Secret Sauce and Magic Fairy Dust

I love this quote from Eiji Toyoda, by way of Jon Miller's Gemba Panta Rei blog post, The Man Who Saved Kaizen:

On Toyota's secret sauce:

"Ultimately, there are no special secret strategies to the Toyota Production System. We are just doing the obvious things, thoroughly, without omission, as a habit. This is simple, but difficult to do consistently across large organizations."

Reminds me of what Mr. Nagamatsu of Shingijutsu shared with us years ago while at Tektronix-Danaher:  "There is no magic fairy dust!"

That said, what I've found if you do the basic (obvious) things thoroughly, without omission, as a habit, then 'magic' happens!  .....there's just no bottle for it.

Casey Neistat--Lean Rockstar (and Movie Maker)

I've watched a few (OK, many/most) of this guy's videos on YouTube, and I must say I like his stuff and generally his approach to life (from what I can tell).

It wasn't until I saw "Casey's Neistat's Wildly Functional Studio" that the Lean connection hit me.  Check it out:

He gets it:

Visual management (at a glance.....dare I say "5S")........check.
"Moonshining" (i.e. making things yourself from what you have readily available).....check.
--Not letting perfect get in the way of better.....check.
--Creativity before capital.......check.
and more.....
Oh, and don't forget.......Being cool..............................check.


Similarly, lots of Lean-ness with "Emergency Brake":



You can check out more of his stuff at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat
http://caseyneistat.com/

Lean Police?

There are many angles to this one--both Lean and Six Sigma.  I bet this police officer would be great at leading Lean Transformation.  Talk about leading "as if" you have no authority (even when you really do).


Thanks to a Facebook friend of mine for sending this link out (months ago)!