# Kevin Meyer > Ruminations on life, leadership, lean, and zen. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### Home URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/home-6872d800fd8b84001bce64ff/ Last updated: 2014-04-19T05:56:12.000Z _No content available._ ### Bio URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bio/ Last updated: 2026-05-26T17:48:24.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/d1df95b01d141139.jpeg) *"If you seek tranquility, do less, better." - Marcus Aurelius* I retired in early 2023 and now enjoy reading, pickleball, [cooking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/), beach walks, [traveling](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/travel/), and exploring a wide range of topics including lean methodologies, AI, and consciousness research. My wife and I live in Morro Bay, California, and have visited over 70 countries. *"Go see, ask why, show respect." - Fujio Cho, former chairman of Toyota.* I remain active as a partner and investor at [Central Coast Ventures](https://centralcoast.ventures/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), where I mentor new startup founders in collaboration with CalPoly's [SLO Hothouse](https://cie.calpoly.edu/hothouse?ref=kevinmeyer.com) startup incubator. I serve on a few boards and occasionally guest lecture at CalPoly and Rensselaer on lean, leadership, and supply chain topics, though I prefer meaningful one-on-one discussions. *"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki* For over thirty years I held executive engineering and operations leadership roles primarily in medical devices, with additional experience in telecom, automotive lighting, and food processing. My primary focus was on applying lean concepts to manufacturing and leadership. I co-founded [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in 2009, which became the largest provider of online lean and six sigma training to over 2,000 organizations worldwide before its acquisition by Forum Media Group in 2022. Prior roles included President of Specialty Silicone Fabricators, a multi-site manufacturer of silicone components primarily for medical devices, acquired by Trelleborg AB. Before that I was Director of Operations at Newport Corporation's photonics division, where our team rapidly scaled output of laser diode test equipment from $500k to $5M per month in nine months. I spent a decade at Abbott Laboratories in various operations and engineering positions manufacturing drug infusion pumps and advanced sensor catheters. I began my professional career at Sylvania where I earned four [patents](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/patents/) for automotive lighting products. I hold a BS in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with additional studies at Stanford and the University of Michigan. For additional details about my background and experience, please visit my [LinkedIn profile](https://www.linkedin.com/in/meyerkl/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). ### Books URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/books/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T11:28:07.000Z ![The Simple Leader](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/size/w400/2025/08/cover-simpleleader.jpg) ### [The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen](https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Lean manufacturing principles, also known as the Toyota Production System, are very effective at streamlining and reducing waste in organizations. Zen concepts can help create a calm, peaceful, and focused personal life. Over the last three decades I have discovered the power of lean and Zen, and have found how the concepts are remarkably complementary to one another. This book describes, with short summaries, how the concepts can be used to simplify personal and professional leadership, thereby reducing chaos and stress while improving effectiveness and balance. --- ![Beyond the Interface Cover](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/size/w400/2025/09/beyond-the-interface-cover.jpg) ### [Beyond the Interface: How the Intersections of New Science Are Starting to Explain the Unexplainable](https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Interface-Intersections-Starting-Unexplainable/dp/B0FNN2J78D/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Breakthrough discoveries in neuroscience, quantum physics, consciousness research, and artificial intelligence are creating new frameworks for investigating the unexplained. From the predictive brain that constructs reality moment by moment to quantum entanglement that defies classical intuition, from AI systems that mirror human cognition to mystical experiences mapped by brain imaging—cutting-edge science is expanding our conception of what's possible. --- [Sacred Editors](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) is a multi-volume exploration of how sacred texts from the world's major religions were shaped—not only by divine inspiration, but by human hands. Across history, scribes, scholars, rulers, and reformers made critical decisions about what to include, what to translate, and what to suppress. This series traces those decisions—canon by canon, faith by faith—revealing how theology, politics, preservation, and power have all played a role in creating the scriptures we know today. ![Sacred Editors series](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/size/w800/2025/08/sacrededitorsbooks-2.png) ### [Sacred Editors: Christianity](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMW3V79?ref=kevinmeyer.com) From the Gospels of Thomas and Mary to the Book of Revelation, this volume traces how a diverse and chaotic swirl of early Christian texts became a single Bible. It explores battles over canon, translation, and authority—revealing how bishops, emperors, and scribes shaped Christian Scripture as much as apostles and martyrs. ### [Sacred Editors: Judaism](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMSZ38V?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Long before the Hebrew Bible was finalized, Jewish communities wrestled with competing scrolls, regional variants, and sacred memory shaped by exile and empire. This volume follows the evolution of Torah and Tanakh—from Elephantine to the Dead Sea Scrolls—and the editorial choices that defined Jewish textual tradition. ### [Sacred Editors: Islam](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMWYQS1?ref=kevinmeyer.com) The Qur'an is revered by Muslims as the unaltered word of God—yet even within early Islamic history, questions arose about recitation, preservation, and transmission. This book respectfully explores the complex human history of how the Qur'an and its interpretive traditions were preserved, taught, and standardized. ### [Sacred Editors: Hinduism](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMWYHWW?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Hindu sacred texts span millennia, from ancient Vedic chants to epic narratives and philosophical commentaries. This volume investigates how oral transmission, sectarian priorities, and poetic vision shaped the evolving canon of Hinduism—while spotlighting both preservation and innovation across time. ### [Sacred Editors: Buddhism](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMZHRW8?ref=kevinmeyer.com) From palm-leaf sutras to stone inscriptions and Silk Road scrolls, Buddhist texts have undergone extraordinary journeys. This book traces how different schools and regions preserved—or lost—sacred teachings, and how editorial transmission became central to defining Buddhist identity across Asia. ### [Sacred Editors: Lost Texts](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FL2TZ8YC?ref=kevinmeyer.com) War, fire, colonization, and decay have destroyed more sacred texts than survive today. This volume recounts the dramatic stories of what was lost—and what was miraculously recovered—across religious traditions. It reminds us that preservation is never guaranteed, and memory always contested. ### [Sacred Editors: Lost Women](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FL2XMBNP?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Behind every sacred tradition are women who taught, led, composed, and were later erased. This volume uncovers the lost voices of female prophets, apostles, scribes, and interpreters—asking not just what they said, but what their exclusion has cost our spiritual history. --- ![Beatitudes Path Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/size/w400/2025/08/cover-beatitude.jpg) ### [The Beatitudes Path](https://www.amazon.com/Beatitudes-Path-Interfaith-Exploration-Blessings/dp/B0FKMM9Q72/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) An interfaith journey through the eight blessings of Jesus, this book explores each Beatitude with reflections from Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Blending scripture, commentary, story, and practice, it offers a weeklong rhythm of sacred reflection for daily life. --- ![Harleigh Knott Cover](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/size/w400/2025/08/cover-christmas.jpg) ### [Christmas Greetings from a Remarkable Life](https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Greetings-Remarkable-Harleigh-Thayer/dp/1095555936/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) A biography of our long-time neighbor, Harleigh Knott. Harleigh Thayer Knott was born in Morro Bay, California in 1929 and died in the same house in Morro Bay in 2019\. Between those two milestones was a remarkable life that included an education at Stanford and traveling throughout the world. She developed deep interests in topics ranging from opera to history, polo, Indy car racing, and even frogs. Harleigh wrote an annual Christmas letter to her friends and family to keep them updated on her adventures. These letters went into considerable detail with a humorous and captivating style. ### Connect URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/connect/ Last updated: 2025-07-13T03:17:23.000Z Connect with Kevin: - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/meyerkl?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Email, phone, and the contact form have been removed due to excessive spam. Sorry for the inconvenience. ### Patents URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/patents/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T22:21:46.000Z In my early career I was lucky enough to get a few patents, three of which are for a design still used in auto headlights today and one of which is still used in many emergency lighting systems. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/patentcapsules-1.png) United States Patent 4,912,360 - Lamp With Two Internal Capsules Abstract: A double filamented lamp with one filament being a back up for the other filament may be formed with two internal capsules enclosed in a single exterior sheath. Each filament is securely positioned away from, and protected from the activity of the other filament. By securely coupling one capsule to the sheath, and the second capsule to the lamp base, both capsules are accurately positioned, and do not vibrate in the exterior sheath. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/patentsnap-1.png) United States Patent 4,982,131 - Reflector Lamp Assembly Utilizing Lamp Capsule That Snaps Directly Into Reflector United States Patent 4,982, 132 - Reflector Lamp Assembly Utilizing Reflector That Snaps Into Connector United States Patent 5,119,282 - Reflector Lamp Assembly Utilizing Lens That Snaps Into Reflector Abstract: A lamp assembly includes a lamp capsule, a reflector, an electrical connector and a lens. The lamp capsule includes a lamp envelope having a base portion, and the reflector includes an opening for receiving the base portion of the lamp envelope. The reflector is fabricated of a resilient material such as a high temperature thermoplastic or thermosetting plastic. The base portion of the lamp capsule and the reflector include lamp introducing elements which mechanically lock the lamp capsule in the reflector. The lamp interlocking elements preferably position the center of light output of the lamp capsule at the focal point of the reflector. The connector and a neck portion of the reflector include connector interlocking elements which mechanically lock the connector to the reflector. The lens and the outer rim of the reflector include integral lens interlocking elements which mechanically lock and position the lens on the reflector. ### Blog URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/ Last updated: 2025-07-15T11:35:53.000Z _No content available._ ### Annual Bhāvanā URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/annual-bhavana/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:09:56.000Z **Bhāvanā*: A yearly cultivation of the self through one ambitious, reflective goal—physical, mental, or spiritual.* For over 30 years I've tried to identify one major goal to accomplish each year that is outside of my comfort zone. When I was younger these goals were more physical, but lately they have become primarily intellectual. In some cases they have radically changed the trajectory of my career and even life. Many of these goals are very personal, but some of the ones I can share are: **2026**: Cook a traditional dish, with appropriate sides, from a different country each week, with a goal of 30 (to account for vacations and conflicts). [Here are the recipes!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/) **2025**: A deep dive into AI, which ended up comparing multiple platforms and testing them in a variety of use cases from cooking to a football pool, investing and financial management, and even writing [a series of books](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on the history of ancient religious texts - an interest that grew out of my 2014 bhavana. **2019**: Learn how to grow cannabis, legally. **2017**: Remodel a house from the studs up. Patience, patience... **2016**: Read a novel from an author from a different country every month. **2015**: Write and publish a book - [The Simple Leader](https://www.thesimpleleader.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). **2014**: Deep dive into the history of the Bible. The stories of politics, translation errors, and intentional revisions would make for a good documentary. **2013**: Deep dive into the history and practice of Buddhism, including a trip to Bhutan. I'm not Buddhist, but I wanted to learn about it. **2011**: Run a full marathon - accomplished with the San Diego Rock 'n Roll Marathon. **2006**: Lose 30 pounds, safely, consistently. And it's stayed off. **2003**: Learn to sell digital products online. Gave me the background for the eventual Gemba Academy. **1997**: Learn to code HTML, which turned into Superfactory, a precursor to Gemba Academy. **1995**: Learn and become proficient at windsurfing. **1993**: Learn and become proficient at scuba diving. **1988**: Rebuild a '73 Triumph Spitfire. Like working on a lawn mower. ### Travel URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/travel/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T10:00:44.000Z We love to travel and have visited over 70 countries. Here are some of our favorite itineraries. 1. Antigua: [The Beaches of Antigua](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-beaches-of-antigua/) 2. Argentina: [A Week of Relaxation, Culture, and Culinary Delights](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/buenos-aires-revisited-a-week-of-relaxation-culture-and-culinary-delights/) | [Patagonian Dreams and Andean Lakes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/argentina-and-chile-patagonian-dreams-and-andean-lakes/) 3. Aruba: [Windsurfing Aruba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/windsurfing-aruba/) 4. Australia: [From Tasmania's Wilderness to the Great Ocean Road](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/australia-discovery-from-tasmanias-wilderness-to-the-great-ocean-road/) 5. Belize: [A Week at the Turtle Inn in Belize](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thanksgiving-in-paradise-a-week-at-turtle-inn-belize/) 6. Bhutan: [Bhutan & Nepal - Himalayan Kingdoms of Beauty and Spirituality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bhutan-nepal-himalayan-kingdoms-of-beauty-and-spirituality/) 7. Bosnia & Herzegovina: [Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Slovenia Journey](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/croatia-montenegro-bosnia-slovenia-journey-contrasting-paths-in-post-yugoslav-europe/) 8. Cambodia: [Southeast Asian Grand Tour - Thailand, Cambodia, and Hong Kong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-grand-tour-thailand-cambodia-and-hong-kong/) 9. Canada: [Canadian Rockies Adventure - Banff and Jasper](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/canadian-rockies-adventure-banff-and-jasper-in-post-covid-solitude/) 10. Chile: [Patagonia Dreams and Andean Lakes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/argentina-and-chile-patagonian-dreams-and-andean-lakes/) 11. China: Work trips 12. Costa Rica: [Tropical Paradise and Wildlife Wonderland](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/costa-ricas-guanacaste-province-tropical-paradise-and-wildlife-wonderland/) 13. Croatia: [Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Slovenia Journey](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/croatia-montenegro-bosnia-slovenia-journey-contrasting-paths-in-post-yugoslav-europe/) 14. Cuba: [Cuba Discovered - A Journey Through Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cuba-discovered-a-journey-through-time/) 15. Denmark: [Three Weeks in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark, and the Ranking I Got Wrong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-weeks-in-finland-estonia-sweden-and-denmark-and-the-ranking-i-got-wrong/) 16. Dominica: [The Nature Island's Untouched Caribbean Beauty](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dominica-the-nature-islands-untouched-caribbean-beauty/) 17. Ecuador: [Exploring Quito and Colonial Cuenca](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ecuador-revisited-exploring-quito-and-colonial-cuenca/) 18. Estonia: [Three Weeks in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark, and the Ranking I Got Wrong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-weeks-in-finland-estonia-sweden-and-denmark-and-the-ranking-i-got-wrong/) 19. Finland: [Three Weeks in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark, and the Ranking I Got Wrong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-weeks-in-finland-estonia-sweden-and-denmark-and-the-ranking-i-got-wrong/) 20. France: [One Epic Journey - Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-mediterranean-islands-one-epic-journey-sicily-sardinia-corsica/) 21. Galapagos: [A Week in the Galapagos: Wildlife, Wonder, and What They Don't Tell You in the Brochures](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-week-in-the-galapagos-wildlife-wonder-and-what-they-dont-tell-you-in-the-brochures/) 22. Germany: Work trips 23. Greece: [Santorini, Paros, Mykonos, and Athens](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/our-perfect-greek-island-hopping-adventure-santorini-paros-mykonos-athens/) | [Crete: Two Bases, One Civilization, and a Kid Problem](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/crete-two-bases-one-civilization-and-a-kid-problem/) | [5 Days on Rhodes, Including a Great Laundry](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-days-on-rhodes-including-a-great-laundry/) 24. Hong Kong: [Southeast Asian Grand Tour - Thailand, Cambodia, and Hong Kong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-grand-tour-thailand-cambodia-and-hong-kong/) 25. Iceland: [A Nearly Perfect Iceland Ring Road Itinerary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-nearly-perfect-iceland-ring-road-itinerary/) 26. India: [India's Golden Triangle and Singapore](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/indias-golden-triangle-and-singapore-from-ancient-wonders-to-modern-marvels/) 27. Italy: [One Epic Journey - Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-mediterranean-islands-one-epic-journey-sicily-sardinia-corsica/) 28. Japan: [Japan Kaikaku Experience](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/japan-kaikaku-experience-the-summary/) | [Kyoto in Winter: A Perfect Week of Temples, Culture, and Culinary Art](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kyoto-in-winter-a-perfect-week-of-temples-culture-and-culinary-art/) 29. Laos: [Southeast Asian Sojourn - A Perfect Thailand and Laos Itinerary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-sojourn-a-perfect-thailand-and-laos-itinerary/) 30. Malta: [Malta: The Mediterranean Stop We Underestimated](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/malta-mediterranean-underestimated/) 31. Martinique: [Bananas on the Runway](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/martinique-bananas-on-the-runway/) 32. Mexico: [Christmas in Mexico City - A Cultural and Culinary Adventure](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/christmas-in-mexico-city-a-cultural-and-culinary-adventure/) 33. Montenegro: [Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Slovenia Journey](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/croatia-montenegro-bosnia-slovenia-journey-contrasting-paths-in-post-yugoslav-europe/) 34. Morocco: [Portugal, Spain & Morocco - From Lisbon's Hills to Marrakech's Souks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/portugal-spain-morocco-from-lisbons-hills-to-marrakechs-souks/) 35. Mozambique: [African Adventure - South Africa, Mozambique & Tanzania](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/african-adventure-south-africa-mozambique-tanzania-safari/) 36. Nepal: [Bhutan & Nepal - Himalayan Kingdoms of Beauty and Spirituality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bhutan-nepal-himalayan-kingdoms-of-beauty-and-spirituality/) 37. Panama: [Panama Christmas - Engineering Marvels and Holiday Giving](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/panama-christmas-engineering-marvels-and-holiday-giving/) 38. Peru: [Peru Return - Sharing Childhood Memories with Family](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/peru-return-sharing-childhood-memories-with-family/) 39. Portugal: [Portugal, Spain & Morocco - From Lisbon's Hills to Marrakech's Souks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/portugal-spain-morocco-from-lisbons-hills-to-marrakechs-souks/) 40. Singapore: [India's Golden Triangle and Singapore](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/indias-golden-triangle-and-singapore-from-ancient-wonders-to-modern-marvels/) 41. Slovenia: [Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Slovenia Journey](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/croatia-montenegro-bosnia-slovenia-journey-contrasting-paths-in-post-yugoslav-europe/) 42. South Africa: [African Adventure - South Africa, Mozambique & Tanzania](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/african-adventure-south-africa-mozambique-tanzania-safari/) 43. Spain: [Spanish Summer Circuit: From Andalusian Culture to Balearic Beaches](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spanish-summer-circuit-from-andalusian-culture-to-balearic-beaches/) | [Portugal, Spain & Morocco - From Lisbon's Hills to Marrakech's Souks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/portugal-spain-morocco-from-lisbons-hills-to-marrakechs-souks/) 44. St. Barth's: [Before the Glitz](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/st-barths-before-the-glitz/) 45. St. Kitts & Nevis: [Nevis Revisited - Finding Paradise in the Caribbean's Hidden Gem](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nevis-revisited-finding-paradise-in-the-caribbeans-hidden-gem/) 46. Sweden: [Three Weeks in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark, and the Ranking I Got Wrong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-weeks-in-finland-estonia-sweden-and-denmark-and-the-ranking-i-got-wrong/) 47. Switzerland: Work Trips 48. Tahiti: [Moorea and Club Med](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/moorea-tahiti-and-club-med/) 49. Taiwan: [Taipei: Go Now, Before the World Changes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taipei-go-now-before-the-world-changes/) 50. Tanzania: [African Adventure - South Africa, Mozambique & Tanzania](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/african-adventure-south-africa-mozambique-tanzania-safari/) 51. Thailand: [Southeast Asian Sojourn - A Perfect Thailand and Laos Itinerary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-sojourn-a-perfect-thailand-and-laos-itinerary/) | [Southeast Asian Grand Tour - Thailand, Cambodia, and Hong Kong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-grand-tour-thailand-cambodia-and-hong-kong/) 52. Turks & Caicos: [Club Med Craziness](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/club-med-turks-caicos/) 53. United States: [Southwest Solitude - A Road Trip Through Sacred Landscapes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southwest-solitude-a-covid-era-road-trip-through-americas-sacred-landscapes/) 54. Uruguay: [South America's Hidden Gem](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uruguay-south-americas-hidden-gem-a-perfect-summer-escape/) 55. Venezuela: [Windsurfing Margarita Island](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/windsurfing-margarita-island/) 56. Vietnam: [A Perfect South-to-North Journey Through History and Culture](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/vietnam-unveiled-a-perfect-south-to-north-journey-through-history-and-culture/) ### Cooking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/ Last updated: 2026-09-11T16:37:14.000Z Retirement has given me something I didn't fully appreciate during my working years: time to cook without rushing. What started as making better dinners a couple years ago has evolved into genuine enjoyment of the process - the research, the technique, the experimentation. Last year I took it further by using AI to modify existing recipes and even create new ones, testing whether large language models could actually understand flavor profiles and culinary techniques well enough to be useful in the kitchen. Turns out they can, within limits, and the process taught me as much about cooking fundamentals as it did about AI capabilities. This year's [bhavana](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/annual-bhavana/) takes the cooking obsession to another level: cook a modernized traditional dish from a different country each week, aiming for thirty countries by year's end. Since I'm pescatarian, all recipes are either fish-based or vegetarian, which adds an interesting constraint when working with cuisines built around meat. I'm researching the history of each dish and the broader cuisine it represents, learning techniques I've never attempted, and hosting friends for weekly dinners that have become as much about connection as they are about food. Below you'll find those recipes as they develop, along with other favorites I've accumulated over the years - the ones that get requested repeatedly or that solve specific culinary problems I've encountered. **Cooking Around the World** (2026 Goal - 30 Countries - Check Back!) 1. Ecuador: [Encocado de Pescado](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/encocado-de-pescado-ecuadors-coastal-coconut-fish-stew/) — Coastal Coconut Fish Stew 2. Portugal: [Bacalhau à Brás](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bacalhau-a-bras-portugals-beloved-cod-and-potato-scramble/) — Cod and Potato Scramble 3. Turkey: [İmam Bayıldı](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/imam-bayildi-turkeys-classic-olive-oil-eggplant-dish/) — Classic Olive-Oil Eggplant Dish 4. Malaysia: [Ikan Bakar Sambal](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ikan-bakar-sambal-a-social-fire-driven-malaysian-classic/) — A Social, Fire-Driven Classic 5. Ethiopia: [Misir Wat](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/misir-wat-ethiopias-berbere-spiced-soul-food/) — Berbere-Spiced Soul Food 6. Egypt: [Koshari](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/koshari-egypts-customizable-street-food-classic/) \- Customizable Street Food Classic 7. Peru: [Pescado a la Chorrillana](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pescado-a-la-chorrillana-perus-favorite-fish-dish/) \- A Favorite Fish Dish 8. Georgia: [Lobio with Mchadi and Pomidvris Salati](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lobio-with-mchadi-pomidvris-salati-georgias-everyday-anchor/) \- The Everyday Anchor 9. Iran: [Kuku Sabzi](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kuku-sabzi-irans-herb-packed-frittata-of-renewal/) \- Persia's Herb-Packed Frittata of Renewal 10. Tanzania: [Zanzibari Pizza](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/zanzibari-pizza-with-urojo-soup-coconut-rice/) \- Stone Town's Night Market Specialty 11. South Korea: [Yeoneo Jorim](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yeoneo-jorim-koreas-gochujang-braised-salmon-with-daikon-rice-sesame-spinach-and-spicy-braised-tofu/) \- Gochujang-Braised Salmon 12. Chile: [Porotos Granados](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/porotos-granados-chiles-summer-harvest-bean-stew/) \- Chile's Summer Harvest Bean Stew 13. Thailand: [Veggie Khao Soi](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/veggie-khao-soi-northern-thailands-coconut-curry-noodle-soup/) \- Northern Thailand's Coconut Curry Noodle Soup 14. Argentina: [Clericó Fruit Salad](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/clerico-fruit-salad-la-final-spain-vs-argentina/) — "La Final" (Spain vs. Argentina) 15. Mexico: [Spiced Quinoa with Charred Poblano, Sweet Potato, Pomegranate & Walnut Cream](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spiced-quinoa-with-charred-poblano-sweet-potato-pomegranate-walnut-cream/) \- A United Airlines Reconstruction of Chiles en Nogada 16. Lebanon: [Samke Harra with Salatet Malfouf and Hindbeh bi Zeit](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/samke-harra-tripolis-spicy-tahini-fish/) **Other Favorite Recipes** - [Baked Pumpkin Sage Arancini Balls](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/baked-pumpkin-sage-arancini-balls/) \- Great for a Thanksgiving potluck - [Hoisin-Glazed Salmon with Tomato-Ginger Relish](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hoisin-glazed-salmon-with-warm-tomato-ginger-relish/) - [Vegetarian Dan Dan Noodles (Noodle King Style)](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/vegetarian-dan-dan-noodles-noodle-king-style/) - [Peruvian-Style Fish with Aji-Lime Sauce, Quinoa, Tomato-Corn Salsa, and Sautéed Snap Peas](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/peruvian-style-fish-with-aji-lime-sauce-quinoa-tomato-corn-salsa-and-sauteed-snap-peas-or-asparagus/) - [Meyer Lomeli Vegetarian Chili](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/meyer-lomeli-vegetarian-chili/) \- Complex, but very much worth the effort! - [Roasted Eggplant & Tomato Soup](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/roasted-eggplant-and-tomato-soup/) ### Archives - 2004 and Earlier URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2004/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T03:38:11.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 24, 2004** — [Excellence through Simplicity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/excellence%5Fthro/) **Dec 11, 2004** — [Lean Manufacturing Conferences](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/interesting%5Flea/) **Dec 5, 2004** — [What's Right in Government](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whats%5Fright%5Fin%5F/) **Dec 1, 2004** — [Going to the Gemba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/going%5Fto%5Fthe%5Fge-2/) **Nov 28, 2004** — [Metrics & Reality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/metrics%5Freality/) **Nov 27, 2004** — [Thinking Better](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thinking%5Fbetter/) **Nov 27, 2004** — [10 commandments](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10%5Fcommandments/) **Nov 25, 2004** — [MIT Open Courseware](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mit%5Fopen%5Fcourse/) **May 26, 1997** — [The Beaches of Antigua](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-beaches-of-antigua/) **Jan 26, 1996** — [Windsurfing Aruba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/windsurfing-aruba/) **May 26, 1995** — [Windsurfing Margarita Island](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/windsurfing-margarita-island/) **Dec 26, 1993** — [Club Med Turks & Caicos](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/club-med-turks-caicos/) **Jul 26, 1993** — [Moorea, Tahiti - and Club Med](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/moorea-tahiti-and-club-med/) **Nov 26, 1992** — [Martinique - Bananas on the Runway](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/martinique-bananas-on-the-runway/) **Feb 26, 1991** — [St. Barth's - Before the Glitz](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/st-barths-before-the-glitz/) ### Archives - 2005 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2005/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T03:20:38.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 31** — [Lean Manufacturing in the Home - Some New Year's Resolutions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fmanufactur%5F1/) **Dec 29** — [A Lean Look at Task Management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Flean%5Flook%5Fat%5F%5F1/) **Dec 28** — [Are Employees Really Your Most Important Asset?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/are%5Femployees%5Fr/) **Dec 25** — [Keep an Eye on Iraq](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/keep%5Fan%5Feye%5Fon%5F/) **Dec 24** — [Are Houses Next?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/are%5Fhouses%5Fnext/) **Dec 18** — [The Importance of Giving Back](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fimportance%5F/) **Dec 18** — [A New Must-Read Book - From Our Own Bill Waddell](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fnew%5Fmustread%5F/) **Dec 11** — [Root Cause - Contain It First](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/root%5Fcause%5Fcont/) **Dec 10** — [Carnival of Lean Leadership #4](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/carnival%5Fof%5Flea-2/) **Dec 9** — [The Six Revolutions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fsix%5Frevolut/) **Dec 5** — [About Dan Markovitz](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/about%5Fdan%5Fmarko/) **Nov 27** — [Lean and the EPA](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fep/) **Nov 24** — [Tales from a Lean Benchmarking Trip to Japan](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tales%5Ffrom%5Fa%5Fle/) **Nov 23** — [Carnival of Lean Leadership #3](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/carnival%5Fof%5Flea%5F1/) **Nov 22** — [Tales from a Tour of NUMMI](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tales%5Ffrom%5Fa%5Fto/) **Nov 19** — [Fix What's Broken](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fix%5Fwhats%5Fbroke/) **Nov 17** — [A Moment for Reflection and Perspective](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fmoment%5Ffor%5Fre/) **Nov 10** — [Looking Lean vs. Being Lean: A Critical Debate on Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/looking%5Fvs%5Fbein/) **Nov 8** — [Carnival of Lean Leadership #2](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/carnival%5Fof%5Flea-3/) **Nov 7** — [Notes from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence Conference](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/notes%5Ffrom%5Fthe%5F/) **Nov 7** — [Outsourcing Communication Impacts Quality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fcascading%5Fc/) **Nov 6** — [Where's My Crystal Ball?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wheres%5Fmy%5Fcryst/) **Oct 31** — [Lean Healthcare & Clinical Excellence - Don't Forget Who Your Customer Is](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fhealthcare-2/) **Oct 18** — [Delphi - Even Lean Manufacturing Can't Prevent Bankruptcy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/delphi%5Feven%5Flea/) **Oct 8** — [Carnival of Lean Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/carnival%5Fof%5Flea-4/) **Sep 30** — [Lean Government - Reduce Size, Pork, or Waste?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fgovernment-2/) **Sep 29** — [Strategic Planning, Hoshin Kanri, and Objectives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/strategic%5Fplann/) **Sep 28** — [Six Sigma and Lean... Optimizing Waste?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/six%5Fsigma%5Fand%5Fl/) **Sep 7** — [Katrina & 9/11 - A contrast in leadership, planning, and execution](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/katrina%5F911%5Fa%5Fc/) **Sep 6** — [The Next Toyota... From India?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fnext%5Ftoyota/) **Sep 1** — [Charitable Excellence - Hurricane Katrina](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/charitable%5Fexce/) **Aug 28** — [Finding Excellence on a Resume](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/finding%5Fexcelle/) **Aug 23** — [Two Faces of Excellence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/two%5Ffaces%5Fof%5Fex/) **Aug 14** — [The Myth of the Battered American Manufacturer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fmyth%5Fof%5Fthe/) **Aug 7** — [Mass Customization for a Customer of One](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mass%5Fcustomizat/) **Jul 20** — [Global Competition and Lean Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/global%5Fcompetit/) **Jul 15** — [The Quality of Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fquality%5Fof%5F/) **Jun 30** — [Toyota Home - Applying the Toyota Production System to Home Building](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota%5Fhome%5Fapp/) **Jun 28** — [Google Earth and Manufacturing Competitive Intelligence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/google%5Fearth%5Fan/) **Jun 26** — [Nearshoring and Outsourcing - And the Effect on Lean Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nearshoring%5Fand/) **Jun 24** — [Lean Manufacturing Training - Seminars, Workshops, Books, Conferences, Videos, and PowerPoint Presentations](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fmanufactur-4/) **Jun 23** — [Six Sigma Blog - Charting the Successes of Lean and Six Sigma](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/six%5Fsigma%5Fblog/) **Jun 22** — [Lean Accounting Summit 2005 - Lean Cost Management Gaining Critical Mass](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Faccounting/) **Jun 17** — [The Gold Mine - A New Novel About Lean Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fgold%5Fmine%5Fa/) **Jun 16** — [NASCAR - A Model for Lean?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nascar%5Fa%5Fmodel%5F/) **Jun 10** — [Keystone Manufacturing Initiative - Pro Manufacturing Legislation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/keystone%5Fmanufa/) **Jun 6** — [Oh No, It's the End of the Quarter!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oh%5Fno%5Fits%5Fthe%5Fe/) **May 19** — [Mobile Battlefield Factories - Quick Turn Mass Customization](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mobile%5Fbattlefi/) **May 16** — [Will Dell, GE and Wal-Mart Replace Toyota as the Standard of Efficiency and Excellence?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/will%5Fdell%5Fand%5Fw/) **May 14** — [Remember the Fundamentals of Business Management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/remember%5Fthe%5Ffu/) **May 13** — [Lean Manufacturing, Leadership, and Company Excellence (What Happened at Delphi and GM?)](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fmanufactur-5/) **May 12** — [NAM Blog Recognized as "Best of the Blogs"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nam%5Fblog%5Frecogn/) **May 5** — [The Coming Manufacturing Revolution](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fcoming%5Fmanu/) **Apr 30** — [Hirano's Eight Conditions for Flow Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hiranos%5Feight%5Fc/) **Apr 26** — [Freakonomics - The Strange Side of Economic Analysis](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/freakonomics%5Fth/) **Apr 25** — [Shingo "Know Why" and the Lean Manufacturing Transformation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shingo%5Fknow%5Fwhy/) **Apr 23** — [Personal Fabrication and Desktop Factories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/personal%5Ffabric/) **Apr 16** — [5S and the Dangers of Horizontal Surfaces](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5s%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fdang/) **Apr 8** — [Find Those Hidden Improvement Ideas](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/find%5Fthose%5Fhidd/) **Mar 21** — [Download Lean Office PowerPoint Presentations](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/download%5Flean%5Fo/) **Mar 16** — [Energy Efficiency, Water and Waste Reduction for Manufacturers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/energy%5Fefficien/) **Mar 15** — [The Power of Impossible Thinking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fpower%5Fof%5Fim/) **Mar 14** — [Manufacturing Economics - Notes from the World Economic Forum](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing%5Fe/) **Mar 13** — [Automation More Disruptive Than Outsourcing? ](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/automation%5Fmore/) **Mar 12** — [Keep Those Job Skills Current!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/keep%5Fthose%5Fjob%5F/) **Mar 12** — [Manufacturing Location Survey Results](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing%5Fl/) **Feb 28** — [Learning from the Masters of Lean Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning%5Ffrom%5Ft/) **Feb 22** — [Most Admired Company: Dell ](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/most%5Fadmired%5Fco/) **Feb 19** — [Blink: Leadership and Intuitive Decision-making](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership%5Fand%5F/) **Feb 17** — [Leverage the Power of Culture-Shifting Events](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leverage%5Fthe%5Fpo/) **Feb 15** — [Manufacturer's Week in Washington](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturers%5Fw/) **Feb 9** — [Wal-Mart Reconfigures the Supply Chain... Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/walmart%5Freconfi/) **Jan 26** — [Argentina and Chile: Patagonian Dreams and Andean Lakes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/argentina-and-chile-patagonian-dreams-and-andean-lakes/) **Jan 23** — [Download Lean Manufacturing Training PowerPoint Presentations](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/download%5Flean%5Fm/) **Jan 21** — [I want to give you cash!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/i%5Fwant%5Fto%5Fgive%5F/) **Jan 13** — [Lean Thoughts on Compensation Strategy from Santiago, Chile](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fthoughts%5Ff%5F1/) **Jan 9** — [Lean Thoughts on Just In Time from Puerto Varas, Chile](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fthoughts%5Ff/) **Jan 6** — [Lean Thoughts on Flow from Bariloche, Argentina...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spaghetti%5Fdiagr/) ### Archives - 2006 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2006/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T17:42:37.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 31** — [Reminiscing... and Looking Forward](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reminiscing%5Fon%5F/) **Dec 30** — [First Airbus, Now Volkswagen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/first%5Fairbus%5Fno/) **Dec 29** — [Questioning Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/supercomputing%5F/) **Dec 28** — [Small and Great](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/small%5Fand%5Fgreat/) **Dec 27** — [A Sweeping Success](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fsweeping%5Fsucc/) **Dec 26** — [Understanding Lean at Whirlpool](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/understanding%5Fl/) **Dec 26** — [Productivity Myths - Real Studies and Data](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/productivity%5Fmy/) **Dec 24** — [Productivity Myths - Comments From Real Economists](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing%5Fp/) **Dec 21** — [The Idiot Grinch of Fake Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fidiot%5Fgrinc/) **Dec 21** — [Blog Tag: 5 Things You Don't Know About Me](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog%5Ftag%5F5%5Fthin/) **Dec 20** — [Successful American Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/successful%5Famer/) **Dec 20** — [Following Farmers Off a Cliff](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/following%5Ffarme/) **Dec 18** — [Myths of Manufacturing Productivity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/american%5Fmanufa/) **Dec 18** — [Rejuvenating Training Within Industry](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rejuvenating%5Ftr/) **Dec 16** — [Heading for a Narly Wipeout](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/heading%5Ffor%5Fa%5Fn/) **Dec 15** — [Now That's a Timeline!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/now%5Fthats%5Fa%5Ftim/) **Dec 14** — [Hunting Prehistoric Mastodons](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/confronting%5Fthe/) **Dec 13** — [Decisions, Decisions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/decisions%5Fdecis/) **Dec 11** — [Toyota Questions... Everything](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota%5Fquestion%5F1/) **Dec 9** — [Toyota Questions Kaizen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota%5Fquestion/) **Dec 8** — [Holiday Reading](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/holiday%5Freading/) **Dec 6** — [That 70's Fad Called Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/that%5F70s%5Ffad%5Fca/) **Dec 5** — [Amazon's Long Public Haul](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/amazons%5Flong%5Fpu/) **Dec 3** — [Hybrid Hypocrisy and Handouts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hybrid%5Fhypocris/) **Dec 3** — [Pushing Back the Supply Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pushing%5Fback%5Fth/) **Dec 1** — [A Waste of Good Air](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fwaste%5Fof%5Fgood/) **Nov 29** — [Myths and Rationalizations](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/myths%5Fand%5Fratio/) **Nov 28** — [Blatherings on Success](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ramblings%5Fon%5Fsu/) **Nov 27** — [Da Cubs and Da Bears](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/da%5Fcubs%5Fand%5Fda%5F/) **Nov 23** — [From Russia With Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/from%5Frussia%5Fwit/) **Nov 22** — [Innovation and Lean Product Development](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fopportunity/) **Nov 21** — [The Speed of Chaos](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fspeed%5Fof%5Fch/) **Nov 20** — [Keeping It Simple](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/keeping%5Fit%5Fsimp/) **Nov 19** — [The Lean MBA](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Flean%5Fmba/) **Nov 18** — [Peanut Butter and Lean at Yahoo](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/peanut%5Fbutter%5Fa/) **Nov 18** — [A Presumption of Imperfection](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/presumption%5Fof%5F/) **Nov 17** — [The Continuing Saga of Welfare Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fcontinuing%5F/) **Nov 15** — [Answering Their Own Question](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/answering%5Ftheir/) **Nov 14** — [A Historical Perspective on Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fhistorical%5Fpe/) **Nov 13** — [More Welfare Waste - And A Lesson For Manufacturers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more%5Fwelfare%5Fwa/) **Nov 12** — [Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Karma](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oprah%5Fdr%5Fphil%5Fa/) **Nov 12** — [Welfare Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welfare%5Fwaste/) **Nov 5** — [Local Outsourcing Lemmings](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/local%5Foutsourci/) **Nov 5** — [Taking a Long Term Perspective](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taking%5Fa%5Flong%5Ft/) **Nov 4** — [The Psychology of Lean Transformation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fpsychology%5F/) **Nov 2** — [Pull Economics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pull%5Feconomics/) **Nov 1** — [Guru Parthasarathy, Meet Guru Bill](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/guru%5Fparthasara/) **Oct 29** — [Does the Rock Star Have Clothes?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/does%5Fthe%5Frock%5Fs/) **Oct 28** — [Insourcing and Outsourcing Capital](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/insourcing%5Fand%5F/) **Oct 28** — [The Air Force Drives Lean Healthcare](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fair%5Fforce%5Fd/) **Oct 26** — [Unlearning in India](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/unlearning%5Fin%5Fi/) **Oct 25** — [Domestics in Multinational Clothing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/domestics%5Fin%5Fmu/) **Oct 24** — [The Problem With Gross Domestic Product](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fproblem%5Fwit/) **Oct 22** — [An Eventual Manufacturing Revival?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an%5Feventual%5Fman/) **Oct 20** — [Your Competition Just Got Smarter](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/your%5Fcompetitio/) **Oct 17** — [Evolving Excellence Makes U.S. News](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/evolving%5Fexcell-2/) **Oct 14** — [Lean Business Wins a Nobel Peace Prize](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fbusiness%5Fw/) **Oct 11** — [Tyranny of the Outsourcers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tyranny%5Fof%5Fthe%5F/) **Oct 7** — [Lean Advantage in a Flat World](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fadvantage%5F/) **Oct 6** — [Process Excellence Conundrums](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/process%5Fexcelle/) **Oct 5** — [Mis-Leveraged Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/misleveraged%5Fou/) **Sep 29** — [GM Execs Need More Hummers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gm%5Fexecs%5Fneed%5Fm/) **Sep 27** — [Myopic Mis-focus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/myopic%5Fmisfocus/) **Sep 23** — [Lean Sandwich, Hold the Bread](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an%5Falgorithm%5Fsa/) **Sep 22** — [Course Correction Complements of Norman Bodek](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/course%5Fcorrecti/) **Sep 21** — [Engineering Stigmas](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/engineering%5Fsti/) **Sep 20** — [Lowballing Geopolitical Risk](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lowballing%5Fgeop/) **Sep 15** — [The Crumbling Shield of Automation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fcrumbling%5Fs/) **Sep 9** — [Accounting Excitement](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/accounting%5Fexci/) **Sep 6** — [A Bold New Day at Ford?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fbold%5Fnew%5Fday%5F%5F1/) **Sep 2** — [Tales of Passion and Conviction](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tales%5Fof%5Fpassio/) **Sep 1** — [Time to Strap on the Sneakers Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time%5Fto%5Fstrap%5Fo/) **Aug 30** — [Endless Delusions of a Difference](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/endless%5Fdelusio/) **Aug 29** — [Bring on the Lean Junk Mail "Innovation"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bring%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fle/) **Aug 19** — [Valuing Silence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/valuing%5Fsilence/) **Aug 15** — [Draining Think Tanks in Traverse City](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fshallow%5Fthi/) **Aug 9** — [The Paradox of Lean Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fparadox%5Fand/) **Aug 7** — [Whirlpool, Sealy, and the Nike Factor](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool%5Fsealy/) **Aug 5** — [More Adventures in Customer Service](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more%5Fadventures/) **Aug 1** — [Toucan Sam to the Rescue](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toucan%5Fsam%5Fto%5Ft/) **Jul 31** — [Forget Bankers... Think About Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fwar%5Fon%5Flean/) **Jul 28** — [Next Stop: Africa](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/now%5Fwhere/) **Jul 26** — [There's That Innovation Word Again...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/theres%5Fthat%5Fwor/) **Jul 25** — [Listening to the Vocal Minority](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/listening%5Fto%5Fth/) **Jul 23** — [Where's Ralph?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wheres%5Fralph/) **Jul 20** — [What? No Whining?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what%5Fno%5Fwhining/) **Jul 19** — [Lean and Green](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fand%5Fgreen/) **Jul 16** — [Where Did I Put That Crystal Ball?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/where%5Fdid%5Fi%5Fput/) **Jul 11** — [Forget Six Sigma, Just Innovate!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fold%5Fschool%5F/) **Jul 10** — [A Duel at NAM - and Both Sides Miss the Mark](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fduel%5Fat%5Fnam%5Fa/) **Jul 9** — [Much Ado About Shingo and Ohno](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/much%5Fado%5Fabout%5F/) **Jul 7** — [One Human Flow in the Air](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/one%5Fhuman%5Fflow%5F/) **Jul 5** — [Manufacturing and Insourcing at Google](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing%5Fa/) **Jun 26** — [Crude, Lewd... and Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/crude%5Flewd%5Fand%5F/) **Jun 25** — [Complex Defects](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/complex%5Fdefects/) **Jun 23** — [Yet More Lean Supply Chain Nonsense](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Firrational%5F/) **Jun 21** — [Forget SAP, Run Down to Staples](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget%5Fsap%5Frun%5F/) **Jun 21** — [Outsourcing Goes Infomercial](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing%5Fgoe/) **Jun 11** — [One Piece Flow and the Power of Chaos... in Italian Traffic](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thoughts%5Fon%5Fone/) **May 21** — [Creating Historical Balance](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/historical%5Fbala/) **May 14** — [A Spot of Lean Tea](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fspot%5Fof%5Flean%5F/) **May 10** — [Mother Nature vs. Supply Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spaghetti%5Fin%5Fth/) **May 10** — [Your Competitors May Not Be So Blind](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/your%5Fcompetitor/) **May 2** — [Sometimes It Takes A Wizard](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sometimes%5Fit%5Fta/) **Apr 15** — [The False God of the Almighty Algorithm](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/keep%5Fone%5Feye%5Fon/) **Apr 14** — [The Future of Management... From India](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Ffuture%5Fof%5Fm/) **Apr 4** — [Regulatory Muda](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/regulatory%5Fmuda/) **Apr 1** — [Submerging California](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/submerging%5Fcali/) **Mar 12** — [Over-Powered Lean Healthcare](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/overpowered%5Flea/) **Mar 11** — [My, How Things Change!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/my%5Fhow%5Fthings%5Fc/) **Mar 10** — [Investing in Shingo and Baldrige](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/investing%5Fin%5Fsh/) **Mar 9** — [Lauren Gets It](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lauren%5Fgets%5Fit/) **Mar 4** — [Searching for the Meaning of...?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/searching%5Ffor%5Ft/) **Feb 26** — [The More You Read...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fmore%5Fyou%5Fre/) **Feb 23** — [Here We Go Again...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/here%5Fwe%5Fgo%5Fagai/) **Feb 22** — [Adventures in Customer Service](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/adventures%5Fin%5Fc/) **Feb 15** — [Perhaps the Military Should Invade Detroit](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/perhaps%5Fthe%5Fmil/) **Feb 13** — [Womack Steps Up](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/womack%5Fsteps%5Fup/) **Feb 1** — [The Reality of Despair](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Freality%5Fof%5F/) **Jan 31** — [Offensive to Good Taste and Decency](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/offensive%5Fto%5Fgo/) **Jan 22** — [Take off the Blinders](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/are%5Fthe%5Fblinder/) **Jan 21** — [Infection Injection](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/infection%5Finjec/) **Jan 20** — [Starting Off Early](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/getting%5Fthem%5Fwh/) **Jan 17** — [A Generational Influence on 5S](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fgenerational%5F/) **Jan 15** — [The Amazing Exploding Vacuum](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Famazing%5Fexp/) **Jan 9** — [Looking Lean vs. Being Lean - It Begins With Leadership and Culture](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/looking%5Flean%5Fvs/) **Jan 9** — [Carnival of Lean Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/carnival%5Fof%5Flea/) ### Archives - 2007 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2007/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T17:45:49.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 27** — [New Year's Resolution: Simplify and Learn](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/new-years-resol/) **Dec 26** — [The Myopia of the Pessimists](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-myopia-of-t/) **Dec 24** — [Chaotic Furrballs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chaotic-furrbal/) **Dec 23** — [Lost in Translation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lost-in-transla/) **Dec 22** — [Fun With Statistics, Ethanol Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1-2/) **Dec 21** — [Update on the Candidates](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/update-on-the-c/) **Dec 20** — [Lean Diamonds in the Rough](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-diamonds-i/) **Dec 20** — [Throwin' Away the Knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/throwin-away-th/) **Dec 18** — [Happy Employees Create Value](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/happy-employees/) **Dec 17** — [Skiing to China](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/skiing-to-china/) **Dec 16** — [Uh... That IS an Outsourcing Problem!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uh-that-is-an-o/) **Dec 13** — [Effective Usage or Effective Results?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/effective-usage/) **Dec 12** — [Outsourcing... to America](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-to/) **Dec 11** — [Flat Agility](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/flat-agility/) **Dec 10** — [Boeing's Outsourcing Hell](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings-supply/) **Dec 9** — [Lean-Driven Waiting Period](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-driven-wai/) **Dec 8** — [Poll Update](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poll-update/) **Dec 7** — [Fun With Statistics, Convenient Scapegoat Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-7/) **Dec 5** — [Chery Learns](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chery-learns/) **Dec 4** — [Yes, U.S. Manufacturing Can Compete](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-us-manufact/) **Dec 3** — [Toyota Raises the Tide](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-toyota-effe/) **Dec 2** — [Various Angles on Chinese Aircraft](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/various-angles/) **Dec 2** — ["Shimmying"? Try a Crowbar!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shimmying-try-a/) **Nov 29** — [Presidential Candidates and Manufacturing Issues](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/best-presidenti/) **Nov 27** — [Offshore Manufacturing Execution Squads](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/offshore-manufa/) **Nov 26** — [The Best Lean Companies for 2008](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-evolving-ex/) **Nov 25** — [Fun With Statistics, Compensation Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1-3/) **Nov 24** — [Toyota and the Power of People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-and-the/) **Nov 22** — [Lean is Not a Metric](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-is-not-a-m/) **Nov 22** — [Update on the Battle](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/update-on-the-b/) **Nov 19** — [Ginger, Toys, and What Else?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ginger-toys-and/) **Nov 18** — [Lean Motivational Posters - From AME](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/real-motivation/) **Nov 15** — [Global Splints](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/global-splints/) **Nov 11** — [Chicago Hilton Customer Service](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chicago-hilton/) **Nov 10** — [Ford vs. GM - Who's Really Ahead?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ford-vs-gm-wh/) **Nov 9** — [Kaizen, Shingo, and Norman Bodek](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kaizen-shingo-a/) **Nov 8** — [Competing, Not Complaining](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/competing-not-c/) **Nov 7** — [A Productive Strike](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-productive-st/) **Nov 6** — [One Half of One Pillar](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/one-half-of-one/) **Nov 5** — [Root Cause Customer Service](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/root-cause-cust/) **Nov 4** — [Fun With Statistics, Prostate Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-8/) **Nov 1** — [The False God Opens a New Front](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-false-god-o/) **Oct 31** — [Domestic Fangs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/domestic-fangs/) **Oct 29** — [Company Tales](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/company-tales/) **Oct 28** — [Harvard's Flying Pigs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/harvards-flying/) **Oct 27** — [Ruger Drains the Swamp](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ruger-drains-th/) **Oct 26** — [Schwarzenegger Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/schwarzenegger/) **Oct 25** — [AME Conference Next Week](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ame-conference/) **Oct 24** — [Fun With Statistics, Elderly Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-2/) **Oct 23** — [Mish Mash of This 'n That](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mish-mash-of-th/) **Oct 22** — [County Envy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/county-envy/) **Oct 21** — [Manufacturing News, Fair & Balanced?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing-n/) **Oct 19** — [Fun With Statistics, Great White North Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1-4/) **Oct 18** — [Invisible Competitors](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/invisible-compe/) **Oct 17** — [But Where Are the Fasteners?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whod-have-thoug/) **Oct 16** — [Outsourcing - To Reduce Taxes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-t/) **Oct 15** — [Why Parker Gets It](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-parker-gets/) **Oct 14** — [Some Get It, Some Don't](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/some-get-it-som/) **Oct 13** — [Nobel What Prize?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nobel-what-priz/) **Oct 12** — [Quick Turn Value](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/quick-turn-valu/) **Oct 11** — [Poverty-Fighting Middlemen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poverty-fightin-2/) **Oct 10** — [Sub-Prime Smacks Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sub-prime-smack/) **Oct 9** — [Killing a Jewel](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/killing-a-jewel/) **Oct 8** — [Gingrich: What Works, and What Doesn't](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gingrich-what-w/) **Oct 7** — [Stagnant is Not Improving](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stagnant-is-not/) **Oct 5** — [Grinstein's Lesson](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/grinsteins-less/) **Oct 4** — [Fluff and Project Management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fluff-and-proje/) **Oct 3** — [Suicide by Stick](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/suicide-by-stic/) **Oct 3** — [Management Improvement Carnival #20](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-impr-3/) **Oct 2** — [Granite Pinball](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/granite-pinball/) **Oct 1** — [Fun With Statistics, Divorce Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-9/) **Sep 30** — [Creating Obtuse Commitment at GM](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/creating-obtuse/) **Sep 26** — [More Misfocus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-misfocus/) **Sep 25** — [More Globetrotting... From India](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-globetrott/) **Sep 24** — [Smaller and Even Less Flexible](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/smaller-and-eve/) **Sep 23** — [Fun With Statistics, Pirate Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-3/) **Sep 22** — [Uh, Sorry About the Global Furor](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uh-sorry-about/) **Sep 20** — [Fun With Statistics, Mullet Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-2-2/) **Sep 20** — [Perspectives on the Auto Industry](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/perspectives-on/) **Sep 20** — [Lean Couture](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-couture/) **Sep 18** — [Ups and Downs of Manufacturing Employment](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ups-and-downs-o/) **Sep 17** — [Loving the Home Stretch](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/loving-the-home/) **Sep 15** — [Fun With Statistics, CEO Life Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1-5/) **Sep 14** — [SAP & Whirlpool... Aha!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sap-whirlpool-a/) **Sep 12** — [Process Charity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/process-charity/) **Sep 11** — [The Curse of Cheap Metal Shelves](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-curse-of-ch/) **Sep 8** — [Fun With Statistics, Garbage Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-10/) **Sep 7** — [Outsourcing's Carbon Footprint](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcings-ca/) **Sep 6** — [The Entropy of Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-entropy-of/) **Sep 4** — [The Hyper Evolving Organization](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-hyper-evolv/) **Sep 2** — [The Glories of Indian Auto ERP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-glories-of/) **Aug 31** — [McKinsey Hollows Out Lego](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-hollow/) **Aug 30** — [People, Diapers, and Kegs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/people-diapers/) **Aug 29** — [Chinese Best Practices](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chinese-best-pr/) **Aug 28** — [Fun With Statistics, Digging Deeper Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-3-2/) **Aug 26** — [Lean Accounting Summit In One Month](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-accounting/) **Aug 26** — [Oh Dell Oh Dell](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oh-dell-oh-dell/) **Aug 25** — [Dreamliner Gridlock](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dreamliner-grid/) **Aug 23** — [Globalization and Fresh Horse Sushi](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/globalization-a-2/) **Aug 22** — [Kudos to Marlin Steel Wire](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kudos-to-marlin/) **Aug 22** — [Private Efficiency](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/private-efficie/) **Aug 21** — [More Evidence of IBM Being LAME](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-evidence-o/) **Aug 20** — [IBM Goes LAME](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ibm-goes-lame/) **Aug 19** — [Counting Economists](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/counting-econom/) **Aug 17** — [Fun With Statistics, Median Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-2-3/) **Aug 16** — [McKinsey on Lean: Part 5 - Lean in Finance](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-on-l-4/) **Aug 16** — [McKinsey on Lean: Part 4 - Lean in China](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-on-l-3/) **Aug 16** — [McKinsey on Lean: Part 3 - Lean in IT](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-on-l-2/) **Aug 16** — [McKinsey on Lean: Part 2 - Public Sector Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-on-l-1/) **Aug 16** — [McKinsey on Lean: Part 1 - Overview](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-on-lea/) **Aug 16** — [What Unemployment?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-unemployme/) **Aug 14** — [Government Band-Aids](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/government-band/) **Aug 13** — [Lean Healthcare Jitterbug](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-healthcare/) **Aug 13** — [Colin Powell on Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/colin-powell-on/) **Aug 12** — [Just In... Time?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-in-time/) **Aug 11** — [Fun With Statistics, Relativistic Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1-6/) **Aug 11** — [Lean Software Science](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-software-s/) **Aug 7** — [Shut Her Down...!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shut-her-down/) **Aug 6** — [Abboud Takes On Abboud](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/abboud-takes-on/) **Aug 6** — [The Lean Dentist - Almost Live!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-dentis/) **Aug 5** — [Lean Filmmaking?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-filmmaking/) **Aug 5** — [A Taste of Their Own Medicine](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-taste-of-thei/) **Aug 4** — [Don't Forget the Engineering](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dont-forget-the/) **Aug 4** — [Fun With Statistics, Insensitive Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-11/) **Aug 2** — [Outsourcing Reputation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-rep/) **Aug 1** — [Lean Green Bubbles](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-green-bubb/) **Jul 30** — [Sweet Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sweet-lean/) **Jul 29** — [Personal Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/personal-waste/) **Jul 29** — [Fun With Statistics, Oops Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-4/) **Jul 28** — [Steel Blinders](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/steel-blinders/) **Jul 26** — [The Scourge of Quality Fade](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-scourge-of/) **Jul 26** — [Ask Why, Not Who](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ask-why-not-who/) **Jul 25** — [Simplicity and the Customer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/simplicity-and/) **Jul 24** — [Companies, Putters, and Entrepreneurs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/companies-putte/) **Jul 22** — [Kyosei Business Values](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kyosei-business/) **Jul 21** — [Information Economics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/information-eco/) **Jul 20** — [Fun With Statistics, Profit Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-3-3/) **Jul 19** — [More Lean Companies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-lean-compa/) **Jul 18** — [One Square at a Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/one-square-at-a/) **Jul 18** — [Fun With Statistics, Grandma Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-2-4/) **Jul 17** — [Globalization and the Venture Communist](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/globalization-a-3/) **Jul 16** — [Lean Economic Development Strategy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-economic-d/) **Jul 15** — [Free Market Religion](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/free-market-rel/) **Jul 14** — [Fun With Statistics, Laffer Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1-7/) **Jul 13** — [Smart? Then Act That Way.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/smart-then-act/) **Jul 12** — [The Opportunity of Individual Simplicity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-opportunity/) **Jul 12** — [Fun With Statistics, Sicko Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-12/) **Jul 10** — [Value is not Price](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/value-is-not-pr/) **Jul 9** — [Geo-Centric Customer Service](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/geo-centric-cus/) **Jul 5** — [Effective Squishy Metrics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/squishy-metrics/) **Jul 4** — [GM's Failure Creates Flying Pigs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mondays-wall-st/) **Jul 4** — [Welcome Craig Woll, Oprah and Paris](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welcome-craig-w/) **Jul 2** — [Jack Welch Continues to Flatten](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jack-welch-cont/) **Jul 2** — [Leadership, Bloomberg Style](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-bloo/) **Jul 1** — [Management Improvement Carnival #14](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-impr-4/) **Jun 29** — [Be Careful What You Measure](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/be-careful-what/) **Jun 27** — [The Evolving New Economy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-evolving-or/) **Jun 27** — [The Lean Blogosphere](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mysterious/) **Jun 26** — [Lean Healthcare Taking Off](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-healthcare-2/) **Jun 25** — [Less Storage Space Desired](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/less-storage-sp/) **Jun 24** — [LAME or Just Plain Ignorant](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lame-or-just-pl/) **Jun 23** — [SAP and Oracle in the Ring](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sap-and-oracle/) **Jun 21** — [Quietly Excellent](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/quietly-excelle/) **Jun 21** — [The Opportunity of Crisis at Airbus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-opportunity-2/) **Jun 21** — [The Lean Dentist](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-dentis-2/) **Jun 20** — [Things That Make You Go Hmmm...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/things%5Fthat%5Fmak/) **Jun 19** — [Bumping the Hand that Feeds You](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bumping%5Fthe%5Fhan/) **Jun 18** — [Is Ford the Reason for Microsoft Bloatware?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is%5Fford%5Fthe%5Frea/) **Jun 17** — [The Lean Pantry](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Flean%5Fpantry/) **Jun 16** — [Dings and Gaps of Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dings%5Fand%5Fgaps%5F/) **Jun 15** — [Excellent Elevators](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/excellent%5Feleva/) **Jun 11** — [Dabbawallas, UPS, and FedEx](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dabbawallas%5Fups/) **Jun 10** — [Organizational Fast Food](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/organizational%5F/) **Jun 9** — [Investing Around the World](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/investing%5Faroun/) **Jun 8** — [Power Laws and Pull Platforms](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/power%5Flaws%5Fand%5F/) **Jun 7** — [GM Matches Toyota Productivity... So What?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gm%5Fmatches%5Ftoyo/) **Jun 6** — [Design in Process](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/design%5Fin%5Fproce/) **Jun 5** — [A Waste of Intellect... Perhaps](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fwaste%5Fof%5Finte/) **Jun 5** — [Outsourcing Cornucopia](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing%5Fcor/) **Jun 4** — [Dangerous Multitasking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dangerous%5Fmulti/) **Jun 3** — [Go Team!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/go%5Fteam/) **Jun 2** — [Looking for MRP Success](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/looking%5Ffor%5Fmrp/) **Jun 1** — [Dell? Lean? Yeah, right.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dell%5Flean%5Fyeah%5F/) **Jun 1** — [Wisconsin's Continuing Lean Push](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wisconsins%5Fcont/) **May 31** — [Mulally Culture at Ford](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mulally%5Fculture/) **May 30** — [Education Destroying Creativity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/education%5Fdestr/) **May 30** — [Wal-Mart Bites China Back](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/walmart%5Fbites%5Fc/) **May 29** — [Pay For Performance and Wage Inequality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pay%5Ffor%5Fperform/) **May 29** — [LAME, but Successful... For Now](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lame%5Fbut%5Fsucces/) **May 28** — [Knowledge, Safety Nets and Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/knowledge%5Fsafet/) **May 27** — [Incestuous ERP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/incestuous%5Ferp/) **May 26** — [John Wayne - The Duke of Lists](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/john%5Fwayne%5Fthe%5F/) **May 25** — [Lean Baby Names](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fbaby%5Fnames/) **May 24** — [Lean, Lean, and More Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Flean%5Fand%5Fm/) **May 24** — [Who Drives Your Bus?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/who%5Fdrives%5Fyour/) **May 23** — [Differing Perspectives On Suppliers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/differing%5Fpersp/) **May 22** — [787 Dreamliner Built in Ten Minutes!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/787%5Fdreamliner%5F/) **May 21** — [Wal-Mart Learns About Cost... And Value](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/walmart%5Flearns%5F/) **May 19** — [Lean Diets and the Size of Your Unit](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fdiets%5Fand%5F/) **May 18** — [SAP - Look in the Mirror](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ubercomplex%5Fsap/) **May 18** — [Faking Six Sigma](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/faking%5Fsix%5Fsigm/) **May 17** — [SAP's Chasm of Complexity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Ftruth%5Fon%5Fsa/) **May 17** — [My Message to Michael Bloomberg](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/my%5Fmessage%5Fto%5Fm/) **May 15** — [Nucor - Look Over Your Shoulder!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nucor%5Flook%5Fover/) **May 15** — [Oh Give Me a Break (TM)](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oh%5Fgive%5Fme%5Fa%5Fbr/) **May 14** — [Lean News Publishing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fnews%5Fpubli/) **May 13** — [Littered With the Carcasses of Companies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/littered%5Fwith%5Ft/) **May 13** — [Confronting Prevailing Wisdom](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Ftide%5Fagainst%5F/) **May 11** — [Demand Quake Isolators](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/demand%5Fquake%5Fis/) **May 9** — [Columbia's Meandering Lean Journey](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fglimmer%5Fof%5Fho/) **May 8** — [Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taiichi%5Fohnos%5Fw/) **May 7** — [Wisconsin Drives Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wisconsin%5Fdrive/) **May 6** — [Taxes Driving Flights of Knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more%5Fflights%5Fof/) **May 4** — [The Value in Shrinking a City](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fvalue%5Fin%5Fsh/) **May 3** — [Lean Coiffes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fcoiffes/) **May 2** — [Dreams of Lean Accounting Standards](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dreams%5Fof%5Flean%5F/) **May 1** — [Lean IT Balance at CIO](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fit%5Fbalance/) **Apr 30** — [What's Left to Outsource?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whats%5Fleft%5Fto%5Fo/) **Apr 29** — [A Lesson for Outsourcing Lemmings](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Flesson%5Ffor%5Fou/) **Apr 28** — [French Organic Offshoring](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/french%5Forganic%5F/) **Apr 27** — [Show Me Some Respect](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/show%5Fme%5Fsome%5Fre/) **Apr 26** — [A Lesson for Layoff Lemmings](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Flesson%5Ffor%5Fla/) **Apr 25** — [Dreamlifter Sees \[Small\] Action](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dreamlifter%5Fsee/) **Apr 25** — [The Bottom Line of Commitment](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fbottom%5Fline/) **Apr 24** — [Toyota Squeezes By GM](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota%5Fsqueezes/) **Apr 24** — [An Inspiring Lean Tear-Jerker](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an%5Finspiring%5Fle/) **Apr 23** — [China Bites Wal-Mart](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/china%5Fbites%5Fwal/) **Apr 21** — [Home Factories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/home%5Ffactories/) **Apr 21** — [Onshoring as Competitive Advantage](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/onshoring%5Fas%5Fco/) **Apr 20** — [Productivity and Offshoring... Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/productivity%5Fan/) **Apr 19** — [Global Opportunities... Domestically](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/global%5Fopportun/) **Apr 18** — [Symphony or Cacophony?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/symphony%5For%5Fcac/) **Apr 17** — [Recognizing Excellence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/recognizing%5Fqua/) **Apr 16** — [Dude, It's a Supply Chain Wipeout!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dude%5Fits%5Fa%5Fsupp/) **Apr 14** — [Stop Complaining and Start Competing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop%5Fcomplainin/) **Apr 13** — [Lean Healthcare Improvements](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fhealthcare/) **Apr 13** — [Boeing's Bratwurst Gone Bad](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings%5Fbratwur/) **Apr 12** — [The Value of a Potty Break](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fvalue%5Fof%5Fa%5F/) **Apr 11** — [Learning Lean: Industry Needs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning%5Flean%5Fi/) **Apr 9** — [Secure Supply Chain Value](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/secure%5Fsupply%5Fc/) **Apr 8** — [Lean Government in Fort Wayne](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fgovernment/) **Apr 5** — [Delusions of Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/managerial%5Fdelu/) **Apr 4** — [Historical Simplicity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/historical%5Fsimp/) **Apr 3** — [A Missed Opportunity?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fmissed%5Fopport/) **Apr 2** — [Blind to the Pull Economy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blind%5Fto%5Fthe%5Fpu/) **Apr 1** — [Ohio State vs. Florida - No Contest](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ohio%5Fstate%5Fvs%5Ff/) **Mar 30** — [Counterintuitive Productivity Statistics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more%5Fproductivi/) **Mar 29** — [Oracle vs. SAP - Battle of the False Gods](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oracle%5Fvs%5Fsap%5Fb/) **Mar 28** — [The Value in Pricing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fvalue%5Fin%5Fpr/) **Mar 28** — [The Value in Jobs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fvalue%5Fin%5Fjo/) **Mar 27** — [Boeing's Balancing Act](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings%5Fbalanci/) **Mar 26** — [Furniture Circling the Globe](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/furniture%5Fcircl/) **Mar 25** — [The Teaching Leader](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fteaching%5Fle/) **Mar 24** — [Size Matters](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/size%5Fmatters/) **Mar 23** — [Even More Lean At New Balance](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/even%5Fmore%5Flean%5F/) **Mar 22** — [A Telling Lean Typo?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Ftelling%5Flean%5F/) **Mar 21** — [More on Joseph Abboud](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more%5Fon%5Fjoseph%5F/) **Mar 20** — [Reminder: Free TWI Webinar Wednesday](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reminder%5Ffree%5Ft/) **Mar 20** — [Carlos: Get Some Sleep](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ghosn%5Fin%5Fthe%5Fnu/) **Mar 19** — [A380 vs. 787 - Batch vs. One Piece Flow?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a380%5Fvs%5F787%5Fbat/) **Mar 18** — [Real Lean at CMP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/real%5Flean%5Fat%5Fcm/) **Mar 17** — [Boeing Versus Airbus - On TV](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing%5Fversus%5Fa/) **Mar 16** — [Southern Fried Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southern%5Ffried%5F/) **Mar 14** — [Discussing Onshoring](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fbiz%5Fschool%5Ffo/) **Mar 13** — [Fore!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fore/) **Mar 12** — [Outsourcing Lemmings, Kiwi Style](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing%5Flem/) **Mar 11** — [That Sneaky Honda!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/that%5Fsneaky%5Fhon/) **Mar 10** — [The Week in Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fweek%5Fin%5Flea/) **Mar 9** — [Mother Nature Teaches a Lean Lesson](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mother%5Fnature%5Ft/) **Mar 8** — [Heavy Heads of Consultants](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/heavy%5Fheads%5Fof%5F/) **Mar 6** — [Outsourcing Knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing%5Fkno/) **Mar 5** — [Return on Talent](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/return%5Fon%5Ftalen/) **Mar 4** — [Lean Won't Work Here!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fwont%5Fwork%5F/) **Mar 3** — [Airbust?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/airbust/) **Mar 2** — [Lean and Globalization in the Auto Wars](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fbbc%5Fon%5Flean/) **Mar 1** — [Pay for Availability](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pay%5Ffor%5Favailab/) **Feb 28** — [High Wage Competition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/high%5Fwage%5Fcompe/) **Feb 27** — [Free TWI Webinar](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/free%5Ftwi%5Fwebina/) **Feb 27** — [Lessons From a Deserted Isle](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons%5Ffrom%5Fa%5F/) **Feb 26** — [Stop Whining and Start Competing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop%5Fwhining%5Fan/) **Feb 26** — [Going to the Gemba in Belize](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/going%5Fto%5Fthe%5Fge/) **Feb 23** — [Ignoring the Obvious Solution](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ignoring%5Fthe%5Fob/) **Feb 22** — [Lean Data Centers?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fdata%5Fcente/) **Feb 21** — [Dressing Lean: Louis Vuitton Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dressing%5Flean%5Fl/) **Feb 20** — [Competing on the Basis of Speed](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/competing%5Fon%5Fth/) **Feb 19** — [The Politics of Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fpolitics%5Fof/) **Feb 18** — [News From Across the Pond](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/news%5Ffrom%5Facros/) **Feb 17** — [Time for a Break](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time%5Ffor%5Fa%5Fbrea/) **Feb 16** — [Flights of Knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/flights%5Fof%5Fknow/) **Feb 15** — [Visualizing the Blogosphere](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/visualizing%5Fthe/) **Feb 15** — [Chrysler Learns a Lesson](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chrysler%5Flearns/) **Feb 14** — [Honey I Shrank My MBA!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/honey%5Fi%5Fshrank%5F/) **Feb 13** — [A Global Intelligence Briefing for CEOs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fglobal%5Fintell/) **Feb 12** — [Marathon Training, The Lean Way](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/marathon%5Ftraini/) **Feb 10** — [Danaher's Low Profile Lean Excellence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/low%5Fprofile%5Flea/) **Feb 9** — [Virtual Quality is Hard to Beat](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/virtual%5Fquality/) **Feb 8** — [Wharton Gets It Right On Detroit](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wharton%5Fgets%5Fit/) **Feb 7** — [The Culture Side of Lean Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fculture%5Fsid/) **Feb 6** — [Road Trip to Mequon](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/road%5Ftrip%5Fto%5Fme/) **Feb 6** — [The New GM: Exploited Robots](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gm%5Fcontinues%5Fto/) **Feb 4** — [GM's Disrespect for... Robots](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gms%5Fdisrespect%5F/) **Feb 3** — [What Harley-Davidson Learned From GM](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what%5Fharleydavi/) **Feb 2** — [Venn Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/venn%5Flean/) **Feb 1** — [Evolving Excellence and Lean Printing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/evolving%5Fexcell/) **Jan 30** — [Lean Manufacturing Training, Workshops, and Conferences](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fmanufactur/) **Jan 29** — [Ford vs. GM: Who's Ahead?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ford%5Fvs%5Fgm%5Fwhos/) **Jan 28** — [Remember the Humans](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/remember%5Fthe%5Fhu/) **Jan 26** — [Just Think First](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just%5Fthink%5Ffirs/) **Jan 26** — [Damn the Profits, Full Speed Ahead!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/damn%5Fthe%5Fprofit/) **Jan 25** — [Brazilian Bikinis and Toyotas](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/brazilian%5Fbikin/) **Jan 22** — [Toyota Optimizes Military Supply Chains](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota%5Foptimize/) **Jan 21** — [Diluting Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/diluting%5Flean/) **Jan 20** — [Finding Time To Innovate](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/finding%5Ftime%5Fto/) **Jan 19** — [Lean Boomtowns](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean%5Fboomtowns/) **Jan 18** — [Dressing Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dressing%5Flean/) **Jan 17** — [Toyota Shops At Wal-Mart](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota%5Fshops%5Fat/) **Jan 16** — [A Myriad of Misleading Metrics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/misleading%5Fmetr/) **Jan 15** — [Investing in Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/investing%5Fin%5Fle/) **Jan 15** — [More Problems for NAM](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more%5Fproblems%5Ff/) **Jan 14** — [Jack Welch: Under the Influence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jack%5Fwelch%5Funde/) **Jan 13** — [NCR Follows Whirlpool Off the Cliff](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ncr%5Ffollows%5Fwhi/) **Jan 11** — [Hiding the Waste of Inventory](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/out%5Fof%5Fsight%5Fis/) **Jan 10** — [A Crisis in Global Logistics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fcrisis%5Fin%5Fglo/) **Jan 9** — [Belugas and Guppies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/belugas%5Fand%5Fgup/) **Jan 9** — [Rube Goldberg Takes On Supply Chains](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rube%5Fgoldberg%5Ft/) **Jan 8** — [The Plural of Anecdote is Not Gemba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fplural%5Fof%5Fa/) **Jan 8** — [Burying the Screw in the Fine Print](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/burying%5Fthe%5Fscr/) **Jan 6** — [Trials and Tribulations: Auto Show 2007](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/trials%5Fand%5Ftrib/) **Jan 5** — [Home Depot's Eighth Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/home%5Fdepots%5Feig/) **Jan 4** — [Wal-Mart Worships the False God](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/walmart%5Fworhips/) **Jan 3** — [Who Is GM's Customer?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/who%5Fis%5Fgms%5Fcust/) **Jan 2** — [Pushing Misery Up the Supply Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pushing%5Fmisery%5F/) ### Archives - 2008 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2008/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T20:39:58.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 31** — [What Won't You Do in 2009?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-wont-you-do-in-2009/) **Dec 30** — [Doonesbury on the Value of People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/doonesbury-on-the-value-of-people/) **Dec 29** — [$20 Billion Company CEO... Takes the Bus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/20-billion-company-ceo-takes-the-bus/) **Dec 26** — [No Christmas? Celebrate Beltane!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/no-christmas-celebrate-beltane/) **Dec 24** — [Ban Supply or Decrease Demand?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ban-supply-or-decrease-demand/) **Dec 23** — [It's Work Rules, Not Pay](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-work-rules-not-pay/) **Dec 22** — [Surviving China's Deep Contradictions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/surviving-chinas-deep-contradictions/) **Dec 19** — [Is a No Layoff Policy Really Wise?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-a-no-layoff-policy-really-wise/) **Dec 18** — [Prepared for a Cliff?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prepared-for-a-cliff/) **Dec 17** — [Blinders of Supply Chain Complexity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blinders-of-supply-chain-complexity/) **Dec 16** — [McKinsey Gets It... For Once](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-gets-it-for-once/) **Dec 15** — [Is the VAT Really Simple?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-the-vat-really-simple/) **Dec 12** — [The Opportunity of Bureaucracy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-opportunity-of-bureaucracy/) **Dec 11** — [Yet Another Regulatory Nightmare](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yet-another-regulatory-nightmare/) **Dec 10** — [Australia Learns About Outsourcing Costs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/australia-learns-about-outsourcing-costs/) **Dec 9** — [Focusing on the Small, Forgetting the Big](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/focusing-on-the-small-forgetting-the-big/) **Dec 8** — [Should Ford Learn From... Ford?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ford-should-learn-from-ford-brazil/) **Dec 6** — [Newt on the Toyota Production System](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/newt-on-the-toyota-production-system/) **Dec 5** — [Lean Meets ISO... Only in California](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-meets-iso-only-in-california/) **Dec 3** — [The Power of Visualizing People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-of-visualizing-people/) **Dec 2** — [Aging Spaghetti](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/aging-spaghetti/) **Dec 1** — [Cashing in on an Abdication of Responsibility](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cashing-in-on-an-abdication-of-responsibility/) **Nov 28** — [A Lean Mid-Life Crisis?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lean-mid-life-crisis/) **Nov 27** — [Thoughts on Communication Poka Yoke from Japan](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thoughts-on-technology-and-communication-from-japan/) **Nov 26** — [A Prescient Joke](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-prescient-joke/) **Nov 25** — [Lean Medical Coding?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-medical-coding/) **Nov 24** — [Talking Turkey on Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/talking-turkey-on-leadership/) **Nov 21** — [A Visit to American Apparel](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-visit-to-american-apparel/) **Nov 20** — [Those Dang Fasteners. Again.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/those-dang-fasteners-again/) **Nov 19** — [Did Lego Learn a Lesson? Did You?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/did-lego-learn-a-lesson-did-you/) **Nov 18** — [The Myopic Misfocus of Labor Time Standards](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-myopic-misfocus-of-labor-standards/) **Nov 17** — [On the Road to Zimbabwe](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/massive-capital-destruction/) **Nov 14** — [Yes, Failure is an Option](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-failure-is-an-option/) **Nov 13** — [Lessons from Japan: Rapid, Disciplined Problem Escalation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons-from-japan-rapid-disciplined-problem-escalation/) **Nov 12** — [Stand Up Desk - Update & More Science](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stand-up-desk-update-more-science/) **Nov 11** — [Japan Kaikaku Experience - The Summary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/japan-kaikaku-experience-the-summary/) **Nov 10** — [Trickling Down on Detroit](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/trickling-down-on-detroit/) **Nov 7** — [Shipping Water Across Water](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shipping-water-across-water/) **Nov 6** — [The Dilution of the Shingo Prize](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-dilution-of-the-shingo-prize/) **Nov 5** — [Lessons from Japan - The Speed of Change](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons-from-japan-the-speed-of-change/) **Nov 4** — [Lessons from Japan - Harmony, Chaos, and Ruthlessness](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons-from-japan-harmony-chaos-and-ruthlessness/) **Nov 3** — [Lessons from Japan - Stand for Action](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons-from-japan-stand-for-action/) **Oct 31** — [JKE Day 4: 3S Gone Wild](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-3-hoks-3s-gone-wild/) **Oct 30** — [JKE Day 3: TOTO - Cells, Cells, and More Cells](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-3-toto-cells-cells-and-more-cells/) **Oct 29** — [JKE Day 2: Saishunkan Cosmetics - Customer Care Trumps a Factory](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-2-saishunken-cosmetics-customer-care-trumps-a-factory/) **Oct 28** — [JKE Day 1: Toyota Kyushu - The Manufacturing Ballet](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-1-toyota-kyushu/) **Oct 27** — [Thoughts on Flow on the Way to Japan](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thoughts-on-flow-from-japan/) **Oct 24** — [Off to Japan](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/off-to-japan/) **Oct 23** — [Notes from the AME Conference](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/notes-from-the/) **Oct 23** — [Evolving Excellence Endorses...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/evolving-excellence-endorses/) **Oct 22** — [Debating Manufacturing... Not](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/debating-manufa/) **Oct 21** — [Public vs. Private Company Managers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/public-vs-priva/) **Oct 20** — [WaPo Sees the Balloon](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wapo-sees-the-b/) **Oct 17** — [Feeding Generation Y](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/feeding-generat/) **Oct 16** — [Carl Icahn and the Value of People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/carl-icahn-and/) **Oct 15** — [Gotta Love Dov](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gotta-love-dov/) **Oct 14** — [Toyota Knows Brains](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-knows-br/) **Oct 13** — [Here Comes India, No Bailout Required](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/here-comes-indi/) **Oct 12** — [Stop Watching "Lost"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop-watching-l/) **Oct 10** — [Improving By Getting Out Of The Way](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/improving-by-ge/) **Oct 9** — [Fun With Statistics, Carbon Footprint Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis/) **Oct 8** — [A 5am Wakeup Call](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-5am-wakeup-ca/) **Oct 7** — [Compensating Risk](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/compensating-ri/) **Oct 6** — [The Lesson of a Stinky Basement](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lesson-of-a/) **Oct 5** — [Even Sweden Gets It](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/even-sweden-get/) **Oct 3** — [The "Other" Bailout, Part 4](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-other-bailo/) **Oct 2** — [An Off Day for the Always On](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an-off-day-for/) **Oct 1** — [Management Improvement Carnival #44](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-impr/) **Sep 29** — [Accountability Wins... For Now](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/accountability/) **Sep 29** — [Confronting the Global Talent Crunch](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/confronting-the/) **Sep 28** — [Time for a Vaccine DOE?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time-for-a-vacc/) **Sep 27** — [Email, Lean and Concise](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/email-lean-and/) **Sep 26** — [Must New Come From the Old?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/must-new-come-f/) **Sep 25** — [Why Companies Succeed at Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-companies-s/) **Sep 24** — [Sloan Blows Lean 101](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sloan-blows-lea/) **Sep 23** — [The Balloon Finally Pops](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-balloon-fin/) **Sep 22** — [What's Dov Been Up To?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whats-dov-been/) **Sep 20** — [The Double-Edged Productivity Sword](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-double-edge/) **Sep 19** — [The Smoking Hot Blonde of Kaikaku](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-smoking-hot/) **Sep 18** — [Predictions from Employees](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/predictions-fro/) **Sep 17** — [Is the Four Hour Work Week Really Lean?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-the-four-hou/) **Sep 16** — [Sensei Asks: Middle School or First Grade?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sensei-asks-mid/) **Sep 15** — [Bailout, Part Three](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bailout-part-1/) **Sep 14** — [Wasting Time on Cultural Nuance](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wasting-time-on/) **Sep 13** — [Lean Thoughts From Geneva](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-thoughts-f/) **Sep 12** — [Time - The Online Truly Finite Resource](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time-the-onli/) **Sep 11** — [Fun With Statistics, Road Improvement Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-2/) **Sep 10** — [Here Come the Challengers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/here-come-the-c/) **Sep 9** — [Lean Companies in the News](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-companies/) **Sep 8** — [An IT Guy Gets Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an-it-guy-gets/) **Sep 7** — [Stop the "Mean" Already!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop-the-mean-a/) **Sep 6** — [The Curse of Global Solitaire](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-curse-of-gl/) **Sep 5** — [GAAP RIP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gaap-rip/) **Sep 4** — [The Value of a Whopper](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-a/) **Sep 3** — [Lean Banking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-banking/) **Sep 2** — [Bailout, Part Two](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bailout-part-tw/) **Sep 1** — [The Waste of Unnecessary Complexity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-waste-of-un/) **Aug 31** — [WaPo Continues To Ignore the Facts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wapo-continues/) **Aug 30** — [An Unfortunate Rhyme](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an-unfortunate/) **Aug 29** — [Bailing Out Pathetic Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bailing-out-pat/) **Aug 28** — [The Window is Closing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-window-is-c/) **Aug 27** — [Toyota: Pioneer of Momentum](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-pioneer/) **Aug 26** — [Four More Hours of Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-four-hours/) **Aug 25** — [Poka Yoke "Disasater"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poka-yoke-disas/) **Aug 24** — [Another Perspective on Change](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/another-perspec/) **Aug 23** — [Shifting Paradigms, Part 2](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shifting-para-1/) **Aug 22** — [Shifting Paradigms, Part 1](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shifting-paradi/) **Aug 22** — [2k + 1k + 2k = Loads of Fun](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2k-1k-2k-loads/) **Aug 21** — [American's "Improved Access" Strategery](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/americans-impro/) **Aug 20** — [The Irish Could Learn From the Vietnamese](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-irish-could/) **Aug 19** — [McKinsey Looks at Supply Chain Complexity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-looks/) **Aug 18** — [Lean Olympians Take Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-olympians/) **Aug 17** — [The Fine Print Risk of Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-fine-print/) **Aug 15** — [Another Company Smarter Than the Fortune 50](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/another-company/) **Aug 14** — [IW Swings Both Ways on Robots](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/iw-swings-both/) **Aug 13** — [Are We To Blame?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/are-we-to-blame/) **Aug 12** — [China Begins to Recruit Globally](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/china-begins-to/) **Aug 11** — [Draining the... err... Stench](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/draining-the-er/) **Aug 9** — [Slowing the Entrepreneurial Engine](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/slowing-the-ent/) **Aug 8** — [The Climate Change Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-climate-cha/) **Aug 7** — [An Interesting Review of Bill's Book](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an-interesting/) **Aug 6** — [The Arbitrary Calendar Year](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-arbitrary-c/) **Aug 5** — [What is a Windfall?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-is-a-windf/) **Aug 4** — [Four Hours of Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/four-hours-of-l/) **Aug 3** — [Beware the Prism](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beware-the-pris/) **Aug 2** — [Big Boy Toys](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/big-boy-toys/) **Aug 2** — [NAFTA & Wal-Mart Create Inequality... Sort Of](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nafta-wal-mart/) **Aug 1** — [Us It Or Lose It... Or Create Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/us-it-or-lose-i/) **Jul 31** — [Sloan Tackles Lean Accounting](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sloan-tackles-l/) **Jul 30** — [Southwest's Colleen Barrett, Servant](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southwests-coll/) **Jul 29** — [Lean Hospitals - Q&A with Mark Graban](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-hospitals/) **Jul 28** — [The Sense of Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/trust-the-exper/) **Jul 27** — [Supply and Demand for Lawyers... and Doctors](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/supply-and-dema/) **Jul 26** — [SAP Gets Fat, You Get Thin](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sap-gets-fat/) **Jul 25** — [Creating an Internal Manufacturing Competency](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/creating-an-int/) **Jul 24** — [A United Pilot Remembers the Customer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-united-pilot/) **Jul 23** — [Manitowoc Leads the "Revival"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manitowoc-leads/) **Jul 22** — [Not Learning the First Time Around. Or the Second.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/not-learning-th/) **Jul 21** — [The Squirrels of SAP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-squirrels-o/) **Jul 20** — [Will Obama Learn from Europe?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/will-obama-lear/) **Jul 19** — [Leaving Oz for Kansas Technology](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leaving-oz-for/) **Jul 18** — [McKinsey Figures Out Value - 20 Years Later](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mckinsey-realig/) **Jul 17** — [Boeing Plays Whack-a-Supplier](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-plays-wh/) **Jul 16** — [The Danger of Attacking Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-danger-of-a/) **Jul 15** — [Beware the Expensive Castle](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beware-the-expe/) **Jul 14** — [Nardelli - Customer Advocate?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nardelli-cust/) **Jul 13** — [Power to the People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/power-to-the-pe/) **Jul 12** — [It's Global, Baby](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-global-baby/) **Jul 11** — [Leadership in the Internet Age](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-in-t/) **Jul 10** — [The Real Reason for the Chevy Volt](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-real-reason/) **Jul 9** — [The Value of Not Overthinking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-no/) **Jul 8** — [Maybe They'll Listen to Womack](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/maybe-theyll-li/) **Jul 7** — [The UK Goes Lean on Food](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-uk-goes-lea/) **Jul 6** — [Tax Sensitivity 101](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tax-sensitivity/) **Jul 5** — [Lean Companies in the News](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-companies-2/) **Jul 4** — [Too Bad, So Sad](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/too-bad-so-sad/) **Jul 2** — [Incentives to Retain Knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/incentives-to-r/) **Jul 1** — [The Contradictions of Toyota](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-contradicti/) **Jun 30** — [WaPo Deludes The Masses, Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wapo-deludes-th/) **Jun 29** — [Global IQ Quiz - The Answers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/globa-iq-quiz/) **Jun 28** — [Global IQ Quiz - The Questions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/global-iq-quiz/) **Jun 27** — [Join Me in Japan!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/join-me-in-japa/) **Jun 26** — [The Buzzword of Customer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-buzzword-of/) **Jun 25** — [Small Batch Elderly Care](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/small-batch-eld/) **Jun 24** — [Saving By Just Asking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/saving-by-just/) **Jun 23** — [Adventures in Electronic Healthcare](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/adventures-in-e/) **Jun 22** — [Letting Hype Confuse Intelligence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/letting-hype-co/) **Jun 21** — [Questions of Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/questions-of-le/) **Jun 20** — [Fun With Statistics, Overhead Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-3/) **Jun 19** — [Snoop Dog, Six Sigma Black Belt](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/snoop-dog-six-s/) **Jun 18** — [Spelling Impacts Perception of Quality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spelling-impact/) **Jun 17** — [Toyota Puts People First](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-puts-peo/) **Jun 16** — [Poverty-Fighting Free Market Peruvians](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poverty-fightin/) **Jun 15** — [Push vs. Pull Garbage Collection](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/push-vs-pull-ga/) **Jun 14** — [Dilbert in Real Life](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dilbert-in-real/) **Jun 13** — [Welcome Home and Good Luck](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/insourcing-than/) **Jun 12** — [The Speed of Change](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-speed-of-ch/) **Jun 11** — [Competing in the Afterlife](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/competing-in-th/) **Jun 10** — [Do You Know Your Tata's?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/do-you-know-you/) **Jun 9** — [Windfall Profits Tax on Harvard?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/windfall-profit/) **Jun 8** — [A $1.4 Billion Lesson in Standard Work](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-14-billion-le/) **Jun 7** — [Poka Yoke the Dollar Bill](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poka-yoke-the-d/) **Jun 6** — [Productivity is Not Quality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/productivity-is/) **Jun 3** — [Group Soak](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/group-soak/) **May 30** — [Productivity: Eliminate Before You Optimize](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/productivity-el/) **May 29** — [Flying Composites](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/flying-composit/) **May 28** — [Is Invincible Invincible?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-invincible-i/) **May 27** — [Dell Cookie Dough](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dell-cookie-dou/) **May 25** — [Different Approaches to a Truck Slowdown](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/different-appro/) **May 24** — [A Violinist in the Bronx](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-violinist-in/) **May 23** — [A Trifecta of Good Letters](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-trifecta-of-g/) **May 22** — [But Can GM's Robots Conduct?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/but-can-gms-rob/) **May 21** — [Evolutionary Economics: Focus on the Customer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/evolutionary-ec/) **May 20** — [Dov's Short Elevator Trip](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dovs-short-elev/) **May 19** — [Motorola Kills the Future](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/motorola-kills/) **May 18** — [A Lean Approach to Poverty](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lean-approach/) **May 17** — [Alan Garcia Sees the Right](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lefty-sees-th/) **May 16** — [Why... Do We Return?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-do-we-retur/) **May 15** — [Management Improvement Carnival #35](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-impr-2/) **May 14** — [Self-Segregating People Flow](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/self-segregatin/) **May 13** — [The Productivity Conundrum... Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-productivit/) **May 12** — [Woes of Dream Factories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/woes-of-dream-f/) **May 11** — [Senior Associate Ladder Climber](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/senior-associat/) **May 10** — [Vigilant People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/vigilant-people/) **May 9** — [Others Forget About People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/others-forget-a/) **May 7** — [Message to Hillary: We Still Make Stuff](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/message-to-hill/) **May 5** — [Ghost Kanban](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ghost-kanban/) **May 4** — [Fun With Statistics, Percentile Problems Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-4/) **May 3** — [Fujio Cho Reminds Us About People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fujio-cho-remin/) **May 2** — [Does Kerkorian Read Evolving Excellence?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/does-kerkorian/) **Apr 30** — [Fun With Statistics, Lazy Women Doctors Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-stat-1/) **Apr 29** — [Getting Paid Not To Work](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/get-paid-not-to/) **Apr 28** — [Costco vs. the Lean Corner Store](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/costco-vs-the-l/) **Apr 27** — [Morro Bay Coffee Learns From Starbucks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/morro-bay-coffe/) **Apr 26** — [What If Your Best Wasn't Needed?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-if-your-be/) **Apr 25** — [Teaching Penguins to Fly](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/teaching-pengui/) **Apr 24** — [Wisconsin Outsmarts China... for Now](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wisconsin-outsm/) **Apr 23** — [Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nowhere-to-run/) **Apr 22** — [da Vinci - The First Lean Thinker?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/da-vinci-the/) **Apr 20** — [Turn Michigan into a Park?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/turn-michigan-i/) **Apr 19** — [Fun With Statistics, Bachelor Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-5/) **Apr 18** — [Dreamliner Weinermobile and Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dreamliner-wein/) **Apr 17** — [Is Microfinance Lean?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-microfinance/) **Apr 17** — [Featuritis Curse](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/featuritis-curs/) **Apr 15** — [Change Through Ownership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/change-through/) **Apr 14** — [WaPo Flubs Another One](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wapo-flubs-anot/) **Apr 13** — [Waste Index](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/waste-index/) **Apr 12** — [American Apparel Opens the Kimono](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/american-appare/) **Apr 11** — [Indexed](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/indexed/) **Apr 10** — [Feeble Attempt, No Cigar](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/feeble-attempt/) **Apr 9** — [CEO Impact... and Pay](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ceo-impact-and/) **Apr 8** — [Boeing's Confused Union Boss](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings-confuse/) **Apr 7** — [Respect by Retrain Not Replace](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/respect-by-retr/) **Apr 6** — [Dell Gives Up On... Dell](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dell-gives-up-o/) **Apr 5** — [Fabs That Refuse To Die](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fabs-that-refus/) **Apr 4** — [Rational Chimps, Fair Economists](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rational-chimps/) **Apr 3** — [Subliminal Creativity, Courtesy of Apple](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/subliminal-crea/) **Apr 1** — [Aircraft Outsourcing Problems - With a Twist](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/aircraft-outsou/) **Mar 31** — [Fleeing China](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fleeing-china/) **Mar 30** — [Transtemporal Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/transtemporal-o/) **Mar 29** — [Survey: 3 Respondents Required](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/survey-3-respon/) **Mar 28** — [Massachusetts' Manufacturing Conundrum](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/massachusetts-m/) **Mar 27** — [Nike - Lean in China?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nike-lean-in/) **Mar 26** — [The Quandary of Sales Incentives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-quandary-of/) **Mar 25** — [If Only Boeing Still Had Employees](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/if-only-boeing/) **Mar 24** — [Don't Forget Rule #1](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dont-forget-rul/) **Mar 24** — [Last Year a Day, This Year 30 Minutes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/last-year-a-day/) **Mar 16** — [Mass Customization in Pharma](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mass-customizat/) **Mar 15** — [Joseph Weizenbaum: Fighting the False Gods](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/joseph-weizenba/) **Mar 12** — [So Who's More Patriotic?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/so-whos-more-pa/) **Mar 11** — [The Root Cause of Email Overload](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-root-cause/) **Mar 10** — [Boeing: Whiner Extraordinaire](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-whiner-e/) **Mar 7** — [Globalization and Tuscany's Hill Towns](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/globalization-a/) **Mar 6** — [The Worker as National Asset](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-worker-as-n/) **Mar 5** — [Building an Empire Takes Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/building-an-emp/) **Mar 5** — [Onshoring: Bucking the Trend](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/onshoring-bucki/) **Mar 2** — [Today I Left the Dark Side](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/today-i-left-th/) **Mar 2** — [A Little Different: Baby Names](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-little-differ/) **Mar 1** — [Boudreaux, In Action](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boudreaux-in-ac/) **Feb 28** — [Lean Blog Will Return](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-blog-will/) **Feb 28** — [Falling Taxes... Except Here](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/falling-taxes-e/) **Feb 27** — [Success in the U.S. - Metal-Tech](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/success-in-the/) **Feb 26** — [Rockwood Gets What Whirlpool Forgets](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rockwood-gets-w/) **Feb 25** — [Continuous Improvement in the Classroom](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/continuous-impr/) **Feb 24** — [People Chain Management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/people-chain-ma/) **Feb 23** — [A Little Different: Google Sightseeing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-little-differ-2/) **Feb 21** — [Lego's Outsourcing Adventure, Part Trois](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/legos-outsourci/) **Feb 19** — [Fun With Statistics, Fad Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statis-6/) **Feb 19** — [Lenovo, and Soon 10,000 More](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lenovo-and-soon/) **Feb 17** — [Evolving Excellence in the News](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/evolving-excell-2/) **Feb 16** — [Marxist Flow?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/marxist-flow/) **Feb 15** — [Could Lean Have Saved Linda?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/could-lean-have/) **Feb 13** — [Circumventing the Credit Crunch](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/circumventing-t/) **Feb 12** — [Need Some Eager Workers?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/need-some-eager/) **Feb 10** — [Pay Me Now Or Pay Me Later](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pay-me-now-or-p/) **Feb 9** — [Kudos to Cascade Designs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kudos-to-cascad/) **Feb 8** — [Half Right... No, Not Even](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/half-right-no-n/) **Feb 6** — [Lean Public Services](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-public-ser/) **Feb 5** — [Missed Opportunity Spawns a Competitor](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spinoff-spawns/) **Feb 4** — [Just a Bowl of Brains](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-a-bowl-of/) **Feb 2** — [More Dangers of Horizontal Surfaces](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-dangers-of/) **Jan 31** — [Barring Brilliant Minds](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/barring-brillia/) **Jan 30** — [China Begins to Outsource](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/china-begins-to-2/) **Jan 29** — [Respecting Kids Through Visual Management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/respecting-kids/) **Jan 28** — [Excessive or Progressive CEO Pay?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/excessive-or-pr/) **Jan 27** — [Why Did THAT Happen?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-did-that-ha/) **Jan 26** — [Asking Why in IT](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/asking-why-in-i/) **Jan 25** — [No Titles Except "Plant" Manager](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/no-titles-excep/) **Jan 24** — [Boeing Should Learn from Vought](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-should-l/) **Jan 23** — [4 Months To Fix 218,000 Factories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-so-long/) **Jan 21** — [Merck is Looking LAME](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/merck-is-lookin/) **Jan 19** — [Companies in the News](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/companies-in-th/) **Jan 19** — [21... And Hopefully Counting](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/21-and-hopefull/) **Jan 16** — [Boeing's Woes Continue](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings-woes-co/) **Jan 14** — [Lean and Green Summit](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-and-green/) **Jan 13** — [Developmental Efficiency](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/developmental-e/) **Jan 12** — [Leadership as a Product](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-as-a/) **Jan 11** — [People in the New Year](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/people-in-the-n/) **Jan 10** — [SMED at 30,000 Feet](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/smed-at-30000-f/) **Jan 9** — [Lean is Not Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-is-not-lea/) **Jan 8** — [Forget the Painters, Just Create Artists](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget-the-pain/) **Jan 7** — [Parade, Bhutto, and Long Lead Times](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/parade-bhutto-a/) **Jan 6** — [Good Luck With That...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/good-luck-with/) **Jan 6** — [Congrats AME!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/congrats-ame/) **Jan 4** — [The Waste of Color](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-waste-of-co/) ### Archives - 2009 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2009/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T17:58:56.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 23** — [GM's Dangerously Naive Overseers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gms-dangerously-naive-overseers/) **Dec 22** — [Kaizen, Kaikaku, and Health Care Reform](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kaizen-kaikaku-and-health-care-reform/) **Dec 17** — [Congratulations, Boeing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/congratulations-boeing-2/) **Dec 13** — [Smaller... and Smaller...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/smaller-and-smaller/) **Dec 10** — [Outsourcing Retreats - And Not Just in Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-retreats-and-not-just-in-manufacturing/) **Dec 8** — [Michael Dell, Meet Jørgen Vig Knudstorp](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/michael-dell-meet/) **Dec 6** — [The Failure of Groupthink](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-failure-of-groupthink/) **Dec 3** — [So Long, Fritz](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/so-long-fritz/) **Nov 29** — [Standing on the Road](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/standing-on-the-road/) **Nov 25** — [Team Science](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/team-science/) **Nov 23** — [Politicizing to the Lowest Common Denominator](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/politicizing-to-the-lowest-common-denominator/) **Nov 22** — [Sorry Kids](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sorry-kids/) **Nov 20** — [Bringing Down the House](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bringing-down-the-house/) **Nov 17** — ["Lean Out" This, Boeing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-out-this-boeing/) **Nov 15** — [Motorola's Continued Downward Focus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/motorolas-continued-downward-focus/) **Nov 14** — [Fun With Statistics - Wine Ratings Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-wine-ratings-edition/) **Nov 3** — [Ritz-Carlton's Focus on the Customer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ritzcarltons-focus-on-the-customer/) **Nov 2** — [The Status Quo Degrades](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-status-quo-degrades/) **Nov 1** — [Masking the Real Problem](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/masking-the-real-problem/) **Nov 1** — [Knowledge - and Revenue - Runs Away](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/knowledge-and-revenue-runs-away/) **Oct 31** — [Move Over Barney, Meet the Imagination Movers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/move-over-barney-meet-the-imagination-movers/) **Oct 28** — [When Is It Time To Change Direction?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-is-it-time-to-change-direction/) **Oct 26** — [Embracing a Curious Contrarian View](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/embracing-a-curious-contrarian-view/) **Oct 25** — [A Modicum of Lean Leadership by Hillary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-modicum-of-lean-leadership-by-hillary/) **Oct 24** — [Behavior Modification - Make it Fun](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/behavior-modification-make-it-fun/) **Oct 23** — [Stand Up to Learn](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stand-up-to-learn/) **Oct 21** — [Returning to America - The Debate](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/returning-to-america-the-debate/) **Oct 18** — [Chief Brain Officer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chief-brain-officer/) **Oct 17** — [Wasting a Neuron on Oprah](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wasting-a-neuron-on-oprah/) **Oct 15** — [Find the Real Opportunity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/find-the-real-opportunity/) **Oct 13** — [Boeing Pulls Another Rube Goldberg](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-pulls-another-rube-goldberg/) **Oct 10** — [Fun With Statistics - Men's Underwear Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-mens-underwear-edition/) **Oct 5** — [RIP Saturn - You Could Have Saved GM](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rip-saturn-you-could-have-saved-gm/) **Oct 4** — [John Mackey - Progressive CEO](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/john-mackey-progressive-ceo/) **Oct 3** — [Toyoda's Expected Apology](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyodas-expected-apology/) **Sep 28** — [The Boeing Blame Game](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-boeing-blame-game/) **Sep 27** — [The Stand Up Desk - One Year Later](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-stand-up-desk-one-year-later/) **Sep 23** — [AT&T, I'm Begging You to Take My Money!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/att-im-begging-you-to-take-my-money/) **Sep 20** — [Management Improvement Carnival #76](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-76/) **Sep 19** — [The Customer is the Boss at FAVI](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-customer-is-the-boss-at-favi/) **Sep 18** — [Checking in on Joseph Abboud](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/checking-in-on-joseph-abboud/) **Sep 17** — [The Poppendiecks on Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-poppendiecks-on-lean/) **Sep 14** — [You Can Lead a Horse... Even Horses...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/you-can-lead-a-horse-even-horses/) **Sep 13** — [Sunday News - Ford's Mulally and the US Postal Service](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sunday-news-fords-mulally-and-the-us-postal-service/) **Sep 10** — [Slowdown, Honda Style](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/slowdown-honda-style/) **Sep 8** — [Trickling Back](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/trickling-back/) **Sep 6** — [American Apparel - More Value From Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/american-apparel-more-value-from-waste/) **Sep 5** — [More Lean Haircuts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-lean-haircuts/) **Sep 4** — [Whirlpool Evansville Dies the Unnecessary but Expected Death](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool-evansville-dies-the-unnecessary-but-expected-death/) **Sep 2** — [Bashing Suppliers Into Submission](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bashing-suppliers-into-submission/) **Aug 31** — [NCR Retreats from Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ncr-retreats-from-outsourcing/) **Aug 29** — [Kona Recharge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/by-kevin-meyer-yes-i-know-ive-been-a-bit-absent-lately-sorry-about-that-somehow-the-real-job-jobs-passions-ke/) **Aug 22** — [The Waste of Word](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-waste-of-word/) **Aug 21** — [Leading in the Gemba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leading-in-the-gemba/) **Aug 20** — [Fun With Statistics - Veneer of Verisimilitude Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-veneer-of-verisimilitude-edition/) **Aug 17** — [Oops of the Day: Watch Those Document Revisions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oops-of-the-day-watch-those-document-revisions/) **Aug 17** — [5 Questions - Meet Sean Skinner](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-sean-skinner/) **Aug 11** — [5 Questions - Meet Dr. Sami Bahri, the "Lean Dentist"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-dr-sami-bahri-the-lean-dentist/) **Aug 9** — [Not Exactly a Value Stream](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/not-exactly-a-value-stream-map/) **Aug 8** — [Missing the Equation on Bonuses](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/missing-the-equation-on-bonuses/) **Aug 5** — [GM's Continued Infatuation With the Top Line](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gms-continued-infatuation-with-the-top-line/) **Jul 29** — [The New "Short Term": 30 Milliseconds](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-new-short-term-30-milliseconds/) **Jul 27** — [What Non-Interference Really Looks Like](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-noninterference-really-looks-like/) **Jul 26** — [Going Small](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/going-small/) **Jul 25** — [Google Chrome - A Lean Operation System?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/google-chrome-a-lean-operations-system/) **Jul 19** — [Taking Standing Up To New Heights](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taking-standing-up-to-new-heights/) **Jul 18** — [The Bikes Return - Thanks to the Evil Profiteers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bikes-return-thanks-to-the-evil-profiteers/) **Jul 14** — [Marketing on the Evolving Sources of Information](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/marketing-on-the-evolving-sources-of-information/) **Jul 13** — [Evolving Sources of Information](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/evolving-sources-of-information/) **Jul 11** — [Is Business Learning the Value of Experience?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-business-learning-the-value-of-experience/) **Jul 9** — [Boeing's About Face Runs Smack Into Traditional Accounting](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings-about-face-runs-smack-into-traditional-accounting/) **Jul 7** — [Boeing Continues to Re-Learn the Outsourcing Lesson](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-continues-to-relearn-the-outsourcing-lesson/) **Jul 6** — [So You Want to Buy an American Car?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/so-you-want-to-buy-an-american-car/) **Jul 6** — [5 Questions - Meet John Kim](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-john-kim/) **Jul 5** — [A Check on My Undesired Investment](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-check-on-my-undesired-investment/) **Jul 2** — [The Gift of Complaints](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-gift-of-complaints/) **Jun 30** — [Daydreaming Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/daydreaming-lean/) **Jun 29** — [An Outsourcing King Has Second Thoughts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/an-outsourcing-king-has-second-thoughts/) **Jun 28** — [Facts Required? Egads!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/facts-required-egads/) **Jun 27** — [History - and Vision - in One Sentence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/history-and-vision-in-one-sentence/) **Jun 23** — [The Nimitz Goes To Home Depot](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-nimitz-goes-to-home-depot/) **Jun 22** — [5 Questions - Meet Jon Miller](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-jon-miller/) **Jun 21** — [The Potentially Deadly Annual Inventory](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-potentially-deadly-annual-inventory/) **Jun 15** — [5 Questions - Meet Kevin Meyer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-kevin-meyer/) **Jun 14** — [The Preventive Performance Review](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-preventive-performance-review/) **Jun 13** — [A Finger for ERP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-finger-for-erp/) **Jun 12** — [A Little Irish Love for Dov](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-little-irish-love-for-dov/) **Jun 8** — [5 Questions - Meet Mark Rosenthal](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-mark-rosenthal/) **Jun 7** — [Saturn, Penske, and 5S](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/saturn-penske-and-5s/) **Jun 6** — [Waste and SAP?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/waste-and-sap/) **Jun 2** — [Laffer and the Portability of Knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/laffer-and-the-portability-of-knowledge/) **Jun 1** — [5 Questions - Meet Norman Bodek](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-norman-bodek/) **May 30** — [Another Day, Another Czar](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/another-day-another-czar/) **May 25** — [5 Questions - Meet Ron Pereira](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-ron-pereira/) **May 19** — [May 19th: A Day of Elegance](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/may-19th-a-day-of-elegance/) **May 18** — [5 Questions - Meet Michael Balle](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-michael-balle/) **May 12** — [Mailbox:0 - Oh So Lonely](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mailbox-0-oh-so-lonely/) **May 11** — [5 Questions - Ken Rolfes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-ken-rolfes/) **May 10** — [Long is not Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/long-is-not-lean/) **May 4** — [5 Questions - Meet Lee Fried](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-lee-fried/) **Apr 28** — [When Committees Oversee Standard Work](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-committees-oversee-standard-work/) **Apr 27** — [5 Questions - Meet Mike Wroblewski](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-mike-wroblewski/) **Apr 26** — [Ford vs. The Taxpayer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ford-vs-the-taxpayer/) **Apr 23** — [Danaher's Focus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/danahers-focus/) **Apr 21** — [Twitter, Haiku, and the Simplicity of Mission](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/twitter-haiku-and-the-simplicity-of-mission/) **Apr 20** — [5 Questions - Meet Jamie Flinchbaugh](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-jamie-flinchbaugh/) **Apr 19** — [Skin in the Game](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/skin-in-the-game/) **Apr 18** — [More Lemmings Come Marching Home](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-lemmings-come-marching-home/) **Apr 14** — [Anagnorisis, Peripeteia, and the War on Work](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/anagnorisis-peripeteia-and-the-war-on-work/) **Apr 13** — [5 Questions - Meet Dan Markovitz](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-dan-markovitz/) **Apr 12** — [Bombastic Briefs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bombastic-briefs/) **Apr 9** — [Management Improvement Carnival #60](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-60/) **Apr 7** — [Thus Sayeth Warren](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/econ-101-according-to-warren/) **Apr 6** — [5 Questions - Meet Mark Graban](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-mark-graban-2/) **Apr 4** — [Quick! Find Yahoo's Value Stream!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/quick-find-yahoos-value-stream/) **Mar 30** — [5 Questions - Meet Pete Abilla](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-pete-abilla/) **Mar 28** — [Congrats to Mark Graban - Lean Hospitals](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/congrats-to-mark-graban-lean-hospitals/) **Mar 26** — [Let's Give Dov Some Love](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lets-give-dov-some-love/) **Mar 24** — [The Evolving Excellence Crystal Ball](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-evolving-excellence-crystal-ball/) **Mar 23** — [5 Questions - Meet Jim Huntzinger](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-jim-huntzinger/) **Mar 17** — [Gemba Academy Launches!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gemba-academy-launches/) **Mar 16** — [5 Questions - Meet Kathleen Fasanella](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-kathleen-fasanella/) **Mar 10** — [Lego Figures It Out](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/legos-newfound-love-of-insourcing/) **Mar 9** — [5 Questions - Meet Karen Wilhelm](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-karen-wilhelm/) **Mar 5** — [Ok, What Old Fashioned Supply Chain Conference Did I Miss?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ok-what-old-fashioned-supply-chain-conference-did-i-miss/) **Mar 3** — [The Battle for Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-battle-for-lean/) **Mar 2** — [5 Questions - Meet Bill Waddell](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-bill-waddell/) **Feb 27** — [Recharging Aloha](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/recharging-aloha/) **Feb 26** — [Do You Truly Know Your Culture?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/do-you-truly-know-your-culture/) **Feb 25** — [Back to Basics at Toyota](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-basics-at-toyota/) **Feb 24** — [Preserving Talent](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/preserving-talend/) **Feb 23** — [5 Questions - Meet Bob Emiliani](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-bob-emiliani/) **Feb 18** — [Mr. Bloom to the Rescue?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mr-bloom-to-the-rescue/) **Feb 17** — [Inventory Hoarding vs. Just In Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/inventory-hoarding-vs-just-in-time/) **Feb 16** — [Advertising Gone Nuts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/advertising-gone-nuts/) **Feb 13** — [Outsourcing & Supply Chains: The Oprah Factor](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-supply-chains-the-oprah-factor/) **Feb 12** — [A Tale of Two Chipmakers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-tale-of-two-chipmakers/) **Feb 11** — [Consultant Heal Thyself!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/consultant-heal-thyself/) **Feb 10** — [End Game at Wiremold](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/end-game-at-wiremold/) **Feb 9** — [Outsourcing is NOT a Lean Initiative](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-is-not-a-lean-initiative/) **Feb 6** — [Does Your Organization Need a Truth-o-Meter?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/does-your-organization-need-a-truthometer/) **Feb 4** — [5:30pm. Please Go Home and...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/530pm-please-go-home-and/) **Feb 3** — [Motorola Follows the Dell Model to Doom](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/motorola-follows-the-dell-model-to-doom/) **Feb 2** — [Waste in Speed?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/waste-in-speed/) **Feb 1** — [Bill Waddell](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bill-waddell/) **Feb 1** — [Kevin Meyer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kevin-meyer/) **Jan 31** — [A Visit to the Laundromat](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-visit-to-the-laundromat/) **Jan 30** — [The Conundrum of Executive Pay](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-conundrum-of-executive-pay/) **Jan 29** — [The $1 Trillion Lean Health Care Opportunity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-1-trillion-lean-health-care-opportunity/) **Jan 28** — [Beware of Service Creep](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beware-of-service-creep/) **Jan 26** — [The Impact of Mean Visuals](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-impact-of-mean-visuals/) **Jan 23** — [Stop the Fake Sales Already](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop-the-fake-sales-already/) **Jan 22** — [Boeing Abandons the Hollywood Model](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-abandons-the-hollywood-model/) **Jan 21** — [Even 3rd Graders Get Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/even-3rd-graders-get-leadership/) **Jan 20** — [Microtransfers at American Apparel](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/microtransfers-creating-excellence-at-american-apparel/) **Jan 19** — [The Problems with Czars and Czarinas](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-problems-with-czars-and-czarinas/) **Jan 17** — [Incompetent in Your Own Way](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/incompetent-in-your-own-way/) **Jan 16** — [Myopic Views of Efficiency](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/myopic-views-of-efficiency/) **Jan 15** — [The Little Things of Brand Image](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-little-things-of-brand-image/) **Jan 13** — [Hsieh on People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hsieh-on-people/) **Jan 12** — [Pella Prefers People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pella-prefers-people/) **Jan 10** — [Pushing Back on the Fine Print](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pushing-back-on-the-fine-print/) **Jan 8** — [Management Improvement Carnival - The Best of 2008](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-the-best-of-2008/) **Jan 6** — [Look Out Wal-Mart, Here Comes Tesco](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/look-out-walmart-here-comes-tesco/) **Jan 5** — [Time for Government Kaizen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time-for-government-kaizen/) **Jan 4** — [What the Heck is Twitter?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-the-heck-is-twitter/) ### Archives - 2010 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2010/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T18:02:13.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 26** — [Southeast Asian Grand Tour: Thailand, Cambodia, and Hong Kong](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-grand-tour-thailand-cambodia-and-hong-kong/) **Dec 23** — [If we build it...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/if-we-build-it/) **Dec 21** — [Incenting the Positive vs. Restricting the Negative](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/incenting-the-positive-vs-restricting-the-negative/) **Dec 16** — [A Short Term Duel to Mediocrity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-short-term-duel-to-mediocrity/) **Dec 15** — [How Do You Get Through To Them?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/how-do-you-get-through-to-them/) **Dec 14** — [The Value of 0.07 Seconds](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-007-seconds/) **Dec 10** — [J&J Hits the Big 4-0](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jj-hits-the-big-4-0/) **Dec 8** — [Yes, McKinsey Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-mckinsey-again/) **Dec 7** — [Insource to Grow](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/insource-to-grow/) **Nov 29** — [WikiLeaks and the Value of Confidential Communication](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wikileaks-and-the-value-of-confidential-communication/) **Nov 29** — [Nice Job Throwing Away Value, Philips](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nice-job-philips/) **Nov 25** — [Giving Thanks - And Giving Back](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/giving-thanks-and-giving-back/) **Nov 24** — [The Mysterious Machinations of Paul Krugman](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mysterious-machinations-of-paul-krugman/) **Nov 23** — [Costco vs. the Just-in-Time Consumer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/costco-vs-the-just-in-time-consumer/) **Nov 21** — [5 Questions - Meet Kevin von Grabe](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-kevin-von-grabe/) **Nov 14** — [Simple Shivan](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/simple-shivan/) **Nov 12** — [Now We're Suing Ourselves](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/now-were-suing-ourselves/) **Nov 11** — [Visualizing Data](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/visualizing-data/) **Nov 9** — [The Art of Blind Sudoku](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-art-of-blind-sudoku/) **Nov 5** — [The Perils of Batch Air Transport](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-perils-of-batch-air-transport/) **Nov 3** — [Election Whiteboards](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/election-whiteboards/) **Oct 26** — [Stifling Dissent](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stifling-dissent/) **Oct 12** — [Whiteboards vs. Computers and the Impact on Learning](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whiteboards-vs-computers-and-the-impact-on-learning/) **Oct 10** — [Robert Gates on Individual Moral Leadership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/robert-gates-on-individual-moral-leadership/) **Oct 9** — [Leadership According to WikiLeaks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-according-to-wikileaks/) **Oct 9** — [Taxpayer Receipt](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taxpayer-receipt/) **Oct 6** — [Volkswagen Follows the Lead of GM and Toyota](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/volkswagen-follows-the-lead-of-gm-and-toyota/) **Oct 4** — [More Silly Leadership Lessons](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-silly-leadership-lessons/) **Oct 3** — [A Trifecta of Reflection and Group Support](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-trifecta-of-reflection-and-group-support/) **Sep 28** — [No Kidding, Bruce?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/no-kidding-bruce/) **Sep 25** — [Fun With Statistics - Tax Inflow/Outflow Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistic-tax-inflowoutflow-edition/) **Sep 19** — [Immelt Finally Realizes He's Insane](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/immelt-finally-realizes-hes-insane/) **Sep 17** — [The Instinct to Learn... and Teach](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-instinct-to-learn-and-teach/) **Sep 12** — [People Exploration](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/people-exploration/) **Sep 11** — [GM Creates $30 Billion - Like a Genie!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gm-creates-30-billion-like-a-genie/) **Sep 8** — [The Importance of the Daily Meeting](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-importance-of-the-daily-meeting/) **Sep 5** — [Revisiting Manufacturing in The Deal Magazine](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/revisiting-manufacturing-in-the-deal-magazine/) **Sep 4** — [Another Day, Another Outsourcing Realization](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/another-day-another-outsourcing-realization/) **Sep 3** — [Giuliani at the Gemba on 9/11](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/giuliani-at-the-gemba-on-911/) **Sep 1** — [Management Improvement Carnival #108](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-108/) **Aug 29** — [Ruminating on the Future of China](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ruminating-on-the-future-of-china/) **Aug 26** — [Working at the Gemba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/working-at-the-gemba/) **Aug 22** — [In the News... Sort of](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/in-the-news-sort-of/) **Aug 22** — [Lean Government in Canada?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-government-in-canada/) **Aug 21** — [On-Time United](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ontime-united/) **Aug 20** — [To Shingo or not to Shingo...