WLEI - Lean Enterprise Institute’s Podcast

Episódios

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  Better Thinking Faster: Toyota Problem-Solving Secrets 27.07.2026 27min

  In the first half of their podcast Better Thinking Faster, Josh Howell, Mark Reich, and Art Smalley discussed solving problems just in time and how the speed of quality problem solving depends on the level of the organization and the types of problems to be found there. In this second half of the podcast, they examine unique traits of problem solving at Toyota that help employees — frontline to senior executives — solve problems better and faster, characteristics that many companies attempting to be lean fail to grasp.  Create Experiential Learning  Many leaders attempt to apply lean based on reading about it and the management processes and tools involved, says Art, Toyota veteran and author of Four Types of Problems. That’s helpful, but it lacks lean problem-solving experiences. For example, working on a line and solving many small problems daily provides formative learning within Toyota that’s carried forward as a team member advances into management and executive ranks.     “Many of us who encounter these ideas later in life, when we’re at higher levels in our career and in our organizations, don’t always get that opportunity,” says Josh, LEI President. He admires Toyota for onboarding individuals, even white-collar executives, by throwing them onto the line “to work at that level of detail and all the opportunity that could be found therein, to just set a mindset that can be very useful to you even as you get into higher level, longer cycle time, more ambitious, more complex work.”    So what is an executive, without Toyota-like onboarding and problem-solving experiences, supposed to do? Mark, LEI Chief Engineer Strategy and author of Managing on Purpose, says they can at least go to line, to where the work is done, and experience it by observing. He’s seen executives who, when going to the frontline, are astounded by “the amount of difficult, unnecessary, frustrating work that happens minute to minute, day to day.” That helps them to experience the precise nature of work and problems there, but they also must care “that people shouldn’t have to work that way, and people are working like that in many organizations. I think Toyota leaders cared, and not just about the shopfloor ... but about everybody in the organization and that everybody in the organization had value-creating work.”    Art sees it as LEI’s purpose to close the learning gap among leaders not coming out of Toyota and somehow help executives gain the experiences he and Mark encountered when working there: “Mark and I got it through line work, working in Toyota, and in our careers of seeing it at various levels. Other people need to kind of come to that awareness, have the fish scales removed from their eyes in different ways.”    Examine the Process behind Outcomes  Toyota’s unique approach to problem solving includes an obsession with going well beyond the cause of a problem to determine how a process or processes contributed to the outcome and cause. Art cites the example of a failed launch at one of Toyota’s overseas plants. Equipment vendor problems contributed to poor outcomes. Instead of citing “failed vendor, not our problem” and moving on, every aspect of the business pertaining to precision equipment that went to overseas operations was thoroughly analyzed to ensure the next overseas launch would be better than the last. It turns out a variety of documentation, support materials, and training that accompanied equipment going overseas was poor, and Toyota worked for a year or more to make it right.  “Toyota is very good about thinking about the process that led to the end result,” says Art. “Most people want to be critical and criticize the end result. Toyota will go back, back, back, back, back. What were our initial assumptions and thought processes and conditions that led us down this path?”     Mark and Art say this approach is not for Toyota to find blame, but to ensure it does not happen again: 5 Whys not the 5 Whos.    Solve All P
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  Sebastian Fixson and Jim Morgan on Why Human Judgment will be Essential for Product Development in the Age of AI 27.07.2026 27min

  In this episode of the WLEI Podcast, we speak with Jim Morgan and Sebastian Fixson about organizational implications for product development and what building your team’s product development capabilities looks like in the age of AI. Morgan is the author of Designing the Future and has spent over 30 years in industry as a product development leader including serving as a global engineering director at Ford Motor Company during the product-led revitalization under CEO Alan Mulally. Sebastian Fixson is Founding Faculty Director of the DBA Program and Professor of Innovation & Design at Babson College and author of The Innovation Navigator: Transforming Your Organization in the Era of AI. The conversation explores:  What people-first leadership means in practice Why particular structures, processes, and practices are needed in product development to help people do their best work The trade-offs inherent in functional and product organizations The organizational and product development implications of new technologies including generative AI How today’s entrepreneurs are thinking about product development and how to invest in developing the next generation of developers
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  Better Thinking Faster: A conversation about solving problems just in time 13.07.2026 39min

