Jim Benson

Collaborative management consultant and author

Jim Benson is the creator and co-author (with Tonianne DeMaria) of the best seller Personal Kanban (Modus Cooperandi Press, 2011) winner of the Shingo Research and Publication Award, 2013. His other books include Why Limit WIP (Modus Cooperandi, 2014), Why Plans Fail (Modus Cooperandi, 2014), and Beyond Agile (Modus Cooperandi Press, 2013). He is a winner of the Shingo Award for Excellence in Lean Thinking, and the Brickell Key Award. Benson and DeMaria teach online at Modus Institute and consult regularly, helping clients in all verticals create working systems. Benson regularly keynotes conferences, focusing on making work rewarding and humane.

Mon, 08/30/2021 - 12:02
Five Ways to Focus and FinishThe tyranny of the urgent often distracts us from what is truly important
Mon, 09/25/2017 - 12:01
Focusing on our most important work (so that we can get it out the door and create value) is hard. It’s harder still when work suddenly picks up, is unfamiliar, or arrives with immediate deadlines when we are already busy. The tyranny of the…
How Many Options Do You Have?A <em>kanban</em> exercise for clarity
Mon, 07/24/2017 - 12:01
The other day I was driving down Point Brown Road in Ocean Shores, Washington. Ocean Shores is a small town with almost no economic base. If you live there, you are likely a retiree or work in one of the restaurants or hotels that serve the…
Finding Our Own Value—Growing by UnderstandingTracking learning, creating, and health
Tue, 06/13/2017 - 12:03
There are those days where your personal kanban is on fire. You’re in a state of flow and tickets are just moving right along. The days go by and you look at your “done” column… it’s full. Really, really full. The “done” tickets seem to swim.…
Distributed Teams, Not Distributed SilosFive elements that improve clarity and collaboration
Thu, 03/30/2017 - 12:01
The notion of a successful distributed team seems like a wonderful yet unobtainable dream. But stop and think: How often are your nondistributed teams successful? When have they been successful, and why? It’s never because of your plan, or because…
Business Starts With Social and Succeeds With RespectSystems thinking is almost always exactly the right thing to do
Wed, 01/18/2017 - 12:01
If you are reading this, you are likely human. Congratulations; I’m human, too. Everyday we all wake up and wonder what the day will bring. We wonder who we will meet, what conversations we will have, and what we will do. We all want to do things…
Get Work Done and Stay HealthyDevelop healthy habits to keep from burning out
Tue, 11/29/2016 - 18:08
I’ve been watching myself. Asking myself why do I do certain things? Why do I lose track of time? I’ve combined a few regimens that have calmed me down, increased my effectiveness, and made me feel healthier. I’ve created for myself things that…
How to Prioritize When There Is No PriorityWhen everything seems equally important, it’s time to start asking questions
Wed, 09/07/2016 - 14:14
Prioritization is stressful. We find ourselves prematurely making value decisions about what to pull and when (right now!). Recently a client asked, “How can I prioritize my work when there is no clear priority? Everything seems equally important…
Dealing With Cans of WormsLimiting work in progress allows you to handle surprises in the workload
Wed, 05/18/2016 - 16:20
We are all cursed with “surprises” at work. We come in, sit down, get ready for the day. We select a task to start on, and about halfway through, it explodes on us. The seemingly simple task now has 30 subtasks all lined up, ready to destroy our…
Consulting and Learning Are Mutually InclusiveSolving problems and knowing the answers are not the same thing
Mon, 03/14/2016 - 17:43
When you are a consultant, or worse yet, seen as a thought leader, people hire you expecting that you’ll know “the answers.” At best, what you actually know are paths to make sense of problems, communicate them, and then solve them. No consultant…
Finding Hidden WIPIt’s right in front of your eyes but disguised
Wed, 07/15/2015 - 10:22
Limiting work in process (WIP) isn’t easy. Our work is largely invisible, which means it’s hard to notice. It just walks right up, bold and unabashed. It doesn’t have to sneak; we’re simply blind to it. Then, one day, we notice it’s there. During…