
Life in Japan: Omotenashi – the spirit of Japan’s customer service & hospitality
In October, 2016 I went on a one-week trip to Tokyo to attend a traditional Japanese Shinto wedding ceremony and visit the city that I
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How can you create an effective top down and bottom up connected management system? The practices of strategy deployment, Training Within Industry, and coaching at all levels can help! I’m...
A vision realized….and continues! Just three weeks ago, I was in the midst of leading a week of learning, culture, and fun with a fabulous group of 17 lean practitioners...
What do creativity, service excellence, and problem solving have in common? A lot! I’m excited to share this interview with my friend Karyn Ross about her new book How to...
Goal complete: developing people and an incredible immersive leadership and cultural learning tour for my Chain of Learning! I was happy to be back in Japan in early 2019 for...
I cannot believe that we just passed the four year anniversary of when I moved to Japan for 18 months and started writing this blog. Both the blog and website...
It’s the beginning of another new year and a time when many of us reflect on the prior year and set intentions and goals for the next year. I just...
How strong is your habit to reflect or to “study-adust” as part of the Plan-Do-Study-Adjust cycle? If you are like most people, myself included, your natural tendency is to jump...
One might expect that all restaurants in Japan are operated with lean principles, but as I quickly learned when my family moved to Japan nearly four years ago, lean thinking...
Gemba Academy just published a podcast that I recorded with Ron Pereira at the AME Conference in San Diego a month ago. Ron and I recorded our first podcast together...
What are you doing six months from today? I’ll be kicking off the next installment of the KBJ Anderson Japan Lean Study Trip! Come join me and other passionate lean...
Highlights from the Netherlands with Isao Yoshino In 2018, I had fabulous opportunity to visit Netherlands for two different events, along Isao Yoshino – my friend, mentor, and partner in...
Have you ever found yourself asking yourself, “I can’t tell if these numbers mean we are better better or worse?”, or reacting in joy or dismay that this week your...

In October, 2016 I went on a one-week trip to Tokyo to attend a traditional Japanese Shinto wedding ceremony and visit the city that I

Using A3 thinking to coach for personal development In previous posts, I’ve walked through the value of using A3 thinking to coach for personal development

New Book: The Toyota Way to Service Excellence Earlier this summer, Jeff Liker reached out to me to see if I would be interested in

Quality improvement approaches in Japanese hospitals It probably surprises many Westerners, where books such as Lean Hospitals by Mark Graban and organizations such as Thedacare and Virginia

My latest article for the Lean Post titled “Summit Reflections: Knowing What You Need to Improve” was just published! In it, I reflect some questions that

You may have asked yourself: “Does every problem require an A3?” Maybe even you’ve asked: “What is an A3?” Or: “What are A3 problem-solving tools?”

Two weeks ago I saw an article in the Japan Times titled: “Nagoya hospital taps Toyota’s famed workflow to reduce staff errors”. My interest was

How should I start coaching using the personal A3 process? Many of you have reached out to me after I published the first post in this

A3 thinking for problem-solving is a well-known process in the Lean community, but did you realize that it can be a powerful process for personal

I just spent most of this week unloading boxes of our life from the sea container that just arrived form Japan and the storage unit of everything

I just came back from presenting at the 5th Annual Lean Coaching Summit held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last week. This Summit was the third consecutive

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve become a bit obsessed with collecting Daruma dolls. Before I left Japan in June, I bought nearly 100 Darumas
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