New Webinar "A Day in the Life of a Lean Supervisor"

I invite you to please join me in a free webinar next week “A Day in the Life of a Lean Supervisor” hosted by Gemba Academy on April 4, 2012 at 1:00 pm – 2:00pm (USA-Central Time).

Click here to register.

In this webinar, I will help define standards of daily lean supervision and how to maintain these within your company's lean operating system. Also, I will discuss how supervisors can improve their own performance and promote lean just by focusing on the key needs shared by all employees. I will tell a few stories as examples, talk about a few simple tools and answer as many of your questions as possible.

Listening, Doing, Thinking

The more I listen, the more I know.
The more I do, the more I learn.
The more I think, the more I understand.

Bruce Lee as a Lean Sensei

Growing up I watched plenty of movies, with action movies being my favorite, especially good guy versus bad guy with the good guys always winning in the end with amazing skill, character, courage and perhaps a bit of luck or divine intervention depending on your beliefs. A favorite action hero of mine was Bruce Lee.

I watched in awe, the speed, grace and ability of Bruce Lee’s skill as a martial artist. Learning more about his life, as short as it was, I discovered that Bruce Lee was more than just a gifted martial artist and he actually studied drama and philosophy at the University of Washington.

Here are a few of my favorite Bruce Lee quotes that I find helpful as a source of inspiration:

“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

“It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”

“If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”Obey the principles without being bound by them.

“Fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

“Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do”

“Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.”

“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”

“A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at.”

“To grow, to discover, we need involvement which is something I experience everyday, sometimes good, sometimes frustrating.”

Influenced by Taoism and Buddhism along with his martial arts training, Bruce Lee developed his own set of beliefs and philosophy that challenged the status quo of traditional martial arts and formed his own style. Not only did he have a truly positive attitude and a dedicated spirit for self-improvement, Bruce Lee had some profound insights that we might apply to our lean journey as well as our life journey.