WLEI - Lean Enterprise Institute’s Podcast

In this episode of the WLEI Podcast, we speak with product leader and angel investor Phil Green about product-centered entrepreneurship and what it takes to truly create value for customers. Since 2020, Phil has been the senior advisor for B2B and technology at Harvard Innovation Labs. Before the i-lab, Phil spent over 30 years working at various startups as a CEO, COO, CTO, and a product manager.

The conversation explores: 

Learn more about lean thinking and practice at lean.org

Josh Howell, LEI president, explores the topic of daily management with Joe Seestadt, Director Lab Outreach for Bronson Healthcare and a faculty member and coach with LEI. Joe trained as an industrial engineer and worked in manufacturing, and has now spent some 18 years in healthcare. He was instrumental in developing the Cleveland Clinic’s daily management system, which has been recognized across the industry.

Joe is unique in that he is both a lean guide to others as well as an owner and user of a system and concepts that he’s helping individuals grasp as they try to transform their own organizations. He describes the importance of daily management as having the ability to know every day if you are ahead or behind, having a mechanism to solve problems at a daily beat in any type of operation (healthcare, service, or manufacturing), and as a means to bring strategy/hoshin kanri to fruition. 

Josh Howell, LEI president, talks with Dr. Sarah Womack, an eight-year veteran of Toyota and author of Toyota’s Improvement Thinking from the Inside. Sarah discusses how her transformation and that of other individuals within Toyota collectively contributed to organizational improvements and high performance. Her Toyota experiences exponentially advanced her learning and today enable her to successfully impart lean values and mindsets to organizations that are very unlike Toyota. Learn more about lean thinking and practice at lean.org

In this episode of the WLEI Podcast, we speak with Steve Spear, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, senior fellow at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, and associated faculty member at Adriane Labs of the Harvard School of Public Health. Spear is also author of The High-Velocity Edge and Wiring the Winning Organization and principal of SeeToSolve.

The conversation explores: 

In this episode of WLEI Podcast, we welcome Amy Smith, Founding Director of MIT’s D-Lab, an innovative university-based program in international development and a senior lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

In this episode of WLEI Podcast, we welcome Cynthia E. Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and author of Design for the Other 90%. Cynthia speaks about design as a catalyst for change and what it means, as she says, to be in “the collective work of building capacity and agency in communities across the world.”

This week The Management Brief presents a podcast with Josh Howell, LEI President, and Mark Reich, LEI Chief Engineer, Strategy. They discuss Mark’s 30-plus years working with hoshin kanri — two decades at Toyota and then coaching executives while with LEI — and the impact that the strategic planning and execution process has had on Toyota and the many companies with which Mark has supported.

You’ll hear how hoshin kanri helped Toyota establish self-reliant North American operations, which required commitment from top leaders outside of Japan establishing a vision and engaging and developing management amid a period of rapid growth. Mark also describes how companies beyond Toyota —  even those without historically strong management and a culture of problem-solving and collaboration — have been able to establish these corporate traits while they’re defining strategic objectives and taking actions to achieve them.

To learn more about hoshin kanri and how to deploy the process in your company, be sure to also read Mark’s upcoming book, Managing on Purpose.

In this edition of The Management Brief, Mark Reich sits down with Isao Yoshino, a 40-year veteran of Toyota and a driving force behind the company’s success with hoshin kanri. Yoshino shares the impact that hoshin kanri and A3 problem-solving has had on him professionally and personally.

Key takeaways include:

· Multiple roles over four decades at Toyota shaped Yoshino’s management beliefs and career.

· Yoshino discusses working directly with Mikio Sugiura, who was instrumental in developing Toyota’s hoshin kanri process.

· Hoshin kanri can positively impact a company as it has Toyota, notes Yoshino, but it’s not without a few challenges.

· Delivering bad news first and an earnest desire to learn from failures were commonplace for Yoshino and Toyota executives and fostered the improvement mindset that still thrives in the company today.

In this episode of the WLEI podcast, we sit down with Mark Dolsen, President of TRQSS, a seat belt manufacturer that supplies Toyota and other automakers in North America. Mark shares insights into TRQSS's lean journey and the critical role of frontline supervisors in driving continuous improvement. 

Key takeaways include: 

In this edition of The Management Brief, Mark Reich sits down with Geoff Miller, CEO of Grand Rapids Chair, to discuss his company's lean transformation journey. Geoff shares how the adoption of hoshin kanri and A3 problem-solving has helped the company maintain strategic focus and build organizational capability. Geoff offers a candid reflection on his leadership transformation, underscoring the importance of perseverance and continuous learning, even in the face of significant disruption. 

Key takeaways include: