Book Review: Go for Third - Leadership Lessons from the Softball Field to the Workplace by Derek Volk
- Book Review
- February 23, 2026

Memorial Day has come to signify the start of summer for many Americans and is often celebrated with cookouts, family get-togethers, road races and concerts. But the real meaning of Memorial Day has, for too many Americans, gotten lost in holiday hoopla. Memorial Day is a day of reflection and remembrance. It is a day
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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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Today marks the 5th anniversary of A Lean Journey Blog and as tradition here each year I take the opportunity to reflect. The act of “self-reflection” is called Hansei is Japanese. It is the practice of continuous improvement that consists of looking back and thinking about how a process can be improved. I’d like to
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Today’s post marks a bit of a milestone for me, as this post is the 1,000th one since I started this blog back in May 2009. This is a big milestone for me as I’ve never seen myself as a writer and when I started, I wasn’t sure where it would lead. This blog is
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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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Value Stream Mapping is a foundational approach to visualizing your systems to optimize value through focused improvements. My good friend Karen Martin and Mike Osterling present a detailed guide to this approach in their book Value Stream Mapping. Karen and Mike attempt to address 3 common gaps in value stream mapping (VSM): 1) Unfamiliarity with
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