  Time is relative, especially when it comes to lean problem solving. The LEI trio of Josh Howell, Mark Reich, and Art Smalley explored how the speed of quality problem solving really depends on the level of the organization in which the problem exists and the types of problems and thinking patterns in place at that level. In this first podcast of two, they examine what “better” and “faster” means in the lean world and how that manifests itself.  There’s often a debate among management circles calling for fast problem solving and change vs. slow, deliberate decision-making. Art, Toyota veteran and author of Four Types of Problems, says, “We’re all trying to think better and think faster, respective to our level and the speed that governs it. But it’s overly simplistic to just say ‘think slow.’ You want to, all things equal, arrive at a better end result faster. In reality there are different types of problems, different patterns of thinking, and different mental gears that can be used.”   Art discussed different types of problems and the different styles of work used in Toyota to address them. As outlined in his book, they are:  Type 1 troubleshooting problem, such as responding to the andon signal at a frontline workstation with a 45-second cycle time, needs to be solved safely and quickly, which will often occur countless times each day because these problems involve a known problem and known solution.   Type 2 problems are harder to solve and have unknown root causes and solutions, which require a more analytical mode of thinking.   Type 3 problems are actually continuous improvement efforts that seek to establish a new, better target condition.  Type 4 problems represent truly innovative new solutions (think hybrid powertrain technologies) that often require years of trial and error.   The problem-solving work moves from convergent thinking, known standards, and highly skilled execution at the frontline to middle management using the eight steps of Toyota Business Practice that can take days or weeks, to innovation, which is slower, more deliberate, divergent, and exploratory.   Josh looks back to his time at Starbucks and the problem-solving spectrum, contrasting the challenge of trying to transform a company of some 350,000 employees (“That’s going to take some time, and certainly the executives don’t want it to take too much time. It can’t take forever.”) compared to experiencing problems in a store during peak service time when there’s a new customer every 30 seconds. “The way that we were taught from our TPS and lean teachers to improve that situation, improve our performance for the customers, was to really dig into the details of what happens inside those 30 seconds.”  Speed is only one facet of lean problem solving. Remember, the Toyota slogan is “Better Thinking, Better Products,” and so quality has to be part of problem-solving work.   Mark (LEI Chief Engineer Strategy, author of Managing on Purpose, and also a Toyota veteran) says the quality of problem solving requires developing the capabilities of those doing the problem solving as well as the patience to take sufficient time to examine problems and come to better solutions: “We want to build the capability in the organization for leaders, for people, not just leaders, but for people at every level, to be able to produce good quality work. What’s unique about Toyota is that’s true in any function. We want good quality accounting work. We want good quality planning work. We want good quality work, of course, at where the products made and developed. And I think that does take time to build that capability to produce good quality, whatever function you’re talking about.”  The trio also discuss the:  Cyclical nature of processes in which problems occur, be that a seconds-long cycle on the line, an annual cycle for formulating corporate strategy, or a decades-long span for replenishing capital equipment. At all levels, the process repeats but t
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  Past, Present, and Future of Lean and AI 08.07.2026 1h 13min

  Gene Kim, DevOps leader and co-author of Wiring the Winning Organization, joins Tyson Heaton, LEI Executive Director of LeanTech/AI, and Art Smalley, Toyota veteran and LEI advisor, for a lively, enlightening, and wide-ranging conversation about artificial intelligence. They discuss how AI is forever changing the work of individuals and organizations, and explore the good, bad, and ugly of AI today and tomorrow.   One thing they all agree on: the use of AI is picking up, even among lean practitioners. Up to 80% of people in the lean community I suspect still have little to no understanding of AI (“What’s a model?”), estimates Art. But there are examples that the other 20% across industries have started running with it. Tyson mentions, “incendiary events,” like an interaction with a hackathon, that are fueling some of this momentum as individuals return to their work with new capabilities and an appreciation for the technology.   “I've coded with chief medical officers, chief science officers, CEOs, CFOs, people in like revenue cycle management and healthcare,” says Gene. “And just to see these people all solving problems by themselves, you know, as they're using coding agents. It's just amazing to see.”  Discussion highlights from this often-amusing podcast include:  AI finds things that humans alone will not: At a personal and corporate level, AI is uniquely useful at analyzing and finding desired information in any form (data, images, etc.) within unstructured data, says Art.   “One of the big angles of this LLM play into functions out outside of ops —  whether you're in purchasing HR, legal, finance ,ops, whatever — they're all sitting on mountains of unstructured data... Apple, of all companies, has this problem, too. There's unstructured data, structured data, and types, and suddenly we now have a way to ingest a lot of that and make it searchable in a way that was not before.”  Like lean standardization, AI removes waste from work that can open space for creativity: “Folks who are new to lean and standardization, they see a standard as potentially restrictive and limiting the creativity and limiting the potential,” says Tyson. Mature lean users, however, recognize that standardization removes constrains and allows them to create and experiment to produce better results.   “A decent chunk of [knowledge work] is basically pattern understanding, pattern synthesis, and pattern projection to get work done,” he adds. “And if you can take and offload that or pair with AI, which it's really good at, it unleashes your creativity.”   Negative reaction to improvements made possible with AI: Gene tells the story of an individual who would do many hours of Excel work each day on a highly specific “horrendous” task, and then AI applied a macro that could do it for her. “Her reaction was anger. She's like, ‘How dare you? I didn't ask for this.” AI removed something she held “near and dear.”   Tyson says a path to overcome this natural human reaction to someone’s work being removed is a better foundation of understanding of value-add vs. non-value add vs. incidental work from the customer’s perspective.  The fear of AI taking jobs is real for some individuals and in some companies: Art relates AI improvements back to early lean improvements, when removing non-value-added piece of work from someone’s work was viewed as taking away their job; they did not recognize the lean improvement was freeing them to think of the other ways they could be adding value to the organization.   Tyson says it’s critical to help rewrite people's identity as creators and improvers rather than lathe worker or spreadsheet specialist. “It's also kind of a tragedy that so many people and so many organizations aren't afforded the ability to remake their identity as an improver of their own work processes and workflows because of either the leadership structure or the behavior, the cultures of the organization.”   Overcoming resistance to AI: 
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  Coaching and Co-Learning — Coach as Mirror 14.04.2026 16min

