Gemba Academy Podcast: Lean Six Sigma | Toyota Kata | Productivity | Leadership

Ron Pereira: Lean Thinker & Co-Founder of Gemba Academy
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Improvement Learning, Improved.

  1. 3d ago

    GA 652 | Culture Before Technology with Hessam Vali

    Most lean practitioners know the theory of constraints. Fewer apply it before they start fixing things. Hessam Vali, a manufacturing consultant and MES software founder based in Wichita, argues that most improvement efforts fail because they target the wrong kinks in the hose. His framework is deceptively simple: if the deepest constraint is still in place, no one will ever see your work. In this episode you’ll learn: What “lean is constant ticking, not occasional kicking” actually demands (2:54) Why fixing the wrong problems leaves customers unable to see progress (7:24) How Rapid Plant Assessment and value stream mapping work together to find constraints (10:03) Why backsliding happens and how to catch it before it compounds (14:52) How checklists and behavior-level metrics detect process drift faster than control charts (18:34) Why technology without an operating system solves nothing (22:16) What AI should and should not be trusted to do in a lean environment (27:11) Why transformation gets worse before it gets better (30:13) The reason firefighting organizations cannot find time for kaizen (31:40) “You are doing firefighting because you’re not doing kaizens, because you’re not pausing, you’re not looking at it, you’re not fixing problem from the cause, and you’re not going to be out of that circle unless you change that behavior.” – Hessam Vali Keep Learning If Hessam’s point about finding the vital few constraints before launching improvement work resonated, the School of Lean covers the foundational tools for mapping value streams and surfacing the kinks worth fixing. Learn More About School of Lean at gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean Podcast Resources Hessam on LinkedIn Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? When your team is deep in firefighting, what does it take to carve out the time to step back and address the constraint that is feeding all those fires?

  2. Sep 24

    GA 651 | The Soup Stage of Transformation with Ben Morley

    Most resistance to lean is blamed on the wrong thing. Ben Morley, an Air Force pilot turned Lean Six Sigma consultant, argues the tools are never really the problem. The breakdown almost always lives somewhere between leadership buy-in and an assumption nobody thought to question. His conversation with Ron Pereira covers cockpit emergencies, a $5 million backlog that dissolved from a single customer phone call, and what a caterpillar turning to soup has to do with organizational transformation. In this episode you’ll learn: How a single quote reframes what transformation actually looks like (1:59) What flying C-17s across seven continents taught Ben about process discipline (3:26) How DMAIC and pilot training turn out to be the same methodology (7:44) Why skipping rigor in the define phase creates variation in the cockpit and the conference room (9:41) How preparation before an in-flight emergency keeps your hands moving while your mind stays clear (15:39) What to do when crossed arms and skepticism greet you on day one (20:41) Why values on the website and culture on the floor are two different things (22:34) When loyalty to a system that keeps you stuck is the real thing to diagnose (25:38) “Values are your belief. Culture is your behavior. Those are two different things.” – Ben Morley Keep Learning If the gap between what your organization says it believes and how people actually behave on the floor resonated with you, the School of Leadership addresses exactly that kind of culture-and-conduct disconnect. Learn More About School of Leadership at gembaacademy.com/leadership Podcast Resources Ben on LinkedIn Ben’s Website Caterpillar Soup at 30,000 Feet Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? Where in your own organization is dormancy being mistaken for absence of progress?

