Lean Blog Interviews — 221: Jacob Stoller, “The Lean CEO”

My guest for episode #221 is Jacob Stoller, author of a book that was just released: The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence. It’s available now through Amazon or you can learn more through his book’s website. As Jacob explains, he’s a journalist, not a Lean practitioner, and he interviewed CEOs across different industries to get their thoughts on Lean management. We discuss topics including how CEOs get exposed to Lean thinking, why humility is so important, what “respect for people” means in the Lean context, and reasons why more CEOs don’t embrace Lean. Did Six Sigma and Dr. Deming come up in his interviews? You’ll also hear a bit about Bob Brody, the CEO at Franciscan St. Francis Health, which was featured in my Healthcare Kaizen books. For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/221. Podcasts are sponsored by KaiNexus and their continuous improvement software platform — www.KaiNexus.com