Product Design and Process Development by Allen Ward and Durward Sobek.

You can't make an hourglass flow faster by yelling at the sand. Discussed: queuing, constraints, Little's Law.

Introducing my free field guide to finding waste in knowledge work and service work—and using the waste you find as an opportunity to start a practice of continuous improvement. Download the field guide here: improvesomething.today/field-guide.

The places where we don't know all the answers are where real improvements can happen. Discussed: Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor; T. H. Huxley's agnosticism.