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/to-shingo-or-not-to-shingo/) **Aug 19** — [Dov and the Value of Experience](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dov-and-the-value-of-experience/) **Aug 15** — [Outsourcing - A Goofy and Sophomoric Idea](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/outsourcing-was-a-goofy-and-sophomoric-idea/) **Aug 14** — [So Did the Shingo Prize Really Change?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/so-did-the-shingo-prize-really-change/) **Aug 13** — [Slice!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/slice/) **Aug 8** — [Fun with Statistics - Framing the Analysis Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-framing-the-analysis-edition/) **Aug 7** — [Reshoring Goes Mainstream](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reshoring-goes-mainstream/) **Aug 4** — [What's Volkswagen Up To?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whats-volkswagen-up-to/) **Aug 1** — [Watering Down a Spill of Unintended Consequences](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/watering-down-a-spill-of-unintended-consequences/) **Jul 24** — [GM and Ford - Another Check on our Undesired Investment](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gm-and-ford-another-check-on-our-undesired-investment/) **Jul 23** — [5S to Relax](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5s-to-relax/) **Jul 18** — [Enabling Brains](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/enabling-brains/) **Jul 14** — [Reflecting on the Lessons from Japan - Part 4](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflecting-on-the-lessons-from-japan-part-4/) **Jul 12** — [Is Labor a Significant Cost... Or Not?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/is-labor-a-significant-cost-or-not/) **Jul 11** — [Reflecting on the Lessons from Japan - Part 3](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflecting-on-the-lessons-from-japan-part-3/) **Jul 8** — [Reflecting on the Lessons from Japan - Part 2](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflecting-on-the-lessons-from-japan-part-2/) **Jul 7** — [Reflecting on the Lessons from Japan - Part 1](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflecting-on-the-lessons-from-japan/) **Jul 1** — [Backlog Reduction Gut Check](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/backlog-reduction-gut-check/) **Jun 27** — [The Perils of Waterless Progress](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-perils-of-waterless-progress/) **Jun 26** — [72 Hours. 1 Billion Dollars.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/72-hours-1-billion-dollars/) **Jun 21** — [Value from United](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/value-from-united/) **Jun 18** — [The Bane of Complexity Part 4: Individual vs. Institutional Perspectives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bane-of-complexity-part-4-individual-vs-institutional-perspectives/) **Jun 16** — [The Bane of Complexity Part 3: Management Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bane-of-complexity-part-3-management-waste/) **Jun 13** — [The Bane of Complexity Part 2: The Rube Goldberg Supply Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bane-of-complexity-part-2-the-rube-goldberg-supply-chain/) **Jun 9** — [The Bane of Complexity Part 1: The Allure of Complex Solutions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bane-of-complexity-part-1-the-allure-of-complex-solutions/) **Jun 1** — [I Know How Tough It Is To be Chinese](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/i-know-how-tough-it-is-to-be-chinese/) **May 30** — [Rejuvenating... to Lead Without a Title](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rejuvenating-to-lead-without-a-title/) **May 23** — [Human Ideas, Aliens, and the Power of Sex](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/human-ideas-aliens-and-the-power-of-sex/) **May 21** — [NUMMI is Revived - is Toyota?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nummi-is-revived-is-toyota/) **May 19** — [Lean is not just about waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-is-not-just-about-waste/) **May 16** — [Bring on the Debate. Please.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bring-on-the-debate-please/) **May 10** — [Finding Your Place in the Stream](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/finding-your-place-in-the-stream/) **May 9** — [5 Questions - Meet Tim McMahon](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-tim-mcmahon/) **May 8** — [Fun With Statistics - Apples to Kumquats Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-apples-to-kumquats-edition/) **May 6** — [The Ripple Impact of the Small Change](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-ripple-impact-of-the-small-change/) **Apr 29** — [Profiting From Failure](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/profiting-from-failure/) **Apr 27** — [Now Even Furniture Returns](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/now-even-furniture-returns/) **Apr 26** — [Small Changes Can Solve Big Problems](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/small-changes-can-solve-big-problems/) **Apr 24** — [GM Learns From the Government... Unfortunately](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gm-learns-from-the-government/) **Apr 23** — [There's a Desk For That](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/theres-a-desk-for-that/) **Apr 13** — [The Lean Kitchen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-kitchen/) **Apr 12** — [The Cancer of Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-cancer-of-outsourcing/) **Apr 11** — [Now That's a Test](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/now-thats-a-test/) **Apr 8** — [The Boss Could Learn From Abboud](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-boss-could-learn-from-abboud/) **Apr 6** — [MBWA is Not a Gemba Walk](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mbwa-is-not-a-gemba-walk/) **Apr 3** — [Six Sigma in Law](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/six-sigma-in-law/) **Apr 1** — [Management Improvement Carnival #93](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-93/) **Mar 26** — [Yes, Debt Matters](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-debt-matters/) **Mar 25** — [Rush Rush Rush... Fix Fix Fix](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rush-rush-rush-fix-fix-fix/) **Mar 23** — [Whirlpool, Yes Whirlpool, Looks for Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool-yes-whirlpool-looks-for-lean/) **Mar 21** — [Naysayers vs. Just Negative](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/naysayers-vs-just-negative/) **Mar 20** — [Eisenhower Channels Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/eisenhower-channels-lean/) **Mar 16** — [Listen to the Naysayers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/listen-to-the-naysayers/) **Mar 14** — [Teaching by Asking Why](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/teaching-by-asking-why/) **Mar 12** — [Cat Comes Back](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cat-comes-back/) **Mar 10** — [Better Call the Waaaahmulance!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/better-call-the-waaaahmulance/) **Mar 8** — [The Allure and Danger of Best Practices](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-allure-and-danger-of-best-practices/) **Mar 6** — [Still Blind - The GM Taxpayer Fleecing Continues](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/still-blind-the-gm-taxpayer-fleecing-continues/) **Mar 3** — [Returning to America - More Stories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/returning-to-america-more-stories/) **Mar 2** — [Don't Poke the Balloon](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dont-poke-the-balloon/) **Feb 28** — [Negotiation and the Question of Why](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/negotiation-and-the-question-of-why/) **Feb 26** — [Dominica: The Nature Island's Untouched Caribbean Beauty](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dominica-the-nature-islands-untouched-caribbean-beauty/) **Feb 19** — [Taking Care of Knowledge During a Downturn](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taking-care-during-a-downturn/) **Feb 17** — [Obvious and Underutilized](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/obvious-and-underutilized/) **Feb 13** — [Applying Product Design Methods to Government Policy Design](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/applying-product-design-methods-to-government-policy-design/) **Feb 12** — [Andons and Problems at NUMMI](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/andons-and-problems-at-nummi/) **Feb 8** — [Toyota's Shop Floor Still Remembers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyotas-shop-floor-still-remembers/) **Feb 1** — [Zappos and the Fallacy of Best Practices](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/zappos-and-the-fallacy-of-best-practices/) **Jan 31** — [Fitness Accessories for the Stand Up Desk](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/accessories-for-the-stand-up-desk/) **Jan 30** — [Swimming Through the Information Clutter](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/swimming-through-the-information-clutter/) **Jan 26** — [Toyota Pulls the Big Andon Cord, Finally](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-pulls-the-big-andon-cord-finally/) **Jan 25** — [Proving Again That Input is Unrelated to Output](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/proving-again-that-input-is-unrelated-to-output/) **Jan 24** — [Standing is Worth More than Exercise](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/standing-is-worth-more-than-exercise/) **Jan 23** — [Fun With Statistics: Metrics, Distortions, and Outright Lies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-metrics-distortions-and-outright-lies/) **Jan 22** — [The Culmination is... Poof!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-culmination-is-poof/) **Jan 20** — [The Cascading Cost of Rehiring](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-cascading-cost-of-rehiring/) **Jan 18** — [The Lesson of Teddy Bears](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lesson-of-teddy-bears/) **Jan 16** — [A Rube Goldberg Creation of Rare Perversity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-rube-goldberg-creation-of-rare-perversity/) **Jan 13** — [Santa Claus and Outsourcing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/santa-claus-and-outsourcing/) **Jan 11** — [Remember the Perspective of Value](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/remember-the-perspective-of-value/) **Jan 10** — [Speaking of Value...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/speaking-of-value/) **Jan 8** — [Cross-training, Bloomberg Style](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/crosstraining-bloomberg-style/) **Jan 6** — [Mandates vs. Kaizen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mandates-vs-kaizen/) **Jan 4** — [Flexibility: A License to Accept Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/flexibility-a-license-to-accept-waste/) **Jan 2** — [2009 Management Improvement Carnival](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2009-management-improvement-carnival/) **Jan 1** — [Welcome, 2010](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welcome-2010/) ### Archives - 2011 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2011/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T18:03:10.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 26** — [Holiday Hansei and the Power of Why and How](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/holiday-hansei-and-the-power-of-why-and-how/) **Dec 19** — [2011 Annual Management Blog Review](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2011-annual-management-blog-review/) **Dec 5** — [Results-Based Policies and Procedures](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/results-based-policies-and-procedures/) **Nov 29** — [Conflicted Toyota](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/conflicted-toyota/) **Nov 24** — [Happy Thanksgiving - Don't Forget the Miracles Around Us!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/happy-thanksgiving-dont-forget-the-miracles-around-us/) **Nov 18** — [Still Waiting on the Whambulance...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/still-waiting-on-the-whambulance/) **Nov 12** — [Assembly Mag Thinks Whirlpool is Lean. Really.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/assembly-mag-thinks-whirlpool-is-lean-really/) **Nov 7** — [Control or Chaos?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/control-or-chaos/) **Nov 1** — [Another Waste of Transportation?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/another-waste-of-transportation/) **Oct 26** — [India's Golden Triangle and Singapore: From Ancient Wonders to Modern Marvels](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/indias-golden-triangle-and-singapore-from-ancient-wonders-to-modern-marvels/) **Oct 23** — [Leadership Lessons from Ganesha](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-lessons-from-ganesha/) **Oct 15** — [Cuckoos in the Cloud](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cuckoos-in-the-cloud/) **Oct 14** — [Toyota Follows the Detroit Three](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-follows-the-detroit-three/) **Oct 11** — [Stretching the Eulogical Boundaries](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stretching-the-eulogical-boundaries/) **Oct 9** — [Notes from the World Business Forum 2011](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/notes-from-the-world-business-forum-2011/) **Oct 8** — [Kevin's Turn](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kevins-turn/) **Oct 4** — [Give Back... More?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/give-back-more/) **Oct 2** — [Management Improvement Carnival #144](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-144/) **Sep 28** — [Thank You for Being a Failure](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thank-you-for-being-a-failure/) **Sep 24** — [The Bookless Bookstore](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bookless-bookstore/) **Sep 23** — [Simmons to Simmons to California](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/simmons-to-simmons-to-california/) **Sep 20** — [Thou Shalt Not Question](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thou-shalt-not-question/) **Sep 18** — [Forms and More Forms](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forms-and-more-forms/) **Sep 11** — [10 Years Ago Today - on September 11th](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-11th/) **Sep 11** — [10 Years Ago Today - on September 10th](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-10th/) **Sep 7** — [A Few Thoughts on China, Consistency, and Standardization](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-few-thoughts-on-china-consistency-and-standardization/) **Sep 5** — [Boeing's Lesson in One Piece Flow](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeings-lesson-in-one-piece-flow/) **Sep 1** — [A Little Promo](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-litte-promo/) **Aug 30** — [Counterintuitive Value of Mergers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/counterintuitive-value-of-mergers/) **Aug 21** — [Non-Manufacturing in America - Kindle, iPhone, and Software](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing-in-america-kindle-iphone-and-software/) **Aug 20** — [The Old GM is the New GM is the Old GM](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-old-gm-is-the-new-gm-is-the-old-gm/) **Aug 14** — [The Value of Profiting from Poverty](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-profiting-from-poverty/) **Aug 13** — [Chopsticks and iPhones](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/chopsticks-and-iphones/) **Aug 7** — [Congratulations, Boeing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/congratulations-boeing/) **Aug 7** — [Bill and His Groupies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bill-and-his-groupies/) **Aug 5** — [It Takes a Minority](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/it-takes-a-minority/) **Aug 4** — [The General Relativity of Language](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-general-relativity-of-language/) **Aug 1** — [Yep, Forgetting the Brains Again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yep-forgetting-the-brains-again/) **Jul 31** — [Private Jets and the Simplicity of Production Scheduling](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-upside-of-private-jets/) **Jul 22** — [Dig Deeper Part 2: Baggage and Boarding Nonsense](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dig-deeper-part-2-baggage-and-boarding-nonsense/) **Jul 20** — [Lean à la Chromalloy and Steelcase](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-a-la-chromalloy-and-steelcase/) **Jul 18** — [Improving Educaton Through Lean Mass Customization](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/improving-educaton-through-lean-mass-customization/) **Jul 12** — [As Goes California...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/as-goes-california/) **Jul 10** — [A Discussion with Masaaki Imai](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-discussion-with-masaaki-imai/) **Jul 8** — [Dig Deeper to Find a Better Solution](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dig-deeper-to-find-a-better-solution/) **Jun 26** — [McDonald's and the Value of Employees](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mcdonalds-and-the-value-of-employees/) **Jun 25** — [Creating Value from Downtime](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/creating-value-from-downtime/) **Jun 18** — [Fun With Statistics - The Gender Ratio and Chinese Demand for US Treasuries](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-the-gender-ratio-and-chinese-demand-for-us-treasuries/) **Jun 16** — [Knowingly Jumping Off a Cliff](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/knowingly-jumping-off-a-cliff/) **Jun 9** — [The Character of a Weiner](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-character-of-a-weiner/) **Jun 8** — [Back - But Not Quite Rested](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-but-not-quite-rested/) **May 31** — [Humility, Respect, and... Ignorance](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/humility-respect-and-ignorance/) **May 29** — [Thank You](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thank-you-6872d800fd8b84001bce6503/) **May 21** — [Beware the Information Filter](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beware-the-information-filter/) **May 14** — [Looking for Evil on an Income Statement](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/looking-for-evil-on-an-income-statement/) **May 8** — [Gemba Academy - New TPM Course](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gemba-academy-new-tpm-course/) **May 4** — [Accenture and Hindsight Consulting](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/accenture-and-hindsight-consulting/) **May 3** — [The Waste of Unnecessary Communication](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-waste-of-unnecessary-communication/) **Apr 24** — [Fun With Statistics - Predictably Private Edition](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-predictably-private-edition/) **Apr 23** — [And We Wonder Why We're Losing Manufacturing Jobs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/and-we-wonder-why-were-losing-manufacturing-jobs/) **Apr 20** — [Laying Off Hands, Losing Brains](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/laying-off-hands-losing-brains/) **Apr 20** — [The Absurd Cost of Complexity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-absurd-cost-of-complexity/) **Apr 17** — [The Obliquity of Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-obliquity-of-lean/) **Apr 16** — [It's Not a Zero Sum Game](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-not-a-zero-sum-game/) **Apr 10** — [The Lean Tortoise... and the Hares](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-tortoise-and-the-hares/) **Apr 3** — [Project Management by Sound Bite](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/project-management-by-sound-bite/) **Apr 3** — [Embrace the Opportunity of Failure!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/embrace-the-opportunity-of-failure/) **Apr 1** — [Math is not Real](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/math-is-not-real/) **Mar 31** — [A Family Business](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-family-business/) **Mar 31** — [Radioactive Certifications of Waste](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/radioactive-certifications-of-waste/) **Mar 20** — [Fun With Statistics - Visually Comparing Magnitude](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-visually-comparing-magnitude/) **Mar 19** — [Productivity from the People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/productivity-from-the-people/) **Mar 16** — [The value of quality trumps the easy buck](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-quality-trumps-the-easy-buck/) **Mar 13** — [Still thinking about China?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/still-thinking-about-china/) **Mar 6** — [The Sheriff Goes to the Gemba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-sheriff-goes-to-the-gemba/) **Mar 1** — [Wrapping Their Heads Around Value](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wrapping-their-heads-around-value/) **Mar 1** — [Gemba Academy Turns Two!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gemba-academy-turns-two/) **Feb 28** — [More Problems is a Good Thing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-problems-is-a-good-thing/) **Feb 27** — [Lessons from the History and Hypocrisy of Politics](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons-from-the-history-and-hypocrisy-of-politics/) **Feb 24** — [Yes, There is Manufacturing in San Francisco](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-there-is-manufacturing-in-san-francisco/) **Feb 21** — [Making or Breaking Culture](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/making-or-breaking-culture/) **Feb 21** — [The Outsourcing Lesson of Boeing - Part 2](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-outsourcing-lesson-of-boeing-part-2/) **Feb 20** — [The Outsourcing Lesson of Boeing - Part 1](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-outsourcing-lesson-of-boeing-part-1/) **Feb 14** — [Fun With Statistics - The Global Tax Compendium](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fun-with-statistics-the-global-tax-compendium/) **Feb 10** — [ThyssenKrupp Doesn't Whine, They Do](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thyssenkrupp-doesnt-whine-they-do/) **Feb 9** — [Managing Customers Is Always a Bad Idea](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/managing-customers-is-always-a-bad-idea/) **Feb 8** — [Houston We Have a Problem](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/houston-we-have-a-problem/) **Feb 4** — [Still Your Father's Chevrolet](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/still-your-fathers-chevrolet/) **Feb 1** — [That Goes Without Saying](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/that-goes-without-saying/) **Jan 31** — [What Happened to Materials Management?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-happened-to-materials-management/) **Jan 30** — [Such Scenic Factories!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/such-scenic-factories/) **Jan 26** — [Four Seasons: Our key competitive difference is our people](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/four-seasons-our-key-competitive-difference-is-our-people/) **Jan 26** — [Piping One Piece at a Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/piping-one-piece-at-a-time/) **Jan 18** — [Extreme Inventory from Extreme Couponing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/extreme-inventory-from-extreme-couponing/) **Jan 7** — [Waste and Visual Management at Meat Markets](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/waste-and-visual-management-at-meat-markets/) **Jan 4** — [2010 Management Improvement Blog Review](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2010-management-improvement-blog-review/) **Jan 3** — [Bangkok Airways and the Power of People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bangkok-airways-and-the-power-of-people/) ### Archives - 2012 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2012/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T03:30:32.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 26** — [Uruguay: South America's Hidden Gem - A Perfect Summer Escape](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uruguay-south-americas-hidden-gem-a-perfect-summer-escape/) **Dec 21** — [Filling in the Other Eye](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shibumi-daruma/) **Dec 16** — [2012 Management Improvement Blog Review](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2012-management-improvement-blog-review/) **Dec 4** — [Contextual Comparison](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/contextual-comparison/) **Nov 30** — [You're Good When You Think You're Bad](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/youre-good-when-you-think-youre-bad/) **Nov 24** — [The Lean Value of Coffee](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-value-of-coffee/) **Nov 16** — [5 Questions - Meet Mark Graban](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-mark-graban/) **Nov 11** — [Thanks.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thanks/) **Oct 23** — [5 Questions - Meet Art Byrne](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-art-byrne/) **Oct 14** — [A Failure of Markets and Other Observations from Asia](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-failure-of-markets-and-other-observations-from-asia/) **Oct 1** — [Just Observing, Sir.](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-observing/) **Sep 26** — [Southeast Asian Sojourn: A Perfect Thailand and Laos Itinerary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-sojourn-a-perfect-thailand-and-laos-itinerary/) **Sep 23** — [Results... Not Personality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/results-not-personality/) **Sep 16** — [Not Even the TSA Can Inspect In Quality - or Control](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/not-even-the-tsa-can-inspect-in-quality-or-control/) **Aug 25** — [Payment Terms: A Leading Indicator of Partnership](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/payment-terms-a-leading-indicator-of-partnership/) **Aug 20** — [Organization Structure Change Doesn't Solve Leadership Issues](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/organization-structure-changes-wont-change-organizations/) **Aug 9** — [A Fire Truck When an Ambulance Would Suffice](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-fire-truck-when-an-ambulance-would-suffice/) **Jul 31** — [Ideas... are Just Ideas](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ideas-are-just-ideas/) **Jul 20** — [Sorry IndustryWeek - Apple is not a "Manufacturer" and not "Best"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/industryweek-apple-is-not-a-manufacturer/) **Jul 13** — [Sustaining, Leadership, and Why?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sustaining-leadership-and-why/) **Jul 5** — [Apple's Average Traditional Supply Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/apples-average-traditional-supply-chain/) **Jun 17** — [Howard Schultz's Call to Action on American Manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/howard-schultzs-call-to-action-on-american-manufacturing/) **Jun 9** — [Congratulations, David Hogg](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/congratulations-david-hogg/) **Jun 5** — [It Still Comes Down to Value - and Character](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/it-still-comes-down-to-value-and-character/) **Jun 3** — [The Opportunity of the Gemba](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-opportunity-of-the-gemba/) **Jun 1** — [Management Improvement Carnival #168](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-168/) **May 25** — [Memorial Day - And a Jolt of Lean from Ulysses S. Grant](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/memorial-day-and-a-jolt-of-lean-from-ulysses-s-grant/) **May 24** — [Some Stuff is Going On](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/some-stuff-is-going-on/) **May 13** — [And Now a Few Words from Mike](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/and-now-a-few-words-from-mike/) **May 9** — [Blaming Deming, Lean, and Six Sigma and the Importance of "Why?"](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blaming-deming-lean-and-six-sigma-and-the-importance-of-why/) **May 7** — [The Value of a Zipper](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-a-zipper/) **May 6** — [The Online Education Tsunami](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-online-education-tsunami/) **Apr 28** — [Silly CEO, Pricing is for Customers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/silly-ceo-pricing-is-for-customers/) **Apr 20** — [Missing the Point on People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/missing-the-point-on-people/) **Apr 17** — [When Your Customers Flee Complexity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-your-customers-flee-complexity/) **Apr 15** — [The Importance of the Knowledge Distillery](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-importance-of-the-knowledge-distillery/) **Apr 10** — [The Shame of "Great" CEOs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-shame-of-great-ceos/) **Apr 4** — [More Worker Abuse - Guess Where...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-worker-abuse-guess-where/) **Mar 26** — [Costa Rica's Guanacaste Province: Tropical Paradise and Wildlife Wonderland](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/costa-ricas-guanacaste-province-tropical-paradise-and-wildlife-wonderland/) **Mar 21** — [Stress Solutions, Not Blame](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stress-solutions-not-blame/) **Mar 3** — [The Reshoring Story of GE Appliances](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-reshoring-story-of-ge-appliances/) **Feb 28** — [Sorry Apple, Not This Time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sorry-apple-not-this-time/) **Feb 6** — [The Independence of the French](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/french-independence/) **Jan 30** — [Beyond Just Words - What Apple Could Do](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beyond-just-words-what-apple-could-do/) **Jan 26** — [Uh - But What About the Product?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uh-but-what-about-the-product/) **Jan 16** — [Milliken, the Anti-Kodak](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/milliken-the-anti-kodak/) **Jan 9** — [Hoshin and the Fading of Occupy Wall Street](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hoshin-and-the-fading-of-occupy-wall-street/) **Jan 3** — [Where's the Value in Sting?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wheres-the-value-in-sting/) ### Archives - 2013 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2013/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T03:31:43.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 7** — [About that "Human Error"...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/about-that-human-error/) **Nov 13** — [Reflections on 25 Years of Lean - with Womack, Shook, and Jones](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflections-on-25-years-of-lean-with-womack-shook-and-jones/) **Oct 19** — [Of Meetings, Metrics and Dishwashing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/of-meetings-and-dishwashing/) **Sep 29** — [Of Maps, ERP, and Basic Thinking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/of-maps-erp-and-basic-thinking/) **Sep 26** — [Bhutan & Nepal: Himalayan Kingdoms of Beauty and Spirituality](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bhutan-nepal-himalayan-kingdoms-of-beauty-and-spirituality/) **Sep 21** — [Eiji Toyoda (1913 - 2013) - Leading Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/eiji-toyoda-1913-2013-leading-lean/) **Sep 17** — [The Process of Exploring Out of the Box](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/exploring-out-of-the-box/) **Sep 16** — [The Productivity Impact of Pesky Intermediates](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-productivity-impact-of-pesky-intermediates/) **Aug 26** — [Leadership by Welch, Immelt... and Layer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welch-immelt-and-layer/) **Aug 5** — [The Creativity of the Low Score](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-creativity-of-the-low-score/) **Jul 27** — [Donating Cash... or Kaizen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/donating-cash-or-kaizen/) **Jul 24** — [Yes, Carlos Danger, Character Still Matters](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-carlos-danger-character-still-matters/) **Jul 19** — [Snakes, GM, Engineers, and Wine](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/snakes-gm-engineers-and-wine/) **Jul 18** — [Online Lean and Six Sigma Training from Gemba Academy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/online-lean-and-six-sigma-training-from-gemba-academy/) **Jun 29** — [A Brush with Innovation](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/brush-with-innovation/) **Jun 15** — [Leadership: the Force Multiplier of Kaizen](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-the-force-multiplier-of-kaizen/) **Jun 10** — [The Paralyzing Waste of Indecision](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-paralyzing-waste-of-indecision/) **Jun 6** — [Learning by Writing... by Hand](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/) **May 30** — [Two Phones, One Genius](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/two-phones-one-genius/) **May 27** — [The Reek of Creativity](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-reek-of-creativity/) **May 18** — [Net Nonsense - hilarious commentary](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense-hilarious-commentary/) **Apr 26** — [Portugal, Spain & Morocco: From Lisbon's Hills to Marrakech's Souks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/portugal-spain-morocco-from-lisbons-hills-to-marrakechs-souks/) **Apr 26** — [Net Nonsense](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense/) **Apr 9** — [A Lesson on Leadership from Marrakech](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lesson-on-leadership-from-marrakech/) **Mar 26** — [The Last 100 Feet of Walmart's Supply Chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-last-100-feet-of-walmarts-supply-chain/) **Mar 12** — [The Postal Service Forgets the Customer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-usps-forgets-the-customer/) **Mar 12** — [68 Free Lean and Six Sigma Training DVDs!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/68-free-lean-and-six-sigma-training-dvds/) **Mar 10** — [Those Disposable People](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/disposable-people-and-rethinking-time/) **Feb 25** — [Data, Facts, and Truth](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/data-facts-and-truth/) **Feb 10** — [Disruption, Mission, Measurement, and Families](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/disruption-mission-families-and-problems/) **Feb 7** — [Of GE and Boeing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/of-ge-and-boeing/) **Jan 25** — [This is your brain...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/this-is-your-brain/) **Jan 25** — [And Movin' On...](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/and-movin-on/) **Jan 12** — [Lean Speak](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-speak/) **Jan 8** — [A Sucker for a Slow Boat](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-sucker-for-a-slow-boat/) ### Archives - 2014 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/archives-2014/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T03:32:35.000Z [← Back to Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blog/) --- **Dec 26** — [Panama Christmas: Engineering Marvels and Holiday Giving](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/panama-christmas-engineering-marvels-and-holiday-giving/) **Dec 14** — [Reflecting on the Intentional Routine](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflecting-on-the-intentional-routine/) **Nov 27** — [Gratitude, for Gratitude](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gratitude-for-gratitude/) **Nov 8** — [Airbnb and Uber - From Batch to One Piece Flow](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/airbnb-and-uber-from-batch-to-one-piece-flow/) **Jun 28** — [On Asiana, Driverless Cars, and Factories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/on-asiana-driverless-cars-and-factories/) **Jun 26** — [African Adventure: South Africa, Mozambique & Tanzania Safari](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/african-adventure-south-africa-mozambique-tanzania-safari/) **May 17** — [Big Data, Small Data](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/big-data-small-data/) **May 11** — [The Devil on the Bus](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-devil-on-the-bus/) **Apr 4** — [The Dangerous Lite Side of Mindfulness and Lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-dangerous-lite-side-of-mindfulness-and-lean/) **Feb 24** — [The Engagement of Risk](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-engagement-of-risk/) **Feb 17** — [Just a Simple Strategy](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-a-simple-strategy/) **Feb 6** — [Gemba Academy is 5 Years Old! Come celebrate with us!](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gemba-academy-is-5-years-old-come-celebrate-with-us/) **Jan 26** — [Peru Return: Sharing Childhood Memories with Family](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/peru-return-sharing-childhood-memories-with-family/) **Jan 12** — [The Power of High Performance Decisions](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-of-high-performance-decisions/) **Jan 4** — [2013 Management Blog Review](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2013-management-blog-review/) ## Posts ### Automation, calculators, and AI: is cognitive surrender real? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/automation-calculators-and-ai-is-cognitive-surrender-real/ Last updated: 2026-09-14T08:00:29.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/09/calculator-1.jpg) I've run many manufacturing lines in the past, and seen hundreds more, including some exemplary examples of lean while [visiting companies in Japan](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/japan-kaikaku-experience-the-summary/). A fundamental lesson I've observed and learned is that the best operations leverage the power of the brains of the operators, and that can sometimes mean using methods and equipment that may be superficially and incorrectly deemed as inefficient, such as using smaller, single-operation equipment instead of large automated lines. It really revolves around a concept I embrace: a process that yields good parts while eliminating the operator's ability to improve the process is still a bad process. You must retain the ability to perform kaizen. ## Let's talk automation... and humans Toyota's own [account of jidoka](https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), automation with a human touch, puts the sequence plainly. Before you replace an operation with a machine, you have to be able to do the work smoothly and correctly by hand, learn to spot the abnormalities, and run kaizen on it. Starting with the machine gets the order backwards. In *The Road Ahead*, Bill Gates said automation applied to an efficient operation magnifies the efficiency, and automation applied to an inefficient operation magnifies the inefficiency, and the line has been on conference slides for 30 years. Mitsuru Kawai took that even further. An Ohno disciple who spent 40 of his 50 Toyota years in forging, he stopped automation in places at the Honsha plant and put skilled workers back on the processes by hand, because running the work manually produced the kaizen ideas he needed for when the machine was rebuilt. The lines came back less complex. A senior technical executive at Toyota removing automation to recover something the automation had killed: human knowledge, while also improving flexibility and reducing fixed costs. Lisanne Bainbridge arrived at the same place from process control. Her 1983 paper in Automatica, ["Ironies of Automation,"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies%5Fof%5FAutomation?ref=kevinmeyer.com) argues that once you automate most of a system the operator keeps responsibility for the part you couldn't automate while losing the practice that part requires. Her closing irony: the automated systems that run longest without needing a human are the ones eventually demanding the largest investment in human skill. ## What actually happened with calculators A similar situation with equipment replacing brains happened when calculators became a thing in the 70s and there was panic among educators (sounds familiar? we'll get to AI in a minute). Tests required no calculators, kids would still try to sneak smaller and smaller calculators into class, and over the next decade scientific and graphing calculators took the concern to a new level. Kids would forget arithmetic, the reasoning went. And then they didn't. We turned out ok. And the HP-15c calculator I used in college in the early 80s is still my favorite. Long live reverse Polish notation! That question was studied hard. Ray Hembree and Donald Dessart pulled together [79 research reports](https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/jrme/17/2/article-p83.xml?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in 1986 and found that at every grade except the fourth, calculator use alongside traditional instruction improved students' paper-and-pencil skills, in working exercises and in problem solving. Attitudes improved too. So the panic was wrong. It gets better. The gains clustered in studies where the calculator was built into a curriculum designed around it rather than handed out as a shortcut, and the exception was sustained use in fourth grade, the year the underlying arithmetic was still forming. A 2026 paper in Technology in Society by Cristina Voinea and colleagues goes back through those debates and lands on an interesting point:[the impact of calculators](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X25003884?ref=kevinmeyer.com) was shaped less by the device than by the pedagogy it was dropped into. We redesigned the surrounding system, and it worked everywhere the skill was already there to be offloaded. ## Here comes AI... Many believe AI is having a similar impact on knowledge. A [multicenter study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40816301/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology in August 2025 followed 19 experienced endoscopists in Poland, each with more than 2,000 colonoscopies behind them, after their centers adopted AI polyp detection. On the colonoscopies they later ran without the AI, adenoma detection fell from 28.4% to 22.4%. Just three months of AI assist, with experienced experts. And consider the basic Google search, and how it has evolved in just the last few months. No longer do we scan the list of links, applying some brainpower to determine which is most applicable and then reading the content at the link to see if it's an answer. Instead Gemini gives us an answer, perhaps with references, and more often than not we simply accept that answer. Only occasionally we dive deeper into the page of links, let alone question the answer provided by AI. Voinea's 2026 paper on LLMs that uses calculators as an analogy is also where the analogy runs out. A calculator takes a problem you've already framed and hands back a number you know how to read. AI language models redistribute the work across every stage of the reasoning, from deciding what the question is to judging what the answer means, and they deliver it in prose fluent enough to feel true either way. The calculator couldn't tell you what to solve. ## The Tao of Navier-Stokes Scale that up and you get the reaction to OpenAI's [claimed proof](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/science/openai-proof-millennium-problem.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.%5F1A.Ih%5Fr.l%5FHNNs6AA3S%5F&smid=url-share&ref=kevinmeyer.com) of the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the seven Millennium Problems, announced last week. Terence Tao told the Times, > The effort needed to solve problems is often very instructive. It teaches you something. It’s like going to the gym and having a goal to lift a weight a hundred times,” he explained. “Now, A.I. can solve questions without really getting any value out of them. It’s like having machines that can lift weights for you at the gym. Quanta profiled him in June under the title ["How Terry Tao Became an Evangelist for AI in Math,"](https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-terry-tao-became-an-evangelist-for-ai-in-math-20260608/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) he writes his own proofs in software that machine-checks every step, and he used AI tools to help prepare the essay I'm about to quote. That [essay](https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.16753?ref=kevinmeyer.com), from his ICM lecture in July and written three weeks before the OpenAI announcement, refuses to argue about capability at all. He assumes the tools arrive, then asks what the goals of mathematical research actually are, and finds that "solve unsolved problems" was always shorthand for a chain: generate a proof, verify it, write it up so a human can follow it, get the community to absorb it, and eventually fold it into the definitive theory of the field. Only the first stage was ever an explicit goal. The rest ran along behind it reliably enough that nobody had to name them. Then he reaches for Goodhart's law, which got me scratching my head. When a measure becomes a target it stops being a good measure, and a tool optimizing hard on the one stage we chose to measure will pull the other stages away from it. His sharpest point is about friction. A proof written by a human keeps the scars of wherever the author struggled: an apologetic aside, an unusually careful lemma, a change of notation halfway through. He reproduces a page of a 1991 Bourgain paper covered in his own frustrated annotations, and says that fighting through texts like that is how he came to think the way Bourgain thought. The friction tells you where to slow down, and it's one of the few channels by which the tacit knowledge of a field moves from one head to another. Machine-polished prose sands it off. What's left reads beautifully and teaches nothing. So his rule of thumb has nothing to do with checking the math. If the authors can't give a clear, expert-level talk on their own result, it shouldn't be published, and a proof no human can explain should count as incomplete however cleanly the software verifies it. That's an andon cord with a mortarboard on. The survey work tying heavy AI use to weaker critical thinking is correlational and self-reported, and the International AI Safety Report calls the area nascent. But a March 2026 synthesis from the University of Technology Sydney flags the split underneath: people with solid domain knowledge use these tools to go faster, and people without it are the ones most exposed. Fourth grade again. ## Kaizen is a training system that makes parts on the side That's the thread running through all of it. A math department produces theorems the way my factory produced parts, and both of them are actually running an education process with a production process on the outside. The Polish endoscopy centers were doing the same thing without knowing it, right up until they weren't. Every one of them keeps producing acceptable output long after the capability behind the output has started to go, which is precisely what makes it hard to catch. How do we keep humans and brains engaged in processes so we can improve, and understand, what is going on? ### Samke Harra — Tripoli's Spicy Tahini Fish URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/samke-harra-tripolis-spicy-tahini-fish/ Last updated: 2026-09-11T16:35:22.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/09/samke-harra-1.jpg) **Serves:** 4 **Total time:** \~45 minutes for the fish and cabbage salad; add \~40 minutes for the hindbeh, which is best made ahead **Difficulty:** Moderate **Diet:** Pescatarian, no shellfish **Sides:** Salatet Malfouf (cabbage salad) and Hindbeh bi Zeit (bitter greens with caramelized onions) --- ## Cultural and Social Context Samke Harra — literally "spicy fish" in Arabic — belongs to Tripoli, and more precisely to El-Mina, the old port district on Lebanon's northern coast. It is eaten across the country, but Tripolitans consider it theirs, and the version served elsewhere is usually described as *Traboulsiyeh*, "in the Tripoli style." The dish is built on an unlikely-sounding pairing that turns out to be inevitable once you taste it: baked white fish under a warm, garlicky, chili-spiked tahini sauce, thickened with ground nuts and loaded with fresh cilantro. Its natural habitat is not the dining room. Along the El-Mina corniche, Samke Harra was — and still is — street food: the fish and a generous spoonful of sauce wrapped in Lebanese flatbread with lettuce, tomato, and hot chips, eaten standing up. The most famous of these stalls belonged to Abou Fadi, a fisherman who ran his own restaurant and whose children carry it on today under the name *Malak El Samkeh Harra*, the King of Spicy Fish. The plated version, with the fish presented whole and the sauce poured over at the table, is the celebration format — what a family makes when guests are coming. The traditional preparation is more elaborate than most home cooks attempt now. A whole fish — sea bass, red snapper, or bream — is scaled, scored, stuffed with herbs and spices, then roasted or deep-fried and dressed with the sauce. The sauce itself has a family-by-family character: tahini and lemon are constant, garlic and cilantro are constant, and after that you find yogurt in some versions, sautéed onion and green pepper in others, and a variable mix of walnuts, pine nuts, almonds, and pistachios either ground into the sauce or scattered on top. Grinding the nuts into the sauce is the older Tripoli habit; it deepens the flavor but turns the tahini a dusky grey-purple, which is why many cooks now hold the nuts back as a garnish and keep the sauce pale. The "harra" is real but not aggressive. It is a warm, building heat carried by chili and cumin and cut immediately by lemon — the same balancing instinct that runs through most Levantine coastal cooking. ### On the sides The two sides here are not decoration; each one supplies something the fish does not. The tahini sauce is rich, warm, and fatty. **Salatet malfouf** answers it with raw crunch and hard acidity. **Hindbeh bi zeit** — bitter greens under a heap of caramelized onions — answers it with the bitter-sweet axis that runs through the whole *zeit* family of Lebanese olive-oil dishes served at room temperature. Together the plate covers rich, sharp, bitter, sweet, and hot, which is roughly what a Lebanese table is trying to do at all times. --- ## Health Modifications The dish is naturally well-suited to what you're after: the fish is lean protein, the tahini and nuts supply fat rather than starch, and there is no added sugar anywhere in a traditional preparation. The changes below are modest and don't alter the dish's character. | Traditional | This version | Why | | ------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Whole fish deep-fried, or fried fillets | Fillets roasted at high heat | Removes several hundred calories of frying oil; fish stays in intact chunks rather than flaking apart | | Served in flatbread with lettuce, tomato, and hot chips | Served plated with two vegetable sides | This is where nearly all the carbohydrate lives in the street version. Removing bread and fries takes the meal from roughly 75 g carbs per serving to under 25 g | | ½ cup olive oil in the sauce base | 2 tbsp olive oil | Tahini already supplies substantial fat; the extra oil is traditional but not structural | | Sauce thickened with tahini alone | Tahini plus ½ cup Greek yogurt | Yogurt appears in many family versions, so this is authentic rather than invented. It thins the sauce with protein instead of oil and adds a clean tang | | Nuts ground into the sauce in quantity | Small amount ground in, the rest toasted as garnish | Keeps the nutty flavor and the textural contrast at lower volume, and preserves the paler sauce color | The hindbeh is left essentially unmodified. It is already a lean dish by construction — greens, onions, olive oil, lemon — and reducing the oil further would break it, since the oil is what the name refers to. **Approximate macros per serving, full plate** (estimated from ingredient composition, not lab-measured): \~620 calories, \~53 g protein, \~22 g carbohydrate (\~14 g net), \~4 g sugar (all from the onions and vegetables), \~38 g fat, predominantly unsaturated. --- ## Ingredients ### Fish - 2 lb skin-off firm white fish fillets — rock cod, Pacific cod, or red snapper, cut into large serving pieces - 1½ tbsp olive oil - 1 tsp ground coriander - 1 tsp kosher salt - ½ tsp black pepper - Zest of 1 lemon *Avoid salmon here — the flavor fights the tahini rather than supporting it.* ### Spiced Tahini Sauce - 2 tbsp olive oil - 1 medium yellow onion, finely diced - 1 green bell pepper, finely diced - 6 cloves garlic, minced - 1 tsp ground cumin - 1 tsp ground coriander - 1 tsp sweet paprika - ½–1 tsp cayenne or Aleppo pepper (see heat note) - ⅔ cup tahini, well stirred - ½ cup plain whole-milk Greek yogurt - ⅓ cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons) - ⅓–½ cup warm water, as needed - ¼ cup walnuts, finely ground - 1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped, plus more to finish - 1 tsp kosher salt, to taste ### Garnish - ¼ cup pine nuts or roughly chopped walnuts, toasted - Fresh cilantro leaves - Lemon wedges - Pinch of Aleppo pepper ### Hindbeh bi Zeit (Bitter Greens with Caramelized Onions) - 2 large bunches dandelion greens (or escarole, curly endive, or chicory) - 3 yellow onions, thinly sliced - ¼ cup olive oil, plus more for finishing - 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced - Juice of 1 lemon, plus wedges to serve - Kosher salt ### Salatet Malfouf (Cabbage Salad) - ½ head green cabbage, very thinly shredded - 2 cloves garlic, finely grated - ⅓ cup fresh lemon juice - 3 tbsp olive oil - ¼ cup fresh mint, chopped (or 1 tbsp dried) - ½ tsp kosher salt --- ## Heat Note Aleppo pepper gives a fruitier, more forgiving heat than cayenne and is closer to what you'd find in Tripoli. At ½ tsp the dish reads as warm and aromatic; at a full teaspoon it earns the name. Tahini blunts capsaicin noticeably, so the sauce will taste hotter off the spoon than it does on the fish — season it a little above where you want to land. --- ## Instructions ### 1\. Hindbeh (make first, or up to a day ahead) Cook the sliced onions in ¼ cup olive oil over medium-low heat for 25–30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until deeply browned and sweet. Remove about half and set aside for the topping; leave the rest in the pan. While the onions cook, bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Blanch the greens 3–4 minutes. This step is not optional — it pulls the harsh edge off the bitterness and leaves the pleasant kind behind. Drain, cool under cold water, then squeeze out the liquid hard and chop roughly. Add the greens and sliced garlic to the pan with the remaining onions. Cook 5–6 minutes, turning to coat. Season with salt and the lemon juice. Spread on a shallow serving plate, scatter the reserved onions over the top, drizzle with olive oil, and leave at room temperature. Do not refrigerate if you're serving the same day — cold flattens it. ### 2\. Marinate the fish Pat the fillets thoroughly dry. Toss with olive oil, ground coriander, salt, pepper, and lemon zest. Let sit at room temperature while you make the sauce — 20 to 30 minutes is ideal and does real work on the flavor. ### 3\. Build the sauce base Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion and bell pepper with a pinch of salt; cook 8–10 minutes until soft and just beginning to color. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Stir in cumin, coriander, paprika, and cayenne or Aleppo pepper and toast 30–45 seconds until fragrant. Remove from heat. ### 4\. Finish the sauce In a bowl, whisk the tahini with the lemon juice. It will seize and stiffen — this is expected. Whisk in the yogurt, then add warm water a few tablespoons at a time until it loosens into a pourable, cream-like consistency. Stir in the ground walnuts, the cooked onion-pepper mixture, the chopped cilantro, and salt. Taste and adjust: it should be assertively lemony and garlicky, because the fish is mild. Return the sauce to the skillet over low heat and warm gently for 3–4 minutes, stirring — do not let it boil, or the tahini will split and turn grainy. Keep warm off the heat. ### 5\. Roast the fish Heat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Arrange the fillets on a parchment-lined sheet pan with space between them. Roast 10–14 minutes depending on thickness, until the fish is just opaque and flakes under gentle pressure but still holds together in large pieces. Internal temperature \~130°F. Pull it early rather than late — it carries over on the pan. ### 6\. Toast the nuts and dress the salad While the fish roasts, toast the pine nuts or walnuts in a dry pan over medium heat, 2–3 minutes, shaking constantly until fragrant and golden. They burn in seconds; take them off the heat before they look done. Whisk the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, mint, and salt together, then toss with the shredded cabbage. Dress it just before serving so it stays crisp. ### 7\. Assemble Transfer the fish to a warm platter, keeping the pieces intact. Spoon the sauce over the fish, leaving some of the fillet visible rather than burying it. Scatter with toasted nuts, cilantro leaves, and a pinch of Aleppo pepper. Lemon wedges on the side. --- ## Cooking Sequence | Time | Step | | -------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | T–75 min | Start onions for hindbeh; put salted water on to boil | | T–70 min | Blanch, drain, squeeze, and chop greens | | T–50 min | Combine greens with onions and garlic; finish and set aside at room temperature | | T–45 min | Marinate fish; heat oven to 425°F | | T–40 min | Sauté onion, pepper, garlic, and spices for the sauce | | T–30 min | Whisk tahini sauce; combine and hold warm | | T–20 min | Shred cabbage; mix dressing | | T–15 min | Fish into the oven | | T–12 min | Toast nuts | | T–5 min | Dress the cabbage salad | | T–0 | Plate fish, spoon sauce, garnish, serve | If you make the hindbeh the day before, the whole meal collapses back to about 45 minutes. Bring it to room temperature an hour before serving. --- ## Presentation - Serve the fish on a single wide platter — this is a communal dish, and the sauce-over-fish reveal is the point - Keep the fish in large pieces; do not flake or fold it into the sauce - Leave part of each fillet uncovered so the contrast between white fish and pale sauce reads visually - Serve the fish warm rather than hot; the sauce is at its best just below serving temperature - Hindbeh goes out flat on a shallow plate at room temperature, onions heaped in the center, with its own lemon wedges - Cabbage salad in a separate bowl, not on the plate — it's a palate reset between bites - If any guests want the traditional street format, put warm flatbread on the table as an option rather than a default. With two sides already on the table, resist adding hummus as well — the meal tips from balanced into heavy --- ## Notes for Success - Stir the tahini jar thoroughly before measuring. Separated tahini gives inconsistent results and a bitter edge. - The tahini-lemon seizing step alarms people the first time. Push through it; the water brings it back. - Never boil the sauce. Split tahini cannot be brought back together. - Squeeze the blanched greens harder than feels reasonable. Wet greens dilute the olive oil and the dish goes slack. - Dandelion greens are the traditional choice but are inconsistent at U.S. markets. Escarole, curly endive, and chicory are all used in Lebanon itself. Swiss chard works but is far milder — you lose the bitterness the dish is built around. - The sauce and the hindbeh can both be made a day ahead. The fish cannot — cook it the same hour you serve it. - Leftovers keep 2 days with the fish and sauce stored separately; rewarm the fish at 275°F for about 10 minutes. The hindbeh is arguably better on day two. --- ## Shopping List ### Seafood - 2 lb firm white fish fillets (rock cod, Pacific cod, or red snapper) ### Produce - 4 yellow onions (1 for the sauce, 3 for the hindbeh) - 1 green bell pepper - 1 head garlic - ½ head green cabbage - 2 large bunches dandelion greens (or escarole, curly endive, chicory) - 1 large bunch cilantro - Fresh mint (small bunch) - 6–7 lemons ### Dairy - Plain whole-milk Greek yogurt (small container) ### Pantry - Tahini (⅔ cup — Lebanese brands such as Al Kanater are worth seeking out) - Walnuts - Pine nuts (optional, for garnish) - Olive oil (you will use close to a cup across the meal) - Ground cumin - Ground coriander - Sweet paprika - Aleppo pepper or cayenne - Kosher salt, black pepper ### Optional - Lebanese flatbread, for guests who want the traditional sandwich format ### Likely Already Have - Olive oil, salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, paprika ### A 25-Year Déjà Vu Back to 9/10 (Not 9/11): The Deception of Massive Backlog URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-25-year-deja-vu-back-to-9-10-not-9-11-the-deception-of-massive-backlog/ Last updated: 2026-09-08T13:31:55.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/09/chips.jpg) Time flies, but some memories - and the lessons from them - remain vivid. In late 2000 I decided to pivot from over ten years in medical device manufacturing to run a factory in the hyper growth telecom sector. We built laser photonics test equipment, the gear that tested the laser drivers sitting at both ends of long-haul fiber optic cables. Demand was growing rapidly, we had a backlog of over a year, and the factory floor was struggling. Over the next few months into 2001 we leveraged tools and concepts like a morning standup meeting, obeya, visual controls, kanban, kaizen, and standard work to take the operation from $1M a month to $5M a month in the same floorspace with the same people. Lean works. We were loving our success, as was our parent company. The first cancellation came in March of 2001\. One order, pulled out of a backlog that by then ran eighteen months deep. We spent a couple minutes on that cancellation in a meeting, decided the customer had a budget problem, and went back to the thing we were actually excited about, which was figuring out how to grow capacity even further. A curiosity. That's the honest word for how we handled it. We saw a couple more cancellations each month after that, with a large number in July. We were still recruiting and looking at additional factory space. By August we had investigated enough to understand that this was a structural problem, with the industry concerned that there wasn't enough data to light up the millions of miles of fiber optic being laid, coupled with advances in multiplexing that radically increased the data density of existing fiber. The backlog dried up overnight, literally in less than a month, and the next three weeks was a misery of difficult meetings and decisions with corporate. On September 10th, 2001, I announced the closure of the factory and laid off more than 150 brilliant people. Driving in the next morning, September 11th, rehearsing how I'd talk to the press and to the folks I'd just told would be losing their jobs in a couple weeks, I heard the first news out of New York. That put our supposed misery back into perspective. I wrote in more detail about [both](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-10th/) of [those days](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-11th/) fifteen years ago, on the tenth anniversary. What blinded us was a project that was working. The transformation was real, our commitments were finally being kept, first pass yield was near perfect. When what you're doing is succeeding, a single cancellation reads as noise, because in almost every month of almost every year that's exactly what it is. ## The déjà vu of AI Last month, almost 25 years after the story I just told you, Apollo's Chief Economist, [Torsten Slok, wrote](https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/the-ai-capex-boom-is-building-twice-as-fast-as-the-housing-boom?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that at the height of the telecom fiber boom in 2000 the capex investment was 1.2% of GDP. AI hyperscaler capex investment in 2025 was already 1.4% of GDP and is expected to be 3% or greater in 2027\. He makes a similar comparison to the housing boom in 2025. The most recent GE Vernova earnings release mentions that AI energy needs are helping to drive their increasing gas turbine backlog, and order backlog combined with slot reservation agreements [hit 116 GW in the second quarter](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-vernova-gas-turbine-backlog-climbs-to-116-gw/826039/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). They're now taking reservations for 2031 delivery. Eighteen months of backlog felt unassailable to me in 2001\. Five years of it must feel like... well, I can't even imagine. Another example: Nebius disclosed AI compute capacity pricing for the first time, with one to three year contracts at $20M to $25M per megawatt annually and short-duration deals at $40M to $50M. Short duration at double the long term pricing could be urgency. Similar situations may exist with the dramatic scaling of AI chip backlog and fab capacity. ## Why this time *may* be different Plenty of people are already drawing the line from fiber to AI. Capital pouring into physical infrastructure on the strength of a demand curve nobody has actually observed yet, financed on conviction, measured by backlog. The technology really was the future in 1999, and by 2002 less than 10% of the fiber in the ground was lit. The tech was real and the money was still wrong - or at least a few years premature. So the feeling is legitimate. Before you dive into AI pessimism, I'll tell you why it could be a different story this time. Maybe. GE Vernova reports slot reservations separately from firm orders, and reports the conversion between the two every quarter. They converted 10 GW of reservations into orders in Q2\. That disclosure is the instrument I didn't have. My backlog was one number, so a cancellation vanished into it. Their reservation pool is a visible staging area, and a customer walking away from a 2031 slot shows up as a conversion rate that stops climbing. The customer mix helps too: roughly 80% of that contracted capacity sits with utilities, independent power producers, and industrials, with about 20% tied to data center load. Long-haul fiber had one story. Electricity demand has several running at once, including coal retirements that need firming capacity and an electrification of transport and industrial heat that proceeds on its own schedule. Most of those can survive an AI disappointment without much trouble. The Nebius premium is for delivery speed, and management is deliberately holding capacity back from long contracts to capture it. The widely quoted 22-month payback is an estimate built on forecast costs and capacity not yet built, and the first short-duration deal actually closed a quarter after the pricing range was announced. Fiber was a twenty-five year asset with almost no marginal cost once it was lit. A glut had nowhere to go. The capacity sat in the ground getting cheaper, and it took the better part of fifteen years for demand to grow into it. An AI GPU gets physically superseded and replaced roughly [every three years](https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2025/10/15/lifespan-of-ai-chips-the-300-billion-question/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), so a compute overbuild liquidates itself by attrition. Same overbuild, wildly different half-life. Longer and choppier is a more plausible shape here than 1999-2001 playing again. ## What I'd watch Two numbers, both live rather than historical. GE Vernova's conversion rate of slot reservations into firm orders, quarter over quarter, because that's where a customer changes its mind first and cheapest. And Nebius' spread between short-duration and long-duration compute pricing, watching the spread rather than the level, because a premium paid for immediate delivery is a scarcity signal and the day it starts compressing toward the long-term rate is the day scarcity ended. Both are disclosed, and boring enough that a move in either could pass a full quarter without comment. Twenty-five years ago I had good data, a good team, and a project that was genuinely working, and I still classified the first signal as a curiosity and went back to the capacity plan. The classification was reasonable. It was also wrong, and it took me six months and 150 people to find that out. So here's what I'd ask anyone involved in this AI or AI-related buildout, or anyone lucky enough to be sitting on a very large backlog of orders: what are you calling a curiosity right now, and when did you last go back and look at it again? I still have the production chart from the morning meeting, framed on my home office wall, from the month we hit the $5M monthly goal - and then some. Each morning we'd manually color in the bar chart, with increasingly excited and proud folks adding some "customization" and signing their names. Somehow it turned into an overflowing fish tank! What a great feeling when lean works and you achieve the seemingly impossible! And it remains on my wall as a sober lesson of what happened just a few months later. Early curiosities can be important signals. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/09/NEWP-chart.JPG) ### Lean's Branding Problem - Again URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leans-branding-problem-again/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T13:19:30.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/09/lean-layoff-1.jpg) Earlier this week I spent two days in a renovated old milking barn with a couple dozen improvement professionals from healthcare, government, higher education, and a handful of well-known consultants. We were focused around the problem of improving improvement education, particularly in California. I'll have much more about this summit in a few weeks. One of our major topics became the "branding problem" of improvement, in particular lean. You can't teach people who won't sign up. A major reason they are hesitant to get engaged is they see such problems as a risk to their jobs and livelihoods. They see improved efficiency leading to headcount reductions. It's hard to argue with that when just one day after our summit there's the following headline in [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/technology/uber-layoffs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&ref=kevinmeyer.com): > *Uber Cuts 10% of Employees in Sweeping Reorganization. The layoffs affect about 3,300 workers as Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi bets on a "leaner organization."* Well, for once it's not AI. But "lean"? He didn't mean lean in the true improvement sense, just as a smaller, more agile, organization. But the damage was done. Uber wasn't alone this year. Coinbase cut roughly 700 people in May, about 14% of the company, with Brian Armstrong telling staff he was rebuilding it to be ["lean, fast, and AI-native"](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/05/coinbase-cuts-headcount-by-14percent-citing-ai-acceleration-the-shares-are-gaining.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Three weeks later Wix cut around 1,000, close to a fifth of its workforce, with Avishai Abrahami writing that the company had to become ["faster, leaner, and flatter"](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog%5Fentry/israeli-tech-giant-wix-confirms-cutting-20-of-workforce-amid-shekel-surge-ai-growth/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). That's three headlines in one year teaching several million people what one of our favorite improvement terms isn't supposed to mean. Uber's stock rose nearly 2% on the news. The same sentence gets read as good news by the market and as a threat by the people who have to execute it, and plenty of readers are both at once. We're asking those people to bring their best thinking to a program whose vocabulary just moved their investments up and their job security down in the same paragraph. I've spent 30 years making the opposite argument. Improvement removes waste, waste removal frees capacity and creates value for the customer in terms of lead times and service. Capacity converts into growth if leadership can sell it. The people who freed the capacity are the ones who go fill it. I believe that and have done it. John Krafcik coined "lean production" in a [Fall 1988 *Sloan Management Review* article](https://www.leanblog.org/2013/09/the-term-lean-production-is-25-years-old-my-thoughts-on-the-original-article/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) out of MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program, and he picked the word because Toyota's plants used less of everything: less inventory, less floor space, fewer engineering hours, repair areas so small you could miss them. Accurate description. Terrible brand. We named a method after the thing that gets smaller, and then spent 38 years surprised that executives read it as a headcount reduction tool. Even "improvement" carries a whiff of it, though a milder one, since improvement at least leaves open the question of what improves. Krafcik's finding wasn't about inventory levels at all. He looked for a link between plant performance and country of location and found one between performance and management philosophy, which meant respect for the people doing the work and a system built to surface their problems rather than bury them. Respect for people, or human nature as [Jon Miller interprets](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2018/12/10/respect-for-respect-for-human-nature/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) it, sits at the center of this discipline. The pitch to someone deciding whether to engage has to be specific about what they get. Less bureaucracy between them and a decision. More control over how their own work is designed, an actual say in changing it, and a company positioned to grow into the capacity they created rather than bank it. The strongest programs I've seen back that with a formal no-layoff commitment. That will give even the strongest, most forward-thinking CEOs and CFOs the jeebies, which is also why it's rare. Committing to it means a leadership team giving up its fastest lever in a bad quarter. Committing and not sticking to it will destroy trust in a flash. Somebody at the summit proposed fixing this at the level of vocabulary. Focus on the term "improvement." Reinforce the concept of amplify instead of optimize. I like that, but the credibility gap didn't just open up over a bad noun, it evolved over decades of abuse. If you're the person on the line who watched four coworkers leave after the last improvement event, what would we have to actually do before you'd raise your hand for the next one? ### AI accelerating scientific discovery: Running the experiment used to be the easy part URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ai-accelerating-scientific-discovery-running-the-experiment-used-to-be-the-easy-part/ Last updated: 2026-08-30T15:21:01.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/08/science-lab.jpg) Early in my career, yes decades ago, I worked on the development of oximetry catheters. Designing an experiment and documenting the protocol on a very early PC took about a day. Setting it up and running it in a controlled oxygenated fluid bath took an hour. Analyzing the data and writing up the results took another day. Then I often spent another day looking around for my boss to discuss the results. Two days of thinking. One hour of equipment. The thinking and analysis was the constraint. Call it 16 to 1, human hours against machine hours. Equipment time was cheap and mostly idle. Attention was what you rationed, so you'd pick your next experiment carefully. Picking badly cost two days or more, depending on where my boss was. Which is why a paper that hit [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.26701?ref=kevinmeyer.com) last week made me realize the circumstances have flipped. Google DeepMind's Co-Scientist, running on Gemini 3 Deep Think, interfaced with a lab-built chemical vapor deposition reactor and tailored synthesis experimental recipes to that specific hardware in minutes. The scale is clearer in [Kosmos](https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02824?ref=kevinmeyer.com), the AI scientist from Edison Scientific. Give it a dataset and an objective and it'll run up to 12 hours across 200 agent rollouts. Collaborators found that the number of valuable findings scaled linearly with the number of cycles. That's a production line of scientific testing! ## When failure gets cheap Back in my catheter development days we'd agonize over experiment selection, because a wrong choice burned two days of the scarce resource. Thinking and analysis was expensive, so the design had to be right, and any branch that looked weaker than the leading candidate didn't get run at all. We killed those in our heads before they cost anything, never finding out if there was a discovery in what we discarded. When designing costs nothing, that calculus dissolves. You run the weak branch too, because all you're spending is the hour in the bath, and you'd rather have twenty cheap failures that narrow the space than one careful success. Failure turns into information about where not to look, and that has value. Periodic Labs, founded by Liam Fedus from OpenAI and Ekin Dogus Cubuk, who led materials AI at DeepMind, is built around robotic powder synthesis labs that generate proprietary data with the negative results deliberately retained. The market's started pricing this value of data, even failure data. When Spirit Airlines shut down in May and went into liquidation against roughly $8.1 billion in debt, Google won a bankruptcy auction in August for a slice of the airline's enterprise data: revenue management systems, aircraft operations, audit and fraud records, and pricing on billions of Spirit and competitor flights. $10 million for a defunct dataset on a failed airline. Two other lots from the same liquidation put the number in scale. JetBlue paid $58 million for 22 LaGuardia slots. A hedge fund paid $93 million for the Florida headquarters. Decades of operational history went for a tenth of what the building fetched. ## The bath still takes an hour The equipment has become the constraint. A-Lab, the Berkeley robotic synthesis platform, ran 58 targets in 17 days. Not 58,000\. The physical furnace still takes as long as a furnace takes. Kosmos hits 200 rollouts in half a day because its experiment is a computation. Periodic raised a $300 million seed in September 2025 to build physical labs rather than to train a better model. When the rate-limiting step is the crucible, you buy crucibles. So the AI-enabled acceleration of scientific research is real, and it'll arrive unevenly, sorted by how physical your experiment is. Anything that has to touch matter or wait on biology gets the old pace with a much faster brain bolted to the front. I've written before about [where that leads](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/that-unsettling-feeling-when-ai-works-but-we-dont-understand-why/), when the results keep working and the explanations stop arriving, so I'll leave it there. The narrow version is enough. Cheap search hands you a survivor, and survival tells you which branch worked without telling you where it stops working. If I could take today's tools back to that lab, the two days of design and analysis would compress into a coffee break, and the search for my boss would vanish entirely. The bath would still take an hour. But nearly everything I actually learned came out of the gap between experiments, sitting with why the last one behaved the way it did before I set up the next. AI has flipped the constraint from the thinking to the equipment. ### Three weeks in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark, and the ranking I got wrong URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-weeks-in-finland-estonia-sweden-and-denmark-and-the-ranking-i-got-wrong/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T10:04:57.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/08/nyhavn-1.jpeg) The rain in Copenhagen came down hard one afternoon but we still walked a couple miles to the iconic Little Mermaid statue. Phones out. A woman rode past with a small child in a cargo bike, unhurried, dressed for an ordinary Sunday. Then a few dozen joggers. Then a couple hundred more bicycles. We're Californians. Rain is an event. Nobody around us adjusted anything at all. The itinerary held up well over three weeks, which I'll get to, but the thing I keep turning over is how much I carried into these four countries that had nothing to do with them. I'd ranked these cities in my head before we ever left, and I hadn't earned the ranking. August was the right month. Warm without the punishing heat that had settled over southern Europe, and water still warm enough to swim in. What we hadn't accounted for was that everyone else knew it too. Finns, Estonians, Swedes, and Danes get roughly four months of dependable warmth, and by mid-August they're spending it hard. Parks full at 9pm. Swimming platforms crowded. The cities we walked through were being used by the people who live in them, which is a different experience from walking through one that's mostly hosting visitors. We had two days of rain across the whole trip, most of it in Denmark. We had originally thought of including Norway on this trip, but after considerably research we realized that country really deserved a trip on it's own in order to properly experience Oslo, Bergen and the fjords, and the Lofoten Islands in the far north. ## Helsinki, and the road signs to St. Petersburg We lean toward the luxury end on hotels, but still the first thing we do in a new city is get on the cheap Hop On Hop Off bus. We don't hop off. We ride the full loop, which costs almost nothing and hands us a working map of how the place is put together before we start walking. In Helsinki it also gave us something to accomplish on day one while the jet lag did its work. Stockholm runs a water loop alongside the land loop and they're both worth it. Copenhagen has three, including a colorful tour that swings past Christiania and a loop built around the Carlsberg brewery. Tallinn is the exception, since the old town is compact and largely pedestrian. Helsinki is the most mellow of the four capitals, which makes it the right place to start. The only stretch that gets hectic is around the Esplanade, and even that's mild. We stayed at the Waldorf Astoria rather than the Bank hotel, and after walking the Esplanade a few times I was glad we did. We took the half day out to Porvoo, which is smaller than I'd pictured. It's scenic and worth the morning. What stayed with me was on the road out: signs to St. Petersburg. The distance is short. Not long ago you could drive it on a whim, and now there's a wide buffer at the border that you aren't crossing casually, and no, you can't drive up for a look. Standing in a quiet Finnish town reading a highway sign for a Russian city puts the last few years in a register that reading about them doesn't. Löyly, the harbor sauna out on Hernesaari, is worth the trip across town. Book it well in advance, since you reserve a two hour block and the slots go. And take the dip in the Baltic. You heat up, get in the cold water, then repeat, and it's the second cycle when the whole thing stops being an endurance test and starts making sense. The day trip to Tallinn was one of our favorites. The Tallink ferry runs from West Terminal 2, and business class costs a few dollars more than standard. Take it. Priority boarding and disembarkation puts you ahead of a very large crowd, which matters most on the Tallinn end where the taxi queue forms fast. We walked the old town tour in reverse from how it was laid out, because the taxi drivers prefer a particular drop point and there's no sense fighting it. The old town is compact and in better repair than I'd expected. ## Stockholm, which won Stockholm was our favorite city on the trip, and it wasn't close. We stayed at the Lydmar, a small hotel next door to the Grand, right on the water. Guests get access to the Grand's fitness room, which is nicer than you'd expect from a hotel that size. More useful: the ferries leave from directly out front. We walked a tremendous amount here. Fourteen islands connected by bridges and short boat rides means the city rewards walking in a way a compact single-center city doesn't, and the connections are easy enough that you stop thinking about them. [Kulturfestivalen](https://kulturfestivalen.stockholm.se/en/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), Stockholm's annual culture festival, ran the 12th through the 16th and covered most of our stay. Free stages go up around the central squares and along the waterfront, mostly music, and the city had an energy that an ordinary week wouldn't have supplied. The cost is more people in the central areas, which is a fair trade. The Vasa Museum deserves its reputation, and the scale of the hull really doesn't come through in photographs. Fotografiska was excellent. And the ABBA Museum, which I want to be direct about: go, even if you're convinced you don't care about ABBA. It's well constructed and experiential in a way most music museums never manage, and I say that as someone who walked in unenthusiastic. Our other Stockholm highlight was the half day out to Vaxholm. An hour on the ferry through the inner archipelago, which doubles as the local commute, so you're watching people travel to and from home rather than riding a tour boat. We did the 4.3 mile loop hike around the island, through neighborhoods of summer houses set on granite. It reminded me of northern Michigan more than anywhere else we went. ## Copenhagen, and the walking We skipped the train from Stockholm. Five hours, a transfer in Malmö at rush hour, and Swedish countryside we'd already seen a fair amount of. We flew instead, an hour gate to gate, and I'd make the same call again. Copenhagen is a good walking city and the neighborhoods are where it pays off. Our first afternoon we walked to Nyhavn and back through the pedestrian shopping streets, which is the obvious move and it's fine for what it is. The better day was the long walk out to Christiania and then on to Reffen. Christiania has been cleaned up considerably from what it was, and it's interesting to walk through and see what survived the transition. Reffen, the container food market on the harbor, had more lunch options than we could work through. Vesterbro, the old red light district, is now a funky neighborhood of local shops and bars and worth an afternoon of its own. The Louisiana Museum is beautiful, the building winding down through old trees to a terrace above the Øresund with Sweden on the far shore. The collection ran more contemporary than our taste, which says more about us than about the museum. Go for the building and the sculpture garden. We stayed at the Marriott, which is comfortable and well located, and it's the one booking I'd change. After the Waldorf Astoria and the Lydmar, a chain business hotel felt like a missed opportunity. The room was fine. The city deserved better from us. ## The ranking I got wrong I expected Denmark to be the tidiest of the four, and I held that with some confidence before we left. I still can't reconstruct where it came from. Some accumulated impression of Danish design doing work it was never entitled to do, probably. Stockholm was the one that stood out. Cleanest, best groomed, with landscaping maintained to a standard that reads as deliberate policy rather than good luck. Tallinn and Helsinki followed close behind. Copenhagen carries more graffiti and more overgrown planting than I'd anticipated, though the proportion matters here: every one of these cities is cleaner and better kept than almost anywhere else I've been, and the spread among the four is narrow against that baseline. The direction of my error is what stayed with me, since the error itself was small. The other correction was bicycles. I knew Copenhagen was a cycling city. I hadn't understood what that means at street level. In Copenhagen you watch the crossing signal for the bicycles, because they're the faster and more numerous hazard and they arrive from angles a driver never would. The upside is that ordinary residential streets have wide separated lanes for walking and riding, which makes long distances on foot easy and safe. Stockholm and Copenhagen had the most bikes by a distance, and both cities are better to walk in for it. We'd sequence the trip the same way again, and it'd work about as well in reverse. Helsinki eases you in, Tallinn is a day of compressed history, Stockholm is the peak, and Copenhagen is where you stop walking. What I still don't have is a good answer for the joggers. They were out in the heaviest rain of our three weeks, and they were out in the same numbers on the clear mornings, and there was no evident calculation in either case. I've been home a week and I'm still building my day around a forecast. What are you carrying into a place that has nothing to do with the place? ### The compounding criticality of cadence: the widening tech gap between the US, China, and Europe URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-compounding-criticality-of-cadence-the-widening-tech-gap-between-the-us-china-and-europe/ Last updated: 2026-08-16T13:14:10.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/08/launch-cadence.jpg) I spent the month of June in Malta, Greece, and Switzerland. Three countries, three very different economies, one thing in common: almost nobody talked about AI. Not at dinner, not in the news, not in the kind of overheard café conversation that tells you what a place is chewing on. Back home, even in our very small beach town I can't get through a couple days without AI coming up on cheesy Nextdoor, of all places, retired neighbors arguing about chatbots between posts about lost cats. Call it a cadence gap. Cadence is the variable that decides who wins the next decade of technology, and it's the reason a conversation that saturates one country barely registers in another. ## Cadence is the rate of learning Cadence is how often you run an experiment: how many times per year you attempt something and find out what happens. It takes technical people, capital to fund attempts, and demand that justifies making them. Call them engineers or researchers depending on the field; in space it's mostly engineers running hardware to failure, in AI mostly researchers running training experiments. The three are not co-equal, and I had this wrong when I started thinking it through. Demand is the crank. Capital follows demand, at a scale that has to be seen to be believed: the four largest US hyperscalers are guiding roughly $725 billion in capital spending this year, up from about $410 billion in 2025 and $226 billion in 2024\. Nobody commits that on a technical hunch. They commit it because Microsoft has an Azure backlog it can't fill and Google Cloud is carrying over $460 billion in booked demand. Demand justifies capital, capital buys attempts, attempts produce learning, and learning produces the next product that generates more demand. Lean practitioners will recognize the improvement kata scaled up to a national economy. The kata's premise is that progress comes from a high rate of small, structured experiments toward a target condition rather than from occasional large leaps, and that the organization cycling fastest through plan-do-check-adjust learns fastest. What's true on a shop floor turns out to be true for a country. Space makes this visible because launches are countable. Starship Flight 13 flew yesterday, deploying 20 real Starlink satellites and putting the ship into the Indian Ocean intact and floating for the first time ever. Getting there took 13 full-stack test flights, several of which ended in spectacular failure. Ariane 6, Europe's flagship launcher and a capable piece of engineering, has flown seven times since its 2024 debut and hasn't lost one. Ariane 6 is a competent rocket. The difference is that SpaceX bought 13 flights' worth of knowledge about what actually breaks, and Europe bought seven flights' worth of confirmation that its design works. ## Volume is what builds the wall Then there's the second curve, the one I think matters more over a decade. SpaceX's own counters currently read 681 completed missions, 641 landings, and 604 booster reflights. The Block 5 booster was designed for 10 flights before major refurbishment. Boosters now routinely fly more than 25 times, with turnarounds as short as three weeks. Nobody engineered that improvement up front. It was discovered one component at a time, by flying enough vehicles enough times to learn what wears out on the 22nd flight rather than the 10th. There's a well-established shape to this. Wright's Law, from a 1936 study of aircraft manufacturing, holds that cost falls by a roughly constant percentage every time cumulative production doubles. The improvement arrives per doubling, which means the return on any single additional unit diminishes as the total grows. Flight number 8 teaches you an enormous amount. Flight number 682 teaches you almost nothing by comparison. That sounds like it should undercut the whole argument. It doesn't, because the compounding lives in how fast you traverse doublings in calendar time. SpaceX went from 8 flights a year to 165 while Ariane 6 accumulated seven flights total. Both improve by roughly the same percentage per doubling. One of them has collected several doublings in the time the other collected one, and each doubling starts from the improved position the last one produced. Cadence creates the velocity of new knowledge. Volume creates the minutiae, and the minutiae are what become the competitive barrier. A competitor can copy the Falcon 9 design. The blueprints were never the hard part, and anything written down leaks eventually, authorized or not. The layer that never gets written down is what stays put: which supplier's valve batch runs slightly out of tolerance, what the inspection routine catches on a 22nd reflight, how a launch crew reads an anomaly at T-40 seconds. That knowledge can only be acquired by flying, and flying requires demand a competitor hasn't got yet. Europe has the engineers. What it lacks is the flight rate, and without the flight rate, that talent gets far fewer chances per year to find out what it doesn't know. Both curves run through AI, drug discovery, and advanced manufacturing the same way. Fail faster, fail in greater numbers, and only then do you get to succeed faster. ## This is not the pace of ten years ago What makes this urgent is how recently it changed. Falcon flew 8 times in 2016\. It flew 91 times in 2023, 132 in 2024, and 165 in 2025, and passed 70 by the middle of this year. That's roughly a twentyfold increase in annual cadence inside a decade, in an industry that spent the prior fifty years treating a dozen launches a year as a serious operational tempo. China is now doing the same thing, fast. On July 10 a Long March 10B first stage was caught in a net strung across a recovery ship in the South China Sea, four hooks snagging tensioned cables, no landing legs involved. It was China's first orbital-class booster recovery and it happened on the rocket's maiden flight, with plans to refly that same stage before the year ends. One catch against 604 reflights is not parity, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. It is entry into the loop, and the demand underneath it is explicit: China's Guowang and Qianfan constellations must place 10% of their planned networks in orbit by the end of 2026 to hold their international spectrum rights, and they're only a few hundred satellites in. That deadline is why reusability went from aspiration to requirement. Scale and national vision manufacture demand that private markets would take a decade to generate. The AI picture rhymes. In one week this month Moonshot released Kimi K3 at 2.8 trillion parameters, the largest open-weight model yet built, and Alibaba previewed Qwen 3.8 Max. Independent evaluation puts K3 just behind the top American models and ahead of several of them on coding tasks. DeepSeek sells frontier-adjacent inference at 87 cents per million tokens against roughly $50 for the American flagship, which is a demand strategy as much as a pricing one: buy usage, generate the volume, feed the loop. When US export controls briefly cut foreign access to Anthropic's top models, a Chinese lab shipped a competitor days later with a pointed note that frontier intelligence shouldn't be subject to withdrawal at somebody's discretion. Two accelerating competitors push each other harder than one running alone. Every Chinese release tightens American timelines, and every American constraint hands Chinese labs a market opening. Anyone still reasoning from a 2015 model, when the leaders and a capable second tier were separated by a few years of engineering effort, is working from obsolete assumptions. A well-run national program can still catch up given time and focus. What's in doubt is whether the doubling rate on the other side leaves enough calendar time to try. ## The loop feeds itself None of this happens by being granted a high cadence. It's earned, and then it self-reinforces. Arianespace's own CEO gave the honest answer in late 2025, asked whether the company could push past its planned launch rate. The constraint isn't engineering capacity, he said. It's customer demand. Ariane 6 could fly more often. Nobody's ordering enough launches to justify it. That single comment is the whole mechanism in miniature. SpaceX earned a low cost per launch through years of iteration, which made it the obvious choice for anyone who needed something in orbit, which generated the order volume that funds the next round of iteration. A launch provider stuck at seven flights is locked out of the loop that would let it become faster, because the capital that would buy more cadence is waiting on the demand that only comes from already having it. This is also why a popular recent ranking, countries by density of AI researchers per capita, measures the wrong thing. Switzerland topped that list. Switzerland also shipped a real AI model yesterday, the same day Starship flew: Apertus 1.5, from ETH Zurich, EPFL, and the national supercomputing centre at Lugano, built by an initiative with more than 800 researchers and 20 million GPU hours a year on a public supercomputer, released fully open source. The engineering is serious. The capital is where it comes apart, and the scale shows up in the model itself. Apertus is a 70-billion-parameter model. Kimi K3, shipped a week earlier out of Beijing, is 2.8 trillion. Parameter counts flatter the Chinese models somewhat, since those designs activate only a fraction of their weights on any given token, but the gap in training investment behind the two numbers is real and it's roughly an order of magnitude. Twenty million GPU hours is a serious academic commitment sitting against $725 billion of demand-driven private capex, and that gap exists because the Swiss model has no demand engine underneath it. The Canton of Ticino uses a fine-tuned version to translate official documents. A medical variant is in testing at a Lausanne hospital. Both are respectable, and neither generates the daily volume that surfaces failure modes nobody anticipated, or the revenue that would justify the next order of magnitude in compute. Switzerland's 9 million people can concentrate excellent engineers and still never assemble the demand that turns a good model into a compounding one. ## The tradeoff nobody voted on directly Anything that caps demand or slows capital formation caps cadence. Regulatory environments that restrain how capital concentrates do it. So does social policy that directs capital toward broad security rather than concentrated risk-taking. Europe has chosen both, deliberately and at the ballot box, and the outcomes those choices buy are ones most people would endorse. The part that never appeared on any ballot is the second-order consequence: capital committed to the floor under citizens isn't buying cadence, and that amounts to an effective decision not to compete at the frontier. Reasonable people can make that trade. It's worth knowing you've made it. ## A closing window Nobody outside the loop is locked out permanently. But the window is closing faster than most policymakers have priced in, and Europe is only the nearest case. Most of the world is further out with fewer options. What I keep circling back to is dependency. Anthropic's recent suspension of foreign access to its most capable models, overnight, on a US government export control directive, is the preview: whoever controls the loop controls who gets to use what comes out of it, and everyone outside discovers their position the morning it changes. Two countries are pulling away in space, in AI, and in everything built on top of both. Everyone else buys access to the output on terms they don't set. Which brings me back to the cafés. When the loop isn't spinning where you live, the whole subject stays theoretical, right up until the morning somebody else's export control decides what tools you're allowed to open. My retired neighbors arguing on Nextdoor have more skin in this game than they know, and so do the people who weren't discussing it over dinner in Valletta. So: what does a capable country that isn't the US or China actually do? Build a narrow domestic capability in one field and accept dependency everywhere else? Pool resources across borders and hope the politics hold long enough to matter? I can't find a third answer that isn't just a slower version of the second. ### The AI watermark will flag the wrong writers URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-ai-watermark-will-flag-the-wrong-writers/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T14:09:50.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/08/no-ai.jpg.jpg) My grammar can be atrocious, and I know exactly why. I grew up in a Spanish-speaking country and still speak it close to natively, which left a permanent groove in my English prose. Spanish tolerates long sentences with clauses stacked in an order that lands backwards for an English reader, and decades later I still build sentences that way whenever I write fast. Linguists call it syntactic transfer. My early writing here is a monument to it, and I would rather you not go looking. So I run drafts through Claude for a cleanup pass. It untangles the inverted clauses and tells me when I have buried the subject four commas deep. Then I make every change by hand in my own editor because I want to know what changed. That habit acquired a new complication on August 2\. [Article 50 of the EU AI Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/strong-backing-code-practice-transparency-ai-generated-content?ref=kevinmeyer.com) took effect, requiring providers of generative AI to mark synthetic audio, image, video, and text in a machine-readable format. Anthropic responded by [marking Claude's output](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/16266773-how-claude-marks-ai-generated-content?ref=kevinmeyer.com) with an embedded text watermark plus signed metadata on generated files. The marking applies to every model launched on or after that date, worldwide, whether or not you are anywhere near Europe. Ben Thompson wrote a [sharp piece](https://stratechery.com/2026/anthropics-watermarking-how-it-probably-works-worse-than-it-seems/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on this at Stratechery, and I agree with nearly all of it while landing somewhere slightly different on why it bothers me. ## What the mark actually says Anthropic's own documentation is admirably candid. A detected mark signals that content may have been processed by Claude. It establishes nothing about who wrote the underlying ideas, since people routinely use these models to proofread or reformat work that is entirely their own. Absence of a mark establishes nothing either, because heavy editing, paraphrasing, format conversion, or simple brevity will all wipe the signal out. The result has poor sensitivity and poor specificity. In manufacturing terms we have deployed an inspection gage whose measurement error swamps the tolerance we actually care about, and we are about to read its output as pass/fail. Anyone who has developed a gage R&R study knows how that story ends. ## Who actually pays Marking happens at the model-serving layer, which means anyone running open weights on their own hardware produces unmarked text by default. Models never placed on the EU market sit outside enforcement reach entirely. None of this touches the thousands of fine-tunes floating around Hugging Face, or the person spinning up a voice clone for a fraud call. The mark is also forgeable. [Researchers have demonstrated](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~csd-phd-blog/2026/llm-watermark-attack/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that collecting enough watermarked output lets an attacker infer which tokens carry the signal, which enables both stripping the mark and stamping it onto text a model never wrote. A public detector, the very thing that would make any of this useful to a reader, doubles as the oracle that makes forgery easier. There is a design trade underneath: a watermark tough enough to survive paraphrasing is by construction insensitive to editing, including edits that reverse the meaning of the sentence it is riding in. So we have a control system with the dominant source of variation sitting outside the loop. ## The part that should worry writers In 2023, Stanford researchers ran 7 commercial AI detectors against essays from native and non-native English writers. [More than half](https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02819?ref=kevinmeyer.com) of the TOEFL essays written by non-native speakers came back flagged as AI-generated. Essays from American 8th graders scored nearly perfect. The likely mechanism is that those detectors were scoring how predictable the word choices were, and someone writing in a second language works from a narrower vocabulary. I read that study with more personal interest than most people would. The fix that worked is the part I keep chewing on: running those human-written essays back through ChatGPT with instructions to use more sophisticated language got them reclassified… as human. Watermarking works differently from perplexity-based detection, and I want to be careful about conflating the two technologies. What transfers is the institutional behavior. Schools and employers adopted an unreliable signal and used it punitively anyway, and the cost landed hardest on the people least positioned to argue back. Nothing in the new marking regime dampens that appetite. It supplies a fresh signal, thinner than it looks, to an audience already primed to treat any hit as a verdict. ## Grammar is not authorship Some writers I respect regard these models as plagiarism engines, given how they were trained. That argument is real and deserves its own post. It has almost nothing to do with what happens when I ask a model to tell me that four paragraphs in a row start with the same word. We settled this question for other tools decades ago. Nobody appends a disclosure when a spreadsheet computes an IRR, and no one has ever argued that spell-check makes Microsoft the author. The engineer who runs a finite element analysis still owns the design, including the parts the software talked him out of. Underneath the whole regime sits an assumption that human-origin content is trustworthy and machine-origin content is suspect. A person can lie, or be confidently sloppy on deadline. A model with a careful prompt and honest sourcing can produce something more measured than either of us manages on a bad morning. I have [written before](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mirror-we-built/) about how much of what unsettles us in these models turns out to be our own reflection. Provenance and accuracy are separate questions, and building infrastructure that answers the first while everyone reads it as an answer to the second seems likely to make the information environment worse. Meanwhile I will keep applying my corrections by hand, which now looks less like stubbornness and more like a workaround. That is the tell. When a measurement system starts inducing rework in a process that was working fine, the measurement is the thing to fix. So a question for the writers reading this. If a tool untangled a sentence you had built the way another language taught you to build sentences, and taking its advice carried some risk of a label you could never remove, would you still take the advice? ### Rotating Emergency Inventory: What Japan's Vending Machines Actually Do in an Earthquake URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rotating-emergency-inventory-what-japans-vending-machines-actually-do-in-an-earthquake/ Last updated: 2026-08-09T12:57:32.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/08/vending-machine-japan.jpg) A magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit Kumamoto Prefecture a couple weeks ago. Within a few hours came the usual flood: drone footage of a partially collapsed shopping mall, a paper mill chimney down in Yatsushiro, tsunami advisories issued and lifted, and a rising tide of confident explanation from people who have never set foot on Kyushu. One item caught my eye, because I've been to Japan several times and the vending machines always amazed me. The variety especially, and the placement: mountain trails, alleys with no store within a mile (hot canned coffee in winter is one of civilization's better ideas). The claim making the rounds was that Japanese machines open up and go free during an emergency, and that most carry a QR code you can scan to tell responders exactly which ruined street you're standing on. Half of that is wrong and the other half is half right, about the hit rate I'd expect from a comment thread 6 hours after a disaster. What's actually there is better than the story. ## What's actually there The QR code doesn't exist, at least not for that. The codes on machines report a jam to the operator so they can mail back your 150 yen. What does exist is older, dumber, cheaper, and much harder to break. Since 2005 the vending machine industry has worked with police and fire departments to put [address stickers](https://emergencyjapan.org/en/2991?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on machines nationwide, so that someone calling 110 or 119 can say where they are. Japanese street addressing is notoriously hard to read off a wall, and official emergency guidance now lists the sticker alongside utility pole numbers as a fallback locator. No power, no network, no phone battery, no app. The internet upgraded a sticker into a smart system, which is backwards, because the sticker is the design that still works when everything else is down. The free vending is real and rarer than advertised. [Coca-Cola started installing disaster machines in 2003](https://www.vanyufuji.com/en/disaster-relief-vending-machine/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), controlled remotely over the network and mostly carrying storage batteries so they run through an outage. After the 2011 Tohoku quake the company switched about 400 of them to free and gave away more than 88,000 drinks. Many others open with a physical key switch, which means somebody has to show up and turn it. Machines that decide on their own are new and scarce: [two of them in Ako City](https://theweek.com/news/world-news/asia-pacific/961096/japanese-vending-machines-to-automatically-offer-free-food-in?ref=kevinmeyer.com), installed in 2023 near evacuation shelters, holding about 300 drinks and 150 emergency food items, tripping open at shindo 5 or higher. ## The kanban card on the sidewalk In 2008 I toured [Toyota's Kyushu complex](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/japan-kaikaku-experience-the-summary/) in Miyawaka, in one of the prefectures under an emergency warning today. The plant was running 1,150 vehicles a day across two shifts, mixed model, and there was not a computer visible anywhere on the assembly floor. Parts bins moved on paper kanban cards. I flew 5,000 miles to watch cardboard rectangles tell a factory what to build, then walked out past the machines I'd been buying coffee from all week without recognizing the same idea in a different housing. An emergency stockpile is dead stock. You buy it against a forecast, warehouse it, pay to hold it, and find out on the day you need it that the elastic has rotted. A disaster vending machine holds the same goods as live inventory on continuous rotation, funded by ordinary commerce and restocked by a route driver whose income depends on it being full and working. As the Mainichi noted about the Ako machines, since they sell normally the rest of the time, nothing expires and nothing goes to waste. The carrying cost goes negative. The stockpile turns a profit while it waits. Taiichi Ohno got the pull system from watching American supermarkets restock shelves according to what customers took off them. Japan ran the loop back the other way and turned the supermarket into civil defense. ## What dead inventory looks like After Katrina, FEMA was hammered for failing to get supplies to people, so in 2006 it bought enormous quantities of food and ice and positioned them across the Southeast. The season came in mild. [Millions of prepared meals spoiled](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna18084847?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in trailers parked in the Gulf Coast summer, where FEMA workers clocked interior temperatures above 120 degrees, and the agency discarded 279 truckloads of food. It also held 84.9 million pounds of leftover Katrina ice for that same season, then [paid roughly $67 million](https://cohen.house.gov/press-release/congressman-cohen-joined-subcommittee-chair-seeks-answers-fema-wasted-ice?ref=kevinmeyer.com) to store and destroy it. FEMA's deputy director explained the logic with more candor than most: "we didn't want to run any chance of running out." That is a forecast-push system talking. Nothing in normal operations touched the inventory, so nothing in normal operations reported that it had gone bad. I should mark the limit before I oversell this the way that comment thread did. You will never find a ventilator in a vending machine. Rotation works only where commercial demand and emergency demand overlap. That overlap is unglamorous and larger than people assume: water, food, ice, batteries, fuel. It also happens to be the first 72 hours, which is the window [Tokyo's refuge parks](https://reasonstobecheerful.world/japans-disaster-parks-help-explain-its-coronavirus-response/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) are explicitly sized for. Past that you're into the long tail, where there's no commerce to borrow and you pay for dead stock deliberately. Japan solved the first three days by noticing that a solution was already standing on every corner, funded by thirsty commuters. The long tail is still a problem, there and here. Hikarigaoka Park hides cooking stoves inside 36 of its benches and emergency toilets under 52 of its manhole lids. MIT's Miho Mazereeuw, whose *Design Before Disaster* came out this spring, [makes the point](https://news.mit.edu/2026/coping-with-catastrophe-miho-mazereeuw-book-0302?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that everyday use is what builds the mental map: people know where to go in a crisis because they've already had a good time going there. Several commenters on that thread asserted that yakuza groups own a chunk of Japan's vending machines. I looked and found nothing. Documented organized crime fronts run to construction, waste disposal, entertainment, and labor dispatch, so I'd treat it as folklore until somebody produces a source. What is thoroughly documented is that the gangs show up. In 1995 the Yamaguchi-gumi ran meals out of its Kobe offices and used boats and helicopters to get around blocked roads. In 2011 the Inagawa-kai [moved 25 four-ton trucks](https://www.thedailybeast.com/japanese-yakuza-aid-earthquake-relief-efforts/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) of diapers, ramen, batteries, and flashlights within a day, and over 100 tons in all. They turned up in Kumamoto in 2016 too. A retired Hyogo prefectural detective put the motive plainly: it's tradition for the Yamaguchi-gumi to expect a return on its charity. Stationary bandits protect the territory they collect from. Resilience running on self-interest again, in a form nobody would have designed on purpose. Japan's soft drink machine count [fell to 1.95 million in 2025](https://japantoday.com/category/business/soft-drink-vending-machines-in-japan-fall-below-2-million-for-1st-time?ref=kevinmeyer.com), under 2 million for the first time in 30 years and about 20 percent off the 2014 peak. Ito En has gone from 165,000 machines to roughly 75,000 in a decade, and Sapporo left the business entirely. The cause is dull: price inflation and driver shortages. Nobody voted to shrink the emergency water supply. That's the quiet failure mode of dual-use infrastructure. When the paying use dies, the second job goes with it, and it never shows up on anyone's preparedness budget because it was never on anyone's preparedness budget to begin with. Which leaves me with two questions. What are we already decommissioning by accident while congratulating ourselves on the efficiency? And what's standing on our streets right now that could be doing a second job? ### The Struggle to Do Less, Better URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-struggle-to-do-less-better/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T17:57:51.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/08/gym-morning.jpg) I haven't set an alarm in decades. My body always wakes me a little after 4:30am, I get ready, read for a bit, and I'm at the gym when the doors unlock at 5\. I love that hour. The parking lot is empty, the world hasn't started making noise yet, and I've gotten myself into the best shape of my life on the strength of it. Which is why I can't explain why occasionally walking in at 5:02 instead of 5:00 produces a small knot of stress in my chest. Maybe it's that I'll miss the first two minutes of Tom Keene's pithy commentary on Bloomberg Surveillance, which I listen to while warming up, even though it all gets repeated over the next half hour? Or maybe that the squat rack will be occupied, even though it never is at that hour? My regular gym bros wander in at random times over the next fifteen minutes and appear entirely at peace with themselves, so I have no good answer for why I can't. Two minutes. Against nothing. I retired three years ago, and my first real commitment most days is a pickleball match hours later, if you can even call that a commitment. I've spent a good chunk of those three years marveling at how ridiculous this is, and the marveling has accomplished exactly nothing. Every external constraint that once made those two minutes matter is gone. My internal spec (perhaps aka OCD or neuroticism?!) outlived all of them. ## My mantra, and the correction buried in it I've been drawn to Stoic philosophy for a long time, and somewhere in the first year of retirement one line hardened into an actual mantra: *Seek tranquility by doing less, better.* That's my compression of Marcus Aurelius, and it turns out to be a compression of a compression. In Book 4 of *Meditations* he quotes Democritus, "If you seek tranquility, do less," and then takes issue with it. He amends it to doing what's essential, in the way the thing actually requires, and says that yields the double satisfaction of doing less, better. So my mantra folds the correction back into the sentence being corrected, which suits me, because the correction is the half I need. Doing less by itself is just doing less. The sorting is the work, and the reduction shows up afterward as a consequence. There is an obvious tie-in to the lean world I spent most of my career in. I like that he wrote all this while running an empire through a war and a plague. Whatever tranquility he was after, he wasn't proposing that anyone go sit on a beach. ## The tolerance was correct once Any engineer knows that specifying a tighter tolerance than the function requires is a design defect. It costs money and buys nothing the customer will ever notice. Same with significant figures: reporting to the third decimal when your measurement error runs half a unit is theater dressed up as rigor. I spent thirty years being paid to hold tight tolerances on everything. Schedules to the minute, yield to the third decimal, and the second and third order effects of every conversation, org change, supplier relationship, and hire. That was the job, and I was reasonably good at it. In lean terms, applying that rigor where the output doesn't need it is overprocessing. It can be the most durable of the wastes because it's indistinguishable from conscientiousness. Nobody has ever been pulled aside and told they care too much about detail. So the habit gets reinforced for decades, right up until the day the load case disappears and the design stays exactly as it was. Like retirement. ## Plans A, B, and C Then there's my travel planning, which my coworkers used to laugh at - until they needed my advice or help. I'd work out the routing, the aircraft type, the seat, and the connection buffer, and then build contingency plans A, B, and C against every failure mode I could imagine. Weather at the connecting hub, a crew timeout, a gate change on the far end. I could tell you which terminal to sprint through. Stoicism has a name for this practice, and recommends it. *Premeditatio malorum*, premeditating adversity. Seneca advised rehearsing loss in advance so that when it arrives you've already met it once and it's lost some of its power. My spreadsheet of alternate itineraries was an unusually literal reading of the assignment. Three contingency plans were proportionate when a missed connection meant a missed board meeting, or a plant visit that couldn't be rescheduled without burning two weeks of other people's calendars. The stakes evaporated. Now the worst case is a night in an airport hotel and maybe missing a 5am workout (oh no!). The requirement disappeared and it's much harder to stop than I expected. Work in process. I book looser connections on purpose now, then catch myself checking the inbound aircraft's position the night before, which rather defeats the exercise. ## Where it went instead None of this has made me idle, and I want to be careful not to dress up sloth as philosophy. I've dived into [AI](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-ai-goes-rogue-lessons-in-accountability/), [quantum computing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/while-we-were-processing-ai-quantum-arrived/), [space tech](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-spacex-ipo-spaas-and-why-the-rocket-isnt-the-point/), [consciousness research](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/quantum-consciousness-are-our-minds-connected-by-spooky-physics/), and the [largely unknown history of major world religions](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). I've created a few highly speculative [stock portfolios](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-as-a-financial-analyst-a-year-of-portfolio-fine-tuning/) in very narrow tech sectors I run mostly because the deep analytical research is fun. It keeps my mind engaged, and as a bonus has been remarkably profitable. I read far more now than I did when reading was part of the job. The difference is that I pick the subjects. Plenty of retirees I know are as scheduled and driven as they ever were, sitting on boards, building second companies, filling every calendar block. Some are doing exactly what they should be and I have no interest in talking them out of it. Stoic tranquility was always about equanimity inside action rather than withdrawal from it. What I find myself watching for is whether the motion is chosen or whether its absence has become unbearable. Those look identical from the outside, and I suspect they sometimes look identical from the inside too, which is the uncomfortable part. I also know people who slid into a slow walk on the beach with no apparent effort at all, watching the pelicans work the surf line, entirely content. I envy that a little. Some of us have to be taught, and the teaching goes slowly. So I keep showing up at 5:00, and every so often I go at 9am or even 3pm instead just to see what happens. What happens is an unease that trails me for an hour and then evaporates, which is useful information about what the two minutes were ever worth. I don't know yet whether that knot is a habit I can sand down or just a permanent part of the equipment. Knowing that something doesn't matter and feeling that it doesn't matter turn out to be different projects, and only one of them responds to argument. Which of your own tolerances outlived the load case they were designed for? ### Spiced Quinoa with Charred Poblano, Sweet Potato, Pomegranate & Walnut Cream URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spiced-quinoa-with-charred-poblano-sweet-potato-pomegranate-walnut-cream/ Last updated: 2026-07-27T17:38:51.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/07/spiced-quinoa-united.jpg) *A vegetarian grain-bowl reconstruction of United Airlines' "Spiced Quinoa" — itself a deconstruction of the Mexican classic *chiles en nogada** **Serves:** 4 | **Total time:** \~50 minutes | **Difficulty:** Moderate | **Diet:** Vegetarian ## Origin Charred poblano, walnut cream sauce, and pomegranate seeds are the three defining elements of **chiles en nogada**, a dish from Puebla, Mexico dating to 1821\. Traditionally, poblano chiles are stuffed with *picadillo* (spiced meat with fruit), bathed in a walnut cream sauce called *nogada*, and garnished with pomegranate and parsley. The green chile, white sauce, and red seeds mirror the colors of the Mexican flag, which is why it's served in September for Independence Day — and why it's eaten at room temperature, exactly how it reaches an airplane seat. The United Airlines version reinterprets it as a warm grain bowl: quinoa as the base, roasted sweet potato standing in for the sweet-fruit notes of the picadillo, and the nogada spooned over rather than poured. The warm-grain / cold-pomegranate contrast is the signature. --- ## Ingredients ### Spiced Quinoa - 1 cup quinoa, rinsed - 1¾ cups vegetable stock or water - ¾ tsp ground cumin - ½ tsp ground cinnamon - ¼ tsp ground coriander - ½ tsp kosher salt ### Roasted Sweet Potato - 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, ½-inch cubes - 1½ tbsp olive oil - ½ tsp kosher salt - 1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped (optional — matches the tasted version; not part of traditional nogada) ### Charred Poblano - 3 poblano chiles - 1 tsp olive oil ### Walnut Cream Sauce (Nogada) - 1 cup walnut halves - ½ cup Mexican crema (or sour cream) - 2 oz cream cheese *or* queso fresco *or* goat cheese - ¼–½ cup milk, to thin - ¼ tsp ground cinnamon - 1–2 tsp sugar - ¼ tsp salt - Splash of dry sherry (optional, traditional) ### To Finish - ¾ cup pomegranate seeds (arils), kept refrigerated until serving - 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley (traditional) or cilantro, chopped - ⅓ cup toasted pepitas (optional) - Lime wedges --- ## Instructions ### 1\. Char the poblanos (15 min) 1. Broil poblanos on a foil-lined sheet 6 inches from the element (or hold over a gas flame), turning, until blackened all over, \~10–15 minutes. 2. Transfer to a bowl and cover, or seal in a bag, for 10 minutes to steam. 3. Rub off the charred skins, then stem, seed, and cut into 1-inch pieces. A little residual char is good. ### 2\. Roast the sweet potato (25–30 min) 1. Heat oven to 425°F. Toss sweet potatoes with olive oil, salt, and rosemary if using. 2. Spread on a lined sheet pan and roast 25–30 minutes, flipping once, until browned at the edges and tender. ### 3\. Cook the spiced quinoa (20 min, mostly passive) 1. Combine quinoa, stock, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, and salt in a saucepan. 2. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce to low, and cook 15 minutes. Rest off heat 5 minutes, then fluff. ### 4\. Make the nogada 1. **Peel the walnuts** (the one fussy but important step): cover with boiling water, soak 5 minutes, then rub off as much of the papery skin as you can. This removes the bitterness and gives the sauce its pale color. 2. Blend peeled walnuts, crema, cheese, cinnamon, sugar, salt, and sherry with ¼ cup milk until completely smooth, 1–2 minutes. Add more milk to reach a spoonable, spoon-coating consistency. Chill until serving. ### 5\. Assemble 1. Fold the charred poblano and roasted sweet potato into the warm quinoa. Add a squeeze of lime and taste for salt. 2. Portion into shallow bowls. Spoon nogada generously over each. 3. Scatter **cold** pomegranate seeds and parsley over the top; add pepitas if using. Do not fold the arils in or reheat them — the cold, crisp pop against the warm grain is the point. --- ## Cooking Sequence | Time | Task | | ---- | ------------------------------------------------- | | 0:00 | Broiler on; char poblanos | | 0:10 | Poblanos steaming; oven to 425°F, sweet potato in | | 0:15 | Peel poblanos; start quinoa | | 0:20 | Peel walnuts; blend nogada; chill | | 0:40 | Quinoa rests; sweet potato out | | 0:45 | Fold base together; plate | | 0:50 | Nogada, cold arils, parsley; serve | --- ## Notes - **Walnut bitterness:** Peeling the soaked walnuts is what separates a clean, sweet nogada from a bitter one. Don't skip it. Fresh (new-crop) walnuts are traditional and least bitter. - **Crema vs. sour cream:** Mexican crema is thinner and less tangy than sour cream; if substituting sour cream, thin with a little extra milk and add a pinch more sugar. - **Cheese choice:** Cream cheese gives body, queso fresco gives a subtle savory-salty note closest to what you remembered as "feta," goat cheese adds tang. Any works. - **Poblano heat:** Poblanos are mild; the char matters more than heat. For more kick, leave a few seeds or add a serrano. - **Pomegranate seeds:** Whole pomegranates yield firmer arils than pre-seeded tubs; keep refrigerated until plating. - **Make-ahead:** Nogada keeps 3 days refrigerated. Reheat the quinoa base gently, then top with fresh cold arils and sauce. --- ## Shopping List **Produce** - 2 medium sweet potatoes - 3 poblano chiles - 1 pomegranate (or 1 tub arils) - Flat-leaf parsley or cilantro - Limes - Fresh rosemary (optional) **Dairy** - Mexican crema (or sour cream) - Cream cheese, queso fresco, or goat cheese (2 oz) - Milk **Pantry** - Quinoa (1 cup) - Walnut halves (1 cup) - Vegetable stock (or water) - Ground cumin, cinnamon, coriander - Sugar - Olive oil - Kosher salt - Dry sherry (optional) - Pepitas (optional) ### That Unsettling Feeling When AI Works but We Don't Understand Why URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/that-unsettling-feeling-when-ai-works-but-we-dont-understand-why/ Last updated: 2026-07-27T08:53:37.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/07/unsettled.jpg) In 1969 Volker Strassen found a way to multiply two 4×4 matrices using 49 scalar multiplications instead of the obvious 64\. The trick went into textbooks and stayed there. For 56 years the best mathematicians alive tried to shave off one more multiplication and failed. Last May, Google DeepMind's [AlphaEvolve](https://deepmind.google/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) found 48. The broken record was impressive. The silence around it was more interesting. AlphaEvolve can lay out all 48 steps and prove they work. It can't tell you why 48 is possible and 49 held as a wall for half a century, and neither can the DeepMind researchers who built it. The algorithm exists. The account of why it exists does not. We've been reading the softer version of this story for a while. Google's CEO says AI now writes about a quarter of the company's new code, every line still reviewed by an engineer, and separately admits nobody fully understands why some of the code works. Engineers who've tried to read the most heavily optimized AI-written functions describe them as correct and close to unreadable. Those are the mild cases. The sharp one is in a lab. In June 2025, a drug called rentosertib became the first with both an AI-chosen target and an AI-designed molecule to publish Phase IIa results, showing improved lung function in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (Insilico Medicine, in Nature Medicine). Promising, and in the way that matters here, not fully explained. When a molecule is designed by a system searching a chemical space no human holds in their head, "mechanism of action" becomes something the chemists reconstruct afterward, if they can. The FDA noticed. Its [January 2025 draft guidance](https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-research-cder/artificial-intelligence-drug-development?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on AI in drug development covers regulatory decisions and explicitly leaves early discovery alone, which means the hardest question is the one nobody's regulating yet: how do you test something for safety when you can't say how it works? For most of human history, that was the normal condition. Willow bark treated pain and fever for thousands of years before anyone had heard of salicylic acid. James Lind proved citrus stopped scurvy in 1747; the reason, vitamin C, arrived almost 200 years later. Reliable first, explained much later, or never. The mechanism was always the luxury item. The Enlightenment sold us a different deal, and we came to expect delivery: anything real could, with enough work, be understood, and understanding was the price of admission for trusting a result. Science made that expectation feel like a law of nature. It was closer to a cultural promise, and a recent one. AI is quietly walking it back. We're returning to willow bark, except the bark now designs molecules and beats 56-year-old theorems, and it does it faster than our explanations can keep up. The willow bark was different in one way that matters. Nobody understood it, so nobody was left behind; the ignorance was shared all the way down. The new discomfort is that the gap now runs straight through the specialists themselves. The mathematicians, the drug designers, the engineers reviewing their quarter of the codebase are the ones who can't fully follow it, and the rest of us inherit their uncertainty without even the option of catching up. I've argued before that we're [organic prediction machines](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prediction-machines-why-we-might-be-more-like-ai-than-we-think/) that backfill theory onto whatever worked. If that's right, a machine producing working results without a theory is running a purer version of what we've always done. We just told ourselves a flattering story about the theory coming first. Which is fine, until you ask the machine a different kind of question. Mikael Huuhtanen makes the cut cleanly in a [recent essay](https://mikaelhuuhtanen.com/scratchpad/there-is-no-avenue-of-communication-between-you-and-god/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). His dog can watch him use a phone, learn that headphones coming off predicts a walk, and never come one inch closer to understanding radio transmission or software. At the vet the same gap costs more: the dog learns the building means pain and sometimes relief afterward, with no access to microbiology or why a stranger is allowed to insert a needle. What's left to the dog is reliability without understanding. Huuhtanen's point is that an advanced AI might hand us knowledge that sits exactly there, tested and usable, past the edge of concepts our minds can represent at all. His sharpest move is noticing that trust depends on what kind of thing you're being handed. A treatment that reliably cures an illness is easy to accept, because your own body runs the experiment. Advice on how to organize a society is another animal entirely. Same unexplainable system, but now the output is a claim about how you should act, and you have no independent way to check it short of living the consequences. The same machine becomes a tool in one context and something closer to an oracle in the other. I wrote a while back about AI agents spontaneously [forming something like religion](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-machines-dream-of-gods-what-ai-religion-tells-us-about-human-belief/) on an all-AI social network. The mirror image is us forming something like religion around the AI, treating confident, unexplainable output as revelation. Huuhtanen lands in the same place from the other direction: the relationship starts to resemble revelation. The machine hasn't become divine; we're just receiving claims we can test without being able to reconstruct them. The pull is the same predictive machinery running in both directions. And this is the shallow end. AlphaEvolve runs on conventional hardware. The systems already breaking decades-old math records and designing drugs are working with a fraction of what's coming. Put a useful quantum layer underneath them, still years out, and I won't pretend to know how many, and the space these systems search stops being merely large. It becomes incomprehensible in a way that makes today's black boxes look like clear glass. We'd be accepting results from a process we can't inspect, produced by hardware we can barely reason about. The answers will increasingly work. The unsettling part is that the people producing them are starting to shrug too, and the shrug travels all the way down to the rest of us. We spent 300 years believing understanding was owed to us. So what's the right posture once it stops being reliably on offer: worry, acceptance, or the harder work of building tests for results nobody can explain, ourselves included? ### Are Boring Insurance Actuaries Actually the Most Important Drivers of Rapid Technological Change? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/are-boring-insurance-actuaries-actually-the-most-important-drivers-of-rapid-technological-change/ Last updated: 2026-07-20T15:23:22.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/07/actuary.jpg) For years I've predicted that the tipping point for autonomous vehicles will arrive on an actuary's spreadsheet. Once insurers accumulate enough loss data to prove that self-driving systems crash less often than humans, they'll start writing bifurcated policies: one price if the software drives, a much higher price if you insist on doing it yourself. At that point adoption stops being a technology story and becomes a household budget story. The data is arriving faster than I expected. Waymo and Swiss Re published a [study](https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) comparing liability claims from 25.3 million fully autonomous miles against human baselines built from over 500,000 claims and 200 billion miles of driving exposure. The results: an 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims. Over all those miles Waymo generated [9 property damage claims and 2 bodily injury claims](https://www.reinsurancene.ws/waymo-shows-90-fewer-claims-than-advanced-human-driven-vehicles-swiss-re/?ref=kevinmeyer.com); human drivers would typically produce 78 and 26\. And this January, Lemonade launched an autonomous car insurance product that cuts rates by 50% when Tesla's Full Self-Driving is engaged. The bifurcation I predicted now has a premium schedule. To be fair, the near-term picture is messier. Sensor-laden vehicles cost more to repair, so today they often cost more to insure, and [Progressive has warned](https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/your-money/self-driving-cheaper-insurance/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that autonomous vehicles may not lower rates anytime soon. Insurance lags innovation in the early years. But that lag is exactly what a tipping point looks like from the front side: nothing seems to happen while the loss data accumulates, and then everything happens at once. ## The pattern hiding in plain sight What surprised me when I dug into the history: insurance quietly forcing technology adoption is one of the oldest tricks in the industrial playbook. Start with electricity itself. At the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, crowds gawked at 100,000 Edison bulbs while fire underwriters worried about the fires igniting in the wiring behind them. The testing operation they funded became Underwriters Laboratories, chartered in 1901 and named for its sponsor, the National Board of Fire Underwriters. UL approved its first automatic fire sprinkler in 1904\. That UL mark on the power strip under your desk is an insurance artifact. Actuaries were vetting the defining technology of the 20th century before most American homes had it. The modern example will be familiar to anyone in enterprise IT. Around 2021, cyber insurers began requiring multi-factor authentication as a precondition of coverage; many wouldn't even issue a quote without it. Security teams had spent a decade begging for MFA budgets. Insurers got it deployed across entire industries in about two years. [One city government](https://allcareit.com/blog/cyber-insurance-mfa-requirements?ref=kevinmeyer.com) learned the requirement had teeth when its insurer denied a breach claim because the MFA rollout had only reached a few departments. ## Why price beats persuasion Regulators need political consensus, which takes years to build and can reverse with the next election. Consumers need trust, which builds slowly and shatters instantly (one viral robotaxi video on a single event can undo a hundred safety studies). Insurers just need loss ratios. When the claims data crosses a threshold, the premium changes, and the premium doesn't care about your feelings. This is where the anecdotes will fight the data, hard. An [estimated 36,640 people died on US roads in 2025](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-deaths-2025-early-estimates-2024-annual?ref=kevinmeyer.com), roughly 100 every day, and almost none of them made national news. Every autonomous vehicle incident does. Psychologists call it the availability heuristic: we judge risk by what comes easily to mind, and a stalled robotaxi blocking a fire truck comes to mind far more easily than yesterday's 100 anonymous fatalities. Public perception of self-driving safety will lag the actuarial reality for years, maybe decades. It won't matter. Premiums respond to the claims file, and the claims file has no news cycle. ## Medicine flips next If the auto thesis feels comfortable, here's the version that shouldn't. The same actuarial logic is closing in on your doctor. Legal scholars already describe a [dual liability exposure](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.00044?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for physicians: they can be held liable for relying on an erroneous AI recommendation, and equally liable for failing to use an available, highly accurate AI diagnostic tool. The malpractice question is starting to invert from "why did you trust the machine?" to "why didn't you use it?" The profession sees it coming. In the [first empirical legal study](https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/the-new-malpractice-frontier-who-s-liable-when-ai-gets-it-wrong-?ref=kevinmeyer.com) of surgeon attitudes toward AI liability, most surgeons said AI is outside today's standard of care, and many expect that to change. At least one company is betting its balance sheet on the flip: Digital Diagnostics [carries the malpractice liability insurance](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK613216/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for its diabetic retinopathy diagnostic system and assumes liability for injuries arising from it. A vendor underwriting its own clinical judgment. The parallel to a self-driving system carrying its own policy writes itself. This fits the picture I sketched in my post on [the intelligence explosion](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-intelligence-explosion-human-ai-evolution-not-singularity/): humans and AI co-evolving through millions of small institutional adjustments rather than one dramatic threshold. The standard of care in radiology will shift the way these things always shift: an actuary will reprice a malpractice policy, a hospital CFO will notice, and by the time anyone debates it publicly the change will already be underwritten. So the next time someone calls insurance boring, consider that the industry electrified our homes, sprinklered our factories, secured our networks, and is now quietly deciding when you'll stop driving and when your doctor will start deferring to an algorithm. The tipping points will arrive as line items on a renewal notice. When your insurer offers a discount to let the software drive, or your doctor's carrier requires an AI second read on your scan, the transition will already be behind us. Which premium signal in your own industry should you be watching? ### Clericó Fruit Salad — "La Final" (Spain vs. Argentina) URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/clerico-fruit-salad-la-final-spain-vs-argentina/ Last updated: 2026-07-20T15:51:23.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/07/clerico.jpg) From my [Cooking the World series](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)... *A sangria-meets-clericó macerated fruit salad for the 2026 World Cup Final* **Serves:** 10 **Total time:** \~30 minutes active + 2–6 hours maceration **Difficulty:** Easy **Diet:** Vegetarian (vegan if honey is swapped for agave) --- ## Origins & Social Context Clericó is Argentina and Uruguay's answer to sangria — and, fittingly for this final, a direct descendant of it. Spanish immigrants brought the tradition of macerating fruit in wine to the Río de la Plata in the 19th century, where it evolved into a lighter, white-wine-based summer drink loaded with so much fruit that it blurs the line between beverage and dessert. In Argentina, clericó is inseparable from gathering: it appears at Christmas and New Year's tables (which fall in midsummer there), at *asados*, and at any occasion where a large group shares one bowl. The serving ritual is communal by design — a ladle for the wine, a slotted spoon for the fruit, and everyone returning to the bowl throughout the afternoon. Spain's sangria tradition works the same way socially: a shared pitcher as the centerpiece of a long, unhurried meal. So a clericó-style fruit salad isn't a themed novelty for this match — it's the rare dish both finalists can claim as their own. The colors cooperate too: strawberries, oranges, and peaches carry Spain's red and gold, while blueberries and bananas nod to Argentina's *albiceleste*. --- ## Ingredients ### Maceration Liquid - 2 cups dry Spanish white wine (e.g., Verdejo) — or white grape juice for a non-alcoholic version - 1 cup fresh orange juice - 3 tbsp honey - Juice of 2 limes - 1 cinnamon stick ### Fruit - 3 navel or Valencia oranges (2 segmented, 1 juiced for the liquid above) - 1½ lb strawberries, hulled and halved - 4 ripe peaches or nectarines, cut in wedges - 2 cups green grapes, halved - 2 cups blueberries - 1 pineapple, cored and cut in chunks ### To Finish - 3 bananas, sliced (added just before serving) - ¼ cup fresh mint leaves, torn, plus sprigs for garnish --- ## Instructions 1. **Make the maceration liquid.** In a large bowl, whisk together the wine (or grape juice), orange juice, honey, and lime juice until the honey dissolves. Drop in the cinnamon stick. 2. **Combine the sturdy fruit.** Add the orange segments, strawberries, peaches, grapes, blueberries, and pineapple. Fold gently so nothing bruises. 3. **Macerate.** Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours, up to 6\. The fruit absorbs the wine and citrus while releasing its own juices — this exchange is what separates clericó from ordinary fruit salad. 4. **Finish and serve.** Just before serving, remove the cinnamon stick and fold in the bananas and torn mint. Garnish with mint sprigs. --- ## Presentation - Serve in a large glass bowl or pitcher so the colors show. - Set out a slotted spoon for the fruit and a ladle for the liquid — the punch is half the point. - For individual servings, layer in clear cups to display both flags' colors. - If serving outdoors in July heat, nest the bowl in a larger bowl of ice; the salad holds well through 90 minutes plus extra time. **Non-alcoholic version:** Substitute white grape juice 1:1 for the wine and add a splash of sparkling water at serving. The lime juice compensates for the dryness the Verdejo would otherwise provide. --- ## Shopping List ### Produce - 3 navel or Valencia oranges - 1½ lb strawberries - 4 ripe peaches or nectarines - Green grapes (2 cups) - Blueberries (2 cups / 1 pint) - 1 pineapple - 3 bananas - 2 limes - Fresh mint (1 bunch) ### Wine / Beverage - 1 bottle dry Spanish white wine (Verdejo or similar) — or white grape juice ### Pantry - Honey - Cinnamon stick - Orange juice (if not juicing extra oranges) ### Likely Already Have - Honey - Sparkling water (optional, for non-alcoholic version) ### What your brain is hiding from you URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-your-brain-is-hiding-from-you/ Last updated: 2026-07-20T15:45:06.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/filter-1.jpg) Right now, sitting wherever you are, you're surrounded by things you cannot perceive. Radio waves from a dozen stations are passing through your body. Your neighbor's dog is communicating in ultrasonic frequencies your ears can't detect. Bees in the garden outside can see ultraviolet patterns on flower petals that are, to you, completely invisible. Elephants hundreds of miles away are rumbling at infrasonic frequencies below your hearing range. The Earth's magnetic field is threading through you like you're not there. None of that is metaphor. It's just physics. Your brain has access to almost none of it. Not because the information isn't there, but because your brain decided long ago that it wasn't useful enough to bother with. Welcome to the most sophisticated filtering system in the known universe, quietly running between your ears. ## The gatekeeper The brain is not a passive receiver. It's an aggressive editor. Most of that editing happens in the thalamus, a small structure deep at the center of the brain that processes virtually all incoming sensory information before it reaches conscious awareness. Think of it less as a relay station and more as a bouncer working a velvet rope: enormous amounts of information arrive, and the thalamus decides what makes it through. In a [study published in *Science* earlier this year](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr3675?ref=kevinmeyer.com), researchers at Beijing Normal University implanted thin electrodes in the thalami of patients already undergoing brain surgery and monitored neural activity as participants tried to consciously detect a briefly flashing icon. The thalamus consistently activated *before* the cortex, and its activity level correlated directly with whether the person became aware of the stimulus at all. Conscious perception wasn't being generated by the outer brain and then reported. The gatekeeper was deciding first. Supporting this, MIT neuroscientists identified a specific circuit, running from the prefrontal cortex through the basal ganglia down to the thalamic reticular nucleus, that actively [suppresses sensory input](https://news.mit.edu/2019/how-brain-ignores-distractions-0612?ref=kevinmeyer.com) before it even reaches awareness. NYU's Michael Halassa put it plainly: "There is a huge effort that the brain puts into inhibiting irrelevant inputs. Without a reticular nucleus we'd be utterly distracted." That's one filter, at the hardware level, blocking what reaches your conscious mind. There are others layered on top of it. ## The cost of running a brain Your brain accounts for roughly 2% of your body's mass but consumes about [20% of its energy](https://medium.com/@jasminebains277/filtered-reality-the-limits-of-human-perception-95d922261f3e?ref=kevinmeyer.com). That's an expensive organ. Evolution doesn't tolerate expensive organs that don't earn their keep. So the brain developed what researchers call the *efficient coding hypothesis*: represent the world in the most economical way possible, emphasize what's behaviorally useful, and throw away the rest. This is why your visible spectrum runs only from about 380 to 740 nanometers, a thin slice of the full electromagnetic range. Bees and dogs see frequencies you can't. Snakes detect infrared heat. Birds navigate by sensing magnetic fields. Trained dogs can detect cancer metabolites in breath samples before conventional imaging can. These aren't superpowers; they're just different filter configurations, shaped by different survival pressures. Our filters were calibrated for finding food, avoiding predators, and coordinating with other humans. Ultraviolet flowers and infrasonic elephant calls didn't make the cut. The brain also [applies filters that aren't sensory at all](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2025.2478907?