I hear this lament from new practitioners to seasoned veterans: Why isn’t our (insert school of workflow management here) transformation working?

Time and again I see coaches focus on the “deficiencies” of their clients or their companies. If only they would just focus! They don’t do what they say they would! They can’t be bothered to do their homework! All we asked them to do was...

We wonder why our LeanAgileSigmaPrinceEtc transitions are unsuccessful.

It’s simple: We started operating before we stabilized the patient.

Feedback loops are only as powerful as our ability to observe.

This is hard for both coaches and practitioners of lean and its derivatives because it’s easy to teach mechanisms and believe that mechanisms are the path to deeper understanding. Whether those mechanisms are A3s, Fibonacci spreads, 6S, timeboxing, gemba walks, DMAIC, or retrospectives, these are tools used to express value, not the value itself.

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