Lean Lessons from St. Patrick: A Saintly Guide to Continuous Improvement
- Leadership
- March 16, 2026

What I have come to realize more and more is how quickly our minds tend to judge life. I am not sure where it comes from; maybe it is from childhood, where we learn the separation of things. There is a Chinese Proverb that goes something like this… A farmer and his son had a
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On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on
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For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips. It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to
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An essential element in Lean thinking is Kaizen. Kaizen is the Japanese name for continuous improvement. While Kaizen is really about improvement involving everyone everyday it is often associated with a structured event. Kaizen events fill the gap between individual, very local improvement initiatives and bigger initiatives such as value stream improvement. They are essential to get cross-functional
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On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on
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Lean has been around since the late eighties/ early nineties, but despite the enormous popularity of Lean, the track record for successful implementation of the methodology is spotty at best. Companies still make mistakes when implementing Lean. These mistakes are generally due to simple misunderstandings of the Lean principles, but when something goes wrong, you
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