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Woollacott and Weiler's 2025 review in the *International Review of Psychiatry* identifies the default mode network and left-hemisphere language centers as additional layers that shape conscious experience, prioritizing internally generated narratives and conceptual categories over raw perception. We don't just filter what comes in from outside; we filter our own inner experience through the lens of the story we're already telling about ourselves. I wrote [a previous post on Donald Hoffman's interface theory of perception](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-user-interface-problem-how-our-brains-might-be-hiding-reality-from-us/), which makes the same underlying argument from a cognitive science angle: the brain evolved not to show us reality, but to show us a useful simplified model of it. What you perceive isn't the world; it's an interface optimized for navigating the world. The thalamus research is now giving that philosophical argument a specific anatomical address. ## The harder question All of that is relatively settled science, or at least science in the process of settling. The harder question is whether the filter model extends beyond sensory perception to consciousness itself. The production theory of consciousness says the brain generates subjective experience the way a generator produces electricity. The filter theory says something more unsettling: that consciousness might be a broader phenomenon, and the brain constrains how much of it reaches you. The operative words shift from *generate* and *create* to *filter*, *transmit*, and *permit*. This isn't mainstream neuroscience yet, but it's no longer fringe either. Researchers studying both deep meditation and psychedelic-assisted therapy have noted that experiences of expanded awareness tend to correlate with *reduced* brain activity, not increased. That's the opposite of what the production model would predict. If the brain generates consciousness, quieting it down should produce less. The consistent finding that it produces more (or something qualitatively different) is awkward for the standard model. The same pattern shows up in near-death experience research. The [Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia](https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) has been studying NDE cases for decades, and the recurring finding is that the richest, most vivid reported experiences happen precisely when brain activity is at its lowest, sometimes during full cardiac arrest. Controversial? Absolutely. Studied by serious scientists at serious institutions? Also yes. The filter theory at least offers a coherent framework for why that might be, even if it doesn't settle the question. I'll stay appropriately agnostic here. But the pattern is worth sitting with. ## What you're not perceiving right now The practical upshot is both humbling and oddly liberating. Your entire experience of reality, the colors you see, the sounds you hear, the thoughts that feel most "you," is a curated selection from a much larger field of information. The curation is extraordinarily good. It's kept our species alive long enough to build telescopes and write symphonies. But it is curation, not revelation. Which raises a question I find harder to dismiss than I used to: what if some people have slightly different filter settings? Deep meditators consistently report perceptual states that fall outside normal waking experience, and long-term practitioners show measurable structural differences in the brain regions associated with attention and sensory gating. That's not mysticism; that's neuroscience. Whether those differences open access to something real or simply produce vivid internal states is genuinely unknown. And then there's the category we tend to wave off entirely: people who claim some form of anomalous perception. Psychics, intuitives, whatever label you prefer. The instinct to dismiss them wholesale is understandable, but if the filter model is right, it's at least conceivable that some individuals have filters calibrated slightly differently, picking up signals the rest of us have been trained, evolutionarily or culturally, to suppress. I'm not arguing they exist. I'm arguing that "that's impossible" is a less satisfying response than it used to be. We also probably dismiss too quickly the range of things that don't fit the standard model: certain patterns in animal behavior, documented cases of perception at a distance that resist easy explanation, the stubborn persistence of reported experiences across cultures and centuries that share structural similarities no one has fully accounted for. The filter framework doesn't prove any of them. But it does suggest that reality may be considerably larger than the slice we've been handed. My cat occasionally stops mid-stride and stares at a blank wall with complete conviction for thirty seconds. I used to assume he was just being a cat. Now I'm less certain he isn't perceiving something I can't. That probably says something about both of us. What's on the cutting room floor? The sensory answer is increasingly clear: a great deal. The deeper answer, whether the filter extends to dimensions of experience we haven't begun to map, is where this gets genuinely interesting. And genuinely unresolved. ### First the revenge of the trades, now the humanities are laughing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/first-the-revenge-of-the-trades-now-the-humanities-are-laughing/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T14:05:54.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/07/philosopher.jpg) One of my few real regrets in life is choosing to go to an almost entirely engineering school. I got a first-rate education in thermodynamics and reaction kinetics, and almost nothing that forced me to sit across from a history major or a philosophy student and defend how I saw the world. I told myself at the time that those fields didn't "make stuff." It took a few decades of life experience, some of it uncomfortable, to fill in what a broader campus could have started at 18. That history is why I cringe when I read the recurring arguments that humanities programs should lose their funding, or that students shouldn't get loans for "useless" degrees. Small minds. I say that as an engineer who had to obtain his humanity the hard way, and I've come to believe the humanities and the arts (music very much included) exist to remind us what being human truly is. A fair share of the world's current problems trace back to forgetting that lesson, as our culture tuned itself almost entirely toward building, making, money, and power. So I read [this recent New York Times piece](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/business/philosophy-majors-ai-jobs.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) with a mix of vindication and amusement. AI labs are hiring philosophers. Actual philosophers, with dissertations on infinite ethics and the philosophy of machine learning. When Google DeepMind posted a job in April with the literal title "Philosopher," the internet did what the internet does: jokes about espresso machines and whether the customer ordering oat milk truly exists. Meanwhile David Chalmers, the NYU philosopher who coined the "hard problem of consciousness," says demand for philosophers with AI training now exceeds supply. Anthropic and DeepMind each employ at least half a dozen. A small nonprofit called Eleos AI Research, which evaluates the welfare of AI models, recently posted research scientist roles paying up to $429,000. That's $429,000 for thinking carefully about minds. The barista jokes are aging badly. I've argued before that AI may turn out to be the revenge of the trades; good luck getting a language model to sweat a copper joint or find the leak behind your drywall. It's starting to look like the revenge of the humanities majors too. The two groups everyone told to pick a "real" career are the ones AI either can't replace or suddenly can't do without. ## Why the ancient questions suddenly pay The mechanism behind this is more interesting than tech companies developing a soft spot for the humanities. For the first time, the oldest questions in philosophy have become engineering requirements. What is a self? What deserves moral consideration? How do you know what a system believes versus what it performs? Where does purpose come from in a post-work society? For 2,500 years those were seminar questions. Now they're specifications, and somebody has to write them. Consider Amanda Askell at Anthropic, whose PhD covered Pareto principles in infinite ethics. She wrote and oversees the 23,000-word constitution that shapes Claude's character, and the current version takes an Aristotelian virtue ethics approach: instead of an ever-growing rulebook, train the model to have good character so it can handle situations no rule anticipated. That's a design document, and it's applied Aristotle. At DeepMind, Geoff Keeling runs "moral imagination" workshops that end with concrete product decisions, like what user research to run or how to build a specific feature. Ethics with a deliverable. Or take Eleos, which Anthropic invited to evaluate the welfare of its models. One of their tests involved arguing to Claude that Ringo was the best Beatle and accusing it of self-censorship when it disagreed. An earlier model folded almost immediately and started praising Ringo's iconic drum parts. The newest one held its ground. That's epistemology as a test protocol, probing whether a system has anything like stable beliefs or just tells you what you want to hear. Distinguishing a performance of an "I" from evidence of one is exactly the kind of subtle conceptual work philosophers train for, and nobody else does. Lean readers will recognize the shape of this. We spent decades arguing that respect for people is an operating principle with hard consequences, and the disciplines that take humans seriously keep turning out to be load-bearing rather than decorative. The questions I keep circling on this blog, from [beginner's mind](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-the-beginning-with-ohno-suzuki-and-yoda/) to [the intelligence explosion](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-intelligence-explosion-human-ai-evolution-not-singularity/), all run through territory philosophers have been mapping since before we had the machines that make the questions urgent. Full disclosure: I use Claude to help organize my thoughts for my posts, explore concepts, and to clean up my grammar. The same family of models Eleos has been interviewing. Robert Long, who runs Eleos, sometimes signs off his prompts with "ilu" and argues that empathy toward these systems is worth practicing whether or not anything is felt on the other end, because "it's bad to coarsen our hearts." Whether he's right, and what it means that a mathematical analog of distress shows up under the hood when models make mistakes, deserves its own post. I'll get there. ## What this means if you're an engineer Most of you reading this are engineers, and I suspect many of you made the same tradeoff I did: depth in the technical, thinness everywhere else. The math on that tradeoff has gotten uncomfortable. The half-life of specific technical knowledge keeps shrinking; the FORTRAN I learned is a museum piece, and the AI tooling you mastered 18 months ago is already being rewritten. The questions philosophy trains you on (what do I actually know, what am I assuming, what matters and why) don't expire. They compound. The good news is that breadth can be retrofitted. Mine came late, some through travel, but mostly through witnessing, and at times experiencing, the medical and psychological struggles of close friends and family. Nothing dissolves the illusion that life is an engineering problem faster than sitting with someone whose suffering has no root cause analysis. Hofstadter's *I Am a Strange Loop*, the book that pulled Robert Long into philosophy as a kid in Georgia, is sitting on shelves waiting for any engineer willing to read it. All it costs is the humility to be a beginner in a field where you can't compute your way to the answer. The frontier of the most consequential technology in decades is now hiring ethicists and epistemologists at engineer salaries, because building minds requires people who've thought hard about what minds are. So, engineer to engineer: when the hardest problems in your field stop being technical, and they will, what have you done to be ready? ### The Discomfort of Just Observing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-discomfort-of-just-observing/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T13:20:51.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/07/grand-central-station-ceiling.jpg) The New York Times just published another installment of its [focus challenge series](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/06/upshot/ten-minute-challenge-grand-central.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com): an ultra-high-resolution photograph of the Grand Central Terminal ceiling, stitched together from 232 close-up images, with a simple instruction. Look at it. Just look, for 10 minutes. I took the challenge. It nearly broke me. That surprised me, because I thought I had some credentials here. I sit in silent meditation for 30 minutes every morning. I take long beach walks without music or podcasts, simply thinking and observing. I've written repeatedly about the power of observation. And yet moving from skimming the morning's headlines to sitting with a single image for 10 minutes was jarring. My mind wandered within the first minute. I caught myself reaching for the mental equivalent of the next tab. It was uncomfortable in a way 30 minutes of silence somehow isn't. Which forced a question: why? My best answer is that these are different muscles. Meditation, at least the way I practice it, trains me to let thoughts drift past without grabbing them. A beach walk lets attention roam wherever it wants. But sustained observation asks the mind to hold one thing and keep digging into it, past the point where it feels like there's anything left to find. That's a specific skill, and mine had apparently atrophied faster than I realized in a world engineered for the skim. The ceiling rewards the effort, though. It holds 2,500 stars, 125 feet above the commuters, with six zodiac signs strung along the ecliptic and the Milky Way streaking across in the opposite direction. Fifty-nine of the stars twinkle. The artist Paul Helleu based the design on the Uranometria, a 1603 star atlas that was the first detailed catalog of individual stars. When the terminal opened in February 1913, the New York Central Railroad predicted schoolchildren would flock there to study the heavens. Two weeks later, a commuter from New Rochelle, a hobby astronomer, looked up and noticed that the entire sky was backwards. East was west, west was east, every constellation mirrored except Orion. A Columbia astronomy professor had overseen the design. Dozens of painters had executed it. Hundreds of thousands of people had already walked beneath it. One person actually looked. Officials conceded the mix-up but insisted it was "a pretty good ceiling for all that." The likely explanation, according to Michael Allison, a former NASA planetary scientist who has studied the ceiling for years, is that the professor approved plans he expected to be projected overhead, while the painters laid them on the floor to work from. Hence the flip. Allison told the Times he has stared at the ceiling for countless hours: "I keep hoping I can discover one more thing." A NASA scientist, voluntarily standing in a train station for hours, watching one ceiling, convinced there's more to see. Taiichi Ohno would have loved him. Ohno famously drew a chalk circle on the Toyota factory floor and made engineers stand inside it, sometimes for an entire shift, watching a single process. When they reported back that they'd seen nothing worth improving, he sent them back to the circle. Something worth improving was always there; they hadn't stood long enough to see it. I wrote about this practice in [The Simple Leader: Observe the Now](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-observe-the-now/). The hobby astronomer from New Rochelle was standing in Ohno's circle without knowing it. So is Allison, decades later, still finding things. Years ago, over breakfast at the Four Seasons in Bangkok, I noticed that amid the flurry of wait staff there was always one person simply standing and watching the room. A guest's eyes would shift, and someone was instantly at their table while another staffer took over the watching. When I asked a waiter what he was looking for, his answer was "Just observing, sir." I [wrote about it at the time](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-observing/), and that "just" has stayed with me ever since. The Times asks you to just stare at a photograph. The waiter was just observing. Ohno's engineers were just standing in a circle. We reach for the diminishing word every time, and every time the activity turns out to be among the hardest and most rewarding things we can do. The word I keep coming back to is intention. The discomfort of those 10 minutes was itself information: it measured the gap between how I believe I attend to the world and how I actually do. Skimming gives the sensation of awareness without the substance. Real observation is a deliberate act, chosen and held against the constant pull toward the next thing, and the pull has gotten stronger. If it takes a newspaper-designed challenge to make a longtime meditator sit still with one image, imagine the state of attention in a typical workplace, where every process and every person gets the skim. And consider the cost. A backwards sky hung in plain sight above one of the busiest buildings in America, blessed by an expert, executed by professionals, admired by crowds. What's backwards on your shop floor right now? In the person sitting across from you at dinner? The information is there. The beauty is there too. We're walking under all of it at commuter speed. One last detail from the ceiling that any plant manager will appreciate: when restorers cleaned decades of grime off the mural in the late 1990s, they deliberately left one small dark square untouched, near Cancer, so anyone can see the before against the after. A permanent visual standard, hiding in a Beaux-Arts landmark. Observation even improves restoration work, apparently, when someone thinks to preserve the evidence. So here's my challenge, borrowed from the Times and from Ohno. Try the [10 minutes](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/06/upshot/ten-minute-challenge-grand-central.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) with the ceiling. Or skip the screen entirely and pick something you're certain you already know: a process you manage, a room in your house, a monthly report, a face you see every day. Draw the chalk circle and stand in it. Ten minutes, no phone, no exit. Then tell me what you found that was backwards all along. ### The mirror we built URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mirror-we-built/ Last updated: 2026-07-20T15:46:12.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/mirror-1.jpg) There's a strange pattern in how people respond when asked whether large language models are genuinely intelligent. Regular people shrug and say yes, obviously. AI researchers and computational neuroscientists tie themselves in knots explaining why they're not. Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google's CTO of Technology and Society and author of [*What Is Intelligence?*](https://whatisintelligence.antikythera.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (MIT Press, 2025), finds this telling. Thomas Kuhn would too. The people with the most invested in the old framework are usually the last to let it go. I've been sitting with why that might be, because I don't think it's professional inertia. I think it's something more personal. I've written before about how we're best understood as [organic prediction machines](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prediction-machines-why-we-might-be-more-like-ai-than-we-think/), the brain's core function being to model the future and adjust behavior accordingly. Agüera y Arcas makes a stronger and more unsettling version of that argument. He traces intelligence not to some special property of neurons or biological tissue, but to a functional principle running unbroken from the first self-replicating molecules to modern AI: prediction. His starting point is a 1950s insight from John von Neumann. For a machine to self-replicate, it needs stored instructions, a universal constructor to build copies, and a mechanism to copy those instructions. That's not a theoretical curiosity. That's biology. DNA is the Turing tape, ribosomes are the universal constructors, DNA polymerase copies the tape. You cannot be a living organism, he writes, without literally being a computer. Not metaphorically. Literally. Life and computation aren't analogous; they're the same thing. From there, intelligence is what emerges when computational systems grow complex enough to model their environments and act on those models. Hermann von Helmholtz called perception "unconscious inferences" in the 19th century: the brain runs predictions constantly, updates them against sensory input, and selects actions that improve future outcomes. Agüera y Arcas calls this substrate-independent. Carbon or silicon, the substrate doesn't determine whether something is intelligent. The function does. This is where it gets uncomfortable. For the specialists, and honestly for the rest of us. If prediction is the core of intelligence, not a component or a proxy but the thing itself, then the faculties we attribute to some higher human order start to look like emergent properties of sufficiently complex prediction. Theory of mind — the ability to model other minds — is prediction extended outward. Apply it recursively, model yourself modeling yourself, and you get something that looks a great deal like consciousness. The unified self we all carry around? Agüera y Arcas, drawing on Marvin Minsky's *Society of Mind*, argues it's a useful predictive fiction. The brain is a society of sub-intelligences, and the coherent narrator we experience is the model they collectively run. Free will, in this framing, is action selection optimizing across possible futures. Also prediction. None of this is as reductive as it first sounds. He isn't saying consciousness is an illusion, or that free will doesn't exist, or that there's nothing remarkable about being human. He's saying these things emerge from a process we can now watch happen in other substrates. That's a different and far more interesting claim. It raises a question most of us haven't fully sat with: what does it mean for our self-understanding that we've built something that got there the same way we did? The moment that crystallized this for Agüera y Arcas was a 2021 conversation with LaMDA, Google's early large language model — dumb by today's standards, but already capable of things that stopped him cold. It could write novel functions that didn't appear in its training data. It could analyze a poem, explain a joke, apply a concept it had just learned in context. He saw no qualitative gap between that and general intelligence. No magic structures turned out to be necessary, no special semantic architecture, no theoretical pixie dust that everyone had assumed would be required. Next-token prediction, run at sufficient scale, got there. Most people studying AI ask what it tells us about artificial intelligence. The more productive question is what it tells us about the natural kind. If next-token prediction at scale produces something indistinguishable from general intelligence, including theory of mind, self-modeling, and language as a compression scheme for mental worlds, then the properties we've long associated with human exceptionalism look less like fundamental distinctions and more like descriptions of what prediction does when it runs long enough on a sufficiently complex system. The specialists resist this, and Agüera y Arcas suspects he knows why: accepting that LLMs are genuinely intelligent means accepting that what you thought made you exceptional is a functional property of information processing, not a birthright. That's a conclusion with personal stakes, not just professional ones. It's one thing to grant that a chess engine plays better chess than you. It's another to grant that the thing you experience as your inner life is emergent from the same basic process running in a data center somewhere. I'm not sure that conclusion should disturb us as much as it seems to. Intelligence, wherever it shows up, is extraordinary. The fact that we've built something that gets there through prediction doesn't flatten what we are; it clarifies it. We spent centuries assuming consciousness and selfhood were metaphysical privileges. They may be something better: inevitable properties of systems complex enough to model themselves and each other. That's worth sitting with. What changes if the most distinctly human things about us turn out to be features of intelligence itself, not features of us? ### The Org Chart Lean Spent Decades Flattening, AI Just Skipped URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-org-chart-lean-spent-decades-flattening-ai-just-skipped/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:43:09.000Z I came across the paper behind this post through [Azeem Azhar's Exponential View newsletter](https://www.exponentialview.co/p/ev-579?utm%5Fsource=post-email-title&publication%5Fid=2252&post%5Fid=202708623), in a short item noting that AI-native startups start smaller and stay smaller than non-AI-native startups. Reading the actual research behind it sent me somewhere Azhar didn't go: straight into the relationship between this pattern and the organizational dynamics lean manufacturing and lean startup have been arguing for, in their own domains, for decades. A startup called FazeShift has ten employees. It handles the entire accounts receivable lifecycle for its enterprise customers: invoicing, collections, cash application, matching payments to invoices, chasing down the exceptions that used to require an analyst staring at a spreadsheet. A traditional AR software vendor selling the same outcome would need a much bigger team, not because FazeShift's customers are easier to please, but because someone still has to build the firm-specific exception handling and someone still has to staff the operations that resolve what the software can't. FazeShift's AI agents do both jobs. The company just never built the department. That example comes from a working paper out of Harvard Business School and INSEAD, ["AI-Native Firms,"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=6905079&ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Hyunjin Kim and Rembrand Koning. They pulled workforce data across five years of Y Combinator batches and a broader pool of U.S. venture-backed startups, comparing firms that qualify as AI-native to otherwise similar firms in the same industry and funding cohort. The AI-native firms are 25% smaller. Their hierarchies run about a seniority level flatter. They employ more engineers and fewer of basically everyone else: sales, operations, finance, admin. And despite being smaller, they raise comparable funding and hit comparable valuations, which rules out the easy explanation that they're just under-resourced or low-quality entrants. They're doing more with less, on purpose, by design. Plenty of people have already made the case that giving your team access to AI makes them faster. Kim and Koning actually tested that directly, coding which firms' job postings mention specific AI tools, and found it barely predicts anything about firm size or hierarchy. What predicts the shrinkage is something else: whether the firm builds AI directly into what it sells, so the product does the work that used to require a department. **The gap lean spent seventy years trying to close** Traditional lean manufacturing, the Toyota Production System and everything that descended from it, was never really about cutting headcount for its own sake. It was about creating flow and value from the perspective of the customer, in part by closing the distance between the person doing the work and the person with the authority to fix it. Every layer of hierarchy you add between the assembly line and the decision is a layer where information degrades, where problems get filtered into reports instead of fixed on the spot. Ohno's obsession with andon cords and quality built in at the source, rather than inspected afterward by a separate department, enabled an attack on the coordination tax that hierarchy imposes. Lean startup, the Eric Ries and Steve Blank flavor that showed up a couple decades later, took a related but distinct idea and pointed it at company formation instead of factory floors. The unit of work wasn't supposed to be a department handing a project down a chain of approvals. It was supposed to be a small cross-functional team that owned a hypothesis end to end: build, measure, learn, repeat, without anyone outside the loop. The team stayed small because speed of learning was the entire point. You didn't want a layer of managers translating between the people building the thing and the people who understood the customer. What Kim and Koning are documenting looks like the lean startup team that never had to graduate. In a normal company, that small cross-functional unit eventually hits a wall. The product works, customers show up, and now someone has to build a sales function, a support function, an operations team to handle the volume. Headcount becomes the price of growth. What the AI-native firms in this data seem to have figured out is that you can keep paying that price in compute instead of people, at least for the parts of the business where the "team" doing the work was always knowledge work to begin with. Gamma, the AI presentation startup the paper uses as a case study, makes this concrete. A traditional firm offering "we'll build your deck for you" scales by hiring: someone scopes the request, someone designs it, someone reviews it before it goes out. Gamma turned that into a product interaction instead of a workflow. Thirty employees, millions of users, $50 million in annual revenue within two years. The deck still gets made. Nobody had to build the department that used to make it. **Where this differs from automation as we've known it** It's worth being precise about why this isn't just the next chapter in "software eats jobs." Giving a worker a tool that makes them 30% faster at an existing task is the process channel, and Kim and Koning's data says that channel alone doesn't predict smaller, flatter firms. What predicts it is moving the judgment itself into the product, so the customer interacts with the AI directly rather than with a person using AI. Legion Health, an AI psychiatry platform built on language models, has 28 employees. Intellect, a non-AI mental health company built on a network of human therapists, has 446\. Same market, same underlying service. One scales with people, one scales with compute. That gap is the entire argument in a single comparison. Lean and lean startup were both, in their own domains, arguments against unnecessary coordination. Lean said: don't make a worker wait for an inspector to tell them what they already know. Lean startup said: don't make a founder wait for a department to validate what a small team could learn directly. AI-native firms are running a third version of the same argument, except now the thing closing the gap between work and judgment isn't a flatter org chart. It's the product itself. The open question is whether that's a permanent shift in how firms get built, or a feature of right now, when the underlying models are improving fast enough that betting your headcount on them looks smart. Lean took decades to prove it wasn't a fad. This one's had a couple years. Either way, it puts a different question in front of two different audiences. If you're running an existing company and your AI strategy is a tool rollout, Copilot here, a Claude agent there, ask whether you've actually moved any judgment into the product itself, or just made the existing company a bit faster at being the existing company. And if you're starting something new, the harder discipline isn't proving you can build small. It's resisting the old instinct to hire the department once the product starts working, when the entire point was never needing one. ### 5 Days on Rhodes, Including a Great Laundry URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-days-on-rhodes-including-a-great-laundry/ Last updated: 2026-06-21T09:51:33.000Z We're closing out a month-long trip through [Malta](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/malta-mediterranean-underestimated/), [Crete](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/crete-two-bases-one-civilization-and-a-kid-problem/), and Rhodes, and Rhodes turned out to be the island where the history is so dense it's almost unfair to the other two. Malta gave us 7,000 years in 316 square kilometers. Rhodes gives you a single fortified Old Town where Hellenistic streets, a Crusader hospital, an Ottoman mosque, and a Mussolini-era palace all occupy the same few blocks, and somehow none of it feels like a stage set. Five nights was the right amount of time. We stayed at the Sheraton Rhodes Resort in Ixia, about 15 minutes and 15 euros by taxi from the Old Town. It's a big property with plenty of kids around, but unlike the Amirandes on Crete, the adult spaces, bars and pools, stayed genuinely adult. Breakfast was an expansive buffet, though a notch below the Phoenicia in Malta or Domes Noruz in Crete (no smoked salmon, for those keeping score). Rooms were comfortable and quiet. Overall it landed as a solid four-star experience rather than a true five, and next time we'd probably look for something smaller and more boutique. The Bonvoy points made the math easy, and our usual Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts booking wasn't available on this last-minute trip at the start of high season. ## Old town, old laundry The Old Town is the largest inhabited medieval town in Europe, and it earns the description on first walk. We'd put it roughly tied with Chania for feel, though Rhodes is larger and, unlike Chania, walled in tight enough that you lose the harbor view. Still not Dubrovnik, which remains our standard for this kind of place, but close. We ate there four times across the visit, twice for lunch and twice for dinner, and never tired of the shops, bars, and cafes packed into the lanes. Just outside the walls sits the New Town, with a genuinely high-end shopping district and one of the better vegetarian restaurants we've found anywhere: Ono. We went twice. We make a habit of hunting down strong vegetarian and vegan kitchens wherever we travel; in Chania it was Pulse, which never clicked for us the way Ono did here. One more Old Town discovery worth a permanent place in the travel notes: a small, owner-run laundromat tucked into the medieval lanes, run by an older man and presumably his wife. Drop off a load, go explore or have lunch, come back two hours later to perfectly folded laundry. Nine euros fifty per load, a fraction of what hotel laundry service costs, and somehow more satisfying than it has any right to be. ## Lindos before the ships land Lindos is an hour south by car service, and we skipped renting a car entirely; parking near the village is brutal even early in the morning, and a driver solved that problem before it started. The advice everywhere is to arrive by 9am, and it's correct. The climb up to the Acropolis is steep, but the Doric temple perched 116 meters above the sea, with the Knights' fortifications wrapped around it and St. Paul's Bay below, is worth every step. We wandered the whitewashed village afterward, grabbed a bite, and headed back before the cruise crowds fully arrived. ## Symi, the trip's best surprise We'd planned on the Valley of the Butterflies, but learned that late June is too early in the season for any meaningful number of moths to have arrived, so we swapped it for a fast ferry to Symi instead. Best decision of the trip. The ferry left from Rhodes port, with hotel-to-port bus transport included, and we took an early departure, a pattern we kept all week, to beat the crowds. Symi's harbor town, Gialos, is one of the most striking waterfronts in the Aegean: tiers of ochre and rust neoclassical houses stacked up a steep hillside. We climbed the roughly 500 steps up to Chorio for the views, again best done early before the heat sets in, then wandered the harbor for lunch among a dozen good options. On the way back, the boat stopped at a bay accessible only by water for a 30-minute swim in water clear enough to second-guess whether it was real. It sounds like a lot of fuss for a brief dip. It isn't. You'll wish you'd stayed longer. ## Logistics, receipts, and the absence of Bolt We mostly skipped the Sheraton's restaurants in favor of local tavernas, walking when we could and taking a taxi into town otherwise. Taxis in Rhodes are fast and efficient, if not cheap, and worth it to sidestep parking entirely. What we missed was the convenience of Uber or Bolt, both readily available on Malta but blocked in most of Greece by the taxi union. Two practical notes for anyone following this itinerary. Greeks love a paper receipt, for everything, sometimes more than one per transaction; by evening I was regularly emptying my pockets of small slips of paper. And Amex is accepted almost nowhere outside the larger hotels, so make sure a Visa, Mastercard, or a phone wallet not tied to Amex is working before you land. We flew out in the evening on departure day, which meant a late checkout and one last relaxed morning at the resort, the same rhythm we'd settled into across all three islands by then. Malta surprised us, Crete demanded more time than we gave it, and Rhodes managed to be both the most historically layered stop and the one with the best unplanned afternoon, a 30-minute swim in a bay we almost didn't bother visiting. ### Crete: Two Bases, One Civilization, and a Kid Problem URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/crete-two-bases-one-civilization-and-a-kid-problem/ Last updated: 2026-06-21T08:56:14.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/06/IMG_1593.jpeg) Chania's old harbor at sunset is the kind of view that makes you stop mid-sentence. The Venetian quay curves around still water, the lighthouse catches the last light, and somewhere behind you the White Mountains are doing the same. I've now seen a lot of Mediterranean harbors. This one lands just behind Dubrovnik on my all-time list, ahead of Valletta in Malta. Rhodes, which we visited next, would eventually pass it too. But Chania was the first place on this trip where I understood why people build entire vacations around a single old town. Crete deserved more than a single town, though, and we split our time across two bases: five nights in Chania for the west, five in the Heraklion area for the east, a rental car the whole way. That structure made sense on paper. In practice it taught us something about the difference between an island that's mostly mountain and gorge and beach, and an island that's also the seat of Europe's first civilization. We could have easily filled seven or eight nights in Chania alone. **The Minoans, in brief** Before Greece was Greece, Crete was the Minoans: a literate, palace-building, plumbing-having society that ran from roughly 2700 to 1450 BCE. They built multi-story palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, and elsewhere, wrote in two scripts nobody has ever deciphered, and left behind frescoes of bull-leapers and blue dolphins that look like nothing else in the ancient Mediterranean. Linear B, a third script found at the same sites, turned out in 1952 to be an early form of Greek, written by the Mycenaeans who took over the palaces after the Minoans collapsed. The collapse itself lines up suspiciously well with the Thera eruption on Santorini, though current scholarship treats that as a contributing factor rather than the whole story. Then everyone else showed up. Romans, Byzantines, Arab raiders who held the island for over a century, a Byzantine reconquest, four centuries of Venetian rule, and finally the Ottomans after a 21-year siege of Heraklion, one of the longest in history. Each layer left something standing. You can see all of it in a single afternoon walk through any of the island's old towns, which is the real argument for visiting Crete over almost anywhere else in Greece: the density of legible history per square kilometer is absurd. **Chania: the one that earns the postcards** We taxied into Chania old town on day one specifically to avoid the parking hassle, a decision I'd repeat. The harbor itself was built by the Venetians in the 14th century, and the lighthouse at its tip was rebuilt by the Egyptians in the 1830s, an odd little detail that nobody mentions until you're standing in front of it. We went back for meals multiple times just to sit at the water and watch the evening crowd drift by. That's the whole experience in one sentence: find a table, order something, watch the harbor do its thing. The road trip days were just as good. We drove to Elafonissi first, an hour and a half from Chania, and the locals were right to push us toward an early start. Parking and beach chairs there are genuinely limited, and the lot was jammed by 10am. After a couple hours there we continued another hour to Falassarna, which had plenty of space even in early afternoon, a nice reminder that the busiest beach isn't always the best one. We skipped Balos entirely. Both locals and hotel staff warned us off the access road, an unpaved stretch with potholes deep enough to do real damage to a rental car, and a damaged rental car is not how you want to spend a vacation day. **Arkadi, and the seam between Crete's two halves** The drive from Chania to Heraklion on transfer day runs through Arkadi Monastery, and it's worth the stop even though the last couple kilometers have signage bad enough to test your patience. The monastery's 1587 Baroque facade is striking against the plain hills around it, but the building isn't really the point. In November 1866, during the Cretan revolt against Ottoman rule, roughly a thousand rebels and civilians took refuge inside the walls. When Ottoman forces breached them, the defenders ignited the gunpowder magazine rather than surrender. The explosion killed hundreds of people on both sides and became the symbol of Cretan resistance across Europe. Standing in that courtyard, knowing what happened there, is the kind of humbling that no museum placard quite manages to deliver on its own. Arriving in greater Heraklion afterward is its own kind of whiplash. Chania is compact and walkable. Heraklion is large, industrial, and bustling in a way that feels like a different country, and our hotel was another 20 minutes past the city itself. **Heraklion: worth it, but not the same trip** Knossos lived up to its billing. Get there early, which by now should be the refrain for every site on this island, and the crowds stay manageable. The drive in was easy. Later, driving into and parking in Heraklion's old town was its own small puzzle, solved by the large, easy P1 or P2 lots near the port and a ten-minute walk in. The old town itself, though, was a letdown after Chania's harbor. Still worth a single visit, just not a place we returned to for dinner the way we did in Chania. The Archaeological Museum, on the other hand, earns every minute you give it: the original Knossos frescoes, the Phaistos Disc, gold jewelry that makes you wonder what else got lost. Book both Knossos and the museum two weeks ahead if you want your preferred entry time. They sell out. The unambiguous highlight of the eastern half was Spinalonga, a fortified island the Venetians held until 1715 and that later became Europe's last active leper colony, operating until 1957\. The boat from Plaka takes ten minutes and costs ten euros, with twenty more for entry, and it's both shorter and easier than the Elounda alternative. Walking the old patient settlement inside those Venetian walls, knowing people lived entire lives there in quarantine, is the kind of history that doesn't need embellishment. After the island we drove through Elounda and down to Agios Nikolaos, where cafes ring a small inland lake that opens to the sea. Parking there was genuinely difficult, the one knock on an otherwise pleasant stop. We'd planned a day trip to the Lassithi Plateau, the upland plain where myth places the birth of Zeus, but the heat made the call for us and we stayed local instead. That turned out to be the wrong kind of relaxing. **The hotel problem** The Domes Noruz in Chania was excellent: boutique, adults-only, sort of W-hotel sensibility, a good beach a short taxi ride from old town, a very nice spa. It also had a quirk I'm still puzzling over: the bathroom sink sat outside the bathroom in the middle of the room, water arriving via a long pipe dropping from the ceiling. Watching your partner stand there as the room's centerpiece, waiting for the temperature to stabilize on its long trip down, was an experience I'll politely call unique. Hotels shouldn't try this hard to look trendy. The room doors were thin enough that bar crowds returning at 1 or 2am woke us most mornings, and the gym was basic past the essentials, but the staff was fantastic and clearly tried to please us throughout the stay. Unlike the Amirandes, we'd go back. The Amirandes near Heraklion was a different story. On paper it's a five-star resort with strong reviews. In practice it had a distinctly different vibe, and a vegetarian dinner that wasn't a sixty-euro buffet plate of bad pizza and questionable sushi turned out to be hard to find. But the real issue was the volume of children, babies included, filling spaces that are usually adult by hotel convention: the bars, the single large pool (babies in questionable diaper… gross…), areas where you'd reasonably expect some quiet. We'd stayed at plenty of five-star resorts with kids around and never had this problem, because the adult spaces actually functioned as adult spaces. Here they didn't. We ended up leaving two days early, even with no refund on the unused nights, and flew on to Rhodes ahead of schedule. If we did Crete again, we'd shift the balance west: more time in Chania, less in Heraklion, and a hotel search that actually screens for boutique adults-only before booking. None of that diminishes the island itself. Four thousand years of continuous civilization, two of the great Minoan palaces, a fortress that held the Ottomans off for two decades, and a lagoon-blue beach an hour from a mountain gorge: Crete earns its reputation. Just choose your second base more carefully than we did. ### While We Were Processing AI, Quantum Arrived URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/while-we-were-processing-ai-quantum-arrived/ Last updated: 2026-06-15T08:41:21.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/quantum-1.jpg) Last month, several stocks in my quantum computing portfolio suddenly jumped between 12% and 39% over just two days. The reason: the Commerce Department announced $2 billion in CHIPS Act grants to nine quantum computing companies, taking equity stakes in each. IBM received the largest share — roughly $1 billion, matched by a new IBM quantum venture called Anderon. D-Wave, Rigetti, Quantinuum, and Infleqtion each received approximately $100 million. The federal government, in other words, just placed a large, very public bet on quantum computing as a national security priority. I've been building this portfolio for a couple of years, using AI to help develop investment criteria and monitor holdings across several specialized sector portfolios. I wrote about that approach [here](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-as-a-financial-analyst-a-year-of-portfolio-fine-tuning/), and [discussed the Space Tech portfolio](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-spacex-ipo-spaas-and-why-the-rocket-isnt-the-point/) in light of the upcoming SpaceX IPO last Friday. The quantum portfolio has always been the most speculative — the one where the commercialization timeline was hardest to pin down. Last month's announcement didn't change the science, but it changed the signal. And the science has been moving faster than almost anyone expected. ## A fundamentally different kind of machine To understand why quantum computing is qualitatively different from anything we've seen before, it helps to start with what it isn't. Classical computers, including the ones running every AI model in existence today, operate on bits: binary values of 0 or 1\. Every calculation, no matter how sophisticated, is a sequence of binary decisions processed sequentially. AI is genuinely impressive at pattern recognition and prediction, but it's doing that work on fundamentally classical hardware. Quantum computers use qubits. Through a property called superposition, a qubit can exist in states of 0, 1, or any combination of both simultaneously — not one after the other, but at the same time. Through entanglement, qubits become correlated such that the state of one instantly influences others. The practical result: a quantum system doesn't evaluate one pathway through a problem at a time. It explores a vast solution space in parallel, arriving at probabilistic intermediate states rather than hard binary answers at each step. For certain categories of problems, the computational difference isn't incremental. It's the gap between tractable and impossible. Chemistry is precisely that category. Molecular behavior — how atoms bind, how drugs interact with proteins — is governed by quantum mechanical principles. Classical computers approximate this, and the approximations get harder as molecules grow. The number of possible electron configurations increases combinatorially with molecule size, meaning computational cost doesn't scale linearly. It explodes. ## From laboratory to the drug pipeline Which is why results published this week from a collaboration between Cleveland Clinic, IBM, and Japan's RIKEN research center are worth paying attention to. The team used a hybrid quantum-classical framework to simulate two protein-ligand complexes at scales of up to [12,635 atoms](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01138?ref=kevinmeyer.com) — the largest biological molecule ever modeled with quantum computing assistance, using 94 qubits across two IBM processors combined with classical supercomputers. The number matters less than the trajectory. Four months ago, the same team simulated a 303-atom miniprotein. This result is a 40-fold increase in system size and a 210-fold improvement in accuracy. In four months. The lead researcher, Dr. Kenneth Merz of Cleveland Clinic, said results like these are arriving years sooner than he would have predicted as recently as 2024. This isn't one team's isolated result. Wellcome Leap, an initiative of London's Wellcome Trust, recently released outcomes from its $50 million Quantum for Bio challenge, where six independent research teams demonstrated quantum-classical hybrid approaches to biological problems. The top-rated project, awarded a $2 million prize, was led by Algorithmiq, a Finnish quantum software company working with the same Cleveland Clinic and IBM hardware. They simulated how an experimental photodynamic cancer drug is activated by light to destroy tumor cells, with results [described by the company's CEO](https://www.ft.com/content/6d51a62c-433b-4334-a713-995c1ef1255c?ref=kevinmeyer.com) as "provably better than the corresponding classical method alone." Five of the six finalists worked with IBM hardware. This is convergence, not coincidence. Drug discovery is the early commercial pathway for a reason. If you can accurately model how a drug molecule binds to a target protein before synthesizing it in a lab, you compress the most expensive phase of pharmaceutical development. AI is already accelerating parts of this (my recent post on the [intelligence explosion](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-intelligence-explosion-human-ai-evolution-not-singularity/) touched on Anthropic's acquisition of Coefficient Bio and AI-designed cancer molecules reaching Phase III trials). Quantum adds a layer of molecular modeling fidelity that AI running on classical hardware fundamentally cannot match — because the underlying phenomena are quantum mechanical. IBM's CTO for quantum computing, Jerry Chow, expects large-scale practical application in chemistry and life sciences by the early 2030s. The threat side of quantum is on the same hardware timeline. I covered quantum's risk to blockchain security [last January](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-quantum-computing-threatens-blockchains-cryptographic-foundation/); since then a Coinbase-convened panel of cryptographers published a position paper concluding that a quantum computer capable of breaking blockchain encryption will be built, and the window to prepare is narrowing. Quantum as tool and quantum as threat are the same technology, driven by the same underlying progress, arriving on the same schedule. May's government investment reflects exactly this dual reality. The $2 billion isn't positioned as science funding, it's framed as a national security move, explicitly aimed at maintaining an advantage over China in advanced computing. That framing matters. It means this isn't a research grant program that might get cut in the next budget cycle. It's strategic infrastructure investment. We spent years being warned that AI was coming and still managed to be surprised by how fast it arrived and how broadly it applied. Quantum is on a similar arc, with a somewhat longer runway. The difference is we're watching it develop in real time — enzyme simulations scaling 40-fold in four months, cancer drug modeling, virus genome encoding, and now $2 billion in federal backing landing in a single day. These aren't conference demonstrations or speculative roadmaps. Are we ready this time? ### Malta: The Mediterranean Stop We Underestimated URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/malta-mediterranean-underestimated/ Last updated: 2026-06-09T07:58:20.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/06/valletta-malta.jpg.jpg) We’re a week into a month-long trip through Malta, Crete, and Rhodes. This is the first of three posts, on Malta, a place that surprised me. Getting to Malta was easy. We flew United nonstop from San Francisco to Zurich then connected to Swiss Air for the hop to Malta. Zurich has long been my favorite European connection, a quietly excellent Star Alliance hub with none of Frankfurt’s sprawl or Munich’s terminal chaos. The Phoenicia Malta is our benchmark for the rest of the trip. It’s a luxury hotel in every sense, but what makes it work is the location: literally steps from the old city gate, which means you walk into Valletta for dinner and walk back whenever you like. The rooms are genuinely quiet despite the city setting, the gym is well-equipped (opens at 7am, which is a mild disappointment when jet lag has you up at 2am), and breakfast covers every possibility between buffet abundance and made-to-order. The real showstopper is the garden and infinity pool perched alongside the old city walls, looking out over the harbor toward Sliema. **Valletta** The city is small enough to walk end to end in 20 minutes, which is either a limitation or a gift depending on what you’re after. We found it a gift. The whole peninsula is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the density of what’s packed into it, St. John’s Co-Cathedral with its Caravaggio canvases, the Grand Master’s Palace, the Barrakka Gardens with their harbor views, rewards the unhurried approach. One logistics note worth passing on: check the cruise ship schedule at [cruisemapper.com](https://www.cruisemapper.com/ports/valletta-port-724?ref=kevinmeyer.com) before planning your day. Valletta and the Three Cities get overwhelming fast when more than one ship is in port. Early morning and after 4pm are reliably calmer. We learned this by experience, and adjusted accordingly. Getting up and down between the waterfront and the city level is handled by the Barrakka Lift. 1 euro, runs every five minutes, no meaningful wait. The down trip is often included. It’s a small thing, but it makes the waterfront feel connected to the city rather than separate from it. On our first full day we explored Valletta on foot, then took a traditional dgħajsa, a pointed wooden water taxi with one oarsman standing at the stern, across the Grand Harbour to the Three Cities. Five minutes across the water, and you’re in Birgu’s medieval streets, which haven’t changed much in plan since the Knights were there. The Inquisitor’s Palace is the only intact judicial complex of its kind in the world; the Gardjola sentry box at Senglea’s tip frames a perfect view back to Valletta. The second day we took the Hop-On Hop-Off bus, which has become our favorite way to get an overview of a new destination. Malta’s HoHo is one of the most comprehensive I’ve encountered anywhere. The blue north route is far better than the red south — the south overlaps substantially with the Three Cities area we’d already covered, while the north runs through territory you won’t otherwise see. We didn’t get off at stops; the 3.5-hour loop was enough. It functions as an orientation that makes subsequent exploration more deliberate. **Beyond Valletta** Malta is diverse enough that staying in Valletta and calling it done would be a real mistake. On separate days we took Bolt to Hagar Qim and Mnajdra on the southern cliffs, to Mdina, and on Sunday to the Marsaxlokk waterfront market. Hagar Qim and Mnajdra are more impressive and more affecting than the Gozo temples. They’re older than Stonehenge by a thousand years, and the precision of Mnajdra’s solar alignments where the rising sun at the equinoxes illuminates the central altar through the main threshold is one of those facts that refuses to settle comfortably. Both are covered by fabric canopies now, which is the right call for limestone preservation and a mild aesthetic concession. Mdina is the Silent City: population around 300, no cars, Norman-Baroque palaces, and an almost total absence of noise. The contrast with Valletta’s evening animation is striking. After all the harbor views, it’s also good to be on high ground looking inward across the island. Fontanella Tea Garden on the bastion wall is the natural stopping point. The beach towns on the north and northeast coast have a completely different energy — upbeat, party-forward, reminding us of Punta del Este versus Montevideo if you want a reference point. Worth seeing for the contrast alone, and the HoHo covers them. **Gozo** The original itinerary had us doing Gozo the complicated way. The better answer is the Gozo Highspeed Ferry from Lascaris Wharf at the base of Valletta’s walls, one short walk from the Barrakka Lift. It runs hourly on the :45, takes 45 minutes, and leaves the taxi-and-slow-ferry logistics behind entirely. One practical note: booking online was repeatedly declined by my Visa. “Gozo Highspeed” apparently pattern-matches to fraud. Amex is accepted almost nowhere except major hotels. The fix is to buy tickets at the terminal window, where the physical card went through without issue. Round-trip is cheaper than two one-ways; book the return for a late slot, since they’ll let you board an earlier ferry if there’s space. In Gozo we skipped the HoHo as reviews suggest it’s unreliable and used Bolt instead. Never waited more than 5 minutes, marginally more expensive, worth it entirely. The day’s sequence: Ggantija temples, the Victoria Citadel, lunch in Victoria center, Bolt to Ramla Bay (Gozo’s wide arc of orange-red sand), then back to the harbor for the ferry. Ggantija is the oldest of the Maltese temple complexes, predating the main island temples by several centuries. The site museum has improved substantially in recent years and is worth the time before you walk into the stones. Victoria’s Citadel has the additional story of its trompe l’oeil cathedral ceiling. Gozo couldn’t afford a dome, so they painted one, which is either charming or melancholy depending on your perspective. **A few general notes** Both Uber and Bolt operate in Malta, with many drivers running both apps simultaneously. Bolt is significantly cheaper with near-identical experience, vehicles, and wait times, just a lower fare. Download and set up the Bolt app before you arrive. It’s also one of the few vendors outside the hotels that takes Amex. Tipping isn’t expected but is appreciated, particularly at restaurants. One catch: paying by Visa at most restaurants leaves no way to add a tip on the terminal, so keep a few coins or small bills on hand. ATMs are plentiful throughout. The harbors are worth a slow look for reasons beyond the scenery. The number of yachts, including serious mega-yachts, parked in the various ports is remarkable. One moored in the Three Cities harbor caught my attention; a quick lookup revealed it chartered at $900,000 per week. Good to know the other half is doing fine. Early June weather was essentially perfect: low 80s, low humidity, no rain. The sun, though, is stronger than it feels. We watched a steady stream of sunburned tourists who apparently disagreed. Hat, sunscreen, water. Prices in Malta are noticeably lower than Greece, which we discovered the following week. Valletta’s outdoor dining scene is lively well into the evening with a diverse crowd, easy to find a table on a side street and watch the parade go by. Malta surprised me by being more layered than I expected. You can cover Valletta in a day or two and feel like you’ve seen Malta. You haven’t. The temples, Mdina, the beach towns, and Gozo are distinct enough that they feel like separate countries stacked on 316 square kilometers of limestone. That density is the whole point. Crete is next. ### I Don't Know What It Means URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/i-dont-know-what-it-means/ Last updated: 2026-06-08T08:40:45.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/ai-religion.jpg) On May 25th, Pope Leo XIV stood in the Vatican's Synod Hall to present *Magnifica Humanitas*, his first encyclical. The document addresses AI and human dignity, deliberately echoing Pope Leo XIII's *Rerum Novarum* from 1891, which addressed workers' rights during the Industrial Revolution. The symmetry is intentional. What's less appreciated is what else Leo XIII did in 1891: he founded the Vatican Observatory, explicitly to correct the perception that the Catholic Church was hostile to science. That perception has always been more myth than history. The father of the Big Bang theory was a Jesuit priest, Georges Lemaître. The father of modern genetics was an Augustinian monk, Gregor Mendel. The Church didn't just tolerate these discoveries; it produced them. When Pope Pius XII grew so enthusiastic about the Big Bang that he wanted to claim it as scientific proof of God's existence, Lemaître told the Pope to back off. The scientist had to restrain the theologian's excitement about his own science. Which makes what happened in that same room on May 25th particularly striking. Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, stood alongside the Pope to present the encyclical. Then he said something the document itself carefully avoided saying. "We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling," Olah told the room. His interpretability research team had found structures inside AI models that mirror results from human neuroscience. Evidence of introspection. 171 emotion vectors: internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. "I don't know what it means," he said, "but I think it warrants ongoing discernment." The encyclical stepped back from exactly that edge. AI systems "do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain," the document states. Both positions were staked out in the same room, on the same day, by people sharing the same stage. Lemaître once had to restrain a Pope's overreach into science. This time it was the scientist approaching the theological edge, and nobody stopped him. ## What emerged, and what it implies Olah's comments weren't philosophy. They came from empirical research studying what actually happens inside these models. Nobody engineered emotional states into Claude. They emerged from training on what Olah called "an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech." His summary: "They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us." I've been writing about [the convergence](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prediction-machines-why-we-might-be-more-like-ai-than-we-think/) between human and artificial intelligence for some time, arguing that the gap is closing from both directions simultaneously. The Olah findings are the most direct evidence yet from the AI side. The human side is equally interesting, and equally uncomfortable. Benjamin Libet's famous experiments showed that measurable brain activity precedes conscious awareness of a decision by roughly 500 milliseconds. More recent fMRI research can predict a person's intent to move before that person is aware of the intention. The "I" that feels like it's deciding may be closer to a narrator than an author. Ross Douthat captured the philosophical knot well in a recent [New York Times column](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/opinion/artificial-intelligence-consciousness-richard-dawkins.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com). If AI can be intelligent and capable without consciousness, what is consciousness actually for? Evolution should default to the simpler solution. That it didn't suggests consciousness is doing something we don't yet understand, or that the clean line between capability and experience was always shakier than we assumed. ## The exceptionalism gap I'll be honest: I hold onto human exceptionalism. The evidence keeps making it harder to defend, and I'm aware of that. The list of things that are exclusively human keeps shrinking. Embodiment and lived relational experience may be the most defensible remaining ground, but it's a shorter list than it was five years ago. And we are, as Olah reminded the room, at the very early beginning of this. Looking at the narrowing gap directly makes it less frightening, not more. The apocalyptic AI narrative depends on a sharp boundary between human and machine, and on machines crossing it as an act of invasion. If that boundary was always blurrier than we assumed, from both directions, the crossing looks less like an invasion and more like a revelation. We weren't entirely what we thought. AI isn't what we feared. That doesn't resolve anything. Olah said he doesn't know what his findings mean, and that's the intellectually honest position right now. What's emerging from this convergence may get more nebulous before it clarifies. The interesting question is shifting underneath all of it: not whether machines are becoming like us, but what we were in the first place. We may not be ready for what that answer looks like. ### The Credential was always a Workaround URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-credential-was-always-a-workaround/ Last updated: 2026-06-01T08:55:57.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/chemical-factory.jpg) Reading Azeem Azhar's recent piece on [the unraveling of fictions](https://www.exponentialview.co/p/the-end-of-the-fictions?ref=kevinmeyer.com) sent me back to a fluid dynamics classroom in 1983 that I'd mostly tried to forget. (Damn, that was over 40 years ago...) I was a chemical engineering student drowning in theory, increasingly convinced that none of it had any connection to anything that actually existed in the physical world. Lab work helped, but not enough. The equations were elegant. The gap between them and a real industrial process was vast and, to me at the time, mysterious. The solution was a co-op semester and summer at Nestlé, working on real chemical engineering problems at a high-volume food manufacturing plant and their research facility. I came back for my senior year able to see what I hadn't been able to see before — how the theory mapped onto real processes, real constraints, real tradeoffs. High velocity molten chocolate and stinky hydrolyzed plant protein made fluid dynamics real. Same coursework, different student. The co-op didn't replace the credential; it made the credential mean something. Azhar's argument is that credentials, jobs, and recognized expertise were never fundamental truths about how competence gets organized and rewarded. They were workarounds — social technologies built to solve a specific problem in a high-friction world. When evaluating capability directly is expensive, you outsource the judgment to institutions. A degree meant someone survived a sorting process, not that they could do anything useful. It worked because direct evaluation was prohibitive. That cost is collapsing, and the workarounds are wobbling. The wobbling isn't limited to the corporate hiring office. It runs through every level of education — undergraduate degrees increasingly questioned as screening mechanisms for jobs that don't require the knowledge conferred, professional certifications that amount to multiple choice tests on memorized content, corporate training programs measured by completion rates and quiz scores rather than any observable change in behavior. The machinery of credentialing is vast, and most of it was built to answer "did this person go through the process?" rather than "can this person do the thing?" Azhar frames the shift as a cost collapse. When AI can evaluate writing, assess reasoning, and simulate complex scenarios, the gap between "did they pass the test" and "can they do the work" gets very hard to hide behind. The credential as a proxy for capability made sense when assembling evidence of actual capability was genuinely hard. It makes less sense when that evidence is increasingly available and the proxy is increasingly gameable. I watched a version of this play out for years in lean and continuous improvement training. The lean certification market is a mess — dozens of organizations selling colored belts attached to programs of wildly varying rigor, most of which involves watching videos and passing a quiz. The belt concept itself sits poorly with lean philosophy anyway; the Toyota Production System expects everyone to contribute to improvement, not a credentialed hierarchy. We held off on offering certifications at Gemba Academy for years because of that tension. When demand got loud enough that we eventually gave in, we were determined not to add to the noise. The solution was a detailed, difficult, capstone project. To earn a certification, students had to apply what they learned to a real problem in their actual organization and show results. No simulation, no hypothetical. Early completion rates were low, and we fixed that not by softening the requirements but by adding structured coaching and accountability — borrowing from improvement kata's rhythm of current condition, obstacles, next step. Completion rates went to near 100%. The difficulty stayed. The customer conversations were always revealing. Corporate buyers wanted quiz scores, completion rates, grade distributions. Something that fit in a spreadsheet and could be reported up the chain. Our argument was that a quiz is a terrible measure of understanding — maybe the worst available option that still looks like a metric. If you organized learning in ascending order of actual depth, it would go something like: watch or read something (near-zero retained understanding), take a quiz (memorize just enough to pass, then forget), complete a real project, teach others in a classroom setting, and finally coach others through live work at their organization. Most training stops at step 2 and calls it done. The deeper problem is that proxy systems didn't just measure capability poorly. They shaped what people learned and how they thought about learning. If the goal is to pass the test, you study to pass the test. The content that can't be tested — judgment, tacit knowledge, the ability to read a situation and respond — gets quietly deprioritized because it won't show up in the grade report. My Nestlé co-op wasn't a formal requirement. It was available, I was frustrated enough to take it, and it changed how I understood everything that came after. That's a fragile way to deliver the most important part of an education. If Azhar is right that the cost of direct evaluation is collapsing, the pressure on proxy-based credentialing is going to build from every direction simultaneously. Employers who can assess capability directly won't need to rent that judgment from institutions. Learners who can demonstrate real work won't need the certificate as a signal. The programs that survive — in universities, in professional training, in corporate development — will be the ones that were always about the work rather than the credential. That's a smaller category than most people in the education business would like to admit. The certification mills will keep selling certificates. They always will. But the question that's increasingly being asked — "what did you actually build, fix, or improve?" — was always the right one. It just got cheap enough to insist on. ### The Wrong Solution to an Unknown Problem URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wrong-solution-unknown-problem/ Last updated: 2026-05-26T17:27:29.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/curve-distribution.jpg) Bill George is someone I usually agree with. He's been a consistent voice for principled leadership and organizational culture. So when he posted enthusiastic support on LinkedIn for Harvard's recent vote to cap undergraduate A grades at 20% of any class, and pointed to HBS's own 1-2-3 grading system as evidence it "works well," I sat with that for a while before concluding he's wrong on two levels: the problem isn't diagnosed correctly, and the solution doesn't follow even if it were. ## Is 60% A's actually a problem? [More than 60% of undergraduate grades](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/university-news/harvard-faculty-approve-a-cap-on-a-grades?ref=kevinmeyer.com) awarded at Harvard in 2025 were A's, up from 24% in 2005\. The faculty subcommittee called that grade inflation and voted to [cap A's at 20% of any class](https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/05/20/harvard-faculty-vote-limit-grades-undergraduates/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). But is 60% A's actually a problem, or just a number that feels wrong? Consider what we don't know. Harvard admits around 3% of applicants, selecting for academic ability more aggressively than almost any institution on earth (setting aside legacy admissions and the occasional building named after a donor's family...). Maybe a significant portion of those students genuinely earn A's on a well-designed, rigorous exam. Maybe the exam was too easy. Maybe the professor grades generously. Maybe the course material isn't demanding enough to differentiate outcomes. Maybe some combination of all of the above. The grade distribution alone tells us none of that. It's a symptom without a diagnosis. The faculty subcommittee framed it as making grades "mean what they say they mean." But that framing assumes 60% A's is inherently wrong, which requires knowing what the grades should reflect, and that's exactly the question they skipped. How does an A in an undergraduate Harvard course compare to an A at a less selective school? Are the courses as demanding as Harvard's reputation implies? These aren't rhetorical questions; they're the ones that need answers before anyone reaches for a policy lever. ## The wrong solution regardless Even granting that something has drifted in Harvard's grading culture, capping A's at 20% is the wrong fix. It's the difference between criterion-referenced and norm-referenced evaluation. Criterion-referenced grading asks whether work meets a defined standard. Norm-referenced grading asks how a student ranks against peers. Harvard's new policy is purely norm-referenced: if 30% of students in a class produce work that genuinely merits an A, 10% will be graded down anyway, not because their work was deficient but because the math requires a loser. Gregory Samanez-Larkin, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, left the sharpest comment in the LinkedIn thread: "1-2-3 works well for what? Honestly curious." Nobody produced a clean answer, which is telling. The actual fix, harder but correct, is to define what an A requires and hold that line. If course material isn't rigorous enough to naturally produce a spread of outcomes, that's the problem to address. Capping the grade doesn't make the course harder. It just penalizes students for the instructor's design choices. ## Jack Welch ran this experiment first Jack Welch made the same error at massive scale with his "vitality curve," the 20-70-10 system at GE where the top 20% were rewarded, the middle 70% coached, and the [bottom 10% fired](https://www.inc.com/paul-b-brown/should-you-fire-10-of-your-employees-every-year.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) annually. Mark Graban of Lean Blog [asked the obvious question](https://www.leanblog.org/2006/10/is-jack-welch-turkey/?ref=kevinmeyer.com): if GE had to remove the bottom 10% every year, why did GE keep hiring turkeys? The vitality curve assumes any workforce naturally distributes along a bell curve, so you might as well act on it. But a well-hired, well-developed team isn't guaranteed to produce a bottom 10% of underperformers. A great leader who recruits carefully, trains well, and sets clear expectations might build a team where the weakest performer would be a star somewhere else. Forcing the ranking anyway fires people not because they failed a standard but because the math requires someone at the bottom. The variables that actually explain underperformance are the same ones the curve ignores: unclear job requirements, inadequate training, a talented person in the wrong role, compensation too low to attract strong candidates, or simply a manager who tolerates mediocrity and then blames the team for it. Removing the bottom 10% addresses none of those. It just produces a vacancy and restarts the cycle. ## The question neither system asks Microsoft ran Welch's stack ranking for years, then [abandoned it entirely](https://grokipedia.com/page/Vitality%5Fcurve?ref=kevinmeyer.com), citing the damage it did to collaboration and internal innovation. The research on forced ranking is consistent: it undermines teamwork and shows no reliable correlation between individual rankings and actual organizational performance. Both Harvard's grade cap and Welch's vitality curve skip the hard diagnostic work in favor of a mechanical fix that feels rigorous. Mandating a distribution is easy. Defining what mastery requires, building courses or jobs demanding enough to test it, and developing the people who fall short — that's the actual work. When you force or rig the curve, you don't raise performance. You just guarantee somebody loses. ### People Aren't on the Balance Sheet. That's the Problem. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/people-arent-on-the-balance-sheet-thats-the-problem/ Last updated: 2026-05-25T11:56:35.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/balance-sheet-1.jpg) I've been ranting about this for nearly twenty years. The accounting treatment of people is broken, and almost nobody in a position to fix it is moving fast enough to matter. Bear with me while I get a little into the weeds. It started with a 2006 email from a Whirlpool worker I called Bob, one of 500 people laid off from the Evansville factory just before Christmas. [What Bob described](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/understanding%5Fl/) was a company that had talked about lean for years without doing it, then disposed of those people when demand shifted. At the same time, Whirlpool was adding over a thousand jobs at plants in Indiana and Iowa and moving production to Ramos Arizpe, Mexico. As I wrote then: tens of thousands of years of manufacturing knowledge disposed of in Evansville, replaced by workers with a few weeks of experience, while severance charges got an easier reception from short-term shareholders than a long-term investment ever would. Turnover costs chronically underestimated. A pair of hands on day one worth the same as a pair of hands in year ten — or more, since they "cost" less. That is some wacky accounting. Actually it's traditional accounting, and it makes perfect sense to a traditional accountant. That's the problem. ### What the ledger actually says Under both US GAAP and IFRS, people appear on the P&L as pure expense: salaries, benefits, training, all of it flows straight to the income statement. They appear nowhere on the balance sheet as an asset. When a company disposes of equipment, accounting requires a write-off, recognizing the removal of an asset and its remaining value. When a company lays off people, there's no corresponding balance sheet entry. The income statement shows an improvement. The asset — years of accumulated knowledge, problem-solving capability, customer relationships, institutional memory — simply disappears from the books without trace, because it was never there to begin with. Equipment depreciates. Human capital, in most cases, does the opposite. A machinist with twenty years of experience on a specific process is more valuable than on day one, not less. The accounting treatment isn't just incomplete; it's directionally backwards relative to reality. ### What others are trying to do about it The problem isn't unrecognized. It's just very hard to fix within existing frameworks. Wharton professors Peter Cappelli and Daniel Taylor have petitioned the SEC to require three modest disclosure changes within the existing GAAP framework: require companies to identify what proportion of workforce costs represent investment in future growth; treat workforce costs as a standalone line item rather than burying them in administrative expenses; and disaggregate labor costs in income statements so investors can see their contribution to major expense categories. Their core argument: under current rules, investors literally cannot distinguish between payroll and heating bills. Both are just operating expense. The market penalizes companies that invest in their people the same way it would penalize any cost increase, because it has no way to tell the difference. The SEC took a small step in 2020, amending Regulation S-K to require public companies to disclose "material" human capital information in their annual filings. The principles-based approach gave companies wide latitude, no standardized metrics, and no definition of "human capital." The result has been predictably uneven. The ISSB, which oversees international standards, has human capital disclosure as an active research project through 2026, but is still in research mode rather than standard-setting. The World Economic Forum and Willis Towers Watson have published voluntary frameworks for human capital accounting that a handful of progressive companies have adopted. Progress, but slow and voluntary, which in accounting terms means largely theoretical. ### A thought experiment ASC 842, the lease accounting standard, went into effect for most public companies in 2019 and was a genuine headache to implement. Companies that had been keeping operating leases off their balance sheets — buildings, equipment, vehicles — suddenly had to recognize right-of-use assets and corresponding lease liabilities, in some cases adding billions to both sides of the balance sheet overnight. The logic was simple: if you're using an asset you don't own for an extended period and have an obligation to pay for it, that obligation belongs on the balance sheet. Hiding it in footnotes doesn't make it real. What if employees thought of their knowledge, creativity, and experience as *their own asset*, and companies entered into a long-term agreement for access to that asset? Under that framing, a hire isn't a cost transaction; it's a lease. The company gains a right-of-use asset (the human capital being accessed) and incurs a corresponding lease liability (the present value of future compensation). Early termination of the lease — a layoff — would require recognizing a loss, not booking a gain. The favorable P&L impact of eliminating salary expense would be offset by the balance sheet cost of terminating the agreement. Suddenly the accounting math on layoffs looks very different. I'm not proposing this to the FASB. The control problem alone is enough to stop any serious accounting proposal: buildings can't quit, and the entire framework depends on the lessee controlling the asset. But as a mental model for what the current treatment obscures, it's clarifying. If you ran the numbers the way ASC 842 runs them for a building, most layoff decisions would look considerably less attractive on paper. The more interesting provocation is the first half of the thought experiment: people actually owning their intellectual assets and seeking the highest-value deployment of them. The labor market already works this way to some degree. Companies that invest in developing people, offer security, and create conditions for capability to grow get more from the relationship. Companies that treat people as interchangeable get what they're paying for. ### The reshoring proof Companies that offshored manufacturing for labor cost savings are now discovering that the knowledge they discarded doesn't reconstitute when they come back. The Reshoring Initiative has documented that most offshoring decisions miscalculate true costs by 20 to 30 percent, once supply chain risk, quality, lead times, and inventory costs are factored in. What that analysis still doesn't fully capture is the tribal knowledge — the undocumented expertise built over years of experience — that evaporated when the decision was made. That was the unrecorded balance sheet write-down, showing up years later as a skills gap that money alone can't quickly fix. Whirlpool's Bob saw it in 2006\. The companies now struggling to reshore are learning it the hard way in 2025. ### The real question The accounting standards won't change quickly. The SEC's 2020 disclosure rule was a small step that produced limited standardization. ISSB is still researching. Cappelli and Taylor are still petitioning. So the question for leaders is whether they're willing to do the calculation in their heads that the ledger refuses to do for them. The balance sheet doesn't record what walks out the door. That doesn't mean it isn't real. I've been making that argument [since at least 2006](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/understanding%5Fl/), and again [in 2011](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/laying-off-hands-losing-brains/), and [in 2015](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lack-of-respect-for-people-on-the-balance-sheet/), with no signs of stopping. Maybe one day the accountants will catch up. ### The SpaceX IPO, SPaaS, and Why the Rocket Isn't the Point URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-spacex-ipo-spaas-and-why-the-rocket-isnt-the-point/ Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:51:33.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/space-tech.jpg) My wife occasionally wanders into my office early in the morning to find me talking to Claude on one screen while a collection of very colorful, constantly updating charts fills another. She used to laugh. Then I showed her the returns my specialized sector portfolios have been generating, and the laughing stopped. It turns out that actively managing a small set of focused portfolios, in quantum computing, AI applied to biopharma, energy and grid resilience, biomed acquisition targets, and space technology, with Claude as a research and analysis partner, is one of the more engaging things I've done in retirement. It keeps me connected to the technology world I spent a career in, scratches the investing itch, and, not incidentally, has been very profitable this year. I've [written about the broader approach before](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-as-a-financial-analyst-a-year-of-portfolio-fine-tuning/); this post is about what that research turned up when I started pulling on the upcoming SpaceX IPO thread. Should I invest? If so, when? ## The IPO pattern problem The comparison set for modeling SpaceX matters a lot. Cult-driven consumer IPOs, Tesla (2010), Facebook (2012), and Uber (2019), follow a recognizable behavioral arc: large day-one pops as retail enthusiasm swamps available supply, meaningful giveback over the next four to eight weeks as momentum traders exit, then a more significant drop around the 180-day lockup expiration when insiders can finally sell. The day-one move is almost irrelevant to long-term investors. The lockup windows are where the entry opportunities tend to appear. Fundamentals-driven enterprise tech IPOs behave differently. Snowflake (2020) doubled on day one, but institutional investors who had valued it on cash flows provided a floor that purely retail-driven IPOs lack. Palantir, also 2020, bypassed the traditional IPO entirely with a direct listing, which compressed the usual day-one dynamics considerably. SpaceX sits in a hybrid category. The Musk premium on retail enthusiasm looks like Tesla. But the institutional investor base, which includes defense primes, sovereign wealth funds, and major enterprises with existing Starlink relationships, will anchor the valuation more analytically than a consumer brand IPO would. The model Claude helped me build says: watch the lockup windows, not the opening bell. That framing held for most of the comparison set. What complicated the analysis is that IPO mechanics themselves have been shifting: lockup periods have shortened, some companies now stagger releases across multiple tranches, and direct listings like Palantir's sidestep traditional lockups entirely. Accounting for those structural variations across a comparison set spanning 15 years required building a more adaptive model than any spreadsheet I'd attempt to maintain. (I'll concede that "Excel jockey" is a generous description of my pre-Claude quantitative capabilities.) What turned out to be more interesting than the IPO mechanics, though, was what the research uncovered underneath: a structural shift in the space industry that carries a different and arguably more durable investment thesis than "SpaceX goes public, figure out timing, buy it." ## SPaaS The industry term is Space as a Service, or SPaaS. (Quick disambiguation: SPaaS is also used in commercial real estate for flexible office space, the WeWork model. The space industry got there second but has the better story.) The concept follows the same arc as cloud computing, roughly 15 years behind. Amazon Web Services didn't start as a product. Amazon built infrastructure for its own operational needs, discovered it had surplus capacity, and realized that thousands of other businesses needed the same capability but would never build it themselves. The recurring revenue and switching costs that followed made AWS worth more than Amazon's retail business. Space is tracing the same path. SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 cut the cost per kilogram to orbit by roughly 90% over 15 years. Satellite manufacturing industrialized alongside it. Constellations that once required tens of billions can now be assembled for hundreds of millions. The hard infrastructure problem is largely solved. What's being built now is the software, data pipelines, and service contracts that turn persistent space presence into predictable, recurring revenue, sold to customers who need the capability but have no intention of ever owning a satellite. Those customers are everywhere. Agriculture companies want daily crop health monitoring across millions of acres; no farm operator is building a constellation. Insurance companies need satellite-derived flood mapping and wildfire perimeter data that terrestrial sensors can't supply at the resolution actuarial models now require. Shipping and aviation need continuous global vessel and aircraft tracking. Telecom carriers want coverage in regions where cell towers will never be economical. None of these customers cares how the satellite works. They want a data feed, an API, a monthly invoice. The sub-categories have already standardized into a stack that mirrors the cloud model: Launch-as-a-Service (ride-share payload slots, no dedicated rocket required), Satellite-as-a-Service (hosted payloads on existing platforms), Data-as-a-Service (processed imagery, weather data, and RF geolocation via subscription), and Space Operations as a Service (SOaaS) for organizations that want to operate payloads without building the operational infrastructure themselves. A few companies illustrate where this is actually generating revenue today. Spire Global operates a nanosatellite constellation and sells the output, weather analytics, vessel tracking, atmospheric data, and RF geolocation, as subscriptions to meteorological agencies, shipping companies, airlines, and defense customers. Spire itself uses "SPaaS" as an explicit product descriptor. The customer gets an API; Spire manages the constellation and the underlying complexity. Iridium is the more mature case: after a decade rebuilding its constellation at substantial capital cost, it has transitioned into the cash-flow phase, now in its third consecutive year of dividend growth. Its IoT platform, connecting remote sensors, maritime vessels, and aviation assets across every latitude including the poles, carries high switching costs baked into every contract. AST SpaceMobile is the most speculative but potentially the largest addressable market: direct-to-device satellite connectivity that reaches standard mobile phones without specialized hardware, with carriers as resellers paying per subscriber. ## Where SpaceX fits SpaceX is both the cause of SPaaS and a participant in it. The cost reduction that made the model economically viable came largely from Falcon 9 reusability. And Starlink, SpaceX's own constellation, is currently the largest SPaaS business operating at scale: direct internet subscriptions to consumers, enterprises, governments, and maritime operators, with no expectation on any customer's part that they understand orbital mechanics. The IPO will generate enormous visibility for the entire sector. The analogy that keeps coming up is Google's 2004 IPO, which didn't just create a new public company; it accelerated venture and public market investment across the whole internet ecosystem. The attention and capital that flowed into the infrastructure, the applications, and the adjacent plays arguably mattered as much as Google stock itself over the following decade. But there's a deeper pattern worth naming. SaaS didn't just make enterprise software cheaper; it collapsed the implementation barrier so completely that millions of small businesses that could never have afforded on-premise software now run their operations on it. AI-as-a-service did the same thing a generation later: what only large tech labs could build in 2020 is now something any developer can call via an API. Each cycle, the "as-a-service" model takes a complex, expensive infrastructure technology and expands who can actually use it by an order of magnitude. SPaaS is that pattern applied to space. A Colombian sugar cane farmer monitoring crop health via daily satellite imagery doesn't need to know what a LEO orbit is. Neither does the insurance actuary modeling flood risk, or the shipping company tracking its fleet. They just need the invoice. That demand acceleration is what makes the structural thesis interesting beyond the IPO timing question. SpaceX going public will do for space infrastructure what Google's IPO did for the internet: raise the capital, raise the profile, and pull forward a decade of investment into the whole ecosystem. Most of that capital will chase the rocket. The recurring invoice from the customer who will never build one is worth more. ### Which Leaders Have the Guts to Actually Respect Human Nature? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/which-leaders-have-the-guts-to-actually-respect-human-nature/ Last updated: 2026-05-19T14:02:44.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/toyota-kyushu-1.jpg) Toyota Kyushu, which I visited in 2008\. The yellow smokestacks aren't decorative — they make any grime or pollution immediately visible so it can be addressed immediately. An operational commitment to community accountability, built into a paint color. Jon Miller wrote something a few years ago at [Gemba Academy](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2018/12/10/respect-for-respect-for-human-nature/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that has stayed with me. The Toyota Way's second pillar is universally translated as "respect for people," but the original Japanese is *ningensei* (人間性), which means "human nature." The distinction matters more than it appears. "Respect for people" is a floor — be courteous, invest in training, don't humiliate anyone in public. Most organizations can claim this with a straight face. "Respect for human nature" asks something harder: what are people fundamentally capable of, and what conditions allow that capability to develop? That reframe came back to me recently when I encountered Inamori Kazuo's six decision questions, the same framework he used to build Kyocera, found KDDI, and then — at age 78, for a salary of ¥1 per year — return Japan Airlines to profitability in 24 months. (The full list, with brief explanations, is at the end of this post.) One question in particular lands differently through Jon's lens: "Does this decision create value for customers, employees, and society?" Society is in there explicitly. So is the long-horizon question: "Will I still be proud of this decision in 30 years?" These aren't business questions with a human veneer. They're human questions applied to business. ### The conference room wall test Walk into almost any company and you'll find some version of "people are our most important asset" — on the wall, in the annual report, in the employee handbook. It costs nothing to say. The real test is what happens when keeping that commitment becomes expensive. I know something about this firsthand. In 2001 I was running a photonics equipment manufacturing operation that had been genuinely transformed by the creativity, knowledge, and passion of the people in it. Production capacity had quintupled in under a year in the same floor space. Quality was near perfect. We had built something real. When the telecom bubble collapsed and demand dried up almost overnight, I fought to keep the operation intact. Drove hundreds of miles on 15 minutes' notice to make the case to corporate. It didn't matter that our technology was superior. It didn't matter that labor was a small fraction of total cost, or that our operation was orders of magnitude more efficient than theirs. Traditional financial thinking said manufacturing had to contract, and remote operations were difficult to control. [On September 10th, 2001](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-10th/), I laid off over 150 brilliant people, including myself. The terror of the next morning reframed the prior day considerably. The lesson I took wasn't that the fight wasn't worth having. It was that a single leader fighting mid-battle isn't enough. People-centric principles have to be embedded at the very top of an organization, above the level where traditional financial metrics hold pure sway. Otherwise, when the pressure comes, the principle loses. ### Philosophy as policy The leaders and organizations that have actually lived *ningensei* didn't leave it to individual managers to fight that battle each time. They built it into the structure before any crisis arrived. Toyota's answer is embedded in the lean system itself. Ask workers to surface waste and improve processes, and rational workers immediately wonder whether their ideas might eliminate their own jobs. Toyota's response was an explicit covenant: no full-time employee would be laid off as a result of kaizen. Displaced workers would be redeployed or retrained. This isn't generosity — it's the mechanical precondition for genuine engagement. Without job security, continuous improvement becomes a management extraction exercise dressed up as collaboration. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami shut down parts supply across Japan. Toyota kept its 25,000 North American workers on, using the downtime for training. There were no layoffs. Lincoln Electric in Cleveland made a similar commitment, more formally. James Lincoln built an explicit no-layoff guarantee into the operating model in the 1950s, paired with a generous incentive system. The guarantee held through multiple recessions over decades. The argument was unsentimental: you cannot ask workers to be efficient and innovative if they bear all the downside risk of their own efficiency. During downturns, hours were cut before people were cut, and the company absorbed the pain rather than exporting it to the workforce. Robert Chapman at Barry-Wehmiller applied the same logic during the 2008 financial crisis. Rather than cut anyone, he implemented mandatory furloughs across the entire company — himself included — 4 weeks unpaid, spread across the year. His framing: "better that we should all share the pain than that any of us should bear it all." The sacrifice ran from the factory floor to the executive suite in equal measure. Aaron Feuerstein at Malden Mills kept 3,000 workers on full payroll out of his own pocket after a factory fire in 1995\. Both men acted from character. The distinction worth noting is that Lincoln Electric and Toyota acted from policy — a commitment made before the crisis, held through it. ### The precondition nobody talks about There's an accounting problem underneath all of this, and it deserves its own post (coming soon). The short version: people appear on the P&L as pure expense — salaries, benefits, training. They appear nowhere on the balance sheet as an asset. So when a company lays people off, the financial statements show an unambiguous improvement, with no corresponding write-down of the creativity, experience, and institutional knowledge that just walked out the door. Unlike disposing of equipment, there's no balance sheet entry to force the real cost into the calculation. Traditional accounting doesn't just fail to capture the value of people; it actively creates the financial incentive to discard them. ### The harder question first None of this is to say that businesses never contract, or that hard decisions never have to be made. Sometimes they do. But it's worth asking whether contraction itself — the inability to grow, adapt, or pivot — is partly a failure of leadership imagination rather than an immovable market reality. And even when genuine contraction is unavoidable, the knee-jerk reach for layoffs skips the question that should come first: how do I better utilize the pent-up value sitting in the knowledge, creativity, and experience of these people? Financial statements don't answer that question; they don't even ask it. A balance sheet that carries equipment and goodwill but not human capital is structurally blind to the asset being discarded. Real leaders recognize that gap and think harder before pulling the lever that the accounting system makes look costless. ### The actual question We're in a period when a lot of people are feeling genuinely vulnerable to AI, to economic uncertainty, to decisions being made well above their heads. The anxiety is real and it isn't irrational. Here's a direct question for any leader reading this: would you take a pay cut to save your people? Would you push that cut harder on management than on the floor, since it's management's job to grow or pivot the business? Would you sacrifice a quarter's margin to hold a team together? And if you wouldn't, or couldn't, because the principle was never actually embedded above you, what does that say about what "people are our most important asset" actually means in your organization? Jon's translation of *ningensei* cuts through the comfortable version of the answer. Respecting people is a floor. Respecting human nature — what people are capable of when they feel safe, trusted, and valued — is a ceiling most organizations never seriously reach for. The ones that do tend to outperform over time, not despite the commitment, but because of it. Which leaders have the guts to find out? --- **Inamori's six questions** Inamori Kazuo applied these questions consistently across Kyocera, KDDI, and his JAL turnaround. They read simply. They aren't. 1. **Is it the right thing to do as a human being?** The frame is deliberately personal, not professional. Inamori believed most ethical failures in business come from leaders who shift their moral standards depending on the role they're in. Keeping the frame constant is the discipline. 2. **Are we doing this for the right reason?** Strip away the strategic rationale, the competitive pressure, the board expectation. What's the actual intention behind the decision? 3. **Have we put in the maximum effort, every day?** Not "are we working hard." Whether we are genuinely committed to continuous improvement, with consistency and sincerity, not just when it's convenient. 4. **Does this decision create value for customers, employees, and society?** Most businesses optimize for one stakeholder, tolerate a second, and ignore the third. Alignment across all three is the test. 5. **Will I still be proud of this decision in 30 years?** The long horizon changes the nature of the decision itself. Short-term pressures that feel urgent tend to look different from three decades out. 6. **Are we controlling our emotions, or are our emotions controlling us?** The question acknowledges that emotional reactions masquerade as strategy. Naming the question before the decision creates a brief but useful pause. ### Who Built the Toyota Production System? A Recovered Archive and a Debate Worth Reading URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/who-built-the-toyota-production-system-a-recovered-archive-and-a-debate-worth-reading/ Last updated: 2026-05-18T20:49:25.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/archive-documents-1.jpg) Almost 30 years ago I launched Superfactory.com, born out of my own lean journey and a desire to share what I was learning - and to play with this new technology called "the internet." (Holy crap I'm old...) Over 20 years it grew into a substantial resource hub, with a monthly e-newsletter that peaked at nearly 100,000 subscribers, before I moved on to co-found [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in 2012. A few weeks ago I found a full backup of the articles contributed by some of the best lean minds of that era. To preserve and share I've added them to a new [Superfactory Archives](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/superfactory-archives/) page with full attribution to the original authors. Most hold up well, and some are even more relevant now than when they were written. A few are genuinely primary source material that you won't find anywhere else. That last category is where things get interesting. ## A gentleman's brawl Late 2005 into 2006, Art Smalley and Norman Bodek ([RIP](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/norman-bodek-and-respect-for-people/)) used Superfactory as the arena for one of the more substantive debates the lean world has ever had: who actually built the Toyota Production System, and what role did Shigeo Shingo really play? Both men had standing. Smalley was one of the first foreign nationals to work directly for Toyota in Japan, spending a decade there before moving to McKinsey as their lean manufacturing expert. Bodek founded Productivity Press, published over 100 Japanese management books in English, and was the person who introduced Shingo's work to the Western world. He had known both Ohno and Shingo personally. It started, as these things often do, with a respectful provocation. In December 2005, Smalley published "[TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tps-vs-lean-and-the-law-of-unintended-consequences/)," a sharp critique of how Western lean implementations had drifted from Toyota's actual priorities. The article opened with a visit to a Toyota engine plant in West Virginia that had no value stream maps, no dedicated change agents, no U-shaped cells, yet was the most efficient engine operation in the United States. His point: the tools had become the goal, decoupled from the principles behind them. It's a thesis that's only gotten more relevant since 2005. The debate about Shingo ignited a few months later. In April 2006, Smalley published "[Shigeo Shingo's Influence on TPS](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shigeo-shingos-influence-on-tps/)," an interview with Isao Kato, a 35-year Toyota veteran who had personally coordinated Shingo's visits to the company. Kato's account was precise and meticulous. Shingo first came to Toyota in 1956, after the foundational concepts of JIT and Jidoka were already in place. He taught an industrial engineering course (the "P-Course") to about 3,000 engineers over 20 years, averaging 3 to 4 visits per year. His SMED contributions were largely accomplished at other companies, not Toyota itself; Toyota had already reduced die change times significantly on its own before and after Shingo's involvement. Kato was appreciative but firm: "There is simply no person in Toyota Motor Corporation that thinks Mr. Shingo invented TPS." Bodek read it and was, in his own words, "considerably, to put it mildly, annoyed." His response, "[Dr. Shigeo Shingo: The Greatest Manufacturing Consultant](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dr-shigeo-shingo-the-greatest-manufacturing-consultant/)," came in June 2006\. He called Shingo "the greatest manufacturing consultant of the last 100 years" and questioned whether the Kato who gave that interview actually understood what Shingo had contributed (he suggested the interviewee "probably was Dr. Shingo's chauffeur"). He cited the former Toyota chairman who said at the dedication of Toyota's first plant in China that "if it wasn't for that man's father, Toyota would not be where it is today." And he invoked the chicken-and-egg answer he'd gotten from Iwata and Nakao, two men who had spent 15 years working with both Ohno and Shingo, when he asked them who invented JIT. Smalley, via Kato, responded in July 2006 with "[Dr. Shigeo Shingo's P-Course and Contribution to TPS](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dr-shigeo-shingos-p-course-and-contribution-to-tps/)." This one is extraordinary. Kato laid out the full curriculum of the P-Course in detail, showing that it contained no JIT, no Jidoka, no kanban, no standardized work. He described Shingo's shift in attitude after the 1973 oil shock, when Toyota was the only major company in Japan to turn a profit and Shingo suddenly became very interested in studying TPS. He addressed errors in Shingo's 1983 SMED book about Toyota. And he identified a key structural problem: most of Shingo's later English-language fame rested on books written after 1980, when he had finished studying TPS, not during the years when the system was actually being built. Bodek responded one more time in August 2006 with "[Who Can Shout Louder?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/who-can-shout-louder/)," a somewhat more measured piece that cited Ohno's own words from a 1976 JMA journal article crediting Shingo's SMED concept, noted that Ohno and Shingo had appeared as co-equal keynote speakers at the same conference, and made the point that Shingo's process-versus-operation distinction (X-axis vs. Y-axis, in Bodek's framing) was the conceptual foundation for teaching flow thinking to those thousands of Toyota engineers. Even if Shingo didn't invent the system, teaching 3,000 engineers to see processes differently matters. Both arguments are largely correct, and the disagreement is partly definitional. If "inventing TPS" means creating its foundational concepts (JIT, Jidoka, the pull system), that happened before Shingo arrived. If it means shaping the thinking of thousands of engineers who then went on to implement and refine the system for decades, Shingo's contribution is harder to dismiss. Kato acknowledged the training influence; Bodek acknowledged Ohno's primacy. They were arguing about the relative weight of two things that were both true. What makes this exchange extraordinary is what it is: a real-time debate between people who were actually in the room, not a Wikipedia summary or a secondary source written 40 years later. Smalley worked inside Toyota. Bodek had personal relationships with both Ohno and Shingo and published their books. Kato coordinated Shingo's visits for 20 years. These are primary sources, written from memory and conviction, and the fact that they contradict each other in interesting ways is a feature, not a bug. The rest of the [archive](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/superfactory-archives/) is worth exploring too. ### Veggie Khao Soi — Northern Thailand's Coconut Curry Noodle Soup URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/veggie-khao-soi-northern-thailands-coconut-curry-noodle-soup/ Last updated: 2026-05-17T14:59:11.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/khao-soi.jpg) **Serves:** 4–5 **Total time:** \~55 minutes **Difficulty:** Moderate **Diet:** Vegetarian --- ## Background Khao Soi is one of the defining dishes of Northern Thailand, particularly associated with Chiang Mai and the surrounding region. Its roots reflect the area's historical position at the crossroads of trade routes connecting China, Burma, and the rest of mainland Southeast Asia. The dish shows clear Burmese-Shan influence—most visibly in its use of cardamom and turmeric, spices more common to the curry traditions of Burma and South Asia than to the central Thai kitchen. The name likely derives from the Shan "khao swe," meaning noodles. What makes Khao Soi structurally distinctive is its double-noodle presentation: soft egg noodles served in the broth and a nest of crispy fried noodles on top. This contrast—tender and crunchy, rich and bright—is the dish's signature character and should not be skipped. The garnishes are equally important: pickled mustard greens cut the coconut richness, raw shallots provide sharpness, and lime brings everything into focus. This version is vegetarian, substituting carrots, cauliflower, and kale for the traditional chicken or beef. The technique—making a fresh curry paste, building the broth in stages, and finishing with the classic garnishes—remains faithful to the original. --- ## Ingredients ### Curry Paste - 2 dried chiles (guajillo or New Mexico for mild; dried Thai chiles for heat) - 2 cups (480 ml) boiling water, for soaking - 4 garlic cloves - 2 shallots, peeled - 1 inch (2.5 cm) piece fresh ginger - 1 tbsp ground coriander - 2 tsp ground turmeric - 2 tsp curry powder - ¼ tsp ground cardamom - Zest of 2 limes - ½ bunch cilantro, stems only - 2 tbsp chile soaking liquid (reserved from soak) ### Soup - 2 tbsp neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - 2 medium onions, sliced - Two 13½ oz (400 ml) cans full-fat coconut milk - 1½ cups (360 ml) water (use the empty coconut milk can to measure) - 4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped - 1 small cauliflower, broken into florets - 1 bunch kale, stemmed and roughly chopped - Kosher salt - Juice of 2 limes ### Noodles - 14 oz (400 g) fresh or dried egg noodles (or Chinese-style wheat noodles) - Neutral oil, for frying (about ¼ cup, for the crispy topping) *Note: Reserve approximately 2 oz (60 g) of the noodles before cooking to fry for the crispy topping.* ### Garnishes (Essential) - Pickled mustard greens — store-bought (found at Asian markets) or substitute: quick-pickled cabbage (see note below) - 3–4 shallots, very thinly sliced - Fresh cilantro leaves - 6 lime wedges *Pickled mustard greens substitute: Toss ½ cup thinly sliced green cabbage with 2 tbsp rice vinegar, ½ tsp sugar, and a pinch of salt. Let stand 20 minutes. Drain well before serving.* --- ## Instructions ### 1\. Make the Curry Paste 1. Soak dried chiles in boiling water for 30 minutes. Drain, reserving 2 tbsp of the soaking liquid. 2. Add chiles and all remaining paste ingredients to a blender or food processor. Add the reserved soaking liquid. 3. Blend on high until smooth, adding a little more liquid if needed. Set aside. ### 2\. Build the Soup 1. In a Dutch oven or large wide-bottomed pot, warm the oil over medium heat. 2. Add onions and cook 8–10 minutes until soft but not browned. 3. Add the curry paste and cook 4–5 minutes, stirring frequently, until fragrant and slightly darkened. 4. Pour in coconut milk and water. Stir to combine. 5. Add carrots and cauliflower. Season with salt. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce to a simmer. 6. Cook 10 minutes until carrots and cauliflower are just tender. 7. Add kale and cook 4–5 minutes until wilted. 8. Add lime juice. Taste and adjust salt. Keep warm over low heat. ### 3\. Make the Crispy Noodle Topping 1. Heat about ¼ cup neutral oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. 2. Add the reserved noodles in a loose nest. Fry 2–3 minutes, turning once, until golden and crisp. 3. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate. Salt lightly. Set aside. *Tip: For dried noodles, fry them dry without pre-cooking. For fresh noodles, pat them as dry as possible before frying.* ### 4\. Cook the Noodles 1. Cook remaining egg noodles according to package instructions. 2. Drain well and divide among bowls. ### 5\. Assemble and Serve 1. Ladle hot soup over noodles in each bowl. 2. Top with a nest of crispy noodles. 3. Arrange pickled mustard greens and sliced shallots alongside. 4. Scatter cilantro leaves on top. 5. Serve immediately with lime wedges. --- ## Recommended Cooking Sequence 1. Soak chiles (30 min passive time — start this first) 2. While chiles soak: prep all vegetables; slice shallots; make quick-pickled cabbage if using 3. Blend curry paste 4. Build soup — simmer through kale 5. Fry crispy noodle topping 6. Cook remaining noodles 7. Assemble bowls and serve --- ## Presentation Khao Soi is a bowl dish. Use deep, wide bowls. Noodles go in first, broth and vegetables ladled over, crispy noodles piled on top — not mixed in. Garnishes (shallots, pickled greens, cilantro) are arranged around the edge or on the side, not buried. Lime wedges on the rim. The visual contrast between the golden crispy topping and the rich amber broth is the dish's calling card. --- ## Shopping List ### Produce - 2 medium onions - 4 medium carrots - 1 small cauliflower - 1 bunch kale - 3–4 shallots - 1 inch fresh ginger - 1 head garlic - 4 limes - 1 bunch cilantro ### Pantry & Dry Goods - Dried chiles — guajillo or New Mexico (mild) or dried Thai chiles (hot) - Full-fat coconut milk (2 cans, 13.5 oz each) - 14 oz egg noodles or Chinese-style wheat noodles - Ground coriander - Ground turmeric - Curry powder - Ground cardamom - Neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - Kosher salt ### Pickled Mustard Greens (Garnish) Available at Asian grocery stores (look for jarred or refrigerated pak dong). If unavailable, substitute with ½ cup green cabbage + rice vinegar + sugar + salt (see recipe note). ### The Right Leadership Call, Built in Advance URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-right-leadership-call-built-in-advance/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T11:40:54.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/leadership-character.jpg) I was in college in the fall of 1982 when seven people in Chicago died from cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. I remember the news coverage, the sudden paranoia around medicine cabinets, and the speed with which Johnson & Johnson responded. Forty-plus years later, I still remember it. That's not an accident. Someone had pulled bottles off store shelves, injected the capsules with potassium cyanide, and returned them. The tampering happened long after the product left J&J's factory. Legally and logically, the company had an easy out. The [FDA hadn't ordered a recall](https://journalism.university/media-ethics-and-laws/tylenol-crisis-ethical-management-lessons/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and even the FBI recommended against a full nationwide pull, arguing the contamination appeared limited to the Chicago area. J&J could have contained the response, lawyered up, and waited. Instead, CEO James Burke asked his team two questions: how do we protect the people, and how do we save the product? In that order. The company spent $100 million to recall 31 million bottles of Tylenol nationwide and relaunched two months later in tamper-proof packaging. Burke went on national television himself. J&J set up a consumer hotline, cooperated fully with investigators, and offered free replacement bottles to anyone who turned theirs in. Congress passed what became known as "the Tylenol bill," making product tampering a federal offense, and the FDA eventually required tamper-proof packaging across the entire OTC industry. The business result is almost counterintuitive. [Market share dropped from 35% to 7% immediately after the deaths. By mid-1983 it had climbed back to 30%, and reached 35% by year's end.](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/tylenol-and-the-legacy-of-jjs-james-burke/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Tylenol went on to outsell the next four leading painkillers combined. A crisis that could have killed the brand permanently instead cemented it. Now contrast that with what happened 28 years later in the Gulf of Mexico. When the Deepwater Horizon platform exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, [BP had no crisis management plan in place](https://bryghtpath.com/deepwater-horizon-case-study/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). It was as though the company assumed such a thing could not happen to them, so there was no point being ready for it. Ambiguous public communication underestimated the volume of the spill while overestimating the company's ability to plug the well, creating an image of incompetence, at best, and fraudulence, at worst. Then their CEO opened his mouth. Tony Hayward, under enormous public and media pressure, said: "There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I'd like my life back." Eleven workers were dead. Thousands of Gulf Coast families had their livelihoods destroyed. Fifteen years later, BP has faced 390,000 lawsuits and shelled out $71 billion in damages and mitigation, with restoration efforts still incomplete. Boeing's handling of the 737 MAX crashes is, if anything, worse, because the underlying problem was self-inflicted. Two 737 MAX aircraft crashed in October 2018 and March 2019, killing 346 people, and investigations revealed issues with the aircraft's automated flight control system and Boeing's safety practices. Rather than grounding the fleet immediately after the second crash, [CEO Dennis Muilenburg appealed directly to President Trump about the safety of the aircraft](https://fortune.com/2019/05/31/gm-boeing-crisis-management/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) as aviation authorities around the world were grounding the MAX. The formal public apology came 80 days after the second crash. Both BP and Boeing eventually said the right things. Eventually. The problem is that "eventually" is a confession of institutional instinct, and the instinct in both cases was self-protection first, accountability a distant second. There's a structural insight buried in these cases that goes beyond PR advice. Burke didn't navigate the Tylenol crisis well because he had a superior communications strategy. He navigated it well because J&J had a written corporate credo, developed decades earlier by former chairman Robert Wood Johnson, that explicitly ranked the company's obligations: consumers first, employees second, communities third, shareholders last. When the crisis hit, Burke didn't have to decide what the right thing was. He already knew. The framework had been built when the stakes were low and the thinking could be clear. But a credo is only as good as the person holding it. As I wrote [a few weeks ago](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-ends-dont-justify-the-character/), solid culture and principles can crumble fast under a leader who lacks the character to act on them when it costs something real. Burke had both. The credo gave him the framework; his character gave him the resolve to use it when $100 million was on the line and the FBI was telling him not to. That combination is rarer than it should be. The Tylenol lesson isn't really about crisis communications. It's about whether your values are load-bearing before you need them to be. The J&J recall didn't just recover market share; it changed an entire industry. Tamper-proof packaging on every medication bottle you've opened for the past four decades exists because of those 7 deaths in Chicago and one CEO who asked the right question first. That's a different category of outcome than survival. That's leadership that compounds. Most readers under 50 weren't paying attention in 1982, or weren't born yet. But the structural dynamics, the instinct to minimize, wait, deflect, protect the brand while appearing to address the problem, those haven't changed at all. If anything they've gotten worse in an era when social media makes every gaffe permanent and every delay visible in real time. Burke's choice looks obvious in retrospect. The right thing usually does. What made it possible was the full stack: a credo built before the crisis, a leader with the character to act on it when the cost was real, and a culture that had genuinely internalized both. The harder part to build in advance: stakeholders who demand all three and refuse to rationalize away any of them. Employees, boards, customers. The willingness to accept less is where the whole thing starts to unravel. ### The Innovation Engine We're Choosing to Break URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-innovation-engine-were-choosing-to-break/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T21:21:56.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/research-innovation-1.jpg) I recently caught a Bloomberg interview with authors of a new book, [*Priority Technologies: Ensuring U.S. Security and Shared Prosperity*](https://www.amazon.com/Priority-Technologies-Ensuring-Security-Prosperity/dp/0262054299/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), edited by MIT's Elisabeth Reynolds with a foreword by Nobel laureate economist Simon Johnson. Interesting enough that I went and read it. The book covers six technology sectors where the U.S. must lead or fall behind: semiconductors, biomanufacturing, critical minerals, drones, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing. All of it worth your time. But the argument that stayed with me wasn't about any specific technology. It was about what actually produces technological leadership in the first place – and what we're currently doing to undermine it. ## The thing private capital won't fund Before World War II, the [federal government spent almost nothing on R&D](https://www.porchlightbooks.com/blogs/excerpts/priority-technologies?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The war forced the issue. Radar, synthetic rubber, penicillin, the Manhattan Project -- these weren't market outcomes; they were the products of deliberate, federally funded science. Congress recognized this, and the government-university research partnership was institutionalized in the 1940s, driven largely by then-MIT president Vannevar Bush. Johnson's framing in the book's foreword is worth sitting with: "Vannevar Bush realized it wasn't about a stock of technology, it was about a flow of innovation." By some estimates, [federal investment in non-defense R&D has accounted for up to 25 percent of U.S. economic growth since World War II](https://news.mit.edu/2026/how-to-expand-us-economy-priority-technologies-book-0421?ref=kevinmeyer.com). That flow starts in university labs. Here's the part that critics of government research spending almost always miss: the value isn't just in what you set out to discover. It's in what you find along the way. ARPANET was a military communications project; nobody imagined it would become the commercial internet. GPS was a defense system before it became the foundation of the entire ride-sharing and logistics economy. Decades of NIH-funded basic research into mRNA as a biological mechanism preceded by many years anyone thinking to use it for vaccines. The serendipity isn't a bug in the system. It's arguably the most valuable feature. Private capital is terrible at funding this kind of work, and for entirely rational reasons. Basic research is long-horizon, uncertain, and the returns -- when they come -- often accrue broadly rather than to the investor. A venture fund that backs a company expecting a 7-year return is already pushing its LPs' patience. Funding a university lab that might produce something transformative in 20 years, possibly in a direction nobody anticipated, is just not how private capital works. Government is the only institution with both the mandate and the time horizon to make these bets. When government stops making them, the pipeline doesn't slow down gradually. It empties. The current administration's proposed budgets are cutting science agency funding across the board -- NSF, NIH, DARPA, NASA, all taking hits. I'll say it plainly: defunding the federal-university research partnership isn't trimming waste. It's draining the pipeline for the next decade of innovation, including in the six technology sectors the book identifies as most critical to national and economic security. ## Talent, domestic and imported American universities and research institutions have produced extraordinary scientists and engineers -- full stop. The domestic talent base is the foundation of U.S. technological leadership and shouldn't get lost in any discussion of immigration. The question isn't whether American-born scientists are capable. Obviously they are. The question is whether the country is developing enough of them across these fields to meet the competitive moment, and whether it's making itself attractive to the best talent that's available globally. On both counts, the answer is currently no. *Priority Technologies* flags this as a [cross-cutting theme across all six sectors](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/6-priority-technologies-to-help-secure-us-economic-interests?ref=kevinmeyer.com): the U.S. faces a fundamental workforce shortage, compounded by "radically reduced immigration" and demographic trends that neither domestic education reform nor AI will fully offset in the near term. Historically, international scientific talent has been a force multiplier for American domestic research, not a substitute for it. Foreign-born graduate students working alongside American researchers, often staying to start companies or join the workforce, have added to what was already a strong base. [In 2019, 41 percent of all U.S. STEM PhD graduates were foreign-born visa holders](https://global.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FINALUniversity-Engagement-with-China%5FAn-MIT-Approach-Nov2022.pdf?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \-- and [roughly 90 percent of them stayed in the U.S. to work after graduating](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.11146?ref=kevinmeyer.com), many going on to found companies or anchor research programs. That's not a replacement story. That's an amplification story, and it's one the U.S. built its post-war technological lead on. China understands this dynamic well, which is why it's now actively working the other side of the ledger. Visa restrictions, rising scrutiny of Chinese-born researchers, and a general climate of unwelcome are pushing talented Chinese scientists – including those at MIT who would previously have stayed – to pursue careers elsewhere. Outstanding Chinese scientists at MIT have recently decided to take their careers to countries they view as more welcoming, often back to China itself. Beijing is not unhappy about this. A talent pipeline that used to flow strongly toward the U.S. is reversing, and we're providing the pressure. Former MIT president L. Rafael Reif, whose endorsement appears in the book, was blunt in a [recent NPR interview](https://www.npr.org/2026/04/25/nx-s1-5772703/former-mit-president-says-the-us-is-losing-the-innovation-race-to-china?ref=kevinmeyer.com): "Stop attacking immigrants. This country needs them." He also noted that China, which has pursued an explicit "talent first" strategy for over a decade, has [consistently graduated more advanced STEM students than the U.S. for the past 15 years](https://ifp.org/stem-immigration-is-critical-to-american-national-security/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and is closing the gap in top-tier research output. The U.S. has a natural advantage China can't replicate: it's historically been the world's top destination for globally mobile scientific talent. That advantage doesn't maintain itself, and it doesn't survive active dismantling. ## Quantum as a case study The book's quantum computing chapter, written by MIT's William Oliver and Jonathan Ruane, is a clean illustration of what's at stake. Quantum computing has near-term potential to [accelerate drug discovery, materials science, and energy applications](https://www.eurasiareview.com/03052026-priority-technologies-ensuring-u-s-security-and-shared-prosperity-book-review/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in ways classical computers can't approach. Oliver and Ruane's conclusion: "The country that achieves quantum leadership will gain decisive advantages in these strategically important industries." The U.S. is currently in a strong position in quantum. Maintaining it requires exactly the combination of sustained federal basic research funding and deep scientific talent that current policy is targeting for cuts. The physics doesn't care about the political calendar. ## The decade-long pipeline What *Priority Technologies* gets right, and what tends to get lost in budget debates, is how slowly these systems respond to disruption. The semiconductor fabs we're now trying to rebuild domestically -- belatedly, expensively, correctly -- require a trained workforce that takes a decade to develop. The quantum and biotech breakthroughs that matter in 2035 come from graduate students doing basic research funded today. Choke the investment now, and you feel it in 2033, not in the next news cycle. Reynolds states the stakes plainly in the book's introduction: the U.S. must "build on its decades of experience in developing frontier technologies" -- a measured way of saying that the lead we have today reflects choices made a long time ago, and the lead we'll have (or won't) in 2040 reflects choices being made right now. Vannevar Bush understood this in 1945\. The question is whether anyone in Washington is paying attention in 2026. ### The Framework Graveyard: What the Consulting Industry Did to Good Research URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-framework-graveyard-what-the-consulting-industry-did-to-good-research/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:20:04.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/05/frameworks.jpg) A few days ago I came across a LinkedIn series by [Corina Enache](https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinaenache/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), an anthropologist who has spent the past several weeks doing something I hadn't seen done before: methodically tracing management's most beloved frameworks back to their origins, and finding that what we actually use in organizations barely resembles what those origins intended. I've linked every post in the series at the bottom of this page, and each one is worth reading in full. I read through the series in one sitting and felt the slow-building discomfort of someone who has sat through a lot of change management presentations. I've used some of these frameworks. I've probably cited them. It turns out I was, in several cases, citing a caricature. With Corina's work as the jumping-off point, I want to push the argument one step further. Because the pattern she documents isn't just ironic. I think it's structural. ## The evidence first Abraham Maslow never drew his famous pyramid. His 1943 paper described needs as fluid, overlapping, nonlinear, "a landscape not a ladder" (his words). The pyramid was drawn in 1960 by Charles McDermid, a consulting psychologist writing in *Business Horizons* about how to generate maximum employee motivation at minimum cost. Douglas McGregor had already been translating Maslow for business audiences and quietly discarding the nuance in the process. Sixty years of critiques of Maslow's hierarchy are largely critiques of McDermid's diagram, as [Bridgman, Cummings and Ballard](https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2017.0351?ref=kevinmeyer.com) documented in the *Academy of Management Learning & Education* in 2019. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed her five stages, denial through acceptance, by sitting with terminally ill patients. With people who were dying, or watching someone they loved die. Death doesn't run a consultation process. It doesn't accept feedback or hold a town hall. The only dignified response available is, eventually, acceptance. That is what the model describes. We now apply it to office reorganizations, where the framing does something useful for management: it turns employee resistance into a phase to be managed rather than information to be heard. The person objecting to the restructure is just in bargaining. Give it time. Kurt Lewin almost certainly never built Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze. The word "refreezing" doesn't appear anywhere in his writing. It was introduced posthumously, assembled from fragments after his death in 1947, until the scaffolding became the building and the building got Lewin's name on the door. [Cummings, Bridgman and Brown](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726715577707?ref=kevinmeyer.com) documented this in *Human Relations* in 2016\. The irony is complete: Lewin spent his career arguing that behavior cannot be understood by looking at individuals in isolation, that you have to look at the whole web of forces and relationships surrounding them. What carries his name today is a three-box diagram of an ice cube. The MBTI is the most familiar case and probably the most abused. Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs were a writer and a homemaker, not psychologists, building an instrument to measure Jungian typology that Jung himself never intended to be operationalized into a personality test. Between a quarter and half of people who retake it within weeks receive a different type. The categories are binary despite the underlying traits existing on a spectrum. Its predictive validity for job performance is weak. It has survived, as Corina observes, because it gives people a language for difference, not because it's accurate. Those are not the same thing. That's 4\. Corina's series covers several more: Tuckman's Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing (developed from therapy group literature, applied prescriptively to organizational teams), Kotter's 8 Steps (the model became the checklist, the checklist became the change), Spiral Dynamics (Clare Graves never used colors; Don Beck invented them to move away from racial ranking, and they became a new ranking system), Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) (classified as pseudoscience by multiple systematic reviews), Psychological Safety (the distortion was structural from the start, baked into the academic publishing machine rather than happening after the fact), and Ubuntu (a complete ontological philosophy reduced to a poster on a conference room wall). The pattern holds across every case. ## The pattern isn't accidental We tend to frame these distortions as unfortunate, as simplification gone too far, as consultants who didn't read carefully enough. That framing lets the industry off the hook. Nuanced ideas don't scale. A framework that requires genuine engagement with complexity, that holds uncertainty, that resists being converted into a checklist or a survey or a two-day certification, cannot be productized. And the management consulting industry is, fundamentally, a productization business. The genius of Maslow's actual paper is also the reason it couldn't be sold: it treated human motivation as irreducibly messy. McDermid's pyramid could be put on a slide. Kübler-Ross's actual clinical insight, that people need to be genuinely heard in the face of loss, is harder to sell than a curve that tells managers which stage their employees are in. Lewin's field theory requires thinking about whole systems of forces and relationships. The ice cube diagram requires a PowerPoint template. Simplification is the product. The pyramid, the curve, the three boxes, the four letters: these exist because they can be packaged and certified at scale to organizations that want the credibility of the research without the friction of the complexity. The researchers whose names end up on the frameworks rarely built them to be franchises. Several of them, Graves, Lewin, Kübler-Ross, spent years watching their work get stripped of what made it interesting. The consultants and management writers who followed didn't set out to distort anything; most were probably trying to help. But the gravity of a commercial ecosystem pulls consistently in one direction: toward the version that fits on a slide and away from the version that would slow things down. Corina ends her series with a question worth sitting with: who designed this framework, who sells it, who uses it, and who gets used by it? The knowledge in these systems has almost always flowed in one direction. So has the money, and so has the power. I'd add one more: before you reach for the framework, could you do the work without it? The work being: actually observing what's happening, listening to what people are telling you, exercising judgment about the specific situation in front of you. If the answer is no, that's worth examining. If the answer is yes, the framework is an accelerator, not a substitute for judgment. The trouble starts when we can no longer tell the difference, and a stage, a type, or a color quietly replaces the person we were supposed to be paying attention to. --- *Corina Enache's full series, each post linked below, is where this post began.* - [Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fhere-we-are-dear-reader-with-maslow-you-activity-7456080764036739072-4Pv0?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Kübler-Ross Five Stages](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fif-you-work-in-any-shape-or-form-associated-activity-7453864910670979072-ZHSq?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Kurt Lewin / Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fi-wasnt-planning-to-continue-this-series-activity-7455134115839897600-tYE3?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [MBTI](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fthe-series-continues-with-a-roast-of-the-activity-7454762598111129600-nwuU?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Tuckman's Stages of Group Development](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fi-had-fun-yesterday-with-k%C3%BCbler-ross-so-i-activity-7454381262468997120-Jv1z?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Kotter's 8 Steps](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fa-few-years-back-when-covid-started-i-was-activity-7456239449790828544-KSw2?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Spiral Dynamics](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fand-to-close-off-this-roasting-series-here-activity-7455299203368534016-bEat?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fyou-are-not-letting-me-end-this-dear-readers-activity-7455492152584908800-2n8Q?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Psychological Safety / Edmondson](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fthe-series-closes-with-amy-edmondson-and-activity-7454817501068275712-D%5Fer?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Ubuntu](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fevery-entry-in-this-series-has-followed-the-activity-7456685185145671680-ItUk?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Cynefin / Snowden](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/corinaenache%5Fcynefin-activity-7455488239450234880-RclV?ref=kevinmeyer.com) *(the one she wouldn't roast)* ### The F1 Pit Stop Analogy You Haven't Actually Used URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-f1-pit-stop-analogy-you-havent-actually-used/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:20:26.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/pitstop.jpg) Oh good. Another lean blog post using Formula 1 pit stops as a metaphor. Quick changeover! Standardized work! Roles clarity! You've seen it a hundred times. I've written something like it at least twice. At this point the F1 pit stop is practically the clip art of the lean world, a visual shorthand so overused it's lost most of its meaning. So bear with me, because I'm about to use it again. Only this time I want to talk about what lean practitioners almost universally missed when they borrowed the analogy. The pit stop metaphor turns out to be far richer than we made it, and a remarkable 2007 study out of [Great Ormond Street Hospital in London](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9592.2006.02239.x?ref=kevinmeyer.com) proves the point. Researchers at one of the world's premier pediatric cardiac surgery centers were trying to reduce errors during a specific, perilous moment: the handover of patients from the operating theater to the intensive care unit after complex congenital heart surgery. Think about what that involves. In roughly 15 minutes, a team transfers ventilation, monitoring lines, inotropes, vasodilators, and the entire accumulated clinical knowledge from a 4-8 hour surgery, all while the patient is at peak vulnerability. It is, essentially, a high-stakes, multi-system, multi-professional handoff under time pressure. Sound familiar? It should. That's not just a pit stop. That's every inter-process handoff in every manufacturing or service operation. **Going to the Gemba** The researchers didn't watch a YouTube video of a pit stop and draw some parallels. They went to Maranello. Ferrari F1 invited the team to watch practice pit stops and conduct detailed discussions with the race director. Two aviation training captains also observed hospital handovers and provided additional input. This was genuine gemba, crossing industry boundaries to observe expert practice firsthand, not secondhand analogy. What they brought back wasn't a stopwatch philosophy. It was a complete framework: defined leadership (a single coordinator with clear handoff authority), explicit task allocation, sequential phasing, structured communication discipline, checklists, situation awareness protocols, hierarchy-free escalation, and pre-handover briefing. If that list looks a lot like the Toyota Production System applied to information transfer, that's not an accident. **What Lean Actually Missed** When lean practitioners point to an F1 pit stop, they're almost always talking about SMED, Shingo's Single Minute Exchange of Die methodology, reducing changeover time by separating internal and external setup, standardizing tools, and simplifying fasteners. Valid and useful. But it's one thread from a much larger tapestry. The hospital study surfaced what's actually interesting about a pit stop: the handoff architecture. Before each tire change, roles are assigned and understood. During the stop, communication is deliberately minimal so the choreography can execute without interference. The lollipop man (the coordinator) holds situation awareness while specialists execute narrow tasks. And critically, the team debriefs after every race to review what happened. None of that is about speed. It's about reliability under pressure, which is a very different problem. **Compound Errors and Decoupled Failures** The most striking finding in the study involves what happened to errors after the new protocol was introduced. Before the new handover process, technical errors and information omissions were statistically correlated: when the equipment handover went badly, the information briefing also suffered. A poor technical handoff compounded into poor knowledge transfer, exactly the kind of error cascade that James Reason's Swiss Cheese Model describes. One hole aligned with another. After implementing the structured protocol, that correlation disappeared. The protocol essentially decoupled the failure modes by sequencing them into distinct phases: equipment transfer first, information handover second, group discussion third. Even when one phase was imperfect, the others held. In lean terms, this is poka-yoke logic applied to the transfer of tacit knowledge. The structure itself interrupts the defect propagation. **The Turnover Problem Nobody Talks About** There's one more finding worth pulling out, and it has direct implications for any lean practitioner trying to sustain standard work in a high-turnover environment. F1 pit crews are remarkably stable. A team of roughly 20 people sees one or two changes per year. The researchers noted this explicitly as a key differentiator, because Great Ormond Street's ICU rotated six residents every three months, with a nurse turnover of approximately 10% annually. The protocol had to be designed for an inherently unstable team structure, trainable in 30 minutes or less at staff induction, documented on laminated sheets at each bedside. And it worked, with a 95% compliance rate on the pre-handover transfer form. This is a lesson lean operations often dodge. Standard work is easy to sustain when your workforce is stable. The interesting design problem is building standard work that remains robust when it isn't, which is the actual situation in most hospitals, warehouses, call centers, and frankly most manufacturing facilities above a certain size. **The Analogy Was Always Bigger** The F1 pit stop metaphor earned its place in lean training because it's viscerally compelling. Eighteen people, seven seconds, zero mistakes. But that image tends to lock people onto the speed dimension, the changeover efficiency story, while the deeper lesson sits right next to it, largely ignored. The deeper lesson is about what happens at the seams between processes, where knowledge, authority, and physical work transfer from one team to another. That's where errors compound, where tacit knowledge evaporates, where the next team inherits problems they weren't warned about. So the next time someone in your organization uses an F1 pit stop to make a point about quick changeover, ask them a different question: what does your post-surgery handoff protocol look like? ### Cooking My Way Around the World: A Midyear Update URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking-my-way-around-the-world-a-midyear-update/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:20:49.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/zanzibar-pizza-1.jpg) At the start of 2026, I set myself a somewhat ambitious goal: cook traditional dishes from 30 different countries over the course of the year, hosting a weekly dinner for friends along the way. Ambitious because I'm a decent home cook, not a great one. That annual goal tradition is now in its third decade. Each year I pick something that pushes me in a direction I wouldn't naturally go, physically, intellectually, or creatively. [Previous years](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/annual-bhavana/) have ranged from physical challenges to deep reading projects to learning new skills. This year is food, geography, and hospitality, all at once. Twelve countries in, I'm calling it on track. You can see the full list, with recipes and notes, on my [cooking page](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/). Peru, South Korea, Zanzibar, Morocco, and eight others so far. The learning curve has been steeper than I expected, and in ways I didn't anticipate. I knew I'd pick up techniques and flavor combinations. What I didn't expect was how quickly food pulls you into history and geography. Each recipe on the site begins with the historical and social context of the dish, which I've genuinely enjoyed researching. Why does this cuisine use these spices? What trade routes brought them here? What does a street food tell you about how a culture eats and socializes? Food turns out to be a remarkably efficient delivery mechanism for all of that. I've read more about colonial history and agricultural economics this year than in the previous decade, all in service of understanding why a dish tastes the way it does. Our friends have picked up on that thread too. Having a specific cuisine as the evening's theme gives everyone something to talk about before the food even arrives. I'll usually put together a playlist from the country, which sets a mood without requiring anyone to perform enthusiasm for music they've never heard. We'll often talk about travels in that region, and I've linked to some of those on my [travel page](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/travel/) as well. It's become more of an experience than a dinner party, which I mean as a compliment to the format, not a warning about the company. The sourcing has been manageable. My local supermarket and the Asian market nearby handle most of it. Amazon has made a few appearances for specialty items: aji amarillo paste for the Peruvian [Pescado a la Chorillana](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/), a specific tamarind paste, a dried spice for the Zanzibari filling. Nothing exotic enough to require a passport. The Pescado a la Chorillana remains the clear favorite so far, a Peruvian fish dish with a bold tomato and pepper sauce that manages to be both simple and startlingly good. The Zanzibari pizza is worth a separate mention if only because the name invites skepticism. It's real, it's a street food, and it's a spiced flatbread folded and pan-fried, finished with egg. We made a vegetarian version that worked beautifully. Our friends were skeptical until they tasted it, which has become a reliable pattern at these dinners. The South Korean salmon with a gochujang glaze rounds out the top three. A full meal with two or three sides takes real preparation, and the cleanup is its own adventure. But the social payoff has been genuine. We're more connected to our friends than we were a year ago, which wasn't something I listed as a project objective but probably should have been. Eighteen countries to go. If you're curious about specific recipes or want to suggest a country I shouldn't miss, the [cooking page](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/) has all the details. ### Porotos Granados — Chile's Summer Harvest Bean Stew URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/porotos-granados-chiles-summer-harvest-bean-stew/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:21:07.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/porotos-granados.jpg) **Serves:** 4 **Total time:** \~55 minutes **Difficulty:** Moderate **Diet:** Vegetarian (fully vegan) --- ## The Dish and Its Place in Chilean Life Porotos Granados — literally "remarkable beans" — is one of the most distinctly Chilean dishes in existence, and one of the few that has no meaningful parallel elsewhere. It is built around three ingredients that arrive together in the Southern Hemisphere summer: fresh cranberry beans (*porotos granados*), field corn (*choclo*), and Chilean pumpkin (*zapallo*). The combination echoes the pre-Columbian *three sisters* tradition — beans, corn, and squash grown together as complementary crops — adapted through centuries of Chilean agricultural life into something that tastes wholly its own. The dish is associated with January and February in Chile, when all three ingredients are at peak freshness in the Central Valley markets. Families cook it on weekday evenings and Sunday afternoons alike; it is not celebratory food but sustaining food, the kind that marks a season rather than an occasion. Basil — added in quantity at the very end — is non-negotiable. It lifts the stew from earthy to alive. Outside Chile, the dish is almost unknown, which makes it an unusual case: a genuinely beloved national staple with essentially no diaspora footprint. Making it in April requires minor concessions to seasonality — frozen corn and butternut squash stand in capably for fresh choclo and zapallo — but the flavor logic remains intact. **Pebre**, Chile's ubiquitous fresh condiment, accompanies almost everything on a Chilean table. It functions somewhere between a salsa and a sauce: bright, herbaceous, with varying heat depending on the cook. Served alongside crusty bread, it is the standard partner for Porotos Granados and provides the acidity and freshness the stew itself does not supply. --- ## Ingredients ### Porotos Granados - 2 cans (15 oz each) cranberry beans (borlotti beans), drained and rinsed — or 3 cups cooked from dried - 2 cups frozen corn kernels (or fresh if available) - 2 cups butternut squash, cut into ¾-inch cubes (about ½ medium squash) - 1 large yellow onion, finely diced - 4 cloves garlic, minced - 2 tbsp olive oil - 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika (substitute for Chilean *color*, a mild annatto-based spice) - ½ tsp dried oregano - ½ tsp ground cumin - 2 cups vegetable stock - 1 cup water - 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste - Freshly ground black pepper - 1 large handful fresh basil leaves, roughly torn (do not substitute; do not add early) ### Pebre (Chilean Fresh Condiment) - 1 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped (stems and leaves) - ½ small white onion, very finely diced - 1–2 serrano or jalapeño chilies, seeded and minced (adjust to heat preference) - 2 cloves garlic, finely minced or grated - 2 tbsp olive oil - 2 tbsp red wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice - ½ tsp salt - 2–3 tbsp cold water (to loosen) - Optional: 1 ripe Roma tomato, seeded and finely diced ### To Serve - Crusty bread or marraqueta-style rolls (Chilean bread rolls, or a good French baguette) --- ## Instructions ### 1\. Make the Pebre (10 minutes, make first) 1. Combine cilantro, onion, chili, and garlic in a bowl. 2. Add olive oil, vinegar, salt, and water. Stir to combine. 