Sublime

The root cause of the turnaround was the discovery and application of the principle that management must focus on improving systems, not in performing the work or in repeatedly snuffing out brushfires. In short, quality products or services, a stable staff, and profitability are the result of the quality systems that produce them, not the reverse.

See Charlie Kiefer’s cameo “Executive Team Leadership,” (page 435).

In all reinforcing processes, as in the bank account, a small change builds on itself.

“A critical part of the Second Way is making wait times visible, so you know when your work spends days sitting in someone’s queue—or worse, when work has to go backward, because it doesn’t have all the parts or requires rework.

people take turns as the facilitator

applies to teams working across functions, joint ventures between organizations, union-management battles, suppliers and manufacturers,

“We find outstanding professionals, and we give them the freedom and support to do what they do best”

CHAPTER 7 WHAT DISTINGUISHES A STRAIGHT-LINE LEADER?

Manufacturers soldiered on, trying to fix the problem as best as they could. They added extra inventory, inspectors, and rework stations to manage all the problems that the assembly line unfailingly generated. But with these fixes, unfortunately, costs and complexity ballooned. The processes they created simply mitigated the problems, but they were