The Lean Marketing Divide: From Push to Pull

The story of the Israeli-Syrian holding battles in the 1973 Yom Kippur War shows that even in the heat of a crisis you can adapt to changing conditions on the ground. What can the healthcare system learn from the...

An open letter in reply to Carl Icahn’s appeal to HP’s shareholders A hostile takeover business model In a letter to HP Inc.’s shareholders, to which he recently added an improved offer, corporate raider Carl Icahn offered to use...

The test of an innovation’s quality is the clarity of its purpose, not its technical sophistication   “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”       Thomas Edison Christensen’s code What is innovation? Who is an...

Lean Thinking and Digital Technology improve the performance of the traditional printing houses – as it prepares for the print of the 21st century The digital print revolution will change our life style. The day is not far away...

If he wants to save Boeing, David Calhoun, the new CEO, will have to first find, then air out, and then make use of the map that Alan Mulally had drawn. One day after the 9/11 2001 attacks, sales...

The winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics are researchers whose work focuses of the problem of world poverty in a way that has much in common with Lean thinking. The results are also the same: finding useful...

Sustainable organizational change is created within an organization – not on its ruins.  Therefore, the change must be accomplished in small steps, known as a Minimum Viable Change (MVC) but these incremental changes also require resources and conceptual flexibility....

A. Moralizing for Pain Relief In great pain from his right molar, a person comes to his dentist. The doctor sits him down on the treatment chair, pulls out a set of illustrations of proper brushing and pictures of...

How can mid-level managers – the most dedicated conformists – be transformed into innovative intra-organizational entrepreneurs who are partners in leading the change that will disrupt and redesign their position? “What Can Be Done About the Glass Floor?” With...

The methodology of “process consultation”, designed by Edgar Schein, serves the ILE team as we support and guide our customer-partners through a Lean transformation process. In order to make the principles of this system available to all, as well...

When the fire breaks out – which happens every day in a chaotic environment – intense courage and patience are required in order to stop and invest managerial energies in building new work processes and adopting a new management...

A System Dragged into Chaos The information and technology (IT) unit at “Waterfall” (not the company’s real name) was flooded with demands for development of new products.  A long line of projects was waiting at the IT “Projects Gate”,...

Metaphors define the way in which we think about and act in the world.  We often think about an organization as if it were a machine, but it is time to imagine an organization as a living organism, with...

Can an organization and its decision-making processes be managed under conditions of extreme uncertainty? The chaos surrounding us demands that we forgo our obsessive attempt to control events and learn to view chaos and the tensions evoked as an...

Hospitals have made themselves so unwieldy as to be virtually unmanageable, yet the technological revolution and the transformation into a global village provide opportunities for alternative managerial paradigms that put the patients – and not the organization structure – ...

“Be the change you want to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi) Being a Lean Facilitator Hillel says, “Do not judge your fellow until you have reached his place” (Sayings of the Fathers 2:4). The work of the Lean...

There is no inherent value in an unrealized idea, a purpose that has not been translated into action, or a vision that has not been transformed into a way of life. This is also true for the world-wide Lean...

Working with an A3 system is like constructing a story.  This is how a safe space to examine conflict and its sources – and identify the roots of the problem – is created. Accessible, Simple, and Effective Problem-solving is...

In most organizations, the high proportion of waste provides an almost infinite source of possibilities for improvement.  Thus, ignorance or no-problem is necessarily a bad thing – rather, it should be thought of as a gap between what is...

The evolution of ideas as an accepted paradigm and basic assumption in organizational culture.  “And he misses that feeling of creating from out of something. Yes, from out of something.  Because to create from out of nothing is to...

This month, I had the privilege of visiting Shanghai, China, to lecture on the topic of “Managing to Invent” at the Chinese Lean Institute’s annual conference.  I opened my talk with an invitation:  I called on the audience to...

The lectures presented by Professor Ezekiel Emanuel were jointly coordinated by ILE and the Assaf Ha’rofeh Medical Center Professor Ezekiel J. Emanuel – oncologist and the vice-president of the Bio-Ethical Institute at Philadelphia University – presents the deep crisis...

During his visit to Israel, Professor Emanuel took part in ILE’s activities, in cooperation with the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, and shared his insights and visions for a revolution in the health system in the United States.

All too often, the relationship between (fixed) standardized work and (flexible) creativity is viewed as if it were a snail’s attempt to convince a bird that it’s better to crawl on the ground.  The truth is: Standardized work is...

The rise and fall of organizations does not depend on chance or bad luck. It generally stems from a fundamentally flawed strategic approach that fails to define a purpose, alienates workers and ignores customers. This post was also published...

Organizations that intend to survive over time must give up their aggressive push marketing (advertising and PR) methods and replace them with a selection of products and services that are suited to the customer’s wants and needs. “But this...