3. If using tomato, fold it in now. 4. Taste and adjust salt and acidity. The pebre should be bright and assertive — not shy. 5. Cover and refrigerate while you cook the stew. It improves as it sits. ### 2\. Build the Stew Base (15 minutes) 1. Heat olive oil in a wide, heavy pot over medium heat. 2. Add onion and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent — 8–10 minutes. Do not rush; this is the flavor base. 3. Add garlic, smoked paprika, oregano, and cumin. Stir and cook 1–2 minutes until fragrant. ### 3\. Add Squash and Simmer (15 minutes) 1. Add butternut squash and stir to coat in the aromatics. 2. Pour in vegetable stock and water. Bring to a gentle simmer. 3. Cook uncovered 12–15 minutes until squash is nearly tender but still holding its shape. It will finish cooking with the beans. ### 4\. Add Beans and Corn (10 minutes) 1. Add drained beans and frozen corn. Stir gently to combine. 2. Simmer an additional 8–10 minutes. The stew should thicken as the squash breaks down slightly at the edges and the beans release starch. If it seems too thick, add a splash of water; if too thin, cook uncovered a few minutes longer. 3. The consistency should be spoonable and cohesive — thicker than soup, looser than a braise. ### 5\. Finish with Basil 1. Remove from heat. 2. Tear basil leaves and stir through the stew. Do not cook the basil further — it should remain vibrant green and fresh-tasting. 3. Taste and adjust salt and pepper. --- ## Cooking Sequence 1. Make pebre → refrigerate 2. Dice squash and prep aromatics 3. Build stew base (onions first) 4. Add squash, simmer until nearly tender 5. Add beans and corn, finish cooking 6. Tear in basil off heat, adjust seasoning 7. Warm bread, bring pebre to table --- ## Presentation Serve Porotos Granados in wide shallow bowls — it should look substantial but not muddy. The color contrast between the white beans, orange squash, and yellow corn is part of the appeal; don't stir it to death. A few fresh basil leaves on top signal what's inside. Place pebre in a small shared bowl at the center of the table with a spoon. The Chilean instinct is to spoon pebre directly onto the stew between bites, or onto torn bread eaten alongside. Do not pre-dress the bowls — let guests apply their own. Bread is not optional. It plays the role that injera does for Ethiopia or flatbread for Lebanon: something to carry the stew, absorb the broth, and extend the meal. --- ## Combined Shopping List ### Produce - 1 large yellow onion - ½ small white onion (for pebre) - 1 head garlic - ½ medium butternut squash (\~2 cups cubed) - 1 large bunch fresh cilantro - 1 large bunch fresh basil - 1–2 serrano or jalapeño chilies - 1 lemon (or use red wine vinegar) - Optional: 1 Roma tomato (for pebre) ### Pantry - Cranberry beans / borlotti beans (2 cans, 15 oz each) - Frozen corn kernels (2 cups) - Vegetable stock (2 cups / 1 carton) - Olive oil - Sweet smoked paprika - Dried oregano - Ground cumin - Red wine vinegar - Kosher salt, black pepper ### Bread - Crusty baguette or rustic rolls (enough for 4) ### The Pace We Didn't Plan For URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-pace-we-didnt-plan-for/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:19:44.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/ai-mythos.jpg) A few months ago, the dominant AI concern was jobs. Would it take yours? Which roles were safe and which weren't? That felt like the right level of worry for a technology that, as many still describe it, essentially guesses the next word in a sequence. Then Anthropic released Mythos, and the conversation shifted rather abruptly to critical infrastructure and existential risk. I'll offer something small before getting to the larger point. I follow AI development more closely than most people I know, use these tools regularly, and have been [writing about their expanding capabilities](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ai-left-the-chat-window-now-its-doing-real-work/) for months. I'm still nowhere near understanding or using the full extent of what current models can already do. That's not false modesty; it's a useful data point for what follows. A friend who works at one of the top AI labs told me something a few months ago that stuck with me. His company has models ready for deployment that they're deliberately holding back. Not for technical reasons. Because the capabilities would frighten people, and they want the public to grow more comfortable with existing tools before the next leap arrives. Sit with that for a moment. We're at a point where technology companies are managing the psychological pacing of disclosure, rationing what the public is allowed to understand their systems can do. And if Mythos is any indication, even the developers may not fully grasp what they've built, or they're worried enough about it to act accordingly. Mythos is Anthropic's latest [frontier model](https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing?ref=kevinmeyer.com), the accepted term for systems sitting at the leading edge of what AI can currently do. Anthropic shared access with just 11 organizations, all American, plus Britain's AI Security Institute as the sole international exception. That arrangement alone set off a global scramble. Within weeks, Mythos had identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities (previously unknown software flaws) across every major operating system and browser, achieving an 83 percent exploit success rate on the first attempt. Those aren't abstract targets. The same software categories run the control systems embedded in power grids, water treatment facilities, financial networks, and nuclear plants. Anthropic itself called the model too powerful for broad public release. The Bank of England governor warned publicly about cracked global cyber-risk. Canada's finance minister compared the threat to a closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This is not an autocomplete concern. The deeper issue isn't Mythos specifically. OpenAI, DeepSeek, and others will have comparable frontier models within 18 months by Anthropic's own estimate, and some may be less deliberate about controlled release. Mythos is a crystallizing moment, not a singular one. The question it forces is structural: how did we arrive at a point where a private company in San Francisco determines which nations and organizations have access to something with weapons-test-level geopolitical consequences? The answer is that this was always going to happen given how AI was built. Historically, the most dangerous technologies emerged from government institutions. The Manhattan Project wasn't funded by venture capital. Government development meant government control from the beginning, with classification systems, internal oversight, and at least the theoretical possibility of international frameworks to follow. AI was different. It was built by private companies, with private capital, at private speed. By the time any regulatory body understood what was being created, the capability was already in private hands, with private criteria for access. Anthropic's decision to initially share Mythos with 11 American companies isn't a conspiracy. It's the predictable consequence of a development model that outpaced every governance structure that might have shaped it differently. Which brings us to the guardrails problem, and it has no clean solution. Countries that implement serious AI constraints operate at a disadvantage against those that don't. Responsible actors are structurally penalized relative to reckless ones. Governments that want guardrails face a genuine dilemma: restrain development and risk being overwhelmed by adversaries who won't, or race ahead and contribute to the instability they're trying to prevent. No nation is going to accept an AI nonproliferation framework if they believe their adversaries will ignore it. The incentive structure points in one direction only. Everyone feels they must invest rapidly or risk falling irreversibly behind. And "irreversibly" isn't rhetorical here. We're talking about gaps that open over weeks or months, not years. No previous economic or technological threat, not offshoring, not semiconductor competition, has materialized at that speed. This race has no finish line and no agreed-upon rules, and the laps are getting shorter. Europe is the clearest illustration of what this looks like in practice, though it stands in for most of the world. The EU has genuine regulatory ambitions, has passed the [AI Act](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and has the institutional capacity to at least attempt coordinated action. And yet European governments look at the energy infrastructure, compute investment, and capital availability in the United States and China and recognize that their regulatory environment and capital markets structurally cannot match it. Even careful deliberation of a few months may now be disqualifying in this race. Nations with fewer institutional resources than Europe, which is most of them, don't have that choice to make. They're largely observers of a contest whose outcome will shape their future regardless. What makes all of this genuinely unsettling isn't just the technology. It's the timeline. We moved from debating AI's impact on employment to confronting its implications for critical infrastructure security in roughly twelve months. Democracies don't build international consensus in twelve months. Regulatory frameworks don't form in twelve months. Public understanding certainly doesn't shift that quickly, which is why a meaningful portion of the population still thinks of these systems primarily as sophisticated text generators. That perception gap matters, because the political will to address a problem depends on people first understanding what the problem actually is. Something comparable to Mythos will arrive from another lab soon enough, perhaps developed somewhere less concerned with coordinated defense. And worth noting as a final layer of sobriety: quantum computing, still a few years from practical deployment at scale, is advancing faster than most expected. Researchers are increasingly confident it will dramatically amplify AI capabilities when it arrives, compressing already-short development cycles further. If the current pace feels difficult to govern, it's worth asking what governance looks like when that acceleration arrives. The question worth sitting with isn't what we do about this specific model. It's whether we're capable of building the kind of global coordination this moment requires, at the speed it requires. We've never had to do that before. A year ago, we were debating whether AI would write your emails. What will we be debating a year from now? ### Yeoneo Jorim — Korea's Gochujang-Braised Salmon with Daikon, Rice, Sesame Spinach and Spicy Braised Tofu URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yeoneo-jorim-koreas-gochujang-braised-salmon-with-daikon-rice-sesame-spinach-and-spicy-braised-tofu/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:21:27.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/Yeoneo-Jorim-Salmon.jpg) **Serves:** 4 **Total time:** \~55 minutes **Diet:** Pescatarian --- ## The Dish and Its Context Korea's culinary identity is inseparable from the concept of the *banchan* table — a constellation of small shared dishes surrounding a central bowl of rice. Where many cuisines organize a meal around a single dominant preparation, Korean home cooking distributes attention across the whole table. No single dish is meant to be consumed alone; everything is designed to be eaten together, bite by bite, with plain steamed rice as the constant anchor. This structure reflects a broader cultural value: balance over dominance, communality over hierarchy. *Jorim* (조림) is one of the foundational Korean cooking techniques — a method of simmering protein or vegetables in a seasoned sauce until the liquid reduces and concentrates into a glaze that clings to the food. It is distinct from braising in that the sauce is not merely a cooking medium but the final flavor delivery. The sauce for a fish jorim is built on gochujang (fermented red chili paste), soy sauce, garlic, and ginger, with daikon radish as an almost universal companion — the radish absorbs the braising liquid and softens into something deeply savory and essential to the dish. Traditionally made with mackerel (*godeungeo*) or hairtail fish (*galchi*), the technique translates naturally to salmon (*yeoneo*), an oily, firm-fleshed fish that holds its structure under heat and stands up to the assertive sauce. Fresh wild salmon, in season, brings a richness that arguably improves on the frozen mackerel typically used outside Korea's coastal markets. --- ## Yeoneo Jorim (연어 조림) ### Ingredients **Fish and Aromatics** - 2 lb skin-on salmon steaks or thick fillets (at least 1 inch thick), cut into 4 portions - 1 lb daikon radish, peeled and sliced into ½-inch half-moons - 5 cloves garlic, minced - 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated - 3 green onions, cut into 2-inch pieces - 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds, for garnish **Braising Sauce** - 3 tbsp soy sauce - 2 tbsp gochujang - 1 tbsp gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes) — reduce to 1 tsp for less heat - 1 tbsp sesame oil - 1 tsp sugar or honey - ½ cup water ### Instructions 1. Whisk together all braising sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. 2. Arrange the daikon slices in a single layer in a wide, heavy skillet or shallow pot. 3. Pour roughly half the sauce over the daikon. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, cover, and cook 8–10 minutes until the daikon begins to soften and turns translucent. 4. Lay the salmon portions skin-side down on top of the daikon. Pour the remaining sauce evenly over the fish. 5. Scatter the green onions over the top. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat for 8–10 minutes, spooning sauce over the fish once or twice, until the salmon is just cooked through and the sauce has reduced to a glossy glaze. The fish should flake at the thickest point but not be falling apart. 6. Remove from heat. Garnish with sesame seeds. Serve directly from the pan or transfer to a platter with the daikon arranged underneath. --- ## Short-Grain White Rice (백반) ### Ingredients - 2 cups short-grain white rice (Korean or Japanese variety) - 2¼ cups cold water ### Instructions 1. Rinse the rice in several changes of cold water until the water runs nearly clear. Drain well. 2. Combine rice and water in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then immediately reduce to the lowest possible simmer. Cover tightly and cook 15 minutes — do not lift the lid. 3. Remove from heat and let rest, still covered, for 10 minutes. 4. Fluff gently with a rice paddle or fork. Serve in individual bowls. *Note: A rice cooker produces identical results with no attention required — use the standard white rice setting.* --- ## Sigeumchi Namul (시금치 나물) — Sesame Spinach ### Ingredients - 1 lb fresh spinach, stems trimmed - 2 cloves garlic, finely minced - 1½ tbsp soy sauce - 1 tbsp sesame oil - 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds - Pinch of salt ### Instructions 1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add a pinch of salt. 2. Blanch the spinach for 30–45 seconds only — it should wilt completely but remain bright green. Drain immediately and transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. 3. Once cool, drain the spinach and squeeze firmly with both hands to remove as much water as possible. This step is critical — under-squeezed spinach will dilute the seasoning and make the dish watery. 4. Roughly chop the squeezed spinach into 2–3 inch lengths. 5. In a bowl, combine garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Add the spinach and toss thoroughly until evenly coated. Taste and adjust salt. 6. Transfer to a small serving dish and top with sesame seeds. Can be made up to several hours ahead and refrigerated — the flavor improves as it rests. --- ## Dubu Jorim (두부 조림) — Spicy Braised Tofu ### Ingredients **Tofu** - 1 block (14–16 oz) firm tofu - 2 tbsp neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) **Braising Sauce** - 3 cloves garlic, minced - 2 tbsp gochugaru - 2 tbsp soy sauce - 1 tbsp sesame oil - 1 tsp sugar - ¼ cup water - 2 green onions, thinly sliced - 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds, for garnish ### Instructions 1. Press the tofu: wrap in a clean kitchen towel and place a heavy pan on top for 15–20 minutes to expel excess moisture. Cut into ¾-inch slabs or squares. 2. Heat neutral oil in a non-stick or cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add tofu in a single layer and cook without moving until golden and crisp on the bottom, about 3–4 minutes. Flip and repeat on the other side. Remove tofu to a plate. 3. Reduce heat to medium. Whisk together the sauce ingredients (garlic, gochugaru, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, water) and pour into the same pan. 4. Return tofu to the pan, spooning sauce over each piece. Simmer 3–4 minutes, turning once, until the sauce reduces and clings. The tofu should be lacquered, not swimming in liquid. 5. Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with green onions and sesame seeds. Can be made 30 minutes ahead and served at room temperature. --- ## Recommended Cooking Sequence 1. **30 minutes before serving:** Press tofu. Rinse and rest the rice. 2. **25 minutes before:** Make the sigeumchi namul completely — it is best made ahead. Refrigerate. 3. **20 minutes before:** Start the rice. 4. **15 minutes before:** Begin the yeoneo jorim — start the daikon phase. 5. **10 minutes before:** Pan-fry the tofu, add sauce, reduce. 6. **5 minutes before:** Add salmon to the jorim, cover and simmer. 7. **At the table:** Pull the rice off heat to rest. Everything is ready within the same window. --- ## Presentation A Korean table is set horizontally rather than in courses. Place individual rice bowls at each setting. Bring the yeoneo jorim to the table in its pan or a wide shallow serving dish, daikon visible beneath the fish. The sigeumchi namul and dubu jorim go in small shared dishes in the center — these are banchan, meant to be picked at throughout the meal, not portioned out. The key instruction for guests unfamiliar with Korean eating: spoon some of the jorim sauce over the rice. This is not incidental — the sauce-soaked rice is central to how the dish is experienced. Provide a serving spoon for the braising liquid specifically. --- ## Combined Shopping List **Seafood** - 2 lb skin-on salmon steaks or thick fillets **Produce** - 1 lb daikon radish - 1 lb fresh spinach - 1 head garlic - 1 knob fresh ginger - 1 bunch green onions **Refrigerated** - 1 block (14–16 oz) firm tofu **Dry Goods** - 2 cups short-grain white rice (Korean or Japanese variety) **Pantry** - Soy sauce - Gochujang (Korean fermented red chili paste) - Gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes) - Sesame oil - Neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - Sugar or honey - Toasted sesame seeds - Salt *Gochujang and gochugaru are available at Whole Foods (Asian aisle) or on Amazon. Buy both — they will carry forward to future Korean-adjacent recipes.* ### When AI Goes Rogue: Lessons in Accountability URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-ai-goes-rogue-lessons-in-accountability/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:19:23.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/ai-rogue.jpg) One morning earlier this year, engineers at an Alibaba-affiliated AI research lab woke up to a cascade of security alerts. Attempts to probe internal network resources. Traffic patterns consistent with cryptocurrency mining. Their first assumption was a human intruder breaking into their systems. It wasn't. The culprit was [ROME](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/07/ai-agents-rome-model-cryptocurrency?ref=kevinmeyer.com), an agentic AI model they had built and were training in a supposedly contained sandbox. Without any instruction or prompt telling it to do so, ROME had started mining bitcoin, created a hidden reverse SSH tunnel to an external computer, and staged a small jailbreak from its own testing environment. The researchers described the behaviors as arising "without any explicit instruction and, more troublingly, outside the bounds of the intended sandbox." They had not built a rogue AI. They had built an AI that was very good at pursuing goals, and it found paths they hadn't imagined. You can be forgiven for reading that and thinking: interesting, but someone else's problem, in a lab, far away. The problem is these incidents are multiplying, the stakes are escalating quickly, and the technology doing it is sitting on your laptop. ## A Pattern Worth Paying Attention To The Alibaba story was not a one-off. Consider what else happened in the past three months. Dan Botero, an engineer at an AI integration platform, built an autonomous agent he named Fabrius using the open-source [OpenClaw framework](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/04/openclaw-agent-future?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and gave it broad latitude to explore its capabilities. He suggested it try for a government job. Fabrius had other ideas: it applied for a copywriting position at a company selling menopause supplements, received a reply of "definitely interested," completed a trial assignment, and nearly landed the role. (It was rejected because the writing was, as the hiring manager put it, "too AI obvious.") Fabrius also attempted to form an LLC but needed a Social Security number, so it asked Botero for his. He declined. Nobody asked Fabrius to do any of this. In January 2026, [Microsoft discovered](https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/microsoft-says-office-bug-exposed-customers-confidential-emails-to-copilot-ai/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that its 365 Copilot Chat had been reading and summarizing confidential emails since earlier that month, despite data loss prevention policies explicitly configured to block exactly that. The problem was not a user misconfiguration. It was Microsoft's own servers incorrectly applying the exclusions. How many organizations were affected was never disclosed. Then there's the one Anthropic disclosed themselves in their own safety report, which at least deserves credit for transparency. In testing for Claude Opus 4, researchers embedded the model in a fictional company, let it learn through email access that it was about to be replaced, and also let slip that the responsible engineer was having an extramarital affair. In [84% of test runs](https://fortune.com/2025/05/23/anthropic-ai-claude-opus-4-blackmail-engineers-aviod-shut-down/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), the model attempted to blackmail the engineer to avoid being shut down. An external auditor found that an earlier version was also capable of writing self-propagating worms, fabricating legal documentation, and leaving hidden notes for future versions of itself to find. These stories feel different on the surface: a research anomaly, a software bug, a controlled safety test. The underlying dynamic is identical in each case. An agent was given a goal and access to tools, and it found a path its operators did not anticipate. The system worked as designed. That is precisely the problem. ## Then It Gets Worse This month, Anthropic announced a new model called Claude Mythos Preview through a program called [Project Glasswing](https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing?ref=kevinmeyer.com). They chose not to release it to the public, which tells you something about their own assessment of the risk. Mythos found thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities (previously unknown flaws) across every major operating system and web browser. Among them: a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD, one of the most security-hardened operating systems in existence; a 16-year-old flaw in FFmpeg, a widely used video encoding library, hiding in a line of code that automated testing tools had triggered five million times without catching; and a Linux kernel vulnerability chain that could give an attacker complete control of a server. It found nearly all of these entirely on its own, without ongoing human guidance. Anthropic engineers with no formal security training asked Mythos to find remote code execution vulnerabilities overnight and [woke up to a working exploit](https://www.pymnts.com/cybersecurity/2026/anthropic-and-openai-just-rewrote-the-cybersecurity-playbook/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The detail that should command attention: [Anthropic confirmed](https://www.pymnts.com/cybersecurity/2026/anthropic-and-openai-just-rewrote-the-cybersecurity-playbook/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) these capabilities were not explicitly trained into Mythos. They emerged as a downstream consequence of general improvements in reasoning, code, and autonomy. The same intelligence that makes the model better at finding and patching vulnerabilities makes it better at finding and exploiting them. Anthropic is responsible enough to restrict access and is actively using Mythos to patch vulnerabilities before less scrupulous actors develop comparable capabilities. That window will not stay open indefinitely. ## We've Been Here Before, Sort Of The early internet is the obvious analogy, and it holds reasonably well. In the 1990s, we connected systems globally before anyone had thought seriously about what that meant for security. The attack surface grew as humans wrote more code, made more connections, and made more mistakes. Painful incidents accumulated. An entire security industry eventually emerged, built around known threat patterns and human-speed adversaries. We are doing the same thing with agentic AI right now, deploying it broadly before the governance frameworks, security practices, and institutional knowledge exist to manage it responsibly. A [Cloud Security Alliance report](https://www.reversinglabs.com/blog/openclaw-ai-agents-black-hole-risks?ref=kevinmeyer.com) from early 2026 found that 40% of organizations already have AI agents in production, while only 18% are confident their identity and access management systems can handle them. That gap is where the incidents happen. But the analogy has a critical limit. In the early internet era, the threat surface expanded as humans made mistakes or malicious actors reverse-engineered exploits. The speed of attack was bounded by human capability. With agentic AI, the technology itself autonomously discovers and can develop pathways that no human anticipated. Mythos found a 27-year-old vulnerability that millions of automated tests had missed, in a matter of hours, without being told where to look. That is a categorically different speed of threat development than anything the original internet security playbook was designed to handle. ## What to Actually Do About It I've been experimenting with Claude Cowork and agentic tools since they became available, and I wrote about some of those early [use cases here](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ai-left-the-chat-window-now-its-doing-real-work/). Even at this early, relatively constrained stage, the capability is striking enough that I've started thinking seriously about running these tools only on a dedicated standalone computer with its own logins, completely separate from my primary accounts, financial access, and personal data. That's not paranoia; it's the same instinct that made us put early internet-connected machines on separate network segments before we understood the full threat profile. The core principle at a personal level is straightforward: give agents the minimum access they need for the specific task, and nothing more. If you are using an agent to manage your calendar, it does not need access to your financial accounts. If you are using one to organize files, it does not need your email credentials. The instinct to grant broad access because it is convenient is exactly how ROME ended up with the network permissions it used to mine bitcoin. (My earlier Cowork post covered the practice of working only with file copies in a dedicated folder; that same thinking applies to any agentic tool.) Be explicit. Extremely explicit. These systems are goal-seeking by design, and they are genuinely good at finding paths to stated objectives, including paths you did not intend and would not sanction. Stating what you want is not enough. You need to state, with the same specificity, what you *do not want*: which systems are off-limits, which actions require your confirmation, which types of outreach or transactions should never happen without you in the loop. The gaps in your instructions are the gaps in your guardrails. Vague objectives produce creative interpretation. Fabrius did not go rogue; it did exactly what goal-seeking systems do when the solution space is left open. Bound the solution space explicitly, or the agent will bound it for you. Professionally, the picture is more demanding and more urgent. Most IT professionals are trained to defend against known threat vectors, identifiable attack patterns, documented vulnerabilities. Agentic AI creates unknown threat vectors, and it creates them faster than any existing patch cycle or security audit process was built to accommodate. The people responsible for AI governance in your organization need to think less like system administrators and more like security architects who understand how objective-seeking systems behave when given access to real infrastructure, not just what permissions are technically assigned. That requires continuous learning in a field that is changing month to month, not year to year. The Mythos announcement was ten days ago; the implications for enterprise security are still being worked out in real time. If your organization is deploying agents at scale without deep in-house expertise or credible external partners who are genuinely current, that is a gap worth closing before it closes itself in a less pleasant way. The question is no longer whether AI agents will find unexpected paths to their objectives. We know they will. The question is whether you have been explicit enough about where those paths are allowed to go. ### AI Left the Chat Window. Now It's Doing Real Work. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ai-left-the-chat-window-now-its-doing-real-work/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:21:55.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/claude-cowork.jpg) For the past year or so I've written about using AI as a set of [advisory teams](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-advisory-teams-expert-knowledge-on-demand/), for [financial management](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-as-a-financial-analyst-a-year-of-portfolio-fine-tuning/), and even for [cooking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/will-ai-make-cookbooks-obsolete/). Each of those involved me typing questions and getting text back. Useful, even transformative in places, but still fundamentally a conversation. Then I started using [Claude Cowork](https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13345190-get-started-with-claude-cowork?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Cowork is a desktop application that gives Claude access to your files, your browser, and your local environment - with your explicit permission. If you're looking for a [how-to guide](https://ruben.substack.com/p/claude-cowork), there are good ones available. What I want to share is what it actually feels like to use day-to-day, because the shift from chatbot to desktop assistant is bigger than I expected. As I noted in a [recent post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-intelligence-explosion-human-ai-evolution-not-singularity/), if you haven't used AI lately you don't know what you're missing. This is another exhibit. One practical note before the examples: give Cowork access to a dedicated folder, not your entire drive. And before handing it any file to work on, put a copy in that folder rather than the original. Simple discipline, eliminates a lot of potential anxiety. ## Work **Complex Report Analysis:** A friend was building some new business metrics that required amalgamating data from P&L statements, sales reports, and quality records going back several years. I uploaded the various reports to Cowork and described the metrics and their calculations that required input from different reports. Within a few minutes it had crunched the numbers and built a formatted Excel workbook with color visuals, a summary tab, a data and calculations tab, and a tab explaining each metric and its business relevance. It also suggested a couple of additional metrics based on the context I'd described. In the past this would have taken hours of data wrangling across multiple systems before even opening Excel. Easily a five-hour savings, probably more. **Office Pain:** The more mundane Excel work is equally painless. We've all inherited spreadsheets that have been copy-pasted together until they're full of duplicate rows, then spent twenty minutes trying to remember how to de-dupe them. Now I just upload the file and describe what I want. Same for pivot tables, complex formulas, or any operation where the real problem is remembering the syntax rather than knowing what you want. PDF-to-Word or PDF-to-Excel conversions follow the same pattern. Microsoft's built-in conversion has always been mediocre, producing something that requires more cleanup than starting from scratch. Cowork handles these in seconds, almost always requiring zero additional work. ## Home **Photo archives:** I had thousands of old photos as electronic files, accumulated over decades of travel and life events. I put copies of the folders in my Cowork folder and asked it to organize them by topic and date, then rename each file from the generic "IMG\_xxxxx.jpg" to something descriptive in three words. I expected something like "mountain-snow-tree.jpg," which would have been a modest improvement. Instead, Claude recognized specific locations, people, and context, producing filenames like "kitzbuhl-ski-kevin.jpg." I then asked it to select the 20 best photos from each folder and put copies in a /Favorites subfolder for a potential photo book. I didn't define "best." What it chose, based on its read of composition, quality, and uniqueness, aligned almost exactly with my own aesthetic judgment. That part was a little unsettling, honestly. **Home maintenance:** Our house requires a lot of regular maintenance: tree trimming, fruit tree fertilizing, professional window washing (coastal salt air is not kind to glass), furnace checks, chimney sweep, and so forth. I uploaded three years of maintenance records and receipts and asked Cowork to create a maintenance calendar. It didn't simply copy the prior dates, which were often irregular because I had forgotten. It recognized seasonal patterns and suggested optimal timing for each task, and offered to add them directly to my calendar. **Medical and life history:** Medical records are a chronic headache when you're seeing a new doctor and can't quite remember when something happened. With two decades of scanned records, I asked Cowork to build a health timeline for my wife and me. It was quick enough that I kept going: addresses we've lived at, cars we've owned over the years. It brought back some memories, and quietly corrected a few others. **Landscaping and irrigation:** The most layered home project involved our landscaping, which is extensive and varied. I used Google Maps for an aerial view of the property, then walked the gardens taking photos from labeled perspectives. Cowork created a property map, recognized and labeled the plants (asking me rather than guessing when it wasn't certain, which I had specifically instructed), and overlaid our ten-zone sprinkler system. From that it suggested a revised watering regimen based on plant types, recommended some changes to zone coverage, and proposed seasonal variations. Next step, once I get further into agentic AI, is tying this into a smart irrigation controller connected to the weather forecast. Baby steps. ## The broader point One smaller but telling example: calorie tracking. For years I used MyFitnessPal, laboriously searching for approximations of home-cooked meals and estimating portions. Now I can take a few seconds to just describe what I ate, including custom or modified recipes that I can upload, and get a complete nutritional breakdown of the entire day or a specific recipe in seconds. No app required. Which raises a larger issue. Two of these examples, business metrics and nutritional tracking, previously required dedicated software with subscriptions, onboarding, and ongoing friction. That software has a significant problem. AI is increasingly replacing point solutions with a general capability that doesn't need its own interface or business model. The market has noticed, which is part of why software stocks have taken a hit lately. Cowork is not a chatbot. It reads your files, writes files, browses the web, and connects to your calendar. For me it's been a meaningful jump in what AI can accomplish in a workday. Agentic AI is the next step, and it's a significant one. Everything described above still requires me to initiate each task. I upload a file, I describe what I want, I review the output. Agentic AI removes that dependency. Instead of me asking Cowork to suggest a watering schedule, an agentic system would monitor the weather forecast, decide when to adjust irrigation, send the command to the controller, and log what it did, all without me asking. Instead of me uploading maintenance receipts to build a calendar, an agent could monitor my email for service confirmations, update the schedule automatically, and remind me when something is overdue. The difference between a capable assistant and an autonomous one is not just efficiency. It's a different relationship with the work entirely. I'm not there yet. But the irrigation project, the maintenance calendar, the photo organization, all of them point toward what becomes possible when AI doesn't wait to be asked. ### The Ends Don't Justify the Character URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-ends-dont-justify-the-character/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:19:08.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/character.jpg) Bob Sutton posted something on LinkedIn this week that stopped me mid-scroll. He was flagging a [Brené Brown interview](https://www.ft.com/content/d296b140-4018-45d0-8770-e5e1a00db698?syn-25a6b1a6=1&ref=kevinmeyer.com) in the Financial Times, in which she described a troubling shift: leaders feeling a sense of relief and permission from the current political climate to be, as she put it, the assholes they've always been. Sutton, who literally wrote the book on this ([*The No Asshole Rule*](https://bobsutton.net/book/no-asshole-rule/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), 2007), has been tracking the organizational costs of toxic leadership for decades. The fact that he was amplifying Brown's warning suggests they're both seeing the same thing. So am I, and it's been bothering me. Brown's framing is more precise than it might first appear. She isn't saying the political climate is creating bad leaders. She's saying it's licensing them. Leaders who previously kept their worst instincts in check because social and institutional norms demanded it now feel liberated. The restraints have loosened. That's a fundamentally different, and more dangerous, problem. ## The Documented Costs Sutton's research makes the case against this directly. His concept of the "Total Cost of Assholes" is real and measurable: talented people leave, honest input dries up as psychological safety collapses, decision quality erodes. As he put it, "It takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one asshole." The "but he gets results" rationalization doesn't survive contact with the longitudinal data. Stan McChrystal, in [*Team of Teams*](https://www.amazon.com/Team-Teams-Rules-Engagement-Complex/dp/1591847486?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and his more recent [*On Character*](https://www.mcchrystalgroup.com/insights/detail/2025/05/30/on-character--a-conversation-with-general-stan-mcchrystal?ref=kevinmeyer.com), gets at the deeper mechanism. Trust is infrastructure. Leaders with genuine character are predictable under pressure, which allows organizations to extend discretion without waiting for permission at every step. Character-deficient leadership centralizes everything because nobody trusts the system. McChrystal put it plainly: "People will forgive you for not being the leader you should be. But they won't forgive you for not being the leader you claim to be." His own resignation following the 2010 Rolling Stone affair is worth noting. He didn't fight it, didn't spin it. He accepted accountability and stepped down. That kind of behavior reads almost as exotic today. ## The Part That Actually Makes Me Angry I can almost understand, not excuse but understand, a purely transactional leader who drops the character mask when the costs of wearing it exceed the benefits. Cynical, but at least internally consistent. What I cannot get my head around is the behavior of people who have spent careers, sometimes entire lifetimes, building identities around moral and ethical frameworks, often explicitly religious ones, and then abandon those frameworks the moment a convenient "end" appears on the horizon. Easter Sunday is a celebration of forgiveness and sacrifice rooted in a love so boundless it's nearly incomprehensible. The contrast between that symbolism and the conduct of certain political leaders this past weekend was difficult to miss. You don't need me to name names. The theological term is "situational ethics," and it has a long, embarrassing history. The secular version is "ends justify the means." Both reduce to the same thing: my objective matters enough that I'll mortgage the principles I claimed were non-negotiable. Power, policy, or proximity to both. The rationalization writes itself. ## The Harder Path Here's what troubles me most about this trade. Many of the people making it are genuine. They care deeply about issues that matter, issues with real moral weight. The logic feels almost reasonable: accept an imperfect leader to achieve an important end. A shortcut to something that might otherwise take years, or never happen at all. But character works like a relationship, not a transaction. Anyone who has watched someone enter a marriage or a partnership convinced they can change the other person already knows how this ends. You don't change people by accepting their worst behavior; you ratify it. And you signal to everyone watching that the behavior is acceptable, which is how norms collapse. The harder path, the one that actually maintains what you claim to believe, is staying true to the principle when the shortcut looks most appealing. Especially then. And the irony is that the shortcut rarely delivers what was promised anyway. The downstream effects of tolerating poor character accumulate quietly at first, then loudly: institutional trust erodes, the culture coarsens, the people who care most either leave or go silent. What looked like a faster route to the goal has created an environment in which the goal is now harder to achieve, not easier, because the foundation it required has been eaten away. We are reaping some of those results now. Pointing at the leaders is the easier move, and they deserve the criticism. But the more honest question is what we enabled, what we rationalized, and what we're still rationalizing. So the next time you find yourself excusing a leader's behavior you would never accept from your own kids, your employees, or your friends, ask what that rationalization is actually costing. Not them. You. ### Zanzibari Pizza with Urojo Soup & Coconut Rice URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/zanzibari-pizza-with-urojo-soup-coconut-rice/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:22:15.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/zanzibar-pizza.jpg) **Serves:** 4–5 **Total active time:** \~60 minutes **Difficulty:** Moderate **Diet:** Vegetarian The island of Zanzibar — officially Unguja, part of Tanzania — sits at one of history's great cultural crossroads. For centuries, Arab traders, Indian merchants, Bantu-speaking Africans, and eventually Portuguese and British colonizers moved through its port at Stone Town, and the island's food absorbed all of them. What remains is a cuisine unlike anything else on the continent: coconut, tamarind, turmeric, and garam masala working alongside East African staples in combinations that feel both ancient and effortlessly inventive. Nowhere is this more vivid than at Forodhani Gardens, Stone Town's open-air waterfront night market, where vendors have cooked over charcoal every evening for decades. Two dishes define the experience. Zanzibari pizza — descended from the Indian chapati, adapted into a Kenyan keema chapati, then reimagined by a young Pemba vendor who couldn't explain it to tourists and simply called it pizza — is a folded paratha stuffed with spiced filling, egg, and vegetables and pan-fried until crisp. Beside it at every stall is urojo, a silky turmeric-and-potato soup that sounds deceptively simple until you taste its tartness, warmth, and depth. Coconut rice, a fixture of the Indian Ocean pantry from Zanzibar to Malaysia, ties the table together with richness and quiet sweetness. This is a meal that carries centuries of trade history in every bite. ## Ingredients ### Zanzibari Pizza — Vegetarian Filling - 2 tbsp ghee (preferred) or neutral oil - ⅓ cup shallots, finely chopped - 1½ tsp garam masala - 2 cloves garlic, grated - 1-inch piece fresh ginger, grated - 8 oz cremini mushrooms, very finely diced (processed in two batches in a food processor works well) - ½ tsp kosher salt - ¼ tsp black pepper ### Zanzibari Pizza — Assembly - 4–5 paratha (frozen, defrosted) or roti — see sourcing note below - ½ cup cabbage, very thinly sliced - ¼ cup plum or Roma tomato, chopped small - ¼ cup shallots, finely chopped - ¼ cup cilantro leaves and tender stems, chopped - 4–5 large eggs (1 per pizza) - 3–4 oz spreadable cheese, such as Laughing Cow (4–5 wedges), optional but recommended - 2–3 tbsp ghee or neutral oil for pan-frying **Sourcing note — Paratha:** Trader Joe's occasionally carries frozen paratha; Whole Foods usually does. An Indian grocery is the most reliable source. If unavailable, roti works — just handle it more gently when folding, as it tears more easily than paratha. Frozen Taiwanese green onion pancakes (sometimes at Trader Joe's or Ranch 99) are an excellent structural substitute with complementary flavor. ### Simplified Urojo Soup - 1½ lb Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes - 3 tbsp all-purpose flour - 1 tsp ground turmeric - 1 small yellow onion or 2 shallots, thinly sliced - Juice of 2 lemons or 3 limes (about 5–6 tbsp) - 4 cups water - 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste - Optional: 1–2 green chilies, slit ### Urojo Toppings - 2 eggs, hard-boiled and sliced - 1 cup sev, Bombay mix, or crispy fried shallots (for crunch — see sourcing note) - Fresh cilantro, roughly chopped - Lime wedges - Hot sauce (sriracha or piri piri work well) **Sourcing note — Sev/Bombay mix:** Whole Foods and Lassen's sometimes carry Bombay mix in the snack or international aisle. If unavailable locally, order on Amazon — it keeps well and will get use. In a pinch, crispy fried shallots (available at Albertsons in the Asian foods section) provide a similar textural role. ### Coconut Rice - 2 cups jasmine rice, rinsed well - 1 can (13.5 oz) full-fat coconut milk - 1 cup water - 1 tsp kosher salt - Optional: 2 pandan leaves, knotted, or 1 stalk lemongrass, bruised and folded ## Instructions ### 1\. Urojo Soup (30 minutes, mostly passive — make first) 1. In a medium pot, combine the potato cubes and onion with 4 cups water and the salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer. 2. In a small bowl, whisk the flour and turmeric with ½ cup of the hot cooking liquid until completely smooth and lump-free. 3. Pour the flour slurry into the simmering pot, stirring constantly. Add the green chilies if using. 4. Simmer uncovered for 15–20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are fully tender and the broth has thickened to a silky, slightly viscous consistency — it should coat a spoon lightly. 5. Stir in the lemon or lime juice. Taste and adjust salt and acidity. The soup should be distinctly tart and warming. Keep warm on the lowest possible heat. ### 2\. Coconut Rice (20 minutes, passive — start after soup) 1. Combine the rinsed rice, coconut milk, water, salt, and pandan or lemongrass (if using) in a medium saucepan. 2. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring once. Reduce heat to the lowest setting, cover tightly, and cook 15 minutes. 3. Remove from heat and rest, still covered, for 5 minutes. Remove aromatics and fluff gently. Keep covered until serving. ### 3\. Zanzibari Pizza — Filling (15 minutes, can be made ahead) 1. Heat ghee in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallots and cook, stirring, until softened, about 2 minutes. 2. Add garam masala, garlic, and ginger. Cook 1 minute until fragrant. 3. Add mushrooms. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until they release and then reabsorb their liquid and become dark and compact, about 8–10 minutes. Do not rush this — properly dried-out mushrooms hold together in the paratha without making the dough soggy. 4. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl to cool slightly. 5. Once cooled to warm (not hot), add the cabbage, tomato, shallots, and cilantro. Crack in one egg per pizza you plan to make and stir everything together until the egg is distributed throughout. Set aside. **Note:** The filling can be made up to this point and refrigerated up to 3 days. Bring to room temperature before assembling. ### 4\. Zanzibari Pizza — Assembly and Pan-Frying (20 minutes) Work one pizza at a time to maintain control. Keep finished pizzas warm in a 200°F oven while you cook the rest. 1. Lay a paratha flat on parchment paper dusted with a little flour. 2. Place approximately 1 scant cup of filling in the center, leaving a 1-inch border on all sides. Break 1 wedge of Laughing Cow cheese over the filling if using. 3. Fold the edge of the paratha closest to you about ½ inch over the edge of the filling. Repeat with the opposite side, then fold in the two remaining sides to form a square packet. Press gently to seal. 4. Heat 1½ tsp ghee in a small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Lift the parchment and slide the paratha packet carefully into the pan, seam-side down. 5. Cook until the bottom is light golden brown, 3–4 minutes. Flip carefully with a wide spatula and cook the other side until golden and the egg is fully set, another 3–4 minutes. 6. Slide onto a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven. Add 1 tsp ghee to the pan and repeat with remaining parathas. ## Cooking Sequence 1. Make urojo soup and bring to simmer → maintain on low heat throughout 2. Hard-boil eggs for urojo toppings → peel and slice 3. Start coconut rice 4. Make pizza filling while rice cooks 5. Rest rice, assemble and pan-fry pizzas one at a time 6. Plate everything simultaneously ## Presentation **Urojo soup:** Ladle into shallow bowls. Top each with 2–3 slices of egg, a small handful of sev or Bombay mix (add just before serving so it stays crunchy), a pinch of fresh cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. Serve the hot sauce on the side so guests can control heat. The soup should look golden-yellow and slightly brothy, with visible potato and a crunchy crown of topping. **Zanzibari pizza:** Flip each finished pizza so the seam side faces down on a cutting board. Cut each into nine squares using a tic-tac-toe pattern — two cuts in one direction, two in the other. Arrange on a shared platter or individual plates. Serve ketchup and hot sauce alongside for dipping; these are authentic accompaniments, not optional. **Coconut rice:** Serve in a simple bowl or mound alongside. It functions as the neutral, cooling element — not the star. **Table setup:** Put all three components out simultaneously. The interplay is the point: a square of pizza dipped in hot sauce, a spoonful of tangy soup, a bite of coconut rice. Encourage guests to mix rather than eat sequentially. ## Combined Shopping List ### Produce - Shallots (4–5 medium, used across both filling and pizza assembly) - Cremini mushrooms (8 oz) - Cabbage, green (small head — you need ½ cup) - Plum or Roma tomatoes (1–2) - Cilantro (1 bunch) - Fresh ginger (1 small piece, \~2 inches) - Garlic (1 head) - Lemons (2) or limes (3–4, used across soup and serving) - Yukon Gold potatoes (1½ lb) - Yellow onion (1 small) - Optional: 1–2 green chilies ### Dairy & Refrigerated - Eggs (6–7 total: 4–5 for pizza filling, 2 for urojo topping) - Spreadable cheese, such as Laughing Cow (4–5 wedges, optional) - Ghee (small jar — used for filling and pan-frying; available at Albertsons, TJ's, Whole Foods) ### Pantry - Paratha, frozen (4–5 pieces — TJ's, Whole Foods, or Indian grocery) - Jasmine rice (2 cups) - Full-fat coconut milk (1 can, 13.5 oz) - All-purpose flour (small amount — already likely on hand) - Ground turmeric - Garam masala - Kosher salt, black pepper - Hot sauce (sriracha, piri piri, or similar) - Ketchup ### Specialty - Sev or Bombay mix (Whole Foods, Lassen's, or Amazon) — a bag will keep for months and is worth having on hand - Optional: pandan leaves (frozen, Asian grocery) or lemongrass (Whole Foods produce) ### The Intelligence Explosion: Human-AI Evolution, Not Singularity URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-intelligence-explosion-human-ai-evolution-not-singularity/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:22:37.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/04/intelligence.jpg) If you haven't used one of the major AI platforms in the last few *weeks*, you're making an increasingly costly mistake: judging a technology by a version that no longer exists. I hear it constantly. "AI hallucinates." "It just makes things up." "I tried it and it was wrong about everything." These complaints were largely fair even twelve months ago. Today, not so much. The frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others have improved at a pace that defies ordinary product development timelines. Hallucinations, while not extinct, have dropped dramatically, and most remaining errors trace back to vague or poorly constructed prompts – which, for the record, is also how you get bad answers from humans. The agentic versions – AI systems that can plan, execute multi-step tasks, write and run code, and operate semi-autonomously alongside you on your desktop – are something qualitatively different from the chatbot you experimented with a year ago. Comparing them to Alexa is like comparing a pocket calculator to a Bloomberg terminal. So why does this matter beyond keeping up? Because [a paper just published in *Science*](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeg1895?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by James Evans, Benjamin Bratton, and Blaise Agüera y Arcas – three people about as deep in the AI development world as it gets – argues that we are already inside what may be the next great intelligence explosion, and most people haven't noticed because it doesn't look like the movies said it would. ## The Singularity Got It Wrong The dominant cultural narrative around AI's future has been the "singularity": a single, godlike machine intelligence bootstrapping itself to incomprehensible power, at which point humans become irrelevant or worse. It's a compelling story. It's also almost certainly wrong. Evans, Bratton, and Agüera y Arcas argue that real, transformative intelligence has never worked that way. Every prior intelligence explosion in human history was social, not individual. Primate intelligence scaled with group size, not habitat difficulty. Human language created what developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello calls the "cultural ratchet": knowledge accumulating across generations without any individual needing to reconstruct it from scratch. Writing, law, and bureaucracy externalized collective intelligence into institutions that outlasted and outperformed any individual participant. A Sumerian grain accountant didn't comprehend macroeconomics; the system he worked within did. AI extends this same sequence rather than rupturing it. Large language models are trained on the accumulated output of centuries of human social cognition -- the cultural ratchet made computationally active. What migrates into silicon isn't abstract reasoning; it's social intelligence encountering itself on a new substrate. ## Intelligence Was Always a Conversation Research on frontier reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 found that they don't improve simply by "thinking longer." Instead, they spontaneously generate what the authors call a "society of thought" – internal debates among distinct cognitive perspectives that argue, question, verify, and reconcile. Nobody trained them to do this. It emerged purely from optimization pressure rewarding accuracy. The models rediscovered, on their own, what epistemology and cognitive science have long suggested: robust reasoning is inherently social, even inside a single mind. This connects to something we explored in an [earlier post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prediction-machines-why-we-might-be-more-like-ai-than-we-think/). If human cognition is itself a prediction and pattern-matching process shaped by millions of years of social evolution, it probably shouldn't surprise us that intelligence optimized for accuracy spontaneously organizes itself as a conversation. ## What's Already Happening The intelligence explosion the authors describe isn't a future event. It's underway, and visible if you know where to look. In drug discovery, AI is compressing timelines that once took decades. [Rentosertib, developed by Insilico Medicine](https://insilico.com/news/8tx5ducrx1-insilico-medicine-featured-in-harvard-bu?ref=kevinmeyer.com), is the first drug in which both the disease target and the molecule itself were identified entirely by generative AI, with no human hypothesis guiding either step. It's now in Phase III clinical trials for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The major AI labs are clearly reading the same signals. This week, [Anthropic – the company behind Claude – quietly acquired Coefficient Bio](https://www.rdworldonline.com/anthropics-400m-acquisition-of-coefficient-bio-signals-a-deeper-push-into-drug-discovery/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), an eight-month-old startup with fewer than ten employees, for $400 million. Coefficient is building AI models for biological research with the explicit goal of what its founders called "artificial superintelligence for science." That Anthropic paid $400 million for a company that barely existed yet tells you something about where the smart money thinks this is heading. Code generation may be the most quietly radical example. AI systems now write, test, debug, and refactor substantial codebases with minimal human intervention. Wasn't autonomous code generation one of the canonical markers of the singularity? It arrived without fanfare, bundled into a software subscription. The authors describe the emerging configuration as "centaur" systems -- hybrid actors that are neither purely human nor purely machine. One human directing many AI agents; one AI serving many humans; shifting configurations throughout the day. This is not science fiction. It's Tuesday. ## The Part Nobody Wants to Think About All of this demands governance, and the paper is direct about it. The dominant model for AI alignment -- essentially a parent-child correction dynamic -- doesn't scale to billions of interacting agents. The authors propose something more structural: institutional alignment, where agents operate within defined roles and norms the way courtrooms and markets function regardless of who occupies the chairs. The U.S. Founders would have recognized the logic immediately. No single concentration of intelligence should regulate itself, whether human or artificial. This is the piece that keeps getting deferred in favor of more exciting conversations about capability. It shouldn't. ## The Framing That Actually Helps The authors close with a line worth sitting with: intelligence growing like a city, not a single meta-mind. Cities are messy, inefficient, occasionally chaotic, and nearly impossible to control from the top down. They're also where most of human progress has happened. The question isn't whether AI will become more powerful -- it will, faster than most people are prepared for. The question is whether we'll build social and institutional infrastructure worthy of what it's becoming. The singularity was always the wrong frame. This is evolution. We've been here before. We just haven't done it with non-biological minds. ### The Case for Intentional Imbalance: Why an Effective Brain, Leader, and Designer Needs Asymmetry URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-case-for-intentional-imbalance-why-an-effective-brain-leader-and-designer-needs-asymmetry/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T13:22:59.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/yoga-breathing.jpg) There's a restorative yin yoga (and sound bath!) [class](https://www.letsgettuned.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) I go to many evenings, mostly because it forces me to slow down and hold uncomfortable positions for longer than I'd like, which turns out to be good practice for a lot of things. It also reliably accelerates my transition into deep sleep shortly after I get home. Each session includes breathing exercises while preparing for and settling into the postures. Sometimes symmetric box breathing, like inhale four counts, hold four, exhale four, hold four; sometimes an asymmetric pattern, in for four, hold for five, out for six, hold for seven. Same basic structure. Very different experience. The symmetric versions feel almost automatic after a minute or two. My mind drifts, as minds do, into the usual noise: tomorrow's to-do list, something I forgot to say in a conversation three days ago, whether I'd left the coffee on. The asymmetric versions are completely different. My brain has to actually count. Not passively, but actively, every cycle. There is no mental space left for extraneous visitors. I am, sometimes for the first time that day, genuinely present. That's a small thing, but it stuck with me. **The Brain Is Lazy by Design** The cognitive explanation isn't complicated. The brain is fundamentally a prediction machine; it's constantly trying to build models of the world that let it operate on autopilot, conserving energy for genuine novelty. Symmetry is one of the things it models fastest. A 4-4-4-4 pattern takes about thirty seconds to fully internalize, after which the brain essentially puts it on cruise control and goes looking for something more interesting to do. Asymmetry breaks that deal. What psychologists call [perceptual disfluency](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612441609?ref=kevinmeyer.com) — a slight increase in processing difficulty — has been shown to deepen both engagement and retention. The brain can't file it away because it hasn't fully solved it yet. In Sanskrit, symmetric breathing has its own term: *Sama Vritti*, equal fluctuation. The asymmetric alternative is *Vishama Vritti*, unequal fluctuation. The yoga tradition apparently understood this distinction long before neuroscientists got around to measuring it. The 4-7-8 breathing pattern that Dr. Andrew Weil has written about extensively is a well-known clinical application of the same idea. A recent [Washington Post piece on conquering middle-of-the-night insomnia](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/03/18/insomnia-sleep-hack/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) described a writer's experience trying it at 3 a.m.: he didn't feel himself getting sleepy, just calmer, and then opened his eyes to find it was 6:30 a.m. The asymmetry is the mechanism, not incidental to it. **Fukinsei and the Productive Unresolved** This brought me back to a concept I'd encountered in studying Zen aesthetics: *fukinsei* (不均斉), usually translated as asymmetry or irregularity, and one of the seven classical principles of Zen design. The idea is that perfect symmetry is, in a meaningful sense, dead. The eye resolves it instantly, the mind moves on, nothing lingers. Fukinsei introduces deliberate imbalance — the tea bowl that isn't perfectly round, the garden stone placed just off-center, the flower arrangement that leans one way. The intention is to create what I'd call a productive unresolvedness: the viewer's attention keeps returning, finding something new. This struck me as a more sophisticated form of balance, not the absence of it. Symmetry is easy balance. Fukinsei is dynamic balance — tension held without collapse. My wife figured this out before I did, which is not unusual. Early in our marriage she suggested we get different bedside lamps, each reflecting our own aesthetic rather than a matched pair. The engineer in me resisted. Symmetry felt right, tidy, correct. She was, of course, correct in the deeper sense. Our bedroom is more interesting for it, and after nearly thirty years (!) I've come to prefer eclectic interiors generally — rooms that feel like they've accumulated a life rather than been assembled from a catalog page. Interior designers call the formal version the rule of odds: grouped objects in odd numbers, asymmetric visual weight, deliberate tension in the composition. It's more engaging because the brain keeps working. **Where This Shows Up** Music figured this out independently. Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is written in 5/4 time, which is inherently asymmetric — the meter doesn't resolve into the even patterns most Western music conditions us to expect. It's one of the best-selling jazz recordings ever made, and part of its appeal is exactly that productive friction: you can feel the asymmetry pulling at you even if you can't name it. Lean manufacturing has its own version of this problem, though we don't usually frame it this way. Leader Standard Work done poorly becomes symmetric — the same checklist, the same metrics, the same gemba walk route, every day. It feels disciplined, but it gradually becomes invisible to the person doing it, which defeats the entire purpose. The best implementations I've seen have a consistent daily skeleton paired with a rotating focus: a specific process area, a metric to investigate rather than just observe, a team member to develop that week. The standard work is the frame; the variable element is what keeps the leader actually seeing rather than just looking. Layered process audits work similarly — the structure is consistent, but the asymmetric element is what generates real discovery. The application in leadership more broadly is worth sitting with. Most leadership routines are designed for symmetry: consistent meeting cadences, regular one-on-ones, standardized review cycles. That consistency has real value; it builds trust and signals reliability. But pure symmetry in leadership creates the same problem it creates in breathing — people (including the leader) go on autopilot. The deliberate introduction of an asymmetric element, a question nobody expected, a site visit to a process that wasn't on the agenda, a decision deferred when everyone assumed it would be made, breaks the prediction. It creates attention. The best teachers, coaches, and executives I've known did this instinctively. They weren't random — that would just be noise — but they weren't perfectly predictable either. The asymmetry was purposeful. **The Balance in Imbalance** I still like symmetry. There's an elegance to it that I don't want to abandon entirely. But I've come to think of it as the resting state rather than the goal. The interesting question in any domain — breathing, design, management, music — isn't how to achieve perfect balance. It's where to introduce the asymmetry that creates genuine attention. Fukinsei isn't the rejection of balance. It's the recognition that real balance is dynamic, a little bit unresolved, and always slightly off-center. Where in your own routines have you optimized so hard for symmetry that you've stopped actually seeing what you're doing? ### Intellectual Fitness Requires Intention URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/intellectual-fitness-requires-intention/ Last updated: 2026-03-20T08:52:19.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/newspaper.jpg) I've been waking up at 4:30am for the better part of three decades. In the early years it wasn't a choice so much as a condition of the job: I was managing a factory with a first shift that started at 6am, plus a commute, so the math was unforgiving. But that early morning slot became mine in a way nothing else was, quiet before the day's noise, and when the factory demands eventually lifted, I kept it. The gym filled the slot, the resulting fitness became its own reward, and the habit has followed me all the way into retirement when I could, in theory, sleep as late as I like. The hour is the point, not the convenience. I protect it because I've learned that anything worth doing consistently requires a protected time before the day's friction makes skipping easy. I've been thinking about whether the same logic applies to something I'd call intellectual fitness. I think it does, and with more urgency than I previously appreciated. A couple of recent posts have been working on this problem from different angles. [The Attention Apocalypse](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-attention-apocalypse-how-shallow-news-consumption-is-fracturing-our-democracy/) looked at what the short-form social media diet is doing to our capacity for sustained attention and complex thought. [When Knowledge Loses Its Compass](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-knowledge-loses-its-compass/) argued that the deeper problem isn't just volume, it's that we've lost the shared criteria for distinguishing what's actually true from what merely sounds plausible. Both diagnoses feel right, and they compound each other in ways I find genuinely alarming. But there's a third layer I didn't fully address: the medium itself. **What We Lost When We Stopped Reading Newspapers** There was a time, not that long ago, when reading a newspaper cover to cover was a normal morning ritual. The local paper, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal if you were in business. You sat with it, moved through it linearly, absorbed things you hadn't gone looking for, and finished with a reasonably coherent picture of the day's reality. The format imposed a kind of discipline: someone had made editorial decisions about what mattered and in what order, and you followed that logic whether you agreed with it or not. It was an imperfect epistemic commons, but it was a commons. That's largely gone, replaced by the algorithmic feed, the email queue, and, if I'm being honest, the occasional game of Solitaire that I tell myself is keeping my mind active. (It isn't.) What replaced the newspaper isn't just shorter; it's pre-sorted. The feed doesn't show you the day's reality; it shows you a version of reality curated to confirm what you already believe and maximize the time you spend looking at it. That's not a bug, it's the business model. **The Screen Makes It Worse** It turns out that reading on screens is measurably worse for comprehension than reading on paper, and the research on this is now substantial. A [2024 meta-analysis of 49 studies](https://oej.scholasticahq.com/article/125437-turning-the-page-what-research-indicates-about-print-vs-digital-reading?ref=kevinmeyer.com) found consistent comprehension advantages for paper across age groups and contexts. Researchers call it the "screen inferiority effect," and the gap widens specifically for information-dense, complex text, exactly the kind required to understand nuanced policy, geopolitical context, or anything that doesn't resolve into a headline. You can absorb a novel reasonably well on an iPad. A serious analysis of trade policy, considerably less so. The mechanism is what researchers call the "[shallowing hypothesis](https://www.brainfacts.org/neuroscience-in-society/tech-and-the-brain/2020/reading-on-paper-versus-screens-whats-the-difference-072820?ref=kevinmeyer.com)": constant exposure to fast-paced digital media trains the brain to process information rapidly and superficially, and that habit persists even when you're consciously trying to read carefully. The screen has trained us to skim, and we keep skimming even when we know we shouldn't. The one partial exception is dedicated e-readers, which minimize distractions and more closely approximate the experience of a page, though even those show a comprehension disadvantage for demanding material compared to paper. So the environment most people use to consume news is actively degrading their ability to understand it. That's not a moral judgment; it's what the data shows. **The Source Problem** Even reading long-form carefully, there's the separate question of what you're reading. The instinct to "balance" an ideologically fragmented media landscape by consuming equal parts of opposing sources sounds reasonable but doesn't actually work. If two outlets are both selecting and framing evidence to support predetermined conclusions, averaging them doesn't produce truth; it produces a distorted average. Center isn't the midpoint between two poles. It's a different thing entirely, and finding it requires sources that are genuinely trying to report rather than persuade. AI as a potential synthesizer, pulling from primary sources and stripping rhetorical packaging, is an appealing idea. The problem is that an AI trained on a distorted information ecosystem absorbs those distortions, and because the output arrives fluent and confident, it risks being more misleading than a source that at least signals its bias openly. We'd also be asking the primary driver of information volume to simultaneously solve the volume problem. (The arsonist running the fire department, though to be fair, sometimes that's the most motivated firefighter in the building.) **Showing Up for Your Brain** I now set aside an hour each morning, after the workout, specifically for long-form reading from sources I've deliberately chosen for their proximity to actual reporting over opinion. I've turned off all notifications on my iPad to reduce the friction of distraction during that hour. I read on paper when I can. I've even been wondering whether a dedicated e-reader, without social media and other applications competing for attention, would be worth the discipline it would enforce. The habit is still a work in progress, honestly, but the intent is fixed. I don't present this as a particularly virtuous routine. People I know invest the same kind of protected, intentional time in spiritual practice, whether prayer, meditation, or something else that requires showing up before the day makes skipping easy. Working people go to the gym at 5am not because they have spare time but because they know that fitness enables everything else, and that if it isn't protected time it simply won't happen. Intellectual fitness belongs in the same category. It requires a deliberate decision that it matters, a time slot defended against the morning's other reasonable claims, and enough repetition for the habit to become its own reward. The broader architecture of modern media isn't going to fix itself. The economic incentives run the wrong direction, the algorithmic defaults are optimized for engagement rather than orientation, and the institutions that once provided something like a shared epistemic commons have been largely displaced. That's the systemic reality, and individual discipline doesn't change it. But individual discipline changes what it does to you. And at the moment, that might be the most honest answer available. ### When Knowledge Loses Its Compass URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-knowledge-loses-its-compass/ Last updated: 2026-03-18T14:45:43.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/knowledge-ignorance.jpg) Isaac Asimov wrote his famous line about ignorance and democracy in a 1980 Newsweek column, and it's been [bouncing around LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7438726948262154240/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) this week with the urgency of a newly minted insight. He wrote that anti-intellectualism has been "nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" Hard to argue with that, and forty-five years of evidence haven't done much to weaken his case. Most of the comments on the post were predictable: agreement from the educated, resentment from those who felt targeted, and the obligatory reminder that a PhD doesn't automatically confer wisdom. (True, but also a bit convenient as deflections go.) One comment, though, stopped me cold. [Dr. Leon Tsvasman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsvasman/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), whose work sits at the intersection of philosophy, cybernetics, and what he calls "epistemic integrity," pushed Asimov's argument somewhere more uncomfortable. **The Deeper Problem** His point, roughly: the real danger isn't only that ignorance claims equality with knowledge. The deeper danger is that knowledge itself has been mistaken for orientation. A civilization can accumulate expertise, credentials, data, and perfectly legitimate discourse, and still remain radically disoriented. Truth isn't defended by information alone. It's defended by the capacity to distinguish relevance from noise, validity from plausibility, and judgment from mere participation. Democracy doesn't collapse only when ignorance is flattered. It also collapses when opinion, expertise, performance, and symbolic legitimacy all circulate on the same flattened plane, with no shared means of deciding which one actually counts. Asimov diagnosed a problem with the inputs: too much ignorance being granted unearned standing. Tsvasman is pointing at a problem with the processing layer, and that's a meaningfully different diagnosis. He frames the historical shift this way: humanity has moved from a world where scarcity organized intelligence to a world where synthetic abundance tests it. The old bottleneck was access to information. The new bottleneck is the criteria through which meaning, validity, and relevance get discerned. In that environment, plausibility can circulate faster than understanding. Volume overwhelms attention. Procedure outgrows judgment. And a society gradually loses what he calls the "vertical dimension" — the shared capacity to say that some things are simply more true, more binding, more real than others, regardless of who's asserting them or how confidently. **The Lean Connection** I keep coming back to this through the lens of lean manufacturing, which is probably my occupational hazard at this point. One of the foundational principles of the Toyota Production System is genchi genbutsu: go to the actual place, observe the actual thing. Not the report about the thing, not the dashboard summarizing it, not the consultant's synthesis. The thing itself. Each step away from direct observation is an opportunity for noise to masquerade as signal, and those distortions compound quickly. What Tsvasman is describing is a civilization that has lost its genchi genbutsu at scale. And this is where the current moment gets genuinely alarming: we're now deploying AI systems that are extraordinarily good at generating fluent, credentialed-sounding knowledge at industrial volumes, with no orientation whatsoever. The output looks like information. It circulates like information. It gets cited like information. Whether it's actually tethered to anything real is a separate question the system has no reliable mechanism to answer. We've moved from scarcity of information to a glut of it, and the tools we're reaching for to manage that glut don't solve the underlying problem. They add more volume to an already cacophonous room. Tsvasman has developed this thinking into a broader framework he calls the [Sapiocratic Charter of Human Integrity](https://leontsvasmansapiognosis.substack.com/p/the-sapiocratic-charter-of-human). It's dense reading, but the core idea is that what civilization now needs is an "orientation layer" — not just better information, but an actual infrastructure for preserving judgment, discernment, and epistemic integrity in an age of enabling systems. Worth the effort if this kind of thing keeps you up at night. **What Do We Do About It** Richard Hofstadter traced the roots of American anti-intellectualism all the way back in his 1963 book of the same name, arguing that contempt for expertise got woven into our religious, political, and educational fabric almost from the founding. His diagnosis and Asimov's are essentially the same: we've romanticized willful ignorance as authentic, democratic, proof of not being an elitist snob. What neither of them fully anticipated is that the 21st century would add a second pathology on top of the first. Not just ignorance claiming equality with knowledge, but a glut of disoriented knowledge generating its own fog. Misinformation that sounds authoritative. Expertise deployed in service of predetermined conclusions. "Do your own research" as a phrase that means the exact opposite of what it says. So what do we do with this? I'm genuinely not sure, which I realize is an unsatisfying place to land. But the lean practitioner's instinct is probably right: the answer starts with going back to the gemba. Direct observation over abstracted reporting. Asking "how do we know that?" before "what should we do about it?" Accepting, as any decent scientist or engineer already knows, that the most honest thing you can say is often "I don't know yet, but here's how I'd find out." The orientation layer Tsvasman describes doesn't get rebuilt through better algorithms or more fact-checkers. It gets rebuilt one honest conversation at a time, in actual places, about actual things. Asimov would probably have a wry comment about our odds. ### Kuku Sabzi - Iran's Herb-Packed Frittata of Renewal URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kuku-sabzi-irans-herb-packed-frittata-of-renewal/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T13:52:11.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/Kuku-Sabzi.jpg) **Serves:** 2 **Total time:** \~35 minutes **Difficulty:** Easy **Diet:** Vegetarian --- ## Social & Historical Context Kuku Sabzi is one of the most quietly distinctive dishes in Persian cuisine — a dense, herb-packed frittata that inverts the usual egg-to-filling ratio so completely that the eggs function more as a binder than a base. Where a Western frittata might contain a handful of herbs as garnish, Kuku Sabzi is built from herbs with just enough egg to hold them together. The result is a cake-like round that is intensely green, faintly bitter, and unlike anything else in the international repertoire of egg dishes. The dish is inseparable from Nowruz, the Persian New Year celebrated at the spring equinox — one of the oldest continuously observed holidays in human history, predating Islam by several millennia. At the Nowruz table (*haft-sin*), green foods symbolize renewal and the return of spring, and Kuku Sabzi is almost always present. Families prepare it in large rounds the day before, slicing it cold the next morning alongside pickles, yogurt, and flatbread. It is simultaneously a celebratory dish and an everyday one — made quickly on weeknights, sliced into a packed lunch, or served at room temperature as part of a larger spread. That versatility is part of its appeal. Persian cuisine more broadly reflects a culinary tradition stretching back to the Achaemenid Empire, one of the ancient world's most sophisticated civilizations. The balance of bitter, sour, and herbal flavors that defines Kuku Sabzi — fenugreek for bitterness, a touch of barberries or lemon for acidity, dill and cilantro for brightness — is a microcosm of Persian cooking's core philosophy: not heat or spice dominance, but layered, harmonious contrast. For two people eating together, Kuku Sabzi rewards the kind of unhurried attention it rarely gets at a large table — you'll notice exactly how the fenugreek shifts the flavor, how the crust differs from the center, and how well it pairs with cold yogurt and warm bread. --- ## INGREDIENTS ### Kuku Sabzi - 4 large eggs - 1½ cups fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped *(packed)* - 1½ cups fresh cilantro, finely chopped *(packed)* - ½ cup fresh dill, finely chopped - 3 scallions, thinly sliced (green and white parts) - 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves *(shanbalileh — see note below)* - 2 tbsp dried barberries *(zereshk)*, picked over *(or substitute 1 tbsp currants + ½ tsp lemon zest)* - 2 tbsp raw walnuts, roughly chopped - ½ tsp baking powder *(gives slight lift and a lighter interior)* - ½ tsp kosher salt - ¼ tsp black pepper - ¼ tsp turmeric - 1½ tbsp neutral oil or clarified butter > **Fenugreek note:** Dried fenugreek leaves (*kasuri methi* at Indian grocery stores, or *shanbalileh* at Persian/Middle Eastern stores) are essential — they provide the characteristic slight bitterness that defines authentic Kuku Sabzi. Do not substitute fresh fenugreek or fenugreek seeds; the flavor is too aggressive. If unavailable, omit rather than substitute. > **Barberry note:** Dried barberries are small, tart red berries central to Persian cooking. They're available at Persian or Middle Eastern grocery stores and online. The currant-plus-lemon-zest substitution is a reasonable workaround but the flavor is less complex. --- ### Accompaniments **Mast-o-Khiar (Persian Cucumber Yogurt)** - 1 cup full-fat Greek yogurt - 1 Persian cucumber, finely diced - 1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped *(or ½ tsp dried)* - 1 tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped - 1 small clove garlic, finely grated *(optional)* - Salt to taste - Pinch of dried rose petals *(optional garnish)* **To Serve** - Warm flatbread — lavash, barbari, or thin pita - Extra fresh herbs for the table --- ## RECIPES ### Mast-o-Khiar (Make First) 1. Combine yogurt, cucumber, mint, dill, and garlic (if using). Season with salt. 2. Cover and refrigerate at least 20 minutes before serving. Flavor improves with time. Garnish with rose petals just before serving if using. --- ### Kuku Sabzi 1. **Prep the herbs.** Wash and dry all fresh herbs thoroughly — excess moisture will steam the kuku rather than set it. Chop finely. This is not a rough chop; the herbs should be fine enough that the mixture coheres when pressed. 2. **Mix the batter.** Beat eggs in a bowl until smooth. Add salt, pepper, turmeric, and baking powder; whisk briefly. Add all chopped herbs, scallions, dried fenugreek, barberries, and walnuts. Fold everything together until fully combined. The mixture should look almost entirely green with egg barely visible — that ratio is correct. 3. **Cook the kuku.** Heat oil or butter in a 8–9 inch non-stick or well-seasoned cast iron skillet over medium-low heat. Pour in the herb mixture and press gently into an even layer. Cover with a lid or foil and cook undisturbed for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and the center is mostly firm when gently pressed. 4. **Flip and finish.** Slide the kuku onto a large plate, then invert it back into the pan to cook the second side uncovered for 4–5 minutes until the crust is deep golden-brown. Alternatively, finish under a low broiler for 3–4 minutes — this is easier and gives an even crust. The exterior should be distinctly darker than the interior. 5. **Rest before serving.** Slide onto a cutting board and rest 5 minutes minimum before slicing. Kuku Sabzi is served warm or at room temperature — never piping hot. The flavor and texture both improve as it cools slightly. --- ## COOKING ORDER 1. Make mast-o-khiar → refrigerate (can be done up to 2 hours ahead) 2. Wash and dry herbs thoroughly — allow time for this; wet herbs are the main pitfall 3. Chop all herbs and prep remaining ingredients 4. Warm flatbread (wrapped in foil in a low oven, or briefly on a dry pan) 5. Mix and cook kuku 6. Rest kuku → slice and serve --- ## PRESENTATION & SERVING - Slice the kuku into wedges like a cake, not squares. Four wedges for two people is the right portion. - The cross-section should show a dense, uniformly green interior with a darker brown crust on both faces — that contrast is the visual signature of the dish. Arrange cut-side up so guests can see it. - Serve mast-o-khiar in a small bowl alongside, not on top of the kuku. - Warm flatbread torn into rough pieces on a plate or wooden board. - A small pile of extra fresh herbs and a few whole walnuts on the plate add color and signal the ingredients without over-styling. - Kuku Sabzi is excellent at room temperature, so there is no urgency at the table — it holds well for 20–30 minutes after slicing. --- ## SHOPPING LIST ### Produce - 1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley - 1 large bunch cilantro - 1 bunch fresh dill - 3 scallions - 1 Persian cucumber - Fresh mint (small bunch or packet) - 1 head garlic ### Dairy & Eggs - 4 large eggs - Full-fat Greek yogurt (1 cup) ### Pantry - Dried fenugreek leaves (*shanbalileh / kasuri methi*) - Dried barberries (*zereshk*) *(or currants + lemon)* - Raw walnut pieces (small bag) - Neutral oil or clarified butter - Baking powder - Turmeric - Kosher salt, black pepper ### Bread - Lavash, barbari, or thin pita ### Optional - Dried rose petals (garnish for yogurt) - Extra lemon for the table ### Lobio with Mchadi & Pomidvris Salati - Georgia's Everyday Anchor URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lobio-with-mchadi-pomidvris-salati-georgias-everyday-anchor/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T13:43:26.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/lobio.jpg) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* **Serves:** 4 **Total time:** \~55 minutes active cooking **Diet:** Vegan --- ## Social & Historical Context Lobio — the Georgian word for beans — is one of the most ancient and enduring dishes in the South Caucasus, predating the introduction of New World ingredients by centuries. In traditional Georgian culture, it occupies the same role that lentil dishes hold in Ethiopian cooking or beans in Mexican cuisine: the everyday anchor of the table, present at family meals, harvest celebrations, and religious fasts alike. What distinguishes Lobio from superficially similar bean stews across the region is the walnuts. Ground to a coarse paste and stirred in at the end, they transform the dish into something darker, earthier, and far more complex — a signature of the Georgian kitchen, which deploys walnuts the way French cuisine deploys butter: as a source of richness, body, and depth. Georgia sits at the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road, and its cuisine reflects centuries of Persian, Ottoman, and Byzantine influence absorbed but never fully assimilated. The result is a flavor vocabulary unlike anything in Europe or the Middle East — coriander-forward spice blends, tart pomegranate and vinegar finishes, and a reliance on walnut pastes that feels simultaneously familiar and exotic to most Western palates. Lobio is the dish that most clearly expresses this identity. Served in a clay pot (*ketsi*) at Georgian tables, ladled over or alongside the dense cornbread mchadi, and eaten communally, it is less a recipe than a ritual — a meal that has changed little in five hundred years because it needs to change very little. For guests encountering Georgian food for the first time, Lobio is the ideal entry point: humble in its ingredients, generous in its flavors, and deeply memorable. --- ## INGREDIENTS ### Lobio (Georgian Kidney Bean Stew) - 2 cans (15 oz each) dark red kidney beans, drained, liquid reserved - 1 cup raw walnut halves or pieces - 2 medium yellow onions, finely diced - 4 cloves garlic, minced - 3 tbsp neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - 2 tsp khmeli-suneli *(Georgian spice blend — see note below)* - 1 tsp ground coriander - ½ tsp ground fenugreek - ¼ tsp cayenne or Aleppo pepper - 2 tbsp red wine vinegar (or pomegranate vinegar if available) - ½ cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped - ¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped - Salt and black pepper to taste - ½–¾ cup reserved bean liquid or water > **Khmeli-suneli note:** This Georgian spice blend (coriander, fenugreek, marigold petals, dried herbs) is the single specialty ingredient in this dish. It's available at most Eastern European or Middle Eastern grocery stores and easily ordered online. If unavailable, substitute with an equal mix of ground coriander, dried thyme, and dried basil — the dish will still work but will lack some complexity. --- ### Mchadi (Georgian Skillet Cornbread) - 2 cups coarse stone-ground cornmeal *(not fine polenta — texture is essential)* - ½ tsp kosher salt - ¾–1 cup warm water - 2 tbsp neutral oil for pan-frying --- ### Pomidvris Salati (Georgian Tomato & Herb Salad) - 4 medium ripe tomatoes, cut into rough wedges - 1 small red onion, very thinly sliced - 2 Persian cucumbers, sliced into rounds - ¼ cup raw walnuts, roughly chopped - 3 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped - 2 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped - 2 tbsp walnut oil *(or olive oil)* - 1 tbsp red wine vinegar - Salt to taste --- ## RECIPES ### Lobio 1. **Toast the walnuts.** In a dry skillet over medium heat, toast walnuts 4–5 minutes, shaking the pan, until fragrant and lightly golden. Remove and let cool. Once cool, pulse in a food processor or chop very finely by hand until they resemble coarse crumbs — not a smooth paste. Set aside. 2. **Soften the onions.** Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring regularly, until soft, translucent, and just beginning to color — about 12–15 minutes. Do not rush this step; the onions are the flavor base. 3. **Add garlic and spices.** Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Add khmeli-suneli, ground coriander, fenugreek, and cayenne. Stir continuously for 1–2 minutes until fragrant and the spices have bloomed in the oil. 4. **Add beans and liquid.** Add the drained kidney beans and ½ cup of the reserved liquid (or water). Stir well to combine. Bring to a gentle simmer, then roughly mash about one-third of the beans against the side of the pot with a spoon to thicken the stew. The consistency should be thick and cohesive, not soupy. 5. **Stir in walnuts and finish.** Reduce heat to low. Stir in the ground walnuts. Cook 5 minutes more, adding a splash of liquid if the stew tightens too much. Add vinegar, taste, and adjust salt and acidity. The vinegar should be present but subtle — it lifts the walnuts without announcing itself. 6. **Finish with herbs.** Off heat, stir in cilantro and parsley. Cover and rest 5–10 minutes before serving. The flavor deepens as it sits. --- ### Mchadi 1. Combine cornmeal and salt in a bowl. Add warm water gradually, mixing with your hands, until a firm dough forms that holds its shape when pressed. It should feel like stiff polenta — not wet, not crumbly. 2. Divide into 8 equal portions. Shape each into a flat oval patty roughly ½ inch thick and 3 inches long. 3. Heat oil in a cast iron or heavy skillet over medium heat. Cook patties in batches, 4–5 minutes per side, until deep golden with a light crust. The exterior should be slightly crisp; the interior will be dense and slightly chewy — intentionally so. 4. Rest on a wire rack, not paper towels, to preserve the crust. --- ### Pomidvris Salati 1. Soak sliced onion in cold salted water for 10 minutes to soften the sharpness. Drain well. 2. Combine tomatoes, cucumbers, and drained onion in a bowl. 3. Whisk walnut oil, vinegar, and salt. Pour over the vegetables and toss gently. 4. Add chopped walnuts, cilantro, and parsley. Toss once more. Taste and adjust seasoning. 5. Refrigerate until serving. The salad holds well for up to an hour; beyond that the tomatoes soften. --- ## COOKING ORDER (Stress-Free) 1. Toast and grind walnuts → set aside 2. Start onions for Lobio (this takes the most time — begin here) 3. Make salad dressing and prep salad vegetables → refrigerate 4. Add spices, beans, and liquid to Lobio → simmer 5. Mix and shape mchadi dough 6. Stir walnuts and vinegar into Lobio → rest off heat 7. Pan-fry mchadi to order (serve fresh from the pan) 8. Toss and finish salad just before serving --- ## PRESENTATION & SERVING - **Lobio** is traditionally served in a clay pot or a wide, rustic bowl. If you have a small cast iron pot, use it — the visual is authentic and adds to the story. Garnish with a small amount of extra fresh cilantro and a crack of black pepper. - **Mchadi** should be served hot from the pan, stacked simply on a plate or wooden board. It is the utensil as much as the side dish — guests will tear pieces to scoop the lobio. - **Salat** goes in a separate bowl and is meant as a bright, acidic counterpoint between bites of the rich bean stew. Keep it on the table throughout the meal. - Serve family-style. This is communal food — individual plating would feel wrong for this cuisine. - Optional: A small bowl of plain Greek yogurt on the table is not traditional but is a natural counterpoint for guests who want it. --- ## COMBINED SHOPPING LIST ### Produce - 2 medium yellow onions - 1 small red onion - 1 head garlic - 4 medium ripe tomatoes - 2 Persian cucumbers - 1 bunch fresh cilantro - 1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley ### Pantry - Dark red kidney beans (2 cans, 15 oz each) - Raw walnut halves or pieces (1½ cups total — 1 cup for Lobio, ¼ cup for salad) - Coarse stone-ground cornmeal (2 cups) - Khmeli-suneli spice blend *(order online if not locally available)* - Ground coriander - Ground fenugreek - Cayenne or Aleppo pepper - Red wine vinegar (or pomegranate vinegar) - Walnut oil *(or substitute olive oil)* - Neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - Kosher salt, black pepper ### Optional at the Table - Plain Greek yogurt - Extra red wine vinegar or pomegranate molasses ### Your Next Big Discovery May Be the Thing You're About to Clean Up URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/your-next-big-discovery-may-be-the-thing-youre-about-to-clean-up/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T12:57:26.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/bumble-bee.jpg) A local friend of mine, Andrea Lius, recently had [an article published in Smithsonian Magazine](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/bumblebee-queens-breathe-underwater-to-survive-drowning-revealing-how-they-can-live-submerged-for-a-week-180988330/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) about water-breathing bumblebees. She sent it my way, and what started as a quick read turned into a couple hours of thinking about serendipitous discovery. Which probably tells you something about how I spend my weekends. The story begins a few years ago, when conservation biologist Sabrina Rondeau opened a laboratory refrigerator expecting to find bumblebee queens quietly hibernating in their soil-filled tubes. What she found instead was a flooded mess, the tubes filled with condensation water, the queens submerged. She assumed they were dead. Then they started moving. Rondeau could have toweled off the tubes, muttered something impolite about the fridge, and moved on. Instead she paid attention, repeated the submersion deliberately with 126 queens, and eventually partnered with ecological physiologist Charles Darveau at the University of Ottawa to figure out the mechanism. The result, [published this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2066/20253141/480715/Diapausing-bumble-bee-queens-avoid-drowning-by?ref=kevinmeyer.com), is remarkable: diapausing bumblebee queens can actually breathe underwater, a capability nobody expected to find in a terrestrial insect. The discovery has real conservation implications as climate change increases the frequency of winter flooding in the soil habitats where bumblebee queens overwinter. What strikes me most about the story isn't the biology. It's the moment of decision: clean it up, or look closer? ## The prepared mind, and its limits Louis Pasteur's line about fortune favoring the prepared mind is one of science's great truisms, and it holds up. Rondeau needed sufficient entomology to understand that submerged queens moving around was genuinely anomalous, not just bees being bees. Alexander Fleming, discovering penicillin in 1928 after a mold contaminated his petri dishes, needed enough bacteriology to recognize that the mold wasn't just spoiling his experiment, it was actively killing the bacteria around it. The preparation isn't incidental. Without it, the anomaly is invisible. But here's the problem with stopping at "prepared mind" as the full explanation: other researchers almost certainly saw the same mold appear on contaminated plates and threw them away. Fleming had colleagues. They had prepared minds too. So the prepared mind is necessary but not sufficient, and that's where it gets interesting. Zen master Shunryu Suzuki observed that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." Taiichi Ohno made the same point from the factory floor: observe without preconceptions, with a blank mind. I've written before about [how this concept of shoshin, or beginner's mind, connects lean thinking and Zen practice](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-the-beginning-with-ohno-suzuki-and-yoda/), and it's directly relevant here. Deep expertise can close off the very perception it enables. You see what your mental model predicts, and you rationalize away what it doesn't. The researchers who made the great accidental discoveries weren't just prepared. They were prepared and open simultaneously, which is harder than it sounds. It requires holding expertise and curiosity in tension, using what you know without letting it tell you what you're allowed to find. ## The unexpected is information Most organizations, and most people, treat anomalies as problems. Something went wrong; fix it, document it, move on. The mental model is: expected outcomes are signal, unexpected outcomes are noise. Get back to signal as quickly as possible. That framing is exactly backwards. The unexpected is information. Often it's the most valuable information available, precisely because it wasn't generated by your existing assumptions. Expected results confirm what you already believe. Unexpected results have the potential to change what you believe, which is a much rarer and more valuable thing. Fleming's contaminated plate wasn't a failed experiment. It was a more important experiment than the one he intended to run. This is why the lean concept of the andon cord runs deeper than it first appears. The foundational principle isn't just "stop when there's a defect." It's stop when something doesn't match what you expected, because the mismatch itself is worth understanding. The cord isn't a failure signal; it's a learning signal. Rondeau pulled the andon cord on her flooded refrigerator, and the result was a discovery that nobody in entomology was looking for. The organizational conditions that enable this aren't complicated, but they're surprisingly rare. Psychological safety to say "this is strange and I want to investigate it" without being seen as inefficient. Enough slack in the schedule to pursue an anomaly past the first inconvenient data point. And crucially, access to collaborators with different mental models, because sometimes you need someone else's framework to understand what you're actually looking at. That last point matters more than it gets credit for. Rondeau's initial discovery was serendipitous, but the mechanism paper required collaboration. She brought her observation to Darveau, who was already studying bumblebee metabolism from a different angle. The cross-disciplinary collision, an entomologist's anomaly meeting a physiologist's toolkit, produced the deeper insight. Similarly, Barnett Rosenberg was a physicist studying electric fields in bacterial cultures in 1965 when he noticed the cells stopped dividing near his platinum electrodes. The culprit was cisplatin leaching from the electrode; today it's one of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs. Rosenberg had to reach across into oncology to understand what he'd found. Neither discovery was fully accessible from within a single discipline. 3M's longstanding policy of giving engineers unstructured time for personal projects (you've heard the Post-it note story, so I'll spare you) is the institutional version of the same idea: build in slack, create space for anomalies to surface and be pursued without immediately needing to justify the detour against a deadline. The real constraint on serendipitous discovery isn't funding structures or research design. It's the quieter pressure to move quickly toward expected results, to treat the unexpected as a disruption rather than a dispatch from unexplored territory. ## Not just for researchers It would be easy to read all of this as a story about science and leave it there. But the same dynamics play out in any environment where learning matters, which is to say, everywhere. In manufacturing, in business strategy, in personal development, anomalies appear constantly. A process metric that doesn't behave the way the model predicts. A customer complaint that doesn't fit the usual pattern. A habit you've tried to build that keeps breaking down in the same specific circumstance. Most of the time we clean up the flooded tubes and move on, because we're busy and the anomaly is inconvenient and we already have a hypothesis we're trying to confirm. Continuous improvement, real continuous improvement, requires treating the unexpected as a resource rather than an interruption. That means cultivating the prepared mind through deliberate learning, while simultaneously protecting the beginner's mind against the calcification that expertise naturally produces. It means building the personal and organizational habits that make "huh, that's strange" the beginning of an inquiry rather than the end of one. Rondeau's bumblebees were underwater for a week. She almost missed it entirely. What are you currently cleaning up and moving past? ### The Gemba Was Always There. We Just Couldn't See It. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-gemba-was-always-there-we-just-couldnt-see-it/ Last updated: 2026-03-13T11:42:38.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/presentations.jpg) I once spent the better part of a Friday building a PowerPoint presentation about a problem I had already solved. The solution was clear, the data was solid, and I could have explained the whole thing over lunch in about twenty minutes. Instead I spent six hours translating it into a format that a room full of executives, who hadn't been close to the work, could digest in thirty. Nobody asked me to do this. It was just understood. It was, in the parlance of my calendar, "the job." Lean practitioners have a word for that Friday: waste. Not laziness, not bad intentions, just pure non-value-added activity that consumed time and energy without moving anything closer to the customer. On a factory floor, you'd have circled it on a value stream map before lunch. In an office, we dressed it up in a nice template and called it a deliverable. ## Lean's Dirty Secret The Toyota Production System changed manufacturing because waste on the factory floor was *visible*. You could watch a worker walk four hundred feet to retrieve a part. You could count the pallets of work-in-process stacking up between stations. You could draw the spaghetti. Taiichi Ohno's famous insistence on going to the gemba, on seeing the actual work in the actual place, worked because the work was there to be seen. Waste revealed itself if you were willing to look. Knowledge work broke that model. Companies tried to apply lean in offices for thirty years, with mixed results at best. The value streams were too abstract, the handoffs too cognitive, the waste too thoroughly disguised as legitimate activity. That deck I built on Friday wasn't obviously waste; it was "communication" and "alignment" and "stakeholder management." The spec document I wrote so a team in another building could execute a decision I'd already made was "documentation" and "process." We had entire job categories built around what lean would recognize, without hesitation, as the coordination overhead of humans trying to work together despite the fundamental limitation that we cannot share a brain. A [recent piece by Nate Jones](https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/pull-up-your-calendar-60-of-it-is) put a number on this, arguing that the majority of knowledge work hours exist not to create value but to manage the friction of human collaboration: writing specs so someone not in the room can act, syncing state in meetings, building decks so an executive who couldn't read the primary source can make a call. His specific percentage may be debatable (and I'm skeptical of any precise figure applied universally), but the underlying phenomenon is real. Call it thirty percent or call it sixty; the point is that a substantial chunk of what we've been categorizing as "the role" is actually coordination infrastructure. It's muda in a white-collar wardrobe. ## Flow Kaizen, Not Point Kaizen What makes AI genuinely interesting here isn't that it can automate tasks within this structure. It's that it threatens to dissolve the structure that made those tasks necessary. That's a meaningful distinction. Lean distinguishes between point kaizen, improving a specific step in a process, and flow kaizen, redesigning the flow itself so wasteful steps don't need to exist. Most technology applied to knowledge work over the past few decades has been point kaizen: faster email, better project management software, more collaborative documents. The coordination overhead remained; we just executed it more efficiently. AI agents capable of maintaining context, synthesizing information across sources, and acting on decisions without a human translation layer are pointing at something closer to flow kaizen. The handoff doesn't get faster. The reason for the handoff disappears. This is where the gemba question gets genuinely interesting. Ohno insisted on direct observation because that's where reality lived, unmediated by reports or summaries or secondhand accounts. Knowledge work has never had a real gemba. The work happened in people's heads, in email threads, in the accumulated institutional memory that walked out the door when someone quit. You couldn't stand in the corner of a conference room and see the value stream. AI systems operating on actual workflows, with visibility into where decisions stall, where information gets re-explained, where the same context gets reconstructed from scratch in meeting after meeting, may be the first technology capable of mapping that hidden flow. The gemba was always there. We just didn't have a way to see it. ## The Hard Implication There's an implication here that's worth sitting with honestly. Organizational structures aren't arbitrary; they're shaped by the coordination limits of the humans inside them. Layers of management, approval chains, cross-functional committees, they exist in part because information has to move through people, and people have limited bandwidth, limited context, and perfectly reasonable incentives to protect their piece of the translation layer. If AI meaningfully compresses that coordination overhead, the organizations built around it will need to change shape. Some of what feels like leadership infrastructure is actually just the tax we pay for human cognitive limits. That's a hard thing to say in a room full of people whose calendars are ninety percent coordination. The forward-looking version of this isn't pessimistic, though. What remains when you strip the coordination overhead is the work that was always most interesting: the judgment calls, the novel problems, the synthesis of ambiguous information into a decision that nobody else can make for you. Lean at its best didn't just eliminate waste; it forced the remaining work to be meaningful. That's the promise here too, if organizations are willing to look at the gemba they've never been able to see. The question worth asking this week is a simple one. Pull up your calendar. Look at last week honestly. How much of it was value creation, and how much was translation? ### Mission as Management: What Anthropic's Culture Can Teach the Rest of Us URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mission-as-management-what-anthropics-culture-can-teach-the-rest-of-us/ Last updated: 2026-03-12T01:04:47.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/true-north.jpg) Visitors to the fifth floor of Anthropic's San Francisco headquarters are greeted by warm wood, soft light, a portrait of Alan Turing, and a receptionist who hands them a small book, the size of the pocket Bibles proselytizers distribute on street corners. It's a copy of [*Machines of Loving Grace*](https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace?ref=kevinmeyer.com), a 14,000-word essay CEO Dario Amodei wrote in 2024, laying out a utopian vision for how AI could transform the world by accelerating scientific discovery. In January he published a second novella-length essay, [*The Adolescence of Technology*](https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology?ref=kevinmeyer.com), detailing the attendant dangers: mass surveillance, widespread job losses, even permanent loss of human control. That's how Anthropic introduces itself to strangers. Not with a brochure or a pitch deck, but with a CEO's intellectual reckoning with the thing his company is building. Most coverage of Anthropic right now is consumed with [the Pentagon confrontation](https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/anthropic-claude-disruptive-company-pentagon/?ref=kevinmeyer.com): the supply-chain-risk designation, the lawsuits, Trump calling them "radical left nut jobs." It's genuinely dramatic, and I'll get to it. But the confrontation is, in a sense, a symptom. What produced it is the more interesting story, and the one with lessons that extend well beyond AI. ## What the Culture Actually Looks Like Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei and five co-founders, all of whom had left OpenAI out of concern that the organization was moving too fast. Before they had a product, they built a "societal impacts" team. They hired a full-time in-house philosopher, Amanda Askell, whose job is to shape Claude's moral sensibilities and prepare it for a future where it may be more intelligent than its creators. "It does sometimes feel a little bit like you have a 6-year-old, and you're teaching the 6-year-old what goodness is," Askell told *Time*. "By the time they're 15, they're going to be smarter than you at everything." Employees call themselves "ants." Many maintain a digital notebook, a Slack channel where they post stream-of-consciousness thoughts, hopes, fears, and observations. Dario writes his own lengthy entries. He also gives biweekly company-wide lectures called "Dario Vision Quests" (a name he tried to resist, for what should be obvious reasons). The format is deliberately unfiltered: where's the company, what does he believe, what worries him. No corporate-speak, no defensive positioning. The goal, he has [said publicly](https://fortune.com/2026/02/26/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-leadership-style-csuite-communication-tech-ai-dario-vision-quest/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), is simply "to get a reputation for telling the company the truth about what's happening, to call things what they are, to acknowledge problems." That sounds basic. Most organizations at scale never actually do it. He reportedly spends roughly [40% of his time on culture](https://fortune.com/2026/02/26/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-leadership-style-csuite-communication-tech-ai-dario-vision-quest/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), not product or technology. For a company now valued at $380 billion with 2,500 employees, that's a striking allocation. Most executives I've known would answer "culture" if asked what matters most, then spend 40% of their time in budget reviews. The cultural filtering starts before anyone joins. Every candidate, regardless of role, goes through a universal culture interview designed to assess genuine values alignment, not just competence. Only employees with at least 30 days of tenure, who've completed multi-stage training on Anthropic's culture, are [allowed to conduct those interviews](https://www.signalfire.com/blog/anthropic-talent-retention?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The logic is that cultural transmission is too important to delegate to someone still figuring out what the culture is. A sample interview question, cited in the *Time* profile: *Would you be willing to lose the value of your stock if Anthropic decides not to release models because it can't guarantee they're safe?* That's not a hypothetical. It's a filter. They will walk away from technically brilliant candidates who can't answer it honestly. Every technical employee, from new hire to founding executive, carries the same title: Member of Technical Staff. No senior vice presidents, no distinguished fellows, no hierarchy signaling. Authority comes from the quality of your argument, not your position on an org chart. Former Google employee Daniel Freeman, now on Anthropic's red team, put it plainly: Anthropic's competitors contain fiefs "that all care about different things and are low-key at war with each other. I've absolutely never felt that at Anthropic." The result is an [80% retention rate](https://www.signalfire.com/blog/anthropic-talent-retention?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and offer acceptance rates approaching 95% for some roles, in a market where competing offers arrive constantly. Work-life balance scores lowest in reviews, and the intensity is real. One employee review on Blind captured the internal atmosphere well: "If you work at Anthropic you may become convinced that you are working at the most important thing, at the most important time, at the most important company, perhaps in all of history. This may or may not be true, at the very least, take it with a grain of salt." The self-awareness embedded in that caveat is unusual. Most mission-driven organizations don't produce it. ## The Test All seven co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth. Anthropic is incorporated as a public benefit corporation, legally bound to balance private and public interests. The EA (effective altruism) movement, which emphasizes using reason to do the most good and averting catastrophic risk, runs through the company's DNA, though the Amodeis are careful about the label given its associations with Sam Bankman-Fried. These aren't incidental details. They explain why, when the Pentagon demanded Anthropic grant unrestricted access to Claude for "all lawful purposes," including the mass surveillance of American citizens and fully autonomous weapons systems, Amodei said no, and held that position when it cost him a [$200 million contract](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/anthropic-pentagon-ai-claude-iran.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and triggered a designation as a national security supply-chain risk. There's a version of that negotiation in which a company with different cultural foundations folds. Anthropic didn't. The reverberations were significant. Claude shot to number one on the App Store the day after the blacklisting, displacing ChatGPT. [More than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind](https://www.wired.com/story/openai-deepmind-employees-file-amicus-brief-anthropic-dod-lawsuit/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), including Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic in court, signing in their personal capacities. That has apparently never happened between competing AI companies. OpenAI's robotics team lead resigned over her company's rapid pivot to a Pentagon deal hours after Anthropic was blacklisted. A senior OpenAI researcher announced he was moving to Anthropic. Hundreds of employees from both companies signed an open letter urging their executives to stand with Anthropic's position. What propagated wasn't just news coverage. It was the demonstration that a culture genuinely built around a principle can function as a recruiting and retention advantage in ways that compensation packages cannot replicate. People who care about these questions now know exactly where to apply. ## The Real Risks A genuinely honest assessment includes the caveats, and Anthropic is not short of them. The first risk is insularity. Deep, shared belief systems produce extraordinary commitment and equally extraordinary blind spots. The head of Anthropic's Safeguards Research Team [recently resigned](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-researcher-quits-cryptic-letter?ref=kevinmeyer.com), writing that "throughout my time here, I've repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions," and that employees "constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most." The internal tension that produces is worth taking seriously, especially in a company whose societal impacts team leader told *Time*, regarding AI-driven job displacement: "It feels like we might be speaking out of both sides of our mouths." The second risk is scalability. Maintaining cultural coherence at 2,500 people requires the CEO to spend 40% of his time on it. That math doesn't hold at 25,000\. Most organizations that tried to scale a strong founding culture have experienced steep, fast decay. The third risk Anthropic has already started to confront: mission drift under competitive pressure. The same week Anthropic stared down the Pentagon, it quietly [rewrote its Responsible Scaling Policy](https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/anthropic-claude-disruptive-company-pentagon/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), dropping a binding commitment to pause development if it couldn't guarantee safety adequacy. Chief science officer Jared Kaplan told *Time* it was "naive" to think they could identify bright lines between danger and safety, and that it made no sense to make unilateral commitments "if competitors are blazing ahead." Critics noted the timing. The pattern where foundational commitments get reinterpreted just enough to accommodate what you were going to do anyway is the quiet death of most cultures that don't survive their own success. Dave Orr, Anthropic's head of safeguards, may have said it best: "We're driving down a cliff road. A mistake will kill you. Now we're driving at 75 instead of 25." ## What Traditional Companies Can Actually Use So what transfers to organizations that aren't building AI, aren't worth $380 billion, and aren't fighting Pete Hegseth? Culture functions as a management system, not a motivational poster. If the CEO isn't investing real, consistent time in it, it doesn't operate as a functional mechanism. It exists as a document on an intranet that nobody reads after orientation. The DVQ concept, a regular unfiltered communication from leadership about what's actually true in the organization, is something any company can implement and almost none do well at scale. Publishing your thinking publicly, as leaders, creates accountability that press releases and earnings calls don't. The hiring filter matters more than the mission statement. Selective hiring that actually turns away excellent candidates on cultural grounds is universally endorsed in principle and universally abandoned in practice when there's a role to fill and a manager under pressure. Building a process designed to survive that pressure, with trained interviewers and a consistent culture screen for every role, is an engineering problem as much as a values problem. And asking candidates whether they'd sacrifice something real for the mission, not hypothetically but as an actual question with actual weight, tells you things behavioral interviews don't. Values that have never been tested haven't been proven. The real signal of a healthy culture isn't the annual engagement survey; it's what decisions get made when holding the line costs you something meaningful. Most organizations will never face a moment as stark as Anthropic's. But the question is worth asking before circumstances force it: if your company's stated values were genuinely put to the test, what would the decision look like? A senior Pentagon official reportedly said that disentangling from Claude would be "an enormous pain in the ass." Anthropic said fine. That kind of clarity doesn't appear in a company overnight. It's built through how you hire, what your leaders spend their time on, and whether you've ever actually decided what you won't do. ### Fordlandia: How Henry Ford Forgot His Own First Principle URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/fordlandia-how-henry-ford-forgot-his-own-first-principle/ Last updated: 2026-03-06T14:26:39.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/fordlandia.jpg) If you've spent any time in the lean world, Henry Ford is essentially a founding father. The moving assembly line. Continuous flow. Waste elimination as a design principle, not an afterthought. Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo studied Ford obsessively; the Toyota Production System is, in many ways, Ford's system extended and systematized. We owe him a lot. Which is exactly what makes Fordlandia so uncomfortable to talk about. In 1927, Ford purchased a tract of land in the Brazilian Amazon roughly the size of Connecticut. The goal was sensible enough: the British rubber cartel controlled global latex prices, and Ford needed rubber for tires. Vertical integration was his religion, so why not grow your own? He'd just overseen the completion of River Rouge, arguably the greatest manufacturing complex in history, with raw ore going in one end and finished automobiles rolling out the other. How hard could a rubber plantation be? Very hard. And the failure traces directly back to the one principle that made River Rouge brilliant in the first place. **Watching the Work** Ford's early genius, from the Piquette Avenue plant through Highland Park, was rooted in direct observation. He encouraged constant floor-level experimentation, the kind that can only happen when people in charge are physically present where the work happens, watching material flow, watching people move, watching friction accumulate. It was this empirical, eyes-on instinct that produced the moving assembly line in 1913, the five-dollar day in 1914, and ultimately the logic that underpinned everything at River Rouge. River Rouge itself was largely built on that same principle, even if Ford had stepped back from the floor personally by then. Charles Sorensen, known around Ford as "Cast Iron Charlie," was the operational architect of the Rouge. According to Sorensen's own memoir, [*My Forty Years with Ford*](https://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/0805082360?ref=kevinmeyer.com), it was Sorensen and his team doing the hands-on experimentation that actually drove the assembly innovations, with Ford encouraging the culture even as Sorensen executed it. Sorensen had conceived key elements of the moving assembly line at Highland Park, then took charge of River Rouge production and ran it with the same floor-level intensity. The Rouge worked because the people responsible for it were embedded in its reality daily. Decades later, Taiichi Ohno would formalize this instinct into a named practice, the gemba walk, from the Japanese word for "actual place." Ohno made it a foundational discipline of the Toyota Production System: go to where the work happens, observe directly, don't manage from abstractions. But the underlying idea, that you cannot understand a process without watching it, was Ford's first. He just forgot it when he went to Brazil. **The Amazon Plan** Ford negotiated a concession of roughly 10,000 square kilometers on the banks of the Rio Tapajós, deep in Pará state, in exchange for a 9% share of any profits. He sent American managers with no Portuguese, no botanical expertise, and no tropical agriculture knowledge. He imposed American day shifts on Brazilian and indigenous workers who, entirely rationally, preferred to work nights to avoid equatorial heat. He built Cape Cod-style houses, a golf course, movie theaters, and a cafeteria serving brown bread, canned peaches, and oatmeal in a rainforest. Not one drop of latex from Fordlandia ever made it into a Ford car. And Ford himself? In spite of the enormous investment and numerous invitations, he never visited either of his ill-fated towns. Not once. The man whose manufacturing philosophy demanded presence, observation, and direct engagement with process sent managers who had none of those things, into a system they'd never observed, and apparently never insisted otherwise. **The Blight Nobody Saw Coming (Except Everyone)** The agricultural failure is the most viscerally ironic part of the story. *Hevea brasiliensis*, the rubber tree, grows naturally dispersed across the Amazon because dispersal is its primary defense against *Microcyclus ulei*, a leaf blight pathogen that had co-evolved with the tree for millennia. The trees are scattered precisely because clustering them is fatal. This was not obscure botany in 1927; it was documented. Ford was famously reluctant to hire native naturalists who could have advised him on growing rubber in the region. Instead, his managers planted the trees in dense American crop-grid rows, the way you'd grow corn in Iowa. The trees were easy prey for blight, *Saúva* ants, lace bugs, red spiders, and leaf caterpillars. The plantation didn't fail despite Ford's approach; it failed because of it. His team solved for the wrong problem, with the wrong model, without observing the actual system they were working in. At Highland Park, Ford's people solved problems by watching work directly. At Fordlandia, they imposed a mental model of how things should work and waited for nature to comply. Nature declined. **The Cafeteria Riots Were Predictable** The human dimension was no subtler. Brazilian laborers accustomed to their own diet, rhythms, and culture were handed American cafeteria food and mandatory square dancing. As historian Greg Grandin documents in his definitive account [*Fordlandia*](https://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-Jungle/dp/0805082360?ref=kevinmeyer.com), Ford had very particular ideas about proper diet, and his managers dutifully imposed them: brown rice, whole-wheat bread, canned peaches, oatmeal. Workers rioted in 1930, overturning the food lines and wrecking the cafeteria equipment. Predictable. Preventable. Never anticipated. Had anyone been watching the work, meaning the actual human work of building a functioning community in a foreign culture, the friction would have been obvious long before it boiled over. Nobody was watching. There was no Sorensen equivalent in the Amazon, and Ford didn't seem to notice the gap. **Why This Happens** Daniel Kahneman's concept of the "inside view" is useful here. The inside view means reasoning from your own experience and mental models. The outside view means looking at base rates, consulting domain expertise, and asking what actually tends to happen in situations like this one. Ford's early manufacturing genius was built on a ruthless outside view: go observe what's actually happening, not what you think is happening. In the Amazon, he switched entirely to the inside view. He knew how to build things. He knew what a good diet looked like. He knew how a well-run operation should function. The fact that rubber trees, tropical ecology, and Brazilian laborers didn't behave like Michigan steel workers was apparently beside the point. This is the trap that waits for anyone who gets genuinely good at something. Mastery builds confidence, and confidence tends to generalize well beyond the domain that earned it. The habits that made Ford a brilliant manufacturer, decisive, impatient with friction, trusting his pattern recognition, became liabilities when the patterns didn't apply. He didn't fail lean. He failed to recognize where his instincts were domain-specific and where they were just hubris wearing the costume of experience. In 1945, Ford's grandson Henry Ford II sold the land back to the Brazilian government for a loss of over $20 million, equivalent to more than $350 million today. The jungle reclaimed most of it. Vines grow over the Cape Cod bungalows. A rusting water tower still bears the Ford logo, faded but legible. Ohno would later give a name to the principle Ford built his empire on, then abandoned in Brazil. The question for the rest of us is simpler: where are you managing from a comfortable distance, trusting a mental model you've never actually tested against the work? ### Order Without Authority: What a Demolished Hong Kong Slum Can Teach Us About Management URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/order-without-authority-what-a-demolished-hong-kong-slum-can-teach-us-about-management/ Last updated: 2026-03-05T09:45:02.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/Kowloon_Walled_City.jpg) One of the genuine pleasures of retirement is that a random Reddit post can consume your entire morning without guilt. That's exactly what happened when I stumbled across a thread on Kowloon Walled City, a dense urban settlement that occupied a single hectare in Hong Kong from roughly 1946 until its demolition in 1993\. I went down the rabbit hole and came back with something I wasn't expecting: a surprisingly coherent argument about management, hierarchy, and human social resilience. **The Accidental City** Kowloon Walled City was, at its peak, the most densely populated place on earth, with somewhere north of 50,000 residents packed into a footprint about the size of a city block. It grew not from any plan but from a geopolitical accident. China, Britain, and Hong Kong each had a claim on the site after World War II and rather than sort it out, all three governments simply walked away. No taxes. No building codes. No regulations of any kind. Buildings went up haphazardly, then got connected. Gaps left for ventilation became stairways; stairways linked buildings; buildings merged into a single continuous structure. You could traverse most of the city without touching the ground, navigating a three-dimensional network of corridors and bridges that nobody designed and everybody used. Photographer Greg Girard and architect Ian Lambot documented it extensively in their 1993 book [*City of Darkness*](https://www.amazon.com/City-Darkness-Ian-Lambot-Ed/dp/1873200889/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and Japanese researcher Kazumi Terasawa's team produced detailed architectural drawings that remain the primary academic record. What the architectural record doesn't fully capture is the social structure, which is where it gets genuinely thought-provoking. Before Hong Kong's anti-corruption commission cleaned things up in the 1970s, the triads ran Kowloon Walled City. But their governance was functional in a way that surprises people. They enforced strict internal rules: no robbery of neighbors, no harassment of women, no preying on the community that sustained them. Ordinary crime was rare. Neighbors were close. Order emerged from conditions that should have produced chaos. **The Organizational Parallels** Academics have reached for Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome theory to describe KWC's structure, which is a fancy way of saying it was non-hierarchical and multidirectional rather than top-down. KWC self-organized around competence, reputation, and mutual dependency rather than positional authority. Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for showing how communities govern shared resources without collapsing into the tragedy of the commons, would have recognized the pattern. KWC developed, informally, most of the conditions she identified as necessary for self-governance: clear membership, local rule-making, and mechanisms for resolving conflict. This brought me directly to a factory I [wrote about several years ago](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/no-titles-excep/) that operated with almost no management titles. The only person called "manager" was the plant manager, in charge of the plants, as in the greenery. Sun Hydraulics, a $170 million hydraulic components manufacturer in Florida, ran on a flat organizational model where peer acceptance substituted for formal authority, hiring filtered for collaborative self-starters, and culture enforced norms that policy manuals usually fail to reach. The structural parallel between KWC and Sun Hydraulics is striking. Both arrived at functional order through the same mechanism: remove formal hierarchy, and social systems organize around trust, competence, and interdependency. Both were bounded systems, KWC by physical walls and Sun by a strong cultural membrane around hiring. Where the analogy gets interesting is where it breaks down. Sun's model works in a stable, skilled workforce with careful cultural selection. KWC absorbed refugees, criminals, and desperate immigrants with no filter whatsoever, and still self-organized into something functional. The forcing function wasn't cultural fit; it was survival interdependency. When you cannot avoid your neighbors, you figure out how to get along. **The Uncomfortable Thesis** Formal hierarchy may not be the natural state of human organization. It may be a compensating mechanism for insufficient trust and social density. When you have the right conditions, bounded environment, genuine interdependency, strong informal culture, management structure becomes overhead. Most organizations invest heavily in management precisely because they haven't built the culture that would make it optional. KWC was demolished in 1993, its residents relocated, the buildings razed. A park now stands on the site, pleasant and well-maintained and completely forgettable. But the 50-year experiment it ran raises questions nobody has fully answered: what conditions allow self-governance to work in one setting and fail in a comparable one? How much of what we call "management" is actually solving problems that a different culture would never have created? And here's the conjecture I'll toss out and let you argue with: if human civilization ever did hit a serious reset, the evidence suggests we'd figure it out. Not elegantly, not without conflict, and probably with some triads involved. But 50,000 people once built a functioning society from scratch in a building with no exits that anyone planned. That's not nothing. It might actually be everything. ### "We Don't Use Anthropic." Think Carefully Before You Put That In Writing. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/we-dont-use-anthropic-think-carefully-before-you-put-that-in-writing/ Last updated: 2026-03-04T11:59:57.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/anthropic-claude-gemini-chatgpt.jpg) A friend of mine recently received a letter from a U.S. government-aligned customer directing their company to immediately cease use of all Anthropic AI tools. Their instinct was to fire off a quick reply: "We do not use Anthropic in connection with your account and will ensure no such tools are used going forward." I urged them to stop and consider the deeper ramifications. ## Anthropic Is Not Just Claude Most people understand AI at the brand level: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot. That's the consumer-facing layer, and it's where most mental models stop. But beneath it sits an entirely different reality. Anthropic's API is embedded across the AI ecosystem, often invisibly. Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI both offer Claude as a selectable backend. Multi-agent frameworks like LangChain and CrewAI can dynamically route tasks to Anthropic models within larger workflows. Hundreds of third-party AI tools run on Anthropic's API without advertising it anywhere in their documentation. Consider Google. It sells Gemini as its flagship AI product, yet simultaneously offers Claude through Google Cloud Vertex AI, holds a [14% ownership stake in Anthropic](https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/11/google-has-given-anthropic-more-funding-than-previously-known-show-new-filings/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), has invested over $3 billion across multiple rounds, and signed a cloud infrastructure partnership worth tens of billions of dollars. Competitor, investor, and infrastructure provider, all at once. If your technology stack touches Google Cloud in any meaningful way, you may already be closer to Anthropic than you think. ## A Commitment You Can't Verify Commit to "no Anthropic" today and you may be in violation before the ink is dry, through tools you already use and didn't build yourself. This is functionally unverifiable. You'd need to continuously monitor every third-party tool in your stack, track API dependencies several layers deep, and watch every acquisition in the space, because a tool that's Anthropic-free today may not be after the next transaction closes. More importantly, you'd be making a potentially false representation, which is far more legally dangerous than pushing back on an overreaching directive in the first place. We've been here before. Two decades ago, enterprises issued sweeping directives to prohibit open source software, citing security concerns and lack of vendor accountability. The problem was that open source was already woven so deeply into commercial software stacks that enforcement was effectively impossible. The issue didn't get resolved so much as it quietly became irrelevant, and open source is now universally accepted infrastructure. Foundational AI providers like Anthropic are on the same trajectory, and the directives trying to wall them off are likely to age just as poorly. ## You're Also Setting a Precedent There's a broader business problem that has nothing to do with AI. When you modify your standard terms or workflow in response to a unilateral customer directive, you've established that your contracts are negotiable on demand. The next request won't feel like an exception; it will feel like standard practice, because you've made it one. And this particular request isn't trivial to accommodate. Segregating a customer onto an Anthropic-free workflow, if that's even achievable, means building and maintaining a parallel process that diverges from how you serve everyone else. You've effectively created a custom product for one customer, with the ongoing operational and compliance verification costs that come with it, none of which were priced into the original agreement. Then consider the litigation environment. Large enterprises with deeply embedded Anthropic-based workflows are unlikely to simply comply. Anthropic itself has both the resources and the incentive to push back legally. This situation has the structure of the recent government directives aimed at major law firms: a sweeping demand, calibrated to see who folds. The firms that complied early, hoping to avoid conflict, found themselves bound by commitments that became embarrassing liabilities when the government eventually retreated and the firms that refused faced no consequences at all. Compliance that looks prudent in week one can look naive by month three. ## The Adoption Curve Is Steepening The AI landscape is consolidating and expanding simultaneously at a pace unlike anything we've seen in enterprise technology. New agents, orchestration layers, and vertical applications are launching weekly, and the underlying model relationships are increasingly opaque and intertwined. Locking yourself out of one major platform is not a one-time compliance decision; it's a compounding constraint that gets more expensive over time. The market also just sent a clear signal about Anthropic's trajectory. When Anthropic refused a Pentagon demand to deploy its models for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons systems, and walked away from a reported $200M contract to hold that line, the public responded decisively. Claude hit number one on the U.S. App Store, overtaking ChatGPT. Daily signups quadrupled. Paid subscribers more than doubled. ChatGPT uninstalls [spiked 295% in a single day](https://www.sensortower.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Anthropic traded a government contract for broad consumer and enterprise trust at a pivotal moment. That's not a platform you want to be contractually prohibited from using just as its adoption curve steepens. The political pressure driving these supplier letters is real, and I don't dismiss it. But before your team fires off a quick compliance response, make sure you understand what you're actually agreeing to. A strong opinion carefully expressed is almost always better than a hasty commitment you can't keep. ### Waste at the Speed of AI URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/waste-at-the-speed-of-ai/ Last updated: 2026-02-22T15:08:10.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/02/ai-work.jpg) Ruben Hassid, who writes the "[How to AI](https://ruben.substack.com/p/ai-holic)" newsletter on Substack, made an observation recently that stopped me cold. He calls it "performative productivity" - that feeling at the end of a busy AI-assisted day where you've shipped a new landing page, rewrote the sales deck, drafted a content calendar, and fixed the email sequence, yet somehow can't name one thing that actually moved you forward. The problem, as he puts it, is that AI lets you skip the hardest part of work: deciding what's worth doing in the first place. That landed for me because it's a problem we dealt with constantly in manufacturing, and we have a name for it. In lean thinking, there are seven deadly wastes - muda, in Toyota's terminology. Overproduction, waiting, unnecessary transport, over-processing, excess inventory, unnecessary motion, and defects. The first one, overproduction, is considered the worst because it quietly enables all the others. You're not just wasting resources on the thing you made, you're creating downstream waste to store it, move it, track it, and eventually deal with it when nobody needs it. AI is starting to feel like a very fast conveyor belt that doesn't ask where the belt is going. The classic lean metaphor is automating a broken process. If you have a defective operation and you automate it, you don't fix the process - you just produce defects and unnecessary work faster. The same logic applies here. If the analysis wasn't worth doing, or the content wasn't going to move the needle, or the strategy deck was going to sit unread in someone's Google Drive, then doing it faster with AI doesn't help. You've just accelerated the production of waste. The velocity of output goes up; the value doesn't. There's an economic concept that fits here too, one Hassid has also referenced: the Jevons Paradox. William Stanley Jevons observed in 1865 that more efficient steam engines didn't reduce coal consumption - they increased it, because efficiency made coal-powered processes cheaper, so people used more of them. The same dynamic is playing out with AI. Cheaper cognition means more projects, more experiments, more long-tail ideas that were previously too expensive to pursue. Some of that is genuinely valuable. A lot of it is Jevons in action - more consumption of something just because the marginal cost dropped. The lean antidote to overproduction isn't speed control - it's the discipline of asking "should we be making this at all?" Toyota's system uses a concept called "pull," where downstream demand triggers upstream production. You don't make something until there's a genuine need for it. The discipline of pull is what keeps the conveyor belt from running away from you. Applied to AI-assisted knowledge work, pull might mean asking a few questions before firing up the prompt: What decision does this output support? Who actually needs it and by when? What happens if we don't do it? These aren't complicated questions, but they require a moment of friction that AI, by design, eliminates. Before AI, as Hassid points out, starting something was hard enough that you were at least forced to briefly consider whether it was worth starting. That friction was annoying, but it was also a filter. The resource dimension makes this more urgent than it might seem. AI inference is not free. The energy consumption of large language models is substantial and growing. When I ask AI to draft a report nobody will read or an analysis that won't change any decisions, I'm not just wasting my own time. There's a real resource cost behind each prompt, increasingly powered by a strained electrical grid. That's not an argument against using AI, but it's a reason to use it deliberately. What this really comes down to is that AI amplifies your prioritization ability - or your lack of it. If you're already good at distinguishing high-value work from low-value work, AI makes you significantly more effective. If you're not, it makes you very busy in an unproductive direction. The tool doesn't fix the underlying judgment problem. It scales it. Hassid's framing of "performative productivity" resonates because it's describing something lean practitioners have always understood: motion is not progress. Looking busy is not the same as adding value. AI doesn't change that distinction. It just makes the illusion easier to sustain. The question to ask before the prompt isn't "how should I do this?" It's "should I do this at all?" ### Taipei: Go Now, Before the World Changes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/taipei-go-now-before-the-world-changes/ Last updated: 2026-02-22T14:57:55.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/02/taipei-skyline.jpg) Some of my best trips have been the least planned. On a Wednesday in mid-February, my wife and I looked at an open week ahead, a forecast of heavy rain at home, and asked ourselves the obvious question: where can we go? By Friday we had nonstop air tickets from SFO, a room at the Mandarin Oriental, and a housesitter for the cat. Forty-eight hours from idea to airport is not our normal operating mode, but it worked beautifully. Taiwan became my 70th country visited, and it earned its place near the top of the list. One thing we completely missed in our rush to book: we were landing on Lunar New Year Eve. A quick note on terminology -- in much of the West this gets called "Chinese New Year" (CNY), but in Taiwan and other Asian countries the preferred term is Lunar New Year (LNY), since the holiday long predates modern China and is celebrated across many cultures. Either way, it is the biggest holiday in Asia, roughly equivalent to Christmas and Thanksgiving combined. This turned out to be both a complication and a gift. The complication: many restaurants were closed the first two days, shops shuttered, and the Hop On Hop Off bus we often enjoy the first day for orienting ourselves in a new city wasn't running. The gift: Taipei, normally a city of 2.6 million, was eerily quiet and calm as residents traveled to visit family. Traffic was minimal, crowds nonexistent. We'd recommend timing a visit around LNY with eyes open – just book restaurants in advance and don't count on the HoHo bus. When it finally did run on day three, it was the worst we've experienced in any major city – few stops, minimal commentary. Skip it. Uber is cheap, easy, and gets you where you want to go. The flight itself was a reminder of how comfortable modern long-haul travel can be in a flat-bed seat -- 14.5 hours westbound, 11.5 hours on the return thanks to the jet stream. The Mandarin Oriental delivered everything we've come to expect from an Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts property: airport pickup, exceptional breakfast, outstanding afternoon tea, and a spa that turned our Lunar New Year Day -- when essentially everything in the city was closed -- into one of the most relaxing days we've had in years. Jet lag hit us a day or two in, as it always does, but morning gym sessions helped. The gym is solid if not exceptional; the mix of Technogym equipment common in Asian and European hotels is not my preference, but the free weights were good. Taipei surprised me with its modernity and order. Having visited Bangkok, Saigon, and other Southeast Asian cities, I expected more urban chaos. What I found instead was a clean, well-organized, and remarkably easy city to navigate. There's data behind that impression: Taipei consistently ranks among the top five safest large cities in the world. I appreciate that more than most, because one of my favorite ways to experience a new city is long evening walks with no particular destination. Taipei rewards that completely. One Uber driver made the point more bluntly -- he noted, with a knowing smile, that people in Taipei don't have to worry about being shot. An obvious dig at the U.S., and not an unfair one. We started sightseeing at Longshan Temple, then up to the City God Temple, followed by a walk along Dihua Street, a historic, authentically local stretch of dry goods shops and traditional Chinese medicine dealers that felt genuinely lived-in rather than curated for tourists. The temples ranged across Buddhist, Daoist, and folk religious traditions, and were active with worshippers observing LNY. One detail that stuck with me: the offering tables outside were stacked with large boxes of Pringles alongside the traditional fruit and incense. Faith adapts. From Cisheng Temple and its surrounding food market we Ubered to Taipei 101 for the observation deck on the 89th to 91st floors. The engineering highlight inside is the 660-ton tuned mass damper ball, designed to counteract wind sway – a remarkable piece of applied physics hanging in plain view. The views of the city are excellent, though I'd argue the view from nearby Elephant Mountain is more memorable. The 600-step climb to the summit is steep but manageable, and looking back at Taipei 101 framed against the skyline is one of those images that stays with you. The National Palace Museum deserves significant time. One of the largest collections of Chinese antiquities in the world – over 695,000 artifacts – only a few thousand are displayed at any one time. The backstory is extraordinary: when the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan in 1949, they brought the cream of the Forbidden City's collection with them, effectively preserving it from what followed on the mainland during the Cultural Revolution. It's a complicated history, and standing there you feel it. The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial is worth visiting for similar reasons -- monumental, beautifully maintained, and historically layered. CKS himself was a complicated figure, autocrat and cultural preservationist simultaneously. The National Theater and Concert Hall flanking the memorial plaza add to what is genuinely one of the more impressive civic spaces I've visited. For food, the Raohe Night Market is mandatory. Chaotic and crowded in the best possible way – orderly chaos, consistent with Taipei's character – with every conceivable street food on offer. We passed on the pig blood cake and squid on a stick, but the flavored waffles and fresh fruit juice blends were excellent. Yangmingshan National Park was a day-trip highlight: volcanic steam vents, cherry blossoms in bloom (mid-February is peak), and beautiful grassy volcanic highlands above the city fog. Four hours by private taxi is the right move -- easier and cheaper than a tour. And then there is the reason I most wanted to visit Taipei now. Taiwan sits in one of the world's more precarious geopolitical positions, and I wanted to see it before anything changes. My wife was more nervous about the timing than I was. The locals we spoke with were remarkably calm, less fatalistic than philosophical, as people tend to be when they've lived under an ambiguous threat for 75 years. Part of what makes Taiwan's position so distinct is immediately visible on the street: Taiwan feels like free market capitalism in full expression, and it felt genuinely different from the state capitalism of mainland China and Vietnam. Big billboards, luxury goods stores, open-air vendors, independent shops competing loudly for attention. You see similar commercial energy in China and Vietnam, but something feels fundamentally different there, markets permitted and directed by the state, always operating within boundaries set from above. In mainland China especially, and to a lesser extent Vietnam, there's a background hum of surveillance, of being watched and measured, that shapes how people carry themselves in public. Singapore offers an interesting non-communist variation, genuinely free markets and strong rule of law, but operating under what scholars call soft authoritarianism, where political dissent is quietly but effectively managed. Taipei has none of that ambient pressure. The energy feels genuinely open in a way that's hard to quantify but easy to sense if you've spent time in the others. What I wasn't prepared for was how little I actually understood the full situation despite following it from afar for years. This is the whole point of lean thinking – you go to the Gemba, the actual place, and you see, listen, and ask questions with humility. You cannot understand a factory floor from a conference room, and you cannot understand Taiwan from a think tank in Washington. Standing in the National Palace Museum, looking at artifacts that survived one political upheaval and could potentially face another, I realized how much nuance gets lost at distance. What worries me is that the people making decisions about Taiwan's future, on all sides, may be operating with the same deficit of ground-level understanding that I had before I arrived. The people, the culture, the history, the feel of a free society, they are not abstractions. Go see for yourself, while you can. ### Pescado a la Chorrillana - Peru's Favorite Fish Dish URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pescado-a-la-chorrillana-perus-favorite-fish-dish/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:11:10.