  This week The Management Brief presents the second installment in our series on coaching across the lean community and the benefits of mutual learning — senior leaders with external and/or internal lean coaches as well as peer-to-peer relationships. These connections can deliver more value and open avenues of understanding and growth not possible when leaders try to go it alone. Mark Reich, LEI Chief Engineer Strategy, is joined by Desh Edirisuriya, General Manager, New Zealand Manufacturing and Business Excellence with Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, and Jim Luckman, LEI Coach and Partner in Lean Transformations Group. Fisher & Paykel is a manufacturer of respiratory care products based in Auckland, and the company is driven by an objective to improve care and outcomes for patients. Desh was instrumental in setting up the company’s Business Excellence function. He was first exposed to lean during an extraordinary growth phase at the company, implementing tools and processes to solve the problem of scaling up. Desh has been with Fisher & Paykel for 25 years, along the way learning how to better understand his role as it has changed and where he must focus. Desh says Jim has helped him with that by “being sort of a mirror [to] get good feedback, reflect, and also help me see my role, my gaps, and then help me through developing a way to bridge those gaps.” Desh adds that he often does not know he’s being coached by Jim, but inevitably he ends up changing his behavior as a result of their conversations. Jim spent 30 years with General Motors, including time at Delphi as a Chief Engineer, director of a site with 600 R&D people, and learning and practicing how to apply lean in R&D. He got involved in coaching after Delphi, and he sees coaching as a means to help individuals solve fundamental problems inside of their businesses from top to bottom, with “the right people solving the right problem at the right time.” He describes his experience with Desh as a “co-learning experience, it’s not one way. I don’t feel like a coach as much as a co-learner.” Topics that Mark addresses with Desh and Jim include: Experiments run by Desh at Fisher & Paykel with leaders, direct reports, and shopfloor teams to build social connections and create respectful dialogue among respective groups, and the challenges Desh has encountered with those experiments. Asking good questions that get people to think about what’s actually going on instead of focusing on their own thinking and not listening to the person you want to do the thinking. Learnings achieved by Desh and Jim in their work together and their future plans. Interested in bringing a coach to your organization? Learn more at lean.org/CLP
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  Coaching and Co-Learning — Understanding that Lean Is a Journey 07.04.2026 26min

