Lean Blog

Most NFL owners watch games from a luxury suite. Carlie Irsay-Gordon, the principal owner and CEO of the Indianapolis Colts, watches from the sideline near the bench, with a headset on and a notebook in her hand. She's been doing this for years, going back to when her father, Jim Irsay, owned the team. But after she took over in 2025, following his death at age 65, the sideli...

Another email arrives about a potential podcast guest. I haven't responded to the first pitch, but the sender wants to make sure it didn't get lost in my inbox. A few days later, there's another reminder. I don't necessarily object to the first pitch. Some publicists introduce me to interesting people for Lean Blog Interviews or My Favorite Mistake. But if I haven't responded...

Danaher has been one of the most cited Lean success stories in the United States for decades. The story usually starts at Jacobs Manufacturing (Jake Brake) in Connecticut in 1987, with Art Byrne, George Koenigsaecker, and the Shingijutsu consultants who had worked with Taiichi Ohno. What started there became the Danaher Business System, or DBS. A lot of people in the Lean com...

On Super Bowl Sunday in February, an 18-month-old boy was pulled from his family's pool in Gilbert, Arizona, and rushed to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. At 11:52 p.m., staff from the medical examiner's office arrived to transport him. They found him breathing in the hospital morgue. He was flown to Phoenix Children's Hospital. According to ...

Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. Today's Mixtape is about slowing down long enough to see the problem clearly before jumping to a fix. Highlights include Steve...