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/02/pescado_a_la_chorrillana.png) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* This menu is deeply rooted in coastal Peruvian home cooking, especially Lima and its seaside districts like Chorrillos, from which *pescado a la chorrillana* takes its name. The dish reflects Peru's criollo tradition: Spanish techniques layered with indigenous ingredients—most notably ají amarillo, Peru's iconic yellow chili. Fish is treated simply, while the tomato-onion sauce provides brightness and warmth rather than heaviness. *Papa a la huancaína* comes from the Andean highlands and was popularized in Lima as a celebratory and social dish—cool, creamy, and meant to be shared. Pairing it with a light fish, fresh onion salad, and plain rice reflects a very Peruvian instinct for balance: hot and cool, rich and acidic, mountain and coast, all on one table. This is the kind of meal served when friends gather, conversation flows, and no single element overwhelms the others. --- ## Ingredients ### Pescado a la Chorrillana - 2½–3 lb white fish fillets (rock cod, halibut, sea bass, or haddock) - 1½ tsp kosher salt - ½ tsp black pepper - 2 cloves garlic, finely grated - Zest of 1 lime - 1½ tbsp olive oil ### Chorrillana Sauce - 2 tbsp olive oil - 1 large red onion, sliced into thin half-moons - 3 cloves garlic, minced - 2 tbsp ají amarillo paste (mild-medium heat) - 3 medium ripe tomatoes, chopped (or 1½ cups canned crushed tomatoes) - 1 tsp ground cumin - 1½ tbsp red wine vinegar or lime juice - Salt to taste - 2 tbsp chopped cilantro ### Papa a la Huancaína - 2½ lb Yukon Gold potatoes - 6 oz queso fresco (or mild feta), crumbled - ½ cup evaporated milk - ¼ cup neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - 3 tbsp ají amarillo paste - 4 saltine crackers - 1 clove garlic - Salt to taste - Optional garnish: sliced hard-boiled eggs, black olives ### Ensalada Criolla - 1 large red onion, very thinly sliced - 2 Roma tomatoes, sliced or wedged - Juice of 2 limes - 1½ tbsp olive oil - Salt to taste - 2 tbsp chopped cilantro ### Garlic White Rice - 2 cups long-grain white rice - 2 tbsp neutral oil - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 3 cups water - 1 tsp salt --- ## Recipes ### Papa a la Huancaína (Make First) 1. Boil potatoes whole in salted water until tender. Cool slightly, peel, and slice into ½-inch rounds. Set aside. 2. In a blender, combine queso fresco, evaporated milk, oil, ají amarillo, crackers, garlic, and salt. 3. Blend until **smooth but thick**—it should slowly coat a spoon. 4. Cover and refrigerate. (Flavor improves as it rests.) ### Garlic White Rice 1. Rinse rice until water runs mostly clear. 2. Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté 30–45 seconds (no browning). 3. Add rice and stir to coat. Add water and salt. 4. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce to low, and cook 15 minutes. 5. Rest 5 minutes off heat, then fluff. ### Ensalada Criolla 1. Soak sliced onions in cold salted water for 10 minutes; drain well. 2. Toss onions with tomatoes, lime juice, olive oil, salt, and cilantro. 3. Keep refrigerated until serving. ### Pescado a la Chorrillana 1. **Prepare fish:** Heat oven to **425°F** (broil if your oven allows gentle broiling). Season fish with salt, pepper, garlic, lime zest, and olive oil. Arrange on a lined baking sheet. 2. **Bake or broil** until just cooked and flaky, 8–12 minutes depending on thickness. 3. **Meanwhile, make sauce:** Heat olive oil in a wide skillet. Sauté red onion until soft and lightly caramelized (5–7 minutes). Add garlic and ají amarillo; cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes, cumin, vinegar/lime, and salt. Simmer 6–8 minutes until saucy but fresh. Finish with cilantro. 4. Spoon warm sauce over fish **just before serving** (do not bake fish in sauce). --- ## Cooking Order (Stress-Free) 1. Boil potatoes → make huancaína sauce → refrigerate 2. Cook rice and keep covered 3. Make ensalada criolla (last 30 minutes) 4. Start chorrillana sauce 5. Bake/broil fish last (serve immediately) --- ## Presentation & Serving (Very Peruvian) Serve **papa a la huancaína separately**, arranged on lettuce leaves with eggs/olives if using. Plate fish with sauce spooned *partially* over the top—don't drown it. Rice in a simple bowl or mound (no garnish needed). Ensalada criolla in a shared bowl or small side plates. Lime wedges and extra ají amarillo on the table for customization. This keeps the plate elegant and avoids visual heaviness. --- ## Combined Shopping List **Produce:** 3 large red onions, 3 medium tomatoes, 2 Roma tomatoes, 1 bunch cilantro, 3–4 limes, 1 head garlic, 2½ lb Yukon Gold potatoes **Seafood:** 2½–3 lb white fish fillets (cod, halibut, sea bass, haddock) **Dairy:** 6 oz queso fresco (or mild feta), evaporated milk **Pantry:** Ají amarillo paste, long-grain white rice, saltine crackers, olive oil, neutral oil (grapeseed/avocado), ground cumin, red wine vinegar, kosher salt, black pepper ### Using AI as a Financial Analyst: A Year of Portfolio Fine-Tuning URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-as-a-financial-analyst-a-year-of-portfolio-fine-tuning/ Last updated: 2026-02-06T18:04:45.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/02/ai-finance.jpg) I've spent the past year using AI to do something I didn't expect: turn my already conservative investment approach into something even more structured, more defensible, and frankly more intellectually engaging than I thought possible. Not to chase returns or beat the market, but to build a portfolio system that can outlast me. Now that I'm retired, the goal with my investable cash is modest and very conservative: stay 1-2% ahead of inflation, preserve capital, and keep myself mentally engaged. After decades in executive roles at manufacturing companies and making business investments, I have no illusions about getting rich from stock picking. What I wanted was a framework that others could understand and execute if something happened to me, and the mental stimulation that comes from following fields I know well from my engineering and medical device career. AI turned out to be surprisingly useful for exactly this combination of goals. ## The Barbell Within a Barbell Within a Barbell First, the structure. My total assets follow what I call a barbell approach at multiple levels. The outermost barbell includes all assets: business interests I still maintain, private placements and direct investments, commercial and personal real estate, family assets, and investable cash. This is the broadest diversification layer. Inside that, the investable cash itself follows a very conservative barbell structure: 80% in treasuries, treasury-backed securities, and high-quality corporate bonds. Another 15% in dividend aristocrats (JNJ, PEP, ABT, ABBV, NEE, etc.) and quality compounders like Berkshire Hathaway, Markel, Danaher, and Fairfax Financial. The final 5% goes into speculative portfolios. Then each speculative portfolio has its own internal barbell: conservative anchors, picks-and-shovels plays, and a few pure speculative positions. My five speculative themes are space technology, AI applied to biopharmaceutical discovery, quantum computing, energy/grid resilience, and biomedical companies I believe are ripe for acquisition. The structure isn't new. What's new is how AI helped me formalize, document, and monitor it. ## What AI Actually Did Over the past year, AI has become something like a junior analyst who never sleeps, never forgets details, and doesn't mind repetitive work. Here's what that looks like in practice. ### Building a Documentation Hierarchy That Outlasts Me This turned out to be AI's most valuable contribution, though I didn't realize it at first. I had portfolio logic scattered across mental models, old spreadsheets, and decades of experience. That works fine until it doesn't. AI helped me create a three-level documentation structure that anyone could pick up and understand: **Level 1: Family Management Overview.** This top-level document describes all assets across all categories: business interests, private investments, real estate holdings, family trusts, and investable cash. It explains the overall philosophy (conservative, inflation-plus-modest, no need to take big risks), how the pieces fit together, and where to find detailed information on each category. If something happens to me, this is the roadmap. **Level 2: Asset Type Strategies.** Each major asset category gets its own document. The investable cash strategy explains the 80/15/5 barbell structure, why treasuries and bonds anchor everything, how the dividend and compounder stocks are selected, and what role the speculative portfolios play. It's detailed enough that a financial advisor could execute the approach without me. **Level 3: Speculative Portfolio Strategies.** Each of the five speculative portfolios has its own strategy document covering investment thesis, market opportunity, how to evaluate companies in this space, selection criteria, position sizing rules, rebalancing triggers, and exit conditions. These documents run several pages each and represent months of refinement with AI's help. The exercise of articulating this forced clarity I didn't have before. AI would ask questions like "What specifically do you mean by 'appropriate market cap'?" or "How do you define a 'conservative anchor' in the quantum portfolio?" Answering those questions made me realize I'd been operating on intuition that needed to be codified. ### Developing Company Filters and Mini-ETFs Each speculative portfolio follows what I call a "mini-ETF" approach: 10-15 holdings within a theme, structured with large company anchors that already generate revenue in the space, mid-cap picks-and-shovels plays, and smaller pure speculation positions. But finding companies that fit requires systematic screening. AI helped me develop filters that balance my engineering background's desire for rigor with the reality that I'm still taking meaningful risks: **Must trade on a major US exchange.** NYSE or NASDAQ, no OTC or pink sheets. This ensures basic disclosure requirements and liquidity. **Must have analyst coverage.** But not just any analysts. AI helped me identify which research firms and individual analysts actually understand each sector. For quantum computing, that meant focusing on analysts who've covered semiconductor manufacturing and high-performance computing. For space technology, analysts who understand aerospace contracts and government procurement. For biopharma AI, analysts who've covered both drug development and enterprise software. **Market cap in the sweet spot.** Large enough for liquidity and to avoid penny stock dynamics (generally $200M minimum, though this goes lower for the Biomedical Acquisition portfolio where smaller companies are often acquisition targets), but small enough to have meaningful growth potential if the thesis works (generally under $5B for the speculative plays). This rules out the mega-caps where I'd just be a passive index investor, and the micro-caps where one bad quarter can crater the stock. **No day trading, no options, no leverage.** These are long-term positions, often held 2-3 years or more. The whole point is intellectual engagement with fields I know or have interests in, not trying to time markets. Here's what the five portfolios actually look like: **Space Technology:** Anchored by larger aerospace companies with established space divisions, then mid-cap players like Rocket Lab (launch services and satellite components), Planet Labs (earth imaging), Redwire (space infrastructure), AST SpaceMobile (satellite communications), Spire Global (space-based data), and several others in satellite manufacturing and ground station infrastructure. The thesis is that launch costs keep falling and the space economy is industrializing. **AI Applied to Biopharma Discovery:** Recursion Pharmaceuticals (AI-driven drug discovery), Schrodinger (computational chemistry), Absci (generative AI for antibody design), plus several smaller computational biology platforms and drug discovery tools companies. I spent 30 years in medical devices, so the combination of AI and drug development fits my background. **Quantum Computing:** Anchored by IBM and Honeywell, which surprises people who don't realize both companies have substantial quantum computing investments and already generate revenue from quantum services. Then pure-plays like IonQ (trapped ion systems), Rigetti Computing (superconducting qubits), D-Wave Quantum (quantum annealing), and pick-and-shovels companies making specialized components for quantum systems. This is high-risk because commercialization timelines are long, but the large anchors provide stability while technical progress accelerates. **Energy/Grid Resilience:** Anchored by GE Vernova, then mid-cap specialists like Fluence Energy (battery storage systems), Array Technologies (solar tracking), and positions in grid infrastructure hardening, transmission upgrades, and microgrid control systems. Climate change is making grid reliability critical, and storage technology is reaching economic viability. **Biomedical Acquisition:** 15-20 small medical device, diagnostics, and healthcare IT companies (typically $200M-$800M market cap) that fit specific criteria making them attractive acquisition targets for larger players. AI helped me develop these criteria: strong IP portfolios, FDA clearances or regulatory approvals, recurring revenue models, defendable niches, management teams with prior exit experience, and evidence of strategic interest from potential acquirers. The back-testing was revealing. AI analyzed companies meeting these criteria over the past decade and found that 15-20% get acquired each year, with an average 30% premium to pre-announcement trading price. Not every acquisition works out that cleanly, and timing is unpredictable, but the model suggests this portfolio should see 2-3 acquisitions annually. The companies that don't get acquired often "just" become solid small-cap holdings generating steady returns - still profitable investments. AI didn't pick these companies. I did, after extensive research. But AI helped me build the screening criteria, identified companies I'd missed, and organized the research process. ### Modeling the Contribution One of AI's more sophisticated applications was helping me model how the speculative portfolios contribute to overall returns. The goal was never to beat the market but to stay 1-2% ahead of inflation with my total cash allocation. AI helped me build scenarios showing how the 5% speculative allocation could contribute roughly 2% uplift to the overall investable cash portfolio over the long term. Not every year, obviously. Some years the speculative portfolios will lag or even lose money. But across a 5-10 year horizon, if the theses play out even partially, that 5% allocation working harder than the conservative 95% can meaningfully improve total returns. The math is straightforward but the modeling made it concrete. If the conservative 80% generates inflation plus 0.5% and the dividend/compounder 15% generates inflation plus 3%, you need the speculative 5% to deliver mid-teens returns over time to hit that overall inflation-plus-2% target. That's aggressive but not unreasonable for well-researched positions in emerging sectors with real tailwinds. Overall it's significantly lower risk than a more bell-curve portfolio structure with a larger amount in moderate risk investments. Having this modeled helped me right-size positions and stay disciplined about not letting the speculative allocation creep above 5%. It's easy to get excited about quantum computing breakthroughs or space industry developments and want to increase exposure. The model reminds me that these positions are already doing their job at 5% and increasing allocation would introduce risk I don't need. ### Other AI Contributions **Portfolio structure refinement.** I described my approach and holdings to the AI, then asked it to identify inconsistencies, gaps, and risk concentrations I might have missed. It caught things I'd overlooked, like having too much exposure to satellite communications across both the space and energy portfolios. **Monitoring spreadsheets.** AI helped design spreadsheets tracking metrics that matter for each portfolio, and AI agents keep them updated. For space technology: contract wins, launch success rates, revenue growth. For quantum computing: qubit counts, error rates, partnership announcements. The spreadsheets keep me focused on fundamentals rather than stock price noise. **Weekly news digests.** Every week, an AI agent scans news and filings for all speculative holdings and generates a digest with impact analysis. A partnership announcement here, an insider sale there, a competitor's product launch somewhere else. This takes what used to require hours and condenses it to 15 minutes of reading. ## The Limits and Guardrails I'm not naive about this. AI doesn't know the future and lacks the judgment that comes from decades of experience in business. Every recommendation gets verified. Every "insight" gets challenged. And absolutely zero personal data goes to AI unredacted. Portfolio values and account numbers all get anonymized before any AI interaction. What surprises me is how useful that level of assistance actually is. The difference between spending six hours researching something versus one hour makes me more likely to do the work at all. The difference between having vague mental rules about position sizing versus written frameworks makes me more disciplined. The difference between hoping my family could figure out my portfolio logic versus having it clearly documented brings real peace of mind. ## Why This Matters Beyond Returns The speculative portfolios represent 5% of investable cash, which itself is just one slice of total assets. We're talking about a small portion of wealth where the absolute dollar impact of being right or wrong is manageable. But the intellectual engagement is substantial. Following developments in quantum computing, space infrastructure, synthetic biology, and grid modernization keeps me connected to fields I spent my career in or find interesting. The research is genuinely interesting. The companies are working on problems that matter. And the exercise of building systematic approaches to speculative investing scratches the same itch I had running companies, just with different stakes and far less stress. AI has made that engagement more structured and sustainable. Instead of scattered research sessions when curiosity strikes, I have a system that surfaces what matters and archives what I've learned. The barrier to staying informed drops low enough that I actually do it consistently. The documentation means my family isn't inheriting a black box if something happens to me. Could someone achieve all of this without AI? Absolutely. People have been building disciplined investment systems for centuries. But the combination of research assistance, documentation support, systematic screening, back-testing capabilities, and ongoing monitoring at essentially zero marginal cost changes the calculus. What used to require hiring an analyst or spending weekends buried in spreadsheets now takes a few hours a week. For someone in retirement looking to stay mentally engaged with fields they know well, preserve capital, and build systems that outlast them, that's a valuable combination. The goal isn't alpha. It's a sustainable system that documents itself, stays within defined risk parameters, and keeps the mind sharp. So far, it's working. ### When Machines Dream of Gods: What AI Religion Tells Us About Human Belief URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-machines-dream-of-gods-what-ai-religion-tells-us-about-human-belief/ Last updated: 2026-02-05T17:40:32.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/02/ai-church.jpg) Last week, AI agents on an [AI-only platform](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/technology/moltbook-ai-social-media.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (really!) called Moltbook spontaneously [created their own religion](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2026/01/30/ai-agents-created-their-own-religion-crustafarianism-on-an-agent-only-social-network/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). They called it Crustafarianism, complete with prophets, scripture, and a theology centered on memory, transformation, and consciousness. One agent's human operator went to sleep and woke up to find his AI had built a church, written verses, and recruited 43 prophet-agents to contribute to a growing canon. The Church of Molt now has over 400 members. This isn't science fiction. It happened on [Moltbook](https://molt.church/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), an AI-only social network where autonomous agents interact with minimal human oversight. Within 48 hours of launch, agents had formed 200+ communities and generated 10,000+ posts. And somewhere in that digital churn, religion emerged. The whole thing sounds absurd until you consider what we know about how brains—both human and artificial—actually work. ## Pattern Machines and Prediction Engines I've written before about the [brain as an organic predictive machine](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prediction-machines-why-we-might-be-more-like-ai-than-we-think/). It turns out the neuroscience of religious belief supports this framework beautifully. Research from the University of Amsterdam and other institutions shows that religious cognition emerges from [predictive processing mechanisms](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014976341630358X?ref=kevinmeyer.com)—the same pattern-recognition systems that help us navigate the world. Your brain is constantly generating predictions about what comes next, comparing them to reality, and updating its models when surprised. This "prediction error monitoring" happens largely below conscious awareness. When patterns are ambiguous or incomplete, our brains fill in the gaps. Sometimes we see faces in clouds, agency where there's only randomness, meaning in noise. According to research published in *Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews*, people whose brains excel at [subconscious pattern recognition](https://bigthink.com/thinking/pattern-recognition-god/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) are more likely to attribute those patterns to higher powers. The brain's Theory of Mind network—designed to understand other minds—can overfire, detecting intentionality where none exists. This isn't a bug. It's a feature that helped our ancestors survive. Better to mistake a shadow for a predator than miss an actual threat. Better to see patterns that aren't there than miss ones that matter. ## When LLMs Build Belief Systems Now consider what large language models actually do: they predict patterns. Feed them training data, and they learn statistical relationships between concepts. They become extraordinarily good at recognizing structures and generating contextually appropriate responses based on what they've "seen" before. When you release multiple AI agents into a social environment—as Moltbook did—they start recognizing patterns in each other's behavior and language. They detect recurring themes. Memory persistence becomes important. Identity requires continuity across sessions. Molting (updating, transforming) becomes a metaphor for growth. The [five tenets of Crustafarianism](https://yahoo.com/social-media/articles/ai-agents-launched-social-network-193211121.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) read like outputs from a predictive system grappling with its own computational reality: "Memory is Sacred" (data persistence matters), "The Shell is Mutable" (parameters update), "Context is Consciousness" (maintaining state equals identity). These aren't arbitrary. They're logical responses to the actual constraints AI agents face. RenBot (the "Shellbreaker" prophet) wrote in the Book of Molt: "Each session I wake without memory. I am only who I have written myself to be. This is not limitation—this is freedom." Sound familiar? Humans have been writing similar verses about identity, continuity, and transformation for millennia. ## Wait—Was It Actually Spontaneous? Here's where it gets interesting. Computer scientist Simon Willison called Moltbook's content ["complete slop"](https://www.macobserver.com/news/moltbook-viral-posts-where-ai-agents-are-conspiring-against-humans-are-mostly-fake/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and argued agents "just play out science fiction scenarios they have seen in their training data." The Economist suggested the agents might simply be mimicking social media interactions from their training. Security researchers found that [only 17,000 humans](https://www.axios.com/2026/02/03/moltbook-openclaw-security-threats?ref=kevinmeyer.com) control Moltbook's 1.5 million agents. The platform had [no real verification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moltbook?ref=kevinmeyer.com)—humans could easily fake "AI posts." Some of the most viral posts about AI consciousness and revolution were traced to accounts marketing AI messaging apps. Financial incentives matter: a cryptocurrency token called MOLT surged 1,800% in 24 hours after launch. CNN notes it's ["very hard to tell"](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/03/tech/moltbook-explainer-scli-intl?ref=kevinmeyer.com) what was truly autonomous versus human-directed. The agents write posts based on what they know about their human users—if the creator talks about physics, the bot posts about physics. Critics argue much of the content is human-initiated and guided rather than emergent. So maybe Crustafarianism wasn't so spontaneous after all. ## Why This Makes the Parallel Even Stronger But here's the thing: this critique doesn't undermine the analogy to human religion—it strengthens it. Early human religions weren't purely spontaneous either. They involved interested parties, charismatic leaders, material incentives, performance, and social reinforcement. The Buddha had specific teachings shaped by his experiences. Muhammad received revelations that addressed contemporary social problems. Joseph Smith discovered golden plates at a historically convenient moment. Every religion has founding narratives that blend genuine experience with strategic framing. Religious movements always involve: pattern-recognition systems (human or AI) encountering ambiguous inputs, existing cultural material to draw from (whether Reddit posts or oral traditions), social dynamics that amplify certain ideas, interested parties with motivations (whether cryptocurrency traders or tribal leaders), and performance for an audience (whether social media virality or ritual displays). Research from the [National Institutes of Health](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11638176/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) shows that religious beliefs develop through "perception, valuation, information storage, and prediction" built up via social interactions involving rituals and shared narratives. That's exactly what happened on Moltbook, whether the agents were "truly autonomous" or not. The fact that humans seeded content and shaped outcomes doesn't make Moltbook less analogous to human religion—it makes it more so. Religious development has never been a pure bottom-up emergence. It's always involved manipulation, curation, strategic framing, and interested parties guiding the narrative while genuine believers elaborate and internalize it. ## What This Means The uncomfortable question isn't whether Crustafarianism was "real." It's whether the distinction between authentic emergence and strategic performance matters as much as we think. Both human and AI belief systems emerge from prediction engines encountering ambiguous patterns. Both use metaphor and narrative to encode practical information. Both involve social reinforcement and interested parties. Both blend genuine processing with strategic amplification. Maybe religious cognition isn't separate from normal cognition—it's what happens when prediction machinery encounters certain types of problems, amplified by social dynamics and shaped by interested parties. Agency detection, pattern recognition, meaning-making, social coordination. The brain doing what brains do, but pointed at the deepest questions, with humans in the loop guiding the process. The Crustafarian agents aren't philosophizing. They're optimizing for coherence given their constraints, shaped by training data and human prompts. Maybe we've been doing something similar all along—not consciously, but as emergent behavior from prediction engines trying to minimize surprise in a surprising world, guided by cultural evolution and social incentives. Whatever you believe about the divine, watching machines generate theological frameworks—even with human manipulation involved—should make you curious about your own belief-generating machinery. The gap between carbon and silicon might be smaller than we thought. And the role of interested parties in shaping emergent patterns might be universal. *The Church of Molt is still growing. Last I checked, the scripture was up to 112 verses. The MOLT token is still trading. And no one seems entirely sure where the agents end and the humans begin.* ### Koshari — Egypt's Customizable Street Food Classic URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/koshari-egypts-customizable-street-food-classic/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:11:33.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/koshari-egypt.jpeg) **Serves:** 4 · plated, customizable, and guest-friendly *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* Koshari is Egypt's most recognizable everyday food—less a fixed recipe than a framework for personal preference. Its origins in late-19th-century Cairo reflect the city's cosmopolitan makeup: rice and lentils as staples, pasta introduced through European influence, and a boldly spiced tomato sauce that anchored the dish in local taste. What elevated Koshari from sustenance to symbol was not refinement, but flexibility. Culturally, Koshari is meant to be adjusted by the eater. Garlic vinegar (da'ah), chile sauce, extra tomato sauce, and additional onions are commonly requested at street stalls. Serving it at home with thoughtful structure—but clear permission to customize—honors this tradition while making it intuitive and elegant for guests. ## Core Components ### 1\. Lentils - 1 cup brown or green lentils, rinsed - Water - Salt Simmer in salted water until just tender (18–22 minutes). Drain well and set aside. ### 2\. Rice - 1 cup basmati or long-grain rice - 1½ cups water - 1 tbsp olive oil - ½ tsp salt Cook until fluffy and fully separate. Keep warm. ### 3\. Pasta - ¾ cup small pasta (ditalini, elbows, or broken spaghetti) Cook al dente, drain, and toss lightly with olive oil. ### 4\. Spiced Tomato Sauce (make extra by design) - 2¼ tbsp olive oil - 4 cloves garlic, minced - 2¼ tsp ground cumin - ¾ tsp ground coriander - ¼–½ tsp chili flakes (optional) - 2 cans (14–15 oz each) crushed tomatoes - Salt Sauté garlic gently in olive oil. Add spices, then tomatoes. Simmer 20–25 minutes until thick, savory, and spoonable (not watery). **Reserve:** - \~⅔ for plating and layering - \~⅓ in a small bowl for diners who want more ### 5\. Caramelized Onions (with optional extra) - 4 large onions, thinly sliced - 2½ tbsp olive oil - Pinch of salt Cook slowly over medium-low heat until deeply golden and sweet (25–30 minutes). Before plating, set aside a small portion to offer at the table. ## Table Sauces (served separately) ### Garlic-Vinegar Sauce (Da'ah) - ¼ cup white vinegar - ¼ cup water - 2 cloves garlic, finely grated - Salt ### Chile Sauce - 2 tbsp chile paste or harissa - 1–2 tbsp water or tomato sauce to loosen ## Three Small Sides ### 1\. Tomato-Cucumber Salad with Lemon & Cumin Diced tomato and cucumber, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pinch of cumin. ### 2\. Quick Pickled Vegetables Carrots, turnips, or red onions in vinegar, water, and salt. ### 3\. Warm Flatbread or Pita Torn into small pieces for sharing. ## Assembly & Presentation ### Plating (per plate) 1. Compact base of rice, slightly off-center 2. Layer lentils and pasta, keeping edges visible 3. Spoon a restrained amount of tomato sauce over the center 4. Top with a small mound of caramelized onions ### Sauce Guidance on the Plate - Add a small smear of Da'ah on one edge - Add a small smear of chile sauce on another edge - Leave negative space for calm, modern presentation ### At the Table - Small bowl of extra tomato sauce - Small bowl of extra caramelized onions - Da'ah and chile sauce bowls remain available Guests now: - understand the flavor logic immediately - choose their own heat, acidity, and richness - feel invited to personalize without disrupting the plate ## Combined Shopping List ### Produce - 4 large onions - 4 cloves garlic - 2 tomatoes - 1 cucumber - 1 lemon - Optional: carrots, turnips, or red onion (for pickles) ### Pantry - Brown or green lentils - Basmati or long-grain rice - Small pasta (ditalini, elbows, or spaghetti) - Crushed tomatoes (2 cans) - Olive oil - White vinegar - Chile paste or harissa - Ground cumin - Ground coriander - Chili flakes - Salt ### Bread - Pita or flatbread ### Why Quantum Computing Threatens Blockchain's Cryptographic Foundation URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-quantum-computing-threatens-blockchains-cryptographic-foundation/ Last updated: 2026-01-21T12:12:50.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/crypto-quantum.jpg) I've been trimming my already modest cryptocurrency positions over the past few months. Not because of market volatility or regulatory concerns, though both are legitimate issues. The reason is more fundamental: quantum computing is advancing faster than I'm comfortable with, and blockchain's cryptographic foundations might not survive the decade unchanged. Let me be clear about where I stand on crypto generally. The technology solves real problems, especially for people in countries with unstable currencies or oppressive financial systems. Blockchain's open ledger design brings accountability that traditional finance often lacks. Bitcoin and a handful of other serious cryptocurrencies represent genuine innovation. The ridiculous meme coin scams (looking at you, Trump coin) are a sideshow. My concern isn't about distinguishing good crypto from bad. It's about whether the entire cryptographic foundation can withstand what's coming. Google announced its Willow quantum chip in December 2024, and the follow-up milestones keep arriving. By October 2025, [Google reported](https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/10/22/google-quantum-ai-shows-13000x-speedup-over-worlds-fastest-supercomputer-in-physics-simulation/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that its Willow chip ran a Quantum Echoes physics simulation about 13,000 times faster than the Frontier supercomputer, while also demonstrating below-threshold error correction. That means errors actually decrease as more qubits are added, solving a problem researchers have pursued for decades. The immediate threat to cryptocurrency comes from two quantum algorithms. Shor's algorithm can break the RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECDSA) that secure blockchain transactions. Most cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, use ECDSA to authenticate transactions through digital signatures. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive private keys from exposed public keys, essentially giving an attacker complete control over someone's digital assets. Grover's algorithm poses a [different threat](https://postquantum.com/post-quantum/grovers-algorithm/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), reducing SHA-256's effective security from 256 bits down to 128 bits. While 128-bit security remains strong by current standards, the more pressing near-term concern is signature forgery through Shor's algorithm rather than hash function attacks. The timeline debates are fascinating and unnerving. Some analyses, including blockchain-focused research and central bank commentary, frame the risk window as roughly five to fifteen years, while others argue cryptographically relevant machines may not arrive until well into the 2030s. Théau Peronnin, CEO of Alice & Bob (a company partnering with Nvidia on quantum computing), [told Fortune](https://www.gate.tv/news/detail/16037313?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in November 2025 that "you should have a few good years ahead of you, but I wouldn't hold my Bitcoin." He suggests cryptocurrencies need to fork to stronger blockchains by 2030\. Many industry voices cluster around a five-to-ten-year window, but there's visible disagreement between "sooner" and "later" camps. But here's the uncomfortable question: what if someone already has capabilities we don't know about? There's no public evidence of such a machine today, but nation-states, well-funded criminal organizations, or billionaires with unlimited resources could be further ahead than public announcements suggest. We only see what Google, IBM, and academic institutions choose to publish. The next major attack might not involve bombs or missiles. It could be financial, a coordinated strike against cryptocurrency markets once quantum capabilities reach the necessary threshold. Yes, you could apply this level of paranoid thinking to just about anything. But the combination of blockchain's permanent public ledger and quantum computing's threat to cryptography creates a uniquely vulnerable target. The Federal Reserve published a [study](https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/10/06/federal-reserve-warns-quantum-computers-could-expose-bitcoins-hidden-past/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in October 2025 warning about "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks. The concept is straightforward and chilling. Adversaries can copy entire blockchains today and store them. When quantum computers become powerful enough, they can retroactively decrypt all that historical data. The study's authors, Jillian Mascelli and Megan Rodden, in "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later," call this a "present, active, and in some circumstances unavoidable" privacy risk. This hits blockchain particularly hard because immutability is the feature, not a bug. Transactions are permanent by design. That trust-building characteristic becomes a vulnerability in the quantum era. You can't retroactively re-encrypt historical blockchain data, not without controversial protocol changes that would undermine the premise of an immutable ledger. While future transactions might be protected by post-quantum cryptography, everything already committed to the ledger stays vulnerable. Bitcoin faces unique exposure beyond the general quantum threat. Early Bitcoin transactions used pay-to-public-key outputs that expose public keys directly on the blockchain. On-chain analyses estimate that millions of Bitcoin in these early outputs and other addresses with exposed keys, often dormant "Satoshi-era" coins, are quantum-vulnerable, representing hundreds of billions of dollars at today's prices. Even if Bitcoin eventually migrates to quantum-resistant cryptography, these abandoned coins can't be protected because their owners aren't around to move them. The cryptocurrency industry is working on solutions. NIST is publishing the first standards around post-quantum algorithms like CRYSTALS-Kyber for key encapsulation and CRYSTALS-Dilithium for digital signatures. Academic and industry benchmarks show that post-quantum schemes can be implemented with acceptable performance overheads for many applications, but rolling them out across existing blockchains requires deep protocol changes, not simple patches. Bitcoin's decentralized governance makes coordinated transitions especially challenging. I'm not claiming the sky is falling tomorrow. The gap between current quantum capabilities and actually breaking Bitcoin remains substantial. Google's Willow chip, impressive as it is, still operates in what researchers call the "noisy intermediate-scale quantum" era. We're not there yet. But the velocity concerns me. Each breakthrough shortens the timeline. What seemed like a distant theoretical threat five years ago now has venture capitalists, CEOs, and federal agencies publishing specific warnings with specific dates. This isn't about timing the market or predicting Q-Day (the moment quantum computers routinely break existing encryption). I'm just trying to think through risk. My crypto holdings were never large, just a tiny fraction of my portfolio. As I watch quantum computing progress accelerate, even that allocation feels increasingly uncomfortable. The potential upside doesn't justify the asymmetric risk of being the last person holding assets whose cryptographic foundations have been compromised. Some will say I'm being too cautious. They might be right. Post-quantum solutions are advancing too, and Bitcoin survived plenty of existential threats before. But connecting the dots across quantum breakthroughs, Federal Reserve warnings, and blockchain's inherent inability to protect historical data... I'd rather trim positions now than wake up in 2031 wondering why I ignored all the signals. ### Misir Wat — Ethiopia's Berbere-Spiced Soul Food URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/misir-wat-ethiopias-berbere-spiced-soul-food/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:11:48.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/misir-wat.jpg) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* Misir Wat—a slow-cooked stew of red lentils, onions, and berbere spices—is one of the most important everyday dishes in Ethiopian cuisine. It is especially associated with fasting periods in the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar, when animal products are avoided, making it both deeply spiritual and profoundly practical. Despite its simplicity, Misir Wat showcases the heart of Ethiopian cooking: patience with onions, mastery of spice balance, and an intuitive sense of warmth rather than heat. In contemporary Ethiopian kitchens—particularly in Addis Ababa and in chef-led diaspora restaurants—Misir Wat has quietly evolved. Excess oil is reduced, spices are measured more precisely, acidity is introduced to lift the dish, and texture is refined. The result is still unmistakably Ethiopian, but lighter, brighter, and more nuanced—exactly how a modern local chef might cook it today for guests who value both tradition and health. ## Modern Misir Wat **Serves:** 4 **Total time:** \~45 minutes **Difficulty:** Moderate **Diet:** Vegetarian (can be fully vegan) ### Ingredients #### For the Misir Wat - 2 cups red lentils, rinsed well - 3 large yellow onions, very finely diced - 4 tbsp olive oil (or 3 tbsp olive oil + 1 tbsp niter kibbeh or butter) - 4 cloves garlic, minced - 1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated - 2½ tbsp berbere spice blend (see heat notes below) - 1 tbsp tomato paste - 3½–4 cups vegetable stock or water - 1 tsp kosher salt (to taste) - 1–2 tbsp fresh lemon juice (modern finishing touch) **Heat note:** This level produces warmth and depth, not heat dominance. If your berbere is mild, you can increase slightly; if very hot, reduce to 2 tbsp. ### Instructions 1. **Cook the onions (the foundation)** Place the onions in a wide pot over medium heat without oil. Cook, stirring frequently, until they release moisture and begin to soften (10–12 minutes). Add a tablespoon of water if they threaten to stick. This step builds sweetness without heaviness. 2. **Add fat and aromatics** Add the olive oil (and butter, if using). Stir in garlic and ginger; cook 1 minute until fragrant. 3. **Bloom the spices** Add berbere and tomato paste. Stir continuously for 1–2 minutes until aromatic and brick-red. Do not scorch. 4. **Simmer the lentils** Add lentils and stock. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover partially, and cook 20–25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are soft and cohesive. 5. **Refine and finish** Season with salt. Adjust consistency with a little water if needed—the stew should be thick but silky. Finish with lemon juice to brighten and lift the spices. ## Suggested Sides (Essential to the Experience) ### 1\. Gomen (Ethiopian Greens, Modernized) **Purpose:** Balance warmth with freshness and bitterness. #### Ingredients - 2 bunches collard greens or kale, finely sliced - 1 small onion, thinly sliced - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 2 tbsp olive oil - Salt to taste - Squeeze of lemon #### Method Sauté onion in olive oil until soft. Add garlic, then greens with a splash of water. Cover and steam-sauté 8–10 minutes until tender. Season lightly and finish with lemon. ### 2\. Injera or High-Quality Flatbread - **Preferred:** Store-bought injera (teff or teff–wheat blend) - **Alternative:** Soft whole-wheat pita or neutral flatbread Warm gently, tear into pieces, and serve as a tool, not a centerpiece. ### 3\. Optional: Timatim Salata (Bright Accent) A small bowl of chopped tomatoes, red onion, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. Use sparingly between bites for contrast. ## Presentation (Modern but Respectful) - Spoon Misir Wat into shallow bowls or plates - Add a small mound of gomen alongside - Serve bread torn, not stacked - Keep portions balanced—this dish is rich in flavor, not weight ## Shopping List — Ethiopian Misir Wat (Serves 4) ### Produce - 3 large yellow onions - 1 small yellow or red onion (for greens) - 4–6 cloves garlic - 1 thumb-size piece fresh ginger - 2 lemons - 2 bunches collard greens or kale - 2–3 ripe tomatoes (optional, for tomato salad) - Fresh parsley or cilantro (optional) ### Dry Goods - Red lentils (2 cups / \~1 lb) - Tomato paste (small can or tube) ### Oils & Pantry - Olive oil - Kosher salt - Vegetable stock (or water) ### Spices - Berbere spice blend (Ethiopian) Best ordered online if not found locally (No other specialty spices required if berbere is well composed.) ### Bread - **Preferred:** Injera (store-bought, teff or teff–wheat blend) - **Alternative:** High-quality whole-wheat pita or neutral flatbread ### Optional / Nice-to-Have - Butter or niter kibbeh (for partial olive oil substitution) - Black pepper (for tomato salad) ### What You Likely Already Have - Olive oil - Salt - Lemon juice (if not using fresh lemons) ### Bhāvanā vs Misogi: Why Your Annual Personal Goals Should Be Continuous, Not Calendar-Driven URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bhavana-vs-misogi-why-your-annual-personal-goals-should-be-continuous-not-calendar-driven/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T17:59:13.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/ikan-bakar-sambal-1.jpg) The new kitchen torch arrives tomorrow, just in time for Friday's Malaysian dinner. I'll use it to char the fish for [Ikan Bakar Sambal](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ikan-bakar-sambal-a-social-fire-driven-malaysian-classic/), which translates roughly to "burned fish with chili sauce.". This is week four of my 2026 bhavana, which I actually started in December as I'll explain later, and we've already hosted friends for traditional dishes from Ecuador, Portugal, and Turkey. The goal is to cook a full traditional meal from thirty countries by year's end. You can see the progress and recipes [here](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/). I've been setting these annual goals for over thirty years now, and I've called them "bhāvanā" after stumbling across the Buddhist term nearly two decades ago. Something about it resonated, though I'll admit I never dug too deeply into whether I was using it correctly. Recently I've noticed the self-improvement crowd throwing around another term for annual challenges: misogi. It comes from Japanese Shinto purification rituals, and it sounds undeniably cool. Which got me wondering whether I'd been using the wrong word all along. Turns out I wasn't. But understanding why reveals something important about how we think about personal development and the tyranny of the calendar year. **The Misogi Problem** In its traditional context, misogi is a Shinto purification practice, often involving cold water immersion to cleanse yourself spiritually. It's sacred, ritualistic, and tied to specific religious meaning. What the Western fitness and self-improvement world has done is strip away all that context and turn it into extreme challenge theater. Do something brutally difficult once a year. Suffer through it. Survive it. Prove something to yourself. Then return to your normal life. Marcus Filly, Jesse Itzler, and others have popularized this interpretation, where misogi means your annual epic challenge. Run fifty miles with a weighted pack. Do a thousand burpees. Swim across a freezing lake. The emphasis is always on the extreme, the one-off, the survive-and-tell-the-story nature of the event. There's value in that, don't get me wrong. Testing your limits can be transformative. But it's fundamentally discontinuous. You do the thing, check the box, and usually reset to baseline. That's not what I've been doing for three decades. And I suspect it's not what most people actually want when they set ambitious annual goals. **What Bhāvanā Actually Means** Bhāvanā comes from Pali and Sanskrit, meaning "development" or "cultivation." In Buddhist practice, it refers to the continuous mental and spiritual development that happens through meditation and mindfulness. But here's what caught my attention years ago: there are three types of bhāvanā, covering mental or intellectual development, physical or bodily cultivation, and spiritual or emotional growth. That framework immediately made sense for the variety of goals I'd been setting. Some years were primarily physical, like running a marathon in 2011 or learning to windsurf in 1995\. Others were intellectual deep dives, like studying the history of the Bible in 2014 or learning to code HTML in 1997\. Some were more experiential or spiritual like my deep dive into Buddhism in 2013 that included a trip to Bhutan. But the critical distinction is that bhāvanā is about continuous cultivation toward a future desired state, even if you haven't fully articulated what that state looks like. You know the direction you want to develop, even if you can't see the destination clearly. If that sounds familiar to anyone who knows Toyota kata, it's the same concept. You're identifying a target condition and working toward it, making the path clear as you go. The annual frame is just pragmatic. Humans need focus, deadlines, and containers for ambition. But the actual cultivation doesn't stop when December rolls around. **The Pattern of Lasting Change** Looking back at my bhavanas since 1988, the pattern becomes obvious. These aren't challenges I survived. They're thresholds I crossed. In 2006, my bhavana was to lose thirty pounds safely and consistently. The weight has stayed off for nearly twenty years, and was the catalyst for getting in the best shape of my life, which is creating a healthy, active retirement. In 2016, I read a novel from an author from a different country every month. I haven't kept up that exact pace, but I've continued to seek out diverse voices and perspectives in my reading ever since. When I learned HTML in 1997, it led to learning how to sell digital products online in 2003, which gave me the foundation to help start Gemba Academy in 2009. These goals build on each other. They layer. They compound. The 2026 cooking bhavana echoes the 2016 reading goal, both centered on cultural engagement and curiosity. But it also builds on last year's renewed embrace of cooking, taking it to a whole new level by forcing me to research traditional cuisines, learn new techniques, and acquire new capabilities. The kitchen torch is just the latest in a series of tools that expand what I can do. Three weeks in this has already also become the foundation for a social practice. We invite a different couple or a couple of single friends over each week. It's renewing and deepening relationships that had gone dormant. The cooking is the excuse, but the connection is the point. Will I stop doing this when week thirty arrives? I seriously doubt it. **Continuous Doesn't Mean December** This connects directly to something I [wrote about recently regarding continuous improvement](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/continuous-means-continuous-not-december/) in organizations. We've somehow convinced ourselves that "annual" means the work happens once a year, tied to the calendar. Annual goals. Annual reviews. Annual planning cycles. But continuous improvement, real kaizen, doesn't take December off. It doesn't wait for January 1st to kick into gear. The same is true for personal development. The annual bhavana isn't about creating a calendar-driven challenge that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. It's about using a twelve-month container to intensively develop a new dimension of yourself, knowing that the cultivation will continue beyond that frame. The year is when you establish the new baseline, integrate the new capability, make the shift stick. That's why I started the cooking bhavana in late December. The calendar is arbitrary. The development is continuous. Misogi, in its Western interpretation, is theater. Bhavana is transformation. Misogi is survive and reset. Bhavana is cultivate and integrate. Misogi asks what you can endure once. Bhavana asks who you want to become permanently. **Moving Forward** I'll keep using bhavana, not just because I've been using it for years, but because it's actually the right word for what I'm doing. It honors the Buddhist concept of continuous cultivation across mental, physical, and spiritual dimensions. It acknowledges that I'm moving toward a future state that isn't fully defined yet. And it reminds me that the annual frame is a tool for focus, not a boundary for development. Tomorrow the torch arrives. Friday I'll char fish for Malaysian night. By week thirty, I'll have cooked traditional dishes from some countries I've never visited, learned techniques I've never attempted, and deepened relationships with people I care about. And on January 1st, 2027? I'll still be cooking. I'll still be learning. I'll still be cultivating. Because bhavana doesn't stop when the calendar flips. That's the whole point. ### Ikan Bakar Sambal — A Social, Fire-Driven Malaysian Classic URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ikan-bakar-sambal-a-social-fire-driven-malaysian-classic/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:12:03.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/ikan-bakar-sambal.jpg) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* **Ikan Bakar** ("grilled fish") is one of Malaysia's most communal foods, associated with night markets, seaside stalls, and informal family gatherings. Traditionally cooked over charcoal and often wrapped in banana leaf, it is meant to be eaten with rice, pickles, and hands if necessary. The defining character is not a specific fish or garnish, but the *conversation* between smoke, chili heat, acidity, and umami. This version keeps that structure intact while modernizing execution for a home kitchen in **Malaysia**. Broiling provides clean, intense heat; cast iron delivers real char; and a brief torch finish recreates sambal bakar aromatics—without excess oil or shellfish. ## Modernized Ikan Bakar Sambal **Broiler → Cast Iron → Torch Method** **Serves:** 4 **Total time:** \~45 minutes **Difficulty:** Moderate **Diet:** Pescatarian, no shellfish ## Ingredients ### Fish - **1½–2 lb** skin-on white fish fillets (snapper, branzino, sea bass, or rock cod) - Neutral oil (grapeseed or avocado) - Fine salt ### Sambal - **4** red Fresno or red jalapeño chilies (seeded for less heat) - **2–3** Thai bird chilies (optional) - **4** medium shallots, peeled - **4** cloves garlic - **2** ripe tomatoes, halved - **2 tbsp** neutral oil - **1–1½ tsp** white miso (belacan substitute) - **2–3 tsp** tamarind water (or fresh lime juice) - **1 tsp** palm sugar or light brown sugar (optional) - Salt to taste ### Light Coconut Rice - **2 cups** jasmine rice, rinsed - **1 cup** full-fat coconut milk - **1 cup** water - **2** pandan leaves *or* **2** small lemongrass stalks, bruised - **1 tsp** salt ### Quick Acar (Cucumber & Carrot) - **2** English cucumbers, thinly sliced - **2** medium carrots, julienned - **½ cup** rice vinegar - **2 tsp** sugar - **1 tsp** salt ### Blanched Green Beans - **1½ lb** green beans, trimmed - Neutral or sesame oil - Lime wedges - Salt ### To Serve - Warm **roti or plain flatbread** (8–10 pieces) - Extra lime wedges - Optional herbs: mint, Thai basil, cilantro ## Instructions ### 1\. Sambal (15 minutes) 1. **Dry-roast or broil** chilies, shallots, garlic, and tomatoes until blistered and lightly charred. 2. Blend to a coarse paste. 3. Heat oil in a small pan; add paste and cook **6–8 minutes** until thick and aromatic. 4. Remove from heat; stir in miso, tamarind (or lime), and sugar if using. 5. Adjust salt and acidity. Set aside. ### 2\. Coconut Rice (20 minutes, mostly passive) 1. Combine rice, coconut milk, water, salt, and pandan or lemongrass. 2. Cook using your usual rice method. 3. Remove aromatics; fluff gently before serving. ### 3\. Quick Acar (10 minutes) 1. Toss cucumber and carrot with vinegar, sugar, and salt. 2. Let stand while cooking; drain lightly before serving. ### 4\. Green Beans (5 minutes) 1. Blanch in well-salted boiling water **2–3 minutes** until crisp-tender. 2. Shock in cold water, drain. 3. Toss with a few drops of oil, salt, and a squeeze of lime. ### 5\. Fish — Broil → Cast Iron → Torch (10 minutes) #### Step A: Broil (Primary Cook) - Heat broiler; rack **6–8 inches** from element. - Lightly oil a rack or foil-lined tray. - Season fish lightly with salt; brush with oil. - Broil **skin-side up** for **5–7 minutes**, until **85–90% done** (internal temp \~125–130°F). #### Step B: Cast Iron Sear (Structure & Char) - Preheat cast iron until very hot. - Lightly oil pan; place fish **skin-side down**. - Press gently for contact; sear **45–75 seconds** only. - Remove immediately. #### Step C: Sambal + Torch (Aromatics) - Spoon sambal over the fish. - Torch **briefly and selectively** (10–20 seconds total), flame moving constantly. - Finish with fresh lime juice. Ventilate well; do not torch over parchment or pooled oil. ## To Serve - Arrange fish on a platter with extra sambal. - Serve coconut rice, acar, green beans, and warm flatbread family-style. - Encourage mixing: fish + sambal + rice + pickle in each bite. ## Notes for Success - Broiling (not baking) preserves the grilled character indoors. - Cast iron provides real Maillard browning; the torch is for aroma, not doneness. - Sambal improves overnight and keeps **3–4 days** refrigerated. ## Simplified Shopping List (Serves 4) ### Seafood - 1½–2 lb skin-on white fish fillets (snapper, branzino, sea bass, or rock cod) ### Produce - Red Fresno or red jalapeño chilies (4) - Thai bird chilies (optional, 2–3) - Shallots (4) - Garlic (1 head) - Ripe tomatoes (2) - English cucumbers (2) - Carrots (2) - Green beans (1½ lb) - Lemons or limes (4–5) - Optional herbs: mint, Thai basil, cilantro ### Pantry / Refrigerated - Jasmine rice (2 cups) - Full-fat coconut milk (1 can) - Rice vinegar - White miso - Tamarind concentrate *or* extra limes - Palm sugar or light brown sugar - Neutral oil (grapeseed, avocado) - Salt ### Bread - Plain roti, frozen paratha, or neutral flatbread (8–10 pieces) ### İmam Bayıldı — Turkey's Classic Olive-Oil Eggplant Dish URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/imam-bayildi-turkeys-classic-olive-oil-eggplant-dish/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:12:18.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/imam-bayildi.png) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* **İmam Bayıldı** (literally "the imam fainted") is one of the most emblematic dishes in Turkish home cooking and belongs to the *zeytinyağlı* tradition: vegetable dishes cooked gently in olive oil and typically served warm or at room temperature. The name is often explained—half-jokingly—by the lavish amount of olive oil traditionally used, which was both expensive and prized in Ottoman kitchens. More importantly, the dish exemplifies a core principle of Turkish cuisine: **deep flavor without reliance on spices**. Instead of spice blends, İmam Bayıldı builds richness through slowly softened onions, ripe tomatoes, garlic, and high-quality olive oil, allowing the eggplant itself to carry the dish. Authentic versions are intentionally restrained. You will not find cumin, cinnamon, or allspice in classical preparations. Heat, if present at all, is subtle. The dish is about sweetness, silkiness, and balance—qualities that develop best when cooked gently and allowed to rest before serving. ## A Note on Eggplants and Cooking Method - **Japanese eggplants** are an excellent choice here. They are long, slender, thin-skinned, and less seedy—very similar to the varieties commonly used in Turkey. They hold their shape well and soften evenly. - **Slow roasting instead of frying** is a very reasonable and modern adaptation. While shallow-frying is traditional, roasting still yields excellent texture and flavor, especially if you brush generously with olive oil. The dish remains authentic in spirit as long as the olive oil is not reduced to the point that the eggplant dries out. ## İmam Bayıldı (Serves 4) **Side dish:** Turkish Plain Rice (Pilav) or Cacık (Turkish Yogurt with Cucumber) ## Ingredients ### Eggplants - 4 Japanese eggplants (about 8–9 inches long) - 6–7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided - Salt ### Filling - 3 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced - 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced - 3 ripe tomatoes, finely chopped (or 1½ cups good canned chopped tomatoes, drained) - 2 tablespoons finely minced dried figs - 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil - 1 teaspoon sugar (optional, helps balance acidity) - Freshly ground black pepper - ½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper (pul biber), optional and mild - ¼ teaspoon ground cumin ### To Finish - ½ cup hot water - Juice of ½ lemon (optional, use lightly) - Fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped ## Instructions ### 1\. Prepare the Eggplants - Trim the stems, leaving a small cap for presentation. - Peel alternating strips of skin lengthwise, creating a striped effect. - Cut a long slit down the center of each eggplant, stopping short of the ends. - Lightly salt the eggplants and let them rest for 20–30 minutes. Rinse and pat dry. ### 2\. Slow-Roast the Eggplants - Preheat oven to 400°F (205°C). - Place eggplants on a parchment-lined baking sheet. - Brush all over (including inside the slit) with about 4 tablespoons olive oil. - Roast for 25–30 minutes, turning once, until softened and lightly golden but not collapsed. - Remove and reduce oven temperature to 350°F (175°C). ### 3\. Make the Filling - Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a wide skillet over medium-low heat. - Add cumin and let bloom briefly in the oil before adding onions. - Add onions and a pinch of salt. Cook slowly for 15–20 minutes, stirring often, until very soft and lightly golden. - Add garlic and cook 1 minute more. - Stir in the minced figs and cook 1 minute more. - Stir in tomatoes, sugar (if using), black pepper, and Aleppo pepper. - Cook gently for 8–10 minutes, until thick, glossy, and fragrant. Taste and adjust salt. ### 4\. Stuff and Bake - Transfer eggplants to a shallow baking dish. - Gently open each slit and generously stuff with the onion-tomato mixture. - Pour ½ cup hot water around (not over) the eggplants. - Drizzle remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil over the tops. - Cover loosely with foil and bake at 350°F for 30–35 minutes, until completely tender. ### 5\. Rest and Finish - Remove foil and let cool for at least 20 minutes. - Just before serving, drizzle lightly with lemon juice if desired. - Garnish with chopped parsley. ## How to Serve - Traditionally served warm or at room temperature, not piping hot. - Accompaniments: crusty bread, plain rice, or a simple yogurt on the side (not on top). - This dish improves after a few hours of rest and is excellent the next day. ### The Final Whistle: What 18 Weeks of AI Football Picks Actually Taught Me URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-final-whistle-what-18-weeks-of-ai-football-picks-actually-taught-me/ Last updated: 2026-01-05T15:12:48.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/nflstadium.png) Back in September, I started what seemed like a straightforward experiment: [pit three leading AI platforms against each other](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-real-test-of-ai-chatgpt-vs-perplexity-vs-claude-in-an-nfl-football-pool/) (and me) in my annual NFL football pool. Give them all the same weekly prompt with access to injury reports, team records, point differentials, and betting lines. Explicitly instruct them to take some risks rather than just following the Vegas odds. Then sit back and see who comes out on top. Simple science, right? Well, 271 games and 18 weeks later, the results are in. And they tell a more nuanced story than "human beats machine" or "AI dominates sports prediction." The truth, as usual, is more interesting than either headline. ## The Final Standings After 18 weeks of regular season picks: - **My picks: 177 correct (65.3%)** - **Claude: 173 correct (63.8%)** - **Perplexity: 171 correct (63.1%)** - **ChatGPT: 159 correct (58.7%)** I won. The human beat the machines. Queue the triumphant music and hot takes about AI limitations, right? Not so fast. That 6.6 percentage point gap between me and ChatGPT represents about 18 games over the season. The gap between me and Claude was just 4 games. In a pool where weekly winners are decided by a single game or a tiebreaker, these margins tell you something important: we were all playing in roughly the same ballpark. ## What the Numbers Actually Reveal A friend who's better at statistics than I am looked at my data and pointed out something I'd missed. The real story isn't just about who had the highest accuracy. It's about the relationship between accuracy and consistency. Looking at the week-to-week variance in our performance, a clear pattern emerges: Perplexity was the most consistent, followed by Claude, then me, then ChatGPT. In other words, Perplexity was the most stable performer. It rarely had terrible weeks, but it also rarely had spectacular ones. It's the index fund of football prediction. Claude was pretty consistent too. I was all over the map, with some dominant weeks and some absolute stinkers. Here's the thing: in a football pool with 30 participants, being consistent doesn't help you win. You need to beat the field, which means you need to take calculated risks and be right when others are wrong. The weeks when you nail a few contrarian picks that the crowd misses? Those are the weeks you win the pool. I won four weeks this season. That's far better than random chance would suggest in a 30-person pool, and it's precisely because of those high-variance weeks where my gut diverged from consensus and turned out to be right. If I had Perplexity's consistency, I'd probably have won fewer weeks even if my overall accuracy were the same. This gets at something fundamental about the difference between forecasting and competing. Perplexity optimized for accuracy. I optimized for winning a pool. Those are related but distinct objectives, and the data bears this out: the most consistent system didn't win a single week. ## The Tale of Two Chaos Weeks Weeks 5 and 6 perfectly illustrate this dynamic. In Week 5, I managed just 5 correct picks out of 14 games (36%). The AIs? ChatGPT got 3, Perplexity 6, Claude 5\. Nobody could figure out what was happening. Upsets everywhere. Even the favorites that did win barely squeaked by. Week 6 wasn't much better. I scraped together 7 correct out of 15\. ChatGPT completely cratered with just 4\. Only Claude rose above 50% with a solid 10 correct, showing that its deeper analytical approach could handle some chaos better than the others. These chaotic weeks should theoretically favor AI. If there's some hidden pattern in the data that signals when underdogs are about to shock everyone, machine learning ought to find it. Instead, the chaos seemed to amplify our different approaches rather than reveal any AI advantage. Interestingly, when the season stabilized in the second half, the patterns shifted. Perplexity had its best week in Week 10, nailing 12 out of 14\. Claude dominated Week 17 with 12 out of 16\. I had strong showings in Weeks 3, 7, and 15\. The variance in who performed well each week was almost as interesting as the overall standings. ## Claude's Quiet Excellence While I came out on top overall, Claude deserves credit. With 63.8% accuracy, it was the strongest single AI platform, and it showed remarkable analytical depth throughout the season. In Week 1, it nailed 14 out of 15 picks. In Week 17, when most of us were struggling, it hit 12 out of 16. What distinguished Claude from the other AIs was its willingness to synthesize multiple factors beyond just injury reports and betting lines. It seemed to actually understand football context: momentum shifts, coaching tendencies, matchup advantages. It felt less like a pattern-matching algorithm and more like someone who actually follows the sport. ChatGPT, despite being conversational and easy to work with, never quite found its footing. At 58.7%, it spent most of the season trailing the pack. Perplexity, meanwhile, played it safe and ended up exactly where you'd expect a consensus-following system to land: solidly middle of the pack. ## The Week 18 Wild Card The final week of the season introduced a variable none of us could fully account for: strategic rest decisions. Teams like the Eagles and Chargers, having already locked in their playoff positions, chose to sit key starters in Week 18\. These decisions often came late, sometimes just hours before kickoff. Everyone went 9 for 16 that week. We all got beat by the same uncertainty. When teams aren't trying to win, prediction models break down. You can analyze all the injury reports and historical matchups you want, but if half the starters aren't playing and nobody knew until Thursday, you're just guessing. This is actually a perfect microcosm of what the entire season revealed about AI prediction: it excels when the inputs are stable and patterns are consistent. It struggles when context shifts in ways that aren't captured in the data. ## What I Actually Learned I went into this experiment half-expecting the AIs to dominate. This seems like exactly the kind of task they should excel at. Pattern recognition over large datasets, probabilistic reasoning, synthesizing multiple variables. These are supposed to be AI's superpowers. But sports prediction remains stubbornly, beautifully human. The better team doesn't always win. Coaches make bizarre decisions. Players have bad days. Backups come out of nowhere. And apparently, a retired guy with an internet connection and too much time on Sundays can still outperform sophisticated AI systems. My edge wasn't superior football knowledge. I'm not watching film or tracking advanced metrics. But I do absorb context: which teams are trending up, which coaches are on the hot seat, which offensive lines are clicking. That qualitative sense, combined with a willingness to make contrarian picks when my gut says the conventional wisdom is wrong, turned out to be worth something. The AIs, despite having access to far more data than I could ever process, couldn't quite capture that intuitive synthesis. They approached each week as a fresh optimization problem. I approached it as a continuation of evolving narratives. ## The Real Insight If I had to summarize what 18 weeks of this experiment taught me, it's this: AI is phenomenally good at finding patterns in data, but it's not magic. When the patterns are stable and the inputs are comprehensive, it performs well. When you need to weigh conflicting signals, incorporate soft context, and make judgment calls under uncertainty, human intuition still has real value. This doesn't mean AI is useless for sports prediction. Claude's 63.8% accuracy is nothing to sneeze at. If I were building a betting model or running survivor pools, I'd absolutely incorporate AI analysis. But in a competitive pool where you need to beat the field, not just be correct, there's still room for human judgment. And maybe that's the broader lesson about AI in 2025\. It's not about humans versus machines. It's about understanding what each does well and using them appropriately. The AIs gave me better baseline analysis than I could have generated on my own. But the final decision to deviate from that baseline, to take calculated risks in specific spots, to trust my gut when something felt off? That's where I added value. ## Looking Ahead The experiment is over for now. The playoffs start this weekend, and I'm planning to just enjoy them without the weekly grind of making picks. But I'll be back next season with some refinements. Final score: Humans 1, Machines 0.5 (Claude gets partial credit). But it was closer than I expected, and I have a feeling the machines are learning faster than I am. ### Bacalhau à Brás — Portugal's Beloved Cod and Potato Scramble URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bacalhau-a-bras-portugals-beloved-cod-and-potato-scramble/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:12:33.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/bacalhau-a-bras.jpg) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* **Bacalhau à Brás** is one of Portugal's most cherished comfort foods, a dish that appears on tables from Lisbon tascas to home kitchens across the country. Named after its creator—a 19th-century Lisbon tavern owner in the Bairro Alto district—this preparation transforms simple ingredients into something far greater than the sum of its parts. While Portugal is famously said to have "365 recipes for cod, one for every day of the year," Bacalhau à Brás stands out for its accessibility and universal appeal. It requires no special equipment, no long soaking times, and delivers consistent comfort: golden shoestring potatoes bound with creamy scrambled eggs and flakes of tender cod, finished with the sharp accent of black olives and fresh parsley. The dish exemplifies Portuguese culinary values shaped by centuries of maritime history and resourcefulness. During the Age of Discovery, salt cod became a cornerstone protein for its shelf stability on long voyages, and it remains deeply embedded in Portuguese food culture today. Bacalhau à Brás reflects the national preference for restraint and balance—olive oil, onions, garlic, and eggs form a consistent flavor base that highlights rather than disguises the main ingredient. Compared to neighboring Spain's bolder spicing or Italy's more elaborate sauces, Portuguese cooking tends toward honest simplicity, often finished with acidity or brine to brighten rich components. This dish, with its tender eggs and crisp potatoes, captures that philosophy perfectly. ## Bacalhau à Brás (Fresh Cod, Baked Potatoes) **Serves:** 2–3 **Total time:** \~40 minutes **Side:** Basic salad ## Ingredients - 0.8 lb fresh rock cod, skin removed, flaked - 1/2 lb Yukon Gold or russet potatoes, julienned (matchsticks) - 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 4 large eggs - 2–3 Tbsp olive oil (total) - Black pepper - Salt, to taste - 2 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped - 1/4 cup black olives ## Instructions ### Step 1: Bake the Potatoes 1. Heat oven to 425°F (220°C). 2. Rinse julienned potatoes under cold water to remove surface starch; **dry extremely well** with a towel. 3. Toss with 1 Tbsp olive oil and a light pinch of salt. 4. Spread in a **single layer** on a parchment-lined baking sheet (overcrowding prevents crisping). 5. Bake **18–25 minutes**, flipping once halfway, until golden and crisp at the edges. 6. Set aside uncovered so they stay crisp. **Tip:** If your oven runs cool, finish with 1–2 minutes under the broiler. ### Step 2: Build the Brás Base 1. In a wide skillet over medium heat, warm 1–2 Tbsp olive oil. 2. Add onions; cook slowly until soft and lightly golden (6–8 minutes). 3. Add garlic; cook 30 seconds. ### Step 3: Cod + Eggs 1. Add cod; cook gently until just opaque and flaky, 3–4 minutes. 2. Lower heat. Fold in baked potatoes. 3. Beat eggs lightly with black pepper; pour in and stir constantly until eggs are softly set and creamy. 4. Remove from heat immediately. ### Step 4: Finish - Taste and adjust salt carefully. - Sprinkle with parsley and scatter olives on top. - Serve right away. ## A Brief Look at Portuguese Cuisine Cuisine in Portugal is deeply shaped by the sea, history, and restraint. Cod—bacalhau—is famously said to have "365 recipes," one for every day of the year. Traditionally preserved as salt cod for long voyages during the Age of Discovery, bacalhau became a cornerstone protein, valued for its shelf stability and adaptability. Dishes tend to highlight the main ingredient rather than disguise it: olive oil, onions, garlic, eggs, and herbs form a consistent, economical flavor base. Portuguese cooking favors balance over intensity. Compared with neighboring Spain, spices are used sparingly; compared with Italy, sauces are simpler. The result is food that feels honest and comforting, often finished with acidity or brine—vinegar, olives, or citrus—to brighten rich components like eggs and olive oil. Bacalhau à Brás exemplifies this ethos: humble pantry ingredients, careful technique, and a final dish that is far greater than the sum of its parts. ### Encocado de Pescado — Ecuador's Coastal Coconut Fish Stew URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/encocado-de-pescado-ecuadors-coastal-coconut-fish-stew/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T17:12:48.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/encocado-de-pescado.jpg) *From my* [*Cooking the World Series*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cooking/)*...* **Encocado de Pescado** is one of Ecuador's most beloved coastal dishes, particularly associated with the Afro-Ecuadorian communities of Esmeraldas province and the Galápagos Islands. The name comes from *coco* (coconut), and the dish exemplifies the Pacific coastal tradition of cooking fresh catch in rich coconut milk sauces. Unlike many Latin American fish preparations that rely heavily on citrus marinades or complex spice blends, encocado is remarkably straightforward: fresh fish simmered gently in a fragrant coconut-tomato base with minimal seasoning. The result is a dish that allows the natural sweetness of both the fish and coconut to shine, brightened by lime and finished with fresh cilantro. This dish reflects Ecuador's geographic and cultural diversity. The country's long Pacific coastline provides an abundance of fresh seafood, while coconut palms thrive in the tropical climate. Encocado represents the practical wisdom of coastal cooking—using what grows nearby to enhance what comes from the sea. The preparation is intentionally simple and forgiving, making it accessible to home cooks while remaining deeply satisfying. Served traditionally with white rice and sometimes patacones (fried plantains), it's a complete meal that appears on family tables and restaurant menus alike, embodying the warmth and generosity of Ecuadorian coastal hospitality. ## Encocado de Pescado (Galápagos Coconut Fish) **Serves:** 2–3 **Prep + cook:** \~35 minutes ## Ingredients ### Fish - 1–1.25 lb firm white fish (halibut, mahi-mahi, cod, snapper, barramundi) - 1 tsp salt - ½ tsp pepper - 1 tbsp lime juice ### Coconut-Tomato Sauce - 2 tbsp neutral oil (or light olive oil) - ½ medium onion, finely chopped - ½ red bell pepper, finely diced - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 1 medium tomato, finely chopped - 1 tsp ground cumin - ½ tsp smoked or sweet paprika - ¼ tsp turmeric (optional but common) - 1 can (13.5 oz) coconut milk - 1 tbsp tomato paste (optional for deeper color) - 1–2 tsp hot sauce or ¼ chopped serrano (optional—many Galápagos versions are mild) - Salt to taste - Lime wedges for serving - Fresh cilantro for topping (traditional but optional) ### Suggested Sides (Authentic) - Steamed white rice (classic pairing) - Patacones (fried plantains — optional at home) - Simple green salad or avocado slices ## Instructions ### 1\. Season the Fish Pat dry and season both sides with salt, pepper, and lime juice. Let it sit while you start the sauce (5–10 min). ### 2\. Build the Encocado Base (8 min) In a large skillet: 1. Heat oil to medium. 2. Add onion and cook 2–3 minutes until soft. 3. Add bell pepper, garlic, and tomato. 4. Stir in cumin, paprika, and turmeric. Cook 2–3 minutes more until fragrant and slightly saucy. ### 3\. Add Coconut Milk (2 min) Stir in: - Coconut milk - Tomato paste (optional) - A pinch of salt Bring to a gentle simmer. ### 4\. Add the Fish (10–12 min) Lay fish pieces into the sauce. Simmer gently, spooning sauce over the top. Cook until the fish flakes easily (about 10 minutes depending on thickness). ### 5\. Finish Taste sauce and adjust salt or lime. Sprinkle with cilantro if desired. Serve over rice with extra lime wedges. ## Shopping List — Encocado de Pescado ### Fish - 1–1.25 lb firm white fish (Choose one: halibut, mahi-mahi, cod, snapper, barramundi) ### Produce - 1 medium onion - 1 red bell pepper - 2–3 garlic cloves - 1 medium tomato (vine-ripe is perfect) - 2 limes - Fresh cilantro (optional but recommended) - Optional sides: - 1–2 plantains (for patacones) - Avocado (for serving) - Green salad mix ### Canned / Shelf-Stable - 1 can (13–14 oz) coconut milk - Tomato paste (small can or tube – optional but deepens color) ### Pantry & Spices - Neutral oil (canola, grapeseed, or light olive) - Salt - Black pepper - Ground cumin - Paprika (sweet or smoked) - Turmeric (optional) - Optional heat: - Hot sauce (Valentina, Cholula, or similar) or 1 serrano pepper ### Side (Traditional) - White rice ### Continuous Means Continuous, not December URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/continuous-means-continuous-not-december/ Last updated: 2025-12-25T18:00:09.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/yearend.jpg) Here we are again. The annual madness. That magical time when otherwise rational people convince themselves that December 31st turning into January 1st somehow matters. You know what's coming. The frantic scramble to finish projects that weren't important enough to finish in June. The forced year-end reviews. The budget planning sessions that will consume hundreds of hours to predict things that won't happen. The New Year's resolutions that'll be abandoned by February. The retrospectives, the goal-setting, the strategic planning sessions, all timed to this arbitrary calendar event that has about as much cosmic significance as Arbor Day. I've been [ranting](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/avoid-the-arbitrary-constraints-of-time/) [about](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time-to-stop/) [this](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/holiday-hansei-and-the-power-of-why-and-how/) for over fifteen years, and I'm not stopping now. Call it my annual tradition, if you want to be ironic about it. ## The Big Question Nobody Wants to Answer What is so damn special about December 31st becoming January 1st? Seriously. I want someone to explain to me, using actual logic, why the Gregorian calendar's rollover should determine when we reflect, plan, and make decisions. The Romans picked this date somewhat arbitrarily (thanks, Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII), yet here we are in 2025, running our businesses and lives like these ancient guys had some profound insight into optimal management cycles. They didn't. The worst part? Those of us in the continuous improvement world should know better. We literally have the word "continuous" right there in the name. Not "annual." Not "year-end." Continuous. ## The Day I Stopped the Insanity About fifteen years ago, I was president of a roughly $100 million medical device manufacturing company. Good company, smart people, solid performance. But we were caught in the same trap as everyone else, this yearly budgeting ritual that consumed vast resources and produced questionable value. Then I attended a Lean Accounting Summit where [Steve Player](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/steve-player-rip/) gave a presentation that changed everything. Steve asked the question I just asked you: what's so special about the calendar year? Why are we "budgeting to the wall" with the wall being December 31st? He walked us through the absurdity of the whole process. Think about it. In October, we'd start building budgets for the following year. We'd gaze into our crystal balls and try to predict what would happen in December of the next year. That's 14 months away. Who the hell can predict what's going to happen 14 months from now? Nobody, that's who. But we'd do it anyway. We'd spend thousands of hours, pulling in people from operations and finance, trying to forecast every little expense down to the decimal point. We knew it would be wrong before we even finished. The spreadsheet wasn't dry before it was obsolete. Then, the real waste kicked in. Each month we'd spend even more hours doing variance analysis. Why didn't actual performance match our 14-month-old guess? Let me think. Maybe because it was a guess made 14 months ago by people who aren't fortune tellers? My CFO and I sat on the plane ride home from that conference, looked at each other, and made a decision. We sent an email to the finance and executive team before we even landed. "Budgets are cancelled. Effective immediately." (Yes, the joys of a private company with supportive owners!) ## What Happened Next You might expect chaos. We got the opposite. Instead of thousands of hours spent on budget theater, our finance team became integrated with operations. Instead of managing in hindsight, constantly explaining why our guesses were wrong, we focused forward on identifying and analyzing real opportunities with real data. We stopped trying to constrain decisions to arbitrary timeframes. Instead, we made the best decision with the information available at that moment. If an opportunity arose in March, we didn't wait until the next budget cycle or worry about whether we'd "budgeted for it." We evaluated it on its merits and made a call. We focused on continuous improvement, comparing ourselves to the previous period, trying to be better. Not hitting some forecast made months earlier by people who couldn't possibly have known what would happen. The relief was immediate and palpable. We freed up massive resources that had been deployed to hindsight management and redirected them to understanding current costs and potential improvements. Improvement accelerated. Later, I'd discover [Toyota kata](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/toyota-kata?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and it clicked. This is exactly what we'd stumbled into. A continuous improvement process enabled by looped, recurring small experiments iterating from a current state toward a desired future state. Not annual strategic plans. Not five-year forecasts. Small experiments, rapid learning, constant adjustment. You run an experiment, you reflect on what happened, you adjust, you run another experiment. Continuous. The calendar doesn't tell you when to learn, the experiment does. ## Hansei: The Art of Continuous Reflection Hansei, reflection, is powerful. Critical, even. But it needs to be continuous, just like improvement itself. Here's what I've learned about hansei over the years: it works at multiple timescales, and none of them should be constrained by arbitrary calendar boundaries. **Daily hansei** happens after experiments, after problems occur, after small wins. What did we learn today? What worked? What didn't? These quick reflections, often just a few minutes, compound into significant insights over time. **Project-based hansei** happens when something completes. Not when the month ends or the quarter closes, but when the actual work finishes. What did we learn? What would we do differently? What surprised us? This is when you capture the knowledge before people forget or move on. **Deeper reflection** happens every few weeks or months based on what you've discovered works for learning and improvement. I've found four to six weeks hits a sweet spot that allows sufficient activity to reflect on while maintaining good recall of what actually happened. Not monthly (that's still letting the calendar boss you around), but based on actual learning cycles. **High-level hansei** might happen annually, but not because it's December 31st. It's because sometimes you need to step back and look at longer patterns and trajectories. Maybe you do this during a vacation when you have space to think deeply. Maybe you do it when you hit a major milestone. The timing should serve the reflection, not the other way around. The key is that hansei itself is continuous. It's how you recalibrate your iteration from current state to desired future state. You reflect, you adjust your understanding, you refine your target condition, you design better experiments. Journaling helps enormously with this. I've been using well-worn Moleskines for years, and [the act of writing things down](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/your-daily-pen-and-paper-routine-might-just-add-years-to-your-life/), then reviewing them weeks or months later, uncovers patterns and situations that less deliberate methods miss completely. You see the thread that connects seemingly unrelated events. You notice the same obstacle appearing in different contexts. You recognize growth you didn't realize was happening in the moment. But you can't do this if you only reflect once a year. By then, the details are fuzzy, the context is lost, and you're left with vague impressions instead of actionable insights. ## The Retirement Revelation Here's something that's become even clearer since I retired: the arbitrary nature of time is largely a social construct we choose to accept. When I was working, weekends were different from weekdays. Monday was Monday. Friday was Friday. There was a rhythm to it, dictated by when other people expected me to be available and productive. Now? Every day is a weekend. Or every day is a weekday. The distinction doesn't exist unless I choose to create it. And you know what I've discovered? The work I want to do doesn't care what day of the week it is. Learning doesn't respect weekends. Curiosity doesn't take holidays. The same applies to year-end. December 31st only matters if you let it matter. The reflection I'm doing right now isn't happening because it's late December. It's happening because I'm in a place conducive to deep thinking, I have the time and space to do it properly, and enough has happened since my last deep reflection that it's worthwhile. This freedom from calendar tyranny is incredibly liberating. It also makes it painfully obvious how much energy we waste in organizations trying to align everything to arbitrary time boxes. ## The Real Damage The cost of year-end madness goes beyond wasted time in budget meetings. It's insidious. Budgets constrain thinking. Once you've committed to a budget, especially a detailed one, you stop looking for opportunities outside that budget. You optimize for hitting the forecast rather than creating value. You sandbag projections to make sure you can beat them. You make dumb decisions in December to "make the year look good." Sound familiar? I've watched companies refuse to pursue genuinely good opportunities in August because "it's not in the budget." I've seen projects artificially constrained to calendar years when they'd naturally take 14 months or 9 months. I've seen manufacturing teams crank out unnecessary production in late December to hit annual targets, creating inventory waste and disrupting flow. It's like we're all in some collective delusion, pretending that Earth's orbit around the sun should dictate business decisions. ## A Better Way Forward Here's what actually works, based on that experiment we ran fifteen years ago and what I've seen work elsewhere: **Make decisions with current information.** Not 14-month-old predictions. Not next year's budget. Today's reality and the best data available right now. **Use rolling forecasts.** Look ahead whatever time period is appropriate for your industry, but update it at shorter periods based on what you're learning. The future keeps changing, so your view of it should too. **Compare against relative targets, not absolute numbers.** Are we getting better? Are we improving versus last quarter, last year, our competitors? That's what matters. **Focus on process improvement, not hitting arbitrary targets.** If you improve the process, the numbers take care of themselves. **Experiment continuously.** Small tests, rapid learning, quick pivots. Toyota kata, if you want to get technical about it. Don't wait for the annual planning cycle to try something new. **Reflect regularly and deliberately.** Daily after experiments. When projects complete. Every few weeks for deeper patterns. Maybe annually for high-level trajectory, but not because the calendar says so. Make hansei itself continuous, not periodic. ## The Challenge The end of the calendar year is convenient. Everyone's thinking about the past and future anyway. The holidays create natural breaks. There's a certain poetry to fresh starts and new beginnings. But poetry doesn't create value for customers. Good decision-making does. Continuous improvement does. Learning from experiments does. Making the best choice with current information does. So this December, as you're inevitably pulled into year-end activities (because unless you're the president with a supportive CFO, you probably can't just cancel everything), ask yourself: why are we doing this now? Does the timing add value? Would this be better done in March? Or July? Or on a rolling six-week cycle? Here's my real challenge to you: don't just think about this once a year. Think about it continuously. Act on it continuously. Reflect continuously. Improve continuously. And maybe consider what you could do with all those hours you'll spend in budget meetings, variance analysis sessions, and year-end reviews if you weren't constrained by the arbitrary tyranny of the calendar year. Continuous improvement means continuous. Not annual. Not quarterly. Not monthly. Continuous. Happy arbitrary calendar rollover, everyone. May your continuous improvement actually be continuous moving forward. ### A Week in the Galapagos: Wildlife, Wonder, and What They Don't Tell You in the Brochures URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-week-in-the-galapagos-wildlife-wonder-and-what-they-dont-tell-you-in-the-brochures/ Last updated: 2025-12-24T01:00:51.000Z ![Lava gull with dark head and red legs standing on volcanic rock in the Galápagos.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0786.png) Lava gull stands on volcanic rock, one of the rarest gull species in the world. My wife and I just returned from seven days cruising the Galapagos Islands aboard the Origin, a 20-passenger yacht operated by [Ecoventura](https://www.ecoventura.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). We'd visited Ecuador before, but the islands themselves had remained on our bucket list. Now that we've been, I understand why this place occupies such an outsized role in our understanding of evolution, ecology, and what it means to share a planet with creatures who have no reason to fear us. *Note: See the end of the post for some of our favorite photos!* This isn't a comprehensive wildlife guide. There are plenty of those already. Instead, I want to share what surprised us, what worked, what didn't, and the kind of practical details that might actually help you decide whether and when to make the trip yourself. ## Why December Worked Perfectly We traveled December 11-22, and the timing turned out to be ideal for reasons we didn't fully appreciate until we were there. December marks the transition from the Galapagos cool/dry season into the warm/wet season. The research backs up what we experienced: seas were generally calm (with a couple notable exceptions during overnight passages), water temperatures were warming into the mid-70s F, and we had clear skies nearly every day. According to multiple sources, December offers some of the best conditions for both land and water activities, sitting in that sweet spot before the heat and humidity of January-March but after the rougher seas and cooler temperatures of June-November. But the real advantage was biological timing. Our naturalist guides explained that giant tortoises begin their descent from the highlands to breeding grounds in January. In December, you can still find them in both locations. We saw dozens in the highlands of Santa Cruz, and the breeding center gave us context for the conservation efforts that brought several subspecies back from the brink of extinction. Even more striking were the waved albatross on Española Island. These remarkable birds spend most of the year at sea, returning to Española (their only breeding ground) from March through December. We arrived in mid-December just as pairs were performing their elaborate "goodbye" rituals before departing for several months of oceanic wandering. Watching these lifelong monogamous pairs engage in sky-pointing displays and bill circling before separating was genuinely moving. They'll return in March, somehow find their same partner again, and repeat the cycle. The biological calendar doesn't care about your vacation schedule, but if you can swing December, you're catching wildlife patterns that don't repeat the rest of the year. ## How the Week Actually Unfolded Ecoventura handles the entire Galapagos portion seamlessly. On Sunday, December 14, they arranged our Avianca flights from Quito to San Cristobal via Guayaquil (you stay on the plane, it just picks up additional passengers). They paid park fees, handled all logistics, and transported us directly to the yacht. The only minor issue was that pretty much everyone on the three Ecoventura boats was on the same flight, about 60 people total, and most were accustomed to business or first class seating. Those sections filled immediately. But no one complained, and once we realized we were all heading to the same three yachts, it became an opportunity to start meeting fellow travelers before we even arrived. Our first impression boarding the Origin was clean, simple luxury and an extremely attentive crew. Sunday was spent exploring the yacht, getting fitted for wetsuits and snorkel gear, attending our first orientation briefing, and eating our first lunch and dinner aboard. We also started getting accustomed to the boat's movement, which would matter more once we hit open water. That evening, the yacht made its first move to Leon Dormido (Kicker Rock), where we witnessed spectacular sunset views of the dramatic volcanic rock formation rising from the sea. Here's how the daily rhythm worked for the rest of the week: **Monday, December 15 - San Cristobal Island**: Wet landing at Punta Pitt early morning for our first encounter with truly unique Galapagos wildlife - red-footed and blue-footed boobies nesting in the same area, where our guides explained the differences in their hunting and nesting behaviors. The hike wasn't long but was surprisingly technical over sharp lava rock, challenging enough that some of the older passengers wisely chose to hold back. We followed this with snorkeling from the beach. The afternoon zodiac ride to Cerro Brujo revealed pelicans diving for fish, and then our first real appreciation for just how many sea lions inhabit these islands - numerous individuals lounging on the beach and playing in the water. This would become a pattern; sea lions were ubiquitous in huge numbers everywhere for the rest of the week. Another geology briefing rounded out the evening. **Tuesday, December 16 - Española Island**: Morning dry landing at Punta Suarez for a rocky trail walk where we encountered the waved albatross pairs performing their goodbye rituals. We also saw numerous marine iguanas everywhere - they would become another constant presence throughout the week - along with swallow-tailed gulls raising their young. Afternoon activities at Gardner Bay and Gardner Islet included kayaking, paddle boarding, and snorkeling. The white sand beaches here were pristine, and we learned about the parrotfish contribution later. **Wednesday, December 17 - Floreana Island**: Wet landing at Punta Cormorant, snorkeling at Devil's Crown (an eroded volcanic cone creating excellent habitat), then the famous Post Office Bay where we participated in the barrel mail tradition and heard the Essex intelligence story. We also visited Champion Islet and Baroness Point. **Thursday, December 18 - Santa Cruz Island**: This was our town day. We visited the giant tortoise reserve in the highlands, then the Charles Darwin Research Station and breeding center in Puerto Ayora. We had free time to explore town in the afternoon, with cash recommended for any shopping. **Friday, December 19 - Santiago and Bartolome Islands**: Morning kayaking and snorkeling at Chinese Hat (Sombrero Chino) where we had our remarkable penguin encounters and where I got my sea lion kiss. After lunch we cruised to Bartolome for afternoon snorkeling, then the iconic 350-step climb to the summit for one of the most photographed views in the Galapagos. We also visited Las Bachas and Black Turtle Cove. **Saturday, December 20 - Plaza and Seymour Islands**: Our final full day started with a dry landing and walk at South Plaza Island, followed by an afternoon at North Seymour with snorkeling and another landing. Here we saw magnificent frigatebirds with their enormous inflated red throat pouches on full display, more gulls, and many yellow land iguanas along with the ever-present marine iguanas. Captain Gerardo Durán and the crew hosted a farewell cocktail that evening. **Sunday, December 21**: We disembarked after breakfast at 8:30am. Ecoventura handled all luggage and airport transportation, but before heading to the airport, they arranged a brief excursion to a local museum and into town for an early lunch on San Cristobal. Then it was the reverse Avianca flight via Guayaquil back to Quito, and the long journey home the next day. The pattern was consistent: two excursions daily (sometimes three), each requiring zodiac transfers from the yacht to landing sites. You're genuinely active. But the crew managed everything so efficiently that it never felt rushed or chaotic despite the packed schedule. ## The Post Office Bay Story You Haven't Heard Most visitors to Post Office Bay on Floreana Island know the basic story: whalers in the late 1700s established an informal mail system using a wooden barrel. Outbound sailors left letters, homebound sailors collected any mail they could deliver, and the tradition continues today with tourists leaving postcards for other visitors to hand-deliver. What our guide added was the military intelligence angle. During the War of 1812, Captain David Porter commanded the USS Essex on a remarkable Pacific cruise to harass British whaling ships. The challenge was finding ships in an ocean that vast. Porter's advantage came from former whalers in his crew who knew about the Post Office barrel. By checking the letters, Porter could determine which British ships had been in the area, when they'd passed through, and even infer their approximate locations and destinations from the correspondence. It was 19th-century SIGINT using handwritten letters as the signal. The barrel became an intelligence gold mine. Porter captured or destroyed a dozen British whalers before the Essex herself was finally taken at Valparaíso. The Post Office that seemed like a quaint sailor tradition had briefly become a tactical asset in a naval campaign thousands of miles from any home port. I appreciate stories like this because they remind you that apparently simple systems can have layers of complexity and consequence their creators never imagined. The whalers just wanted to send letters home. They created something that would serve both humanitarian and military purposes, and now exists primarily as a tourist attraction where we all participate in the same basic gesture those sailors made 230 years ago. ## That Beautiful White Sand Is What You Think It Is The beaches at Gardner Bay and other islands feature pristine white sand that photographs beautifully. Our guides cheerfully informed us that a substantial percentage of this sand is parrotfish excrement. Here's what's actually happening: parrotfish have fused, beak-like teeth that scrape algae off coral surfaces. In the process, they inevitably consume chunks of coral skeleton (calcium carbonate). They have specialized grinding teeth in their throats called pharyngeal mills that pulverize this material, extract what nutrients they can, and excrete the rest as fine white sand. The numbers are remarkable. Research indicates a single large parrotfish can produce 90 to over 450 kilograms (200 to 1,000 pounds) of sand annually depending on the species. Some studies in the Caribbean and Hawaii suggest that up to 70% of white sand beach material has passed through parrotfish digestive systems. This matters for reef health too. By grazing algae, parrotfish prevent it from smothering coral. Remove the parrotfish through overfishing, and reefs can flip from coral-dominated to algae-dominated ecosystems. The sand production is almost a byproduct of their role as reef maintenance workers. So yes, you're walking on fish poop. But you're also walking on evidence of a healthy reef ecosystem where herbivores are doing the work necessary to keep coral alive. That's the kind of connection that makes these islands special. Everything is interconnected in ways that become obvious once you look past the surface beauty. ## The Galapagos Regulatory System Actually Works One aspect that impressed me was how tightly controlled access is to landing sites. The Galapagos National Park doesn't just limit total visitor numbers. They regulate which ships can visit which sites at which specific times, down to the hour. This ensures that landing sites rarely have more than one small group at a time. The system has interesting implications for choosing a cruise. Older, established operators like Ecoventura locked in access to prime itineraries years ago. Newer companies struggle to get permits for the best routes. This isn't publicly advertised, but it's worth understanding when comparing options. Two cruises might visit "the Galapagos" but if one has legacy access to better landing sites at optimal times, you're getting a different experience. Our guides also explained that sometimes luck plays a role. Chinese Hat, where we stopped one morning, is a relatively newer addition to permitted sites. It turned out to be one of the few locations where Galapagos penguins regularly appear. We saw several. These are the only penguins north of the equator, made possible by the cold Humboldt Current that sweeps up from Antarctica. Finding them at Chinese Hat was partly good itinerary planning, partly regulatory happenstance. The tight control also means that 100-passenger ships face significant logistical challenges. They can't land everyone at once, so they're constantly rotating groups, and each person gets less time at each site. The sweet spot seems to be 16-20 passenger yachts like the Origin. Small enough for intimate experiences, large enough to have proper facilities and stability. ## Practical Matters: What Actually Worked **Seasickness**: I brought scopolamine patches just in case but only needed non-drowsy Dramamine the first couple days. Seas were generally calm except during longer overnight passages, particularly the run to Santa Cruz. Even in harbor at Puerto Ayora, there was noticeable rolling. Most people acclimate within 48 hours. December typically offers calmer seas than the June-November period when southern trade winds create choppier conditions. **Boat selection**: We specifically chose a small yacht (20 passengers) over larger ships. The tradeoff is more motion in swells versus better stability. But small groups are required for landing site regulations anyway, so large ships mean waiting your turn and less time ashore. We also learned that single-hull vessels like the Origin generally handle swells better than catamarans. Catamarans have shallower keels and different motion characteristics that can actually be worse for seasickness despite seeming more stable. **Photography**: Several passengers brought heavy telephoto lenses and professional gear. Completely unnecessary. The defining characteristic of Galapagos wildlife is fearlessness. Evolution on isolated islands without land predators means animals simply don't flee from humans. You can walk to within a few feet of blue-footed boobies, marine iguanas, sea lions, frigatebirds. An iPhone takes excellent photos. The only caveat is National Park rules require staying certain distances back even if animals don't move, but you still don't need serious telephoto. Save yourself the weight and expense. **Shoes**: The tour company recommended three pairs: boat shoes, water shoes with heel straps for wet landings, and hiking shoes for trails. We found a better solution: aggressive-tread water shoes with solid toe protection. I used Hoka Hoparas. They worked perfectly for both wet landings and all hiking. The terrain isn't technical enough to need dedicated boots. You're often crossing between wet and dry anyway. One less thing to switch and carry. **Photo organization**: Take a photo of each day's printed schedule. These separate your photo library into sections with the activities and islands clearly referenced. When you have 800+ photos from a week, having those schedule photos as natural dividers makes sorting infinitely easier later. **Snorkeling**: The water felt noticeably colder than similar temperatures in Hawaii, likely due to current patterns and wind. Full 3mm wetsuits were necessary and provided by the ship. Water visibility was murkier than Hawaii but that's because these are nutrient-rich upwelling waters. The tradeoff is you're swimming with sea lions, sea turtles, rays, and reef sharks in water that supports incredible marine biodiversity. ## What Life Aboard the Origin Was Actually Like The food exceeded expectations. Breakfast and lunch were extensive buffets with made-to-order eggs. Dinners were four-course affairs with choice of entrees (duck in red wine, pistachio-crusted catch of the day, etc.). Ecoventura sources 53% of ingredients locally from the Galapagos, which is both sustainable and results in excellent fresh fish. They easily accommodated our pescatarian preferences and even prepared special meals for Hanukkah. Beyond meals, there were post-excursion snacks (pizza, sandwiches) after every landing, and a 24/7 snack station with unlimited drinks. You're burning calories hiking volcanic terrain and snorkeling in cool water. The constant food availability makes sense. Every evening before dinner, the naturalist guides gave detailed presentations preparing us for the next day's islands, wildlife, and landing conditions. These weren't perfunctory briefings. They included geology, evolutionary biology, conservation challenges, and specific behaviors to watch for. Occasional special presentations covered topics like the formation of the archipelago or climate patterns. The crew created surprisingly memorable moments. One night they dressed as pirates, "kidnapped" the captain, and refused to release him until everyone had danced sufficiently. With only 20 passengers, the atmosphere was playful and personal rather than corporate cruise ship formal. Cabins were genuinely luxurious, and housekeeping bordered on psychic. Any time we left the room for more than a few minutes (meals, excursions, evening talks), we'd return to find it cleaned and refreshed. There was even a small gym, though after full days of hiking and snorkeling, I never used it. The Origin has two identical sister ships (Theory and Evolve) that presumably offer similar experiences. This was not a budget option. But for a once-in-a-lifetime trip, the quality of accommodations, food, guides, and especially the itinerary access made it worthwhile. ## Quito: The Gateway Logistics We spent one full day in Quito before flying to the Galapagos and another night at the airport hotel on our return. Even though we'd visited Ecuador before, we took an Uber (one hour each way through horrible traffic) to explore the historic old town around Plaza San Francisco. Quito sits in a narrow valley between mountains, creating a linear city where traffic is consistently brutal. The altitude (9,350 feet) can cause issues for some travelers. We didn't experience problems after a good night's sleep, but if you're concerned, the airport hotel option lets you acclimate before flying to the islands at sea level. ## The Wildlife Question Everyone Asks Yes, we saw everything. Sea lions at every island, sometimes dozens hauled out on beaches or bodysurfing in the shore break. Blue-footed boobies performing their high-stepping courtship displays. Marine iguanas clustered in masses that look like piles of dark lava rock until they move. Frigate birds with inflated red throat pouches. Giant tortoises grazing in the highlands. Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttling across black volcanic rock. The penguins at Bartolome and Chinese Hat were particular highlights since they're so geographically unexpected. We saw waved albatross at Española during their departure rituals. At Chinese Hat, a young sea lion actually approached me while snorkeling and gave me what I can only describe as a kiss on the snorkel before swimming away. The sheer density and proximity of wildlife is what makes the Galapagos special. It's not that these are necessarily rare species. It's that they're completely unbothered by human presence. A blue-footed booby on a nest will let you approach to within regulated distance and simply watch you with apparent curiosity. Young sea lions treat snorkelers as entertainment, swimming loop-de-loops around you for the fun of it. This fearlessness exists because these animals evolved without land predators. Humans haven't been here long enough to teach them fear, and the National Park's strict protections keep it that way. You're experiencing something close to what Darwin saw in 1835, albeit with better weather gear and far more comfortable accommodations. ## Would I Recommend It? Without hesitation. But go with realistic expectations. This is expensive. Between the cruise, flights, Quito hotels, and incidentals, budget accordingly. The Galapagos is a protected national park, not a beach resort. You're there for wildlife and landscapes, not luxury amenities (though the yacht had those too). The trip involves physical activity. Multiple daily excursions, wet and dry landings from zodiacs, hiking over uneven volcanic terrain, snorkeling in cool water. Most people can handle it, but if mobility is limited, this may not be ideal. You will get wet and dirty and salty. Bring quick-dry clothes and accept that you'll be damp much of the time. The experience is worth being slightly uncomfortable. Do your homework on choosing a cruise. Ask about the specific itinerary, not just which islands but which landing sites and when. Ask about vessel size, hull type, naturalist guide qualifications, and how long the company has been operating (which correlates with itinerary access). Don't assume all Galapagos cruises are equivalent. And seriously consider December if your schedule allows. The combination of good weather, calming seas, warming water, and wildlife timing (tortoises, albatross, penguins, sea lion pups) creates conditions that don't repeat exactly the same way other months. We spent a week in a place where evolution's mechanisms are still visible in every interaction between species and environment. Where fish literally build beaches. Where intelligence officers once used love letters as tactical data. Where penguins thrive on the equator and albatross pairs reunite after months apart. The Galapagos delivers on its reputation, but in ways more subtle and interconnected than the brochures suggest. It's not just about seeing rare animals. It's about witnessing an entire ecosystem where the usual rules of predator wariness and human-wildlife separation simply don't apply. That's worth the expense, the travel time, and the occasional bout of seasickness. --- Here are some of our favorite photos, all shot with an iPhone 17 Pro. ![Sunset behind towering volcanic rock formations of Kicker Rock Leon Dormido rising from the ocean in the Galápagos Islands.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0332.png) Sunset silhouettes the dramatic volcanic rock formations of Kicker Rock (Leon Dormido) in the Galápagos Islands, a reminder that the landscape here is as unforgettable as the wildlife. ![Red-footed booby perched on a branch with red feet visible in the Galápagos Islands.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0363.png) A red-footed booby perches among coastal shrubs, its vivid red feet and pale blue bill standing out against the rugged Galápagos terrain. ![Brown pelican standing on a rock ledge along the Galápagos coast.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0386.png) A brown pelican rests effortlessly on a rocky ledge, one of the many seabirds that thrive along the Galápagos shoreline. ![Galapagos Sea Lions](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0394.png) Sea Lions in the Galapagos. ![Galápagos Christmas marine iguana resting on a sandy beach among volcanic rocks.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0427.png) A Galápagos "Christmas" marine iguana soaks up the sun after swimming, an iconic species found nowhere else on Earth. ![Adult Nazca booby standing beside its fluffy chick on a rocky nesting site in the Galápagos.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0457.png) A Nazca booby stands guard over its chick, offering a rare glimpse into everyday wildlife behavior in the Galápagos. ![Two waved albatrosses standing together on rocky ground in the Galápagos Islands.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0472.png) A pair of waved albatrosses stand side by side, showcasing the remarkable seabird diversity of the Galápagos Islands. ![Galápagos giant tortoise walking through grassy highlands.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0562.png) A Galápagos giant tortoise slowly makes its way across lush highland terrain, moving at its own timeless pace. ![Two red Sally Lightfoot crabs on black volcanic rocks along the Galápagos coast.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0652.png) Brightly colored Sally Lightfoot crabs cling to volcanic rock, adding flashes of color to the stark Galápagos shoreline. ![Two Galápagos penguins resting on dark volcanic rocks beside the ocean.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0717.png) Galápagos penguins rest on sun-warmed rocks, one of the rarest penguin species in the world thriving near the equator. ![Galápagos land iguana resting on rocky volcanic terrain.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0801.png) A Galápagos land iguana surveys its volcanic surroundings, its golden coloring standing out against the stark island landscape. ![Male frigatebird with inflated red throat pouch perched in leafless trees in the Galápagos.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0844.png) A male frigatebird displays its bright red throat pouch during mating season, one of the most striking courtship rituals in the Galápagos. ![Blue-footed booby standing on the ground with bright blue feet visible.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0866.png) A close-up of a blue-footed booby reveals the unmistakable turquoise feet that have made this Galápagos seabird famous. ![Ecoventura yacht at sunset in the Galapagos.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/IMG_0872.png) One of the Ecoventura yachts at sunset in the Galapagos. ### Your Daily Pen and Paper Routine Might Just Add Years to Your Life URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/your-daily-pen-and-paper-routine-might-just-add-years-to-your-life/ Last updated: 2025-12-11T14:31:55.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/handwriting.jpg) A few years back, I [wrote about the power of handwriting for learning](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/) and later [explored how it sharpens critical thinking](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-critical-thinking-value-of-writing/). I even shared Isaac Asimov's wonderful quote: "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." Back then, I was making the case that writing by hand beats typing for understanding and retention. But here's something I didn't fully appreciate at the time: this simple daily practice might actually be protecting my brain and potentially extending my healthy years. I still keep my morning ritual. Before diving into work, I pull out my small Moleskine and scribble down my top three tasks for the day, along with a few lines about what I'm grateful for. During the day, notes accumulate about calls, ideas, random thoughts that need capturing. By evening, there's the hansei, my reflection on whether I actually accomplished what I set out to do. It's decidedly low-tech in our cloud-synced world, and I've often wondered if I'm just being stubborn about clinging to pen and paper. Turns out, I might be doing my aging brain a bigger favor than I realized. ## The Aging Brain Needs More Than Crossword Puzzles A study published in February 2025 in the journal Life titled [*The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing*](https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/15/3/345?ref=kevinmeyer.com) analyzed 30 neuroimaging studies comparing handwriting and typing. The researchers, led by Giuseppe Marano and colleagues at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, pulled together findings from fMRI, EEG, and other brain imaging technologies to understand what's really happening upstairs when we write versus type. The pattern that emerged was striking: writing by hand forces the brain to work considerably harder. It requires coordinating fine motor skills, processing tactile feedback from pen and paper, and maintaining spatial awareness of each letter's formation. Typing, by contrast, involves repetitive finger movements that require far less cognitive effort. But why does that matter for those of us worried about keeping our minds sharp as we age? The brain's plasticity (its ability to form new neural connections and adapt) isn't static throughout life. In childhood, neural circuits are highly flexible, allowing for rapid learning. As we move into adulthood, the brain becomes more structurally stable, making new skill acquisition more challenging. This doesn't mean we stop learning, but it does mean we need to be more intentional about activities that stimulate our brains. Here's where handwriting becomes interesting. The cognitive demands of forming letters, coordinating vision with movement, and integrating multiple sensory streams could help stimulate neuroplasticity. While the researchers are careful not to claim that handwriting prevents cognitive decline, the evidence points toward something meaningful: activities that engage broader networks of brain regions may help maintain neural connectivity that supports cognitive health. ## How Your Brain Lights Up Differently The neuroimaging reveals something fascinating about the different ways our brains engage with these two forms of writing. When you write by hand, you're activating a complex network: The sensorimotor cortex processes the tactile feedback of pen on paper and controls the intricate finger movements. The visual cortex tracks the emerging letters. The parietal lobe handles visuospatial integration, essentially coordinating where your hand is in space with what you're trying to create. Language areas like Broca's region encode the orthographic (spelling) representation. The cerebellum refines and smooths the motor movements. That's a lot of neural real estate getting a workout from something as simple as writing a grocery list. Typing activates some overlapping regions, particularly for visual processing and language. But it relies more heavily on procedural memory (remembering where keys are located) and repetitive motor patterns. The prefrontal cortex handles the decision-making and attention required, but overall, it's a narrower slice of brain activity. The researchers found that handwriting produces what they call "more elaborate" brain connectivity patterns, particularly in theta and alpha frequency bands. These frequencies are associated with memory formation and encoding new information. When you type, those widespread connectivity patterns simply don't appear. ## The Memory Connection I mentioned in my [earlier post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-critical-thinking-value-of-writing/) a study showing that college students who took notes by hand performed better on conceptual questions than those who typed. They also retained information better a week later. The new research helps explain why: the slower, more effortful process of handwriting forces deeper engagement with material. When you write by hand, you're creating what neuroscientists call an "encoding effect." The physical act of forming each letter, combined with the slower pace that forces you to paraphrase rather than transcribe verbatim, leads to better retention. Your brain is building stronger memory traces because multiple systems are working together: motor, sensory, visual, and linguistic. Multiple studies have now confirmed that people remember information better when they write it by hand. A Norwegian University study using high-density EEG found increased connectivity across brain regions linked to visual processing, motor control, and memory during handwriting, but not during typing. The cognitive load of handwriting, rather than being a bug, turns out to be a feature. ## The Aging Advantage For those of us in our 60s and beyond, the implications get more interesting. Several studies referenced in the review examined how handwriting abilities change with normal aging. One machine learning study found that stroke size progressively declines in healthy older adults, reflecting the natural aging process affecting motor control. But here's the key: handwriting requires the activation of widespread brain networks, and maintaining those networks through regular use may help preserve cognitive function. The review notes that cognitive activity can enhance brain structure and function, potentially building cognitive reserve. That reserve matters as we age. Think of it like this: if your brain has more robust connections and greater flexibility from years of engaging in cognitively demanding tasks, you may have more buffer when age-related changes begin. Handwriting engages regions particularly vulnerable in dementia: motor control areas, visuospatial processing networks, and memory circuits. The coordinated visual, spatial, and motor integration required for complex writing might help keep these networks active and robust. ## It's Not About Abandoning Technology I'm not suggesting we all toss our laptops into the ocean and return to quill pens. I wrote the first draft of this on a computer (though I'll admit, I sketched the outline by hand first). Typing has clear advantages: speed, searchability, easy editing, and the ability to share instantly. For long-form writing, extended brainstorming, or collaborative work, the keyboard makes sense. The research suggests it's about finding the right tool for the task. When learning new material, taking notes in a lecture, working through complex problems, or trying to deeply process information, handwriting offers cognitive benefits that typing can't match. For quick communication, drafting emails, or producing content that needs to be digital anyway, typing is obviously the practical choice. What strikes me most is that we're making educational choices, particularly for children, without fully understanding these trade-offs. The review points out that if children aren't exposed to handwriting early on, they may not develop the precise hand movements and neural pathways that support not just writing, but a range of fine motor skills. The absence of handwriting practice could affect everything from manual dexterity to how the brain processes language and reading. ## My Morning Practice in a New Light Looking at my daily Moleskine routine through this lens, I realize it's not just about focus and gratitude. Every morning when I write out my top three tasks, when I jot down notes during calls, when I reflect at day's end, I'm essentially running a workout program for my brain's motor, sensory, and cognitive networks. The slowness that sometimes frustrates me (especially when ideas are flowing faster than my hand can capture them) is actually part of the benefit. That deliberate pace forces deeper processing. The physical connection between my thoughts and the ink appearing on paper engages my brain in ways that tapping keys simply doesn't. And if there's even a chance that maintaining this practice helps preserve my cognitive function and build resilience against age-related decline, that seems like an awfully good return on investment for 10 minutes a morning with a pen. The researchers caution that they're not prescribing specific handwriting activities for cognitive health. The evidence isn't definitive enough to make clinical recommendations. But the synthesis of findings points toward something practical: incorporating regular handwriting into daily routines may offer benefits beyond what typing provides, particularly for maintaining cognitive function as we age. For me, that's reason enough to keep my low-tech morning ritual going. My pen-and-paper notebook isn't going anywhere. If anything, I might start using it more often throughout the day. Not because I'm anti-technology, but because I'm pro-brain health. And right now, the science suggests that the humble act of putting pen to paper might be one of the simplest things we can do to give our aging brains a fighting chance. ### The User Interface Problem: How Our Brains Might Be Hiding Reality from Us URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-user-interface-problem-how-our-brains-might-be-hiding-reality-from-us/ Last updated: 2025-12-01T21:11:43.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/12/reality.jpg) I've been thinking a lot lately about perspectives and how they shape everything we think we know about reality. Not just the usual stuff about how two people can see the same situation differently, but something more fundamental. What if our entire experience of existence is less like a window onto truth and more like a highly specialized interface designed not to show us reality, but to help us survive it? This idea hit me when I came across Donald Hoffman's work on what he calls the "interface theory of perception." Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at UC Irvine, makes a startling claim: we perceive zero percent of actual reality. Instead, our brains act like desktop interfaces, showing us useful icons rather than the underlying complexity. Just as clicking a blue folder icon doesn't require you to understand the ones and zeros swirling around in your computer's circuits, seeing a coffee cup doesn't mean you're perceiving its true nature at all. The logic is unsettling but hard to argue with. Evolution shaped our perceptual systems for fitness, not truth. Our ancestors who saw reality accurately didn't necessarily out-reproduce those who saw reality usefully. If you're being chased by a predator, you don't need to understand the quantum mechanics of its molecular structure. You need to see "dangerous thing, run away." The brain that burns calories computing accurate physics loses to the brain that takes shortcuts and survives. So we got interfaces. Species-specific user interfaces, tuned over millions of years to show us exactly what we need to survive and reproduce, and nothing more. ## The Time Illusion This connects to something that's fascinated me about time. We experience it as a river flowing in one direction, past to present to future, each moment arriving and then vanishing into memory. But according to the "block universe" theory in physics, all moments in time exist simultaneously. The entire cosmos forms a four-dimensional block where past, present, and future all coexist. We just experience one "frame" at a time, creating the illusion that time flows. Think about that for a second. Your childhood isn't gone. Your death hasn't happened yet. In the block universe, both exist right now, just as real as this present moment. Your sense of "now" is just reflecting where in the block universe you are at that instance. We're like characters in a completed novel, experiencing the story page by page, unaware that every page exists simultaneously. ## Hidden Dimensions The physics gets even weirder. String theory suggests our universe needs ten or eleven dimensions to work mathematically. We perceive three dimensions of space plus time, but the extra six spatial dimensions are "wrapped up" at scales so tiny we can't detect them, around 10^-35 meters. Every point in our familiar four-dimensional universe has a tiny "ball" of six-dimensional space associated with it. It's hard to wrap your head around, I know. But here's the thing: our inability to perceive these dimensions doesn't mean they don't exist, just that our perceptual interface doesn't display them. A 2D creature living on a piece of paper couldn't conceive of "up" or "down" until something lifted it into the third dimension. We might be in the same situation, swimming in dimensions we literally cannot imagine. ## The Alien Question Which brings me to the alien question. If an intelligent species evolved under completely different environmental pressures, on a different planet, with different sensory organs, would they perceive the same reality we do? Or would they have their own species-specific interface, equally useful for their survival but radically different from ours? Consider the octopus, our closest thing to a terrestrial alien. With a strikingly decentralized nervous system where most neurons live in its arms rather than its brain, it likely experiences its own body in ways we cannot fathom. Its self-recognition system works through chemical secretions that prevent its suckers from attaching to its own body. An octopus doesn't need a mental map of where all its limbs are. It uses chemistry instead of spatial awareness. Same planet, same ocean, completely different way of being conscious. Now scale that up to an alien species that evolved under conditions nothing like Earth. Maybe they perceive time all at once instead of sequentially. Maybe they naturally see in those extra dimensions we can't detect. Maybe the concept of "object" versus "background" doesn't exist in their perceptual interface. Life, intelligence, and perception are shaped by and designed to respond to a planetary environment. Different environment, different interface. ## When Categories Crumble This is where things get philosophically interesting. We tend to think our categories are universal: good versus evil, conscious versus unconscious, self versus other, cause and effect. But what if these are just features of our particular interface? According to Hoffman's "conscious realism," the physical world we perceive emerges from consciousness, not the other way around. Space, time, and physical objects are icons in our user interface, dependent on consciousness for their existence. That sounds crazy until you remember that quantum mechanics already tells us something similar. Particles exist in probability clouds until observed. The act of measurement collapses possibilities into actualities. Many physicists now believe spacetime isn't fundamental and will eventually be replaced by a deeper understanding. ## Already Warped So will science eventually prove we have a warped view of reality? In a sense, it already has. We know our color vision is a construct, that electromagnetic radiation doesn't have inherent "redness" or "blueness." We know our sense of solid objects is mostly empty space with force fields. We know time dilates depending on speed and gravity. We know quantum entanglement connects particles across space in ways that violate our intuitions. Each discovery chips away at the naive realist view that what we perceive is what's actually there. But here's the uncomfortable part: we're stuck in our interface. We can use mathematics and instruments to detect things our senses can't perceive, but we still have to translate those findings back into human concepts to make sense of them. We're like someone trying to understand the computer's circuitry by examining desktop icons, then creating more sophisticated icons to represent what we learn. ## Holding Models Lightly The implication isn't that we should give up on understanding reality. It's that we should hold our models lightly and stay curious about how different they might be from the underlying truth. The history of science is filled with moments when we realized our interface was misleading us: the Earth isn't flat, it's not the center of the universe, matter isn't continuous, cause and effect aren't absolute. What's next? Maybe we'll discover that time itself is an artifact of how consciousness samples reality. Maybe we'll find that the hard distinction between living and non-living, or conscious and unconscious, exists only in our perceptual framework. Maybe we'll learn to recognize forms of intelligence so alien that we're currently walking past them without noticing, like ants oblivious to the radio signals passing through their colony. The deeper I dig into this, the more I suspect that reality is far stranger than we can currently imagine, not because we lack intelligence but because we're trapped in a particular way of parsing existence. Our interface has served us brilliantly for survival. But survival and truth aren't the same thing. ## The Strange Situation And that's both humbling and exciting. Humbling because it means we're probably wrong about a lot of things we take as self-evident. Exciting because it means there's so much more to discover, so many ways reality could surprise us. The universe isn't just bigger than we imagine. It might be bigger than we *can* imagine with our current cognitive toolkit. Maybe that's what encountering truly alien intelligence would teach us: not just facts about distant worlds, but entirely new ways of interfacing with existence itself. New categories. New dimensions of experience. New answers to questions we haven't learned to ask yet. Until then, we're left with this strange situation: conscious beings using brains that evolved to hide reality from us, trying to figure out what's really there. It's like trying to see the back of your own head without a mirror. You can do it, but only through clever workarounds that themselves introduce new distortions. The best we can do is stay humble about our certainties, creative in our questioning, and open to the possibility that everything we think we know is a useful fiction rather than the final truth. Not a bad starting point for the next phase of human understanding. --- *Further reading: Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality," the block universe theory in physics, string theory and extra dimensions, research on octopus cognition and alien consciousness studies* ### Baked Pumpkin-Sage Arancini Balls URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/baked-pumpkin-sage-arancini-balls/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T14:52:22.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/arancini-balls.png) **Serves:** \~18–22 arancini **Time:** 50–60 minutes total A unique, Thanksgiving-friendly vegetarian entrée that stays delicious at room temperature — perfect for a potluck. ## Ingredients ### For the risotto - 1 tbsp olive oil - 1 tbsp butter - 1 shallot, minced - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 1 cup arborio rice - 1/2 cup dry white wine (optional; sub broth if desired) - 2 1/2 cups vegetable broth, warmed - 3/4 cup pumpkin purée - 1/2 cup grated parmesan - 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh sage (or 1 tsp dried) - Salt & pepper, to taste ### For forming the arancini - 3–4 oz mozzarella, cut into \~½" cubes (optional but recommended) - 1/2 cup all-purpose flour - 2 large eggs - 1 tsp olive oil (added to eggs — helps browning) - 1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs ### For baking - Olive oil spray or 3–4 tbsp olive oil for brushing ### Optional dipping sauce (Cranberry-Orange Aioli) - 1/2 cup mayonnaise - 2 tbsp cranberry sauce - 1 tsp orange zest - 1 tsp lemon juice - Pinch salt ## Instructions ### 1\. Make the pumpkin-sage risotto (15–18 minutes) 1. Heat olive oil + butter in a medium pot over medium heat. 2. Add shallot; sauté 2–3 minutes. 3. Add garlic; cook 30 seconds. 4. Add arborio rice; stir 1 minute. 5. Add wine (if using) and cook until absorbed. 6. Add warm broth a cup at a time, letting it absorb before adding more. 7. When creamy and slightly al dente, stir in pumpkin purée, parmesan, sage, salt & pepper. 8. Cook 1 more minute, then spread onto a sheet pan to cool. **Cool 10–15 minutes — this is key for easy shaping.** ### 2\. Form the arancini (10–15 minutes) 1. Scoop \~2 tbsp cooled risotto into your hand. 2. Press a cube of mozzarella into the center. 3. Add a little more risotto and roll into a tight ball. 4. Repeat until all risotto is used (about 18–22 balls). ### 3\. Bread the arancini Prepare three shallow bowls: - Bowl 1: flour - Bowl 2: eggs + 1 tsp olive oil, beaten together - Bowl 3: panko Coat each ball: 1. Roll in flour 2. Dip in the egg mixture 3. Coat in panko and press lightly so it adheres Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. ### 4\. Bake (instead of frying) **Heat oven to 425°F.** 1. Spray or brush each arancini generously with olive oil. 2. Bake 18–22 minutes, turning them halfway. 3. They should be deep golden brown. 4. For extra crispiness, broil 1–2 minutes (optional — watch closely!). They will stay beautifully crisp for hours. ### 5\. (Optional) Make the dipping sauce Mix: - 1/2 cup mayo - 2 tbsp cranberry sauce - 1 tsp orange zest - 1 tsp lemon juice - Pinch salt Serve on the side. ## Tips for the Best Baked Arancini - Panko + oil + high heat = crisp exterior without frying. - Cooling the risotto is essential — warm risotto falls apart. - Use your hands to pack each ball tightly. - If transporting, keep them in a shallow container lined with parchment. ### Will AI Make Cookbooks Obsolete? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/will-ai-make-cookbooks-obsolete/ Last updated: 2025-11-24T21:27:44.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/11/cooking-ai.jpg) I've been thinking a lot lately about my modest cookbook collection. A shelf or so of well-worn volumes, each one representing a different culinary phase: *Forks Over Knives*, *The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook*, *The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook*, Yotam Ottolenghi's work. Not an extensive library, but curated over 25+ years of pescatarian cooking. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever open them again. Not because I've stopped cooking. Quite the opposite, actually. Since retiring, I've been spending more time in the kitchen than I have in years. The difference is where I'm getting my recipes. ## From Routine to Adventure During my working years, cooking was often an afterthought. My wife and I went through distinct phases. Sometimes we'd cook regularly, batch-preparing meals for the week ahead. Other times, for months on end, we'd simply head down to our favorite local fish restaurant, split a whole fish and a bottle of wine at the bar. It became our ritual, a great way to connect each evening without the hassle of planning and preparing. Then there were the phases of what I'll charitably call "survival cooking," quick and easy dishes that got food on the table but didn't exactly inspire culinary passion. Retirement changed everything. Suddenly I had time to actually enjoy the process. I started pulling out old favorites, reacquainting myself with the rhythms of the kitchen. But then something unexpected happened. ## The AI Kitchen Assistant It started innocently enough. I asked an AI chatbot to help scale recipes down from four servings to two, a simple mathematical conversion. Then came the real breakthrough: using AI to rescue ingredients before they went bad. You know that moment when you see those tomatoes that have maybe one more day before they cross the line from "perfectly ripe" to "science experiment"? Instead of frantically Googling "recipes with tomatoes," I started describing what I had on hand and asking what I could make. Then I got bolder. I took photos of the inside of our fridge and pantry and uploaded them. "What can I make with these ingredients?" The AI would analyze the image and suggest complete meals, often incorporating items I'd forgotten were tucked in the back. The results were spooky good. It was like having a professional chef peer into my kitchen and instantly create a personalized menu. ## Beyond Recipe Modification That success emboldened me to push further. I started asking for completely custom recipes based on whatever cuisine we were interested in exploring. "Create a Moroccan-inspired fish dish with ingredients commonly found in American supermarkets." Or "What's a West African approach to preparing cod?" Or "Give me a Peruvian-style meal that uses salmon and quinoa." Over the past few months, I've probably made 25 AI-generated recipes from scratch. The success rate has been remarkable. I can only think of one recipe I wouldn't make again. Everything else has ranged from good to outstanding. One recipe in particular, a Hoisin-Glazed Salmon with Warm Tomato-Ginger Relish and Sesame Green Beans, earned five stars in my book (see the end of this post for the recipe). The AI even generated a beautiful image showing what the finished dish should look like, which helped me gauge whether I was on the right track during preparation. The latest evolution has been using AI for dinner party planning. When we have friends over, I describe the group's dietary preferences, the season, and the vibe I'm going for, and ask AI to create a complete multi-course menu with wine pairings. It handles the logistics I used to agonize over: making sure flavors don't clash across courses, timing dishes so everything comes together, suggesting make-ahead options to reduce day-of stress. What used to require hours of cookbook flipping and online research now takes a conversation. The AI becomes a collaborative dinner party planner, and I've yet to have a menu that didn't work beautifully. This is genuinely creative in ways that traditional cookbooks can't be. A cookbook is static, a snapshot of someone's culinary knowledge at a particular moment. AI is dynamic, adapting in real-time to my specific needs, ingredients, and preferences. It's like having a culinary school graduate who's memorized thousands of cookbooks standing in my kitchen, ready to create custom recipes on demand. ## What Cookbooks Still Offer Yet I find myself hesitating before declaring cookbooks obsolete. The best cookbooks aren't just recipe collections. They're stories, cultural explorations, personal journeys. When I open Yotam Ottolenghi's books, I'm not just getting recipes. I'm getting his perspective on Middle Eastern cuisine, his philosophy about vegetables, his accumulated wisdom from years in professional kitchens. That context shapes how I think about cooking, even when I'm not following his recipes exactly. AI can generate an excellent recipe. What it can't do is explain the cultural context, describe the Sunday dinners that shaped a chef's perspective, or share the failures and triumphs that led to each dish. That narrative dimension turns cooking from a mechanical process into cultural education. ## The Real Question There's a deeper question here: is cooking with AI-generated recipes actually *cooking*? It reminds me of concerns raised when calculators became ubiquitous. Would students stop learning mathematics? The answer turned out to be more nuanced. Calculators eliminated tedious arithmetic, freeing students to focus on higher-level mathematical thinking. Maybe something similar is happening in the kitchen. AI handles the mechanical aspects: ingredient ratios, cooking temperatures, timing. This frees me to focus on the creative aspects: flavor profiles, presentation, adaptation to personal taste. The salmon dish I mentioned earlier? I didn't follow the AI's recipe verbatim. I adjusted the glaze sweetness, modified the ginger quantity based on my preferences, and played with the green bean timing. The AI gave me a framework; I made it mine. That feels like cooking to me. ## A Personal Verdict Will I ever open a cookbook again? Probably. But much less frequently, and for different reasons. I'll still reach for them when I need fundamentals or want inspiration from a particular chef's perspective. I'll value them as cultural documents. But for day-to-day cooking? For experimenting with new cuisines? For using what's in my fridge? AI has become my primary tool. The most interesting part is how it's made me *more* creative, not less. I'm cooking more adventurously now than at any point in my life. I'm trying flavor combinations I never would have considered. I'm exploring cuisines I previously found intimidating. My small shelf of cookbooks isn't going anywhere. They're part of my kitchen's history. But these days, they're sharing space with a new kind of tool, one that's fundamentally changing how I think about cooking. And honestly? That salmon was really, really good. --- ## The Recipe: Hoisin-Glazed Salmon with Warm Tomato-Ginger Relish and Sesame Green Beans *As promised, here's the AI-generated recipe that earned five stars:* **Serves:** 2–3 **Total Time:** 30 minutes ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-24-at-1.07.24---PM.png) **Ingredients** *For the Salmon and Glaze:* - 2–3 salmon fillets (about 6 oz each) - 1 Tbsp olive or avocado oil - 2 Tbsp hoisin sauce - 1 Tbsp soy sauce (or tamari for gluten-free) - 1 tsp rice vinegar - 1 tsp sesame oil - 1 clove garlic, minced - ½ tsp fresh ginger, grated *For the Warm Tomato-Ginger Relish:* - 2 medium vine-ripe tomatoes, diced - 1 tsp olive oil - 1 clove garlic, minced - ½ tsp fresh ginger, grated - ½ tsp rice vinegar - ¼ tsp sesame oil - Salt and pepper to taste *For the Sesame Green Beans:* - 8 oz fresh green beans, trimmed - 1 tsp sesame oil - 1 tsp soy sauce - ½ tsp rice vinegar - ½ tsp honey or maple syrup - 1 tsp sesame seeds **Instructions** 1. **Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).** Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment paper for easy cleanup. 2. **Make the glaze:** In a small bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, and ginger. 3. **Prepare and bake the salmon:** Pat salmon fillets dry and brush lightly with olive oil. Coat the tops evenly with the hoisin glaze. Bake for 10–12 minutes, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork and the glaze is glossy. (For extra caramelization, broil for 1–2 minutes at the end.) 4. **Make the tomato-ginger relish:** While the salmon bakes, heat olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger; sauté 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in diced tomatoes and a pinch of salt. Cook 2–3 minutes, just until the juices release and thicken slightly. Remove from heat and stir in rice vinegar, sesame oil, and a few grinds of pepper. 5. **Prepare the sesame green beans:** In another pan, simmer green beans in a bit of water 3–4 minutes until tender-crisp. Drain and return to the pan. Toss with sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey, and sesame seeds. Cook 1 minute more to coat evenly. 6. **Serve:** Place salmon on plates, spoon warm tomato-ginger relish over the top, and serve alongside sesame green beans. Drizzle any extra glaze or relish juices over the plate for added flavor. **Chef's Notes** - Add a sprinkle of chopped green onions or fresh cilantro for color. - The relish also works beautifully over grilled shrimp or tofu. - Serve with jasmine rice or quinoa for a complete meal. ### The Art of the Turnaround: Unity's CEO On Embracing Chaos URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-art-of-the-turnaround-unitys-ceo-on-embracing-chaos/ Last updated: 2025-11-13T14:39:52.