  This week The Management Brief kicks off an extended series on the coaching and co-learning that is occurring throughout the lean community. We’ll be exploring the benefits of mutual learning in all its forms — senior leaders with their lean coaches, be they external or internal to the organization, as well peer-to-peer relationships — that deliver more value and open avenues of understanding and growth not possible when going it alone.   Most if not all leaders are looking for guidance tailored to their positions, and that’s especially true of lean leaders seeking to transform themselves and their organizations. Effective coaching and co-learning relationships offer a “follow me and we’ll figure this out together” association that enables both partners to navigate a lean journey, establish a path for lean transformation, and achieve sustainable results. We will examine what makes lean coaching and co-learning relationships effective, and, in the process, provide insights into how to establish your own co-learning opportunities.  Our initial installment in this series brings together Marco Lopez, CEO Dreamplace Hotels, & Resorts in the Canary Islands, which embarked on a lean “never-ending” journey 15 years ago, and Oriol Cuatrecasas, coach with the Instituto Lean Management in Spain and a lean practitioner for decades. Mark Reich, LEI Chief Engineer, Strategy, interviews the duo who discuss co-learning and the Dreamplace journey, including:  In 2009, Marco says he and others in the company asked, “What can we do to be more competitive,” and realized they had to do something new and that lean was an option. He is grateful they came to the decision to pursue lean, now seeing it as “the only way,” despite not recognizing early on that the journey would not be easy or fast and takes continuous attention and effort to sustain.  Marco recalls directors working on the first A3s with Oriol, with them being instructed to go out to the gemba and solve real problems. He realized this approach was going to take time, and he and directors would need to be patient and support people every step of the way. Marco recognized that lean was not a “plug-in solution.”   Oriol recalls what attracted him to working with Dreamplace. Around 2010, he was speaking at a public conference and, at the end of the event, advised attendees to take a problem, take a team, learn, apply lean, and share successes (as Jim Womack often advised). Five years later he received an email from an operations manager at Dreamplace who described doing precisely what Oriol had suggested, wanted to share with him what a team was working on, and asked, “When are you going to come?” Oriol went to Dreamplace and met the manager and Marco. A Dreamplace team had begun breaking down silos (lodging department, kitchen, housekeeping, etc.) that prevented flow in serving hotel guests better, and also was working to have a majority of business decisions made by frontline employees. “Immediately I fell in love with these people, and said ‘When do we start?’”  Marco and Oriol discuss how lean was meant for the hospitality industry, an environment that is purely value-added and in which every customer requires a customized experience. This environment requires a reliance on cross-functional teams to seamlessly support the customer’s journey throughout all aspects of their stay.  Coaching has helped Marco and managers within Dreamplace learn how to set goals, manage and empower people, and be honest and open with teams. For example, Marco learned to show up at the gemba and support staff without dominating the situation. Dreamplace started its lean journey internally, working on its own for five years. In hindsight, Marco advises others to ask for professional help from the beginning: “You will save at least two or three years.” Oriol says it helps to be coaching “the right executive,” someone who can make real decisions to change things, own the tr
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  20 Years Later: How Toyota's Product Development Principles Are Still Core to a Lean Enterprise 06.04.2026 29min

  In this special edition of the WLEI Podcast, hosts Lex Schroeder and LEI President Josh Howell sit down with former product development executive Jim Morgan to explore the lasting impact of The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process, and Technology, the groundbreaking book he co-authored with Jeff Liker. Two decades after its release, the insights that revealed Toyota’s unique approach to product development remain a cornerstone for any organization striving to become a great product company.   Together, they examine: The story behind the research that inspired The Toyota Product Development System, what drove Jim to uncover Toyota’s secrets of innovation, and how to apply them today The enduring principles engineering leaders still rely on to build teams that consistently design products customers love (and buy) How Jim translated lean product and process development (LPPD) lessons into practical action across his own career as a product development and operations executive, adapting them to diverse challenges and contexts. Common hurdles companies face when putting core LPPD ideas into practice—and where to begin the transformation journey. Why so many organizations hesitate to take those hard, necessary steps to develop their people and achieve genuine enterprise transformation. Whether you’re new to lean thinking or deep into your own transformation, this conversation offers both history and insight into how timeless principles continue to shape the future of product development and provide the key to a lean enterprise.   Learn more about lean product and process development at lean.org/LPPD
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  Cutting through the Noise in Tech: Sarah Milstein's Advice for Leaders Who Want to Keep People Focused on Value Creation 03.12.2025 24min

  Sarah Milstein shares practical guidance for engineering and product leaders on building respectful cultures, streamlining roles, and sustaining lean product and process development.
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  Keeping Our Humanity in Tech: Julia Austin on Why It Pays to Put People First in Product Development 19.11.2025 22min

  In this episode of The Design Brief, Julia Austin—executive fellow at Harvard Business School and former tech leader at companies like Akamai and VMware—discusses how putting people first in product development drives better outcomes and high-performance teams. She shares insights on creating effective collaboration, navigating common 2025 product development challenges, and leveraging AI while keeping human beings at the center of work design.
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  Designing Work to More Effectively Solve the Right Problems 11.11.2025 1h 2min