  3. Sep 17

    GA 650 | Train It Before You Trust It with David Osagie-Igiehon

    Most continuous improvement practitioners are using AI the same way they use Google, and getting roughly the same quality of results. David Osagie-Igiehon has taken a different approach. He builds custom agents trained on lean principles, CI methodology, and the specific knowledge domains his work demands, and the gap in output quality is significant. What he describes is less about automation and more about compressing the time it takes to do rigorous work. In this episode you’ll learn: How an accountant became a lead lean consultant and Master Black Belt candidate (2:41) What it means to use AI as a collaborative tool rather than a driving system (4:19) How building a custom AI agent named Dominique changed the pace of research (5:27) Why the quality of your prompt determines the quality of your output (7:27) How a properly structured prompt produced a 125-page governance document (11:23) Whether critical thinking can survive in a world built around AI tools (17:34) How to create a specialized AI agent trained on CI knowledge and methodology (20:46) What excites and concerns a lean and AI practitioner about where this technology is heading (29:51) Why the human review step is the part of the AI process you cannot skip (32:48) “Critical thinking would never disappear because people are superior than machines.” – David Osagie-Igiehon Keep Learning David describes reaching Master Black Belt as the foundation that lets him know whether an AI output is actually correct. If you want that same grounding before trusting AI-generated analysis of your own processes, structured Six Sigma training is where that foundation gets built. Learn More About School of Six Sigma at https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-six-sigma Podcast Resources David on LinkedIn Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? If you built a custom AI agent trained specifically on your company’s lean methodology and problem-solving approach, what would you want it to know first?

  4. Sep 10

    GA 649 | Accountability Starts in the Mirror with Michael Caito

    Most organizations have a strategy. Far fewer can actually execute one. Michael Caito built and sold a food delivery business decades before DoorDash existed, then spent years helping other companies close the gap between where leaders want to go and where they actually end up. His diagnosis is consistent: the gap is almost always an accountability problem, and accountability is almost always the leader’s problem first. The conversation with Ron covers what CEOs truly own, how to know whether you have a strategy issue or an execution issue, and why the cadence of your team meetings matters more than most leaders want to admit. In this episode you’ll learn: How focusing on what is vital applies the Pareto principle to business (2:24) Why the strategy-execution gap exists in most organizations (9:29) What five things a CEO truly owns in any business (10:55) When to make a people change and how to know you have waited too long (13:34) How an operating rhythm makes performance visible across the organization (15:34) Why monthly goal reviews beat quarterly check-ins for compounding results (17:28) The difference between leading indicators and result-based measurements (20:00) How to tell whether you have a strategy problem or an execution problem (22:44) What a struggling leader should do first before choosing a system or hiring a coach (26:39) “Performance is visible and the person that’s not performing or hitting their goals, they’re not gonna be comfortable working there.” – Michael Caito Keep Learning If Michael’s point about building a real management cadence around goal-setting and performance visibility resonated, the School of Leadership offers structured ways to develop exactly those skills across your organization. Learn More About School of Leadership at gembaacademy.com/leadership Podcast Resources Michael on LinkedIn Michael’s Website Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? When was the last time your team reviewed goals together in a structured monthly meeting, and what got in the way of making that a non-negotiable rhythm?

  5. Sep 3

    GA 648 | Discovering Lean in High School with Ted Pendergrass

    Most lean practitioners spend their careers trying to change the minds of adults who have been doing things the same way for decades. Ted Pendergrass decided to start earlier. Over 20 years coordinating a career technical education program at a California high school, he brought 5S, practical problem-solving, and Yellow Belt certification to students who had never heard of lean. The conversation covers what actually stuck, what surprised him, and what the rest of the lean community could do to help. In this episode you’ll learn: How a cabinet maker’s instinct for efficiency led to lean teaching (4:57) What happens when high schoolers 5S their Google Drives (6:57) Why practical problem solving opens students’ eyes more than any other unit (9:06) How student tours reveal whether lean is actually taking root (12:22) Why education is not the most lean process and what chunking has to do with it (13:34) How to teach students to use AI as a tool rather than a crutch (15:53) Why CTE programs are the right entry point for spreading lean (19:46) What a Yellow Belt certification does for a student in a job interview (21:51) How the California Partnership Academy model keeps students engaged and career-ready (24:18) Why getting companies inside schools changes what students believe is possible (29:00) What practitioners outside education can do to plant lean seeds in their communities (30:49) “If you have to ask if it’s good enough, it probably isn’t.” – Ted Pendergrass Keep Learning Ted’s seniors earned Yellow Belt certification as a capstone to a three-year lean program. If that kind of structured progression interests you for your own team or organization, the certification path is worth a close look. Learn More About Certifications at https://www.gembaacademy.com/solutions/certifications Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? If you had two hours with a classroom of high school students, which lean concept would you start with and why?