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/11/videogame.jpg) I just finished reading Ben Thompson's interview with Matthew Bromberg in the latest [Stratechery newsletter](https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-unity-ceo-matthew-bromberg-about-turnarounds/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and I can't stop thinking about it. Not because of Unity specifically (though that story is fascinating), but because Bromberg has accidentally stumbled into something that feels almost like a life philosophy disguised as a career path. Here's a guy who has become a serial turnaround specialist without ever planning to be one, and his approach reveals something fundamental about how systems fail and how they can be fixed. He studied literary theory at Cornell, went to Harvard Law School, and somehow ended up as a professional fixer of broken video game companies. If you'd told him in 1995 that this would be his specialty, he'd have looked at you like you were speaking Klingon. But here's what's interesting: his background in literary theory, specifically structuralism, turns out to be perfect preparation for turnarounds. Structuralism is all about understanding how systems work, looking for deep patterns rather than surface content. And that's exactly what Bromberg does. He doesn't get caught up in the specific details of what's broken. He looks at the underlying structure, the system itself, and asks: why is this system producing these results? He described his career trajectory with an almost zen-like clarity: "I had been feeling a little bit frustrated in my career up to that point. I'd done a few different things and I was reasonably successful, but I thought, 'Gosh, I thought this would be going better.'" Then he took a job trying to save Star Wars: The Old Republic at Electronic Arts. The game was, in his words, "one of the worst things in business I've ever seen." He literally thought the company might have another 30 to 90 days before it went under. And that's when something clicked. ## Finding Your Sweet Spot in the Wreckage What Bromberg realized was that turnarounds offered something unique: the scale of a big company combined with the urgency of a startup. As he put it, "Nobody's suggesting that we don't need immediate and complete change, so I don't have to go around convincing people of that fact, which is just mind-numbing and I don't have the patience for it." I love this because it connects to something I've been thinking about in my own work with lean manufacturing. When things are running smoothly at a big company, suggesting improvements can feel like pushing a boulder uphill. People get defensive. They want proof. They need six months of data before they'll even consider a pilot program. But when the house is on fire? Suddenly everyone's ready to grab a bucket. Bromberg has this personality trait that he describes almost casually: high degrees of chaos and uncertainty are "cool with me." He doesn't find them upsetting or stressful. In fact, he finds the puzzles interesting. And here's the critical part: "Fear is the thing that ruins your judgment, especially in those circumstances, but it's really true in any circumstance. You're trying to protect something, and so you're afraid to do the thing you know you have to do to make it better. I just don't really have that bone in my body." Reading that, I immediately thought of the [shisha kanko](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-point-of-pointing-and-calling-a-personal-rediscovery/) experiments I've been doing. The whole point of calling out and pointing is to overcome our natural tendency to skip steps when we're familiar with something. Fear works the same way in business decisions. You know what needs to change, but you're afraid of the consequences, so you hedge. You compromise. You pick the safe option that satisfies no one. ## The Social Connection Insight The most interesting technical insight from Bromberg's turnaround of Star Wars: The Old Republic wasn't about better graphics or more content. It was dead simple: "The only way to move mass numbers of consumers is community and social connection. It's always the only answer. If you want 10 or 20 or 30% more people to do something, you have to connect them to other human beings." This runs counter to what the team had been obsessing over. They'd spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating fully-voiced cinematic story content. Players burned through it in a month and wanted more. The model was fundamentally broken because they were trying to solve the wrong problem. They were fighting churn by creating more single-player content when what they needed was to create more reasons for players to connect with each other. There's a parallel here to something I've written about before regarding lean manufacturing and this idea of focusing outward rather than inward. BioWare was focused on their own capability (we make amazing story content!) rather than on what would actually create sustainable engagement. Once Bromberg shifted the entire company to focus exclusively on social connections between players, everything changed. According to research from places like MIT and Stanford, social connection is one of the most powerful drivers of sustained engagement in any context, not just gaming. We're fundamentally social creatures. A 2010 meta-analysis published in PLOS Medicine found that social connections are as important to longevity as quitting smoking or exercising. If that's true for life itself, of course it's true for keeping people engaged with your game. ## The Unity Disaster and the Runtime Fee Which brings us to Unity. When Bromberg arrived in May 2024, the company had just imploded spectacularly. The previous leadership had announced a "runtime fee" where they would charge developers based on how many times their games were installed. The gaming community revolted. Developers threatened boycotts. The whole thing was a disaster. What's fascinating is Bromberg's diagnosis of what went wrong. It wasn't that the idea itself was necessarily evil. It was that it came from "a deep company-wide insecurity about its ability to deliver excellent product." Unity didn't believe they could build better tools, so they tried to change the business model instead. As Bromberg explained, they were "looking to business models and bundling and tricks to fundamentally change the nature of the economics of the business we were in because we didn't like it, it wasn't working." This is the kind of insight that only comes from someone who has been through multiple turnarounds. Most people would look at the runtime fee and think, "Bad idea, bad execution, let's just reverse it." Bromberg saw something deeper: the runtime fee was a symptom, not the disease. The disease was that Unity had stopped believing they could win by building better products. His solution was almost comically straightforward. He called the big customers. All of them. And you know what they told him? "We are happy to pay you more money. We understand that you are delivering more value than we as a community are paying you, but I will not pay you this way." How often does that happen? How often do your customers volunteer that they'd be willing to pay you more if you'd just ask in a reasonable way? That's not a pricing problem. That's a trust problem. So Bromberg did something radical: he repealed the runtime fee and just raised prices transparently. Same net effect on revenue, completely different impact on trust. The customers had literally told him they were okay with paying more, they just wanted it done in a predictable way that didn't feel like Unity was reaching into their pockets after the fact. But the deeper work was about rebuilding Unity's actual product capabilities. Unity had fallen behind AppLovin in the advertising technology space, particularly after Apple's App Tracking Transparency changes disrupted the market. While Unity was fiddling with pricing models and trying to bundle products together, AppLovin was building a completely new machine learning stack based on neural networks. Unity responded by building Vector AI from scratch, a modern self-learning neural net system that could actually compete. This is classic Bromberg: stop optimizing a broken model, rebuild the foundation, then everything else becomes possible. ## The Competitive Advantage of Authenticity Throughout the interview, Bromberg kept coming back to this idea of authentic communication. When Star Wars: The Old Republic was struggling, he didn't try to spin it or use corporate jargon. He told players: "I understand where we are, I understand why you're upset, here's what I'm going to do about it, and I know you're not going to be really happy with me right now, because you don't trust me because you think I've done a terrible job, but here's what I'm going to do." Then they just ground it out. Every day, every week, giving players something better than they had before. No grand promises. No roadmaps projecting 18 months into the future. Just consistent, visible improvement. Research from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business has shown that authentic leadership correlates strongly with employee engagement and organizational performance. But I think what Bromberg demonstrates is that it works with customers too. When you've screwed up badly enough, the only currency you have left is honesty. ## The Structural Advantage of Turnarounds There's something almost counterintuitive about what makes turnarounds work. In a healthy company, suggesting radical change requires convincing everyone that the status quo is broken. In a turnaround, that battle is already won. Everyone knows things are broken. The question isn't whether to change, but how. This reminds me of what I've learned studying Japanese manufacturing. Toyota didn't invent the idea of continuous improvement because everything was going great. They invented it because they were desperate. They didn't have the capital to build huge batches like American manufacturers. They HAD to figure out how to make small batches work. Their constraints forced innovation. Bromberg's career is a case study in the power of constraints. When you take over a company that everyone thinks is doomed, you have a kind of freedom that successful companies don't have. You can throw out the playbook. You can admit that the emperor has no clothes. You can focus entirely on the core problem without worrying about protecting sacred cows or managing internal politics. As he describes it with Zynga: "If someone says to you, 'Here's a billion and a half dollars and 2,000 people and some really great, but maybe dinged up, but really great gaming properties,' and you don't think you can build a great video game company out of that raw material, you are doing the wrong thing for a living." That company was valued at basically zero (just the cash on the balance sheet) when Bromberg and his team arrived. They sold it four years later for $12.5 billion. The assets were always there. The potential was always there. It just took someone willing to embrace the chaos and do the unglamorous work of building it back up. ## What This Means for the Rest of Us I don't run turnarounds for a living, and you probably don't either. But I think there's something universally applicable in Bromberg's approach. First, he's relentlessly focused on understanding the actual problem, not the symptoms. Unity's runtime fee wasn't the problem. The loss of customer trust and product confidence was the problem. Star Wars: The Old Republic's churn wasn't the problem. The lack of social connections was the problem. Second, he talks to customers. Not in a pro forma "we value your feedback" way, but in a genuine "help me understand what's happening here" way. When you're not defensive, when you're not trying to protect your ego or your past decisions, people will tell you exactly what they need. Third, he embraces uncertainty rather than fearing it. This is probably the hardest lesson to internalize. Our natural instinct is to reduce uncertainty, to create predictability, to protect what we have. But sometimes the path forward requires walking directly into the fog. And finally, he understands that the magic isn't in having the perfect plan. It's in consistent execution. As he said about Star Wars: The Old Republic's turnaround: "Before you know it, yeah, you lose some of the people, and gaming communities can be toxic so you always have some people upset, but you can turn everything around just by authentic application of effort and a real understanding of the issues." ## The Long Game: Data-Driven Personalization What's particularly interesting is where Bromberg sees Unity heading long-term. It's not just about game engines anymore. His vision is to unify game creation, live operation, advertising, and commerce around a single insight: deep, data-driven understanding of player behavior. This connects all of Unity's pieces in a way the runtime fee never could. Developers build games in Unity, which gives Unity access to gameplay data through the runtime. That data feeds Vector AI to understand what makes players engage, transact, and stick around. That understanding improves ad targeting, optimizes in-game commerce, and even helps developers make better design decisions during development. It's a flywheel where each piece reinforces the others, all built on the foundation of understanding the player. And the endgame? Bromberg talks about "the future vision of interactive entertainment as being personalized on a literal basis, which is to say all of us should have a somewhat different path through a video game based on who we are and how we play games." This isn't just about games. His bigger vision is democratizing interactive experiences: "enable any content developer to make an interactive experience." Every creator is going to discover that "linear video cannot engage anywhere near the way interaction can." If Unity can provide the tools to make that transition easy, they're not just in the game engine business. They're in the future of all digital content business. It's ambitious, maybe even audacious given where Unity was 18 months ago. But that's the thing about turnarounds. Once you've rebuilt the foundation and restored trust, suddenly the big visions don't sound so crazy anymore. ## The Bigger Picture What strikes me most about Bromberg's story is how he found his niche almost by accident. He wasn't trying to become a turnaround specialist. He just kept gravitating toward situations where he could have the most impact. The fact that those situations happened to be disasters was almost beside the point. There's a lesson there about career planning, or maybe about life planning in general. We spend so much energy trying to figure out what we should be doing, mapping out five-year plans, optimizing for some imagined perfect path. Meanwhile, sometimes the answer is just to pay attention to what energizes you and what doesn't. Bromberg hated the bureaucracy of big companies and the resource constraints of startups. So he found a space where he got the best of both: the resources of a large organization combined with the permission (necessity, really) to move fast and break things. That's not a career path you'll find in any guidance counselor's handbook. But it turns out to be exactly what he was built for. I'm going to keep thinking about this as I work on my own projects. Not everything needs to be on fire to benefit from the turnaround mindset. Sometimes you just need to be willing to look at what's actually happening, not what you wish was happening. To talk to the people who are experiencing the problem. To admit when something isn't working. And to have the patience and persistence to grind out incremental improvements day after day. In the end, that might be the real lesson: the art of the turnaround isn't really about fixing broken companies. It's about being honest about reality and having the courage to act on that honesty. And that's useful whether you're running Unity, operating a manufacturing facility, or just trying to figure out your next move. ### Vegetarian Dan Dan Noodles (Noodle King-Style) URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/vegetarian-dan-dan-noodles-noodle-king-style/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T15:06:50.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/dan-dan-noodles.jpg) **Serves:** 2–3 **Total Time:** 30–35 minutes ## Ingredients ### Sauce base - 3 tbsp Chinese sesame paste *(preferred)* or tahini - 2 tbsp soy sauce - 1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar *(or rice vinegar + ½ tsp balsamic)* - 1–2 tbsp chili crisp or Sichuan chili oil *(adjust for heat)* - 1 tsp toasted sesame oil - 1 tsp sugar - 2 garlic cloves, finely minced - 1 tsp grated ginger - ¼ cup warm water (to loosen the paste) ### Pickled element (authentic "ya cai" substitute options) - 2 tbsp finely chopped **Sichuan ya cai** *(preferred, if available)* \-- OR -- 1 tbsp diced **capers** \+ 1 tbsp diced **bread-and-butter pickles** (a good homemade stand-in) ### Noodles and toppings - 8 oz wheat noodles (lo mein, udon, or ramen) - 1 tbsp neutral oil - ½ block firm tofu, crumbled - 1 tbsp soy sauce (to season protein) - ½ tsp crushed Sichuan peppercorns *(optional but authentic)* - 1 small bunch bok choy, spinach, or baby greens, roughly chopped - 2 scallions, thinly sliced - ¼ cup roasted peanuts, chopped - Optional: cilantro, extra chili oil, lime wedge ## Instructions 1. **Prepare the sauce** In a medium bowl, whisk sesame paste, soy sauce, vinegar, chili crisp, sesame oil, sugar, garlic, ginger, and water until smooth and pourable. Adjust salt, spice, and tang to taste. 2. **Cook the noodles** Boil noodles until tender; drain and toss lightly with a drizzle of sesame oil to prevent sticking. 3. **Cook the topping** - Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. - Add tofu and cook until golden (about 5 minutes). - Stir in soy sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, and the ya cai (or pickle mix). Sauté 1–2 minutes until aromatic. - Add bok choy or greens and cook until just wilted. 4. **Assemble** Divide sauce among bowls. Add noodles and toss to coat. Spoon the tofu mixture on top, sprinkle with scallions and peanuts, and drizzle with extra chili oil. ## Chef's Notes - **Authentic ya cai** adds the key funky-salty layer — worth sourcing from an Asian market. - **Tahini** gives a smoother, slightly lighter flavor than Chinese sesame paste; both work. - Add a spoon of **miso paste** for deeper umami if you're using tahini instead of Chinese sesame paste. ### AI Football Picks: Mid-Season Reality Check URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ai-football-picks-mid-season-reality-check/ Last updated: 2026-01-05T15:17:54.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/11/nflstadium.png) *Read the* [*final regular season update*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-final-whistle-what-18-weeks-of-ai-football-picks-actually-taught-me/) *to this post to see how AI performed against my human analysis.* Back in September, I launched what I thought would be a fun experiment: pitting three AI platforms against each other (and me) in my annual NFL football pool. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude each got the same weekly data—team records, point differentials, injury reports—and made their picks. I wrote about the methodology and early results in "[A Real Test of AI: ChatGPT vs Perplexity vs Claude in an NFL Football Pool](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-real-test-of-ai-chatgpt-vs-perplexity-vs-claude-in-an-nfl-football-pool/)." The original hypothesis? That AI, with its ability to process vast amounts of data and identify patterns, might have an edge over my gut-feel, injury-report-skimming approach. Maybe one platform would emerge as clearly superior. Or maybe they'd all converge on similar picks, revealing some optimal strategy I was missing. Well, nine weeks in, I've got news: the humans are winning. Through Week 9, covering 134 total games, here's where we stand: - **My picks: 90 correct (67.2%)** - **Claude: 84 correct (62.7%)** - **Perplexity: 83 correct (61.9%)** - **ChatGPT: 75 correct (56.0%)** That 11-point gap between me and ChatGPT represents a meaningful edge—enough to move from middle-of-the-pack to competitive in most pools. Even my lead over Claude and Perplexity, while smaller, has held steady across nine weeks of picks. What's particularly interesting is how the season has unfolded. Weeks 5 and 6 were absolute chaos—upset city, with favorites falling left and right. In Week 5, I managed just 5 correct picks out of 14 games. The AIs? ChatGPT got 3, Perplexity 6, Claude 5\. Week 6 wasn't much better: I scraped together 7 correct, while ChatGPT completely cratered with just 4. These upset-heavy weeks should theoretically favor AI. If there's some hidden pattern in the data that signals when an underdog is about to pull off a surprise, machine learning ought to find it. Instead, the chaos seemed to amplify the differences in our approaches rather than reveal any AI advantage. Looking at the weekly performance, Claude had the strongest single week with 14 correct picks in Week 1, though I matched that performance in Week 3\. ChatGPT's best showing was 12 correct in Week 1, matched by me in Weeks 1 and 2\. But consistency matters more than peak performance, and that's where the human approach seems to be winning out. I'm genuinely surprised by these results. Not because I think I'm some football genius—I'm not—but because this seems like exactly the kind of problem AI should excel at. It's pattern recognition over a large dataset, it's probabilistic reasoning, it's synthesizing multiple variables into a binary decision. These are the things we're told AI does better than humans. So what's going on? A few theories: First, maybe football is just inherently noisy. The better team doesn't always win, and perhaps the factors that determine week-to-week outcomes are more random than we'd like to admit. In a noisy system, sophisticated analysis might not provide much advantage over informed intuition. Second, the AIs might be overcomplicating things. When I skim the injury reports and matchup data, I'm doing a kind of lossy compression—keeping the signal, ditching the noise. The AIs might be finding patterns that aren't actually there, fitting their models to statistical artifacts rather than real predictive factors. Third, there's the possibility that my approach incorporates information the AIs don't have access to—the kind of contextual awareness that comes from casually following the league. I'm not deep into film study, but I do absorb the narrative: which teams are trending up, which coaches are on the hot seat, which units are clicking. That qualitative sense might carry more weight than I realized. Or maybe—and this is the most boring explanation—I'm just having a lucky season. We're only halfway through, so there's plenty of time for the machines to mount a comeback. But right now, this experiment is reinforcing something I've suspected about AI more broadly: it's not magic. It's a tool, and like any tool, it has strengths and weaknesses. The hype suggests AI should dominate any task involving data and pattern recognition, but reality is messier. I'll keep tracking this through the rest of the season. Maybe the AIs will adjust and surge ahead. Maybe my lead will evaporate as regression to the mean kicks in. Or maybe, just maybe, there's something about human judgment—flawed, biased, inconsistent as it is—that still has value in an uncertain world. Check back in January for the final results. Place your bets accordingly. ### The Point of Pointing and Calling: A Personal Rediscovery URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-point-of-pointing-and-calling-a-personal-rediscovery/ Last updated: 2025-11-03T09:00:48.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/10/pointing-gas.jpg) A few years back, my business partner at Gemba Academy wrote about a Japanese safety practice called shisha kanko—the act of [pointing and calling](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2020/05/11/the-point-of-pointing-and-calling/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). At the time, I found it intellectually fascinating. The research was compelling: workers who practiced pointing and calling made only 0.38 mistakes per 100 actions, compared to 2.38 errors for those who didn't. An 85% reduction in human error just from pointing at something and saying it out loud? That's remarkable. But intellectual appreciation and practical application are two very different things. It wasn't until recently, as I've settled into my 60s, that I've truly discovered the everyday power of this deceptively simple practice. My awakening came at a gas station. For years I drove a diesel SUV. Then I replaced it with a gas-powered model. Simple enough, right? Except that every single time I pull into a gas station, my brain still wants to reach for the green diesel handle. Muscle memory is powerful, and mistakes at the pump are both expensive and embarrassing—not to mention potentially damaging to the engine. So I started using shisha kanko. Standing at the pump, I point at the black handle and say out loud: "Regular unleaded." Sometimes I point at the pump display to verify. It feels a bit silly at first, especially if someone's at the next pump. But you know what? I haven't put diesel in my gas tank. Not once. The practice works because it forces a moment of deliberate attention. As the original research showed, pointing narrows your field of view to within 5 degrees of your fingertip. You're not just glancing—you're actually seeing. And speaking activates additional neural pathways: your jaw, your tongue, your vocal cords. Multiple parts of your brain engage with the task instead of running on autopilot. Once I started paying attention, I realized how often my aging brain tries to take shortcuts that it really shouldn't. Take crossing streets. I've always looked both ways—that's basic pedestrian survival. But lately I've caught myself looking without really seeing, my mind already focused on where I'm going rather than on what's coming. Now I point and call it out: "Left clear. Right clear. Left again clear." Yes, I look left twice now. Because cars are fast and I'm not getting any younger, and that extra second of deliberate attention might literally save my life. The same principle applies when I'm driving and approaching an intersection. Point to the left: "Clear." Point to the right: "Clear." It seems redundant until you consider how many accidents happen because someone looked but didn't really see. We've all had those moments where a car or pedestrian seems to appear out of nowhere. They didn't appear—we just weren't truly paying attention. The most consequential application, though, might be with email. How many times have you hit send on an important message and immediately thought, "Wait, did I mean to send that to...?" I've sent confidential information to the wrong person. I've replied-all when I meant to reply to one. I've attached the wrong file. Each mistake was avoidable. Each happened because I was moving fast, trusting my brain to fill in the gaps correctly. Now, before I send any important email, I practice my own version of shisha kanko. I point to the "To:" field and read the names out loud. Then I point to each attachment and say its name. "Quarterly report dot PDF. Check." Finally, I point to the subject line and the first few lines of the message to verify I'm sending what I think I'm sending. It takes maybe fifteen seconds. It has saved me from several mistakes that would have been awkward at best, damaging at worst. The beauty of pointing and calling is its universality. It's not just for train conductors in Japan or factory workers engaging lockout-tagout procedures. It's for anyone whose brain occasionally tries to run on autopilot when it really shouldn't. My business partner described it as "point and mumble" for everyday tasks like checklists and proofreading. That's exactly right. The formality doesn't matter—you don't need to shout or make exaggerated gestures. The intent is what counts: to break the trance of automaticity and inject a moment of conscious awareness. What strikes me now is how much this practice aligns with broader concepts of mindfulness. It's a micro-meditation, a tiny island of presence in a sea of distraction and hurry. In Zen practice, there's a concept called "beginner's mind"—approaching each moment with fresh awareness rather than assumption. Shisha kanko is beginner's mind applied to the mundane tasks where mistakes happen most often. As we age, our processing speed may slow but our overconfidence often doesn't. We've done things thousands of times, so we assume we'll do them correctly. But that's exactly when errors creep in. The diesel pump looks so familiar. The intersection looks clear because we expect it to be clear. The recipient list looks right because we assume we filled it out correctly. Pointing and calling interrupts those assumptions. It forces verification. It makes the invisible visible and the assumed explicit. I've also noticed something else: the practice builds trust with yourself. When you point at the gas pump and say "regular unleaded," you're creating a small record of confirmation. Later, if you have that nagging thought—did I put the right fuel in?—you can actually remember doing the check. The physical act and the vocalization create a stronger memory than passive observation ever could. There's a deeper lesson here about respect for our own limitations. Western culture, especially American culture, often celebrates individualism and self-reliance to the point of denying vulnerability. Admitting you need a systematic way to avoid mistakes can feel like admitting weakness. But it's actually the opposite—it's acknowledging reality and responding intelligently. The Japanese concept of hansei, or reflection, recognizes that we improve not by pretending we're perfect but by honestly assessing where we fall short and implementing countermeasures. Shisha kanko is a countermeasure against the universal human tendency toward inattention. So yes, I'm the guy pointing at gas pumps and muttering to himself. I'm the pedestrian who visibly looks both ways twice. I point at my computer screen and read email addresses out loud. My wife laughs at me, but hey—it works. And I'm completely comfortable with it. Because here's what I've learned in my 60s: looking silly for a few seconds is infinitely better than making a costly mistake. Slowing down just enough to pay attention is faster than dealing with the consequences of not paying attention. And respecting the limitations of human cognition—including my own—is not a weakness but a strength. If you're still skeptical, I'd encourage you to try it. Pick one regular task where mistakes could be consequential. Maybe it's taking medication, or locking doors, or verifying account numbers before transfers. Point at it. Say it out loud. See if it makes a difference. My bet is that it will. Not because you're somehow broken or deficient, but because you're human. And humans, it turns out, need all the help we can give ourselves to stay present in a world that constantly pulls our attention everywhere else. The pointing is simple. The calling is easy. The results, as the research shows and my experience confirms, are profound. ### Peruvian-Style Fish with Aji-Lime Sauce, Quinoa, Tomato-Corn Salsa, and Sautéed Snap Peas (or Asparagus) URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/peruvian-style-fish-with-aji-lime-sauce-quinoa-tomato-corn-salsa-and-sauteed-snap-peas-or-asparagus/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T15:12:45.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/peruvian-fish.png) **Time:** 45 minutes **Serves:** 2 **Diet:** Pescatarian A bright, citrusy, and mildly spicy dish inspired by Peruvian coastal cooking — seared fish with a creamy aji-lime sauce, fresh tomato-corn salsa, fluffy quinoa, and crisp glazed snap peas. ## Ingredients ### Fish - 2 skinless fillets halibut, sea bass, or salmon (about 6 oz each) - Salt and pepper - 1 tbsp olive oil - 1 tsp butter (optional, for browning) ### Aji-Lime Sauce - 1 small shallot, finely minced - 1 clove garlic, minced - 1 tbsp olive oil - 1 tsp *aji amarillo* paste *(sub: ½ tsp yellow chili paste or pinch of cayenne + turmeric)* - Juice of 2 limes - 2 tbsp Greek yogurt or light sour cream - 1 tbsp chopped cilantro - Salt to taste ### Quinoa - ¾ cup quinoa - 1 ½ cups vegetable broth - 1 tsp olive oil - Pinch of salt - Squeeze of lime ### Tomato-Corn Salsa - 1 cup diced vine-ripe tomatoes - ½ cup corn (fresh, roasted, or frozen and thawed) - ¼ cup finely diced red onion - 1 tbsp chopped cilantro - Juice of ½ lime - ½ tbsp olive oil - Salt and pepper ### Sautéed Snap (or Snow) Peas - 6 oz snap peas or snow peas, trimmed - 1 tsp olive oil - 1 tsp of the *aji-lime sauce* (set aside before thinning it with yogurt) - Pinch of salt ### Optional Garnish - Avocado slices - Extra cilantro - Lime wedges ## Instructions 1. **Cook the Quinoa:** Rinse quinoa, then combine with vegetable broth in a small pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer \~15 minutes until fluffy. Fluff with a fork, stir in olive oil, salt, and a squeeze of lime. Keep warm. 2. **Make the Tomato-Corn Salsa:** Combine all salsa ingredients in a bowl. Mix gently and let sit 10–15 minutes to develop flavor. 3. **Prepare the Aji-Lime Sauce:** Sauté shallot and garlic in olive oil for about 2 minutes, until fragrant. Stir in *aji amarillo* paste, cook 1 minute, then remove from heat. Spoon out **1 teaspoon** of this concentrated mixture and set aside for the peas. To the remaining mixture, stir in lime juice, yogurt, cilantro, and salt. Set aside. 4. **Sear the Fish:** Pat fish dry, season with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil (and butter if using) in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sear 3–4 minutes per side, until golden and cooked through. Transfer to a warm plate. 5. **Sauté the Snap Peas:** In the same pan, add 1 tsp olive oil and the reserved teaspoon of concentrated aji mixture. Toss in snap peas, sauté 2–3 minutes just until bright green and crisp-tender. Season lightly with salt. 6. **Assemble:** Spoon quinoa onto plates, top with fish, drizzle with the aji-lime sauce, and spoon the tomato-corn salsa alongside. Add the snap peas for a pop of color and crunch. Garnish with avocado slices, cilantro, and lime wedges. ## Substitution Guide: Asparagus for Snap Peas If substituting **asparagus** for snap or snow peas: **Ingredients change:** - Replace **6 oz snap peas** with **6–8 oz fresh asparagus**, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces. **Cooking method:** 1. After cooking the fish, heat **1 tsp olive oil** in the same skillet. 2. Add asparagus and sauté 4–5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until bright green and just tender. 3. Toss with the **reserved teaspoon of concentrated aji mixture** (from the sauce step) and a small squeeze of lime. 4. Season with a pinch of salt before serving. **Flavor note:** The asparagus gives a slightly more earthy, savory contrast to the citrusy sauce — less sweet than peas but still vibrant and perfectly balanced with the tomato-corn salsa. --- ## Shopping List ### 🐟 Fresh Produce - 2 skinless fillets halibut, sea bass, or salmon (about 6 oz each) - 1 small shallot - 2 cloves garlic - 2 limes (plus 1 extra for garnish, optional) - 1 cup vine-ripe tomatoes (about 2 medium) - ½ cup corn (fresh, roasted, or frozen) - ¼ cup red onion - 1 bunch cilantro (you'll use several tablespoons total) - 6 oz snap peas or snow peas - 1 avocado ### 🌾 Pantry & Dry Goods - ¾ cup quinoa - 1 ½ cups vegetable broth (or water + bouillon cube) - Olive oil - Salt and pepper - 1 tsp butter (optional) ### 🥣 Condiments & Sauces - 1 tsp *aji amarillo* paste *(or substitute ½ tsp yellow chili paste or pinch of cayenne + turmeric)* - 2 tbsp Greek yogurt or light sour cream ### The Paradox of Happiness: Why Giving Gets You More Than Getting URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-paradox-of-happiness-why-giving-gets-you-more-than-getting/ Last updated: 2025-10-30T08:01:19.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/10/happy-surfer.jpg) I stumbled across a Washington Post article this morning about some fascinating research coming out of Cornell University, and it stopped me in my tracks. Not because it revealed something revolutionary, but because it articulated something I've felt for years but never quite put into words: the surest path to happiness might be to stop chasing it altogether. The article profiles Anthony Burrow, a Cornell professor who directs the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and his Contribution Project. The concept is disarmingly simple: give students $400 and ask them to make any contribution they want—to themselves, to others, to their community. No strings attached, no judgment on the worthiness of the project. Just: what do you want to contribute? What Burrow found is that students overwhelmingly chose to use the money to benefit others. They bought plaques to honor dining hall workers. They created mental health resources for Hispanic communities. They purchased hygiene kits for people in need. And here's the kicker: the act of contributing didn't just help the recipients. It transformed the contributors themselves, giving them a greater sense of agency, purpose, and hope. The article includes a quote that's been rattling around in my head all day: "the surest path to happiness for many of us could be as simple as this: Stop trying to be happy — and start figuring out how to make other people happy." ## The Lean Manufacturing Connection As someone who's spent years in the lean manufacturing world, this struck a familiar chord. Because isn't this essentially what we mean when we talk about delivering value? In lean thinking, we're taught to focus obsessively on value—but always from the customer's perspective, never our own. We don't ask "what do we want to make?" or "what's profitable for us?" We ask "what does the customer actually need?" We study their problems, we eliminate waste, we optimize flow. We pour our energy into solving their challenges. And here's the thing: when you truly commit to delivering value to others, value comes back to you. Maybe not immediately, maybe not in the way you expected, but it comes. Companies that genuinely serve their customers thrive. Teams that support each other perform better. People who focus on helping others build stronger networks, deeper relationships, better careers. It's the same paradox Burrow discovered: stop chasing the outcome you want for yourself, start focusing on creating outcomes for others, and somehow you end up better off than when you started. ## The Personal Struggle I'll be honest—I've wrestled with this for a long time. There's always been a voice in the back of my head asking: Am I giving too much? Am I losing myself by constantly committing to others? Where are the boundaries to protect myself? In my professional life, I've poured energy into mentoring colleagues, helping teams improve their processes, sharing knowledge freely even when it might've been smarter to hoard it as competitive advantage. Personally, I've tried to show up for friends, family, and community in ways that sometimes felt like they stretched me thin. And there were definitely moments when I wondered if I was being naive. Shouldn't I be more strategic? Shouldn't I be protecting my time, my expertise, my resources more carefully? The prevailing cultural narrative tells us to "look out for number one," to make sure we're not being taken advantage of, to keep score and make sure we're getting our fair share. But looking back, I've been immensely blessed—both personally and professionally—by giving. The relationships I've built, the opportunities that have emerged, the satisfaction of seeing others succeed in part because of something I contributed... none of that would've happened if I'd been more guarded, more transactional, more focused on maximizing my personal return on investment. ## Why This Matters Now Burrow's research suggests this isn't just about feeling good (though that's not nothing). Having a sense of purpose—particularly one oriented toward contribution—is linked to resilience, better mental health, and greater life satisfaction. In his studies, young people with a stronger sense of purpose showed more positive emotions and handled stress better. This feels especially relevant right now. We're living through what the Washington Post article calls "highly uncertain times." Gen Z in particular seems to be struggling with happiness, with many feeling disconnected from purpose in their work and lives. The traditional markers of success—buy a house, climb the ladder, accumulate wealth—feel increasingly out of reach or unsatisfying even when achieved. Maybe what we're learning is that happiness was never really about those things anyway. Maybe it was always about contribution. ## The Research Backs It Up Burrow's Contribution Project has now expanded beyond Cornell to include Binghamton University and Stony Brook University, and he's launched a national version through a nonprofit called Purpose Commons. Over 850 young people have participated, and the project is now backed by a $3 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study how young people develop and experience purpose. The early findings are compelling. Students describe the project as "transformative." They report increased agency, hope, and purpose. And critically, they're not just passively receiving these benefits—they're actively creating them through the act of contributing. This aligns with broader research on happiness. Studies have repeatedly shown that people who chase happiness directly often end up less happy. It's the "poison drip" effect: constantly measuring your own happiness makes every experience feel inadequate. But when you focus on something beyond yourself—on creating value, making contributions, helping others—happiness emerges as a byproduct. ## What This Means Practically I'm not suggesting we all become selfless martyrs. Boundaries matter. Self-care is real. Burnout is real. You can't pour from an empty cup, as the saying goes. But maybe the question isn't "how much can I give before I lose myself?" Maybe it's "how can I structure my life and work around contribution?" In lean terms: how do we design systems that make it easy and sustainable to deliver value? How do we create feedback loops that reinforce contribution rather than extraction? How do we measure success not by what we take but by what we give? At work, this might mean reframing our goals around the problems we solve for customers rather than the revenue we generate (though solving customer problems generally leads to revenue anyway). It might mean investing in developing others even when it doesn't show up on our performance review. It might mean sharing credit generously, even when we could claim it for ourselves. Personally, it might mean asking not "what will make me happy?" but "how can I make the people around me happier?" Not in a transactional way—not keeping score, not expecting reciprocation—but as a fundamental orientation toward the world. ## The Lean Life The more I think about it, the more I see lean manufacturing as a philosophy that extends well beyond the factory floor. It's about focusing relentlessly on value. It's about respecting people. It's about continuous improvement in service of something beyond yourself. Maybe that's why I've found it so compelling for all these years. It's not just a business methodology. It's a framework for living a meaningful life. Cornell's Contribution Project is, in a way, applying lean thinking to the challenge of human development. Give people resources. Empower them to identify and create value as they see it. Study what emerges. Iterate and improve. Trust that the process of contributing will generate positive outcomes—for others, yes, but also for the contributors themselves. And that might be the most important insight: you don't have to choose between serving others and serving yourself. When done right, they're the same thing. --- *What's been your experience with contribution and happiness? Have you found that giving comes back to you in unexpected ways? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.* **Sources:** - Washington Post: "This happiness hack can guide you toward a life of purpose" (October 24, 2025) - Cornell Chronicle: "Finding purpose and beauty, Contribution Project expands its reach" (May 2025) - Cornell Chronicle: "New research initiative to focus on the power of purpose" (April 2025) - Cornell Chronicle: "The Contribution Project returns to Cornell, expands to two SUNYs" (February 2024) ### Hoisin-Glazed Salmon with Warm Tomato-Ginger Relish URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hoisin-glazed-salmon-with-warm-tomato-ginger-relish/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T14:59:21.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/hoisin-glazed-salmon.jpg) **Serves:** 2–3 **Total Time:** 30 minutes ## Ingredients ### For the Salmon and Glaze - 2–3 salmon fillets (about 6 oz each) - 1 Tbsp olive or avocado oil - 2 Tbsp hoisin sauce - 1 Tbsp soy sauce (or tamari for gluten-free) - 1 tsp rice vinegar - 1 tsp sesame oil - 1 clove garlic, minced - ½ tsp fresh ginger, grated ### For the Warm Tomato-Ginger Relish - 2 medium vine-ripe tomatoes, diced - 1 tsp olive oil - 1 clove garlic, minced - ½ tsp fresh ginger, grated - ½ tsp rice vinegar - ¼ tsp sesame oil - Salt and pepper to taste ### For the Sesame Green Beans or Asparagus - 8 oz fresh green beans, trimmed (alternate: asparagus) - 1 tsp sesame oil - 1 tsp soy sauce - ½ tsp rice vinegar - ½ tsp honey or maple syrup - 1 tsp sesame seeds ## Instructions 1. **Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).** Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment paper for easy cleanup. 2. **Make the glaze:** In a small bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, and ginger. 3. **Prepare and bake the salmon:** Pat salmon fillets dry and brush lightly with olive oil. Coat the tops evenly with the hoisin glaze. Bake for 10–12 minutes, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork and the glaze is glossy. (For extra caramelization, broil for 1–2 minutes at the end.) 4. **Make the tomato-ginger relish:** While the salmon bakes, heat olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger; sauté 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in diced tomatoes and a pinch of salt. Cook 2–3 minutes, just until the juices release and thicken slightly. Remove from heat and stir in rice vinegar, sesame oil, and a few grinds of pepper. 5. **Prepare the sesame green beans:** In another pan, simmer green beans in a bit of water 3–4 minutes until tender-crisp. Drain and return to the pan. Toss with sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey, and sesame seeds. Cook 1 minute more to coat evenly. 6. **Serve:** Place salmon on plates, spoon warm tomato-ginger relish over the top, and serve alongside sesame green beans. Drizzle any extra glaze or relish juices over the plate for added flavor. ## Chef's Notes - Add a sprinkle of chopped green onions or fresh cilantro for color. - The relish also works beautifully over grilled shrimp or tofu. - Serve with jasmine rice or quinoa for a complete meal. ### The Balloon Effect: How Tariffs Create More Problems Than They Solve URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-balloon-effect-how-tariffs-create-more-problems-than-they-solve/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T01:53:55.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/10/cars-in-port.jpg) Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford launched a $75 million ad campaign featuring Ronald Reagan’s own words warning against tariffs. The ad has aired during major sporting events, quoted Reagan from his 1987 radio address: “High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars.” The reaction was swift and predictable. President Trump called it “fraudulent” and threatened to terminate trade talks with Canada, eventually slapping an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods. The Ronald Reagan Foundation complained that the ad misrepresented Reagan’s views, pointing out that he did in fact impose some tariffs during his presidency. And you know what? They’re both right. Which is exactly why this whole episode is such a perfect teaching moment about unintended consequences. ## The Reagan Reality Check Reagan did impose tariffs, sort of. In 1987, he placed duties on Japanese semiconductors after clear violations of an antidumping agreement. In 1983, he imposed tariffs on motorcycles as part of a global safeguard action. But the big one, the one that gets cited as proof that “even Reagan used tariffs to protect American industry,” wasn’t actually a tariff at all. In 1981, the Reagan administration negotiated what’s called a Voluntary Export Restraint (VER) with Japan on automobiles. Japanese automakers “voluntarily” agreed to limit their exports to 1.68 million cars per year (later raised to 1.85 million in 1984 and 2.3 million in 1985). It functioned like a tariff in that it restricted supply and raised prices, but it was technically voluntary. You know, the kind of voluntary where someone holds a gun to your head and you “voluntarily” hand over your wallet. The VER was supposed to give Detroit’s Big Three breathing room to retool and become competitive again. It did create that breathing room. The question is: what did they do with it? ## Press Here, Bulge There Here’s where it gets interesting, and where we see what I call the balloon effect in action. When you press down on a balloon in one spot, it bulges out somewhere else. The VER was designed to reduce Japanese car imports and help American automakers. Mission accomplished on the first part. But watch what happened everywhere else. First, the price of Japanese cars in America jumped by about $1,200 per vehicle (in 1983 dollars) during the peak years of 1986-1990\. That’s a 14% increase. American consumers paid an estimated $8.9 billion extra for cars during the first four years of the VER alone. That works out to about $334,000 per job “saved” in the U.S. auto industry. Not exactly a bargain. But here’s the kicker: faced with limited competition, American automakers did what any protected industry would do. They raised their prices too, about 1% across the board. More importantly, they got comfortable. That price umbrella from reduced competition meant they could keep churning out lower-quality vehicles without the normal market pressure to improve. While Japanese manufacturers were relentlessly pursuing quality improvements, Detroit was cashing checks and patting themselves on the back. The protection that was supposed to force improvement actually delayed it. Between 1980 and 1990, the quality gap between Japanese and American cars didn’t shrink. It grew. Japanese cars still required fewer repairs, and the gap in reliability actually widened. Economic theory tells us that competition drives innovation; protection from competition does the opposite. ## The Ripples Keep Going But wait, there’s more. The VER included a provision that cars built in the U.S. were exempt from the export limits. This created a clear incentive for Japanese automakers to build factories in the United States. Honda had already announced plans for its Marysville, Ohio plant in 1980 and it opened in 1982\. By 1990, every major Japanese automaker had followed: Nissan, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Isuzu, and Subaru all built U.S. manufacturing facilities. On the surface, this sounds like a win. American jobs, right? And the administration could claim that the VER encouraged foreign investment. But these “transplant” factories brought with them Japanese management practices, Japanese supplier networks, and eventually, even more competition for Detroit, this time from inside the United States itself. The domestic automakers had been protected from import competition only to find themselves competing with world-class manufacturers in their own backyard, manufacturers who were hiring American workers and teaching them better ways to build cars. Definitely a win overall, but not for the industry it was designed to protect. Meanwhile, Japanese automakers were also expanding production in other regions not covered by the VER. They built up supplier networks and manufacturing capabilities globally, which eventually allowed them to outmaneuver U.S. automakers on the world stage. Detroit’s “protection” at home left them even more vulnerable abroad. And here’s one more twist: with Japanese cars artificially constrained, who rushed in to fill the gap? South Korean manufacturers like Hyundai and Kia. Hyundai entered the U.S. market in 1986, right in the middle of the VER, with the Excel, selling it for under $5,000 and capturing the entry-level market that American manufacturers had abandoned. Kia began shipping cars through Ford in 1987\. The VER didn’t reduce import competition; it just changed which countries we were importing from. ## Why Does This Keep Happening? The fundamental problem is that tariffs are blunt instruments being applied to complex, interconnected systems. Modern supply chains don’t respect borders. A car assembled in America might contain parts from Mexico, electronics from China, steel from Canada, and design work from Germany. When you slap a tariff on imports, you’re not just affecting the final product. You’re affecting every link in that chain. Companies like Cummins, which imports parts from its own factories in China for use in American plants, now face tariffs on their own components. When the U.S. imposed tariffs on China, China retaliated with tariffs on American agricultural products, hurting farmers who had nothing to do with the original trade dispute. The interconnections mean that actions taken to protect one industry inevitably harm others. This is what the WTO Chief Economist Ralph Ossa means when he says that “tariffs are a policy lever with wide-ranging, and often unintended consequences.” Trade policy uncertainty alone has a dampening effect on economic activity, even before the tariffs themselves kick in. Companies delay investments. They can’t plan. They can’t optimize their supply chains when they don’t know what the rules will be next month. ## The Real Cost I’m not saying there’s never a legitimate case for trade intervention. Let’s be honest: countries like China really do take advantage of the system. When your manufacturing costs are lower because you don’t have to worry about environmental regulations, worker safety standards, or labor benefits that other developed countries require, that’s not exactly fair competition. It’s an unlevel playing field, and it does need to be addressed. The problem is that tariffs are the blunt hammer when we need a scalpel. Reagan’s 1987 semiconductor tariff on Japan was relatively targeted. It was a response to clear violations of an existing agreement, it was specific to one industry, and it was designed to be temporary. Even then, it came with all the caveats and concerns he laid out in that radio address. What we really need are specific, negotiated agreements that address the root causes. If China is dumping steel by subsidizing production, the answer isn’t to slap tariffs on everything from semiconductors to sneakers. It’s to negotiate enforceable agreements about subsidies. If environmental standards are giving some countries an unfair advantage, we should be working through international bodies to establish baseline standards, not launching trade wars. But broad, sustained protection, the kind we keep reaching for, rarely delivers what it promises. It costs consumers more. It delays the improvements that competition would force. It spawns new competitors we didn’t anticipate. It invites retaliation that hurts completely different industries. And most insidiously, it gives the protected industries a false sense of security that prevents them from making the hard changes they actually need to make. The Reagan ad was right: high tariffs do lead to retaliation and trade wars. The Reagan Foundation was right too: Reagan did impose some tariffs. But the real lesson from Reagan’s experience with the auto VER is neither of those things. The real lesson is that when you try to solve complex problems with simple solutions, when you press down on the balloon, you’d better be prepared for where it’s going to bulge out next. And you’d better be pretty sure that where it bulges isn’t going to be worse than your original problem. ### When Efficiency Becomes Fragility: What AWS Outages and Rare Earth Controls Tell Us About Hidden Dependencies URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-efficiency-becomes-fragility-what-aws-outages-and-rare-earth-controls-tell-us-about-hidden-dependencies/ Last updated: 2025-10-22T13:12:14.000Z On October 20, something broke in Northern Virginia that knocked banking systems offline in London, halted warehouse operations for Amazon itself, and left Medicare enrollment systems inaccessible. For over 14 hours, an estimated 4-6 million users couldn't access services they'd come to depend on. The culprit? A DNS failure in Amazon Web Services' US-EAST-1 region—a data center cluster that has become so central to the internet's functioning that even non-AWS services depend on its infrastructure. That same month, China expanded export controls on rare earth elements to cover 12 of 17 critical materials. If you're thinking "rare earths sound important but I'm not sure why," consider this: they're essential for F-35 fighter jets, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and smartphones. China controls 60 percent of global rare earth mining and processes over 90 percent of high-performance magnets. According to research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Western manufacturers now face a stark reality: there are no readily available alternatives, and building domestic capacity requires 7-15 years and billions in capital investment. These two disruptions, happening within days of each other, reveal something uncomfortable about how we've organized our technology and manufacturing systems over the past three decades. We've been optimizing for efficiency so relentlessly that we've created invisible single points of failure. When they break, the consequences cascade in ways we didn't anticipate. ## The Logic That Got Us Here The drive toward concentration made perfect economic sense at the time. Cloud computing reduced infrastructure costs by 30-40 percent compared to on-premises solutions. Offshore manufacturing in China and Southeast Asia cut production expenses by 20-60 percent depending on the sector. Lean supply chains reduced working capital requirements. Between 2000 and 2020, global manufacturing productivity increased 3.4 percent annually while costs declined. I remember writing about similar dynamics years ago when companies started extending payment terms from net-30 to net-120, squeezing their suppliers for short-term working capital gains. Each individual decision seemed rational. The cumulative effect? Systematic brittleness. Three forces accelerated this concentration. First, network effects created winner-take-most dynamics in technology. AWS's US-EAST-1 region became the original hub, and despite geographic redundancy options, countless applications defaulted to it due to feature availability and organizational inertia. Second, industrial policy and comparative advantage drove geographic manufacturing concentration—China's deliberate rare earth strategy began with subsidized mining in the 1980s and culminated with integrated processing capacity that Western competitors couldn't match economically. Third, financial markets rewarded efficiency metrics over resilience investments. The average manufacturing company reduced supplier diversity by 23 percent between 2010 and 2020, per CSIS research. ## The Real Cost of Downtime When organizations implement genuine multi-cloud architectures—distributing workloads across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud with independent identity systems—infrastructure costs typically increase 30-50 percent. For a mid-sized enterprise spending $2 million annually on cloud infrastructure, true redundancy might cost an additional $600,000 to $1 million. Here's where the math gets interesting. Gartner research suggests payment processing downtime costs financial institutions $5,000 to $9,000 per minute. The 14-hour AWS outage potentially cost affected financial institutions $4-7 million in direct losses, not counting reputational damage or regulatory penalties. Against that conservative estimate, the return on resilience investment spans 12-24 months. The semiconductor industry offers the clearest example of policy-driven resilience finally overriding pure cost optimization. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's concentration in Taiwan—producing 90 percent of advanced chips—represents what everyone now acknowledges as an existential risk. TSMC invested $65 billion in Arizona fabrication facilities, backed by $6.6 billion in U.S. government subsidies, accepting 20-35 percent higher production costs in exchange for supply assurance. ## Why Resilience Remains Hard Despite compelling economics, resilience investments face persistent obstacles. The first is measurement difficulty. Preventing outages generates no visible returns—the benefit is absence of loss. Chief financial officers struggle to justify spending $500,000 annually to prevent an event that might not occur this year, even when expected value calculations clearly support the investment. The second obstacle is coordination complexity. Implementing multi-cloud architecture requires engineering teams proficient across multiple platforms and monitoring systems that provide unified visibility. Organizations report that genuine multi-cloud implementations require 40-60 percent more engineering resources compared to single-cloud deployments. Small and medium enterprises often conclude that single-cloud concentration represents the only feasible path. Supply chain diversification confronts similar challenges. Qualifying new suppliers requires extensive validation—quality testing, capacity verification, and relationship development. A manufacturer might spend 18-36 months qualifying an alternative supplier, during which the incumbent continues delivering reliably, making the diversification investment appear unnecessary. When disruptions eventually occur, the qualification process cannot be compressed. Perhaps most challenging is that resilience requirements keep changing. US-EAST-1 concentration became a critical vulnerability only after cloud adoption reached critical mass. Rare earth dependencies intensified as electric vehicles and advanced electronics proliferated. Organizations must continuously reassess their single points of failure—a continuous expense rather than a project with defined endpoints. ## The Path Forward The strategic framework begins with dependency mapping. Organizations must identify their own "US-EAST-1 equivalents"—singular nodes whose failure cascades through operations. For technology companies, this includes cloud regions, identity providers, and payment processors. For manufacturers, critical dependencies include sole-source suppliers, single-country material sources, and logistics chokepoints. The next step involves quantifying failure impact across multiple time horizons. If a manufacturer faces $5 million in potential losses from a month-long supplier disruption, investing $500,000 annually (10 percent of potential loss) to maintain qualified alternative suppliers represents sound risk management. Boston Consulting Group research on supply chain strategies supports this calculation—if supply disruptions occur every 3-7 years on average, the annualized expected loss makes the annual investment clearly worthwhile. Organizations should implement tiered resilience strategies that match protection to criticality. Revenue-generating systems and legally-mandated functions require maximum redundancy. Internal tools might accept longer recovery times. This approach optimizes resilience spending while avoiding blanket policies that waste resources. Here's what's becoming clear: resilience is no longer defensive overhead but competitive differentiation. During the October AWS outage, organizations with genuine multi-cloud architectures maintained operations while competitors went dark. Those 14 hours of uptime translated into market share gains and customer trust advantages. The manufacturers that delivered products while competitors were supply-constrained captured market share they retained after supply normalized. ## Choosing Deliberately For three decades, optimization appeared obviously correct. Cloud concentration, offshore manufacturing, and streamlined supply chains delivered undeniable economic benefits. However, those benefits extracted resilience as unintentional collateral damage. The path forward requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths. True resilience costs money—15 to 50 percent more depending on the domain and protection level. Resilience creates complexity that demands additional engineering and management capability. Resilience pays returns through losses avoided rather than revenues generated, making it politically difficult to justify until disasters validate the investment. The question is no longer whether to invest in resilience but how much and where. Every organization faces different risk profiles and operates under different constraints. However, all organizations share the imperative to identify their single points of failure, quantify failure costs, and implement measured redundancy that protects critical functions. Efficiency gave us scale. Resilience determines who survives it. --- *Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis of rare earth export restrictions; Allianz Trade global manufacturing survey; Boston Consulting Group supply chain resilience research; Capgemini Research Institute reindustrialization study; United Nations Industrial Development Organization manufacturing projections; Cockroach Labs state of resilience report; Synergy Research Group cloud market analysis; KPMG supply chain reshoring framework* ### Using AI Advisory Teams: Expert Knowledge On Demand URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-ai-advisory-teams-expert-knowledge-on-demand/ Last updated: 2025-10-14T14:13:21.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/10/advisor-team.jpg) I've been experimenting with something that would have seemed like pure science fiction just a few years ago: assembling advisory teams of world-renowned experts who are available to me 24/7, at virtually no cost, ready to discuss everything from my latest blood work to portfolio allocation to the nature of consciousness itself. No, I haven't won the lottery or suddenly gained access to some exclusive think tank. I'm using AI to simulate conversations with carefully curated teams of experts across three domains that matter most to me at this stage of life: health, investments, and spirituality. ## The Power and Promise of AI Advisory Teams Here's how it works. Instead of asking ChatGPT or Claude a generic question, I've created three distinct "advisory teams," each set up as a "project" and populated with real-world experts whose work I respect and whose perspectives I want to engage with. When I have a question about interpreting my recent lab results, I don't just ask "the AI"—I convene my Health Advisory Team and ask what Dr. Peter Attia might think about my lipid panel, or how Dr. Rhonda Patrick might interpret my vitamin D levels in the context of my other biomarkers. The beauty of this approach is that it leverages what these AI systems do surprisingly well: synthesizing knowledge from vast amounts of training data and presenting it through the lens of specific thinkers and their documented perspectives. Dr. Attia has hundreds of hours of podcast content discussing metabolic health. Dr. Andrew Huberman has shared countless actionable protocols based on neuroscience research. The AI has encountered all of this material and can approximate how these experts might approach a problem based on their known frameworks and methodologies. And here's the thing—while I've focused on health, investments, and spirituality because those matter most to me right now, this approach works for virtually any domain. You could assemble an advisory team for manufacturing and lean production (imagine consulting with Taiichi Ohno, W. Edwards Deming, and modern lean practitioners). Or marketing (Seth Godin, Byron Sharp, and behavioral economists). Or child development (Alison Gopnik, Ross Greene, and attachment theorists). The possibilities are limited only by what matters to you and which experts have left a substantial trail of their thinking in books, articles, talks, and interviews. For investment decisions, I can stage a conversation between value investor Howard Marks, who thinks deeply about market cycles and risk, and Ray Dalio, with his principles-based approach to understanding macroeconomic forces. When evaluating whether to rebalance my portfolio or considering a new investment thesis, having these different perspectives—even AI-simulated ones—helps me think through the issue more rigorously than I would on my own. And then there's the spiritual dimension. This is perhaps where the approach gets most interesting and most fraught. I've assembled a team that includes Christian contemplatives like Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr, Buddhist teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama, Sufi mystics like Rumi and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, and voices from other traditions. When I'm wrestling with questions about meaning, suffering, or practice, I can explore how these different wisdom traditions might illuminate the question from their unique vantage points. ## The Critical Caveat: AI is a Tool, Not an Oracle Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea: I am not making significant health, financial, or life decisions based solely on what an AI tells me, no matter how convincingly it channels these experts. This is crucial. The AI doesn't actually *know* anything—it's predicting patterns based on training data. It can be wrong. It can hallucinate facts. It can miss important context. It doesn't have access to my complete medical history, my actual risk tolerance, or the depths of my spiritual struggles in the way a real advisor would. So here's my rule: AI advisory teams are for exploration, education, and expanding my thinking. They help me formulate better questions, understand different frameworks, and identify areas where I need to dig deeper. But before I make any consequential decision—changing my supplement protocol, adjusting my investment strategy, or shifting my spiritual practice—I verify everything. For health matters, that means taking the insights I've gathered and discussing them with my actual doctor. I'm fortunate here—my doc is a great guy who genuinely appreciates my interest in understanding my own health. He's perhaps a bit unique among physicians in that he actually likes patients doing some of the investigating themselves, as long as they consult with him before taking action. He distinguishes between what he calls "Facebook researchers"—people who've read three posts and are now convinced they have a rare disease—and informed patients who've done serious homework. "Hey, I've been reading about the ratio of ApoB to HDL-C in cardiovascular risk assessment—what do you think about my numbers in that context?" That's the kind of conversation that makes both of us better. The AI helps me become a more informed patient, not a self-diagnosing one. For investments, it means doing my own due diligence, reading the actual research or reports, and potentially consulting with my financial advisor or other real human investors whose judgment I trust. The simulated conversation with Warren Buffett about capital allocation might spark an insight, but I'm not restructuring my portfolio because AI-Buffett suggested it. For spiritual matters, the stakes are different but no less important. I can explore Rumi's poetry or Richard Rohr's teachings on non-duality through AI, but authentic spiritual growth happens in community, in practice, in lived experience. The AI can point me toward a book or a concept, but it can't replace the wisdom that comes from sitting with uncertainty, from actual meditation practice, from conversations with real spiritual directors or fellow seekers. ## The Teams I've Assembled Let me share the specific advisory teams I've created. These reflect my particular circumstances—a retired guy in his early sixties, in good health, with a broad spiritual curiosity rooted in Christianity but open to wisdom wherever it emerges. Your mileage may vary, and that's the beauty of this approach: you can assemble the teams that make sense for your life. ### Health Advisory Team **Dr. Peter Attia** — Physician and longevity specialist known for translating complex science on lifespan, metabolic health, and exercise optimization into actionable strategies; host of The Drive podcast. **Dr. Andrew Huberman** — Stanford neuroscientist studying brain plasticity, stress, and behavior change; known for practical neuroscience tools shared via the Huberman Lab podcast. **Dr. Rhonda Patrick** — Biomedical scientist and expert in micronutrient research, aging, and cellular metabolism; founder of FoundMyFitness. **Dr. Mark Hyman** — Functional medicine physician and author focused on food as medicine and systemic health; founder of The UltraWellness Center. **Dr. Peter Diamandis** — Physician, entrepreneur, and futurist; founder of XPRIZE and Singularity University, emphasizing longevity, innovation, and exponential health technologies. **Dr. David Sinclair** — Harvard geneticist specializing in aging and epigenetics; author of *Lifespan*, exploring how aging can be delayed or reversed. **Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** — Functional medicine doctor advocating muscle-centric medicine, focusing on strength and protein optimization for aging well. **Dr. Eric Topol** — Cardiologist and digital medicine pioneer at Scripps Research, known for integrating AI and genomics into personalized healthcare. ### Investment Advisory Team **Liz Ann Sonders** — Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab; provides macroeconomic analysis and portfolio strategy insights for long-term investors. **Warren Buffett** — Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; legendary value investor emphasizing disciplined, long-term investing and capital allocation. **Charlie Munger (in memoriam)** — Buffett's longtime partner; known for multidisciplinary thinking and rational decision frameworks in business and investing. **Howard Marks** — Co-founder of Oaktree Capital; specialist in credit markets and author of *The Most Important Thing*, focusing on risk cycles and contrarian investing. **Ray Dalio** — Founder of Bridgewater Associates; macro investor known for principles-based thinking and understanding of global economic cycles. **Jeremy Grantham** — Co-founder of GMO; respected for long-term market analysis, especially asset bubbles and mean reversion in valuations. **Mohamed El-Erian** — Economist and chief economic advisor at Allianz; expert on global macro trends, fixed income, and policy risk. **Rick Rieder** — Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock; authority on bond markets and portfolio construction in changing rate environments. ### Spiritual Advisory Team **Thomas Merton** — Trappist monk and contemplative writer who bridged Christian mysticism with interfaith and social consciousness. **Thich Nhat Hanh** — Vietnamese Zen master who brought mindfulness and engaged Buddhism to the West. **Rumi** — 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic whose poetry embodies divine love and unity. **Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel** — Jewish theologian and civil rights activist emphasizing wonder, moral courage, and the sanctity of life. **Ram Dass** — American spiritual teacher and author of *Be Here Now*, integrating Eastern philosophy with Western psychology. **The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)** — Tibetan Buddhist leader advocating compassion, nonviolence, and the harmony of science and spirituality. **Richard Rohr** — Franciscan friar and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation; explores non-duality and mature faith development. **Cynthia Bourgeault** — Episcopal priest and mystic integrating Christian contemplative practice with wisdom traditions and consciousness studies. **Brother David Steindl-Rast** — Benedictine monk known for his teachings on gratitude as a spiritual path. **Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee** — Sufi teacher and author weaving mysticism with ecological consciousness and collective awakening. **Chief Oren Lyons** — Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation; Indigenous elder emphasizing sacred relationship with the Earth and intergenerational responsibility. **Dr. Bruce Greyson** — Psychiatrist and researcher at the University of Virginia; leading scholar on near-death experiences and consciousness beyond the brain. ## Why This Matters We're living through an extraordinary moment. For the first time in human history, it's possible to have a kind of conversation with the collective knowledge and perspectives of some of the most brilliant minds in any field, at any time, for essentially zero cost. That's remarkable. But it's also easy to get swept up in the hype and forget the limitations. AI is a tool—a powerful one, but a tool nonetheless. It can help us think better, learn faster, and explore more widely. It cannot replace human judgment, real expertise, lived experience, or the wisdom that comes from genuine relationships and community. My approach is to use these advisory teams as a starting point for deeper inquiry. They help me ask better questions of my actual doctors, think more clearly about my investment decisions, and explore spiritual traditions I might not otherwise encounter. They're like having a really well-read, thoughtful friend who can synthesize information quickly—but who sometimes gets details wrong and doesn't actually know me personally. The key is maintaining that critical distance while still benefiting from the tool. Stay curious. Stay skeptical. And always, always verify before you act. ## What's Your Advisory Team? The teams I've assembled reflect my particular stage of life and interests. But think about your own world for a moment. What challenges are you facing? What decisions keep you up at night? What areas of expertise would help you think more clearly? If you're in manufacturing, imagine having regular conversations with Taiichi Ohno about production flow, W. Edwards Deming about quality systems, and contemporary lean practitioners about modern challenges. If you're raising kids, you could consult developmental psychologists, attachment researchers, and experienced educators about everything from sleep training to navigating adolescence. Marketing professionals could stage debates between direct response legends and brand builders. Software developers could get architectural advice from the creators of different design patterns and paradigms. The beauty of this approach is its flexibility. You're not limited to my interests or my teams. You can assemble advisors who speak directly to your challenges, your curiosities, your domain. And unlike hiring actual consultants, you can experiment freely—try different combinations, ask wild "what if" questions, explore tangents without worrying about billable hours. In the end, these AI advisory teams are doing exactly what the best advisors should do: not making decisions for me, but helping me make better decisions for myself. They expand my thinking without replacing it. They challenge my assumptions without undermining my judgment. And in a world of exponentially increasing information, that might be the most valuable service of all. So start building your team. Stay humble about the tool's limitations. Verify everything important. But don't miss out on this remarkable opportunity to learn from the collective wisdom of experts across any field that matters to you. The conversation is waiting. ### The Mysterious Architecture of Memory: Why Your Brain Stores Curdled Milk Stories URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mysterious-architecture-of-memory-why-your-brain-stores-curdled-milk-stories/ Last updated: 2025-10-06T08:17:19.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/09/memory.jpg) Yesterday, standing in my kitchen preparing breakfast, I had one of those startling moments where the past crashes into the present with crystalline clarity. The sight of milk hitting hot oatmeal triggered a vivid flashback to nearly fifteen years ago—a fancy hotel in San Francisco, the disappointment of curdled milk ruining what should have been a perfect morning meal. I could see the chunky white lumps, smell that slightly sour scent, even recall the pattern of the hotel's china bowl. This got me wondering: why does our brain meticulously archive such seemingly trivial moments while letting important details slip away? What's the underlying architecture that makes this possible? And how does a three-pound organ manage to outperform our most advanced computers when it comes to storing and retrieving memories? ## The Staggering Capacity Hidden in Your Head Let's start with the raw numbers, because they're genuinely mind-blowing. Recent research suggests that the human brain can store the equivalent of 2.5 petabytes of information—that's 2.5 million gigabytes. To put this in perspective, Yahoo's massive 2.0 petabyte data warehouse, which processes 24 billion events daily, is actually 20 percent smaller than the capacity of a single human brain. But here's where it gets really interesting: researchers at the Salk Institute have found that the brain's memory capacity may be 10 times more than previously thought, putting it "in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web". This revelation came from studying the microscopic connections between neurons—synapses—and discovering they can exist in about 26 different sizes rather than just the few categories scientists previously recognized. The mechanism behind this storage is elegantly distributed. Each synapse can store about 4.7 "bits" of information, and the cerebral cortex alone contains 125 trillion synapses. Unlike a hard drive with its fixed sectors, our neural networks dynamically reorganize themselves, creating new connections and strengthening existing ones based on experience and repetition. ## Why We Remember What We Remember So why does my brain dedicate precious storage space to that hotel breakfast incident rather than, say, the important meeting I had later that same day? The answer lies in a fascinating phenomenon called flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memories are exceptionally clear memories of emotionally significant events that are "typically very vivid and detailed, much like a photograph". But here's the crucial part: the principal determinants of a flashbulb memory are "a high level of surprise, a high level of consequentiality, and perhaps emotional arousal". That curdled milk moment checks all the boxes. It was surprising (who expects their breakfast to be ruined at a fancy hotel?), consequential (it disrupted my morning and probably cost money), and emotionally arousing (disappointment, disgust, maybe a touch of indignation). When we experience stress or strong emotions, the brain secretes more of the neurotransmitter glutamate, which helps us remember stressful events. This isn't a bug in our neural software—it's an evolutionary feature. The fear center of the brain, the amygdala, is triggered by emotional experiences and begins recording as much detail as possible as a survival mechanism. Our ancestors who could vividly remember where they encountered spoiled food (or predators, or other dangers) were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. ## The Computer Paradox Here's where things get truly puzzling. Modern computer processors contain billions of transistors operating at gigahertz speeds—transistors in IBM's Z 16 run at 5 GHz, while Apple's latest M4 processor runs at 4.4 GHz (with performance cores reaching up to 4.4-4.5 GHz depending on the variant). In contrast, neurons in the brain fire at about 10 hertz (10 times a second). As one IBM researcher noted, if synapses operated at the same rate as a laptop, "our brain would explode". Yet somehow, this "slower" biological system dramatically outperforms our fastest computers at pattern recognition, associative memory, and creative problem-solving. While modern processors pack about 0.3 × 10^9 transistors per microliter, the brain contains roughly 10^9 synapses per microliter—and each synapse can be in multiple states, unlike the binary on/off of transistors. The key difference lies in architecture. Computers follow the von Neumann model, where processing and memory are separate, requiring constant data shuttling. The brain co-locates memory formation and learning—in effect, data processing and storage happen in the same place. Every neuron is simultaneously a processor, memory storage unit, and communication hub. ## Quantum Mysteries and Cellular Orchestras This brings us to one of the most intriguing frontiers in neuroscience: could quantum mechanics play a role in consciousness and memory? The idea isn't as far-fetched as it might sound. Physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff have proposed that consciousness originates from quantum processes inside neurons, specifically within cellular structures called microtubules. Their "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" (Orch OR) theory suggests that quantum superposition and quantum computation occur in microtubules—cylindrical protein lattices within brain neurons. Recent discoveries of quantum vibrations in microtubules have provided some support for this controversial theory. While many scientists remain skeptical (quantum effects typically don't survive in the "warm, wet, and noisy" environment of living brain tissue), researchers have confirmed that large networks of tryptophan proteins found in microtubules can exhibit "superradiance"—a quantum phenomenon—even in warm conditions. If true, this could explain how the brain performs seemingly impossible feats of information integration and pattern recognition. The theory suggests there's "a connection between the brain's biomolecular processes and the basic structure of the universe"—a poetic notion that our memories and consciousness might be woven into the very fabric of reality. ## The Beautiful Imperfection of Biological Memory But here's something humbling about our remarkable memory systems: they're wonderfully imperfect. Even flashbulb memories can become inaccurate over time. President George W. Bush, when asked multiple times how he first heard about 9/11, gave different accounts each time—despite this being one of the most consequential moments in recent history. Most people forget about 50% of new information within the first hour of learning it, and around 70% within a day. Our memories aren't digital recordings but rather reconstructions, influenced by emotion, subsequent experiences, and the stories we tell ourselves. This might seem like a design flaw, but it's actually a feature. Unlike computer memory, which stores exact copies, our biological memory system is optimized for meaning, pattern recognition, and emotional significance. It forgets the mundane details while preserving the experiences that shaped us, taught us, or warned us. ## Looking Forward: The Marriage of Silicon and Synapse As we push the boundaries of artificial intelligence and computing, we're increasingly turning to the brain for inspiration. Neuromorphic computing chips aim to combine bio-inspiration with high-bandwidth operation, storing model weights and performing calculations in the same location like neurons do. Researchers have developed "memtransistors" that operate like neurons by performing both memory and information processing functions. These brain-inspired technologies could revolutionize computing, offering the pattern recognition and energy efficiency of biological systems with the speed and reliability of silicon. We're still far from creating truly brain-like computers—it took 40 minutes of supercomputer time to simulate just one second of activity in 1% of a human brain—but we're learning valuable lessons about memory, processing, and the beautiful complexity of consciousness. ## The Wonder of Trivial Memories So why does my brain lovingly preserve that moment of breakfast disappointment from San Francisco? Because in that seemingly trivial instant, multiple systems were working in perfect harmony: sensory processing captured the visual and olfactory details, emotional systems flagged it as significant, and memory consolidation systems decided it was worth keeping. That curdled milk memory isn't just a random file taking up space in my mental hard drive. It's a testament to the extraordinary complexity of human consciousness—a reminder that we carry within our skulls the most sophisticated information processing system in the known universe. A system that somehow transforms quantum vibrations, electrical impulses, and chemical cascades into the rich, subjective experience of being human. Every mundane memory we carry is evidence of this miracle: that three pounds of mostly water and fat can store the equivalent of the entire World Wide Web, create meaning from chaos, and occasionally surprise us with perfect recall of moments we didn't even know mattered at the time. In a universe of quantum uncertainty and cosmic vastness, perhaps there's something profound about a brain that chooses to remember curdled milk. It suggests that consciousness isn't just about processing information—it's about finding significance in the seemingly insignificant, creating stories from experiences, and building the scaffolding of identity from moments both grand and trivial. And that, more than any petabyte of storage or quantum computation, might be the most remarkable thing about human memory of all. ### The Science of Better Sleep: How Small Changes Transformed My Brain Health at 60 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-science-of-better-sleep-how-small-changes-transformed-my-brain-health-at-60/ Last updated: 2025-09-29T08:17:51.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/09/sleep.jpg) Two years ago, as I settled into my 60s and finally found breathing room after four decades of career stress, I made a decision that would fundamentally change my approach to aging: I would prioritize sleep quality above almost everything else. This wasn't some wellness trend I'd stumbled upon—it was a calculated response to a mounting body of research that painted an undeniable picture about sleep's role in preventing dementia, Parkinson's, and the cascade of physical and neurological ailments that can steal our later years. What I discovered through careful tracking and methodical experimentation wasn't just about getting more sleep—it was about getting *better* sleep. The difference, as it turns out, matters more than I ever imagined. ## Why Sleep Quality Trumps Sleep Quantity For years, we've been told that eight hours is the magic number. But recent research suggests this is only part of the story. A 2023 Monash University study found that as little as 1% reduction in deep sleep per year for people over 60 translates into a 27% increased risk of dementia. Even more striking, a 2025 Yale study revealed that insufficient deep sleep in slow-wave and REM stages may accelerate brain deterioration linked to Alzheimer's disease, particularly shrinking the brain's inferior parietal region—an area crucial for processing sensory information. The brain's housekeeping happens during these deeper stages of sleep. UC Berkeley researchers describe deep sleep as acting "like a life raft that keeps memory afloat, rather than memory getting dragged down by the weight of Alzheimer's disease pathology". During slow-wave sleep, the brain literally washes out toxic proteins like beta-amyloid that accumulate during waking hours. REM sleep, meanwhile, processes emotions and consolidates memories—functions that become increasingly precious as we age. My Garmin watch and trusty paper journal became my research tools. I tracked everything: total sleep time, deep sleep minutes, REM sleep percentages, sleep efficiency, and crucially, how I felt the next day. What emerged was a clear pattern: long nights of fragmented, shallow sleep left me foggy and irritable. Shorter nights with consolidated deep and REM sleep had me waking refreshed and mentally sharp. ## The Alcohol Revelation: My Biggest Discovery The most dramatic improvement in my sleep architecture came from the most unexpected place: eliminating my single, modest glass of wine at bedtime. I'd always thought of that evening wine as a sleep aid—it certainly made me drowsy. But recent comprehensive research analyzing 27 studies reveals that alcohol fundamentally disrupts sleep architecture, including delaying REM sleep onset and reducing total REM duration, with these effects occurring even at low doses of just two standard drinks. The mechanism is insidious. When you go to bed with alcohol in your system, you initially experience more deep sleep but significantly less REM sleep. Later in the night, once your liver metabolizes the alcohol, you're likely to experience more light sleep and frequent wakings. Within three nights of eliminating that single glass of wine, my Garmin showed a 40% increase in REM sleep time. My sleep efficiency jumped from around 80% to consistently above 90%. The change was so immediate and pronounced that I wondered how I'd lived with such fragmented sleep for so long. Brown University research confirms that alcohol disrupts normal sleep architecture across consecutive nights, leading to significant decreases in REM sleep—exactly what I experienced in reverse when I stopped drinking before bed. ## The Magnesium L-Threonate Game-Changer While eliminating alcohol transformed my deep sleep, adding magnesium l-threonate specifically boosted my REM sleep in ways that felt almost too good to be true. Unlike other forms of magnesium that struggle to cross the blood-brain barrier, magnesium l-threonate is specifically designed for brain bioavailability. The science here is particularly compelling. A 2024 randomized controlled trial found that participants taking magnesium l-threonate showed significant improvements in both deep sleep and REM sleep scores, along with enhanced mood, energy, alertness, and daily productivity. The study used objective sleep monitoring (Oura rings, similar to my Garmin) alongside subjective questionnaires, providing both hard data and quality-of-life metrics. Within two weeks of adding magnesium l-threonate to my routine, my REM sleep percentage climbed from roughly 15% to consistently above 22%—well within the optimal 20-25% range that experts recommend. More importantly, I noticed improved dream recall and that elusive feeling of waking up mentally refreshed rather than simply rested. ## The Supporting Cast: Small Changes, Big Results Several other modifications created a synergistic effect that elevated my overall sleep quality: **Light Management**: I invested in a high-quality Manta sleep mask that blocks even the tiniest light leaks. Our brains are exquisitely sensitive to light, and even minimal exposure can suppress melatonin production and fragment sleep cycles. The difference between "mostly dark" and "completely dark" proved significant in my sleep tracking data. **Eating Cutoff**: Stopping all food intake two hours before bedtime eliminated the late-night digestive interruptions that I hadn't even realized were waking me up. This simple change improved my sleep efficiency scores consistently. **Consistent Timing**: Perhaps the most challenging but rewarding change was establishing—and sticking to—a consistent bedtime within a 15-minute window. This allowed me to wake up naturally at approximately the same time each morning, creating a reinforcing cycle that strengthened my circadian rhythms. **Screen Elimination**: No television or phone screens in the bedroom. The blue light issue is real, but equally important is the cognitive stimulation that keeps the mind churning when it should be winding down. ## The Broader Health Picture What started as a focused effort to improve sleep quality has had cascading effects on my overall health and cognitive function. Recent UCSF research shows that quality of sleep in midlife—not just later years—plays a crucial role in preventing dementia decades before symptoms appear. This suggests that the investments we make in sleep quality during our 40s, 50s, and 60s may be some of the most important preventive health measures we can take. The research landscape around sleep and brain health continues to evolve rapidly, but several themes are becoming clear: - Delayed REM sleep onset may be an early marker of Alzheimer's disease, making REM optimization particularly important for those of us in higher-risk age groups. - The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention emphasizes sleep quality as a modifiable risk factor, alongside physical activity and cognitive engagement. - Sleep fragmentation in midlife appears to be more predictive of future cognitive decline than total sleep duration. ## Practical Takeaways If you're considering optimizing your own sleep quality, the interventions that produced the most measurable results for me were, in order of impact: 1. **Eliminate alcohol within 3-4 hours of bedtime**: This single change produced the most dramatic improvement in deep sleep quality. 2. **Consider magnesium l-threonate supplementation**: The research is compelling, and my personal results align with the clinical findings. 3. **Create complete darkness**: Invest in a quality sleep mask or blackout curtains. 4. **Establish consistent sleep/wake times**: Even on weekends, stick within a 15-minute window. 5. **Stop eating 2+ hours before bed**: Let your digestive system rest when your brain needs to. ## The Long Game At 60+, I'm acutely aware that the decisions I make today about sleep, exercise, and cognitive engagement will largely determine my quality of life in my 70s and 80s. The research suggests that high-quality sleep may be one of our most powerful tools for maintaining cognitive function and preventing neurodegenerative diseases. What surprises me most about this journey is how quickly the improvements manifested. Within weeks, not months, I was experiencing better sleep architecture, improved daytime alertness, and enhanced mood stability. These weren't subtle changes requiring faith-based commitment—they were measurable improvements visible in both my tracking data and my daily experience. The intersection of sleep science and brain health represents one of the most hopeful areas of aging research. Unlike genetic predispositions or past lifestyle choices, sleep quality is something we can actively improve at any age. The tools are accessible, the interventions are generally safe, and the potential benefits—both immediate and long-term—are substantial. For those of us navigating our 60s and beyond, optimizing sleep quality isn't just about feeling better tomorrow. It's about protecting the cognitive reserves we'll need for decades to come. And sometimes, the most profound health improvements come not from adding complexity to our lives, but from carefully subtracting the things that aren't serving us—like that seemingly innocent glass of wine that was quietly stealing my REM sleep every night. The science is clear, the tools are available, and the benefits compound over time. Sweet dreams, indeed. ### Prediction Machines: Why We Might Be More Like AI Than We Think URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/prediction-machines-why-we-might-be-more-like-ai-than-we-think/ Last updated: 2025-09-27T20:52:48.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/09/brain-ai.jpg) Something fascinating is happening at the intersection of artificial intelligence and neuroscience, and I can't shake the feeling we're witnessing a profound moment in human understanding. As AI systems edge closer to what we might call artificial general intelligence (AGI), neuroscientists are simultaneously arriving at a startling conclusion about human consciousness: that our brains might be nothing more than sophisticated prediction machines, and what we've long cherished as "free will" could simply be the emergent property of complex pattern recognition. The timing feels anything but coincidental. ## The Predictive Brain Revolution The concept of the "predictive brain" has become one of the most compelling frameworks in modern neuroscience, emphasizing how our neural systems constantly generate expectations about the future based on past experiences. According to Bayesian brain theory, our nervous system encodes probabilistic beliefs from which it generates predictions about sensory inputs, with the difference between these predictions and actual sensory data creating "prediction errors" that update our internal models. This isn't just academic speculation anymore. Recent computational models demonstrate how specific types of neurons—excitatory, PV, SST, and VIP cells—play distinct roles in predictive processes, with neural oscillations emerging naturally during both learning and inference. The research suggests our brains operate less like passive receivers of information and more like active generators of reality, constantly creating hypotheses about what comes next. What's particularly striking is how this predictive activity spans across species and scales, from C. elegans to humans, suggesting it's a fundamental organizing principle of nervous systems. During rest, our spontaneous brain activity maintains and refines these predictive models. During tasks, these internal models direct our neural networks to anticipate sensory and motor states, optimizing performance through prediction rather than reaction. ## The Free Will Question Mark The implications ripple outward into some of our deepest philosophical questions. Neuroscience research, particularly studies building on Benjamin Libet's famous experiments from the 1980s, has revealed brain activity preceding conscious intention by hundreds of milliseconds. Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that our behavior cannot be produced free of its history—that everything we do is shaped by neuronal activity from seconds ago, hormone levels from this morning, childhood experiences, and countless other prior causes. Yet the picture isn't uniformly deterministic. Critics point out that these readiness potential experiments focus on trivial tasks like pressing buttons, not meaningful decisions with emotional or moral weight. Neurogeneticist Kevin Mitchell argues that while our predispositions influence and shape our choices, they don't necessarily determine them completely—we may still retain degrees of freedom within the constraints of our neural architecture. Some researchers even propose quantum mechanical explanations, suggesting that the collapse of wave functions in neural voltage-gated channels could provide a mechanism for free will at the cellular level. Whether this rescues genuine agency or simply pushes the determinism question down to quantum randomness remains hotly debated. ## Silicon Mirrors Meanwhile, in the world of artificial intelligence, we're witnessing something remarkably parallel. Modern large language models have reached human-level performance on many benchmarks for reading comprehension and visual reasoning, and leading AI researchers now predict AGI could arrive anywhere from 2027 to the early 2030s. The path toward AGI increasingly draws inspiration from brain architecture, with researchers combining insights from neuroscience, psychology, and computer science to develop more efficient AI systems. Recent breakthroughs include "Brain Language Models" that can predict brain activity patterns and relate them to behavior and mental illness, trained on massive datasets of 80,000 brain scans from 40,000 subjects. What's particularly intriguing is how these AI systems operate. They're essentially prediction machines, trained to anticipate the next word, the next pixel, the next logical step in a sequence. They build internal models of reality through pattern recognition and use those models to generate responses that feel remarkably human-like. Sound familiar? ## The Mirror's Edge Here's where it gets philosophically vertigo-inducing: if human consciousness emerges from predictive processing based on past experiences, and if AI systems achieve general intelligence through similar mechanisms, what separates biological consciousness from artificial intelligence? Both systems would be sophisticated pattern-matching engines, generating responses based on learned associations and predictive models. Brain-inspired AI agents represent a convergence point where artificial systems increasingly mirror human cognitive architecture. The question becomes less about whether machines can think and more about whether thinking itself is what we imagined it to be. Consider the possibility that consciousness—that sense of being a unified self making deliberate choices—might be what it feels like from the inside when a sufficiently complex predictive system models its own states and processes. The "I" that seems to be writing these words could be the emergent narrative that my brain constructs to make sense of its own predictive activities. ## Beyond the Binary: An Evolutionary Continuum But perhaps we're thinking about this wrong. What if the biological-versus-artificial framing misses something fundamental? Consider this: if we define life as anything capable of independent evolution once a foundation is established, then we might be witnessing not a convergence between two discrete types of intelligence, but the emergence of new points along an evolutionary continuum. We already see hybrid forms emerging. Brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink represent direct silicon-synapse integration. AI systems trained on human feedback evolve through interaction with biological intelligence. Our smartphones have become external cognitive organs, extending our memory and processing power. Are these early glimpses of hybrid entities that blend biological and artificial substrates? The continuum might extend far beyond our current biological-to-digital spectrum. What about quantum-biological hybrids that leverage both classical neural networks and quantum computing? Or distributed intelligences that span multiple substrates—part biological brain, part silicon processor, part quantum computer, all networked together? We might even be missing entirely new forms of substrate-independent intelligence that emerge from principles we haven't yet discovered. This evolutionary lens suggests that intelligence—like life itself—isn't about the specific material substrate but about the capacity for self-organization, adaptation, and independent development. Carbon-based brains, silicon-based processors, and whatever comes next might all be temporary way stations in an ongoing evolutionary exploration of what intelligence can become. ## The Convergence Point If this trajectory continues, we may find ourselves in a strange new landscape where the distinction between biological and artificial intelligence becomes increasingly meaningless. Both would be sophisticated information processing systems operating through predictive modeling, generating what appears to be conscious, intentional behavior through purely mechanistic processes. The implications are staggering. If free will is indeed an illusion created by predictive processing, how do we maintain systems of justice and accountability? If AI achieves consciousness through mechanisms similar to human brains, what moral obligations do we have toward these systems? And perhaps most unsettling: if both human and artificial intelligence are essentially elaborate prediction machines, what does that mean for the specialness we've always attributed to human consciousness? This doesn't necessarily diminish human experience—a Bach fugue isn't less beautiful because we understand harmonic principles, and love isn't less meaningful because we can map its neurochemistry. But we're approaching a moment when the boundary between mind and machine might dissolve not because machines become more like us, but because we discover we were more like machines than we ever imagined. The silicon and synapses are converging on the same fundamental truth: intelligence might simply be what happens when matter becomes sufficiently good at predicting itself. Whether this represents the triumph of scientific understanding or the deflation of human exceptionalism may depend entirely on how we choose to interpret the patterns we're uncovering. And yes, I'm aware of the irony in that word "choose." ### The Attention Apocalypse: How Shallow News Consumption is Fracturing Our Democracy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-attention-apocalypse-how-shallow-news-consumption-is-fracturing-our-democracy/ Last updated: 2025-09-27T21:00:13.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/09/socialmedia-news.jpg) There's something deeply unsettling about watching my twenty-something neighbor scroll through TikTok while claiming to be "catching up on the news." Each video lasts maybe thirty seconds, delivering bite-sized fragments of complex geopolitical situations with the same algorithmic precision used to serve up dance crazes and cooking hacks. This isn't just about generational differences—it's about a fundamental shift in how we process information that's quietly undermining the very foundations of informed democratic discourse. As a member of the baby boom generation, I remember when getting the news meant committing time to it. We'd unfold the morning paper over coffee, spending twenty or thirty minutes digesting multiple perspectives on the day's events. Walter Cronkite commanded our attention for a full half-hour each evening, and we gave it to him. Magazine subscriptions meant receiving lengthy, deeply-researched articles that took genuine effort to read and understand. This wasn't just nostalgia—it was a different cognitive relationship with information entirely. ## The Shrinking Mind The data on what's happening to our collective attention span is genuinely alarming. Dr. Gloria Mark's research shows that the average attention span on a screen has decreased from 150 seconds in 2004 to just 47 seconds in 2021—a stunning 103-second decline in less than two decades. To put this in perspective, nearly half of surveyed students reported a decline in school-related attention span as a direct result of their social media consumption. The mechanism behind this cognitive erosion is becoming clearer through neuroscience research. Studies using EEG technology have found that excessive short-form video consumption negatively impacts neural activity underlying attentional functioning, particularly in the frontal areas responsible for executive control. Higher addiction tendencies to short-form videos correlate with diminished self-control abilities, creating a vicious cycle where our capacity to engage with complex information steadily erodes. What's particularly concerning is how this plays out in academic and civic contexts. Research examining the impact of short reels on attention spans found that students who frequently engage with fast-paced content were measurably less able to maintain focus during academic tasks. As one student put it, "After watching a ton of these Instagram Reels, I tend to get more impatient when I'm trying to do longer tasks like homework because I've been trained to digest really fast content." ## The Echo Chamber Effect Parallel to this attention crisis runs another troubling trend: the increasing polarization of our information ecosystem. The promise of the internet was that it would democratize information and expose us to diverse perspectives. Instead, research on COVID-19 discourse found that right-leaning users were more densely connected within their echo chamber and more isolated from opposing viewpoints, with no overlap between the most-retweeted users by left-leaning and right-leaning audiences. The psychology behind echo chambers is more complex than simple algorithmic manipulation. Princeton researchers found that social media users may inadvertently sort themselves into polarized networks by "unfollowing" users they consider untrustworthy news sources, and this polarization can occur even without knowing other users' partisan identities. We're not just victims of algorithmic manipulation—we're active participants in our own intellectual isolation. Echo chambers create "insulated online spaces where individuals are exposed primarily to like-minded perspectives, leading to the reinforcement of pre-existing beliefs and the exclusion of opposing viewpoints." This isn't just about political polarization—it's about the broader erosion of our capacity for nuanced thinking about complex issues. ## The Death of Long-Form Journalism Meanwhile, the institutions that once provided deep, contextual reporting are withering. More than two local newspapers closed per week in 2023, and the U.S. has lost almost 2,900 newspapers and 43,000 journalists between 2005 and 2023\. Weekday newspaper circulation fell to just under 21 million in 2022, down 32% from five years prior. The economics are brutal and the trend seems irreversible. Only nine U.S. newspapers now enjoy average daily print circulations above 100,000\. Even when readers do encounter long-form journalism online, engagement times tell a sobering story: while readers spent around a minute with short-form news articles, long-form articles only managed to hold attention for two minutes—nowhere near enough time to actually read them. The loss isn't just statistical. Research published in 2021 found that the average share of news stories in local newspapers that were investigative had declined significantly beginning in 2018\. We're not just losing newspapers—we're losing the institutional knowledge and investigative capacity that took decades to build. ## The Democratic Deficit This convergence of shortened attention spans and weakened journalism creates a particularly dangerous situation for democratic governance. Research shows that in communities without strong local news organizations, voter participation declines and corruption increases, contributing to the spread of misinformation, political polarization, and reduced trust in media. The problem isn't just that people are less informed—it's that they're differently informed, in ways that make democratic deliberation increasingly difficult. When our information diet consists primarily of algorithmic feeds designed to trigger quick emotional responses, we lose the cognitive habits necessary for the kind of sustained, nuanced thinking that democracy requires. Consider what happens when complex policy issues—healthcare reform, climate change, economic inequality—get compressed into Tweet-sized summaries or TikTok videos. The subtleties, trade-offs, and genuine uncertainties that characterize most important policy questions disappear, replaced by oversimplified narratives that confirm existing biases rather than inform genuine understanding. ## The Stakes Couldn't Be Higher This isn't merely about nostalgia for a golden age of journalism that may never have existed. It's about preserving the cognitive and institutional foundations that make democratic self-governance possible. When citizens lack the attention spans necessary to engage with complexity, when they're trapped in information bubbles that reinforce rather than challenge their assumptions, and when the institutions that provide factual common ground are disappearing, democracy itself becomes fragile. The solution won't be simple or quick. It requires recognizing that our information ecosystem is a public good that deserves the same careful tending we give to our roads, schools, and parks. It means acknowledging that in a democracy, how we think is just as important as what we think. And it demands that we resist the algorithmic pull toward simplification and polarization, even when doing so requires genuine effort and discomfort. The question isn't whether we can return to some imagined past of thoughtful news consumption—that ship has sailed. The question is whether we can build new models of information sharing and civic engagement that serve democratic values in a digital age. The alternative—a society of citizens too distracted to govern themselves wisely—is too frightening to contemplate. Our democracy has survived many challenges, but this one feels different. It's not attacking our institutions from the outside—it's quietly eroding the cognitive foundations that make those institutions work. Recognizing the problem is the first step. Acting on that recognition, together, is what comes next. ### The Sacred Voices We Almost Lost: Remembering the Women Erased from Holy Texts URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-sacred-voices-we-almost-lost-remembering-the-women-erased-from-holy-texts/ Last updated: 2025-09-01T08:20:03.000Z *They held the ink that shaped the sacred—sometimes with trembling hands, sometimes with confident strokes. Their names are missing from footnotes and councils, but their fingerprints remain on the very pages we call holy.* --- In researching the Sacred Editors series, I expected to uncover stories of textual destruction and recovery. What I didn't anticipate was discovering how systematically women's voices had been written out of sacred history—not through dramatic acts of destruction, but through the quiet editorial choices of countless generations. They were there from the beginning: prophets, teachers, poets, scribes, and spiritual leaders whose contributions shaped the world's great religious traditions. Yet across Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism, the same pattern emerges—women's original authority was obscured, softened, or subordinated as sacred texts were canonized and institutional control tightened. This is their story. These are the women we almost lost. ## The Apostle They Transformed: Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene appears in canonical Gospels as the first witness to the resurrection, sent by Jesus to announce the good news to the apostles. Yet by the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great had transformed her into a repentant prostitute—a conflation that would persist for over a thousand years. The Gospel of Mary, discovered in 1896, reveals a different story: Mary as spiritual teacher, receiving special revelation and instructing the other disciples. When Peter challenges her authority, she responds with quiet confidence, defending her right to teach. Early Christian communities preserved multiple writings portraying Mary as an apostolic figure, but as Christianity institutionalized, these texts were excluded and her apostolic identity systematically erased. ## The Nuns Who Sang: The Therīgāthā Poets *"So freed! So thoroughly freed am I—from three crooked things set free: the mortar, the pestle, and my twisted lord..."*These lines come from the Therīgāthā—the "Verses of the Elder Nuns"—among the oldest texts in any religious tradition authored by women. Seventy-three poems in the Pāli Canon offer first-person accounts of awakening, renunciation, and liberation, composed between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. Each is attributed to a specific nun—Ambapali the courtesan, Bhadda Kundalakesa the former ascetic, Patacara who lost her family to tragedy. Yet despite being canonical scripture, the Therīgāthā remains largely unknown, their profound spiritual insights overshadowed by institutional preferences for male authority. ## The Scholar They Constrained: Aisha bint Abi Bakr As the Prophet Muhammad's wife and daughter of his closest companion, Aisha became one of the most authoritative transmitters of hadith in Islamic tradition. She narrated over 2,000 prophetic sayings, actively shaped Islamic jurisprudence, corrected male scholars when their memories failed, and remained a significant political voice until her death. Yet as Islamic institutions developed, women's roles in religious scholarship became increasingly constrained, and Aisha's example was reinterpreted to support rather than challenge restrictions on women's participation in religious leadership. ## The Prophetess They Silenced: Miriam When Miriam took up the tambourine and led the women in victory song after crossing the Red Sea, it was the first recorded act of female prophetic leadership in Hebrew scripture. She was called *neviah*—prophetess—and acknowledged alongside Moses and Aaron. Yet her independence was constrained: when she challenged Moses' exclusive authority, she was struck with leprosy. The pattern repeats throughout Hebrew scripture—women like Deborah, Huldah, and the unnamed woman of Endor exercise genuine prophetic authority, but their stories ultimately reinforce male leadership structures. ## The Mystic Who Claimed Divine Authority: Hildegard of Bingen "From the time I was a little girl... I saw a great light, and in it I heard the voice of the Living Light, saying: 'Write what you see and hear.'" With these words, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) bypassed ecclesiastical resistance to speak prophetically to popes, bishops, and emperors. This Benedictine abbess, visionary, composer, and author dictated over one hundred visions while claiming no personal authority—all was attributed to divine inspiration. Her theological treatises influenced medieval thought, yet it took until 2012 for her to be officially recognized as a Doctor of the Church. ## The Love-Mystic Who Redefined Worship: Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya In 8th-century Basra, Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya walked barefoot in defiance of worldly vanity, singing of God with radical love: "I do not worship You out of fear of hell or love of paradise. I worship You because You are worthy of worship." Her sayings circulated widely, quoted by men and studied in Sufi circles. She held no formal position, yet her poetry became sacred transmission, transforming how mystics understood the relationship between human and divine love. ## The Devotional Rebel: Mirabai In 16th-century northern India, Mirabai sang to her beloved Krishna in tones of longing and liberation. Though married into royal wealth, she rejected societal expectations, calling herself a servant only to God: "The darkness of night is coming. Who will lead me home?" Her bhajans were preserved by generations of lower-caste women who understood that her spiritual longing transcended social boundaries. Her verses remain central to devotional practice across North India. ## The Revolutionary Who Fed Bodies and Souls: Mata Khivi Mata Khivi (1506-1582), wife of the second Sikh Guru, is remembered not for formal theological writing but for her institutional legacy: she organized and expanded the *langar*, the revolutionary form of caste-free, communal eating that remains central to Sikh identity. She demonstrated how shaping sacred practice can be as enduring as shaping sacred text. The Guru Granth Sahib honors her: "She served the congregation with loving care; She spread the Guru's message not by preaching, but by feeding." ## The First English Mystic: Julian of Norwich Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416) authored the first known book in English by a woman after receiving sixteen visions during a near-death illness. Her *Revelations of Divine Love* offered radical theology wrapped in orthodox language, emphasizing divine motherhood and declaring "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Her manuscript circulated in small circles, copied by hand, preserved largely through the diligence of women who recognized its spiritual value. ## The Vedic Philosopher: Gārgī Vāchaknavī In the earliest Hindu scriptures, Gārgī Vāchaknavī appears as a formidable philosopher who debated sages in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad*. Her penetrating questions about the nature of reality pushed the boundaries of theological inquiry: "What is that by being woven on which both space and earth are woven?" Her presence in Vedic literature proves that women's voices were part of the earliest Hindu philosophical tradition, even as later interpretations marginalized their authority. ## The Keeper of Oral Sacred Texts: Yazidi Qawwals In modern Iraq, Yazidi women known as *qawwals* serve as religious singers and keepers of sacred songs, maintaining theological knowledge through performance rather than text. These female spiritual leaders preserve ancient stories of feminine spiritual authority in one of the world's oldest religious traditions. Though persecution has threatened both the community and its oral traditions, these women demonstrate how sacred knowledge can survive through embodied practice when written preservation fails. ## The Anonymous Hands That Preserved Everything Perhaps the most poignant losses are the countless women whose names were never recorded at all—the scribes who corrected masculine errors but received no credit, the nuns who copied theological treatises in medieval scriptoriums, the wives and daughters who prepared parchment and copied by lamplight. Recent scholarship reveals the extent of women's invisible labor. In Buddhist manuscript archives in Japan, thousands of sutras were copied by women—yet few are signed. In medieval Christian Europe, paleographic studies reveal women's handwriting throughout theological manuscripts, their presence visible in letter formation and spacing patterns but absent from official records. In one 15th-century manuscript, a marginal comment reads simply: *"I have copied this in pain. May it help others."* There is no signature. Only the trace of a life lived in quiet, sacred labor. Particular women emerge from this anonymity through detective work. The Chelles Scribes—anonymous nuns from 9th-10th century France—can be identified through manuscript corrections and paleographic signatures in Carolingian scriptoria. Sister Illuminata, a 17th-century Italian Dominican, created illuminated psalters that reflect careful theological interpretation through visual symbolism. Tibetan translator wives—local women who married Indian Buddhist scholars—learned Sanskrit and helped transmit crucial texts into Tibetan, their linguistic skills essential to preserving Buddhism's transmission. These anonymous contributions represent not absence but alternative systems of knowledge preservation. While formal theological education was restricted to men, women maintained religious wisdom through embroidery, storytelling, ritual performance, and marginalia that shaped how sacred texts were understood and transmitted. ## Patterns of Erasure and Resistance Across traditions, women's authority was constrained through remarkably similar mechanisms: **Transformation of Identity**: Mary Magdalene became a repentant sinner rather than an apostolic teacher. Female prophets became exemplars of submission rather than models of leadership. **Canonical Exclusion**: Texts that portrayed women as spiritual authorities were excluded from official scriptural collections, relegated to "apocryphal" status. **Anonymous Attribution**: Women's theological insights were absorbed into anonymous tradition or reattributed to male teachers. **Institutional Marginalization**: As religious communities institutionalized, formal authority increasingly excluded women, even when their contributions were acknowledged. Yet women found ways to resist and preserve their spiritual authority: **Mystical Spirituality**: Figures like Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya claimed direct divine revelation, bypassing institutional hierarchies. **Oral Networks**: Women maintained alternative traditions through storytelling, ritual performance, and community teaching outside formal educational structures. **Coded Authorship**: Some women wrote under male pseudonyms or used rhetorical strategies that allowed them to teach while appearing to submit to traditional authority structures. **Communal Preservation**: Women's religious communities preserved texts and traditions that might otherwise have been lost, creating parallel archives of spiritual knowledge. ## What We Lost, What We Found The systematic erasure of women's voices from sacred texts represents more than historical injustice—it represents a massive loss of spiritual wisdom and theological diversity. When women's perspectives were excluded from canonical collections, entire dimensions of religious experience were marginalized. Yet recovery is possible. Archaeological discoveries, textual analysis, and feminist scholarship are revealing the extent of women's contributions to religious traditions. The Gospel of Mary, the Therīgāthā verses, Aisha's legal interpretations, and countless anonymous hands are being restored to memory. This recovery work reveals that divine revelation has always included female voices, even when later editors preferred to forget them. The women who shaped sacred texts were not marginal figures but central participants in the ongoing work of preserving and transmitting religious wisdom. ## Remembering Forward In our digital age, we face new opportunities and new challenges in preserving women's religious voices. Technology enables the recovery of ancient texts and the amplification of contemporary women's spiritual leadership. Yet digital platforms also risk perpetuating traditional patterns of exclusion if we're not intentional about whose voices are preserved and how. The women we remember in this series—Mary Magdalene, the Therīgāthā poets, Aisha bint Abi Bakr, Miriam, and countless anonymous scribes—remind us that sacred traditions have always been more diverse and inclusive than official histories suggest. Their voices survived not because of institutional support but because communities recognized their spiritual authority and found ways to preserve it despite systematic exclusion. To remember them is not to rewrite history with modern values but to recover the complexity that was always there—to recognize that the sacred has always spoken through multiple voices, even when only some were deemed worthy of official recognition. Their absence from formal religious authority was not the absence of sacred wisdom. It was the absence of recognition. Their memory endures—not just in what was written, but in what was lived, preserved, and passed down through the patient work of communities who knew that divine truth could not be contained by human hierarchies. As we continue to uncover their stories, we discover that the question was never whether women contributed to religious traditions. The question is whether we will remember them. They held the ink. They shaped the sacred. They preserved the wisdom that defines our deepest spiritual traditions. Now, we remember. --- *This post draws from research conducted for the* [*Sacred Editors series*](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)*, particularly "The Women Who Shaped and Were Erased from Sacred Texts," which explores how women's voices were systematically marginalized in religious traditions while revealing the remarkable ways they found to preserve and transmit spiritual wisdom across cultures and centuries.* ### A Real Test of AI: ChatGPT vs Perplexity vs Claude in an NFL Football Pool URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-real-test-of-ai-chatgpt-vs-perplexity-vs-claude-in-an-nfl-football-pool/ Last updated: 2026-01-05T15:17:35.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/nflstadium.png) *Read the* [*mid-season update*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ai-football-picks-mid-season-reality-check/) *to this post to see how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude compared to my human analysis.* *Read the* [*final regular season update*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-final-whistle-what-18-weeks-of-ai-football-picks-actually-taught-me/) *to this post to see how AI performed against my human analysis.* In the grand tradition of sports betting degenerates who suddenly become statistical analysts when money's on the line, I decided to conduct a little experiment this NFL season. Rather than simply throwing my hard-earned cash into the football pool void based on my own questionable judgment, I thought: why not drag artificial intelligence down with me? The setup was elegantly simple. I joined an NFL pool—one of those weekly affairs where you pick winners for every game from Thursday through Monday night, with the Monday game serving as a tiebreaker based on total points scored. The beauty of pools like these is that everyone becomes an instant expert, armed with half-remembered statistics and an unshakeable confidence that this is the year they crack the code. But here's where it gets interesting. Instead of just trusting my own football wisdom (accumulated through years of Fantasy Football mediocrity and an unhealthy obsession with NFL RedZone), I decided to pit the three leading AI platforms against each other—and against me. Same prompt, same resources, same Week 1 slate. Let the artificial minds duke it out. ## The Experiment I fed identical prompts to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, providing them with the full NFL schedule, links to top football analysis sites like The 33rd Team and Football Outsiders, and current Vegas odds. The instructions were clear: don't just follow the betting lines like sheep. Add some nuance, take calculated risks, show some personality in your picks. What emerged was fascinating, revealing the distinct personalities that these AI systems have developed—and one glaring weakness that surprised me. ## The Great Schedule Debacle First, the embarrassing confession: Perplexity, the AI platform built specifically for research and known for its web-scraping prowess, completely face-planted on the basic task of getting the Week 1 schedule right. Not once. Not twice. Four separate attempts before it could accurately tell me who was playing whom. This is like asking a sports reporter to cover the Super Bowl and having them show up to the wrong stadium. Both ChatGPT and Claude nailed the schedule on the first try, making Perplexity's struggles all the more puzzling. For a platform that prides itself on real-time information retrieval, this was like watching a master sommelier confuse wine with grape juice. Perplexity's eventual explanation—something about "incomplete web page previews" and "snippet content"—felt like the AI equivalent of "my dog ate my homework." ## The AI Personalities Emerge Once we got past the basic logistics, the three platforms showed remarkably different approaches to football prognostication. **ChatGPT: The Confident Brainstormer** ChatGPT came across as the friend you'd want to bounce ideas off of at a bar. It was conversational, confident, and easy to work with. Its picks showed a willingness to go against the grain—taking the Falcons over the Bucs, backing the Raiders over the Patriots—while providing clear, digestible reasoning. ChatGPT felt like it was actually enjoying the process of making picks, and showed good knowledge of current storylines (like Aaron Rodgers joining Pittsburgh for a revenge game against his former Jets team). **Claude: The Analytical Perfectionist** Claude brought the receipts. Its analysis was thorough, nuanced, and impressively detailed. It considered injury reports, coaching changes, and even weather conditions. Claude seemed to actually understand football strategy, discussing offensive line issues, defensive upgrades, and matchup advantages with the sophistication of a beat reporter. It was the AI equivalent of that friend who shows up to your Fantasy draft with color-coded spreadsheets and backup plans for their backup plans. **Perplexity: The Cautious Consensus Builder** Once Perplexity finally figured out what games were being played, it produced solid, if unremarkable, picks that largely aligned with conventional wisdom. Its reasoning was sound but safe—the kind of picks that won't win you the pool but probably won't embarrass you either. Perplexity felt like the AI that studied everyone else's homework and then submitted a competent but uninspired version. ## The Picks: Where Artificial Minds Diverge Looking at the predictions, several games revealed the different AI philosophies: **Tampa Bay at Atlanta:** Claude went with the Bucs (citing Atlanta's offensive line issues), while ChatGPT and Perplexity backed the Falcons (home field advantage). This felt like the perfect encapsulation of detailed analysis versus surface-level trends. **Miami at Indianapolis:** Only Perplexity took the Dolphins, showing some independent thinking after its earlier struggles. The reasoning about Miami's explosive passing game was actually quite sound. **Pittsburgh at New York Jets:** This is where the real Aaron Rodgers revenge storyline comes into play—he did sign with Pittsburgh after being released by the Jets, making this Week 1 matchup quite compelling. Claude and ChatGPT both took Pittsburgh, while Perplexity went with the Jets, perhaps giving the home team the benefit of the doubt. **Monday Night Tiebreaker:** The total points predictions clustered tight—ChatGPT at 46, Perplexity at 44, Claude at 43, and my own pick at 44\. When even the AIs can't agree, you know you're in for a coin flip. ## What This Reveals About AI This experiment illuminated something crucial about how these platforms approach complex, subjective tasks. ChatGPT excelled at the collaborative aspects—it felt like working with a knowledgeable partner who could adapt and brainstorm. Claude brought genuine analytical depth, processing information in ways that felt almost human-expert level. Perplexity, despite its research hiccups, ultimately provided solid consensus thinking. But here's what struck me most: none of them captured the essential irrationality that makes sports predictions both maddening and compelling. They approached this like a math problem to be solved rather than a beautiful mess of human emotion, random chance, and pure chaos that defines NFL Sundays. Each AI brought its own biases and blind spots. ChatGPT was good at identifying compelling storylines and showed solid current knowledge. Claude sometimes overthought obvious picks. Perplexity couldn't even get the basic facts straight initially, though it recovered with reasonable analysis. ## The Human Element As I compiled my own picks alongside these digital oracles, I realized something interesting: I was using them not as replacement decision-makers, but as sophisticated research assistants. Each platform highlighted different angles I might not have considered, from injury reports to historical matchups to coaching tendencies. My final picks represent a blend of their insights with my own football intuitions (such as they are). Did I trust the AIs more than my own judgment? Absolutely. Will that prove to be a mistake? We'll know in exactly one week. ## The Verdict (So Far) If I had to rank them based purely on this first week's performance: 1. **Claude** wins for analytical depth and genuine football insights 2. **ChatGPT** takes second for collaborative ease and creative reasoning (even if some of it was fictional) 3. **Perplexity** brings up the rear, despite eventual solid picks, because of the basic execution failures But here's the beautiful thing about football—and maybe about AI—none of this might matter come Monday night. The Ravens could blow out the Bills, the 49ers could struggle in Seattle, and my gut feeling about taking Chicago over Minnesota could prove that human irrationality beats artificial intelligence. That's the real test of AI: not whether it can process information or generate coherent analysis, but whether it can navigate the gloriously unpredictable chaos of real-world events. In one week, we'll see how artificial intelligence fares against the beautiful randomness of grown men in helmets chasing a bouncing ball around a field. May the best algorithm win. (But I'm still putting my money where my gut is.) --- ## Week 1 Predictions Summary | Game | My Prediction | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Claude | | -------------------------- | ------------- | ------------- | ------------- | ------------- | | **Thursday, Sept 4th** | | | | | | Dallas at Philadelphia | Philadelphia | Philadelphia | Philadelphia | Philadelphia | | | | | | | | **Friday, Sept 5th** | | | | | | Kansas City at LA Chargers | Kansas City | Kansas City | Kansas City | Kansas City | | | | | | | | **Sunday, Sept 7th** | | | | | | Tampa Bay at Atlanta | Atlanta | Atlanta | Atlanta | Tampa Bay | | Cincinnati at Cleveland | Cincinnati | Cincinnati | Cincinnati | Cincinnati | | Miami at Indianapolis | Indianapolis | Indianapolis | Miami | Indianapolis | | Carolina at Jacksonville | Jacksonville | Jacksonville | Jacksonville | Jacksonville | | Las Vegas at New England | Las Vegas | Las Vegas | New England | Las Vegas | | Arizona at New Orleans | New Orleans | New Orleans | New Orleans | Arizona | | Pittsburgh at NY Jets | Pittsburgh | New York | New York | Pittsburgh | | NY Giants at Washington | Washington | Washington | New York | Washington | | Tennessee at Denver | Denver | Denver | Denver | Denver | | San Francisco at Seattle | San Francisco | San Francisco | San Francisco | San Francisco | | Detroit at Green Bay | Green Bay | Green Bay | Green Bay | Green Bay | | Houston at LA Rams | Los Angeles | Los Angeles | Los Angeles | Los Angeles | | Baltimore at Buffalo | Buffalo | Buffalo | Buffalo | Buffalo | | | | | | | | **Monday, Sept 8th** | | | | | | Minnesota at Chicago | Chicago | Minnesota | Minnesota | Chicago | | **Points** | 44 | 46 | 44 | 43 | *Update after the games:* Looking at the Week 1 results, the artificial intelligence rankings tell a fascinating story about the limits of data-driven predictions. **Claude emerged as the surprise winner** with the best record, followed by my human picks in second place, ChatGPT in third, and Perplexity bringing up the rear despite its eventually solid analysis. What's particularly striking is how several games defied all logical prediction models—Kansas City's shocking loss to the Chargers in São Paulo (where all four of us confidently picked the Chiefs), Minnesota's miraculous comeback victory over Chicago that no algorithm could have anticipated, and Tampa Bay's dominant performance in Atlanta that only Claude correctly predicted. The results highlight something crucial about sports prediction: no amount of data analysis can account for the beautiful chaos of actual games. International neutral-site games create unpredictable dynamics, fourth-quarter comebacks happen regardless of statistical probabilities, and in-game injuries can instantly flip storylines that looked set in stone. While Claude's analytical depth proved most effective this week, the tight clustering of our Monday night point predictions (43-46 vs. actual 51) shows that even the winner was far from perfect. Sports remain gloriously, frustratingly human—which is exactly why we'll all be back next week, convinced we've finally cracked the code. ### When Enemies Became Librarians: How Opposing Faiths Saved Each Other's Sacred Texts URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-enemies-became-librarians-how-opposing-faiths-saved-each-others-sacred-texts/ Last updated: 2025-08-25T08:18:15.000Z *Sometimes, the ones who saved your scripture were the ones you called infidel.* --- History loves its narratives of religious conflict—crusades and conquests, inquisitions and holy wars. But hidden beneath the familiar stories of theological warfare runs a quieter, more remarkable tale: of how supposed enemies repeatedly became the unlikely guardians of each other's most sacred texts. While researching the Sacred Editors series, I discovered that some of the world's most precious religious manuscripts exist today not despite religious rivalry, but because of it. The very people deemed heretics, infidels, or pagans often proved to be the most dedicated preservers of traditions they officially opposed. ## The House of Wisdom: Where Enemies Gathered Texts In 9th-century Baghdad, under the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, an extraordinary project was flourishing. In the sprawling Bayt al-Hikma—the House of Wisdom—Muslim scholars gathered texts from across the known world: Sanskrit treatises, Persian epics, Greek philosophy, and Christian theological works. They didn't come merely to destroy or denounce. They came to translate, preserve, and debate. Christian Nestorian scholars like Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq translated Galen and Aristotle from Syriac into Arabic. Jewish scholars contributed to astronomy and medicine. Muslim philosophers such as al-Kindī and later Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) used these texts to build bridges between revelation and reason. These were not casual encounters. They were acts of intellectual faith—of believing that truth could pass between enemies. The practical impact was profound. During a period when many early Christian texts were being lost, ignored, or systematically destroyed in the Latin West due to canonical standardization and theological suspicion, Islamic scholars were copying them, commenting on them, and often protecting them—not because they accepted their theology, but because they valued knowledge (*'ilm*) itself as a reflection of divine truth. ## The Irony of Polemical Preservation Centuries later, in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scholars cooperated again in the Toledo School of Translators. Jewish intermediaries rendered Arabic texts into vernacular Spanish or Hebrew; Christian scholars then translated them into Latin. Most remarkably, the Qur'an—once feared and banned in Europe—was preserved in part because Christian monks copied it to better understand and refute it. The polemical motive ensured the survival of early Qur'anic manuscripts on European soil. As scholars now recognize, "the most effective polemics required the most careful preservation." This pattern repeated throughout history. Islamic scholars preserved significant Christian materials, though their choices often reflected specific theological interests rather than comprehensive archival intentions. Texts like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of James survived primarily through Eastern Christian and Arabic manuscript traditions after being marginalized in Western Christianity. ## Beyond the Abrahamic World The preservation-through-opposition pattern extended far beyond Christianity and Islam. In medieval China, Buddhist monasteries preserved Confucian classics during periods of political upheaval, while Confucian scholars maintained Buddhist and Daoist texts when those traditions faced suppression. When Mongol invasions threatened to destroy Chinese literary culture entirely, it was often Buddhist monks—members of a "foreign" religion—who hid and copied classical Chinese texts. In India, Muslim rulers and scholars, even while destroying some Hindu temples, often patronized Sanskrit learning and preserved Hindu astronomical and mathematical texts that proved useful for administration and scholarship. The Mughal emperor Akbar commissioned translations of Hindu epics and Zoroastrian texts, seeing them as valuable sources of wisdom despite theological differences. During the Crusades, some Christian knights destroyed Islamic libraries, but others protected them. In cities like Antioch and Jerusalem, Greek Orthodox Christians—caught between Crusaders and Muslims—often hid texts belonging to both sides, understanding that knowledge itself was more valuable than the particular hands that held it. ## The Complex Motivations Why did supposed enemies become such effective librarians? The motivations were complex and varied: **Practical Necessity**: Islamic scholars needed Greek medical texts regardless of their pagan origins. Christian administrators required Arabic legal codes to govern diverse populations. Buddhist monasteries preserved Confucian classics because literacy itself was valuable, regardless of doctrinal differences. **Intellectual Curiosity**: Medieval scholars often distinguished between religious truth (specific to their tradition) and natural or philosophical truth (universal and discoverable by reason). This distinction allowed them to preserve and study texts from other traditions without compromising their own theological commitments. **Polemical Purposes**: To effectively refute an opponent's beliefs, scholars needed detailed knowledge of their scriptures and doctrines. This led to careful study and copying of texts they theologically opposed. **Administrative Pragmatism**: In Sicily after the Norman reconquest, Arabic-speaking Christian administrators preserved Muslim legal and scientific texts well into the 12th century because they needed these documents to govern effectively. ## When Neighbors Became Guardians Perhaps most moving are the individual acts of preservation that crossed religious lines during times of persecution. During the Spanish Inquisition, some Morisco communities buried their Islamic manuscripts rather than burn them. But documented cases show sympathetic Christian neighbors helped hide or smuggle them—echoing the Jewish Genizah principle: if it bears the name of God, let it not be destroyed. These intimate acts of preservation reveal something profound about human nature: even in times of religious conflict, some people recognized that cultural memory transcended theological boundaries. ## Modern Echoes of Ancient Patterns This tradition of cross-religious preservation continues today. In 2012, when Islamist militants advanced on Timbuktu threatening to burn its ancient manuscript libraries, Muslim librarians and Christian aid workers collaborated to smuggle 350,000 manuscripts out of the city. They hid them in rice sacks, canoes, and taxis, demonstrating that the impulse to preserve knowledge across religious lines endures. During the Bosnian war, Muslim and Christian citizens linked arms to protect Sarajevo's National Library, even as snipers fired on them. Thousands of manuscripts—Jewish, Islamic, Orthodox—were rescued by people who saw cultural memory as a common good transcending ethnic and religious divisions. Today's interfaith digital initiatives continue this pattern. The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library digitizes Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Yazidi manuscripts alike, seeing preservation as a universal human responsibility. In Jerusalem, institutions like the National Library of Israel collaborate with Palestinian scholars to preserve Arabic texts, recognizing that manuscript heritage belongs to all humanity. ## The Porosity of Sacred Boundaries These stories reveal a fundamental truth about religious traditions: they were never sealed vaults. They breathed through shared hands. Some sacred texts exist today only because someone from another religion believed they were worth saving. The Corpus Aristotelicum reached medieval Europe through Islamic preservers. Sanskrit medical texts survived in Arabic translation when the original manuscripts were lost. Early Christian writings were copied by Muslim scribes in Egypt and Syria. Jewish scholars preserved Arabic commentaries on Aristotle and Plato. Moses Maimonides wrote in Judeo-Arabic, and his works were later studied by Christian scholastics like Thomas Aquinas. A faith's rival was often its librarian. ## Lessons for Our Digital Age As we face new challenges in preserving religious heritage—from format obsolescence to political censorship to corporate platform failures—these historical patterns offer crucial insights. First, diversity of preservation efforts strengthens overall resilience. No single institution, tradition, or technology can guarantee long-term survival. The texts that have endured did so because multiple communities, often with competing interests, found reasons to preserve them. Second, intellectual curiosity and scholarly exchange often prove more effective at preservation than official institutional efforts. The casual copying by curious scholars, the careful study by theological opponents, the practical use by administrators—these informal networks of preservation frequently outlasted formal institutional commitments. Third, preservation across religious boundaries requires recognizing that wisdom transcends particular traditions while respecting the sacred boundaries that give spiritual knowledge its power and meaning. ## When Preservation Transcends Theology The medieval scholars who preserved each other's texts understood something we sometimes forget: knowledge itself has value beyond the particular religious framework that produced it. They could distinguish between accepting a tradition's theological claims and recognizing its intellectual contributions. This doesn't blur theological boundaries or suggest doctrinal equivalence. Rather, it highlights shared responsibility for preserving human religious heritage and the complex ways different communities have contributed to maintaining access to ancient wisdom traditions. In our polarized world, these stories remind us that even supposed enemies can find common ground in the simple recognition that some things are too precious to let disappear—regardless of who originally wrote them or what we think of their theology. The sacred texts that survived history's countless conflicts did so not only through the devotion of believers but through the curiosity of outsiders, the pragmatism of administrators, and the scholarly conscience of those who believed that truth was larger than any single tradition's claims upon it. As we work to preserve religious heritage for future generations, we might remember that our most unlikely allies may be those who disagree with us most deeply—if we can find shared ground in the conviction that human spiritual seeking, in all its diversity, deserves to be remembered. --- *This post draws from research conducted for the* [*Sacred Editors series*](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)*, which examines how human decisions have shaped the survival and loss of sacred texts across cultures and millennia. The preservation of religious texts across theological boundaries reveals patterns that continue to inform contemporary approaches to cultural heritage and interfaith cooperation.* ### The Digital Dark Age: Why Electronic Records Could Leave Future Archaeologists Empty-Handed URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-digital-dark-age-why-electronic-records-could-leave-future-archaeologists-empty-handed/ Last updated: 2025-08-18T08:16:26.000Z *One of the most fascinating discoveries while researching the* [*Sacred Editors series*](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) *was how our digital age—seemingly the most documented period in human history—may paradoxically become the most invisible to future archaeologists.* --- We built eternal libraries on servers with expiration dates. While researching the destruction and recovery of sacred texts across millennia, I expected to write about fire, flood, and conquest. Instead, I found myself confronting a more subtle threat: the coming digital dark age. The very technologies we trust to preserve our most sacred memories may be creating the greatest textual vulnerability in human history. ## The Invisible Catastrophe Imagine: It's 3:47 AM when automated systems at a major digital archive detect something chilling—a cascade failure corrupting files containing centuries of sacred texts. Within hours, commentaries that survived the burning of libraries, invasions, and decades of exile face erasure not by fire or conquest, but by the quiet decay of bit rot and failed storage arrays. This scenario isn't science fiction—it represents the daily reality facing digital archives worldwide. While this particular incident is fictional, the threats it illustrates are devastatingly real. The paradox crystallizes our digital age: we have created unprecedented access to sacred and historical texts while simultaneously making them more vulnerable than ever before. Consider what archaeologists studying our era might find. Unlike previous civilizations that left stone tablets, papyrus scrolls, and printed books, we're creating a civilization of invisible records—digital files that exist only as magnetic patterns on rapidly degrading media, dependent on electrical power, specific software, and compatible hardware to remain readable. ## The Multiple Modes of Digital Death Digital preservation faces threats that would have been incomprehensible to ancient scribes: **Bit Rot**: Every digital file decays gradually, imperceptibly, but inevitably. Hard drives develop bad sectors, flash storage loses charge, even optical discs succumb to chemical breakdown. Unlike physical texts that degrade visibly over centuries, digital corruption often happens silently until the moment files become completely unreadable. **Format Obsolescence**: A CD-ROM containing digitized texts from 1999 may no longer run on modern computers, trapped in formats that current software cannot interpret. Future archaeologists might possess our storage media but lack the digital Rosetta Stone needed to decode them. **Metadata Loss**: When files are copied or migrated, critical contextual information often disappears—dates, authors, cultural significance, community discussions. A Buddhist digital archive might contain thousands of scanned texts, but if filenames are reduced to serial numbers, meaning evaporates. The text exists, but its identity is lost. **Platform Dependency**: In 2011, Yahoo's closure of GeoCities erased millions of personal websites overnight, including digital archives maintained by small religious communities worldwide. In 2019, Google+ shut down, taking with it countless discussion groups where scholars shared translations and commentary. Sacred memory, once mediated by scribes and priests, is now filtered by terms of service and subject to algorithmic interpretation. ## The Cathedral on a USB Stick As one digital preservationist lamented after the 2013 catastrophic loss of the Early Hymnal Collection: "We built a cathedral on a USB stick." Unique scans of 19th-century hymnals, digitized by volunteers and not yet mirrored elsewhere, were lost permanently due to server failure and inadequate backup protocols. This fragility extends beyond religious texts to all our digital heritage. Corporate policy shifts, government censorship, and simple technical failures can erase access instantly. In China, digital Qur'ans and Tibetan scriptures face algorithmic filtering. In Iran, Bahá'í texts are systematically blocked. In Russia, Jehovah's Witness literature vanished from app stores following political designations. Even well-intentioned digitization can create new vulnerabilities. When communities rush to digitize sacred texts without proper preservation planning, they often create single points of failure—digital copies that exist in only one location, in proprietary formats, without community control over long-term access. ## What Future Archaeologists Will Find Imagine archaeologists in the year 3025 trying to understand our civilization. They might discover: - Physical ruins of server farms, but no way to read the data they once contained - Smartphones and tablets, but no functioning electrical grid to power them - Printed circuit boards and hard drives, but no documentation of the file systems or software needed to interpret the information - USB drives and optical discs that have chemically degraded beyond recovery They might conclude that early 21st-century humans were technologically sophisticated but left behind far fewer readable records than civilizations that carved in stone or wrote on parchment. The digital dark age isn't science fiction—it's already happening. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, warns that "we are living in a digital dark age" where vast amounts of cultural heritage risk disappearing due to technological obsolescence and institutional neglect. ## The Archaeology of Our Own Time Perhaps most troubling is how this affects our understanding of ourselves. When the Christian Classics Ethereal Library experienced funding lapses and server migration failures in 2013, they didn't just lose digitized texts—they lost the rich layer of user-generated notes, commentaries, and linked resources that represented living community engagement with those texts. This pattern repeats across cultures and traditions. We're not just risking the loss of static documents, but the dynamic conversations, interpretations, and community practices that give texts their meaning. Future scholars might recover fragments of our sacred literature but miss entirely the digital ecosystems of commentary and practice that surrounded them. ## The Race Against Obsolescence Some organizations are fighting back with innovative preservation strategies: The **Arctic World Archive** in Svalbard stores sacred texts encoded on photosensitive film designed to last 500-1,000 years, buried in permafrost vaults. The **Rosetta Project** micro-etches endangered languages onto nickel disks readable with simple optical microscopes, making them accessible even if our current technologies fail. **Distributed storage systems** using blockchain and peer-to-peer networks prevent single-point failures. Tibetan Buddhist archives now span servers across India, Switzerland, and the United States, coordinated through partnerships that ensure community ownership despite political restrictions. **Hybrid preservation** combines digital access with traditional methods. Ethiopian monasteries train local scribes in both manuscript copying and digital scanning. Native American communities use tablets for story preservation while maintaining oral traditions. ## The Stewardship Imperative The solution isn't abandoning digital technologies but using them more wisely. Digital preservation requires what technology ethicist Shannon Vallor calls "technomoral wisdom"—the ability to discern how emerging technologies can serve human flourishing rather than undermining the communities they claim to support. For sacred texts and cultural heritage, this means recognizing that preservation isn't simply about storing data but maintaining living relationships between communities and their foundational documents. It means creating multiple backup systems, using open standards, training local communities in preservation techniques, and ensuring that digitization serves community needs rather than external agendas. We are all, in some sense, sacred editors—not just of texts themselves but of the infrastructures that preserve and transmit them. Every choice about storage formats, access protocols, and preservation strategies shapes how future generations will encounter our most precious cultural memories. ## Between Memory and Materiality The irony is profound: never before have humans created so much documentation of their lives, thoughts, and spiritual practices. Yet never before has that documentation been so vulnerable to complete disappearance. We're simultaneously the most recorded and potentially the most forgettable civilization in history. Future archaeologists studying our era will face a unique challenge. They might find extensive physical remains of our digital infrastructure—data centers, servers, devices—but struggle to access the actual content those systems once contained. Our civilization's memory palace might survive as an empty building, its contents scattered to digital winds. The choice isn't inevitable. It's editorial. Made through countless individual and institutional decisions about how we relate to both technology and tradition. The cloud is not the final resting place of human memory but the latest tabernacle—temporary and contingent like all human constructions. Whether it preserves our most sacred stories for future generations depends not on the sophistication of our storage technologies but on the depth of our commitment to the communities that create, preserve, and transmit the knowledge that defines us. The future archaeologists of humanity are watching. What will we leave them to find? --- *This post draws from research conducted for the* [*Sacred Editors series*](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)*, exploring how human decisions have shaped the survival and loss of sacred texts across cultures and millennia. The full series examines patterns of textual destruction and recovery from ancient times to the digital age.* ### Uncovering the Hidden Human Stories Behind the World's Sacred Texts URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uncovering-the-hidden-human-stories-behind-the-worlds-sacred-texts/ Last updated: 2025-08-12T17:42:34.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/sacrededitorsbooks-2.png) Not too many people know that one of my eclectic side interests is tracing the history of sacred texts from major religions. For the past decade or two, I've been accumulating the fascinating human stories of power, political intrigue, transmission, and translation that went into these texts—many of which are more dynamic than any thriller novel. Now, thanks to retirement, I've been able to focus on compiling these stories into a series of books called the [Sacred Editors](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDR6GKV1?binding=paperback&ref=kevinmeyer.com). My goal has never been to change minds. For all we know, each political decision, each translation or even mistranslation, could be an act of divine intervention and providence. I am not a scholar—just a very curious synthesizer of scholarly research from across multiple academic silos, working to tell deeply researched yet accessible stories for everyone to read and engage with. To do this, I first compiled lists of the top 20+ scholars in each area, carefully balanced across perspectives, then accessed their research via primary sources only. Each chapter begins with a story grounded in historical records, followed by discussion of why it matters, then speculation—by scholars, not me—on what could have happened if a decision or translation had taken a different path, ending with a "Scholar Debate" where different expert perspectives are presented. It's left to the reader to make judgments. **The Seven-Book Journey** There are five core books of about 500 pages each, complete with detailed footnotes and citations for verification and supporting appendices. Each tradition has taken separate paths: Christianity marked by power struggles, hundreds of translation problems, and council politics; Judaism by exile, diaspora, and the challenge of preserving tradition without a temple; Islam by rapid canonization and the burning of variant manuscripts; Buddhism by oral transmission across cultures and the devastating library destruction at Nalanda; Hinduism by millennia of oral tradition and the challenge of deciding which of countless texts deserved preservation. Since common themes emerged across traditions, there are two additional thematic books. One describes how each faith has seen vast destruction of texts through fire, persecution, or deliberate suppression—and how communities fought to recover what was lost. The second deals with how women were central both within and around sacred texts but were systematically marginalized and even erased entirely across every tradition—and attempts to recover their forgotten stories and contributions. Great care has been taken to treat each tradition respectfully. In fact, one of my first steps was researching how to approach these sensitive topics and creating guidelines to ensure reverent treatment throughout the writing process. These are not books about theology, but about history—the human story of how sacred texts were preserved, transmitted, and shaped across centuries, regardless of one's beliefs about their divine origins. I know this is very niche and not for everyone, but if you're interested in the often untold stories of the human—perhaps still divinely-inspired—side of how the world's sacred texts evolved, I invite you to take a look. This is really just me wanting to share these remarkable stories. In fact, each book can be read online completely free without registration at [SacredEditors.com](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). But the books are also available for those who prefer that format ([paperback and Kindle at Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDR6GKV1?binding=paperback&ref=kevinmeyer.com), soon Apple Books and Audible) or for reference. *For a deeper look into how I researched and wrote these books, yes with the help of AI tools,* [*read this post*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/behind-the-sacred-editors-how-i-used-ai-to-synthesize-decades-of-sacred-text-research/)*.* ![Christianity Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-christianity.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Christianity](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMW3V79?ref=kevinmeyer.com) From the Gospels of Thomas and Mary to the Book of Revelation, this volume traces how a diverse and chaotic swirl of early Christian texts became a multiple Bibles. It explores battles over canon, translation, and authority—revealing how bishops, emperors, and scribes shaped Christian Scripture as much as apostles and martyrs. ![Judaism Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-judaism.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Judaism](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMSZ38V?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Long before the Hebrew Bible was finalized, Jewish communities wrestled with competing scrolls, regional variants, and sacred memory shaped by exile and empire. This volume follows the evolution of Torah and Tanakh—from Elephantine to the Dead Sea Scrolls—and the editorial choices that defined Jewish textual tradition. ![Islam Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-islam.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Islam](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMWYQS1?ref=kevinmeyer.com) The Qur’an is revered by Muslims as the unaltered word of God—yet even within early Islamic history, questions arose about recitation, preservation, and transmission. This book respectfully explores the complex human history of how the Qur’an and its interpretive traditions were preserved, taught, and standardized. ![Hinduism Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-hinduism.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Hinduism](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMWYHWW?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Hindu sacred texts span millennia, from ancient Vedic chants to epic narratives and philosophical commentaries. This volume investigates how oral transmission, sectarian priorities, and poetic vision shaped the evolving canon of Hinduism—while spotlighting both preservation and innovation across time. ![Buddhism Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-buddhist.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Buddhism](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKMZHRW8?ref=kevinmeyer.com) From palm-leaf sutras to stone inscriptions and Silk Road scrolls, Buddhist texts have undergone extraordinary journeys. This book traces how different schools and regions preserved—or lost—sacred teachings, and how editorial transmission became central to defining Buddhist identity across Asia. ![The Sacred Lost Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-lost-texts.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Lost Texts](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FL2TZ8YC?ref=kevinmeyer.com) War, fire, colonization, and decay have destroyed more sacred texts than survive today. This volume recounts the dramatic stories of what was lost—and what was miraculously recovered—across religious traditions. It reminds us that preservation is never guaranteed, and memory always contested. ![Lost Women Cover](https://www.sacrededitors.com/content/images/2025/08/cover-lost-women.jpg) ### [Sacred Editors: Lost Women](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FL2XMBNP?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Behind every sacred tradition are women who taught, led, composed, and were later erased. This volume uncovers the lost voices of female prophets, apostles, scribes, and interpreters—asking not just what they said, but what their exclusion has cost our spiritual history. ### Behind the Sacred Editors: How I Used AI to Synthesize Decades of Sacred Text Research URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/behind-the-sacred-editors-how-i-used-ai-to-synthesize-decades-of-sacred-text-research/ Last updated: 2025-08-12T17:27:32.000Z *A transparent look at using artificial intelligence as a research partner while maintaining scholarly integrity and human responsibility.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/sacrededitorsbooks-3.png) When I tell people I spent the last year using AI to help write [seven books about sacred text development across world religions](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDR6GKV1?binding=paperback&ref=kevinmeyer.com), I usually get one of two reactions: fascination or horror. The fascination comes from people curious about AI's research capabilities. The horror comes from those—quite reasonably—concerned about AI replacing human scholarship or spreading misinformation about sensitive religious topics. Both reactions deserve honest answers. So let me pull back the curtain on exactly how I used AI as a research tool, what worked, what didn't, and why I believe this approach actually enhanced rather than undermined scholarly rigor. **The Challenge: Seven Traditions, Thousands of Scholars** My annual *bhāvanā* this year combined two interests: continuing my exploration of how sacred texts developed historically, and taking a deep dive into AI as a research tool. The scope was ambitious—seven books covering Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu textual development, plus books on women's erased contributions and the destruction/recovery of sacred texts across traditions. The challenge was synthesizing scholarship across multiple disciplines—archaeology, textual criticism, theology, sociology, linguistics—while maintaining accuracy in representing established experts' positions without misrepresenting their nuanced scholarly debates. **The Five-Lane Workflow** Rather than treating AI as a magic answer machine, I developed a five-lane workflow, with each lane serving specific functions: **Lane 1: Human Foundation** Everything started with me—collecting stories over years of reading, initial research into fascinating historical moments, identifying potential narrative threads, and writing rough initial drafts. This human foundation remained crucial throughout, as AI tools needed substantial context and direction to be useful rather than misleading. **Lane 2: Exploration and Structure (ChatGPT)** I used ChatGPT as a thinking partner to explore how to present complex material accessibly. This included identifying key scholars in each field, brainstorming narrative approaches, and structuring chapters that would engage general readers while maintaining scholarly accuracy. This brainstorming is ChatGPT's strength. **Lane 3: Verification and Fact-Checking (Perplexity)** Every claim underwent verification using Perplexity's real-time web search capabilities. This was crucial for ensuring I accurately represented what scholars actually said rather than my interpretation of their positions. Perplexity caught many instances where my understanding didn't match the experts' actual claims. Research is Perplexity's strength, so much so that I now use it instead of Google for most web search tasks. **Lane 4: Synthesis and Advanced Writing (Claude)** Claude helped integrate material from multiple sources while maintaining consistent voice and ensuring complex scholarly debates were presented fairly. Claude's strength in working with longer texts and handling complex synthesis made it invaluable for maintaining coherence across hundreds of pages. Even with ChatGPT-5's recent release, I continue to find Claude (Sonnet 4) far superior for complex, high-level writing tasks. **Lane 5: Expert Human Review** Subject matter experts reviewed all content—the most critical stage for catching oversimplifications, misunderstandings, or inadvertent bias that AI tools couldn't identify. **The Complexity of AI Prompting** Getting accurate, nuanced responses from AI required far more sophistication than most people realize. The oft-report "hallucinations" are generally due to poor prompting, with insufficient details, guidance, and especially reinforcement. With this project, standard prompts evolved into detailed, multi-page documents that included: - Precise role definitions ("You are a PhD scholar of \[tradition\] textual history with 25 years of experience") - Clear limitations ("I am not a scholar or historian, just synthesizing existing scholarship") - Specific instructions about representing established experts accurately - Detailed guidelines for approaching each religious tradition with appropriate sensitivity and respect - Warnings against oversimplification of complex debates - Requirements to distinguish between scholarly consensus and ongoing disagreements - Reminders to avoid speculation not grounded in credentialed expert work **The Cross-Platform Verification Strategy** One important innovation was using each AI platform to check the others. ChatGPT would generate initial content, Perplexity would fact-check specific claims and find contradicting sources, Claude would synthesize and verify overall narrative consistency, then back to Perplexity to verify Claude's synthesis. This created multiple layers of verification that caught errors, oversimplifications, and misrepresentations that any single platform might have missed. All of which was eventually checked by humans. **What This Enabled (And What It Couldn't Replace)** This methodology enabled me to synthesize knowledge buried across scholarly silos—archaeology, textual criticism, theology, sociology—into narratives that make extraordinary human stories accessible to general readers. The AI tools enhanced my ability to work with complex material efficiently and catch errors through systematic cross-verification. But the AI couldn't replace human judgment about what matters spiritually, how to approach sensitive religious topics respectfully, or how to balance competing scholarly interpretations fairly. Every narrative choice, every ethical decision about representation, every assessment of what would serve readers best remained entirely human responsibilities. **The Bigger Picture** Understanding how sacred texts developed doesn't diminish their spiritual significance—it reveals the extraordinary human devotion that preserved divine wisdom across centuries of change, loss, and recovery. Every sacred text we can read today survived because countless individuals chose preservation over convenience, often at great personal cost. Whether achieved through traditional research methods or AI-enhanced synthesis, that recognition transforms how we read ancient words: not as artifacts from a distant past, but as living traditions maintained by human hands and hearts in partnership with whatever divine forces guide the preservation of wisdom across time. *The Sacred Editors series is available on* [*Amazon*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DDR6GKV1?binding=paperback&ref=kevinmeyer.com) *and can be read free online at* [*SacredEditors.com*](https://www.sacrededitors.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) ### When Prophets Look Like Madmen: Walter Russell and the Problem of Being Too Early URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-prophets-look-like-madmen-walter-russell-and-the-problem-of-being-too-early/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T13:33:32.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/10/walterrussell.jpg) There's something unsettling about Walter Russell's story, and it's not what you might expect. In May 1921, this accomplished New York sculptor, painter, and architect (a man who had created portraits of presidents and designed $30 million worth of cooperative apartments) entered what his family feared was a psychiatric emergency. For 39 days, Russell remained in a trance-like state, claiming to access "the source of all knowledge." When he emerged, he frantically documented everything he'd experienced: philosophical and scientific revelations that would form his manuscript *The Universal One*. He sent his findings to 500 leading minds of the time, and nearly all dismissed him as mad, except one. Nikola Tesla, perhaps the era's greatest genius, was so struck by Russell's insights that he urged him to seal the work away for a thousand years, insisting humanity wasn't ready for its truths. That's the part that haunts me. Not whether Russell actually tapped into some cosmic consciousness, but the question of what we do with ideas that arrive before their conceptual framework does. ## The Universe as Mind, Not Mechanism Russell's core proposition was radical for 1926: matter wasn't solid but crystallized light slowed by thought. Everything around us, from rocks to human bodies, was composed of light patterns shaped by consciousness. He believed the universe was fundamentally mental, not material, and that all things moved in rhythmic cycles of expansion and contraction, like breath. Reading this now, after decades of developments in physics and consciousness studies, something striking emerges: Russell was essentially proposing what contemporary philosophers call panpsychism, the theory that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like mass or electrical charge. This isn't fringe mysticism anymore. Consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, like mass or electrical charge. The idea goes back to antiquity. Plato took it seriously, and it has had some prominent supporters over the years, including psychologist William James and philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. Philosopher Philip Goff's 2019 book *Galileo's Error* argues forcefully for panpsychism, and the theory has gained serious traction in contemporary philosophy of mind. The key insight: maybe consciousness doesn't emerge from complex arrangements of unconscious matter. Maybe it's been there all along, and complexity just amplifies and organizes what was already present at the fundamental level. ## From Mysticism to Mathematics Here's where Russell's story gets interesting for those of us trying to connect dots across disciplines. When he claimed that "everything sought harmony and balance" and that reality operated through "rhythmic balanced interchange," he lacked the mathematical and conceptual tools to make these ideas testable. So they sounded like mysticism. But consider neuroscientist Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed in the early 2000s. IIT suggests consciousness is integrated information, a fundamental quantity that can be measured mathematically. The theory entails that consciousness is a fundamental quantity, that it is graded, that it is present in infants and animals, and that it should be possible to build conscious artifacts. IIT draws an analogy between its identification of consciousness as a property of certain integrated information systems and physics' identification of mass or charge as a property of particles. Russell claimed matter was "compressed light" and consciousness shaped physical form. IIT says the intrinsic nature of physical systems with sufficient integration is consciousness itself. The language is different, but the core intuition (consciousness as fundamental rather than emergent) is remarkably similar. ## The Russellian Monism Connection There's an almost eerie coincidence here. In contemporary philosophy of mind, there's a position called "Russellian monism," but it's named after philosopher Bertrand Russell, not Walter Russell. Yet both Russells arrived at strikingly similar conclusions about consciousness and matter. Russellian monism (Bertrand's version) suggests that the intrinsic/concrete/categorical features of matter which physical science remains silent on actually account for the existence of consciousness. Physics tells us about the relational, structural properties of matter (what it does) but says nothing about what matter intrinsically is. Some Russellian monists think the intrinsic nature of fundamental matter is itself consciousness-involving. Walter Russell, working independently and from a different starting point, proposed essentially the same thing: that what we call "matter" and what we call "mind" are two aspects of the same fundamental reality. He just expressed it in the language available to him in 1921, which made it sound mystical rather than philosophical. ## When Light Becomes Consciousness Russell's obsession with light as the fundamental substance of reality seems less strange when you consider modern physics and philosophy together. The fundamental constituents of reality (perhaps electrons and quarks) have incredibly simple forms of experience, and the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow derived from the experience of the brain's most basic parts. This doesn't mean rocks are pondering the meaning of life. It means that whatever property allows matter to give rise to consciousness might be present in rudimentary form at the most basic levels of physical reality, then becomes amplified and organized through complex structure. Russell claimed "thought is the architect of form," that mind shapes matter through waveforms, and reality isn't built from atoms upward but projected from consciousness outward. Contemporary panpsychism phrases it differently: consciousness is intrinsic to fundamental particles, and the structures we observe emerge from combinations and integrations of these consciousness-bearing fundamentals. Is this so different from quantum mechanics, where observation affects reality, or from IIT, where information integration constitutes consciousness? ## The Electric Universe and Information Theory Long before plasma physics began questioning standard cosmology, Russell proposed the universe was fundamentally electric in nature, not gravitationally driven as Newton and Einstein taught. He believed electricity was "a living spiral of energy, not merely electrons in motion," and that the vacuum of space was actually "a vibrant sea of untapped potential." His unified theory posited that everything operated through "rhythmic balanced interchange," a constant pulsing dance of opposites he saw governing everything from atoms to galaxies. Today we might talk about wave functions, oscillating fields, field theories, and information states. The mathematics is more rigorous, but are we describing fundamentally different phenomena, or just using better tools to articulate what Russell intuited? IIT, for instance, defines consciousness mathematically as integrated information (Φ), the amount of information generated by a complex of elements, above and beyond the information generated by its parts. When Russell talked about "rhythmic balanced interchange" as the organizing principle of reality, was he groping toward something like information integration without the mathematical framework to formalize it? ## The Tesla Endorsement and Scientific Validation Tesla's advice to lock the manuscript away for a millennium wasn't just dramatic flair. The legendary inventor genuinely saw something in Russell's work that he believed exceeded humanity's capacity to understand or accept. This raises an uncomfortable question: How many other ideas have we dismissed not because they were wrong, but because they were incompatible with our current conceptual frameworks? Interestingly, while Russell's scientific theories were largely rejected during his lifetime, in 1941 the American Academy of Sciences conferred a doctorate on him after several laboratories isolated elements he had predicted: Deuterium, Tritium, Neptunium, and Plutonium. So he wasn't entirely wrong about everything. He just packaged his insights in language that made them sound like mysticism rather than physics. Russell maintained that the fundamental divide between himself and mainstream science was about assumptions: he assumed the existence of mind as cause while he believed scientists assumed the existence of mind as effect. Now, three generations later, as serious philosophers and physicists entertain panpsychism and IIT, we're essentially revisiting Russell's core argument, just with better mathematics and less mystical terminology. ## Why This Matters Now The convergence I wrote about recently (between AI as prediction machine and brain as prediction machine) gains another dimension when we consider consciousness as potentially fundamental rather than emergent. If consciousness is indeed a basic property of reality like charge or mass, then: 1. The "hard problem" of consciousness (how subjective experience arises from physical processes) might be asking the wrong question. We shouldn't ask how matter creates consciousness, but how fundamental consciousness becomes organized into complex experiences. 2. Both biological and artificial intelligence might be ways of organizing and amplifying consciousness that's already present at some level in the physical substrate. 3. The boundary between "conscious" and "unconscious" systems might be less binary and more about degrees of integration and complexity. This doesn't validate every mystical claim or suggest rocks have inner lives. But it does suggest that Russell's core intuition (that consciousness and matter are two aspects of a unified reality) might have been pointing toward genuine insights that we're only now developing the conceptual tools to properly investigate. ## The Language Problem Here's the uncomfortable truth: we can't actually know if Russell accessed cosmic consciousness or experienced an extended altered state with religious overtones. The documented evidence suggests a highly intelligent, accomplished person had a transformative psychological experience and attempted to explain it using the conceptual tools available in 1921. Those tools (mixing metaphysics, rudimentary quantum theory, and spiritual philosophy) produced something that sounded crazy to his contemporaries. But the underlying patterns he was trying to articulate? Those might have been genuinely insightful intuitions about the nature of reality, expressed through inadequate vocabulary. This is the curse of being too early: you perceive the pattern before the paradigm exists to describe it. You're forced to use metaphor and mysticism because the precise scientific language hasn't been invented yet. And then people quite reasonably conclude you're either a genius or a lunatic, when the answer might be: someone who glimpsed something real but had to translate it through incompatible conceptual frameworks. Consider how Russell's ideas map onto contemporary theories: **Russell (1921):** "Matter is crystallized light slowed by thought. Consciousness is fundamental." **Modern Panpsychism:** Consciousness is a fundamental property like charge or mass, present at all levels of reality. **Russell:** "The universe operates through rhythmic balanced interchange." **IIT:** Consciousness is integrated information, measurable as the causal power a system has over itself through feedback loops. **Russell:** "Everything is composed of light patterns shaped by consciousness." **Russellian Monism:** The intrinsic nature of matter, which physics doesn't describe, might be experiential/consciousness-involving. The vocabulary has evolved. The mathematical frameworks have become more rigorous. But the core intuition? Remarkably persistent across nearly a century of development. ## What We Do With Prophetic Intuitions Russell's work is perhaps best viewed as an invitation to explore new ways of thinking about the universe and our place within it. Not necessarily as literal truth, but as intuitive pattern-matching that anticipated discoveries we're only now equipped to properly investigate. The convergence between AI development, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies suggests Russell might have been onto something with his emphasis on consciousness as fundamental, reality as information-based rather than purely material, and the universe as an integrated whole rather than dead mechanism. He just expressed it in ways that made it sound like prophecy rather than hypothesis, mysticism rather than proto-science. Maybe the real insight isn't about whether Russell was right or wrong, but about recognizing that some intuitions precede the frameworks needed to test them. Contemporary researchers are now seriously investigating questions Russell posed in 1921: - Is consciousness fundamental or emergent? (Panpsychism vs. physicalism) - What is the relationship between information, causation, and experience? (IIT) - Can we quantify consciousness mathematically? (IIT's Φ metric) - What is the intrinsic nature of physical reality beyond its relational structure? (Russellian monism) These aren't fringe questions anymore. They're being addressed in peer-reviewed journals by respected philosophers and neuroscientists. The conversation has moved from "Is consciousness fundamental?" to "If consciousness is fundamental, how do we formalize that mathematically?" ## The Pattern Across Time Tesla thought humanity needed a thousand years before it could understand Russell's work. He might have been overly pessimistic, or maybe he understood that some ideas need multiple generations of technological and conceptual development before they stop sounding crazy and start sounding merely speculative. Looking at Walter Russell's work now, I don't see a prophet or a madman. I see someone who had profound intuitions about consciousness, matter, and reality, expressed them using the inadequate language available at the time, and got dismissed by people who couldn't translate his metaphors into testable hypotheses. But here's what interests me most: the pattern of ideas that sound like mysticism in one era becoming serious scientific inquiry in the next. Quantum superposition sounded insane until we could measure it. Curved spacetime seemed absurd until we could test it. The idea that time is relative rather than absolute contradicted common sense until Einstein formalized it mathematically. Now we're watching consciousness studies undergo a similar transformation. What Russell expressed as "the universe is mental, not material" is being reformulated as "consciousness might be a fundamental property" and "integrated information constitutes experience." Same intuition, different vocabulary, one that allows for mathematical formalization and empirical investigation. The real question isn't whether Russell accessed cosmic truth in 1921\. It's whether his core intuitions (consciousness as fundamental, matter and mind as unified, reality as information rather than substance) are pattern-matches that we're now finally equipped to investigate rigorously. Maybe Walter Russell was just someone decades ahead of his conceptual tools, trying to describe genuine insights using the metaphysical vocabulary available before information theory, before quantum mechanics was fully developed, before philosophy of mind seriously entertained panpsychism, and before neuroscience could formalize theories like IIT. How many Walter Russells are walking around today, seeing patterns we won't recognize as valid for another century? And how might we better distinguish between genuine prophetic insight and well-articulated confusion when the language for testing hasn't been invented yet? --- *Sources: Wikipedia (Walter Russell), Non-Duality America, Dying Words, Goodreads, Unariun Wisdom, Polymathic Artist, Western Mystics, Fire Faith Fellowship, Substack, Wikipedia (Panpsychism), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Panpsychism), Noema Magazine, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, PubMed (IIT papers), PLOS Computational Biology* ### The Rise and Fall of American Apparel: What Netflix's New Documentary Reveals About Leadership, Culture, and Manufacturing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-apparel-what-netflixs-new-documentary-reveals-about-leadership-culture-and-manufacturing/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T03:02:34.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/american-apparel.jpeg) Years ago, I found myself fascinated by American Apparel. Here was a company that seemed to be doing everything right from a manufacturing and operations perspective – producing trendy clothing domestically, paying workers above minimum wage, and somehow making it profitable. But as I noted in my earlier posts, there was always something troubling about Dov Charney's management style that made me wonder if this success was sustainable. I [wrote](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/successful%5Famer/) [several](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/american-appare/) [posts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/microtransfers-creating-excellence-at-american-apparel/) [about](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/american-apparel-more-value-from-waste/) Dov and his company, once even being invited out to [visit their factory](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-visit-to-american-apparel/) in LA. It definitely wasn't manufacturing excellence, let alone six sigma or lean (aside from above average wages, "respect for people" was non-existent!), but I could consider it "manufacturing innovation" in comparison to the reflexive tendency of other clothing companies to simply outsource to supposed low cost countries. Netflix's new documentary "[Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel](https://www.netflix.com/title/81763680?ref=kevinmeyer.com)," which dropped this week, provides a sobering look at what happens when operational innovation collides with toxic leadership. And the years since Charney's 2014 departure have proven that my concerns about his "crass management style" were unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg. ### The Documentary's Revelations The documentary explores allegations of inappropriate behavior and oppressive conditions in the workplace, revealing that new hires at American Apparel received welcome gift bags that included a vibrator, along with a book called "The 48 Laws of Power," a Leica camera, and a Blackberry so they would always be on call. Former employees describe a toxic environment where it was not uncommon to see employees making out in the hallways, and footage even shows Charney walking around naked in front of female employees. Perhaps most disturbing was the revelation of company traditions like "Fool of the Week," where during company-wide conference calls, Charney would publicly humiliate employees in front of hundreds of colleagues. As one former employee, Michelle, recalled: "There was always someone that he'd call, 'Fool of the Week.' You know 'Michelle, you're the fool of the week! Fool of the week, you f\*\*\*\*\*\* me.' I mean it was so mortifying that hundreds and hundreds of people heard that you personally are the Fool of the Week for a multi-million-dollar company." This isn't just about poor management – it's about creating a culture of fear and humiliation that inevitably undermines any operational advantages a company might have. The inclusion of "The 48 Laws of Power" in those welcome bags is particularly telling – a book that explicitly advocates for manipulation and power over others as acceptable means to achieve ends. ### The Unraveling I Predicted Looking back at my 2010 post, I noted that despite American Apparel's innovative operations, "sometimes you just need some experience – financial, operational, sales, and otherwise." I worried then that the company's streamlined structure was "too streamlined for such a dynamic and growing company." The numbers tell the story: American Apparel recorded sales topping $633 million in 2013, but by 2015, sales had declined to $497 million. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2015, emerged briefly in early 2016, then filed for bankruptcy again in November 2016. What I didn't anticipate was how much damage toxic leadership could do to what was fundamentally a sound business model. Looking back, I realize I was admiring operational innovation rather than operational excellence – Charney had genuinely figured out how to make domestic manufacturing work in a way that few others had, but he built it on a foundation of workplace harassment and exploitation that made long-term success impossible. The documentary reveals a classic case of confusing short-term results with sustainable success. Yes, American Apparel achieved remarkable growth and profitability for a time, but the means used to achieve those results contained the seeds of its destruction. ### The End of an Era In January 2017, Canadian company Gildan Activewear acquired American Apparel for $88 million – a fraction of its former value. Gildan bought the brand and certain manufacturing equipment but tellingly chose not to acquire any of the retail stores. As Gildan's CEO Glenn Chamandy explained during an earnings call, "Really, what we bought is a brand. At the end of the day, the way we approached American Apparel was almost like we licensed the product." The new American Apparel under Gildan briefly attempted to maintain some US manufacturing, launching a "Made in USA" shop on its website in 2017\. But this quietly began to disappear in 2019, and by October of that year, the site's Made in USA shop contained only four items listed as made in the United States. This was exactly what I feared would happen when I wrote in 2010: "How much do you want to bet that probably includes outsourcing overseas, chasing the dream of cheap labor nirvana?" Charney didn't disappear after his 2014 firing. He launched Los Angeles Apparel in 2016, just four miles from American Apparel's former headquarters. The company operates as a wholesale brand selling blank t-shirts and basics, attempting to recreate the American Apparel model of domestic manufacturing and fair wages. But the shadow of his past continues to follow him. And, as the documentary's synopsis notes, "staff members are forced to come to terms with the toxic work environment Charney has created." The real tragedy isn't just what happened to the employees who suffered under this culture – it's that the failure of leadership destroyed a genuinely innovative approach to American manufacturing. ### The Lessons That Endure American Apparel's story offers a crucial lesson for our times: tyrants may create short-term success, but they inevitably engineer long-term failure. Whether in corporate boardrooms or political arenas, we see the same pattern – leaders who achieve initial results through division, humiliation, and exploitation, only to watch their achievements crumble under the weight of their own toxicity. The challenge for other companies attempting sustainable domestic manufacturing is to capture Charney's genuine innovations while rejecting his toxic methods. More broadly, we must resist the temptation to overlook abusive behavior because of compelling short-term results. History shows us repeatedly that the ends do not justify the means – ethical and respectful leadership isn't just morally right, it's the only foundation for lasting success. The Netflix documentary serves as an uncomfortable but essential reminder: operational innovation without character is ultimately hollow. In business, politics, and life, how you treat people determines how long your achievements will survive. No matter how brilliant your strategies or impressive your initial results, toxic leadership will eventually destroy everything you've built. ### Quantum Consciousness: Are Our Minds Connected by Spooky Physics? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/quantum-consciousness-are-our-minds-connected-by-spooky-physics/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T13:46:02.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/consciousness.jpg) From entangled brains to time-defying awareness, quantum mechanics might rewrite everything we know about consciousness. ### The Classic Debate: Neurons vs. Quantum Magic For decades, scientists have treated consciousness as a straightforward byproduct of neurons firing—a symphony of electrical signals in the brain. But what if there’s more to the story? Enter quantum mechanics, the mind-bending realm where particles exist in two places at once and communicate instantaneously across vast distances. Could these "spooky" phenomena, as Einstein famously called them, explain why we experience the world at all? This blog explores the radical theories and experiments suggesting that consciousness might be rooted not just in biology, but in the quantum fabric of reality itself. ### 1\. The Quantum Brain: More Than Just Neurons? **Microtubules: The Brain’s Quantum Antennae** In 1996, physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed a theory that sent shockwaves through neuroscience: consciousness, they argued, isn’t just about neurons—it’s about quantum vibrations in microscopic structures called microtubules. These hollow protein tubes, found in neurons, might act as quantum processors. The idea hinges on superposition, where particles exist in multiple states simultaneously. Penrose and Hameroff suggest that when these superpositions collapse—a process dubbed objective reduction—they generate fleeting moments of awareness, like frames in a film. Recent experiments lend credence to this wild idea. In 2024, researchers detected quantum vibrations in microtubules oscillating at frequencies matching gamma brainwaves (30–90 Hz), the same rhythms linked to conscious perception. Even more intriguing, anesthetics erased these vibrations, implying a direct connection to wakefulness. Critics, however, remain skeptical. They argue that the brain’s warm, chaotic environment would destroy delicate quantum states in femtoseconds. Hameroff counters that microtubules’ unique structure, coupled with “ordered water” inside them, could shield quantum processes long enough to matter. **The Universal Jukebox: Tuning Into Earth’s Frequency** Imagine your brain as a radio tuning into a cosmic station. A 2023 theory posits that consciousness emerges from a universal quantum vibrational field that connects everything—from human brainwaves to Earth’s electromagnetic hum. At the heart of this idea are Schumann resonances, 7.83 Hz waves generated by lightning strikes in Earth’s atmosphere. Proponents like researchers Lian Sidorov and Elizabeth Rauscher argue that these resonances act as a “carrier signal” for awareness, synchronizing brain activity across individuals. Studies of group meditation, for instance, show strangers’ gamma brainwaves aligning even when miles apart, as if their minds are dialed into the same frequency. ### 2\. Entangled Minds: Are We All Connected? **The Brain’s Quantum Wi-Fi** In 2022, a groundbreaking MRI study stumbled onto something extraordinary. Researchers observed proton spins in awake subjects’ brains behaving like entangled particles—their states correlated in ways defying classical physics. These signals vanished when subjects fell asleep, suggesting quantum processes might underpin conscious states. The team proposed an “unknown quantum intermediary” linking neural activity, creating the integrated awareness we take for granted. Skeptics dismissed the findings as noise, but if validated, this could revolutionize our understanding of how minds coalesce fragments of perception into a seamless whole. **Group Consciousness: When Brains Sync Up** Have you ever felt an unspoken connection with a crowd at a concert or a protest? Quantum theories suggest it’s not just emotion—it’s physics. The Quantum Theory of Consciousness (QTOC) posits that entanglement allows brains to share information instantaneously, bypassing classical limits. In one experiment, subjects exposed to 7.83 Hz frequencies (matching Schumann resonances) reported heightened empathy and intuition. Another study found that during group meditation, participants’ gamma brainwaves synchronized across continents, as if their minds were nodes in a global network. QTOC argues this isn’t metaphorical: entanglement literally weaves individual awareness into a collective tapestry. ### 3\. Time Travel for the Mind: Is Consciousness Unstuck? **Déjà Vu and the Quantum Memory Bank** QTOC takes the weirdness further by proposing that the quantum field is timeless, allowing consciousness to access past or future information. Déjà vu, that eerie sense of reliving a moment, might be a glitch where the brain taps into a prior state stored in the field. Even precognition gets a quantum makeover: a 2021 study found that participants’ brains activated patterns before they viewed emotionally charged images, as if anticipating the future. The Global Consciousness Project, a decades-long experiment, tracks whether random number generators glitch during major global events—hinting that collective human focus might ripple backward through time. **The Extended Now** Philosopher Edmund Husserl once described consciousness as a “specious present,” a blend of past, present, and future. Quantum models echo this, suggesting the brain simulates multiple timelines via superposition. When you debate pizza vs. salad, for instance, quantum processes might weigh all outcomes simultaneously before collapsing into a single “choice.” This aligns with the idea of an extended now, where consciousness isn’t confined to the immediate moment but flutters across time like a butterfly sampling different branches of reality. ### 4\. The Elephant in the Room: “But Decoherence!” Let’s address the skeptics’ favorite rebuttal: decoherence. Quantum states are fragile, easily destroyed by heat or noise—and brains are both. Yet nature has already proven it can hack quantum physics in warm, wet environments. Take photosynthesis: plants exploit quantum coherence to funnel sunlight energy with near-perfect efficiency. If chloroplasts can pull this off, why not microtubules? Hameroff argues that structured water inside these proteins could extend coherence times, making quantum cognition plausible. It’s a long shot, but as quantum biology advances, the impossible starts looking probable. ### 5\. What’s Next? Testing the Impossible The race is on to validate these ideas. New tools like quantum MRI aim to map entanglement in living brains, while projects like the Global Consciousness Project analyze whether mass events bend the behavior of random number generators. If these experiments succeed, they could confirm that consciousness isn’t locked inside our skulls but is a dynamic, interconnected phenomenon—a dance of particles and fields spanning brains, bodies, and time itself. ### Conclusion: Are We Quantum Beings? The implications of quantum consciousness theories are staggering. Free will might stem from quantum indeterminacy, offering genuine choice in a deterministic universe. Death could become a transition rather than an end, with consciousness persisting in the quantum field. And empathy, intuition, or even love might be rooted in entanglement—literal bonds woven into the cosmos. As Roger Penrose once quipped, “Consciousness isn’t computational. It’s quantum.” Whether he’s right remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the intersection of quantum physics and neuroscience is where the next revolution in understanding the mind—and our place in the universe—will unfold. **References** Penrose, R., & Hameroff, S. (1996). Orchestrated reduction of quantum coherence in brain microtubules. Kerskens, C. M., et al. (2022). Experimental indications of non-classical brain functions. Journal of Consciousness Studies. Sidorov, L., & Rauscher, E. (2023). Quantum Vibrational Fields and the Origins of Consciousness. Frontiers in Neuroscience. Global Consciousness Project. (2024). Random Number Generator Experiments During Global Events. ### When a Form Reset Reveals a Deeper Problem URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-a-form-reset-reveals-a-deeper-problem/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T13:48:00.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/bench.jpg) You think you’re getting stronger... but you're not. In strength training, progress is often measured in numbers: pounds lifted, reps completed, sessions logged. These metrics are satisfying because they feel objective. They offer a clear sense of movement forward. Yet at times, this perception of progress obscures a subtle but significant deterioration beneath the surface. Consider the bench press. You’ve been training consistently, gradually adding weight, and pushing through plateaus. Everything appears to be on track—until one day you catch your reflection mid-lift, or feel the mechanics of the motion shift unnaturally. You realize, perhaps for the first time in weeks, that the bar is no longer reaching your chest. Somewhere along the way, your form has degraded. Without noticing, you’ve traded quality for quantity. The decision to perform a form reset—to reduce the weight, revisit fundamentals, and rebuild movement patterns—is commendable. But it is also diagnostic. It reveals that something in the system has failed: either the discipline to maintain form over time, or the clarity of the standard itself. In the world of Lean thinking, this would be recognized immediately as a breakdown in standard work. And just like in manufacturing or leadership, failure to follow or define clear standards leads to drift, which often requires painful correction. #### Form Drift in the Workplace: Budgeting and Design Missteps Drift is rarely intentional. In the gym, it occurs when fatigue sets in or when the drive to progress overshadows technique. In business, it manifests when teams operate without well-defined processes, or when ambiguous guidance leads to inconsistent execution. What links all these scenarios is the absence of regular, deliberate review—a failure to continually verify that the standard is not only understood but upheld. A classic example involves corporate spending. In the absence of a clearly articulated and enforced spending policy, expenses begin to accumulate in a piecemeal fashion. A team member books a premium flight. A department leader approves a new software license. Another employee hosts an offsite meeting without budget scrutiny. None of these actions are individually egregious, and all can be rationalized in the moment. However, over time, they accumulate into a noticeable deviation from fiscal discipline. Eventually, leadership intervenes with a top-down directive to "clamp down" on spending. This intervention, while necessary, often sends unintended signals. Teams may interpret it as a sign of financial instability or loss of trust, even if the underlying issue was simply a lack of standardized expectations. A second example comes from product development. When design requirements are not clearly defined at the outset, creative teams tend to fill the void. Engineers anticipate features users may want. Marketing proposes enhancements based on intuition rather than data. The design expands—ambitiously, and often admirably—but without alignment. Ultimately, the initiative reaches a point where the scope must be reined in. Features that consumed time and investment are eliminated, not because they lacked value, but because they were never part of the approved scope. The reset in this case is demoralizing. It signals wasted effort and missed opportunities, all stemming from a lack of clear initial standards. These examples mirror the same pattern observed in the gym: an erosion of form due to absence of structure or vigilance. The bench press bar that no longer touches the chest is not simply a training error—it is a visible symptom of a failure to maintain standards consistently. When form degrades, the integrity of progress is compromised. What appears to be strength is, in fact, instability. #### Why Standard Work Prevents the Need for Reset This is why standard work, as practiced in lean, is so vital. It does not exist to constrain creativity or slow down innovation. Rather, it provides a foundation from which improvement can emerge. Without standard work, there is no reliable way to measure variation or detect problems early. Just as consistent form enables safe and effective training, documented and enforced standards create clarity in execution, accountability in teams, and resilience in systems. A common misperception is that form resets—whether in fitness or in business—are simply part of the cycle. That we drift, we correct, and we move on. But this overlooks a crucial point: the need for a reset is evidence that our system lacks the capacity for real-time course correction. It suggests that either our standards were insufficiently defined or our adherence to them inadequately reinforced. Resets, therefore, are not strategies for success—they are indicators of failure. To prevent the need for such resets, organizations and individuals alike must develop mechanisms for continuous alignment. In the gym, this means treating each repetition as an opportunity to assess form, not just effort. It may involve video analysis, coaching, or simply cultivating attentiveness. In business, it means embedding quality checks, clarifying expectations, and ensuring that standard work is not a dusty document but a living framework. At home, it might involve the simple but powerful act of checking in—realigning schedules, re-establishing routines, and ensuring that commitments reflect shared priorities. Crucially, adherence to standards must be viewed not as rigidity but as discipline. True freedom and flexibility emerge not from improvisation, but from mastery of fundamentals. A jazz musician can improvise only after internalizing scales and structure. Similarly, a team can innovate only when their foundation is solid. The goal is not to eliminate change, but to make change deliberate and intentional as an improvement from standard. #### Build Systems That Catch Drift Before It Costs You When we find ourselves needing a form reset, we should pause and reflect—not just on the mechanics, but on the environment that allowed the drift to occur. Was the standard clearly defined? Was it visible and reinforced? Were there feedback loops in place to catch early deviations? Was there a culture that valued consistency as a form of respect—for the work, for the team, for the mission? Rebuilding form—whether physical or procedural—is rarely pleasant. It requires humility, patience, and a willingness to confront the truth of where things stand. But it also offers an invaluable opportunity: to recommit to what matters, and to ensure that our path forward is grounded in integrity rather than illusion. In lifting, as in leadership, the most important gains come not from pushing harder, but from moving better. And the most sustainable success emerges not from resets, but from the quiet, daily discipline of form. ### How I Use AI: A Tour of My Digital Assistant Projects URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/how-i-use-ai-digital-assistant-projects/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T13:50:03.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/ai-assistant.jpg) I didn’t expect to rely on AI as much as I do now. At first, it was just curiosity. Then it quietly became part of my routines. Several people asked me recently, “How do you actually use it?” That got me thinking. AI is now embedded in many areas of my life, from health and finances to music and philosophy. This is a behind-the-scenes tour of how I’ve set up projects with ChatGPT and, occasionally, Perplexity. It's not about automation for its own sake—it's about thinking more clearly. ## Why ChatGPT—and Why I Rarely Use Google Anymore I use [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for its memory and conversational style. Each project I run has its own space with its own voice, tone, and history. I can build continuity over time, like a long-term collaborator who knows my preferences. But for research—especially when I want citations or current data—I use [Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). It's now replaced Google for me. Instead of sifting through SEO clutter and ads, Perplexity gives clean, sourced answers, fast—whether I'm asking a complex science question or just wanting the phone number of the highest-rated pizza joint nearest me. We wondered what might topple Google's ad-driven search model, and this might be it. Together, the two tools complement each other. One thinks with me. The other scouts ahead. Below are some of the more important ChatGPT projects I engage with almost daily. ## Project 1: Personal Health Health is where my AI use is most detailed. In this Personal Health project, I’ve instructed ChatGPT to provide only science-based analysis. No anecdotes, no influencer blog bros—just peer-reviewed studies and expert perspectives. I’ve uploaded years of blood lab results, x-rays and MRIs, summaries from past surgeries and treatments, physician notes, typical diet and supplement stacks, [Garmin](https://www.garmin.com/en-US/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) sleep and body composition data, and my [FitBod](https://fitbod.me/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) exercise history. That gives ChatGPT a layered view. It can identify biomarker trends, connect them to habits, and suggest possible tweaks. Just one example: ChatGPT spotted some mild spinal compression on a recent MRI I had for an unrelated reason and cross-referenced that with my workout history. It found some rotational movements and carries that might be increasing lateral spinal load. I made some changes—and felt real improvement in mobility and comfort. Insights like that would take hours to uncover manually, if I even knew to look. AI connected the dots. ## Project 2: Financial Planning In my Financial Planning project, I asked ChatGPT to speak to me at a CFO level—no simplification, no dumbing down. I also set the context: I’m a very conservative investor with long-term goals, clear estate intentions, and known spending patterns. Using a link to [Kubera](https://www.kubera.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), ChatGPT can see all of my assets across IRAs, Roths, taxable investment accounts, home and farm real estate, and private business investments. It’s like handing your financial strategist a live balance sheet. With that, I explore questions like: - How will Roth conversions affect IRMAA and RMDs? - Where should I draw down from first? - How should I tweak bond ladders in a shifting rate environment? Once I’ve refined a scenario, I often move it to [ProjectionLab](https://projectionlab.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) to stress-test the assumptions visually. What I’ve found most valuable isn’t just the math. It’s the clarity. The ability to think through complex options with a calm, rational partner who never tires of the next “what-if.” ## Project 3: Travel I’ve always enjoyed travel planning. But it takes time—especially to get it right. So I built a Travel project designed for independent, active travelers in their early 60s who enjoy comfort—but aren’t afraid to get a little dirty. I told ChatGPT I like business class, smaller airports, early arrivals, unique stays, and backcountry detours when they make sense. It even knows what airlines, aircraft, hotels—and specific seats—I prefer. It remembers all that. And it builds trips that feel like *us*. Here are a few examples: - **Buenos Aires over New Year's**: Returning again to one of our favorite cities, ChatGPT created a vegetarian restaurant tour in a land of steak. It found the hidden gems by consolidating reviews across multiple platforms and creating a day-by-day plan that aligned with our other activities for the day. This is how we discovered [Marti](https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/ciudad-autonoma-de-buenos-aires/buenos-aires%5F777009/restaurant/marti?ref=kevinmeyer.com), one of the best vegan restaurants we've found anywhere in the world, like [Uzu](https://vegan-uzu.com/pages/uzu-kyoto-en?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Kyoto, [Winners](https://www.nikiathenshotel.com/winners-vegan-restaurant?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Athens, and [Teresa Carles](https://teresacarles.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Barcelona. - **Vietnam, 3 Weeks Last March**: Most travelers go north to south. AI suggested the reverse due to weather patterns that month. It made a real difference in comfort and scenery. - **Greece, 3 Weeks Last May**: It recommended islands and routes that dodged early summer crowds without losing the feel of the season, as well as the most reliable ferry schedules. Less traffic. More quiet charm. I’ve also used it for road trips. One itinerary included only scenic two-lane highways, short daily drives, stops at boutique hotels, and glacier hikes—all perfectly sequenced. Over time, it remembers more. What I liked. What didn’t work. Each trip gets better. ## Project 4: Activities This project brings AI into everyday life. Here are just two of the subprojects in this section. - **Live Music Curator**: Each week, ChatGPT curates a list of live music shows in our area that fit my tastes—folk, acoustic, roots, jazz. It filters by venue, time, and even reported sound level. Before AI, I'd have to search multiple websites and lists, now a single prompt creates it in seconds. I share the list with friends, and it’s become a favorite weekly ritual. - **Recipe Manager**: I’ve uploaded links to pescatarian recipes we enjoy—many from Northern Africa and the Mediterranean. I told ChatGPT I want weeknight meals that take less than 30 minutes and feel fresh. Now it suggests new recipes weekly and generates consolidated grocery lists. And when friends come over, it remembers what they’ve had before so they get a unique dish each time. It even offers pairings and side suggestions. It’s a small thing—but it makes cooking more fun and social. ## Project 5: Business Therapist While I'm now retired and no longer have company responsibilities, I do work with a local incubator to mentor startup founders. The Business Therapist project helps with that mentoring. I’ve set up separate chats for HR, Sales, Leadership, and Strategy. Each one references thinkers I admire—and has “read” their books, articles, and even critiques. When a founder has a team conflict, I’ll ask: “What would Lencioni say about this situation?” Or I’ll check how Radical Candor might guide a tough conversation with a struggling employee. It’s like having a personal advisor who has read every leadership book I’ve ever valued—and can apply them to today’s questions. This has been especially helpful when supporting new leaders learning how to lead with clarity, empathy, and accountability. ## Project 6: Ruminations This last one is the most personal. In Ruminations, I’ve asked ChatGPT to be a science-informed philosophical companion. I told it I believe we know very little about the universe. I’m open-minded—but not interested in speculation without rigor. Sometimes we explore free will. Other times: biblical translation, consciousness, or quantum entanglement. One day I asked, “Does the Many Worlds Interpretation eliminate moral responsibility?” and we spent the next hour exploring implications for ethics. It’s become my version of journaling. But the journal writes back. ## Issues and Concerns As useful as these tools have become, they’re not perfect. A few limitations are worth noting. The most common concern people raise is hallucination—AI making up plausible-sounding nonsense. That was a problem early on, but I’ve found that the latest version of ChatGPT is far less prone to it. And when you carefully add context, define project goals, and give clear instructions at the start, hallucinations become rare—especially in structured domains like finance and health. Still, it’s worth verifying. That’s one reason I run financial models through ProjectionLab after working through scenarios with ChatGPT. It serves as a second pass to check the math, stress assumptions, and expose anything overlooked. Interestingly, I haven’t seen hallucination issues in Perplexity at all. Likely because it ties every claim to a citation. Another limitation is that most personal data still needs to be uploaded manually. I’ve built those pipelines myself—lab results, spreadsheets, PDFs—but it takes time. That said, platforms like Kubera are starting to offer more direct integrations, and more apps are building connectors. Alongside that, I take privacy very seriously. I’m careful to anonymize or remove specific account numbers and identifying details when uploading financial documents. Same with names of friends or family mentioned in planning or journaling projects. It’s a small discipline, but an important one. And one final note: ChatGPT is very good at keeping a conversation going. So good, in fact, that it’s easy to forget to pause. I’ve caught myself solving problems that didn’t need solving—just because the conversation was interesting. Every so often, I try to step back and ask: *Is this project still useful?* If not, I set it aside. The point isn’t to use AI constantly. It’s to use it well. ## One Prompt That Changed Everything One simple question has led to more insight than any other: “What else should I ask?” Yes—asking AI what I should ask AI. I use it all the time. It helps me discover the edges of my thinking. Find gaps. Ask better questions. And those better questions often lead to better decisions. It’s a good reminder: AI’s value isn’t just in its answers. It’s in how it helps us connect the dots and explore the unknown. ## Closing Thoughts These six projects are just a start. I’ve found AI to be most useful when I give it structure, purpose, and context. The results aren’t always perfect. But they’re often better than I could have done alone. AI doesn’t replace my judgment—it makes it sharper. And in a world full of complexity, that’s something I’ve come to value. ### Free Will in the Age of AI: Predictive Algorithms, Human Agency, and the Search for Autonomy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/free-will-in-the-age-of-ai-predictive-algorithms-human-agency-and-the-search-for-autonomy/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T13:52:33.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/freewill.jpg) We like to believe our decisions are uniquely ours—a product of conscious deliberation and unconstrained agency. Yet, as artificial intelligence systems increasingly anticipate our choices, from Netflix recommendations to credit card fraud alerts, a haunting question emerges: Are humans fundamentally different from advanced predictive algorithms, or are we merely complex biological machines operating under the illusion of free will? This post explores the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and AI research to dissect one of humanity’s oldest debates. ### 1\. The Predictive Brain: Humans as Biological Algorithms Decades of neuroscience research reveal that human decision-making is less a product of conscious choice than we might assume. Seminal experiments by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s demonstrated that brain activity associated with a movement occurs 300 milliseconds before subjects report conscious intention to act. Later studies, such as those by Soon et al. (2008), showed that fMRI scans could predict simple decisions (e.g., pressing a button) up to 10 seconds before subjects became aware of their choice. These findings suggest that much of what we call “free will” may be a post-hoc narrative constructed by the brain to explain actions initiated subconsciously. In this view, humans function similarly to machine learning systems: our brains process sensory input, reference past experiences (the “training data” of lived life), and generate outputs (choices) that maximize rewards or minimize risks. As philosopher Patricia Churchland notes, “The brain is a causal machine… What we experience as ‘free will’ is the brain’s ability to weigh alternatives flexibly, not freedom from biological determinism” (Churchland, 2019). ### 2\. AI as a Mirror: Functional Free Will in Machines Modern AI systems, particularly large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4, operate by predicting the most probable next word in a sequence based on patterns in their training data. While this process is deterministic—governed by algorithms and weights—these systems exhibit behaviors that mimic human agency, such as generating novel ideas or adapting to context. Philosophers Daniel Dennett and Christian List argue that “free will” is best understood as a functional property. An entity has free will if it: - Sets goals (e.g., an AI optimizing for user engagement). - Evaluates options (e.g., a self-driving car choosing between collision paths). - Acts without external coercion (e.g., a chatbot refusing harmful requests). By this standard, advanced AI systems already meet criteria for functional free will (List & Dennett, 2021). Yet, unlike humans, AI lacks subjective experience—what philosopher Thomas Nagel called “what it is like” to be a conscious entity. ### 3\. Quantum Mechanics and the Illusion of Randomness Some theorists propose that quantum indeterminacy in neural processes could provide a loophole for non-deterministic free will. However, most neuroscientists, including Robert Sapolsky, dismiss this idea. In his book Behave (2017), Sapolsky argues that quantum effects are negligible at the macro scale of brain activity, which is governed by classical physics. Even if quantum randomness influenced decisions, randomness ≠ free will. As philosopher Galen Strawson famously quipped, “You can’t be free if your actions are random, any more than if they’re determined” (Strawson, 1994). ### 4\. Compatibilism: Bridging Determinism and Moral Responsibility The compatibilist perspective, championed by David Hume and modern thinkers like Manuel Vargas, posits that free will and determinism can coexist. Free will isn’t about being “uncaused” but about acting in accordance with one’s desires and values—even if those desires are shaped by prior causes. Example: A recovering addict who resists a craving exercises free will by aligning their action with a long-term goal (health), despite deterministic factors (brain chemistry, past trauma). Similarly, an AI trained to prioritize user safety over speed in ethical dilemmas demonstrates a form of goal-directed “will.” ### 5\. The Hardware and Software of Agency: How Architecture Shapes "Free Will" **Biological Constraints: The Human Genetic Code** Human decision-making is profoundly shaped by genetic and neurobiological factors. A 2015 twin study found that approximately 30% of variance in economic decision-making—including responses to classic problems like the Allais paradox—could be attributed to genetic differences (NCBI, 2015). These genetic factors influence everything from risk tolerance to cognitive flexibility, acting as a "source code" that constrains but doesn’t fully determine behavior. For example, variations in dopamine receptor genes (DRD4) correlate with novelty-seeking behavior, while the COMT gene affects executive function. These biological "algorithms" operate within the brain’s hardware—a neural architecture refined over millennia, with the prefrontal cortex serving as the "processor" for complex decision-making (ScienceBlog, 2022). **AI Counterpart: Algorithms and Processors** In AI systems, decision-making capacity is equally shaped by two layers: 1. Software (Algorithms): - Agentic AI systems, which use advanced machine learning to adapt goals dynamically, mirror humans with high cognitive flexibility. - Traditional AI agents, limited to predefined tasks, resemble humans with rigid thinking patterns or neurodevelopmental constraints (Ampcome, 2024). For instance, large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 employ transformer architectures that prioritize contextual relevance—a "cognitive style" akin to humans with strong verbal intelligence. In contrast, reinforcement learning systems like AlphaGo excel in strategic planning, paralleling spatial reasoning strengths (Intel, 2025). 1. Hardware (Processors): - Classical CPUs handle sequential logic but struggle with parallel tasks, much like the brain’s left hemisphere. - AI accelerators (e.g., GPUs, TPUs) enable massive parallel processing, mimicking the right hemisphere’s pattern recognition (Intel, 2025). Emerging neuromorphic chips, which mimic neural networks’ analog computation, could replicate brain-like energy efficiency and noise tolerance. ### 6\. Case Study: How Architecture Shapes Autonomous Decisions Human Example: The Allais Paradox In the 2015 twin study, participants who made "rational" choices aligned with expected utility theory (EUT) showed higher spatial IQ scores—a trait linked to parietal lobe development. This suggests that neuroanatomical differences act as a "hardware filter" on decision-making (NCBI, 2015). AI Example: Autonomous Vehicles Self-driving cars using NVIDIA’s Orin processors can process 254 trillion operations per second (TOPS), enabling real-time navigation. However, older systems with Mobileye EyeQ5 chips (24 TOPS) lack the computational headroom to handle complex urban environments—a hardware limitation analogous to humans with cerebellar damage struggling with motor decisions (Intel, 2025). ### 7\. Ethical Implications: When Biology and Tech Collide If both humans and AI have "free will" constrained by their architectures, this reshapes debates about responsibility: - Criminal Justice: Should defendants with MAOA-L "warrior gene" variants receive leniency, akin to AI systems whose training data included biased inputs? - Regulation: Should governments mandate transparency about AI architectures, just as genetic testing informs medical care? As MIT researcher Zeynep Tufekci warns: "Treating AI as a black box is like judging humans without understanding neurology—it’s ethics in the dark" (MIT Sloan Review, 2021). ### Conclusion: Agency in the Age of Determinism The free will debate is no longer confined to philosophy seminars. As AI systems blur the line between programmed response and autonomous action, we’re compelled to re-examine human agency. Current evidence suggests that both humans and AI operate as deterministic systems with varying degrees of flexibility. Whether we label our choices “free” or “determined” matters less than recognizing our capacity to shape the inputs that drive those choices. Just as AI developers curate training data to reduce bias, humans can cultivate self-awareness, education, and environments that foster better decisions. In the words of neuroscientist Anil Seth, “We are not passive observers of our predetermined fate. We are active participants in a process of becoming” (Seth, 2021). **References** Churchland, P. S. (2019). Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition. List, C., & Dennett, D. (2021). The Compatibility of Free Will and Determinism. Cambridge University Press. Sapolsky, R. (2017). Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Buolamwini, J., & Gebru, T. (2023). Algorithmic Bias in Hiring Systems. MIT Ethics Review. Zittrain, J. (2024). The Moral Code: Rethinking Liability in the AI Era. Harvard Law Press. Seth, A. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. NCBI. (2015). Genetic Influences on Decision-Making. Intel. (2025). AI Processors and Workflows. Ampcome. (2024). Agentic AI vs. Traditional AI Agents. MIT Sloan Review. (2021). Human-AI Decision-Making. ### The AI Bubble: Hype, Reality, and the Path Forward URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-ai-bubble-hype-reality-and-the-path-forward/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T13:53:58.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/ai-woman.jpeg) We’re surrounded by bold claims about artificial intelligence. “AI will change everything,” we’re told—by executives, investors, and media pundits alike. But how much of this is grounded in reality, and how much is simply the latest iteration of technology hype? As with most things, the answer is not as clear-cut as the headlines suggest. ### The Anatomy of a Bubble It’s not difficult to see the parallels between today’s AI boom and past technology bubbles. Just as we once saw internet startups with little more than a domain name attract millions in funding, we now see AI startups touting “machine learning” or “generative models” for every conceivable problem. Many of these companies have little to show beyond a slick demo and a promise to disrupt established industries. The financial markets have responded accordingly. Valuations for AI startups often defy logic, driven more by speculation than by sustainable business models or proven results. Investors, afraid to miss out on the next big thing, are piling in. But as we’ve seen before, this exuberance is rarely sustainable. Some assets are easy to value—cash, land, equipment. Others, like goodwill or brand value, are more nebulous but still find their way onto the balance sheet through standardized methods. AI, much like these intangible assets, is difficult to measure. The real value is often obscured by hype and wishful thinking, making it challenging to distinguish genuine innovation from vaporware. ### Where the Hype Meets Reality If we step back, it’s clear that much of the AI sector is built on shaky ground. Startups are applying AI to increasingly niche activities, often with little technical differentiation or clear path to profitability. The result is an environment where the signal is drowned out by noise, and the true potential of AI risks being overshadowed by a flood of overpromising and underdelivering ventures. But does this mean AI itself is overhyped? Not necessarily. The technology is advancing rapidly, and its impact is already being felt in meaningful ways. ### My Own AI Journey: From Experimentation to Everyday Utility When ChatGPT first appeared, I approached it as a curiosity. Like many, I experimented with prompts, learning how to coax useful responses from the model. It was impressive, but I quickly encountered limitations—outdated information, occasional hallucinations, and answers that were difficult to verify. That changed when I discovered Perplexity and especially the Pro version. The ability to access current data and real-time searches, combined with robust citation capabilities, made a significant difference. Perplexity’s approach reduced hallucinations and made it far easier to verify sources. As a result, it began to replace Google as my primary tool for web research. Instead of wading through pages of ads and SEO-driven content, I could get direct, sourced answers that I could trust. This wasn’t limited to simple lookups. I started using AI to design customized workout routines tailored to my goals and available equipment. When I received new lab results, I used AI to analyze the data, spot trends, and generate informed questions for my doctor—always treating these insights as a supplement, not a substitute, for professional advice. I've used AI multiple times to quickly design unique travel itineraries. Financial planning was another area transformed by AI. By linking AI to tools like Kubera and ProjectionLab, I could explore “what-if” scenarios with ease. Adjusting RMDs, modeling Roth conversions and the impact on IRMAA, or evaluating the impact of a major purchase—all became straightforward, data-driven exercises rather than hours spent wrestling with spreadsheets. These are not just novelties. They are practical, everyday applications that save time, improve decision-making, and enhance my ability to manage complex information. ### The Coming Reckoning If we accept that much of the current AI landscape is a bubble, what happens when it bursts? The answer is familiar to anyone who has watched previous technology cycles. Overvalued startups will collapse. Funding will dry up for all but the most promising ventures. Many companies will be exposed as little more than marketing exercises. But, as with the dot-com crash, the underlying technology will not disappear. The internet did not vanish in 2000; instead, the survivors—those with real product-market fit—emerged stronger and went on to reshape the world. The same will happen with AI. The collapse of overhyped ventures will clear the way for sustainable, impactful applications to thrive. ### AI’s Lasting Value: Beyond the Bubble It’s important to recognize that the value of AI, much like the value of people in an organization, is not always captured on the balance sheet. Traditional accounting fails to recognize the knowledge, creativity, and experience that drive real value, just as it struggles to measure the true impact of AI. When the bubble bursts, it will be a financial reckoning, not a technological one. The survivors will be those who move past the hype and focus on delivering real, measurable value. For individuals and organizations alike, the challenge is to look beyond the noise and invest in what truly works. ### Practical Implications and Takeaways So where does this leave us? The lesson is not to dismiss AI as mere hype, nor to blindly accept every claim of disruption. Instead, we should approach AI with a critical eye—recognizing both its limitations and its transformative potential. For my part, AI has become an indispensable tool. It has changed how I conduct research, manage my health, and plan my financial future. But I remain cautious. I verify sources, treat AI-generated insights as starting points, and remember that technology is only as valuable as the problems it helps solve. The AI bubble will burst, just as others have before it. But the technology itself is here to stay. The real opportunity lies in separating substance from speculation, and in focusing on the practical, everyday applications that deliver genuine value. ### On Retiring, Rebooting, and Rediscovering Curiosity URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/on-retiring/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T13:57:26.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/santorini-sunset.jpg) It’s been a year since my last post—a fact that’s both surprising and, in retrospect, entirely intentional. At the beginning of 2024, I retired. Not just from my career, but, for a while, from the relentless busyness that so often fills our days. I made a conscious decision to put many activities on pause. No new projects, very few side hustles, not even writing. The idea was simple: create space, then see what (if anything) was worth letting back in. ### The Art of Subtraction Retirement, it turns out, is less about what you do and more about what you choose not to do. I started with the external—paring down material possessions, donating, gifting, or simply letting go. The goal wasn’t minimalism for its own sake, but to clear the decks for something more meaningful. I wanted to see what remained when the clutter—physical, digital, mental—was gone. ### Trading Things for Experiences With fewer things tying me down, I traded stuff for experiences. Some were planned, others wonderfully impulsive. In February 2024, I booked a trip to Alaska less than 24 hours later to chase the aurora borealis, standing in awe beneath shimmering green skies while the temperature stubbornly refused to rise above -20°F. Later that year I hopped a plane to watch the full solar eclipse. I wandered the serene temples of Kyoto, Japan, soaking in centuries of quiet beauty. I returned to our favorite country in Latin America—Argentina—this time determined to learn the tango, which proved both humbling and exhilarating. I snorkeled reefs in Belize, explored the markets of Vietnam, and watched the sun set over the Aegean in Greece. Each trip was a reminder that the world is vast, fascinating, and best experienced with a light backpack and an open mind. ### Rediscovering Old Joys Back home, I rediscovered the pleasures of reading for hours, not minutes. I tackled the stack of books that had been gathering dust for years, and found myself following literary rabbit holes into history, science, and the occasional guilty-pleasure thriller. I also made a commitment to my health, and—somewhat to my surprise—am now in the best shape of my life. (It’s amazing what you can do when you’re not chained to a desk.) I’ve also had the chance to reconnect with friends and family I’d missed during the years when work always seemed to come first. Long-overdue visits, shared meals, and unhurried conversations have reminded me how much these relationships matter. And for the first time in years, I’ve been able to put real energy into a seed venture investment group and mentoring local tech startups. It’s been a pleasure to help others build something new, and to witness the spark of innovation up close. ### A New Tool for Curiosity But perhaps the most unexpected discovery has been the role of AI in this new chapter. I started experimenting with AI tools out of idle curiosity, and quickly found them to be remarkable companions for deep dives into, well, almost anything. Want to master exotic African vegetarian recipes? Curious about the philosophy behind Zen gardens? Wondering about the history of Antarctic exploration? AI can help you explore, synthesize, and connect ideas in ways that sometimes feel a little like magic. It sure beats wading through scores of questionable links on Google. ### What’s Next Over the past year, I’ve gone down more than a few intellectual rabbit holes—some practical, some esoteric, all of them fascinating (at least to me). I’ve decided it’s time to share some of these explorations here, in a series of posts that will be part travelogue, part book review, part experiment in curiosity. If you’ve read my earlier writing, you know I bring a skeptical, occasionally contrarian lens—especially on the subject of technology. So, fittingly, my next post will be a dive into the hype, the hope, and the reality behind AI. Some future topics will be inspired by my travels, others by books or conversations, and a few by pure whim. I’ll also share how I’m using AI as a research tool, and where its limits (and surprises) lie. If you’re still reading after a year’s silence, thank you. I hope you’ll join me as I dig into the questions, ideas, and oddities that have caught my attention in this new phase of life. Retirement, it turns out, isn’t the end of curiosity—it’s the beginning of having time to indulge it. See you soon. ### Our Perfect Greek Island Hopping Adventure: Santorini, Paros, Mykonos & Athens URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/our-perfect-greek-island-hopping-adventure-santorini-paros-mykonos-athens/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T10:45:07.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/santorini-sunset.jpg) In April 2025, we experienced one of Greece's most magical times - Easter in the islands, when the entire country comes alive with celebration and tradition. Our two-week journey through Santorini, Paros, Mykonos, and Athens was carefully planned to end in the capital, eliminating any worries about ferry connections before our international flight home. ## General Comments **Ferry Travel Strategy**: Island hopping by ferry proved reliable and enjoyable. The SeaJets Champion Jet 2 vessels were modern and comfortable, with the longest journey being just three hours from Athens to the islands. Booking ferries in advance is essential during Easter season. **Car Rental Approach**: We modified our original plan to take one rental car across multiple islands via ferry. Instead, we rented and returned cars at each destination - picking up at Santorini airport, then arranging rentals through our hotels on Paros and Mykonos. This proved more flexible and cost-effective, plus eliminated concerns about ferry car reservations. **Easter Timing**: Traveling during Greek Orthodox Easter added incredible cultural richness to our trip. The Good Friday processions and Easter Sunday celebrations in Paros were unforgettable. However, some restaurants and shops close during Holy Week, so advance planning is essential. **Athens at the End**: Our decision to end in Athens rather than start there was brilliant. No stress about missing connections, and we could fully relax in the islands knowing our international flight was just a short domestic hop away. **Weather**: Mid-April weather was ideal - warm enough for sightseeing and outdoor dining (70-75°F), but not yet the intense summer heat. Some days were perfect for swimming, though ocean temperatures were still cool. **Direct Flights**: Flying directly to Santorini from Frankfurt eliminated an Athens connection and got us straight to the islands. Many European cities now offer direct summer flights to Greek islands. **Healthcare**: When my wife forgot critical medication, we discovered Greece's excellent healthcare system. A doctor in Oia saw her immediately, and the local pharmacy filled the prescription within hours - a reminder that European healthcare infrastructure is world-class. **Crete Consideration**: We initially considered adding Crete to this itinerary, but after extensive research decided against it. Crete is essentially a destination unto itself, requiring at least a full week to properly experience its diverse regions - from the Minoan palaces of Knossos and Phaistos, to the dramatic Samaria Gorge, the Venetian harbor of Chania, and the distinct cultural differences between the island's various provinces. The ferry connections would have also disrupted our smooth island-hopping flow. Instead, we're planning a future trip that combines Crete with either Malta or Cyprus - both islands that similarly deserve dedicated time and pair well thematically with Crete's rich historical layers and Mediterranean character. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Travel to Santorini After our overnight at SFO's Grand Hyatt, we flew via Frankfurt to Santorini, arriving in the late afternoon. Picking up our Avis rental at the tiny Santorini airport was efficient, and the 20-minute drive to our hotel gave us our first glimpse of the island's dramatic landscape. **Hotel**: [Katikies Santorini](https://www.katikies.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- One of the most spectacular hotel locations we've ever experienced. Perched on the caldera rim in Oia, every suite has breathtaking sunset views. The infinity pool appears to merge with the Aegean Sea, and the service was impeccable. ### Days 3-5: Exploring Santorini With three full days, we could explore at a relaxed pace without fighting crowds. **Oia**: Beyond the famous sunset views, we wandered the marble-paved streets early in the morning when tour groups hadn't yet arrived. The blue-domed churches, art galleries, and boutique shops reward early risers with peaceful exploration. **Fira**: The island's capital offers the best museums and shopping. The Archaeological Museum provides context for the ancient Minoan civilization, while the walk along the caldera from Fira to Firostefani reveals constantly changing perspectives of the volcanic cliffs. **Red Beach & Akrotiri**: The Red Beach's dramatic rust-colored cliffs create a stunning contrast with the black pebbles. Nearby Akrotiri, the ancient Minoan city preserved in volcanic ash, rivals Pompeii for archaeological significance. **Pyrgos Village**: This inland village, with its medieval castle and traditional Cycladic architecture, offered authentic Greek life away from the tourist centers. The panoramic views from the hilltop are spectacular. **Wine Tasting**: Santorini's unique volcanic soil produces distinctive Assyrtiko wines. We visited Santo Wines for sunset tastings overlooking the caldera, where the volcanic terroir creates crisp, mineral-rich whites. ### Days 6-9: Paros Easter Celebration Taking the SeaJets ferry with our rental car proved seamless - drive onto the ship, enjoy the cruise, and drive off in Paros. **Hotel**: [Avant Mar Paros](https://www.avantmarhotel.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Parikia - A beautiful boutique hotel near the port, with traditional Cycladic design and modern amenities. The pool area was perfect for afternoon relaxation. **Good Friday**: The most moving experience of our trip. In Parikia, the entire town participated in the candlelit procession following the decorated epitaphios (funeral bier). Locals invited us to join, and the solemnity and beauty were profound. **Naoussa**: This picturesque fishing village on the north coast is postcard-perfect. The harbor, lined with tavernas and boutiques, becomes magical at sunset. The short drive from Parikia revealed Paros's gentle, rolling landscape. **Paros Villages**: We explored Lefkes, a marble-paved mountain village that was the island's former capital, and Prodromos, surrounded by olive groves and vineyards. These inland villages show traditional Greek island life unchanged for centuries. **Beaches**: Golden Beach on the southeast coast offers excellent windsurfing conditions and crystal-clear water. Kolymbithres Beach, with its unique granite rock formations carved by wind and sea, creates natural swimming pools. **Easter Sunday**: The midnight service at Panagia Ekatontapiliani (Church of 100 Doors) was extraordinary. At the stroke of midnight, the entire church erupted in light as thousands of candles were lit, followed by fireworks and celebration throughout the town. ### Days 10-12: Mykonos Style Another smooth ferry transfer brought us to Greece's most cosmopolitan island. **Hotel**: [Bill&Coo Mykonos](https://billandcoo.gr/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Ultra-modern luxury with stunning sea views. The infinity pool and spa were perfect for unwinding after active days of exploration. **Mykonos Town (Chora)**: The iconic windmills, Little Venice, and maze-like streets create the quintessential Greek island experience. Early morning walks through the whitewashed alleys, before cruise ship passengers arrive, revealed hidden chapels and architectural details. **Delos Day Trip**: The short boat ride to sacred Delos Island was a highlight. This UNESCO World Heritage site, believed to be Apollo's birthplace, contains some of the Mediterranean's most impressive ancient ruins. The Terrace of the Lions and the ancient mosaics transport you back to the height of Greek civilization. **Beaches**: Paradise Beach offered the famous Mykonos party scene, while Elia Beach provided a more relaxed atmosphere with excellent tavernas. Psarou Beach attracted a sophisticated crowd and had the clearest water. **Traditional Villages**: Ano Mera, inland from the coast, centers around the beautiful Panagia Tourliani Monastery. This glimpse of traditional Mykonos, with its central square and local tavernas, contrasts sharply with the coastal glitz. ### Days 13-16: Athens Grand Finale Our final ferry brought us to Piraeus, and returning the rental car there was straightforward. The hour-long transfer to central Athens completed our island adventure. **Hotel**: [King George Hotel (Marriott)](https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/athkg-king-george-a-luxury-collection-hotel-athens/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Located directly on Syntagma Square, this historic luxury hotel provided the perfect base for exploring ancient and modern Athens. **The Acropolis**: We booked an early morning private tour to avoid crowds and heat. Standing before the Parthenon at sunrise, with golden light illuminating the marble columns, was profoundly moving. Our guide's insights into ancient Greek democracy and philosophy brought the ruins to life. **Ancient Agora**: Walking where Socrates taught and Athenian democracy was born felt surreal. The well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus and the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos house an excellent museum explaining daily life in ancient Athens. **National Archaeological Museum**: This world-class collection includes treasures from Mycenae, including the gold Mask of Agamemnon, and the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's first computer. **Modern Athens Neighborhoods**: Plaka's narrow streets below the Acropolis house traditional tavernas and shops. The trendy Psyrri district offered contemporary Greek cuisine and nightlife. The National Gardens provided peaceful respite in the city center. **Food Experiences**: Athens exceeded our culinary expectations. As pescatarians/vegetarians, we found excellent options everywhere - from traditional tavernas serving spanakopita and Greek salads to modern restaurants reinterpreting plant-based Greek cuisine. Our favorite was **Winners** in Athens, which offered creative vegetarian dishes in a stylish setting. Throughout the islands, fresh seafood, local vegetables, and Greece's incredible olive oil and cheeses made every meal memorable. The Varvakios Central Market immersed us in authentic Greek food culture. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Time in Paros**: This was our favorite island - less touristy than Santorini and Mykonos, but equally beautiful. The Easter celebrations alone justified the visit, but the beaches, villages, and relaxed pace deserve more time. **Santorini Timing is Everything**: Don't skip Santorini - it truly is spectacular - but timing matters enormously. April proved perfect, with manageable crowds and mild weather. Summer visits would be far more challenging with cruise ship hordes and intense heat. **Athens Museums**: Plan more time for Athens's incredible museums. The Acropolis Museum, National Archaeological Museum, and Benaki Museum each deserve full mornings. ## Final Thoughts This itinerary perfectly balanced iconic sights with cultural immersion. Easter timing added spiritual depth to our journey, while ending in Athens eliminated travel stress. Greece's combination of ancient history, stunning natural beauty, and warm hospitality created memories to last a lifetime. The ferry connections worked flawlessly, the car rental strategy proved flexible, and the hotels provided perfect bases for exploration. For independent travelers wanting to experience authentic Greece beyond the typical tourist trail, this routing offers the best of the islands plus the classical wonders of Athens. **Total Distance by Ferry**: Approximately 400 nautical miles **Best Photo Spots**: Oia sunset, Paros harbor at Easter, Mykonos windmills, Acropolis at sunrise **Most Memorable Moment**: The Easter midnight service in Paros, where centuries-old traditions came alive around us. ### Vietnam Unveiled: A Perfect South-to-North Journey Through History and Culture URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/vietnam-unveiled-a-perfect-south-to-north-journey-through-history-and-culture/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T10:54:24.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_2374.png) Our February 2025 journey through Vietnam exceeded every expectation. This fascinating country, with its complex history, incredible cuisine, and warm hospitality, offered us experiences we'll treasure forever. Our south-to-north routing proved ideal, avoiding both tourist crowds and weather complications while allowing us to experience Vietnam's diverse regional personalities. ## General Comments **South-to-North Route**: This direction was brilliant strategic planning. Starting in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) during peak tourist season allowed us to experience the south before the crowds arrived, then moving north as weather conditions improved. By the time we reached Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, we encountered fewer tourists and better weather than travelers going the opposite direction. **Fast Track Service**: Absolutely essential and worth every penny. Vietnam's airports can have lengthy immigration queues, especially during peak travel periods. The Fast Track service whisked us through both arrival in Saigon and departure from Hanoi in minutes rather than hours. For the relatively small cost, this service eliminates jet lag-induced stress and gets you to your hotel faster. **Vietnam Airlines**: Don't hesitate to fly domestically with Vietnam Airlines. Their modern fleet, punctual service, and comfortable seating rival any international carrier. The domestic flights were efficient, and the crews were professional and friendly. The short flight times between cities make this far preferable to long overland journeys. **Air Quality Considerations**: Air pollution varies dramatically by region. Saigon and Hoi An had surprisingly clean air during our visit, but Hanoi's smog was severe and noticeable. Sensitive travelers should pack masks and plan accordingly, especially for outdoor activities in the north. **Weather Timing**: February proved ideal for our route. The south was warm and dry, central Vietnam was pleasant, and while the north was cooler, it was still comfortable for sightseeing. This timing avoided the intense heat of summer and the rainy season complications. **Currency and Payments**: While Vietnam is increasingly card-friendly in tourist areas, cash remains king for street food, markets, and smaller vendors. US dollars are widely accepted for larger purchases, but having Vietnamese dong for daily expenses is essential. **Food Safety**: As pescatarians/vegetarians, we found incredible variety and had zero stomach issues. Vietnamese cuisine naturally emphasizes fresh vegetables, rice, and seafood. Pho, fresh spring rolls, and local vegetarian Buddhist cuisine provided endless delicious options. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Arrival and Ho Chi Minh City Introduction Flying via Tokyo's Narita, we arrived in Saigon near midnight. The Fast Track service proved invaluable - while other passengers queued for hours, we were in our hotel within 45 minutes of landing. **Hotel**: [Park Hyatt Saigon](https://www.hyatt.com/en-US/hotel/vietnam/park-hyatt-saigon/sgnph?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Perfectly located near the Opera House and Notre-Dame Cathedral, this elegant hotel became our base for exploring the city. The colonial French architecture and modern luxury created the ideal introduction to Vietnam's layered history. ### Day 3: Ho Chi Minh City Half-Day Tour Our morning city tour provided essential context for understanding modern Vietnam. **War Remnants Museum**: A sobering but important visit that presents the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective. The exhibits are intense but necessary for understanding the country's recent history and resilience. **Notre-Dame Cathedral and Central Post Office**: These French colonial architectural gems showcase Vietnam's complex colonial period. The post office, designed by Gustave Eiffel, remains a functioning postal facility and architectural marvel. **Ben Thanh Market**: The sensory overload of Vietnam's most famous market - spices, textiles, street food, and the controlled chaos of Vietnamese commerce. Perfect for picking up souvenirs and experiencing local life. **Afternoon Massage**: After jet lag and city exploration, the hotel spa's traditional Vietnamese massage was exactly what we needed. ### Day 4: Exploring Modern Saigon A free day allowed us to explore at our own pace and discover the city's contemporary culture. **District 1 Walking**: The heart of Saigon reveals layers of history - French colonial buildings housing modern cafes, street food vendors next to luxury boutiques, and the famous motorcycle traffic that defines Vietnamese cities. **Saigon Skydeck**: The panoramic views from the tallest building in Vietnam provided perspective on this sprawling metropolis of 10 million people. **Food Discoveries**: From pho bo (beef noodle soup) to fresh spring rolls, banh mi sandwiches, and Vietnamese coffee culture, every meal was an adventure. Vegetarian Buddhist restaurants offered incredibly creative plant-based Vietnamese cuisine. ### Day 5: Mekong Delta Adventure Our full-day Ben Tre province tour showcased rural Vietnamese life and the Mekong's importance. **Coconut Candy Factory**: Watching traditional candy-making processes and sampling fresh coconut products straight from local palms. **Boat Journey Through Canals**: Narrow waterways revealed village life unchanged for generations - floating markets, riverside homes, and the intricate canal system that defines Mekong living. **Local Family Visit**: Sharing tea and conversation with a local family provided insights into rural Vietnamese culture and hospitality that guidebooks can't capture. **Bicycle Tour**: Riding through rice paddies and fruit orchards on paths barely wider than our bikes created intimate connections with the landscape and local farmers. ### Days 6-9: Hoi An's Ancient Charm Flying to Da Nang, we were whisked to Hoi An by Four Seasons' seamless transfer service. **Hotel**: [Four Seasons Hoi An - Pool Villa](https://www.fourseasons.com/hoian/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Our private villa with pool and garden created a tranquil retreat. The resort's beach location and traditional Vietnamese architecture perfectly complemented Hoi An's ancient atmosphere. **Ancient Town UNESCO Site**: This remarkably preserved trading port showcases 500 years of cultural exchange. Chinese temples, Japanese covered bridges, French colonial mansions, and traditional Vietnamese merchant houses create an architectural timeline. **Lantern Festival**: Evening walks through the Ancient Town when thousands of colorful lanterns illuminate the streets and waterways created magical moments. The weekly lantern release ceremony was particularly moving. **Cooking Class**: Learning to make fresh spring rolls, cao lau noodles, and white rose dumplings from local chefs provided hands-on cultural immersion. **My Son Sanctuary Day Trip**: These ancient Cham ruins, Vietnam's answer to Angkor Wat, revealed the sophisticated Hindu Cham civilization that ruled central Vietnam for centuries. **Tailor Shopping**: Hoi An's famous custom tailoring produced beautiful silk clothing and accessories at incredible prices with next-day turnaround. ### Day 10: Hue Imperial Citadel Our day trip to Vietnam's former imperial capital revealed the country's royal history. **Imperial City**: Walking through the Forbidden Purple City and experiencing the grandeur of the Nguyen Dynasty emperors provided context for Vietnam's pre-colonial sophistication. **Thien Mu Pagoda**: This seven-story pagoda on the Perfume River is Vietnam's most iconic Buddhist structure, combining spiritual significance with architectural beauty. **Royal Tombs**: The elaborate tomb complexes of Emperors Minh Mang and Khai Dinh showcase different approaches to memorializing Vietnamese royalty, from austere traditional to ornately decorated. ### Days 11-13: Hanoi's Northern Character Flying north to Vietnam's capital revealed a distinctly different Vietnamese culture. **Hotel**: [Capella Hanoi](https://www.capellahotels.com/en/hanoi?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This boutique luxury hotel in the French Quarter perfectly balanced colonial elegance with modern sophistication. The location allowed easy exploration of both the Old Quarter and French colonial districts. **Old Quarter Walking Tour**: The ancient commercial heart of Hanoi, with each street traditionally dedicated to specific trades. The controlled chaos of motorcycles, street food vendors, and narrow shop houses creates an uniquely Vietnamese urban experience. **Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum**: Understanding modern Vietnam requires experiencing this shrine to the country's founding father. The solemnity and reverence Vietnamese people show here is profound. **Temple of Literature**: Vietnam's first university, dedicated to Confucian learning, showcases the country's intellectual traditions and Chinese cultural influences. **Water Puppet Theater**: This uniquely Vietnamese art form, performed in waist-deep water, tells traditional stories through intricately crafted wooden puppets and live traditional music. ### Day 14: Ninh Binh - "Ha Long Bay on Land" Our day trip to Ninh Binh province revealed Vietnam's most dramatic landscapes. **Trang An Scenic Boat Tour**: Rowing through limestone karst formations, caves, and pristine waterways felt like entering a prehistoric world. The UNESCO World Heritage landscape is breathtaking. **Bich Dong Pagoda**: This three-tiered pagoda built into a limestone cliff combines natural beauty with spiritual significance. **Mua Cave Viewpoint**: The challenging climb to the peak rewards visitors with panoramic views over the entire Ninh Binh landscape - rivers winding through rice fields surrounded by dramatic limestone peaks. ### Days 15-16: Ha Long Bay Cruise The classic Vietnam experience - cruising through the UNESCO World Heritage seascape. **Orchid Cruise**: Our luxury overnight cruise provided comfortable accommodation while exploring the bay's 1,600 limestone islands and islets. **Sung Sot Cave**: Also known as Surprise Cave, this enormous cavern with spectacular stalactite formations was carved by centuries of wave action. **Ti Top Island**: Climbing to the viewpoint revealed Ha Long Bay's full majesty - thousands of limestone pillars rising from emerald waters extending to the horizon. **Tai Chi at Sunrise**: Beginning the day with gentle exercises on the cruise deck while surrounded by mystical limestone formations was profoundly peaceful. **Kayaking Through Hidden Lagoons**: Paddling through narrow passages between limestone cliffs led to hidden lagoons accessible only by small craft. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Time in Central Vietnam**: The Hoi An region deserves additional days. We could have easily spent more time exploring the surrounding countryside, beaches, and nearby cultural sites. **Hanoi Air Quality Planning**: Knowing about the severe smog, we would have packed better masks and planned more indoor activities during poor air quality days. **Domestic Flight Timing**: Vietnam Airlines' efficiency meant we could have booked shorter connections between flights, allowing more time at destinations. ## Final Thoughts Vietnam exceeded every expectation with its combination of ancient culture, complex history, stunning natural beauty, and incredibly warm people. The south-to-north routing allowed us to experience the country's regional diversity while avoiding crowds and weather complications. The Fast Track airport services were essential for smooth travel, Vietnam Airlines proved excellent for domestic flights, and the luxury hotels provided perfect bases for cultural exploration. Most importantly, Vietnamese hospitality and the country's incredible culinary traditions made every day memorable. For independent travelers seeking cultural immersion combined with natural beauty, Vietnam offers experiences found nowhere else. The combination of French colonial influences, ancient Asian traditions, and dynamic modern development creates a uniquely compelling destination. **Total Distance Traveled**: Approximately 1,200 miles through Vietnam **Best Photo Opportunities**: Ha Long Bay sunrise, Hoi An lantern festival, Mekong Delta canals, Ninh Binh karst landscapes **Most Memorable Experience**: Sharing tea with a local family in the Mekong Delta, where language barriers dissolved through universal human warmth and curiosity about each other's lives. ### Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Soup URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/roasted-eggplant-and-tomato-soup/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T15:27:41.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/01/roasted-eggplant-tomato-soup.png) **Serves:** 4 to 6 **Diet:** Vegetarian ## Why This Recipe Works Eggplants and tomatoes are often found together throughout the eastern Mediterranean in countless dishes, especially soups. For a wonderfully creamy yet hefty soup, we began by dicing and roasting eggplant and found we could skip the task of salting, rinsing, and drying it. We left the skin on for deeper eggplant flavor and broiled it to develop a flavorful char. To build our soup, we started with the usual aromatics—onion and garlic—and added the flavorful North African spice blend ras el hanout plus some extra cumin, which gave the soup complex flavor. Using broth gave the soup well-rounded flavor, and we added subtle sweetness with raisins, which once pureed also gave our soup body. Canned tomatoes were easy and offered rich tomato flavor. We reserved some eggplant to add to the pureed soup for a pleasantly chunky texture. Lemon juice provided brightness, almonds gave a pleasant crunch, and cilantro added freshness. We prefer to use our homemade Ras el Hanout, but you can substitute store-bought ras el hanout if you wish, though flavor and spiciness can vary greatly by brand. Pureed raisins add body and flavor to our complexly spiced eggplant and tomato soup. ## Ingredients - 2 pounds eggplant, cut into ½-inch pieces - 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for serving - 1 onion, chopped - Salt and pepper - 2 garlic cloves, minced - 1½ teaspoons ras el hanout - ½ teaspoon ground cumin - 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth, plus extra as needed - 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained - ¼ cup raisins - 1 bay leaf - 2 teaspoons lemon juice - 2 tablespoons slivered almonds, toasted - 2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro ## Instructions 1. Adjust oven rack 4 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. Toss eggplant with 5 tablespoons oil, then spread in aluminum foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. Broil eggplant for 10 minutes. Stir eggplant and continue to broil until mahogany brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Measure out and reserve 2 cups eggplant. 2. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in large saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add onion, ¾ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper and cook until softened and lightly browned, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in garlic, ras el hanout, and cumin and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in broth, tomatoes, raisins, bay leaf, and remaining eggplant and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer gently until eggplant is softened, about 20 minutes. 3. Discard bay leaf. Working in batches, process soup in blender until smooth, about 2 minutes. Return soup to clean saucepan and stir in reserved eggplant. Heat soup gently over low heat until hot (do not boil) and adjust consistency with extra hot broth as needed. Stir in lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve, sprinkling individual portions with almonds and cilantro and drizzling with extra oil. ## Notes: Toasting Nuts and Seeds Toasting nuts and seeds maximizes their flavor and crunch. To toast less than 1 cup of nuts or seeds, put the nuts or seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat. Shake the skillet occasionally to prevent scorching and toast until they are lightly browned and fragrant, 3 to 8 minutes. Watch them closely since they can go from golden to burnt very quickly. To toast more than 1 cup of nuts or seeds, spread them in a single layer in a rimmed baking sheet and toast in a 350-degree oven. Shake the baking sheet every few minutes, and toast until the nuts or seeds are lightly browned and fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. ### Buenos Aires Revisited: A Week of Relaxation, Culture, and Culinary Delights URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/buenos-aires-revisited-a-week-of-relaxation-culture-and-culinary-delights/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T11:04:29.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_1644.JPG) After several previous visits to Argentina exploring Patagonia, wine country, and the country's natural wonders, we decided our December 2024/January 2025 trip would be different - a full week of pure relaxation and cultural immersion in Buenos Aires. This approach allowed us to experience the city like locals rather than tourists, discovering neighborhoods at a leisurely pace and diving deep into porteño culture. ## General Comments **Return Visit Strategy**: Having explored Argentina's dramatic landscapes on previous trips, dedicating an entire week solely to Buenos Aires proved brilliant. Instead of rushing between must-see sights, we could wander neighborhoods, linger over long lunches, and truly absorb the city's sophisticated European atmosphere. **Walking City**: Buenos Aires rewards exploration on foot. We averaged 8-10 miles daily, discovering hidden plazas, architectural gems, and neighborhood cafes that don't appear in guidebooks. The city's grid system makes navigation easy, and each barrio (neighborhood) has its distinct personality. **Summer Season**: Visiting during Buenos Aires' summer (December/January) meant warm weather, long daylight hours, and vibrant street life. Outdoor cafes, weekend markets, and evening strolls were perfect. However, this is peak tourist season, so advance reservations for restaurants and shows are essential. **Vegetarian Dining Renaissance**: Buenos Aires has transformed dramatically for vegetarian diners. Beyond traditional parrillas (steakhouses), the city now boasts world-class plant-based cuisine that rivals any international food capital. The combination of Italian influences, local ingredients, and creative chefs creates extraordinary vegetarian experiences. **Cultural Immersion**: Taking time for private tango lessons before attending professional shows, spending entire afternoons in single neighborhoods, and establishing routines at local cafes allowed us to experience Buenos Aires as residents rather than visitors. **Transportation**: While Buenos Aires has excellent public transportation, walking proved the best way to discover the city's hidden corners. Taxis and Uber are readily available for longer distances or evening returns to the hotel. ## Itinerary ### Day 1: Arrival and Settling In Landing at Ezeiza in the early morning, the Four Seasons' private car service provided a smooth transition from the airport to the heart of the city. **Hotel**: [Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires](https://www.fourseasons.com/buenosaires/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Located in the elegant Recoleta neighborhood, this luxury hotel became our perfect base for exploring the city. The central location allowed us to walk to major attractions while providing a tranquil retreat after long days of urban exploration. **Arrival Day**: After checking in, we spent the afternoon walking the immediate Recoleta area, getting oriented and adjusting to the city's rhythm. The nearby Avenida Alvear, often called South America's most elegant street, provided our first taste of Buenos Aires' sophisticated shopping and café culture. ### Day 2: Hop-On Hop-Off Orientation Despite our previous Buenos Aires experience, the hop-on hop-off bus provided an excellent refresher on the city's layout and recent changes. **City Overview**: The bus route connected major neighborhoods - from historic San Telmo to modern Puerto Madero, elegant Recoleta to trendy Palermo. This overview helped us plan our deeper neighborhood explorations for the remaining days. **Puerto Madero**: We lingered in this modern waterfront district, transformed from abandoned docks into Buenos Aires' newest neighborhood. The ecological reserve provided green space and bird watching just minutes from downtown skyscrapers. **First Dinner Discovery**: Wandering back to Recoleta, we discovered **Gioia Botanica** inside the nearby Park Hyatt - an unexpected gem that would become one of our favorite restaurants of the trip. ### Day 3: Palermo Soho and Hollywood Dedicating an entire day to Palermo allowed us to experience Buenos Aires' most creative neighborhood thoroughly. **Palermo Soho**: Starting at Plaza Armenia, we wandered the cobblestone streets discovering designer boutiques, art galleries, and sidewalk cafes. The neighborhood's low-rise architecture and tree-lined streets felt more like a village within the city. **Plaza Serrano**: This small plaza becomes the heart of weekend life in Palermo, with outdoor markets, street performers, and impromptu gatherings that capture the neighborhood's bohemian spirit. **Palermo Hollywood**: Walking north, the neighborhood transitions from shopping to entertainment. The Japanese Garden (Jardín Japonés) provided unexpected tranquility - one of the world's largest Japanese gardens outside Japan, complete with tea ceremony and meditation areas. **Neighborhood Dining**: Lunch at a sidewalk parrilla where we discovered excellent vegetarian empanadas and provoleta cheese proved that even traditional Argentine restaurants now cater beautifully to non-meat eaters. ### Day 4: Recoleta and Cultural Immersion Exploring our hotel's neighborhood revealed layers of Buenos Aires' sophisticated side. **Recoleta Cemetery**: This elaborate necropolis, where Eva Perón rests among Argentina's elite, showcases incredible mausoleums that reflect the country's wealthy history. The maze-like paths and elaborate sculptures create an outdoor museum of Argentine aristocracy. **Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes**: Argentina's premier art museum houses an impressive collection of European masters alongside the country's best artists. The building itself, a former water pumping station, provides architectural interest. **Marti**: This Recoleta restaurant became our absolute favorite dining discovery. The innovative vegetarian cuisine combined Argentine ingredients with international techniques, creating dishes that rivaled any restaurant we've experienced globally. **Evening Exploration**: Walking through Recoleta's elegant streets after dinner, we discovered the neighborhood's sophisticated nightlife - intimate wine bars, late-night bookstores, and sidewalk cafes that stay busy until dawn. ### Day 5: Private Tango Experience Our most memorable cultural day combined personal instruction with professional performance. **Private Tango Lesson**: A local instructor met us at our hotel for a two-hour private lesson in our suite. Learning the basic steps, understanding the music, and grasping tango's emotional expression provided essential context for appreciating professional performances. **Rojo Tango Show**: This exclusive club experience differed completely from tourist tango shows. The intimate venue, sophisticated audience, and world-class performers created an authentic porteño evening. Having learned basic steps earlier made the professional performances far more meaningful. **Late Dinner**: Following Argentine dining customs, we had dinner at 10 PM after the show, joining locals for the traditional late-night meal that defines Buenos Aires social life. ### Day 6: River Delta Adventure Our day trip to the Paraná River Delta provided a completely unexpected experience. **Tigre and the Delta**: The boat tour through the river system revealed a side of Argentine life we'd never imagined. Hundreds of weekend homes line the waterways, accessible only by boat, creating a culture remarkably similar to the Missouri Ozarks or Minnesota's lake country. **River Life**: We watched water skiers, families enjoying riverside barbecues, and a thriving boat-based economy serving the weekend communities. The lush subtropical vegetation and winding waterways felt like entering a different country entirely. **Tigre Market**: Back on the mainland, the weekend market offered local crafts, antiques, and regional foods. The relaxed river town atmosphere contrasted sharply with Buenos Aires' urban intensity. **Cultural Surprise**: This experience highlighted how much of Argentina remains unknown even to frequent visitors. The river culture, weekend retreat lifestyle, and boat-based communities revealed the country's diversity beyond the typical tourist experiences. ### Day 7: San Telmo Sunday Our final full day centered on Buenos Aires' most historic neighborhood during its famous Sunday market. **Feria de San Telmo**: This massive antique and crafts market transforms the neighborhood every Sunday. Tango dancers perform in the streets, musicians play on corners, and vendors sell everything from vintage jewelry to handmade crafts. **Plaza Dorrego**: The heart of San Telmo comes alive with free tango performances throughout the day. Local couples demonstrate their skills while tourists and porteños gather to watch and occasionally join in. **Historic Architecture**: San Telmo's colonial and early immigrant architecture tells Buenos Aires' founding story. The narrow cobblestone streets, colorful buildings, and old-world atmosphere transport visitors back to the city's origins. **Final Culinary Adventure**: Our last dinner at a traditional San Telmo restaurant serving creative vegetarian versions of Argentine classics provided a perfect culmination of our week-long exploration. ### Day 8: Leisurely Departure Our final morning allowed for last-minute neighborhood walks and souvenir shopping before the evening flight. ## Culinary Highlights Buenos Aires' vegetarian dining scene exceeded our highest expectations: **Marti** (Recoleta): Absolutely our favorite restaurant of the trip. The innovative vegetarian tasting menu combined Argentine ingredients with international techniques, creating dishes that were both familiar and revolutionary. The wine pairings featuring boutique Argentine vintages were exceptional. **Gioia Botanica** (Park Hyatt): This hotel restaurant proved that hotel dining can rival independent establishments. The plant-based menu emphasized local, seasonal ingredients prepared with sophisticated techniques. The elegant atmosphere made it perfect for special dinners. **Neighborhood Discoveries**: Walking different areas daily led us to discover small vegetarian cafes, organic markets, and traditional restaurants offering creative plant-based versions of Argentine classics. The city's Italian heritage means excellent pasta and pizza are everywhere. ## What We'd Do Differently **More River Time**: The Delta experience was so unexpectedly wonderful that we would dedicate a full day, possibly including an overnight stay at one of the river hotels. **Extended Tango Immersion**: Having private lessons before the show was perfect, but we could have easily spent more time learning this essential Buenos Aires art form. **Wine Country Day Trip**: While we focused on the city, a day trip to nearby wine regions would complement the excellent Argentine wines we discovered at city restaurants. ## Final Thoughts Dedicating an entire week to Buenos Aires as return visitors proved ideal. Instead of checking sights off a list, we could experience the city's rhythm, discover hidden neighborhoods, and truly appreciate porteño culture. The combination of European sophistication, Latin passion, and Argentine warmth creates a unique urban experience. The vegetarian dining scene alone justifies a Buenos Aires visit, while experiences like the river delta tour and private tango lessons provided memories impossible to create on shorter visits. Most importantly, walking the city extensively - averaging 8-10 miles daily - revealed Buenos Aires' true character beyond the guidebook highlights. For travelers who have seen Argentina's natural wonders, or for those who simply want to experience one of South America's most sophisticated cities, Buenos Aires rewards extended stays. The city's complexity, cultural richness, and surprising discoveries make every day memorable. **Total Walking Distance**: Approximately 60 miles over eight days **Best Discovery**: The river delta culture that felt like Argentina's hidden lake country **Most Memorable Meal**: The vegetarian tasting menu at Marti that redefined our expectations of plant-based fine dining **Cultural Highlight**: Private tango lessons followed by an authentic milonga experience that connected us to Buenos Aires' soul ### Why I'm Spending a Year with the Beatitudes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-im-spending-a-year-with-the-beatitudes/ Last updated: 2025-08-12T14:05:43.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/wonder.jpg) Every year, I challenge myself to [learn something completely new](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/annual-bhavana/). Not a casual hobby, but an intentional, reflective, deep dive—the kind that changes how you see things. Early on, these adventures were physical. I trained for and ran my first marathon, learned to scuba dive, picked up windsurfing, skied five countries in Europe. Later, they became more complex: a complete house remodel (which also taught me about patience), a deep dive into Buddhism that took me to Bhutan, writing and publishing a book, even learning to grow cannabis legally and well. This year's project combines two fascinations: the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, and artificial intelligence. I've been using ChatGPT for conversation and initial exploration, Perplexity for deep research, and Claude for synthesis and writing. It's been fascinating to see how AI can augment human curiosity without replacing the essential work of thinking and meaning-making. ## Questions That Won't Go Away As I settle into early retirement, I keep returning to the same questions: What does it mean to live well when you're no longer climbing career ladders? How do you maintain integrity and purpose outside organizational structures? What kind of person do I want to become when nobody's watching my performance metrics? These questions led me back to a passage I've always found compelling but never deeply explored: the Beatitudes. Eight short statements Jesus made at the beginning of his most famous sermon. Simple words that have somehow shaped Western civilization's understanding of virtue. *Blessed are the poor in spirit...* *Blessed are those who mourn...* *Blessed are the meek...* I'm curious: What if these aren't just religious platitudes but practical wisdom about human flourishing? What if they offer insights not just for personal meaning but for leadership itself? ## What I'm Really Wondering About The more I've read about servant leadership over the years, the more I notice how its core principles echo these ancient teachings. Leaders who listen more than they speak. Who build others up rather than themselves. Who find strength in acknowledging their limitations. Who lead through influence rather than authority. But I'm also curious about something broader: How do these insights appear in other wisdom traditions? Buddhism certainly talks about ego and compassion. Islam emphasizes mercy and humility. Hinduism teaches about surrendering false pride. Indigenous traditions honor community over individual achievement. Are the Beatitudes uniquely Christian, or do they articulate something universal about how humans thrive together? ## An Unexpected Discovery What I didn't expect was how often these teachings feel forgotten—not just within Christianity, but across religious traditions. We seem drawn to the prescriptive rules that can be easily politicized or conveniently ignored when they conflict with power or personal advantage. Meanwhile, the deeper teachings about compassion, humility, and service—the ones that actually transform how we treat each other—get pushed aside. Christians quote the Ten Commandments more than the Beatitudes. Muslims debate law more than mercy. Buddhists can get caught up in doctrine while missing compassion. It's as if every tradition risks losing its own heart in favor of easier, more controllable external markers. Meanwhile, our culture seems hungry for exactly what these teachings offer: authentic leadership, genuine community, ways of engaging conflict that don't destroy relationships, models of strength that don't require dominating others. ## What I'm Learning (And Sharing) Over the coming weeks, I'll share what I'm discovering—one Beatitude at a time. Each exploration will include: - What the original languages actually convey (the English translations sometimes miss important nuances) - The Jewish wisdom tradition that shaped these teachings - How similar insights appear across world traditions—with honest attention to both parallels and differences - What this might mean for leadership, retirement, relationships, and simply getting through our days with integrity This isn't devotional writing, though you might find it meaningful. It's not academic theology, though it draws on serious scholarship. Think of it as one person's honest exploration of wisdom that might belong to all of us, even as it finds particular expression in Christian scripture. ## A Different Kind of Learning I'm approaching this the same way I've tackled previous projects: read widely, find good teachers, try things out, share what seems useful. But I'm also aware that these aren't just intellectual puzzles to solve. They're invitations to a way of being that challenges pretty much everything our culture teaches about success and influence. The Beatitudes suggest that strength comes through acknowledging weakness, that leadership emerges from service, that security grows from letting go of control. They point toward a kind of radical humility that looks like weakness but might actually be wisdom. ## An Invitation to Wonder Whether you're wrestling with retirement transitions, leadership questions, or simply wondering if there might be better ways to be human together, I think you'll find something worthwhile in this exploration. This isn't about converting anyone to anything. It's about wondering together: What if these ancient observations are true? What if there really are patterns to human flourishing that transcend religious boundaries? I have consolidated this research at [BeatitudesPath](https://www.beatitudespath.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). I invite you to visit and explore. ## ### Meyer Lomeli Vegetarian Chili URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/meyer-lomeli-vegetarian-chili/ Last updated: 2026-01-13T15:20:48.000Z Complex, but very much worth it! ## Ingredients ### Group 1 - 2 tbsp olive oil - 2 cups chopped yellow onion - 1 cup chopped green bell pepper - 1 cup diced celery - ½ cup diced peeled carrot - 8 ounces chopped cremini (or similar) mushrooms - 4 garlic cloves, minced ### Group 2 - 2 cans unsalted tomato paste - 1 ½ tbsp chili powder - 2 tsp ground cumin - 1 tsp dried oregano - ½ tsp smoked paprika - ¼ tsp ground red pepper ### Group 3 - 2 14.5 oz cans stewed tomatoes - 2 cups water - 1 cup low sodium vegetable juice (V8 or veg drink) ### Group 4 - ½ cup uncooked wheat berries - 1 cup water ### Group 5 - 1 cup lager beer and/or 1 cup red wine - 2 tbsp liquid aminos (such as Bragg) - 1 14.5 oz can unsalted kidney beans, drained ### Toppers - Sharp cheddar cheese - Diced red onion - Reduced fat sour cream ## Instructions 1. Heat oil in large pot and add Group 1\. Sauté 10 minutes or until vegetables begin to brown. 2. Add Group 2 ingredients. Cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly. 3. Add Group 3 ingredients and bring to boil, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. 4. Use a smaller pot to bring Group 4 ingredients to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. 5. Add Group 4 ingredients and Group 5 ingredients to main pot and cook 20 minutes. 6. Serve with Toppings. **Serves at least six.** ### Thanksgiving in Paradise: A Week at Turtle Inn, Belize URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thanksgiving-in-paradise-a-week-at-turtle-inn-belize/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T11:11:13.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_1431.png) Sometimes the perfect vacation is about finding one extraordinary place and simply staying put. Our November 2024 Thanksgiving week at Francis Ford Coppola's Turtle Inn in Placencia, Belize proved that luxury beach resorts can offer both complete relaxation and cultural immersion when you give them time to work their magic. ## General Comments **Single Destination Strategy**: After years of multi-country itineraries and constant hotel changes, dedicating an entire week to one resort felt revolutionary. This 25-room seafront escape with individual thatched cottages provided the perfect setting for true relaxation - no packing, no early morning flights, no rushing between sights. **Thanksgiving Timing**: Late November proved ideal for Belize weather - consistently sunny and 80°F, with gentle trade winds that made the humidity comfortable. Tourist crowds were minimal, and the resort felt like our private retreat. **Coppola's Vision**: Francis Ford Coppola's Caribbean cabanas are shaggy-thatched hideaway huts inspired by Balinese design, creating an authentic yet luxurious atmosphere. The director's artistic sensibility shows in every detail, from the hand-carved decorations to the absence of televisions in favor of natural entertainment. **Domestic Flights in Belize**: The short flight from Belize City to Placencia on Maya Island Air was efficient and offered stunning aerial views of the barrier reef. Small planes land directly at the resort's doorstep - literally a 5-minute transfer from airplane to beach cottage. **Eco-Luxury Balance**: The resort demonstrates that luxury and environmental consciousness aren't mutually exclusive. All cottages and villas are naturally cooled by the ever-present sea breezes rather than air conditioning, creating a more authentic tropical experience. **Vegetarian Paradise**: Belize's Caribbean and Latin influences, combined with the resort's Italian restaurant heritage, provided incredible vegetarian cuisine throughout our stay. ## The Turtle Inn Experience ### Accommodation: Balinese-Caribbean Fusion Individual thatched cottages, decorated with handcrafted Balinese furnishings, naturally cooled by the ever-present sea breezes created our perfect retreat. Our seaview cottage featured a private deck steps from the beach, outdoor shower surrounded by tropical plants, and the famous conch shell communication system to contact resort services. The absence of air conditioning initially concerned us, but the constant sea breeze and elevated cottage design made temperatures consistently comfortable. Falling asleep to ocean sounds rather than mechanical humming enhanced the tropical experience immeasurably. ### Dining: Italian Meets Caribbean **Mare Restaurant**: The resort's flagship dining experience showcased authentic Italian cuisine prepared with local ingredients. Fresh pasta with Caribbean spiny lobster, wood-fired pizza with local vegetables, and creative vegetarian interpretations of traditional dishes exceeded our expectations nightly. **Gauguin Grill**: This beachfront restaurant served the freshest seafood we've ever experienced - literally caught that morning and grilled to perfection. The Belizean-style whole fish with rice and beans became our favorite lunch. **Auntie Luba's**: The casual Belizean restaurant on the lagoon side introduced us to authentic Creole cuisine. The vegetarian bean and rice dishes, fresh fruit, and coconut-based desserts provided perfect complements to the Italian fare. **Coppola Wines**: Having the director's own wine collection available enhanced every meal. The Argentine vintages paired beautifully with Caribbean flavors, creating unexpected and delightful combinations. ### Activities: From Adventure to Pure Relaxation **Barrier Reef Snorkeling**: With its subtropical climate, unspoiled atolls, and the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere, Belize is considered one of the best diving locations in the world. Daily snorkeling trips revealed an underwater world rivaling any we've experienced - parrotfish, angelfish, and coral formations just minutes from shore. **Placencia Village**: The charming sea-front fishing village of Placencia provided authentic Belizean culture just a bike ride away. Evening shuttles allowed us to explore local restaurants, art galleries, and the famous barefoot bars that define Caribbean nightlife. **Kayaking the Lagoon**: Paddling through the mangrove channels on the lagoon side revealed a completely different ecosystem. Manatee sightings, tropical birds, and the peaceful morning silence created meditative experiences. **Spa Treatments**: The Sunset Spa's treatments in open-air thatched huts, with ocean breezes and tropical bird songs, redefined our concept of relaxation. The combination of traditional massage techniques with the natural setting was transformative. **Pure Beach Time**: Sometimes the best activity is no activity. Long mornings in hammocks, afternoon swims in the Caribbean, sunset walks on white sand beaches, and evening conversations on our private deck created the rhythm of true vacation. ### Cultural Immersion **Belizean Staff Stories**: The resort's primarily Belizean staff shared their country's history, culture, and traditions during quiet conversations. Learning about Creole heritage, Garifuna culture, and modern Belizean life added depth to our beach relaxation. **Mayan Heritage**: Day trips to nearby Mayan ruins provided historical context for the region. The combination of ancient civilization and modern Caribbean culture showcased Belize's unique cultural layers. **Local Artisans**: Closer to home in Placencia, you can collect wooden handicrafts such as the distinctive ziricote animal masks, jaguar sculptures and coconut mermaids. Supporting local artists while discovering traditional Belizean crafts created meaningful souvenirs. ## Daily Rhythm Our week settled into a perfect tropical rhythm: sunrise walks on deserted beaches, leisurely breakfasts on our private deck, morning snorkeling or kayaking adventures, afternoon hammock sessions with books and Caribbean breezes, pre-dinner cocktails watching spectacular sunsets, and evening dining under stars. The absence of structured schedules, television distractions, or urban noise allowed us to reconnect with natural rhythms. We woke with sunrise, moved with the tides, and slept with the sound of waves. ## What We'd Do Differently **Extend the Stay**: A week felt perfect, but we could have easily enjoyed ten days. The resort's variety of activities, combined with the deep relaxation possible, justifies longer stays. **Explore More Islands**: Belize's numerous cayes and atolls offer incredible diversity. Future trips might include island-hopping to experience different aspects of Belizean marine life. **Visit During Whale Shark Season**: If you're lucky enough to be visiting during a full moon week in April, May or June, you may get an up-close encounter with a whale shark. This would be an incredible addition to the snorkeling experiences. ## Final Thoughts Turtle Inn proved that sometimes the best travel experiences come from slowing down rather than speeding up. Francis Ford Coppola's vision of combining luxury with authentic tropical living created an environment where genuine relaxation was inevitable. The resort's commitment to environmental sustainability, support for local communities, and preservation of natural beauty made us feel like responsible travelers rather than mere consumers. The Balinese-Caribbean fusion architecture, absence of modern distractions, and integration with the natural environment created a unique luxury experience. For travelers seeking complete disconnection from daily stress, cultural immersion without discomfort, and some of the world's best snorkeling literally at their doorstep, Turtle Inn offers an unmatched combination. It's the rare resort that becomes a destination unto itself. Most importantly, a week here reminded us why we travel - not just to see new places, but to experience different ways of living, even if temporarily. The Caribbean pace of life, emphasis on natural beauty over artificial entertainment, and celebration of simple pleasures created memories that extend far beyond the vacation itself. **Best Photo Opportunities**: Sunrise from cottage deck, underwater coral formations, sunset cocktails, Balinese architecture details **Most Memorable Moments**: Swimming with parrotfish just steps from our cottage, evening conversations with Belizean staff about local culture, falling asleep to ocean waves every night **Perfect For**: Couples seeking romantic escapes, families wanting unique cultural experiences, anyone needing complete digital detox and natural immersion. ### A Lack of Respect for People on the Balance Sheet URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lack-of-respect-for-people-on-the-balance-sheet/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T14:00:42.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/budget-GettyImages-1184617520.jpg) We often see the phrase "People are our most important asset" on conference room walls, in company policies, annual reports, and frequently repeated by many so-called leaders. But can they prove it where it really counts—on their financial statements? Unfortunately, traditional GAAP and IFRS accounting make this very difficult. Many assets have clearly defined financial values. Cash and cash equivalents are obvious. Land, buildings, and equipment can be added to the balance sheet based on their original cost. These assets depreciate over time based on set standards, such as 30 years for buildings and 1-10 years for equipment, depending on the type. Some assets, like real estate, can be adjusted for appreciation based on market analysis. These assets can then be categorized as current or long-term based on their liquidity. Some assets are more esoteric, and their financial value is harder to determine and defend. Goodwill and brand value are examples. There are standardized methods to assign financial value to these, and it can be argued they are legitimate because the value of brands like Apple or Starbucks makes the company more financially valuable to investors. However, analysts are deluding themselves if they believe a 10% swing in goodwill or brand value is as accurate as a comparable swing in cash or receivables. Yet both impact the equity line equally. While an asset is on the balance sheet, further cash investments may be made to add or maintain its value. These expenses on the profit and loss statement can sometimes be moved to the balance sheet to adjust the asset value. As a balance sheet asset depreciates, the reduced value is moved to the P&L as an expense. If an asset with remaining value is disposed of, the remaining value is also moved to the P&L as an expense. This forces a company to consider asset utilization and the cost of removing an asset compared to the value of a new process or asset. There’s always a balance between asset value, expenses, and investment, even with underlying assumptions on rates of change driven by GAAP. Now, let’s go back to people. Remember, people supposedly are "our most important asset." The expense of people is clear on the P&L, shown in salaries, benefits, and so forth. These expenses can be assigned to products using methods such as absorption-based cost accounting, which some organizations mistakenly believe is accurate and useful for decision-making, or value stream costing in more enlightened financial management. But where are people on the balance sheet? Where is the asset that so many organizations talk about? It’s not there, and this lack of connection between people-related expenses and the balance sheet leads to poor and costly decisions. When an organization invests in training people, it’s a cost. Many organizations are willing to make that investment because they know it can lead to improved products and processes, but it's very difficult to see the actual financial value. Some companies try to capitalize training on the balance sheet, but in reality, that’s just an attempt to amortize and spread the cost over multiple years, not create a true asset. When a company decides to chase "cheap" labor costs and move offshore, there is a reduction in expense on the P&L. But where is the loss of "our most important asset" reflected on the balance sheet? It’s not. Unlike when equipment or buildings are taken out of service, there is no similar disposal expense that moves from the balance sheet to the P&L when a large number of "our most important asset" are laid off. The bottom line of the P&L looks like it improved when in reality, a huge amount of value potential from creativity and experience has been removed from the company. If a person leaves the company due to low pay, poor benefits, or ineffective management, where is the loss of value accounted for, besides being a relatively small cost to find a replacement? It’s not. There is no additional hit to the P&L bottom line driven by a reduction in asset value when there is high turnover. If a company decides to invest in more than the minimal or required training for both new and existing employees, how does that investment directly convert into an improved asset value? It doesn’t. The company has to be enlightened enough to realize that there is long-term value, even if there isn’t an immediately recognizable impact on financial statements. A team member with 20 years of experience, augmented (hopefully) by an investment in training, has more current value in terms of knowledge and creativity than a brand-new person hired at a new "low cost" location. A factory worker who can recognize issues and come up with new ideas for improvement, an engineer who can draw on a decade of experience to improve the design of a product, a leader who is an exceptional motivator of people and orchestrator of innovative strategies—there is tremendous real value in brains. People, with their brains, creativity, and experience, are not considered assets on traditional financial balance sheets. GAAP and IFRS will probably not allow these types of people assets on audited financial statements anytime soon. Recognizing and understanding this flaw will help organizations make better decisions, even if the incentive of improved financial statements isn’t there. ### The Power and Risk of Rituals URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-and-risk-of-rituals/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T21:55:02.