  In this week’s Management Brief, Nelson Repenning of MIT Sloan discusses the theories shaping organizational transformation. He highlights his “dynamic work design” — an “anti-initiative” approach to redesign work so organizations solve the right problems, boosting productivity, profits, and engagement.
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  Steven Spear Talks about Competing with TPS and Problem Solving 03.11.2025 57min

  This week, The Management Brief features Dr. Steven Spear, MIT senior lecturer and co-author of Wiring the Winning Organization, in conversation with LEI’s Josh Howell and Mark Reich. Spear shares insights from his early experiences with the Toyota Production System and explains how organizations win by enabling people to see and solve problems faster and more deeply.
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  The Management Brief | Leaning on TPS Learnings to Create a U.S. Manufacturer 14.10.2025 46min

  What happens when a leader learns TPS directly from Hajime Oba? Jon Armstrong, CEO of Do It American MFG, shares how lessons from the Toyota Production System continue to shape his approach to leadership, culture, and U.S. manufacturing.
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  The Management Brief | Transforming from GM Executive to Toyota Leader 06.10.2025 44min

  In this edition of The Management Brief, Carl Klemm reflects on his journey from GM to Toyota, sharing lessons on leadership maturity, long-term management thinking, and creating cultures of trust, respect, and continuous improvement.
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  The Management Brief Bonus Edition | Two Lean Luminaries and Two Processes for Lean Transformation 29.09.2025 1h 5min

  In this special dual-release of The Design Brief and The Management Brief, Josh Howell is joined by LEI veterans Jim Morgan and Mark Reich to explore two powerful lean processes: lean product and process development (LPPD) and hoshin kanri. Drawing on decades of experience at Toyota, Ford, Rivian, and beyond, they reveal how these methods align strategy, accelerate innovation, and transform enterprises from the C-suite to the frontline.
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  The Design Brief | Eric Ethington and Matt Zayko on Why it Takes a Chief Engineer to Design Profitable Value Streams 25.09.2025 27min

  In this edition of The Design Brief, Eric Ethington and Matt Zayko share how skilled chief engineers build strong teams and robust product and process development systems. They discuss essential chief engineer skills, the role of conflict in innovation, system integration, and real stories of lean product and process development in action.
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  Improving Patient and Caregiver Outcomes with Lean in Healthcare 22.09.2025 48min

  In this edition of the Management Brief, Cleveland Clinic leaders Dr. Lisa Yerian and Chad Cummings share how they are reinvigorating lean practices post-COVID, tackling workforce and fiscal pressures, and developing people to sustain excellence in care and culture.
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  The Management Brief | Lean Improvement Group Helps Appliance Maker Reshore Products 15.09.2025 50min

  In this edition of The Management Brief, Josh Howell and Mark Reich talk with Rich Calvaruso, Senior Director of the Lean Management Office at GE Appliances. Rich shares how GE reshored manufacturing, built lean systems beyond kaizen events, and developed leaders through hands-on immersion. His core message: develop people and improve process at the same time.
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  TPS Taken to Companies across the UK 08.09.2025 49min

  In this edition of the Management Brief, Simon Rowley and Julian Ball from Toyota’s Lean Management Centre (TLMC) join LEI’s Josh Howell and Mark Reich to discuss the role of continuous improvement (CI) groups in lean management. They share how TLMC was founded in 2009 to support companies adopting the Toyota Production System (TPS) while developing Toyota staff through hands-on coaching. The conversation covers training programs, applying TPS beyond manufacturing, starting small with lean, developing people, and the critical role of standardized work in driving safety, quality, and lasting improvement.
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  A Toyota Take on Taking TPS to Others 01.09.2025 47min

  In this edition of The Management Brief, LEI’s Josh Howell and Mark Reich talk with Jamie Bonini, President of Toyota’s TSSC, about how Toyota develops people and spreads TPS. They explore the role of CI groups, differences between Toyota’s internal and external approaches, and why building leaders’ problem-solving capability—not just installing tools—is key to lasting performance.
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  Innovation as a Core Capability: Sebastian Fixson on Why Leaders Need Lean Product and Process Development 20.08.2025 24min

  In this edition of The Design Brief, Sebastian Fixson, PhD, of Babson College, joins Jim Morgan of LEI to discuss how today’s product leaders can build stronger teams, better businesses, and innovative solutions. They explore leveraging LPPD to develop future-ready leaders, balance physical and digital innovation, and create process thinkers who drive sustainable growth. Listen now and discover how LPPD is transforming the way we develop products, teams, and leaders.