  6. Aug 27

    GA 647 | Making Sleep a Priority with Tim Thomas

    Most organizations measure productivity, absenteeism, and safety incidents without ever asking what all three have in common. Tim Thomas, a former Australian Special Forces soldier turned sleep specialist, argues the answer is sitting in plain sight at the bottom of every performance pyramid. The conversation moves from combat deployments in Afghanistan to corporate boardrooms, and the through line is the same: fatigue is an enemy that most leaders never name. In this episode you’ll learn: How the opposite of fear works and what that means for taking action (3:22) What Special Forces, veteran recovery, and corporate leadership have in common under pressure (9:36) Why leaders in a state of fatigue lose the bandwidth to lead well (10:29) How to build practical sleep habits that improve everything else (13:59) Why breathwork is not meditation and why that distinction matters (16:29) How the first five minutes of your morning shape the rest of your day (21:42) Why resilience lives in recovery rather than in relentless output (22:45) How measuring sleep quality could change the way companies define success (28:14) What a near-fatal ambush revealed about connection, intelligence, and not dying with a full magazine (31:23) “If you want to cut the amount of sick days you have in half, improve the quality sleep of the people that work there.” – Tim Thomas Keep Learning Tim’s performance pyramid puts rest and recovery at the foundation of everything else, and that same principle applies to the people leading improvement work on your floor or in your office. Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership Podcast Resources Tim on LinkedIn Breathwork in Bed Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? If sleep quality were a visible metric in your organization, what would it reveal about how your team is actually performing?

  7. Aug 20

    GA 646 | Connect Before You Correct with Royden Johnson and Luc van Merrienboer

    Culture shapes how people receive change, and nowhere is that clearer than on a shop floor where history, language, and moral authority all sit alongside the 5S board. Royden Johnson and Luc van Merrienboer bring two distinct lenses to that tension: Royden from years of leading continuous improvement in South Africa, and Luc from rolling out digital transformation across Asia and now the African continent. Their conversation with Ron covers resistance, influence, and what it actually takes to bring people along rather than drag them forward. In this episode you’ll learn: The cultural context of 5S in Asia and Africa (5:01) How 5S connects to every performance pillar in a manufacturing operation (9:43) What digital transformation actually looks like on a shop floor (13:04) Where their passion for continuous improvement comes from (15:42) How to use personal, social, and structural influencing strategies together (17:18) How to handle CAVE people without losing the rest of the team (19:29) Why unemployment history in South Africa shaped resistance to continuous improvement (25:32) What happened when a leader stopped pushing and started listening (27:28) How to speak, listen, and lead while keeping everyone’s dignity intact (31:50) Keep Learning If the discussion about moral authority, influencing strategies, and leading change on a diverse shop floor resonated with you, the School of Leadership offers structured ways to develop those same skills in your own context. Learn More About School of Leadership at gembaacademy.com/leadership Podcast Resources Royden on LinkedIn Luc on LinkedIn Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? When you have encountered a CAVE person in your organization, what shifted the dynamic?

  8. Aug 13

    GA 645 | Why Leadership Is Failing with Keith Wyche

    Trust in leadership has been declining for decades, and Keith Wyche has the research to prove it. A 40-year veteran of AT&T, IBM, and Walmart, Keith opened up to us about a few mistakes he’s made in his career. The real conversation here is what changed him, and what he thinks it will take to reverse the broader collapse. In this episode you’ll learn: How a career spanning AT&T, IBM, and Walmart shapes a leadership philosophy (2:26) Why a 15-year-old’s question became the catalyst for serious research (4:05) How the thirst for power quietly replaced the calling to serve (6:08) What happens when results become the only measure that matters (7:27) Why vulnerability is harder for leaders than it looks (10:42) How admitting a mistake in front of 30,000 employees built more trust than any win (11:08) How to rebuild trust one promise at a time (16:48) The difference between listening to defend and listening to understand (18:53) Why people never forget how a leader made them feel (20:42) “My successes may have inspired me, but my failures taught me.” – Keith Wyche Keep Learning If Keith’s point about creating followership through trust, listening, and character resonated with you, the School of Leadership is a practical place to build those same skills in yourself and your team. Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership Podcast Resources Keith on LinkedIn Uncommon Leadership Get All the Latest News from Gemba Academy Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news What Do You Think? When you listen in a conversation, are you listening to understand the other person, or are you already forming your response?

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