Lean and Toyota Kata require exceptional communication skills, which is why my session at NE ShingoPrized conference and my joint session with Toyota Kata (TK) Author Mike Rother were so popular. People tend to resist change, even when what they are doing isn’t working. People also resist change when what they are doing IS working, but might be open to improvement. Continuous improvement (CI) doesn’t wait for things to break to fix them. Lean/CI/Tk are based on a paradigm shift, and often where things fall down in practice is in translating lean thinking into lean speaking.
Dwight Bowen, Continuous Improvement Manager for GBMP remarked that my joint session with Mike Rother was “probably the best session he had ever attended”. That’s because we took the theory to a very practical level that people could relate to.