Its Stuart here from People Centred Excellence. On a recent Lean Academy I was delivering, delegates had been reading the excellent  Learning to lead at Toyota, a Harvard Business Review article from 2004, written by Steven J Spear.

People Centred Excellence today announced the launch of its Advanced Lean Coach Training programme. The Advanced Lean Coach course is tailored specifically for lean and CI professionals looking to take their skillset to be operational at a truly strategic level in organisations and offers a way for those already qualified to LCS Level 1c – or those with significant prior experience – to gain LCS Level 2a, the next step up on the Lean Competency framework.

Hello everyone, Mike here from People Centred Excellence. I hope everyone is keeping well in these unprecedented times.

Have you read Katie Anderson’s new book, ‘Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn’ yet? If you have – or at least started it – you will know what a profoundly interesting and exciting addition it is to Business Improvement literature. If you haven’t bought it yet, you must. Seriously.

Imagine the scene, you’re on your daily commute to work, you have a list of things that you plan to do today. All prepared, calm and relishing the day ahead.

Hello everyone, Stuart here. In our latest PCE blog, I’m talking about the problem with problems. I’d welcome your thoughts and experiences of effective and not so effective Problem-solving, so please join the debate. I hope you enjoy this article.

Some of you may already know that I am a big fan of Lean Kata, probably one of the least understood – yet powerful – improvement approaches (not a tool, definitely not a tool) used by Toyota. Its lack of ‘popularity’ and uptake, especially in the UK, is a mystery to me and many others.

Sounds pretty dramatic doesn’t it? But that was exactly my principle take away from attendance at the recent 25th Anniversary LERC Conference at Cardiff Business School. Dan Jones was the keynote speaker. He looked really well – despite his admittance that he’d suffered some ill health recently – and he was in fine form nonetheless!

I first became aware of the process of Kata in 2004, when I was a Group Leader at Toyota’s Assembly Plant in Derby in the UK. Except I don’t recall it being called ‘kata’ or even that I was being coached through a structured process – it was just how things were done there!