KaiNexus recently invited The Toyota Way to Service Excellence author Karyn Ross to speak to our own Mark Graban, about How to Coach for Creativity and Service Excellence. Ross is a purpose-driven consultant and Lean coach at karynrossconsulting.com. Focused specifically on services, Karyn has worked with small, medium, and large organizations in sectors as diverse as insurance, financial services, HR, transportation, and retail. Using her unique Practical Creativity (TM) approach, Karyn teaches creativity techniques in combination with Toyota Way / Lean practices to help businesses retain current customers and attract new ones.

I doubt that you are still using index cards to organize your contacts, but your approach to huddle boards may be just as outdated. In the same way that an electronic contact database has a ton of advantages over a Rolodex, digital huddle boards offer valuable benefits that paper notes pinned to a poster on the wall. Here are the top reasons to consider an upgrade.

I doubt that you are still using index cards to organize your contacts, but your approach to huddle boards may be just as outdated. In the same way that an electronic contact database has a ton of advantages over a Rolodex, digital huddle boards offer valuable benefits that paper notes pinned to a poster on the wall. Here are the top reasons to consider an upgrade.

When you're thinking about rolling out Strategy Deployment in your organization, it can be intimidating to know exactly where to start, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to set yourself up for success right from the beginning. I've recently written an eBook that covers these questions, as well as information about the software you need to enable Strategy Deployment, that you can download on our blog at blog.kainexus.com.

Obviously, all of us here at KaiNexus are huge fans of continuous improvement. But I am not going to lie, I find the name to be a bit of a problem. It is clear, succinct, and meaningful, so what could be the matter?

KaiNexus webinar by Greg Jacobson and Mark Graban:

Taking Improvement Boards Digital: How Leading Companies are

Improving Visual Management

We get the chance to chat with a lot of frontline employees, managers, and executive leaders about all aspects of continuous improvement. We love to learn about how organizations are using the techniques and tools of Lean and other methodologies to improve results and reach their most important business goals. Gemba Walks are a practice that comes up quite a bit. Some leaders find them to be incredibly effective and welcomed by managers and staff alike, while others find them to be a chore with disappointing results.

Last month, our friends Tania Lyon and David Yeager presented at the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Lean in Education on their research and experience in spreading a culture of continuous improvement. Tania Lyon has been a KaiNexus customer for the last couple of years, and has led her team to accomplish some astounding results in her position as Director of Organizational Process Improvement. David Yeager is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and a Faculty Research Associate at UT Austin and will be presenting his research at the KaiNexus User Conference later this year.

In this podcast, Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacobson chat about their upcoming webinar on May 16 -- learn more at http://kainexus.com/webinars

Taking Improvement Boards Digital: How Leading Companies are Improving Visual Management

In this webinar you will learn:

Why people use improvement boards

Challenges to using physical boards

How digital boards solve these challenges

Examples of effective digital boards

Using boards to manage strategy deployment

A popular ice breaker in business meetings these days is 3 Truths and 1 Lie. Each person says three true things about themselves and one made up thing and everyone tries to guess which is the lie.

We thought that 10 truths and 1 lie would be a good way to introduce Standard Work. Can you guess which is which?