(Quality Digest: Chico, CA) -- Norman Bodek, author of several best-selling books, including How to do Kaizen: A new path to innovation—Empowering everyone to be a problem solver (PCS Inc., 2010), will be running his “Respect for People” certification course in September 2011 to teach you how to develop your people to their fullest potential and bring out the best from them. The five-day course will be held at a hotel in Portland, Oregon. The exact date and time will be determined soon.

“Respect for People” will cover the following topics:
• Jidoka and zenjidoka (extending jidoka all the way to the customer). According to Bodek, when Gary Convis, former president of Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky, was asked what he expected from his people, he said, “Only two things: Come to work and pull the cord.” Many companies in the West are implementing lean, but very few allow employees to “pull the cord.” Learn how to start slow and do it.
• Quick and Easy Kaizen. Bodek asserts that this powerful tool will get all employees involved in solving problems, by learning how to build a culture of continuous improvement, improve company morale, and increase your company’s productivity by asking employees for their ideas. In 2005, Gulfstream received 350 ideas from 1,000 employees, says Bodek. Last year those employees implemented 34,000 ideas and saved the company more than $2 million. Gulfstream became very lean, and in 2010 won the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Excellence.
• Innovation. Innovation is necessary to remain competitive, but it has traditionally been confined to a limited number of people in an organization. Bodek teaches that everyone can be innovative, because you never know where the next great idea may come from. One company stopped everyone from doing their normal work for 24 hours and set up an innovation brainstorming session—they came up with 150 new products.
• Hitozukuri (building great people). Japanese organizations are teaching virtually all of their employees to become “masters,” to be highly skilled at something very specific.
• The Harada Method. “This is the most exciting concept in Japanese management since the discovery of lean,” says Bodek. “I will teach you how to teach your employees how to establish personal growth goals that are aligned with your organization’s goals,” says Bodek. “IBM used to ask new employees, ‘Where do you see yourself at IBM in 40 years?’ IBM wanted every employee to envision ways to grow on the job. Instead of waiting for managers to tell them what to do, your employees can be inspired to be self-reliant. Takashi Harada is a great genius like Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, and has already taught 55,000 people in Japan how to be successful.”

The course will be highly interactive. Bodek will lead the group, lecturing, teaching, and sharing the wealth of knowledge about the “human side of lean” that he has gained during the last three decades. Each workshop will include activities that will help participants understand and implement these tools in their own organization.

Be one of the first people in the United States to become certified to teach the Harada Method. Send an e-mail to Bodek at bodek@pcspress.com to be kept up to date with the details of the course.