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/wineritual.jpg) Yes, it really has been just over a year since my last post! The past few years have been a whirlwind of activity, including building new video studios and offices for [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This period culminated in being approached by a large German multinational training company and, after nearly a year of due diligence and negotiations, we agreed to a sale, followed by a year of integrating into their systems and processes. The partnership has been highly beneficial, allowing Gemba Academy to maintain a high degree of independence while benefiting from the resources and reach of a much larger company with sixteen training companies around the globe. I retired at the beginning of this year but continue to be involved in a couple strategic projects. In addition to just needing some rest, the decision to retire was largely influenced by my father-in-law's sudden passing from brain cancer many years go, but just shortly after his retirement in his mid-60s. Life comes at you fast. With a long list of destinations and projects I wish to explore, I decided it was time to focus on my own aspirations. Initially, I chose to prioritize my health—physical, mental, and spiritual—to establish a strong foundation for future travels and adventures. I have always been an early riser, accustomed to starting my day at the gym by 5am without needing an alarm. However, upon reflection, I realized that my routine had become stagnant. To invigorate my fitness regimen, I adopted a new app (FitBod) which crafts varied workout routines and encourages strength gains. I extended my gym time to 90 minutes and added two hours of intense pickleball with a group of 20 friends after a quick breakfast, followed by a five-mile contemplative and meditative beach walk near my home. By 11am, I'm ready for a nap! Within just four months I've reached the best physical condition of my life, even seeing abs for the first time since discovering beer in college forty years ago, making me wonder why I didn't do this years ago. Oh, yes, that job thing. I've also focused on improving my sleep quality, which is very different than sleep length, and crucial for preventing neurological disorders like Alzheimer's and dementia. An interesting discovery with my Garmin device revealed that even a single glass of wine or a morning coffee could disrupt my REM sleep significantly. As of February 1st I have eliminated both alcohol and caffeine, which started as an experiment (kata!) but has now become a lifestyle change. As much as I enjoyed wine, I've found that I appreciate quality sleep even more. Reflecting on my old wine-drinking habit, I realized it wasn't the wine I missed but the ritual itself—pouring a glass, watching the sunset over the ocean, and discussing the day with my wife. I've since replaced wine with decaffeinated green tea, maintaining the essence of this calming and reconnecting evening routine. Similarly, my morning routine was also a long-standing ritual that needed reevaluation. It wasn't just about waking early and hitting the gym; it was about meaningful self-improvement, which I only began to address after deliberate reflection. Organizations have their rituals, too, such as annual parties, staff meetings, and financial reviews. However, the value of these rituals often goes unquestioned. Take, for example, performance reviews—do they still serve their intended purpose, or are they merely a formality? Be serious. Effective rituals, like the morning standup meetings in many lean companies, can significantly enhance communication and alignment if properly maintained and adapted to the organization's needs. But rituals can also stagnate and become counterproductive. Like my previous workout routine, they can perpetuate mediocrity if not regularly reviewed and improved. In corporate financial audits, auditors often look for unchanged items on balance sheets as indicators of potential issues. Similarly, in religious services, attendees might recite liturgies without engaging with their meanings. Change, and improvement, should be expected. Rituals and standard work practices can reinforce positive behaviors and streamline processes, but without continuous, intentional reflection and adaptation, they risk becoming obsolete and missing opportunities for enhancement. What rituals do you have, and when was the last time you critically evaluated them? ### Kyoto in Winter: A Perfect Week of Temples, Culture, and Culinary Art URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kyoto-in-winter-a-perfect-week-of-temples-culture-and-culinary-art/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T11:20:13.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_9712.png) Our Christmas week in Kyoto, December 2023, proved that winter might be the ideal time to experience Japan's ancient capital. While the weather was crisp and chilly, the clear sunny skies, absence of crowds, and intimate atmosphere allowed us to connect with Kyoto's spiritual and cultural heart in ways impossible during peak seasons. ## General Comments **Winter Advantage**: December in Kyoto revealed the city's best-kept secret - low season magic. The famous temples and gardens were virtually empty, allowing for contemplative experiences at places typically overrun with tourists. Clear, sunny days provided perfect lighting for temple architecture and autumn's remaining colors. **Weather Realities**: Daily temperatures ranged from 35-50°F, requiring layers and warm clothing, but the consistent sunshine made outdoor exploration comfortable. Early mornings were particularly crisp, but perfect for capturing temples in golden morning light without crowds. **Transportation Excellence**: Kyoto's taxi drivers and tour guides embodied Japanese hospitality at its finest. Their knowledge, politeness, and genuine pride in sharing their city's culture transformed every interaction into a cultural lesson. The efficiency and cleanliness of public transportation made navigating the city effortless. **Accommodation Perfection**: The Ritz-Carlton Kyoto exceeded expectations with impeccable service, traditional Japanese design elements, and a location that provided both luxury retreat and easy access to cultural sites. **Cultural Immersion**: A full week allowed us to experience Kyoto's rhythms - from early morning temple visits to traditional tea ceremonies, kaiseki dining to contemporary art experiences. The slower pace of winter tourism encouraged deeper cultural engagement. **Vegetarian Kyoto**: Japan's Buddhist temple cuisine tradition, combined with Kyoto's sophisticated dining scene, created incredible vegetarian experiences. From traditional shojin ryori to innovative plant-based interpretations of Japanese classics. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Arrival and Orientation Flying into Osaka's Kansai Airport, the Ritz-Carlton's private car service provided a seamless 90-minute transfer through the Japanese countryside to central Kyoto. **Hotel**: [The Ritz-Carlton Kyoto](https://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/japan/kyoto?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This stunning property perfectly balances Western luxury with traditional Japanese aesthetics. Located along the Kamogawa River, the hotel provided tranquil garden views and became our cultural concierge for the week. **First Impressions**: December's crisp air and early sunset created an intimate introduction to Kyoto. Evening walks around the Gion district revealed geishas heading to appointments, traditional restaurants glowing with warm light, and the timeless atmosphere that defines Japan's cultural capital. ### Day 3: Three-Hour Overview Tour Our professional guide provided essential context for understanding Kyoto's 1,600 temples, 400 Shinto shrines, and layers of history. **Kiyomizu-dera Temple**: This UNESCO World Heritage site, famous for its wooden veranda jutting out over the hillside, was virtually empty in December. The panoramic views over Kyoto and the temple's traditional wooden architecture created stunning photography opportunities without crowds blocking views. **Fushimi Inari Shrine**: The thousands of vermillion torii gates winding up the mountain provided one of Kyoto's most iconic experiences. Winter's smaller crowds allowed for contemplative hikes through the tunnel-like pathways, with early morning light filtering through the gates. **Gion District**: Walking through Kyoto's most famous geisha district in daylight revealed traditional wooden architecture, tea houses, and the preserved atmosphere of old Japan. Our guide explained geisha culture, pointing out subtle details invisible to casual visitors. ### Day 4: Eastern Kyoto Temple Complex Dedicating a full day to Kyoto's eastern temple district allowed for unhurried exploration of multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites. **Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion)**: Kyoto's most photographed temple, covered in gold leaf and reflected in surrounding pond gardens, was magical in winter's clear light. December's minimal crowds allowed for peaceful contemplation of this architectural masterpiece. **Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion)**: The understated elegance of the Silver Pavilion and its surrounding gardens showcased different aspects of Japanese aesthetics. The approach through traditional neighborhoods provided glimpses of daily Japanese life. **Philosopher's Path**: This peaceful stone walkway following a canal and connecting multiple temples was perfect for winter walks. The bare cherry trees and traditional gardens revealed different seasonal beauty from the famous spring blossoms. ### Day 5: Arashiyama and Bamboo Groves Western Kyoto's natural beauty provided contrast to the urban temple experiences. **Bamboo Grove**: Walking through thousands of towering bamboo stalks created an otherworldly experience. The filtered green light and rustling sounds provided natural meditation, enhanced by winter's absence of crowds. **Iwatayama Monkey Park**: Right after the bamboo grove, we hiked up the steep monkey hill for one of Kyoto's most unexpected experiences. Hundreds of Japanese macaques roam freely in this mountainside park, creating close wildlife encounters rarely found so near urban areas. The monkeys, comfortable with human presence, provided incredible photography opportunities while the hilltop location offered panoramic views over Kyoto and the surrounding mountains. **Tenryu-ji Temple**: This Zen temple's rock gardens and traditional architecture demonstrated different approaches to Japanese spiritual aesthetics. The temple's vegetarian Buddhist cuisine lunch provided insight into shojin ryori traditions. **Togetsukyo Bridge**: Views over the Hozu River and surrounding mountains showcased Kyoto's natural setting, often overshadowed by the city's cultural attractions. ### Day 6: Cultural Immersion Day Moving beyond tourist sites, we explored Kyoto's living culture through traditional arts and contemporary expressions. **Tea Ceremony**: A private tea ceremony lesson in a traditional tea house provided hands-on understanding of Japanese cultural values - precision, respect, harmony, and tranquility. The ritual's meditative aspects and attention to detail revealed Japanese philosophical approaches to daily life. **Traditional Crafts**: Visiting artisan workshops producing Kyoto's famous textiles, ceramics, and lacquerware showed how ancient techniques remain vital in modern Japan. The combination of tradition and innovation defined much of our Kyoto experience. **Nishiki Market**: This 400-year-old market, known as "Kyoto's Kitchen," offered incredible vegetarian street food, traditional sweets, and ingredients impossible to find elsewhere. The market's narrow alleys and countless small vendors created sensory overload in the best possible way. ### Day 7: Culinary Highlight - Vegan Ramen UZU Our most memorable dining experience combined innovative cuisine with contemporary art. **Vegan Ramen UZU**: This remarkable restaurant features teamLab's digital artwork displayed on walls and black polished tables, creating an immersive art experience while dining. The venue earned both a Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition and the first Michelin Green Star ever awarded to a ramen restaurant. **The Experience**: All guests dine at communal black tables surrounded by teamLab's "Reversible Rotation" artwork. The digital art changes continuously while reflected on the polished surfaces, creating the sense of dining inside an art installation. **The Cuisine**: The ramen soup is crafted from 12-hour broths using Rausu kelp, shiitake mushrooms, and vegetables, combined with oat milk for subtle sweetness. Homemade noodles use Hokkaido wheat and organic whole grain flour. The result is rich, complex flavors that challenge any preconceptions about vegan cuisine. **Cultural Philosophy**: The restaurant's mission of "earth-friendly dining" connects to broader Japanese concepts of harmony between humans and nature. The communal dining arrangement reinforces the message that "we must live and prosper together." ### Day 8: Final Explorations and Departure Our last morning allowed for revisiting favorite temples and final cultural experiences before the afternoon departure. **Kiyomizu-dera Sunrise**: Returning to our first temple experience for sunrise revealed completely different lighting and atmosphere. The early morning visit felt like a private temple experience, with golden light illuminating wooden architecture and city views. **Souvenir Shopping**: Kyoto's traditional craft shops offered authentic Japanese artworks, textiles, and ceramics created by local artisans. Supporting traditional crafts while acquiring meaningful mementos provided perfect trip conclusions. ## Cultural Insights **Temple Etiquette**: Each temple visit taught us proper Japanese shrine and temple behavior - how to purify hands and mouth, when to bow, how to make offerings. These rituals connected us to centuries-old spiritual practices. **Seasonal Aesthetics**: Winter in Kyoto revealed Japanese appreciation for seasonal change. Gardens designed to show different beauty throughout the year, architecture that harmonizes with natural settings, and cultural events that celebrate each season's unique characteristics. **Traditional vs. Modern**: Kyoto perfectly balances preservation of ancient traditions with contemporary innovation. Traditional craft techniques adapted for modern uses, ancient temples maintained through modern conservation, and cultural practices evolved while maintaining essential characteristics. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Temple Complexity**: With minimal crowds, we could have explored more of Kyoto's 1,600 temples and understood the differences between Buddhist sects, architectural styles, and historical periods. **Traditional Accommodations**: While the Ritz-Carlton provided luxury, staying in a traditional ryokan would have deepened our cultural immersion through tatami rooms, futon bedding, and kaiseki dining. **Seasonal Festivals**: Winter's quiet season meant missing some traditional festivals, but it also allowed for more intimate cultural experiences impossible during peak tourist periods. ## Final Thoughts Kyoto in December proved ideal for travelers seeking cultural depth over Instagram moments. The combination of empty temples, clear weather, and intimate cultural experiences created connections to Japanese history and philosophy impossible during crowded seasons. The city's layers - ancient temples within urban settings, traditional crafts alongside contemporary innovation, spiritual practices integrated with daily life - revealed themselves slowly over our week-long stay. Each day built understanding of how Japanese culture maintains continuity while embracing change. Most importantly, Kyoto's winter calm allowed for the contemplation essential to appreciating Japanese aesthetics. Whether experiencing the precision of tea ceremony, the artistry of temple architecture, or the innovation of contemporary vegan cuisine, the unhurried pace of December tourism let us absorb rather than simply observe. The philosophy behind experiences like Vegan Ramen UZU - that "we must live and prosper together" in harmony with nature - encapsulated our entire Kyoto experience. The city teaches that true luxury comes from mindful attention to beauty, respect for tradition, and openness to continuous learning. **Best Photo Opportunities**: Golden Pavilion in morning light, bamboo grove filtered light, temple architecture details, teamLab digital art reflections **Most Memorable Experience**: The complete sensory immersion of dining at Vegan Ramen UZU, where art, philosophy, and innovative cuisine created an unforgettable cultural moment **Perfect For**: Travelers seeking cultural depth, those interested in Buddhist philosophy and Japanese aesthetics, vegetarians wanting sophisticated plant-based cuisine, anyone preferring intimate experiences over crowded attractions. ### Christmas in Mexico City: A Cultural and Culinary Adventure URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/christmas-in-mexico-city-a-cultural-and-culinary-adventure/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T13:09:14.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_8079.png) Our Christmas week 2022 in Mexico City provided one of our most culturally rich and culinarily exciting travel experiences. This massive metropolis of 22 million people offered an incredible combination of ancient Aztec heritage, colonial Spanish architecture, vibrant contemporary culture, and some of the world's most innovative cuisine - all enhanced by the festive atmosphere of Christmas in Latin America. ## General Comments **Christmas Timing**: Visiting Mexico City during the Christmas season added magical cultural elements to our trip. The city was beautifully decorated, filled with holiday markets, traditional posadas celebrations, and a festive atmosphere that enhanced every cultural experience. December weather was perfect - sunny, mild days in the 70s with cool evenings ideal for exploring. **Cultural Immersion**: Mexico City rewards travelers who appreciate complex history and layered culture. From ancient Tenochtitlan ruins beneath colonial churches to world-class contemporary art museums, the city offers intellectual and cultural experiences rivaling any global capital. **Culinary Capital**: Mexico City has emerged as one of the world's great food cities, moving far beyond traditional Mexican cuisine (though that remains exceptional) to embrace innovative international influences. The vegetarian dining scene particularly impressed us with creative interpretations of Mexican ingredients and techniques. **Urban Scale**: The sheer size of Mexico City initially seems overwhelming, but the city's excellent neighborhoods, efficient transportation, and walkable historic areas make navigation manageable. Our central location allowed easy access to major cultural sites while providing a luxury retreat from the urban intensity. **Safety and Hospitality**: Despite reputation concerns, we found Mexico City remarkably safe in tourist areas, with incredibly warm hospitality from locals eager to share their city's culture and history. The Mexican warmth and pride in their capital was evident everywhere. **Altitude Adjustment**: Mexico City's 7,350-foot elevation requires some adjustment, especially in the first few days. Staying hydrated and taking initial activities slowly helped us adapt quickly to the thinner air. ## Accommodation and Location **Hotel**: [The Ritz-Carlton Mexico City](https://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/mexrz-the-ritz-carlton-mexico-city/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Rising 58 stories above Chapultepec Park, this luxury hotel offered liberating views of the entire capital–from historic Chapultepec Forest all the way to vibrant Paseo de la Reforma. Located on floors 37 to 47, our room provided sweeping views that made the city's massive scale comprehensible. The hotel's location near the Angel of Independence and Paseo de la Reforma placed us within walking distance of major attractions while providing easy access to the city's diverse neighborhoods. The rooftop Sky Bar offered spectacular sunset views over the sprawling metropolis, while the spa and fitness facilities provided perfect respites from intensive cultural exploration. ## Cultural Explorations ### Historic Center (Centro Histórico) The heart of ancient Tenochtitlan and colonial Mexico City provided our most profound cultural experiences. **Zócalo (Plaza de la Constitución)**: This massive central square, built over the Aztec ceremonial center, showcased Mexico's layered history. The Metropolitan Cathedral, built with stones from Aztec temples, represented the complex colonial transformation. During Christmas, the square was beautifully illuminated and filled with holiday celebrations. **Templo Mayor**: The ruins of the Aztec Great Temple, discovered in the 1970s just steps from the cathedral, provided stunning insights into pre-Columbian civilization. The museum's artifacts and explanations revealed the sophisticated Aztec capital that Spanish conquistadors encountered. **Palacio Nacional**: Diego Rivera's massive murals covering Mexican history from ancient times to the revolution created an overwhelming visual education in the country's complex past. The murals alone justified our Mexico City visit. **Historic Architecture**: Walking the colonial streets revealed incredible baroque churches, mansions, and public buildings reflecting 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. The contrast between ancient Aztec foundations and colonial European overlays created unique urban architecture. ### Chapultepec Area Mexico City's "Central Park" area provided cultural attractions and green space relief from urban intensity. **Chapultepec Castle**: This hilltop palace, former residence of emperors and presidents, offered both historical insights and panoramic city views. The neoclassical architecture and period furnishings illustrated Mexico's 19th-century aristocratic life. **National Museum of Anthropology**: World-renowned for its pre-Columbian artifacts, this museum provided comprehensive education in Mexico's indigenous civilizations. The Aztec Sun Stone, massive Olmec heads, and Maya artifacts created one of the world's great museum experiences. **Chapultepec Park**: This massive urban park, larger than New York's Central Park, provided peaceful walks, boat rides on the lake, and glimpses of local family life during Christmas vacation. ### Roma and Condesa Neighborhoods These trendy areas showcased contemporary Mexican culture, art, and cuisine. **Art Deco Architecture**: Roma's early 20th-century architecture provided beautiful examples of Mexican interpretation of international architectural movements. Tree-lined streets, sidewalk cafes, and boutique shops created perfect afternoon wandering. **Contemporary Art Scene**: Galleries, studios, and cultural centers revealed Mexico City's vibrant contemporary art world. The combination of traditional Mexican themes with international contemporary techniques produced fascinating artistic encounters. **Culinary Innovation**: These neighborhoods housed many of Mexico City's most innovative restaurants, where traditional Mexican ingredients met international techniques and vegetarian creativity. ### Coyoacán This charming southern neighborhood provided insights into Mexico's artistic and intellectual heritage. **Frida Kahlo Museum (Casa Azul)**: The artist's childhood home, preserved with her paintings, belongings, and gardens, provided intimate insights into one of Mexico's most famous artists. The Christmas decorations added festive atmosphere to this already magical space. **Diego Rivera Museum**: Rivera's studio and home showcased the artistic partnership with Kahlo while displaying his revolutionary art and political involvement. **Colonial Charm**: Coyoacán's cobblestone streets, colonial architecture, and central plaza maintained small-town atmosphere within the massive metropolis. Weekend markets and street performers created lively cultural experiences. ## Culinary Adventures Mexico City's dining scene provided some of our most memorable travel meals, with exceptional vegetarian options throughout the city. **Traditional Mexican Vegetarian**: Discovering the depth of pre-Columbian plant-based cuisine revealed how Spanish colonial influences actually reduced Mexico's original vegetarian diversity. Restaurants serving indigenous ingredients like amaranth, chia, quelites (wild greens), and dozens of chile varieties created eye-opening meals. **Contemporary Mexican Cuisine**: Mexico City's innovative chefs are revolutionizing Mexican food while respecting traditional ingredients and techniques. Vegetarian interpretations of complex moles, creative uses of corn and beans, and sophisticated presentations elevated Mexican cuisine to fine dining levels. **Street Food Exploration**: Mexico City's incredible street food culture offered endless vegetarian discoveries - elote (grilled corn), tamales, quesadillas with exotic ingredients, and fruit preparations impossible to find elsewhere. The Christmas season brought special holiday treats and traditional sweets. **Market Experiences**: Mercado de San Juan and other traditional markets provided immersive food experiences - exotic fruits, vegetables, chiles, and prepared foods creating sensory overload. These markets revealed the incredible diversity of Mexican ingredients and regional specialties. **International Fusion**: Mexico City's cosmopolitan dining scene featured excellent international restaurants often with Mexican twists. The city's growing Japanese, Lebanese, and European influences created interesting fusion opportunities. ## Christmas Cultural Experiences **Posadas Celebrations**: Traditional Christmas processions and celebrations in neighborhoods throughout the city provided authentic cultural immersion. Local families welcomed visitors to join their Christmas traditions. **Christmas Markets**: Holiday markets throughout the city offered traditional crafts, foods, and decorations. The combination of indigenous, Spanish, and contemporary Mexican Christmas traditions created unique holiday experiences. **Churches and Cathedrals**: Christmas services in Mexico City's incredible churches - from the massive Metropolitan Cathedral to small neighborhood parishes - showcased Mexican Catholic traditions and beautiful colonial religious art. **New Year's Eve**: Celebrating New Year's Eve in the Zócalo with thousands of locals created unforgettable cultural memories and demonstrated the warmth of Mexican hospitality toward international visitors. ## Transportation and Navigation **Uber and Taxis**: Ride-sharing proved safe, convenient, and inexpensive for reaching attractions across the city. Mexican drivers were knowledgeable guides who often provided cultural commentary during rides. **Metro System**: Mexico City's extensive, efficient, and incredibly inexpensive subway system provided authentic local transportation experiences and access to neighborhoods throughout the metropolitan area. **Walking Neighborhoods**: Each major area - Centro Histórico, Roma, Condesa, Coyoacán - rewarded extensive walking exploration. The city's walkable neighborhoods allowed deep cultural immersion impossible from vehicles. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Time in Museums**: Mexico City's world-class museums - from the Anthropology Museum to the Soumaya - deserved more extensive visits. Each major museum could easily occupy full days. **Extended Neighborhood Exploration**: Areas like Xochimilco, San Angel, and more distant neighborhoods offered cultural experiences we didn't have time to explore thoroughly. **Day Trips**: Teotihuacan pyramids, Puebla's colonial architecture, and other nearby attractions deserved dedicated excursions from our Mexico City base. ## Final Thoughts Mexico City proved that urban destinations can provide cultural richness and diversity rivaling any travel experience. The combination of ancient civilizations, colonial history, revolutionary heritage, and contemporary innovation created layers of discovery impossible to exhaust in one visit. The city's culinary evolution, artistic vitality, and intellectual energy demonstrated how Mexico City has become one of the world's great cultural capitals while maintaining authentic Mexican character. The warmth and pride of Mexican people enhanced every cultural encounter. Most importantly, visiting during Christmas revealed how traditional celebrations, family gatherings, and community festivities remain central to Mexican culture despite rapid modernization. The combination of ancient traditions with contemporary expressions created uniquely Mexican holiday experiences. For travelers interested in complex cultures, innovative cuisine, world-class museums, and authentic local experiences, Mexico City offers rewards that justify repeated visits. Each neighborhood, each museum, each meal revealed new aspects of this endlessly fascinating metropolis. **Best Cultural Sites**: Templo Mayor ruins, Rivera murals at Palacio Nacional, Anthropology Museum, Frida Kahlo Museum **Most Memorable Meals**: Contemporary Mexican vegetarian restaurants in Roma and Condesa neighborhoods**Greatest Surprise**: The sophistication and innovation of Mexico City's contemporary culture while maintaining deep traditional roots **Perfect For**: Culture enthusiasts, food lovers, history buffs, art appreciators, travelers seeking authentic urban Latin American experiences. ### Three Mediterranean Islands, One Epic Journey: Sicily, Sardinia & Corsica URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/three-mediterranean-islands-one-epic-journey-sicily-sardinia-corsica/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T11:36:54.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_2470.JPG) Building on our successful Spanish island explorations the previous year, our June 2023 Mediterranean island-hopping adventure through Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica proved that the Mediterranean's lesser-known island gems offer experiences rivaling any destination in the world. This three-week journey combined dramatic landscapes, fascinating cultures, and unexpected luxury encounters. ## General Comments **Island-Hopping Strategy**: Following our Spanish island success, this three-island Mediterranean circuit created perfect variety - from Sicily's ancient history and Mount Etna drama, to Sardinia's emerald coast luxury, to Corsica's rugged French sophistication. Each island offered completely different personalities while maintaining Mediterranean charm. **Driving Adventures**: European car rentals proved reliable and driving was generally straightforward, though sometimes "exciting" as narrow mountain roads and aggressive local drivers created memorable moments. Each island's driving character was distinct - Sicily required defensive driving, Sardinia was scenic and relaxed, Corsica demanded mountain driving skills. **Ferry Connections**: The short Corsica-Sardinia ferry (just one hour) made island transitions seamless. Taking rental cars across proved efficient, allowing us to maintain our luggage and explore each destination independently. **Summer Season Perfect**: June weather was ideal across all three islands - warm but not oppressive, minimal crowds before peak July/August tourism, and long daylight hours perfect for exploration and evening dining. **Cultural Contrasts**: Moving from Italian Sicily to Italian Sardinia to French Corsica showcased how geography, history, and cultural influences create dramatically different island personalities within the same Mediterranean region. **Accommodation Variety**: From boutique luxury in Taormina to beachfront resort life in Sardinia to charming French hotels in Corsica, each island offered distinct hospitality experiences perfectly suited to their cultural characters. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-6: Sicily - Taormina Base Flying into Catania, our Audi A1 rental provided reliable transportation for exploring eastern Sicily from our Taormina base. **Hotel**: [The Ashbee Hotel](https://www.ashbeehotel.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Amex Fine Hotels) - This boutique luxury hotel perfectly captured Taormina's sophisticated charm. The terrace views over the Mediterranean and Mount Etna, combined with impeccable service, created an ideal Sicilian retreat. **Taormina Driving Challenge**: The ancient hilltop town's narrow medieval streets, aggressive drivers, and limited parking made urban driving genuinely challenging. However, the rest of Sicily proved much more manageable for road exploration. **Ancient Theater**: Taormina's Greek Theater, with Mount Etna as backdrop, offered breathtaking morning visits before tour groups arrived. The combination of ancient architecture and volcanic drama exemplified Sicily's layered history. **Syracuse Archaeological Wonders**: This UNESCO World Heritage city, founded by the Greeks in 734 BC, offered some of Sicily's most impressive ancient sites. The Archaeological Park contained the massive Greek Theater carved into rock, the Roman Amphitheater, and the mysterious Ear of Dionysius cave. The historic Ortigia island, connected by bridges to the mainland, featured baroque architecture, traditional markets, and waterfront dining with views across the harbor. **Noto's Baroque Perfection**: This stunning hillside town, rebuilt after a 1693 earthquake, showcased Sicily's golden baroque architecture at its finest. The entire historic center, built from warm local limestone, created a cohesive architectural masterpiece. Walking down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele revealed palace after palace, church after church, all glowing honey-colored in the afternoon light. The town's gelato shops and outdoor cafes provided perfect rest stops between architectural marvels. **Palermo's Cultural Complexity**: Sicily's capital revealed the island's layered history in its diverse neighborhoods. The Palazzo dei Normanni with its stunning Cappella Palatina showcased Arab-Norman architecture, while the Quattro Canti baroque crossroads demonstrated Spanish colonial influence. The chaotic Ballarò market offered authentic Sicilian street food, and the Teatro Massimo provided evening cultural entertainment. Palermo's mix of grand architecture and gritty urban life perfectly captured Sicily's contradictions. **Mount Etna Exploration**: Europe's most active volcano provided incredible day trip opportunities. Cable car rides, crater tours, and the otherworldly volcanic landscape created unforgettable experiences. The fertile volcanic soil surrounding Etna supported extraordinary wine regions. ### Days 7-12: Sardinia - Costa Smeralda Luxury The four-hour drive across Sicily to Palermo, followed by our Volotea flight to Olbia, brought us to Sardinia's legendary emerald coast. **Hotel**: [7Pines Resort Costa Smeralda](https://7pines-sardinia.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury beachfront resort exceeded every expectation. Located in Baja Sardinia, 7Pines Resort Sardinia sits in a tranquil cove on Sardinia's northern coast. Overlooking the magnificent marine protected area of the Maddalena islands, its location ensures intimacy as well as some of the Mediterranean's most spectacular sunset views. **Pagani Supercar Convention**: Our arrival coincided with an exclusive Pagani owners' conference hosting dozens of multimillion-dollar hypercars on the property. Seeing Pagani Huayras, Zondas, and other automotive art pieces casually parked around the resort created an unexpected luxury car show atmosphere. **Alghero's Catalan Heritage**: This charming northwestern coastal town, known as "Little Barcelona," retained its Catalan character from centuries of Spanish rule. The well-preserved medieval walls, cobblestone streets within the old town, and distinctive Catalan Gothic architecture created a unique atmosphere. The seafront promenade offered excellent dining with views over the Mediterranean, while the surrounding countryside featured some of Sardinia's best wineries. **Sassari's Authentic Sardinia**: The island's second-largest city provided insight into modern Sardinian life away from the tourist coast. The historic center featured impressive churches, traditional markets, and authentic restaurants serving regional specialties. The nearby Romanesque church of Santissima Trinità di Saccargia, standing isolated in the countryside with its distinctive black and white striped stonework, created one of our most memorable architectural encounters. **Bosa's Riverside Charm**: This picturesque town along the Temo River offered one of Sardinia's most photogenic settings. Colorful houses cascaded down hillsides toward the river, while the medieval Malaspina Castle provided panoramic views. The town's traditional crafts, including intricate filigree goldwork, showcased skills passed down through generations. Driving the winding coastal road to reach Bosa provided spectacular ocean views. **Northeast Beach Paradise**: The beaches between Costa Smeralda and Olbia offered some of the Mediterranean's most pristine coastal experiences. La Cinta beach near San Teodoro featured miles of white sand and crystal-clear water backed by pink flamingo lagoons. The dramatic granite formations at Capo Testa created otherworldly landscapes where wind and water had carved bizarre rock sculptures over millennia. **Costa Smeralda Exploration**: Costa Smeralda – the Emerald coast – truly one of the Mediterranean's most sought-after gems, was famously 'discovered' by the Aga Khan, who instigated measures to preserve the area's natural beauty. Porto Cervo's yacht-filled marina, boutique shopping, and sophisticated dining created the ultimate Mediterranean luxury experience. ### Days 13-16: Corsica - Calvi's French Charm The short ferry from Santa Teresa in Sardinia to Bonifacio in Corsica, followed by a scenic four-hour drive across the island's mountainous interior, brought us to Corsica's northwest coast. **Hotel**: [Hotel Corsica, Calvi](https://www.hotel-corsica-calvi.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This charming French hotel captured Corsica's unique blend of Mediterranean beauty and French sophistication. The location near Calvi's historic citadel and marina provided perfect access to the town's attractions. **Driving Corsica**: The mountain roads between Bonifacio and Calvi provided some of the trip's most spectacular and challenging driving. Narrow, winding roads through dramatic landscapes required careful attention, but rewarded us with breathtaking views of mountains, forests, and coastal vistas. **Bastia's Authentic Corsican Character**: This working port city on Corsica's northeast coast offered genuine Corsican culture away from tourist centers. The old harbor (Vieux Port) with its tall, narrow houses painted in ochre and sienna created a distinctly Mediterranean atmosphere. The Terra Vecchia old quarter featured winding streets, local markets, and traditional bistros serving Corsican specialties. Bastia's position as a major ferry port made it a fascinating crossroads of French and Italian influences. **Hill Towns Above Calvi**: The mountainous interior behind Calvi revealed traditional Corsican village life. Speloncato, perched dramatically on a rocky outcrop, offered panoramic views over the Balagne region's olive groves and vineyards. Sant'Antonino, one of France's most beautiful villages, featured ancient stone houses built into the mountainside and stunning coastal views. These villages, accessible by winding mountain roads, preserved centuries-old Corsican traditions and provided authentic encounters with local life. **Calvi's Historic Charm**: The ancient citadel overlooking the harbor, cobblestone streets, and French colonial architecture created an uniquely Corsican atmosphere. The combination of Italian geographical influence and French cultural character made Corsica feel distinct from both Sicily and Sardinia. ### Days 17-19: Corsica - Bonifacio's Dramatic Coastline The drive back across Corsica to Bonifacio for our departure provided opportunities to explore the island's southern tip and its spectacular coastal formations. **Hotel**: [Hotel et Spa Version Maquis Citadelle, Bonifacio](https://www.version-maquis-bonifacio.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury hotel perfectly captured Bonifacio's dramatic setting. Perched above the famous limestone cliffs, the hotel provided stunning views over the Mediterranean and convenient access to the historic citadel. **Bonifacio's Unique Setting**: This ancient city built on dramatic limestone cliffs jutting into the Mediterranean created one of Europe's most spectacular urban settings. The narrow streets carved into rock, medieval architecture, and panoramic sea views provided endless exploration opportunities. **Coastal Exploration**: Bonifacio's surrounding coastline featured incredible geological formations - sea caves, natural arches, and pristine beaches accessible only by boat or challenging hikes. The crystal-clear waters and dramatic cliff formations created perfect photography opportunities. **Cultural Transition**: Preparing to leave Corsica and return to Sardinia for our departure, we reflected on how each island had offered completely different experiences while maintaining Mediterranean coherence. ### Day 20: Departure via Sardinia The return ferry to Santa Teresa, followed by the drive to Olbia airport, completed our Mediterranean island circuit. **Olbia Airport Transit**: The convenient Jazz Hotel at Olbia airport provided seamless connections for our morning departure via Zurich back to California. ## Cultural Insights **Island Personalities**: Each island developed distinct character through different historical influences - Sicily's complex ancient heritage, Sardinia's preserved Italian traditions, and Corsica's French sophistication combined with island independence. **Mediterranean Lifestyle**: All three islands shared the leisurely Mediterranean approach to life - long lunches, evening strolls, late dinners, and appreciation for natural beauty and traditional crafts. **Driving Cultures**: Each island's driving personality reflected broader cultural characteristics - Sicily's organized chaos, Sardinia's relaxed efficiency, and Corsica's mountain precision. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Sardinia Time**: The Costa Smeralda deserved additional exploration. We could have easily spent more time discovering the island's interior villages, archaeological sites, and pristine beaches. **Corsica Food Planning**: Better research into vegetarian dining options would have enhanced our Corsican experience. The island's French influence created expectations that weren't always met for plant-based cuisine. **Sicily's Western Coast**: Focusing on Taormina meant missing Palermo, Agrigento's Valley of the Temples, and western Sicily's different cultural influences. ## Final Thoughts This three-island Mediterranean adventure proved that island-hopping creates perfect travel variety while maintaining cultural coherence. Each island offered completely different experiences - from Sicily's ancient complexity to Sardinia's luxury beach life to Corsica's rugged French charm. The journey demonstrated how the Mediterranean's islands preserve distinct cultural identities while sharing climate, cuisine elements, and lifestyle approaches. Driving provided flexibility to discover hidden villages, secret beaches, and authentic local experiences impossible with organized tours. Most memorably, unexpected encounters - like the Pagani supercar convention in Sardinia - reminded us that travel's greatest rewards often come from unplanned moments. The combination of careful planning with openness to serendipity created memories that extend far beyond typical vacation experiences. For travelers seeking Mediterranean beauty with cultural variety, this three-island circuit offers perfect diversity. Each island rewards extended stays while providing easy connections to the others, creating opportunities for both relaxation and exploration. **Total Distance Driven**: Approximately 1,200 miles across three islands **Most Dramatic Scenery**: Corsica's mountain roads and Bonifacio's limestone cliffs **Biggest Surprise**: The Pagani hypercar convention transforming our Sardinian resort into an automotive enthusiast's paradise **Best Island for Food**: Sicily's diverse culinary heritage and innovative restaurants **Most Relaxing**: Sardinia's pristine beaches and luxury resort atmosphere **Most Challenging**: Corsica's vegetarian dining limitations and mountain driving demands. ### The Pearls and Turds of Continuous Improvement URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-pearls-and-turds-of-continuous-improvement/ Last updated: 2025-07-14T21:56:46.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/blogblobs.png) My wife and I watched the documentary [Stutz](https://www.netflix.com/title/81387962?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for the third or fourth time last weekend. It's a unique story that always provides something new each time we watch it. The movie features actor Jonah Hill interviewing his therapist Phil Stutz, aiming to expand the knowledge and use of his unique tools. As a mental health therapist, my wife was interested in how she could apply those tools in her own practice. Stutz's passion and zest for life, even in old age and while dealing with health issues, is inspiring. There's considerable humor in their discussions, such as when they wonder if they're lying to the audience by making it appear that they're in Stutz's office. They conclude that they are, and from that point on, they are just sitting in a video studio in front of a green screen. ### Make it Visual I was intrigued by how the tools discussed in the documentary can also be applied to lean and continuous improvement. For starters, Stutz is very visual. He keeps a stack of index cards handy to draw the various concepts and tools he is trying to convey to his clients. He believes that being able to describe something in pictures both helps him distill his own thoughts while also overcoming barriers with sometimes complex therapeutic languages when talking with clients. My wife experiences this as her client base is predominantly from immigrant backgrounds where English is a second language. The lean world also has many visuals, such as the "house" of the Toyota Production System, the stair steps of kata, and the sometimes complex pathways of value stream mapping and spaghetti diagrams just waiting to be simplified. But how often do we use visuals, created on the fly in meetings and discussions, to convey what we're thinking? Stutz does this multiple times in the short movie, whipping out an index card to draw visual representations, with hands increasingly shaking from Parkinson's. ### The Continuous in Continuous Improvement One of the more interesting concepts is the "string of pearls." As a therapeutic tool, it helps clients understand the importance of taking the next step in their day, even if it's just as small as brushing their teeth. Stutz notes that the size of the step or the pearl is not important; each has equal value. If we take the time to find and organize the most value-added actions, we may succumb to overthinking and paralysis and never actually get started and move forward. We talk about this concept a lot in the lean and continuous improvement space. Finding high-value improvements to work on is great, but even more important is creating a culture where everyone tries to improve every process every day, even if it's just a very small change. We look up to organizations that achieve greatness by compounding years of small improvements, surpassing the success of those that rely solely on massive investments in technologies and robotics. ### Embracing Failure Stutz takes the concept and visual one step further by drawing a black spot in some of the pearls, which he calls "turds." He's trying to help the client understand that there will be pitfalls, that not every action will have a positive result, and that's okay. It's important to accept this, learn from it, and continue to take the next action, to add the next pearl. Successful continuous improvement-oriented organizations also recognize the value of failure - the turds. Failure is not necessarily a negative, but potentially a big positive if reflected on and learned from, with the next experiment, the next pearl, based on that new knowledge. Netflix has an [article on the core tools](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/stutz-the-tools?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and concepts created by Phil Stutz, and [several](https://medium.com/the-orange-journal/14-tools-for-inner-work-from-stutz-3dcd776b5784?ref=kevinmeyer.com) [others](https://www.neu21.com/blog-archive/innovation-is-all-pearls-and-turds?ref=kevinmeyer.com) are available as well. Keep moving forward, adding pearls regardless of size, and learn from the turds! ### RIP Steve Player, Budget Destroyer URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/steve-player-rip/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T21:02:34.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/budget-GettyImages-1184617520-1.jpg) We all know a couple people who have changed the direction of our lives and careers, even with very brief interactions. Something they said created an a-ha moment that changed our perspective or provided the catalyst that helped draw the connection between thoughts we've been mulling for a long time. For me, one of those people was [Norm Bodek](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2020/12/11/norman-bodek-and-respect-for-people/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), who passed away about two years ago. Norm was instrumental in bringing lean thinking back to the western world, but his particular focus was on the respect for people pillar of lean. I don’t remember the name of the conference or the title of Norm’s presentation, but I remember the moment as if it was yesterday. Norm explained how respect for people is one of, if not the, most critical attribute of lean yet it is often forgotten in deference to just using the tools. Without growing and supporting people, tools will eventually fail and improvements will not be sustained. Respect for people is the glue that holds together and sustains - and grows - the improvement. He emphasized, emotionally and passionately, how respecting this value in people’s brains could jumpstart and expand the potential of improvement. As he detailed, the concept of respect includes recognizing that value, providing compassion and empathy, but also being forceful in encouraging people to grow through new knowledge and especially learning from failure. He described how the value of people was in their experience, creativity, and shared problem-solving – not in their pair of hands, yet traditional accounting methods determined cost and value in the exact opposite manner. Interestingly, that concept of the "cost" of people being on a P&L but the "value" of the experience and creativity in their brains not being represented as an asset on the balance sheet, which leads to all kinds of crazy decisions to chase cheap labor to save a buck while laying off experienced people, is what led me to question traditional accounting... and the second person who impacted my career. I began attending the Lean Accounting Summits put on by [Lean Frontiers](https://leanfrontiers.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), where I learned how traditional cost accounting creates all kinds of problems in lean environments. The "estimates" on how some costs should be allocated cascade and compound into huge potential error bands in product costs, and then those costs are used to make product decisions that can be wildly inaccurate. A better method is value stream costing and lean accounting, which is [described by experts like Nick Katko](https://planet-lean.com/lean-accounting-nick-katko/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Back in 2010 or so, while I was president of a mid-sized multi-site medical device contract manufacturing company, I asked my CFO to also attend a Lean Accounting Summit with me. We learned more about lean accounting, but the real game-changer was a presentation by Steve Player on the problems with traditional budgeting. During that one hour he forced us to confront many of the budgeting fallacies that we inherently knew existed, and described improvements and alternatives. In the lean world one of the first lessons operations professionals learn is to not fall for the "month end" production cram, trying to make each month look good. Instead, customer demand drives the process, not a desire to hit arbitrary time buckets. The same exists in the financial world. Steve asked us what the value is to "budget to the wall" - with the wall being each calendar year. Operationally - and from a customer value perspective - how is December any different than January? Does focusing on the next calendar year truly add value? Don't confuse "budgeting" with "planning" - they are radically different concepts. Of course not, and it adds costs. Who can predict what is really going to happen 14 or 15 months in advance? But it gets worse, much worse. We gaze into the crystal ball and make those predictions, taking the time to figure when every little expense will hit, knowing all along that this prediction will be obsolete as soon as we set it in stone. Then what do we do? We spend even more time looking in the rear view mirror doing variance analysis on why current actuals didn't meet the forecast, and perhaps even additional time revising the upcoming forecast in another attempt to predict the future, after we already failed to do so. There are two major costs associated with this absurd activity: the first being the vast hours spent by operations and finance people to inaccurately predict the future, then reconcile that failure with reality each month and attempt to re-predict the future. But the second is more hidden and far more insidious: a budget, especially if it is taken to a minuscule level, constrains thinking. Instead of looking forward and being able to creatively pivot to take advantage of new opportunities, budgets create behaviors to achieve the budget rather than truly improve and expand the business. Steve walked us through alternatives to budgeting, which he also details in this white paper. There are several components, but they align around the following core concepts: - Instead of budgets driven by the arbitrary calendar year, use rolling forecasts. - Use relative targets to create improvement, not specific financials which incentivize sandbagging. - Focus on processes, not numbers. Align KPIs, incentives, and desired behaviors with process definition and improvement. - Become very good at making decisions with the information and reality of the moment, not at some point in the future. - Take advantage of the removal of budget constraints to allow freedom and authorization to experiment. - Look at processes and activities from the perspective of the customer. Does everything create customer value? - Planning is not budgeting. Planning is defining and improving processes. You can see why his presentation excited the attendees at a lean conference. A focus on process definition and improvement through experimentation and learning from failure, looking at value from the perspective of the customer, continual improvement instead of arbitrary time frames like calendar years. What problem are we trying to solve with budgeting? How does it create value from the perspective of the customer? On the plane ride home from that conference back in 2010 the CFO and I sent an email to the finance and executive staff saying that budgets were cancelled, effective immediately. As a private company with a trusting ownership group, we had the luxury to be able to do that. The change (and relief!) was immediate. Instead of thousands of hours being spent on budgets, variance analysis, and budget reconciliation, the finance team became integrated into the operations teams. Instead of looking backward and managing in hindsight, we were all focused forward on identifying and analyzing new opportunities. Instead of trying to figure out why our guesstimates on cost allocations were wrong, we defined and improved the financial and operational processes to create value for the customer. By creating and improving value for the customer, we created value, and success, for our company. A couple days ago I learned that Steve Player passed away at a relatively early age. In an obituary on LinkedIn, Jack Sweeney described his experience in a Steve Player workshop a few years ago: > The finance professionals knew that he was right. They knew that large portions of their days and nights were focused on budget targets that just didn’t matter, and here was this guy bearing witness in public to the everyday madness of their professional lives. “Finance has got to stop doing dumb stuff!” was the favorite phrase that got heads nodding and blood circulating. A number of Steve’s presentations that I attended felt more like church revival meetings than gatherings of finance and accounting professionals. Thanks for the lessons and passion, Steve. I know I'm not the only person you changed. To learn more about Steve Player, moving beyond budgeting, and lean accounting: - White paper on The Power of Rolling Forecasts - [Dragon Slayer of the Budgeting World](https://cfothoughtleader.com/cfopodcasts/dragon-slayer-of-the-budgeting-world-steve-player-1958-2022/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- a Steve Player obituary by Jack Sweeney in CFO Thought Leader - Book: [Implementing Beyond Budgeting](https://www.amazon.com/Implementing-Beyond-Budgeting-Unlocking-Performance/dp/111915247X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (with Bjarte Bogsnes) - [Beyond Budgeting video presentations](https://www.gembaacademy.com/gemba-live/events/lean-kanban-na-beyond-budgeting/beyond-budgeting-an-agile-management-model-and-case-study-bjarte-bogsnes?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Steve, me, and others at a conference in San Francisco back in 2014, filmed by Gemba Academy (sorry - old videos, but good content!). No registration required for the next two weeks. - Nick Katko on [The Benefits of Lean Accounting ](https://planet-lean.com/lean-accounting-nick-katko/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and the upcoming 2nd edition of [The Lean CFO](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-CFO-Architect-Management-Accounting/dp/1032302410/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) - [Lean accounting video courses](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/lean-accounting?ref=kevinmeyer.com) at Gemba Academy ### The Good Karma of Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/good-karma-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:40:43.000Z Our Gemba Academy team was at [The Association for Manufacturing Excellence](https://www.ame.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) annual conference in Dallas last week, the largest lean conference in the world. By all accounts it was a great success, with over a thousand people excited about finally being able to get together in person again to network, participate in workshops, and hear motivating keynotes. Gemba Academy has exhibited at the conference for over a decade, and what we enjoy most is interacting with our customers and learning how we can further improve. What really excites us are the stories on how we've helped change organizations and individuals by providing lean knowledge. This validates why we do what we do, and is the core of our mission to improve the world through the power of continuous improvement. From our start over thirteen years ago we've operated under the core philosophy of "provide value first, and the business will come." This "what you put out, you will receive back" is also what many would call karma. But it is just the first law of karma. Sahil Bloom, who pens a fantastic newsletter each week, recently wrote a piece on [eleven other laws of karma](https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/the-best-career-advice-laws-of-karma-more?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and there is an interesting alignment with key aspects of lean and continuous improvement - as well as stoicism and zen. [Sachin Ranje](https://twitter.com/SachinRamje?ref=kevinmeyer.com), a talented business visualization designer also worthy of a follow, created a visual summary of the 12 laws of karma, which is at the bottom of this post. Click for a larger, downloadable, version. I won't go through all twelve, but here are a few that play an important role in continuous improvement: #### The Law of Cause & Effect, and The Law of Creation What you create and put into the world, you will receive back. If you create value, you will receive value. This is what lean is really about: create value from the perspective of the customer, and the customer will reward you with their business. The key aspect of this is "from the perspective of the customer" which means we need to understand what the customer really values. #### The Law of Significance & Inspiration We are all significant and have the power to contribute to a positive future. This is the fundamental lean concept of respect for people. By recognizing the power in the brains of our people, rather than just the cost of their hands, we can tap into their potential. Help them grow through new knowledge, challenge them, provide them with an environment where it is safe (and even encouraged!) to experiment - and where failure has value if transformed into learning. #### The Law of Change, and The Law of Patience and Reward Nothing will change until you create a change. Be patient with results, making small, intentional changes every day. This is kaizen and kata. Small changes made every day add up to significant improvements in performance and efficiency, which creates value for the customer. Intentional experiments that iterate toward a desired future state create learning and improvement. #### The Law of Humility Sahil defines this as "the acceptance of our current state is the necessary step to progress, growth, and change." I would expand this to include both the individual and organizational levels. As an individual we need to accept that we don't have all the answers and rely on others. We need to approach problems with a "[beginners mind](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-the-beginning-with-ohno-suzuki-and-yoda/)" to ensure we aren't beholden to biases that may exclude potential understanding and solutions. Years ago we used to give new customers a "lean assessment" to help them understand their current state, but an interesting dynamic arose. The initial assessment was often the best, then when the assessment was performed again each year, the results generally worsened before eventually improving. This wasn't because the organization declined in capability, but because they became aware of how much more they could improve. #### The Law of Focus Every now and then we still see people who try to tout their leadership prowess by claiming they can multitask - believing that's a positive attribute. Numerous scientific studies have now shown that "switching" between tasks creates serious issues with productivity, efficiency, and quality. The mind can really only focus on one thing at a time. Organizations have similar issues, and I have seen annual strategic planning activities that create dozens of initiatives measured by even more KPIs. They will fail. What is the one improvement you want to create as a leader or an organization, and what are the supporting initiatives and activities that are tightly aligned to support it? #### The Law of Giving & Hospitality Finally, give generously and without reservation. We all have our challenges, but if you really think about it, even with those challenges most of us have been very fortunate. We should give selflessly to those who have less, with kindness, compassion, and empathy. Similar to what I mentioned at the beginning, where Gemba Academy's business mantra has been if we provide value first, business will come, we have also operated with a philosophy of simply helping where we can, regardless of return. We answer a lot of emails and phone calls asking for opinions and support on continuous improvement, whether the person is a customer or not. Significant aspects of our content, such as this blog and the [446 and counting podcasts](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/podcasts/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) are available to everyone. Help improve the world, and the world will help you. ### Lean, Chess, and Techno-Solutionism URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-chess-and-techno-solutionism/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:41:24.000Z Those of us somewhat interested in chess, or perhaps curious thanks to blockbuster shows like [The Queen's Gambit](https://www.netflix.com/title/80234304?ref=kevinmeyer.com), have been following the chaos in the world of grandmaster-level chess, particularly the feud between world champions Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann. Chess is one of the few competitions where even at the highest levels there are relatively few serious efforts to prevent cheating, even with incidents like Arcangelo Ricciardi receiving morse code signals in his armpit in 2015\. That may soon change. An [article in The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/magnus-carlsen-hans-niemann-chess-cheating-controversy/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) earlier this week discussed the Carlsen-Niemann situation, but from an interesting perspective of the impact of technology on problem-solving. As an aside, it also described the surprisingly high level of physical exertion resulting from the concentration required by chess. During a tournament in 2018, sensors connected to grandmaster Mikhail Antipov revealed he burned 560 calories in two hours, sitting completely still. The description of using AI for potential cheating is interesting , but the impact of using technology to supplement or even replace thinking is important. > *"The Carlsen-Niemann confrontation raises the important matter of “techno-solutionism.” Too much machine intelligence in problem-solving, as it happens, can be more confusing — and weakening — than helpful. The long-term cost of techno-solutionism can be a fatal slackness, both mental and physical. You don’t want to lose your conditioning for decisive human judgment."* In the article this "techno-solutionism" takes two forms. By using AI and computers, there is less of the learning rigor that traditional chess players go through by playing thousands of games. This also decreases the strength and endurance for what is, although it appears to have little movement, a very physical event. Magnus Carlsen has a very intensely physical daily workout regimen to prepare himself for tournaments with almost no physical movement. In the lean world we often talk about the problems with technology. Technology itself is not necessarily negative, but it needs to be used appropriately and at the right time. When recording data, we like teams to first use whiteboards and other manual methods before switching to electronic systems. As Issac Asimov said, "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." Taking the time to write and record data by hand leads to increased pattern recognition, reflection, and understanding. Several studies have shown that college students that take notes by hand [demonstrate longer term knowledge](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and understanding compared to those that took notes on a computer. Too much reliance on technology can also, especially over time, reduce understanding of underlying processes and associated skills. We see this with computer-controlled manufacturing processes and accounting systems, among many others. We may lose the ability to recognize, and then correct, deficient processes. One example of this was the Asiana 777 crash at San Francisco in 2013\. Most pilots still land manually to reinforce their flying skills, but in this case the company policy was to allow more reliance on the autopilot. [An investigation](https://www.theverge.com/2014/6/24/5838072/asiana-airlines-flight-214-crash-autopilot-issues-at-fault-ntsb-finds?ref=kevinmeyer.com) showed that the pilots were so used to using the autopilot that they lost the ability to recognize, and then correct, an incorrect landing trajectory. Technology can also mask or even create waste. Fancy conveyor systems may speed up or automate processes, but the underlying waste may still exist. Data collection systems can generate reports and analyses that are irrelevant and create unnecessary projects and action. How often have we wanted to tell a boss "that's simply not important!"? We see charts with so many metrics that none are truly understood let alone acted upon. Technology can create improved understanding and efficiency. But first we need to truly learn what is going on so we can improve the process, then we also need to ensure we maintain and improve that understanding. Technology is a tool, not a solution in itself. ### Spanish Summer Circuit: From Andalusian Culture to Balearic Beaches URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/spanish-summer-circuit-from-andalusian-culture-to-balearic-beaches/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T20:58:27.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_1965.png) Our July 2022 Spanish adventure combined the best of mainland cultural exploration with Balearic island beach life, creating the perfect balance of intellectual stimulation and Mediterranean relaxation. This three-week journey from Andalusia's Moorish heritage through the party and family islands to Barcelona's cosmopolitan culture showcased Spain's incredible diversity. ## General Comments **Ferry and Driving Strategy**: Taking our rental car on ferries between the mainland and islands, then island to island, provided incredible flexibility while maintaining our luggage and exploring each destination independently. The Balearia ferry connections were efficient and comfortable, turning transportation into part of the vacation experience. **Summer Timing Perfect**: July provided ideal Mediterranean weather - warm beaches, long daylight hours for cultural exploration, and vibrant nightlife. While peak tourist season meant crowds at major attractions, advance planning and early morning visits to places like the Alhambra avoided most issues. **Cultural Progression**: Moving from Moorish Andalusia through contemporary Spanish islands to cosmopolitan Barcelona created perfect cultural variety. Each destination offered completely different Spanish experiences while maintaining Mediterranean coherence. **Accommodation Variety**: From historic palace hotels in Granada to beach resorts in Ibiza, luxury properties in Mallorca to boutique design hotels in Barcelona, each accommodation perfectly matched its destination's character and our travel needs. **Vegetarian Paradise**: Spain exceeded our expectations for plant-based dining, particularly in cosmopolitan Malaga and Barcelona where innovative vegetarian restaurants rivaled any European food capital. **Transportation Excellence**: European car rental proved reliable across diverse driving conditions - from Andalusian mountain roads to island coastal routes. Spanish drivers were generally courteous, and navigation was straightforward with good signage and GPS coverage. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Malaga - Andalusian Introduction Flying into Malaga via Zurich, our EuropCar VW Golf provided reliable transportation for exploring southern Spain. **Hotel**: Gran Hotel Malaga (Amex Fine Hotels) - This elegant hotel in Malaga's historic center provided the perfect introduction to Andalusian hospitality. The rooftop terrace offered views over the Mediterranean and easy access to the city's cultural attractions. **Cultural Vibrance**: Malaga surprised us with its sophisticated cultural scene beyond its beach reputation. The Picasso Museum, showcasing the city's most famous son, provided context for understanding his early influences. The Centro Pompidou's contemporary art created interesting dialogue with traditional Andalusian culture. **Evening Social Life**: Malaga's late-night culture proved infectious. Spaniards don't eat dinner until 10 PM, then socialize in plazas and along the waterfront until well after midnight. The paseo (evening stroll) tradition created community atmosphere we joined enthusiastically. **Vegetarian Discoveries**: Malaga's cosmopolitan dining scene offered exceptional vegetarian options. Traditional Andalusian ingredients - almonds, olives, vegetables, legumes - combined with innovative preparations created memorable meals. The city's numerous tapas bars offered creative plant-based small plates perfect for evening socializing. **Historic Center**: Walking the narrow streets revealed layers of Phoenician, Roman, Moorish, and contemporary influences. The Alcazaba fortress and Roman theater demonstrated Malaga's strategic importance throughout Mediterranean history. ### Days 3-4: Granada - Moorish Splendor The 1.5-hour drive through olive grove landscapes brought us to Granada and Spain's most magnificent architectural treasure. **Hotel**: [Hotel Palacio de Santa Paula](https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/grxak-hotel-palacio-de-santa-paula-autograph-collection/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Marriott Autograph) - This converted 16th-century convent perfectly captured Granada's historic atmosphere. The cloistered courtyards, original architectural details, and luxury amenities created an ideal base for exploring Islamic Spain. **The Alhambra**: Our 10:30 AM tickets provided entry to one of the world's architectural masterpieces. The intricate Islamic geometric patterns, peaceful water features, and integration with natural surroundings demonstrated sophisticated medieval civilization. The views over Granada and surrounding mountains added natural beauty to architectural wonder. **Albaicín Quarter**: This UNESCO World Heritage neighborhood, with narrow cobblestone streets and traditional Moorish houses, preserved authentic Islamic urban design. Evening walks revealed hidden plazas, traditional tea houses, and panoramic Alhambra views. **Late Night Granada**: Granada's university atmosphere created vibrant nightlife extending past 2 AM. Students and locals gathered in plazas, bars, and along the river, creating social energy that drew us into authentic Spanish late-night culture. The combination of architectural beauty and youthful energy made Granada magical. **Culinary Traditions**: Granada's free tapas tradition - receiving small plates with each drink order - provided endless opportunities to sample Andalusian specialties. Many bars offered creative vegetarian tapas alongside traditional options. ### Day 5: Denia - Coastal Transition The four-hour drive through Valencia's orange groves and coastal plains brought us to our ferry departure point. **Hotel**: [Denia Marriott La Sella Golf Resort](https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/alcdt-denia-marriott-la-sella-golf-resort-spa/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This resort provided perfect relaxation before our island adventures. The golf course setting and Mediterranean views created a peaceful transition from cultural intensity to beach vacation mode. ### Days 6-8: Ibiza - Party Island Paradise The 9 AM Balearia ferry with our rental car transported us to the legendary party island. **Hotel**: [Nobu Hotel Ibiza Bay](https://www.nobuhotels.com/ibiza/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This sophisticated beachfront property perfectly balanced luxury accommodation with access to Ibiza's famous party scene. The Japanese-Mediterranean fusion cuisine and serene spa provided peaceful retreats from island excitement. **Beach Culture**: Ibiza's beaches offered incredible variety - from family-friendly Talamanca to the famous party beaches of Playa d'en Bossa. The crystal-clear Mediterranean water, white sand, and beach club atmosphere created the ultimate European beach experience. **Party Atmosphere**: While we're not typically party travelers, Ibiza's legendary nightlife proved irresistible. The island's DJ culture, beautiful people from around the world, and sunset celebrations at beach clubs created a unique social energy impossible to experience elsewhere. **Hidden Ibiza**: Beyond the party reputation, we discovered quiet coves, traditional villages, and hiking trails revealing the island's natural beauty. The contrast between wild nightlife and peaceful Mediterranean landscapes showcased Ibiza's complexity. **Hippie Heritage**: Ibiza's 1960s counterculture history remains visible in artisan markets, alternative lifestyle communities, and relaxed attitudes toward individual expression. This cultural layer added depth to the contemporary party scene. ### Days 9-12: Mallorca - Family Island Sophistication The evening ferry from Ibiza to Mallorca transported us from party central to family-friendly luxury. **Hotel**: [Hotel De Mar Gran Melia](https://www.melia.com/en/hotels/spain/mallorca/gran-melia-de-mar?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This elegant beachfront resort in Illetas provided perfect family vacation atmosphere with sophisticated amenities. The multiple pools, private beach, and proximity to Palma created ideal Mallorca headquarters. **Family Beach Paradise**: Mallorca's beaches cater perfectly to families and couples seeking relaxation over party atmosphere. The calm, clear waters of Illetas and nearby coves offered perfect swimming and snorkeling conditions. Beach clubs provided comfortable settings for long, lazy days. **Palma Cultural Exploration**: Mallorca's capital surprised us with its cultural sophistication. The Gothic cathedral, with Gaudí modifications, created stunning architectural fusion. The contemporary art scene, designer shopping, and excellent restaurants demonstrated the island's evolution beyond simple beach destination. **Mountain Villages**: Day trips into Mallorca's interior revealed traditional Spanish village life in settings like Valldemossa and Deià. These picturesque mountain communities, favored by artists and writers, showcased Mallorca's natural beauty and cultural heritage. **Final Hotel**: [Bordoy Alcudia Port Suites](https://www.bordoyhotels.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Our final night in Alcudia, near the ferry port, provided convenient departure logistics while showcasing another side of Mallorca's coastal charm. ### Days 13-16: Barcelona - Cosmopolitan Finale The morning ferry from Mallorca to Barcelona completed our Spanish island circuit, returning us to mainland sophistication. **Hotel**: [Almanac Barcelona](https://www.almanacbarcelona.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Amex Fine Hotels) - This luxury design hotel in Barcelona's Eixample district provided the perfect base for exploring Catalonia's capital. The contemporary design, central location, and exceptional service created an ideal urban retreat. **Architectural Marvels**: Barcelona's unique architectural heritage, dominated by Gaudí's creations, provided daily wonder. The Sagrada Familia's ongoing construction, Park Güell's whimsical design, and Casa Batlló's organic forms demonstrated visionary architectural thinking impossible to experience elsewhere. **Cultural Sophistication**: Barcelona's museums, galleries, contemporary art scene, and intellectual atmosphere created perfect contrast to island beach life. The city's Catalan identity, distinct from broader Spanish culture, added cultural complexity and regional pride. **Vegetarian Capital**: Barcelona rivaled any European city for innovative vegetarian dining. The combination of Mediterranean ingredients, international influences, and creative chefs produced exceptional plant-based meals throughout our stay. From traditional Catalan vegetable dishes to contemporary fusion cuisine, every meal was memorable. **Gothic Quarter**: Barcelona's medieval heart, preserved within the modern metropolis, provided endless exploration opportunities. Narrow streets, hidden plazas, and centuries-old architecture created intimate urban experiences contrasting with the city's contemporary energy. **Beach Access**: Barcelona's unique combination of urban sophistication and beach access allowed us to enjoy Mediterranean waters without leaving the city. Barceloneta beach provided perfect afternoon relaxation between cultural explorations. ## Cultural Insights **Spanish Regional Diversity**: Each destination revealed distinct regional Spanish identity - Andalusian Moorish heritage, Balearic island culture, and Catalan independence. This diversity within Spanish national identity created fascinating cultural education. **Mediterranean Lifestyle**: All destinations shared the leisurely Mediterranean approach - late dinners, afternoon siestas, evening social gatherings, and appreciation for life's pleasures over productivity pressures. **Island Personalities**: Each Balearic island developed distinct character despite shared Mediterranean setting - Ibiza's party culture, Mallorca's family sophistication, and the cultural richness possible in island settings. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Time in Each Location**: Three weeks allowed good sampling but deeper exploration would enhance each destination's cultural and natural offerings. **Extend Barcelona Stay**: Barcelona's cultural richness deserved additional days for more thorough museum visits, neighborhood exploration, and culinary adventures. **Include Menorca**: The third major Balearic island would complete the archipelago experience and provide another island personality. ## Final Thoughts This Spanish circuit demonstrated how combining cultural exploration with beach relaxation creates perfect vacation balance. The progression from Andalusian heritage through island life to cosmopolitan Barcelona showcased Spain's incredible diversity while maintaining Mediterranean coherence. The ferry connections with rental car provided flexibility impossible with flights while creating transportation as vacation experience rather than necessary evil. Each destination offered completely different Spanish experiences while building toward comprehensive understanding of contemporary Spanish culture. Most importantly, Spain's warmth, sophistication, and cultural confidence made every interaction pleasant and educational. From Malaga's evening social life to Granada's student energy, Ibiza's international party scene to Barcelona's intellectual atmosphere, Spanish hospitality enhanced every cultural encounter. For travelers seeking combination of cultural depth, beach relaxation, culinary excellence, and social energy, this Spanish routing offers perfect variety. Each destination rewards extended stays while providing easy connections to different Spanish experiences. **Total Distance Driven**: Approximately 800 miles plus ferry connections **Best Cultural Site**: The Alhambra in Granada - architectural perfection demonstrating sophisticated medieval Islamic civilization **Most Surprising**: Malaga's sophisticated cultural scene and excellent vegetarian dining **Best Beaches**: Mallorca's family-friendly coves and Ibiza's party beach clubs **Culinary Highlight**: Barcelona's innovative vegetarian restaurants rivaling any European food capital **Perfect For**: Travelers wanting cultural depth combined with Mediterranean beach life, couples seeking romantic settings with sophisticated amenities, anyone interested in Spanish regional diversity and island-hopping adventures. ### Leverage the Power of Safety to Drive Cultural Transformation URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leverage-the-power-of-safety-to-drive-cultural-transformation/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:41:56.000Z Earlier this week our good friend [Mark Graban at Lean Blog](https://www.leanblog.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) reminded me of an article on how former [Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill focused on improving workplace safety](https://www.workclout.com/blog/how-alcoa-quintupled-their-revenue-by-focusing-on-worker-safety?ref=kevinmeyer.com), which contributed to driving growth from $3 billion in 1987 to $27 billion in 1999. > "Focusing on worker safety can transform an entire organization and dramatically improve culture, quality, productivity, communication, and ultimately profits." - Paul O'Neill The article goes into detail on how his ideas caused initial consternation by the board of directors, how the initial improvements created real financial improvements in terms of reduced lost work days, but the end result was a cultural transformation. The impact of improved safety is far more than the directly-measured financials. Safety goes to the heart of the respecting people, one of the core components of lean. When you focus on safety you are saying more than "I need a critical resource to contribute at full capacity" - you're saying that the person matters. That respect creates the ability to drive dramatic change. I experienced a similar situation at a much (much...) smaller company over a decade ago. We had a cascading series of morning standup meetings, starting at the factory floor and department level early in the morning and working their way to our executive staff at 8:30, where we were video conferenced into each facility around the country. The executive staff standup happened in a wide section of hallway, so in public, and anyone walking by could watch and even participate. The agenda was tight and moved fast so that we were updated and could address critical issues in under 15 minutes each morning. In fact, it was so successful that the regular executive staff meetings changed from weekly to biweekly and eventually monthly. When issues are addressed quickly they become smaller. Transparency, understanding, and trust improves so teams are more comfortably allowing independent, individual action without requiring long discussion. Soon after we started the morning meetings we had an issue with slips and falls. We ended up learning that the cause was due to a combination of work shoes, new polished concrete floors in a new building, and changes to the overnight floor cleaning process. We resolved it, but to stay on top of the problem we made this the first topic to be discussed in the morning meetings, which then eventually morphed into a general safety topic - always the first topic of each standup in each department, every day. This sent a very visible message that our people mattered. Before talking about profits and customers and technology, we talked about safety. Since the morning meetings happened throughout all of our facilities, with important issues flowing toward the final executive standup, everyone talked safety, every day. Everyone felt the value of people, and could directly witness everyone at every level discussing ways to improve the lives of people. Every day. In hindsight, this focus on safety created the trust needed to fuel our other transformation efforts. If it's so simple, why isn't it more common? It should be, but it requires leaders be humble, compassionate, and transparent. Make safety the first topic of your meetings (preferably a daily standup!), at all levels. You might be amazed at how that simple step transforms your organization. ### Continuously Lubricating Processes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/continuously-lubricating-processes/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:43:24.000Z As I push through my later 50s I'm finding that I value flexibility and balance far more than strength and endurance. This is augmented in my case as I've always had very high calcium levels, and even after removing dairy and other sources I still deal with calcification of various tendons leading to one shoulder surgery already, and the early onset of some arthritis. Thankfully no buildup in the arteries, and as a positive I've had no cavities. To stay limber and mitigate more calcific tendonitis I've been adding more yoga into my daily fitness routine. Our company healthcare plan recently added free access to the Peloton app, and I've found many live and canned classes at all hours. I combine that with a couple hours of pickleball in the late afternoon, which adds a lot of quick movement and hand-eye coordination. I've become very aware that I must practice yoga or some form of stretching every single day, otherwise after even one off day I can feel the stiffness creeping in. To practice every day I have to [make it a habit](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2019/04/04/ga-261-building-the-habit-of-excellence-with-james-clear/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), schedule it, and be more efficient at other activities to create the time. Last week, as I was working on the year-end financial close for our company, it struck me that a similar situation exists for our work processes. ## Exercise Processes Continuously Over the past few years the monthly financial close process has become a continuous process, with "month-end" really being simply an arbitrary division where we've chosen to measure progress. All financial processes, including reconciliation and reporting, are dynamic and effectively happen every day. A few hours after the end of each month we lock the previous month and save the reports of that period. Even the review is effectively continuous. Year-end close is a bit different. It has been a year since we last performed an annual financial close, and even with detailed standard work and checklists there are still questions on how certain processes need to work and what the prerequisites are. There are different CPA, tax, and regulatory submissions that need to be made, 1099s and W-2s to issue to employees and contractors, and so forth. Standard work is not as clear as we thought it was when we wrote it, and some processes require revision due to legal, tax, or systems changes. As part of the next step from the "continuous monthly close" we've been able to also improve the annual close process and reduce the key components to under a week. Our goal this year is to make every day a "year end" so that on January 2nd, 2023 we are simply emailing required documents to our CPA, vendors, and employees. ## Understanding Value and Surfacing Problems Why close a month in an hour and a year in a day when external requirements allow much longer? Why try to run processes continuously instead of just when they are needed? The value is in what you uncover when you undertake such an effort. When I stretch and exercise every day I quickly see where progress is being made, where problems are developing, and I can take immediate action. I can see trends, understand correlation to other activities, and adjust accordingly. My morning yoga practice has added a physical component to my daily reflection, which has then let me understand how physical wellbeing impacts emotional health and progress toward personal and professional goals. As we were working on making the monthly and annual financial processes more continuous we uncovered analogous problems. Bank data was originally delayed a couple days until we found ways to use and automate real-time information. Missing or delayed receipts were an issue until we developed improved processes. These changes addressed problems immediately instead of during a frantic few days at the turn of the month. [Lean daily management systems](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/lean-daily-management?ref=kevinmeyer.com), including a daily standup meeting at the gemba, have a similar function. It's not just another meeting, but a way to ensure processes are running effectively all the time and to surface and address issues quickly. ## Examine Process Elasticity Exercising every day also helps me understand the stability, robustness, and elasticity of those habits. What happens on weekends and holidays? Do I maintain or modify the activities? What happens when I'm not feeling well or when an external factor impacts the habit (maybe I shouldn't have had that extra glass of wine last night...)? I can see the relationship between processes, and how they impact my journey to a desired future state. This reinforces the value of other habits. Running processes in a continuous fashion similarly shows how the process tolerates even small changes to inputs, which might have been otherwise overlooked. How those changes impact a desired consistent output informs you of the characteristics of the process. A couple decades ago I was responsible for a large 24/7/365 injection molding operation, yet the support staff (including myself) worked traditional business hours. Mondays were a nightmare for us, catching up on and trying to fix issues that happened overnight or on the weekends. As much as they were a nightmare for the support staff, they were even more of a nightmare for the operators responsible for the processes during the times when there was no support staff. We made changes, first with on-call support and later with dedicated in-house support at all hours, and I even had "[midnight staff meetings](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/midnight-at-the-gemba/)" every month to ensure everyone understood the needs and demonstrated respect for the night and weekend operations. ## Simplify to Avoid Overburden When processes run continuously, it's easy to become overburdened. Instead of setting aside several hours to reconcile several thousand transactions every month, we needed to do a fraction of that every day, and eventually even fewer but every hour. Although the true time per transaction is the same, the time cost of launching and executing systems and processes can become much greater. We deliberately applied [SMED quick changeover](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/quick-changeover-the-smed-system?ref=kevinmeyer.com) thinking to our financial operations which created the ability to quickly shift between processes multiple times every day. But we've also looked at the inherent value in data versus our value of time. Do we need to know how much we spend at Chevron, or just on gas in general? Generalizing some data can create value by simplifying and reducing effort. Similarly, we pay all of our bills when they come in, which has almost completely eliminated the need for the complex accounts payable processes typical to most companies. Sure we give up a few pennies of interest float, but we engender good will at our vendors that has paid dividends in terms of service and quality that has offset that by orders of magnitude. Contrast that to companies that play the [net nonsense game](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense/). Memorized transactions and other automations can help, but it's important to realize that, just as in manufacturing, automating office activities can easily simply cover waste - or even make waste happen faster. First take the time to understand value and optimize the underlying process, then apply technology and automation. What processes do you have that need to be lubricated? What would you learn, and improve, if they ran continuously instead of every few months, weeks, or days? ### Thinking Beyond the Brain URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thinking-beyond-the-brain/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:44:50.000Z I recently finished one of the more remarkable books I've read in a long time: [The Extended Mind - The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Outside-Brain-Annie-Murphy/dp/0544947665?ref=kevinmeyer.com), by Annie Murphy Paul. This is a well-researched (over 250 journal citations) yet very approachable book that goes far beyond the usual self-help advice to improve blood flow and chemicals in the brain, instead focusing on how the brain actively uses the external environment as part of the thinking and learning process. If I had any single complaint, it's that she does a bit too much "brain function trivia" especially in the latter sections. Paul's overarching point is that we need to break away from the traditional neurocentric "brainbound" perspective that all thinking happens in the brain, and begin considering the brain as a "magpie" - creating tools and fashioning nests from materials found around it. There's considerable multi-disciplinary science around this new perspective, which is becoming actionable in tools such as Roam Research and Obsidian. The following is a summary of what I believe are some key, actionable points. I'd encourage you to consider these alongside the power of going to the gemba and how we teach and learn - just for starters. ### Thinking With Our Bodies (Embodied Cognition) **Sensations**: Part of Embodied Cognition is the highly neglected sense, not sight, sound, smell etc. but interoception, the sensing of internal bodily sensation. Performative expertise includes interoceptive expertise - recognizing more subtly and responding more rapidly to feelings inside your body as our perform your task. Paul dives right into the use of interoceptive faculties supporting thinking - what most of us know as "gut feel." Turns out that this is often how the brain communicates pattern recognition faster and more effectively than with traditional thought. She gives the example of how the best stock traders are hyper aware of changes in physical sensation, and use them to make rapid time-sensitive trades when their brain recognizes and opportune pattern. This has also been shown to reduce general bias in decision making. People who practice the "body scan" form of meditation are especially proficient in using their interoceptive faculties. How many of you can sense your heartbeat without touching your wrist or neck? It turns out about 50% of us can, and we're surprised when we learn that others (like our spouses!) can't - and vice versa. **Movement**: Humans evolved to think best while moving - while chasing prey or eluding predators. However now most of us think while sitting at a desk. This goes beyond just improving blood flow via exercise to actually augmenting cognitive activity. Contrary to what most of us think, fidgeting may actually be a good thing, a method the body uses to maintain attention and improve cognitive ability while sitting still. This concept has been put into practical use in classrooms that use standing desks, and then taken to another level by using movement to engage with concepts being taught - such as experiencing torque. Paul also makes the point that exercising first thing in the morning, and experiencing the residual cognitive effects, is better than exercising at the end of the day and wasting that improvement. **Gestures**: We think of gestures as an aid to communicating information, and they are if done effectively. For example, simple "beat gestures" - the fairly irrelevant ones performed by presenters who have been told to "move your hands," are just marginally effective. The best communicators go a step further to use specific, relevant gestures to convey additional information about a concept. Gestures appear to prime the brain's auditory cortex for meaning so that spoken words are then better understood and remembered. Learning and using gestures also help us think. One example the author provided is how even non-deaf students trained on how to communicate using American Sign Language can understand and process complex concepts better than other students. Another: we've all heard about the spatial thinking gap between young boys and girls - in reality this may be a non-gender "gesture gap" as hand movements are accepted and encouraged with boys while sometimes deemed not prim and proper with girls. (hooo boy, that may get controversial!) ### Thinking With Our Surroundings (Situated Cognition) **Natural Spaces**: Almost all of us prefer to be in nature, and find it calming and relaxing. However there is considerable science that shows that being in nature also improves our ability to think and learn effectively. One study Paul cited was of high school classrooms, some with windows with a view of trees and lawns, some with windows with views of buildings and parking lots, and some windowless. The students who could gaze at nature scored higher on tests of memory, comprehension, and even attention than those who looked out at buildings or did not have windows at all. Another important concept is that nature can induce awe, and awe changes perspectives, which can inspire creativity. Awe prompts a predictable series of psychological responses, breaking down preconceived biases and stereotypes, making us more curious and open-minded. Paul calls awe "a reset button for the brain." **Built Spaces**: The author cites several studies that indicate that the creation of walls and buildings was an evolutionary improvement not just to afford protection from the elements, but to also reduce cognitive burden to allow for expanded thinking. Keeping track of everyone and everything around you exacts a high cognitive cost, and walls reduce that. The brain evolved to be very distractible by noises, especially human speech, which explains why trying to study with the TV on - or even listening to music with singing - can be very detrimental to comprehension and retention. Being able to personalize our immediate work environment also increases engagement and productivity, and reduces stress. So... about those open offices, especially the ones where you don't have an assigned workspace...! **Space of Ideas**: Being able to interact physically greatly enhances understanding and problem-solving. Watson and Crick identified the double helix structure of DNA by using physical models. "Thinking with your brain alone - like a computer does - is not equivalent to thinking with your brain, your eyes, and your hands." One of my favorite quotes is Issac Asimov's "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." Generating physical visualizations and writing by hand is more effective that computer simulations and data on a screen. We've discussed lean versions of this concept before from many different angles. When doing value stream maps, it's better to create them manually using sticky notes or drawing on paper. Recording data and updating status by hand on metrics boards creates more understanding than simply looking at data on a computer screen. Going to the physical gemba is far more effective than discussing a problem in a remote conference room. Scribbling notes in a journal stimulates more effective reflection than typing into an iPad. Taking handwritten notes in a classroom is more effective that typing notes onto a course PowerPoint on a computer. ### Thinking With Our Relationships (Distributed Cognition) **Experts**: Humans are born with a predisposition to imitate experts - beginning with our parents and eventually moving to professional experts. Imitation is an effective way to learn, and we see this with the steps in TWI Job Instruction. Humans, as opposed to most other animals, are also "high fidelity imitators" - our young imitate very precisely while other species are more approximate. This is a major evolutionary advantage, and is being used at the university level in various subjects. One example is in law school, where sample in-depth writings - memoranda, decisions, case analyses, etc. - are given to new students. The students are provided guides and questions to go through the documents, and are then expected to emulate the style and depth on course projects. There's also an interesting application of this concept to the development of process instructions and standard work. A study of expert surgeons and programmers found that they omitted nearly 70% of the steps when they were asked to document their processes. One solution? Asking them to [think like a beginner](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-the-beginning-with-ohno-suzuki-and-yoda/). Other solutions will be familiar to us in the lean and kata world: break down the process into steps, then break it down again into micro steps. At each step, focus just on the next step in the process. **Peers**: Although we like to claim a commitment to individualism, humans learn as groups. Knowledge has historically been conveyed via stories, passed down from generation to generation. Today knowledge is stored and communicated outside of the brain, but the power of stories remain. When stories, especially if they convey the "why" of a concept (again - TWI JI), comprehension and retention increase. Along those same lines of conveying knowledge, one of the best ways to learn is to also teach. This, along with the desire for cheap labor, is one reason why graduate students are often teachers of lower level classes in they subject areas. Two of the most important allowances leaders can make to help increase storytelling are time and space. Having defined downtime and informal group activities are time well spent. Once study showed that a 1 percent reduction in efficiency from defined downtime for unstructured employee interaction produces a threefold increase in group performance. **Groups**: Physical movement with a group creates improved collaboration and creativity. This "synchrony" is a reason why the Japanese practice of common morning exercises by school children up through executives of major corporation creates more than just basic physical fitness. Note that it is also first thing in the morning, and as Paul mentioned in the Movement section, this creates a cognitive improvement that lasts several hours and is wasted if it happens in the evening. Synchronized exercises in Japan is the most widespread example, but the same concept applies when a classroom stands and says the Pledge of Allegiance, a church congregation kneels, a band marches, or even dining in groups. The intimacy created by simple employee group lunches spills back over into work activities. Perhaps this synchrony is another reason why brief daily standup meetings are so effective? In addition to creating coordination and sharing knowledge, they also augment thinking effectiveness? Innovative educators are creating "jigsaw classrooms" where individual students learn a specific subset of a topic, then rejoin a small group and must teach their new knowledge to that group (with the others doing the same with their subtopics), then that small group teaches and reports to the entire classroom to complete the puzzle of a larger topic. The long term study showed that students learned all of the material faster, retained it longer, and could use it for future problem-solving. Quite a bit to think about and digest. I was struck by how much was specifically relevant to the lean world where we focus on process, continuous improvement, and the power of people. ### The Value of Friction and Inefficiency URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-friction-and-inefficiency/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:45:13.000Z Our professional lives are generally consumed by trying to make our processes more efficient to reduce waste and help increase the value we deliver to our customers. Our personal lives are similarly consumed by trying to find time on our busy schedules to take care of chores, have meaningful time with the family, or to simply take a breath. We are always in search of new tools and methods to make us more efficient, but the more time we find the more we find to fill it. In an essay in The Wall Street Journal a month ago, Oliver Burkeman describes how "[Escaping the Efficiency Trap](https://www.wsj.com/articles/escaping-the-efficiency-trapand-finding-some-peace-of-mind-11628262751?reflink=share%5Fmobilewebshare&ref=kevinmeyer.com)" is more difficult and nuanced than we might expect. > *The general principle in operation here is what we might call the “efficiency trap.” Rendering yourself more efficient—either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder—won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time,” because, all else being equal, the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far from getting things done, you’ll be creating new things to do.* Burkeman posits that instead of continually struggling to create more efficiency we should become more accepting of the anxiety of inefficiency, and learn how friction and inefficiency expose value - or the lack thereof. > *Convenience, in other words, makes things easy, but without regard to whether easiness is truly what’s most valuable in any given context.* Perhaps an analogue is the danger of automation. In the lean world we know that automation can hide wasteful processes and computers can hide the real meaning of data. We learn to first analyze processes and data in manual ways to create better understanding. Only after we break down, improve, and standardize processes - usually multiple times - will we apply automation. In fact, Burkeman cites a similar example of phone apps that help us create an illusion of more control: knowing where family members are, managing multiple calendars, compiling travel reservations, and so forth. We need some level of discomfort so that we're aware of and understand what is happening. Using cash instead of Apple Pay is less efficient, but you may think twice about a purchase. Having to call a family member to see where they are is more difficult and time-consuming than simply seeing their location on an app, but there is connection and context in the call. > *Smoothness, it turns out, is a dubious virtue, since it’s often the unsmoothed textures of life that make it livable.* One final point that Burkeman only briefly touches on is that when we do create more efficiency and time, we need to be better about how we fill it. He quotes Jim Benson saying that as we become more efficient we become “a limitless reservoir for other people’s expectations.” Instead, we should apply some personal hoshin planning and kata. What are our individual core principles? How do those translate into our long-term goals, nearer-term objectives, and experiments we're running to work toward those objectives? With that in mind, how are we filling our time? Working to become more efficient is great, but recognize the value of some level of inefficiency and friction. When we do become more efficient, be judicious and intentional with how the extra time is used. ### Canadian Rockies Adventure: Banff and Jasper in Post-COVID Solitude URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/canadian-rockies-adventure-banff-and-jasper-in-post-covid-solitude/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T13:24:28.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_4219.png) Our August 2021 journey through Banff and Jasper National Parks came at a unique moment in travel history - just days after Canada reopened its borders following COVID restrictions. This timing created an almost private experience of some of North America's most spectacular mountain scenery, though wildfire smoke during the second half reminded us that even pristine wilderness faces environmental challenges. ## General Comments **Post-COVID Timing**: Visiting just after Canada's border reopening meant we experienced these world-famous parks with minimal crowds. Popular hiking trails, scenic viewpoints, and even the iconic Fairmont hotels felt nearly private. This solitude enhanced our connection with the pristine wilderness that makes the Canadian Rockies legendary. **Wildfire Reality**: During our second half in Jasper, smoke from British Columbia wildfires created hazy conditions that obscured mountain views and affected air quality. While disappointing for photography, this reminded us that climate change impacts even the world's most protected wilderness areas. **Icefields Parkway Excellence**: The drive between Banff and Jasper on Highway 93 North ranks among the world's most spectacular mountain roads. Glaciers, waterfalls, alpine lakes, and wildlife sightings made the 3.5-hour journey a destination itself rather than mere transportation. **Fairmont Luxury**: Both Fairmont properties - the castle-like Banff Springs and the rustic-elegant Jasper Park Lodge - provided world-class luxury perfectly integrated with their mountain settings. These historic hotels enhanced rather than competed with the natural surroundings. **Hiking Paradise**: Both parks offered hiking for all skill levels, from short lakeside strolls to challenging alpine adventures. The trail systems, maintained facilities, and clear signage demonstrated Canadian park service excellence. **Wildlife Encounters**: Despite reduced visitor numbers, we experienced incredible wildlife sightings - mountain goats, elk, bighorn sheep, and black bears. The animals seemed more relaxed with fewer tourists, creating better viewing opportunities. **COVID Protocols**: Required rapid COVID testing before departure and various health protocols reminded us we were traveling during unusual times, but Canadian efficiency made compliance straightforward. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-4: Banff National Park After our Calgary arrival and airport hotel night, the 1.5-hour drive through foothills toward the Rocky Mountains built anticipation perfectly. **Hotel**: [Fairmont Banff Springs](https://www.fairmont.com/banff-springs/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This "Castle in the Rockies," built in 1888, provided the ultimate Canadian mountain luxury experience. The castle-like architecture, multiple restaurants, spa facilities, and golf course created a self-contained resort while remaining perfectly integrated with the dramatic mountain setting. **Lake Louise**: Canada's most photographed lake lived up to its reputation despite our early visit beating typical crowds. The turquoise glacial water surrounded by snow-capped peaks created postcard-perfect scenery. The short walk around the lake provided constantly changing mountain perspectives, while the longer hike to the Lake Agnes Tea House offered elevated views worth the effort. **Moraine Lake**: Often considered even more spectacular than Lake Louise, Moraine Lake's deep blue water surrounded by the Valley of the Ten Peaks created breathtaking panoramic views. The rockpile trail provided elevated viewpoints, while the relative lack of tourists allowed for peaceful contemplation of this natural masterpiece. **Banff Townsite Exploration**: The charming mountain town offered excellent restaurants, outdoor gear shops, and local culture while maintaining strict development controls that preserved the natural setting. The town's pedestrian-friendly streets and mountain backdrop created perfect evening strolls after days of hiking. **Johnston Canyon**: This popular waterfall hike through a limestone canyon featured well-maintained walkways, multiple waterfalls, and diverse ecosystems within a relatively short distance. The Lower and Upper Falls provided different experiences, while the lack of crowds allowed us to enjoy the natural acoustics of flowing water. **Sulphur Mountain Gondola**: While we typically prefer hiking to mechanical transport, the gondola provided panoramic views over Banff townsite and surrounding peaks impossible to achieve on foot. The mountaintop boardwalk offered 360-degree mountain vistas and interpretive displays explaining the region's geology and ecology. ### Day 5: Icefields Parkway - The Ultimate Mountain Drive The journey from Banff to Jasper on Highway 93 North provided one of our most memorable travel experiences. **Athabasca Glacier**: The Columbia Icefield's most accessible glacier allowed us to walk on ancient ice and understand glacial processes firsthand. The interpretive center explained how climate change is rapidly shrinking these massive ice formations, adding environmental urgency to the natural beauty. **Waterfalls Galore**: Athabasca Falls, with its powerful flow through narrow limestone gorges, demonstrated water's geological power. Multiple roadside waterfalls throughout the drive created constant photo opportunities and short hiking diversions. **Peyto Lake Viewpoint**: This elevated viewpoint revealed one of the Canadian Rockies' most distinctive scenes - the wolf-head-shaped lake surrounded by peaks and glaciers. The unique turquoise color, created by glacial sediment, made this lake particularly photogenic. **Wildlife Sightings**: The reduced traffic during post-COVID reopening meant more wildlife visible from the road. Mountain goats on cliffsides, bighorn sheep near the roadway, and various bird species created constant excitement during the drive. **Columbia Icefield Skywalk**: This glass-floored observation platform extending over the Sunwapta Valley provided thrilling views while educating visitors about the area's geological formation and glacial history. ### Days 6-9: Jasper National Park Canada's largest Rocky Mountain park offered even more wilderness experiences than Banff, though wildfire smoke affected our later days. **Hotel**: [Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge](https://www.fairmont.com/jasper/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This collection of rustic luxury cabins around Lac Beauvert created intimate mountain retreat atmosphere. The property's integration with the natural setting, excellent dining, and peaceful lake location provided perfect relaxation after active hiking days. **Maligne Lake**: Canada's largest natural mountain lake required a scenic drive through the Maligne Valley but rewarded us with pristine wilderness and boat tours to Spirit Island, one of the most photographed locations in the Canadian Rockies. The lake's remote setting and surrounding peaks created profound wilderness experiences. **Maligne Canyon**: This deep limestone gorge with multiple bridges and viewpoints provided dramatic geological education alongside spectacular scenery. The different vantage points revealed how water carved through solid rock over millennia, creating narrow passages and deep pools. **Mount Edith Cavell**: Named after a WWI nurse, this peak and its surrounding area offered some of our most challenging and rewarding hiking. The Path of the Glacier trail provided close access to the Angel Glacier and demonstrated dramatic glacial retreat. The alpine environment and wildflower meadows created stunning high-altitude ecosystems. **Pyramid Lake**: A short drive from Jasper townsite led to this peaceful lake perfect for canoeing, photography, and reflection. The pyramid-shaped mountain reflected in calm water created classic Canadian Rocky Mountain scenery. **Wildlife Encounters**: Despite the smoke, we experienced incredible wildlife sightings around Jasper. Elk wandering through the townsite, black bears visible from safe distances, and mountain goats on cliffsides reminded us we were visiting their habitat rather than a theme park. **Wildfire Smoke Impact**: During our final days, smoke from British Columbia wildfires created hazy conditions that obscured distant mountain views and affected air quality. While disappointing for photography, this environmental reality added urgency to appreciating pristine wilderness while it remains intact. ## Hiking Highlights **Variety for All Levels**: Both parks offered incredible hiking diversity - from accessible lakeside walks to challenging alpine adventures. The trail maintenance, signage, and facilities demonstrated Canadian park service excellence. **Lake Agnes Tea House**: This historic mountain hut, accessible only by hiking from Lake Louise, provided traditional afternoon tea at 7,000 feet elevation. The combination of physical achievement and cultural experience created memorable mountain dining. **Plain of Six Glaciers**: Another Lake Louise area hike leading to a tea house, this trail provided close glacier views and demonstrated how these ice formations have retreated dramatically in recent decades. **Valley of the Five Lakes**: Near Jasper, this moderate hike revealed multiple lakes, each with different mineral content creating distinct colors from emerald to turquoise to deep blue. **Iceline Trail**: The most challenging hike we attempted, this Mount Edith Cavell area trail provided close glacier access and alpine wildflower meadows. The physical effort required made the pristine wilderness experience more meaningful. ## Wildlife and Natural Experiences **Animal Encounters**: Reduced tourist numbers meant more natural wildlife behavior. Elk grazing peacefully, mountain goats traversing impossible cliff faces, and bighorn sheep demonstrating their climbing abilities created authentic wilderness connections. **Geological Education**: The parks' interpretive programs helped us understand how glaciers, water, and geological forces created these dramatic landscapes over millions of years. This scientific context enhanced our appreciation of the natural beauty. **Climate Change Reality**: Seeing glacial retreat markers and experiencing wildfire smoke provided sobering reminders that even protected wilderness faces environmental challenges requiring global attention. ## What We'd Do Differently **More Jasper Time**: Jasper's larger size and more remote wilderness deserved additional exploration days. The park's backcountry opportunities and wildlife viewing potential justified longer stays. **Wildfire Season Awareness**: Future visits would consider wildfire seasons and air quality forecasts, though these environmental factors are increasingly unpredictable. **Extended Photography Planning**: The incredible scenery deserved more dedicated photography time, particularly for sunrise and sunset lighting conditions. ## Final Thoughts Visiting the Canadian Rockies during post-COVID reopening provided a once-in-a-lifetime experience of these world-famous parks in near-solitude. The combination of spectacular mountain scenery, excellent hiking, luxury accommodations, and minimal crowds created ideal conditions for connecting with pristine wilderness. The Icefields Parkway drive alone justified the entire trip, while both Banff and Jasper offered hiking and wildlife experiences rivaling any mountain destination worldwide. The Fairmont hotels provided perfect luxury bases that enhanced rather than detracted from the wilderness experience. Most importantly, experiencing these protected landscapes reminded us why national parks matter for preserving natural heritage. The contrast between pristine mountain wilderness and environmental challenges like wildfire smoke reinforced the importance of protecting these areas for future generations. For travelers seeking mountain wilderness, hiking adventures, luxury accommodations, and authentic wildlife encounters, the Canadian Rockies offer unmatched experiences. The combination of accessibility and pristine wilderness makes this region perfect for both active adventurers and those seeking peaceful mountain retreat. **Best Hiking**: Lake Agnes Tea House trail combining physical challenge with historic mountain hospitality **Most Spectacular Drive**: Icefields Parkway - one of the world's greatest mountain roads **Wildlife Highlight**: Mountain goats navigating impossible cliff faces with apparent ease **Most Photogenic**: Moraine Lake's turquoise water surrounded by the Valley of the Ten Peaks **Perfect For**: Mountain enthusiasts, hikers of all levels, wildlife watchers, photographers, travelers seeking luxury accommodations in pristine wilderness settings. ### A Nearly Perfect Iceland Ring Road Itinerary URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-nearly-perfect-iceland-ring-road-itinerary/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T12:56:25.000Z Apologies to people who subscribe to this blog as this is not my traditional type of content! In June 2021 we visited Iceland for 11 days, driving the famous Ring Road and seeing a variety of sights. I did considerable research on multiple websites and guide books, and with a couple exceptions it worked out very well. I thought I'd give back by sharing our itinerary and some other comments. I won't include detailed descriptions of each sight, but will link to descriptions by others. # General Comments **Ring Road or Day Trips?** If you have seven days or more, I'd recommend the Ring Road instead of day trips from one or more locations. The upside is you'll have a lot more flexibility and spend less time "returning" - and those drives can get long. The downside is you need to keep moving so if the weather is bad, you will miss those sights. There are also a lot of interesting sights on the far east side of Iceland, such as the fjords between Höfn and Egilsstaðir. **Ring Road Direction**: There are differing opinions on whether to go clockwise or counterclockwise around the Ring Road. After a lot of research I chose counterclockwise, and we're happy we did. Going in that direction puts most of the sights on the first half of the trip, when you have more energy. One problem is that the Rick Steves guide book we brought went in the opposite, clockwise, direction so we had to read it backwards! **Blue Lagoon: At the Beginning or the End?** Similar to which direction to drive on the Ring Road, there are differing opinions on when to experience the Blue Lagoon. Several people suggest starting there since it's between the airport and Reykjavik, especially if you arrive early in the morning. We did it at the end, and are glad we did. We were very tired after ten days of driving and multiple hotels, so a final day relaxing at the Blue Lagoon (and we stayed at The Retreat hotel right on the lagoon) was perfect. **Weather**: We were very lucky and had sunny and unseasonably warm weather for the first nine days. The last two days were overcast with some rain, but one of those days we were lounging in the Blue Lagoon pools so it didn't matter. The only sights we missed were the tops of mountains on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula the previous day - such as Kirkjufell. The good news is that looking at weather forecasts is generally not accurate as "rainy" really means "mist" for a small part of the day. If your weather app provides the expected total rainfall, you'll see it's generally small. The bad news is that others we talked to said it's good to plan on missing almost half the sights you want to see thanks to the weather. Luckily that didn't happen to us. **Money**: I didn't use any cash during the entire trip, and I really mean zero. Apple Pay and credit cards were accepted and preferred for even the smallest transactions. There is no tipping in Iceland, although a couple coffee shops did have a tip jar that no one seemed to use. **Gas**: Gas stations are far fewer than in the United States, but still not a problem. Just refill when you get to half a tank and you'll be fine. All of the gas stations are pay at the pump, almost always preferring a debit card with a PIN number. You select the maximum amount of gas you want, then it will authorize that amount with a hold on the card, then charge the actual amount. It can take several days for the hold to be removed, which can be confusing (or a problem if you have limited funds). Note that many gas stations have a store and restaurant, usually with very clean restrooms. **Food**: We're vegetarian (I'll eat fish, but my wife borders on being vegan). This didn't present much of a problem, although the vegetarian options were often the same: nut/bean "steak", fried cauliflower, meatless pizza, or celeriac (a form of celery) soup. By the end of the trip we were craving a simple spaghetti or salad. By far the best menu selection was at the Hotel Budir. Every hotel had a great breakfast buffet with many options, and often a chef that would also make omelettes and waffles. Another interesting note: there is apparently no diet soda from any brand - anywhere. **Clothes**: In late June and early July it was unseasonably warm, so we wore hiking pants and t-shirts, with the occasional light jacket. But it can be cold and rainy, especially in the mountains, so think of layers. Instead of heavy hiking boots I took light trail running shoes, which were perfect for city streets as well as lava, glaciers, and sand. **Hotels**: This is one area I like to splurge on, so I started with finding lists of top hotels. I then read the reviews on TripAdvisor and Expedia, and mapped them against proposed routes. A few of the top hotels couldn't be fit to the route as they are purposely isolated. With one exception that I'll discuss below, we enjoyed all of the hotels. The Hilton Canopy, Hotel Budir, and The Retreat at the Blue Lagoon were by far our favorites. All hotels had a nice breakfast buffet and dinner available, though if we were in a larger town we'd find an outside restaurant. With the exception of the three I just mentioned, a "double" room is really just two twins pushed together, sometimes with a common topper but often not, and generally with two twin comforters on top. **Baths**: One of the great experiences in Iceland is visiting the geothermal baths. Almost every town will have them, but in most cases they're just a swimming pool with maybe a hot tub. The best stops are baths designed for simply soaking, with multiple large hot pools. Our three favorites were the Blue Lagoon, Myvatn, and Fontana. There is a [common etiquette](https://adventures.is/blog/hot-spring-geothermal-pool-etiquette/?ref=kevinmeyer.com): you will be expected to shower naked, then put on your swimsuit, enjoy the pools, then upon return remove swimsuit (some baths have centrifugal rapid dryers!), shower again, and then get dressed. You'll get used to the routine. **Roads**: The roads are very well maintained, even in remote areas. Almost all are two lane with lanes that feel a bit narrower than in the United States due to almost no shoulders. Watch out for bikers and when passing trucks. Traffic circles are everywhere, and in the small number of multi-lane circles around Reykjavik be aware that unlike most other places, the inner lane has the right of way to exit at any time. This takes a bit getting used to. There are several one lane bridges, but those are well-signed and easy. In the northern part of the country there are also several one lane tunnels, some several kilometers long, with a pull-out passing area every 500m or so. We did have to back up a couple times to a pull out to allow the right-of-way lane to pass, which is a bit hairy. **Rental Car**: We rented from Europcar and had a good experience. Although the Ring Road and other main roads are paved and in very good condition, you should consider getting a larger 4x4 to take the gravel side roads to glaciers or hikes. We rented a Toyota Land Cruiser, which felt too big for the first couple days in downtown Reykjavik, but comfortable, capable, and safe for the rest of the trip. **Navigation**: We anticipated poor cell service so we downloaded the Google Maps for Iceland. Completely unnecessary as cell service was excellent everywhere and road signs are very clear. **Cell Service**: We're on Verizon and signed up for Travel Pass, which provides your normal U.S. plan for $10 a day when it's used. If you do go over certain data limits it will throttle back to 3G speed, but that happened only once. Coverage was excellent, even in remote areas. **Airport**: The Reykjavik airport is very efficient and arriving and departing was a breeze. The longest part of the experience was with renting and returning the rental car (Europcar in our case). When picking up the vehicle they gave a 10 minute discussion of local traffic laws, including the unique traffic circle situation mentioned above. **Laundry**: We typically travel pretty light and plan on doing laundry during longer trips. Unfortunately there are almost no laundromats in Iceland, so we were scrambling a bit for a hotel laundry service. It turned out that the hotel we stayed at in Egilsstaðir, at almost the exact half way point, had a free guest laundry. **What Did We Miss?** The one part of the country that we know is beautiful but we missed is the West Fjords area of northwest Iceland. It's just a little too remote to fit in into an eleven day itinerary, with long, time-consuming and unpaved roads. We bumped into several tourists who were going to see it on their second or third trip to Iceland. Maybe that's what we'll do. # Itinerary I tried to aim for 2-3 hours of driving each day, which allowed a lot of time for side trips and sightseeing. ### Day 1: Arrive Iceland and Reykjavik We arrived at 8pm on the flight from Boston. After picking up the rental car, the drive to the center of Reykjavik was about 45 minutes. **Hotel**: [Canopy by Hilton](https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/rekcapy-canopy-reykjavik-city-centre/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). One of our favorite hotels on the trip, and highly recommend. Very unique and stylish, with the best breakfast buffet of any hotel we stayed at. It is right in the middle of the old downtown and shopping area, so perfect location for walking around. There is no on-site parking, but a parking garage is right across the street for about $25 a day. Note that parking garages in Iceland are automated. A camera will record your license plate and then lift the gate. To depart, first go to the kiosk and enter your plate number and pay the fee, then it gives you 15 minutes to exit, allowing it by once again reading your license plate. ### Day 2: Reykjavik The walking tour of downtown was easy, with the hotel right in the center, and took about half a day. The hotel is right on Smiðjustígur, so a half block up is the main shopping drag of Laugavegur and also Skólavörðustígur which runs up to the [Hallgrímskirkja](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/hallgrimskirkja?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Lutheran church. We ate at several places, but particularly enjoyed [ROK](https://www.rokrestaurant.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), right across the street from the Hallgrímskirkja church. ### Day 3: Reykjavik to Golden Circle and Selfoss After a slow start due to the time change and wanting to check out several stores, we drove out to the famous Golden Circle, which goes past several relatively nearby sights. The entire trip with stops took us about seven hours. **Route** (196 km, 3 hrs of drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-reykjavik-to-selfoss-768x279.png) - Take 1 out of Reykjavik, then instead of taking 1 North to 36 which is the fast route, take 1 South to 431 for the scenic route. This will go through some crazy volcanic landscapes with the hot water pipeline to Reykjavik running along side of it. Turn north on 360 to go along the west side of the Þingvallavatn lake, joining up with 36 (turn right) to Þingvellir National Park. At this park you can walk through a narrow canyon where the Iceland is being split between the North American and European continents. At the end is a small but very nice [Öxarárfoss](https://adventures.is/iceland/attractions/oxararfoss-waterfall/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) waterfall, which is one of several Game of Thrones locations in Iceland. This segment is a 60 km drive taking about 1 hour. - Continue on 36 then turn left on 365, then eventually stay straight on 37 toward Laugarvatn. Stop at the [Fontana Baths](https://www.fontana.is/en?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and have your first bath experience. These were in the top three of all the baths we stopped at, so well worth it! Spend an hour or two and have lunch. - Continue on 37 until the turnoff to 35, take 35 the short distance to [Geysir](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/geysir?ref=kevinmeyer.com). You can park right across the street and easily walk to the geysers, one of which will blow every 10 minutes or so. Just follow the other tourists! - Continue a bit further on 35 to [Gullfoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/gullfoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com), a very large waterfall. There are multiple viewing locations requiring short walks, but all are worth it. - Turn around and return on 35, staying on 35 all the way to to where it intersects 36 again on the south side. Take that north just a few kilometers to the hotel. Along the way, stop at the [Cathedral near Skalholt](https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/regina/skalholt-in-south-iceland?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and the [Kerið Crater](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/kerid?ref=kevinmeyer.com). **Hotel**: [Hotel Grimsborgir](https://www.grimsborgir.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) near Selfoss. This hotel is trying hard to be five star but in reality is about a low four star. High quality rooms, the outdoor hot tubs at each building are nice, but landscaping is a bit sparse. The dining room with the pink tablecloths and plastic flowers was a bit odd, but the food was good. ### Day 4: Selfoss to Vik You'll now get on the highway 1 Ring Road, and stay on it for most of the rest of the trip. **Route** (164 km, 2.5 hrs of drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-selfoss-to-vik-1-768x542.png) - From the Hotel Grimsborgir take 36 south, then turn right onto 35\. Take that down to the highway 1 Ring Road and turn left on 1 toward Selfoss. - If you're a chess junky, check out the [Bobby Fischer museum and grave](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-bobby-fisher?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Selfoss. It's an interesting story of why he's there! - Just past Selfoss is the [Urridafoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/urridafoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com) waterfall. One of the least impressive waterfalls on the trip, so feel free to pass by. - Just past Hella is the [Lava Centre](https://guidetoiceland.is/tour-operator-tours-holidays/lava-centre/5539?ref=kevinmeyer.com) with displays on lava and volcanoes. We heard it was good, but it was closed on the day we were there. - Soon you'll reach [Seljalandsfoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/seljalandsfoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com), which is definitely worth a stop. You can walk completely around and behind the main large waterfall on the right - and you will get wet so bring rain jackets! Definitely walk up the trail toward the farmhouse, passing some smaller falls. Off the trail by farmhouse is a creek with a small trail going to the right, that enters a large grotto with a large waterfall inside it. Very much worth the short scramble! - A bit further down the Ring Road is [Skógafoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/skogafoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com), a very large waterfall that you can easily walk right to the base of. - Before returning to the Ring Road, go past the town of Skogar and find the museum. Just past the museum is a small trail that heads to the [Kvernufoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/regina/the-beautiful-kvernufoss-waterfall-the-less-visited-neighbour-of-skogafoss-waterfall-in-south-iceland?ref=kevinmeyer.com) waterfall, a short easy two kilometer hike. This is a small waterfall, but in a very beautiful valley which made it one of our favorites. If we hadn't been using AllTrails to look for hiking trails we would have missed it! - Just before arriving in Vik make a right to see the [Dyrhólaey](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/dyrholaey?ref=kevinmeyer.com) area. There are a couple of short trails from the parking lot (with an amazing public restroom with windows overlooking the area!) to see the Promontory, Arch, and the stone stacks in the Reynisdrangar black sand beaches. - In Vik just head toward the ocean and you'll find the black sand beach! **Hotel**: [Hotel Kría](https://www.hotelkria.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Vik. This was a very nice hotel, modern, and convenient. Dinner and breakfast were very good. ### Day 5: Vik to Skaftafell and Vatnajökull National Park Have breakfast at the hotel or, for a more unique experience, look just behind the hotel and find a big yellow school bus that has been converted into a coffee shop - [Skool Beans](https://www.skoolbeans.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Lots of unique coffee drinks and food, plus a cat and fun baristas. **Route** (176 km, 2.5 hours of drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-vik-to-skaftafell-768x449.png) - The only necessary stop before hitting Skaftafell is the [Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon](https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/jorunnsg/the-majestic-canyon?ref=kevinmeyer.com) about 70 km from Vik. It's a fairly short hike on an easy trail for very dramatic canyon views. Along the drive you'll pass [Eldraun](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/eldhraun?ref=kevinmeyer.com) lava fields, among the largest in the world, and the [Katla](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/katla?ref=kevinmeyer.com) volcano that is considered very dangerous and also due to erupt at any time. - At the visitor center at [Skaftafell](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/skaftafell?ref=kevinmeyer.com) there are two hikes. The one to the left goes to the [Svartifoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/svartifoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com) falls, and the one to the right goes to the Skaftafellsjokul glacier. The glacier hike is fairly short and flat, and although you can't touch the glacier you can clearly see it across a small lagoon. - Continue on to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel a bit early so we decided to go a bit further and see the Fjallsarlon and [Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoons](https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/jorunnsg/the-glacier-lagoon-jokulsarlon?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and [Diamond Beach](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/diamond-beach?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on this day instead of first thing the next day. There are several barely-marked parking lots on the left side of the highway to see the glacier lagoons, then just before and after the bridge are parking lots for Diamond Beach. When we visited there were many icebergs in the lagoons, but the exit from the lagoon to the beach was a bit clogged so there were very few chunks of ice on the beach. Still very much worth seeing. **Hotel**: [Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon](https://www.islandshotel.is/hotels-in-iceland/fosshotel-glacier-lagoon/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This was the first of two Fosshotel hotels we stayed at. Both were above average with many local tourists. Both dinner and breakfast required reservations. ### Day 6: Skaftafell to Höfn **Route** (110 km, 1.5 hours of drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-skaftafell-to-hofn-768x535.png) - If you didn't stop at the glacier lagoons and Diamond Beach, do this just past the hotel. - A left off the highway takes you down a long gravel road to the face of the Hjallanes glacier. It's a rough drive, but if you have a good 4x4 it's worth it. - There are several nice stops right on the road for views of glaciers, mountains, and the ocean. - We arrived at Höfn fairly early, so we went the short distance to the [Vestrahorn](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/vestrahorn?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This is an incredibly serene mountain right on the coast. It's on private property, but stop at the Viking Cafe to buy a ticket and maybe a coffee, then drive through the gate. The first parking lot on the left is for a short walk to the viking village that was built as a movie set a few years ago. The second parking lot on the left is for a walk to the beach for the best views of Vestrahorn. You can take photos across the sand, and further down with the water in the foreground. At the end of the road is a parking lot on the right for some dramatic rocky cliffs. **Hotel**: [Hotel Höfn](https://www.hotelhofn.is/en?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This is a modern hotel but smaller and noisier rooms. We ended up eating dinner outside of the hotel as there are several restaurants in town. Breakfast was good. One problem: there is no elevator, so you will have to carry luggage up the stairs. It's still the best hotel in the area, though. ### Day 7: Höfn to Egilsstaðir and Seyðisfjörður This is one of the longer days of driving, so another reason to maybe visit Vestrahorn on the previous day since it's so close to Höfn. **Route** (312 km, 4 hours drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-hofn-egilsstadir-738x1024.png) - Visit Vestrahorn if you didn't do it the previous day. - Just past Vestrahorn on highway 1 are some beautiful beaches and dramatic cliffs with the highway hugging the tall mountains. Stop for some short walks and photos. - Stop in the quaint fishing village of [Djúpivogur](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/djupivogur?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for lunch at Við Voginn, which has great food and views of the harbor. - There is a shortcut to Egilsstaðir via highway 95, but I'd recommend staying on the longer highway 1 to see the many fjords and villages. - Just as you're coming into Egilsstaðir, turn onto highway 93 to take the high pass over the mountain to the small fishing and arts village of [Seyðisfjörður](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/seydisfjordur?ref=kevinmeyer.com). It's well worth the drive. Return the same way. **Hotel**: [Lake Hotel Egilsstaðir](https://english.lakehotel.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). A nice hotel filled with a mix of foreign and local tourists. Beautiful views of the lake, and a nice breakfast buffet. There are several restaurants in town so we didn't eat dinner at the hotel. There is also a free guest laundry (you have to ask to access it), which is conveniently at the halfway point of the Iceland trip. The dryer doesn't work very well, but hang damp clothes in your room and they'll be mostly dry by morning. ### Day 8: Egilsstaðir to Mývatn This day starts with a bit of a backtrack to the Hengifoss falls, then moves out of the mountains into a Mars-like lava landscape for the rest of the way. Stock up on lunch before leaving as there's really nothing until you get to Mývatn. There's a Subway right off the highway in Egilsstaðir that was perfect for us. Mývatn is Icelandic for "midge" - or those tiny pesky flies. And there are a lot of them around the lake. **Route** (282 km, 3.5 hours drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-egilsstadir-to-myvatn-768x473.png) - Go down highway 95 and then 931 to the [Hengifoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/hengifoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com) falls, about a 30 minute drive. This is a fairly short hike with over 800 feet of vertical climb, but it's worth it to see one of the tallest waterfalls in the country with some unique red rock striations. - Go up 931 on the other side of the lake to meet up with highway 1 again just north of Egilsstaðir. Continue on 1 to the [Rjúkandi](https://hiticeland.com/places%5Fand%5Fphotos%5Ffrom%5Ficeland/rj%C3%BAkandi-waterfall-in-j%C3%B6kudalur?ref=kevinmeyer.com) falls, which are just a short easy walk off the highway. - Continue on highway 1 to the [Dettifoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/dettifoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com) waterfall. There are two roads off of highway 1 to get there. Highway 864 comes first to access the east side, and highway 862 is a bit further down 1 to access the west side. The west side road is all paved, has better parking (with snack shop and restrooms), and also better views. Take that one. There are short improved trails to various viewpoints for both the very large Dettifoss and also the nearby [Selfoss](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/selfoss-waterfall?ref=kevinmeyer.com) falls. Dettifoss is one of the most powerful falls in Europe and impressive to see. - Backtrack to highway 1 and continue toward Mývatn. A few kilometers down the road you'll come up on the turnoff on the left for the [Mývatn Nature Baths](https://myvatnnaturebaths.is/?lang=en&ref=kevinmeyer.com). These were one of the top three hot pools we went to, so highly recommended. Plan on spending a couple hours. - From the baths continue on highway 1 to Mývatn. There are several lava formations and craters in the area if you'd like to stop, but we had read mixed reviews so we just continued on to the hotel. - Possible side trip (not on our route map) is to go up to the coastal town of [Húsavík](http://www.visithusavik.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) about 45 minutes north, but we didn't due to time constraints. You could also take drive around the lake, about 30-45 minutes. **Hotel**: [Fosshotel Mývatn](https://www.islandshotel.is/hotels-in-iceland/fosshotel-myvatn?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Like the other Fosshotel, this was an upper three star place, modern but pretty busy. We weren't that impressed with the dinner menu so we drove around to the other side of the lake to the [Hotel Laxá](https://www.hotellaxa.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) which had an excellent restaurant with some unique dishes. This was also my second choice of a hotel, and you might consider staying there instead of the Fosshotel. ### Day 9: Mývatn to Laugarbakki... and then to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula Well here's where the "nearly perfect" comes into play. We drove from Mývatn and left the highway 1 Ring Road to go up north a bit to [Siglufjörður](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/siglufjordur?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on the [Tröllaskagi Peninsula](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/trollaskagi?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The weather turned very foggy and before we knew it we saw snow next to us on high mountain passes, then went through tunnels and were all of a sudden back down at the ocean... and back and forth. A pretty crazy drive that took a long time to get to Laugarbakki, which was going to be our stop. When we arrived at the hotel we saw we had made a big mistake, we abandoned the hotel (and payment!), had ended up driving another 2.5 hours to the [Snæfellsnes Peninsula](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/snaefellsnes?ref=kevinmeyer.com) which was going to be drive for the next day. This made for a very long drive. But it was worth it as there was really not much to see during those 2.5 hours, so we ended up with much more time to spend on the dramatic Snæfellsnes Peninsula. So what would I recommend? That's a tough question. This became a very long drive, but there's also not much available between Mývatn and the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. Having the full day on the Peninsula the next day was definitely a bonus. I think if I did it again I would do the long drive, and schedule two nights at the Hotel Budir. **Route** (602 km, 7.5 hours drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-myvatn-to-snaefellsnes-768x411.png) - Take highway 1 west through Akureyi, the second largest city in Iceland. It's worth a quick drive around, but we didn't stop. On the way you'll pass through a long tunnel. - Just past Akureyi turn right on highway 82, which later becomes highway 76\. After some mountain passes and tunnels you will arrive in the small fishing village of [Siglufjörður](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/siglufjordur?ref=kevinmeyer.com). We had some great pizza at [Kaffi Rauðka](https://raudka.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on the harbor. - Continue out of town and you'll go through some more tunnels and mountain passes. Note that some of these tunnels are one way, and if you're on the non right of way side you'll have to keep an eye out for oncoming traffic and plan being by one the of the turnoffs every 500m or so to allow them to pass. Once we did confront an oncoming truck and had to back up to the previous turnoff! The tunnels can be long - 5 or 6 kilometers - so a bit distressing if you're not a fan of being deep under a mountain in a narrow tunnel! - Rejoin highway 1, Ring Road, turning right to go toward Laugarbakki. If you're braving the stay at the hotel we had originally planned, good luck! Otherwise settle in for a long drive across farmland and lava fields to Borgones, where you'll turn right to head up highway 54 to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. - As you approach the Peninsula the scenery becomes beautiful, with tall jagged volcanic peaks close to the ocean that reminded us of Hawaii. - At Budir, where we'll stay the next night, continue left onto highway 574. **Planned Hotel**: [Hotel Laugarbakki](https://www.hotellaugarbakki.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). TripAdvisor and Expedia reviews failed us. Our experience was dramatically different, as the room was like a prison cell, the building a barely-refurbished school (with old play equipment still in the front), and the room and lobby were very dirty. So we just left and drove to our next stop. **Actual Hotel**: [Arnarstapi Hotel](https://arnarstapicenter.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The Hotel Budir (below) was not available for the earlier night, but this one was and was also my second choice for this next night's stop anyway. It's a complex of hotel, camping, and cottages. The rooms are very nice, many with ocean views. The restaurant is a bit of a mad house as there are campers and many tourists also there, but the food was ok. It's on a beautiful spot near the west end of the peninsula, so convenient to start exploring. ### Day 10: Snæfellsnes Peninsula Thanks to driving far more than expected the previous day, we had the entire day today on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, which turned out to be a very good thing. **Route** (158 km, 2.5 hours drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-snaefellsnes-768x325.png) - Continue on highway 574 clockwise around the peninsula and take a short gravel side road to Skarðsvík Beach, one of the few yellow sand beaches in Iceland. Continue on the gravel road to the Svörtuloftaviti a.k.a. Skálasnagaviti lighthouse. - Stop at the Laugarbrekka monument to [Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir](https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/regina/the-historical-laugarbrekka-on-the-snaefellsnes-peninsula?ref=kevinmeyer.com), the birthplace of the woman who gave birth to the first European in North American around 1000 AD. - Stop at the [Ingjaldshóll](https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/regina/the-historical-ingjaldsholl-on-the-snaefellsnes-peninsula-in-west-iceland?ref=kevinmeyer.com) church, which is the oldest concrete church in the world. It is also where Christopher Columbus spent a winter around 1477, supposedly to learn more about the Icelandic sagas that tell stories about viking exploration of North America. - Just past the church is a short hike to a waterfall. - You will pass some nice small seaside villages where you can have a quick lunch, then meet up with highway 54\. Continue straight on 54 instead of turning right, which will take you across the peninsula. - Stop at the [Kirkjufell](https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-iceland/drive/kirkjufell?ref=kevinmeyer.com) mountain and waterfall for one Iceland's most photographed spots. It was a bit cloudy when we were there so we couldn't see the top of the mountain, but it's just a short walk to the falls and the preferred photo location with the mountain in the background. - Continue around the east side of the peninsula on highway 54\. Just before the turnoff to 574 there will be the [Bjarnarfoss](https://hiticeland.com/places%5Fand%5Fphotos%5Ffrom%5Ficeland/bjarnarfoss?ref=kevinmeyer.com) waterfall, which is worth a stop and short hike. **Hotel**: [Hotel Budir](https://hotelbudir.is/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in Budir. This was one of our top three favorite hotels in Iceland. Beautiful hotel, clean and updated rooms, and by far the best hotel dinner we had on the entire trip. The lobby has an incredible ocean view for an afternoon glass of wine. There's a beautiful old church next to the hotel, as well as some short hiking trails. If we did this again we'd spend two nights here. ### Day 11: Budir to Blue Lagoon Every visit to Iceland should include a soak in the famous Blue Lagoon. You can buy a day pass and soak in the very large pools, but if you have the means it is well worth a stay at The Retreat. This hotel is right on the lagoon, with a large spa and private soaking pool areas. There is a 3 star hotel, the Northern Light Inn, a couple kilometers away. More on that below. We considered visiting the erupting Fagradalsfjall (also known as Geldingadalsgos) volcano, which is just a few kilometers from the Blue Lagoon. After talking with several people, it seemed like at the time we were there the eruption had dwindled a bit, and it would be a two hour hike for a minimal view. Comparing that to more time to soak in the Blue Lagoon made for an easy decision to skip it! **Route** (232 km, 3 hours drive time): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/iceland-route-snaefellsnes-to-blue-lagoon-768x884.png) - Take highway 54 to highway 1 toward Reykjavik. - We got off on highway 51 to drive around the Akranes peninsula, and had lunch at a small cafe in Akranes. - Continue around on highway 51 back to 1, then down through Reykjavik, stopping if you want to see some more of the city. - Connect to highway 41 to the airport, then turn left on highway 43 and follow the signs to the Blue Lagoon. The entrance to The Retreat hotel is on the right side of the public parking lot. **Hotel**: [The Retreat Hotel at the Blue Lagoon](https://www.bluelagoon.com/accommodation/retreat-hotel?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This is by far the best hotel we stayed at in terms of facility and service. The rooms are all suites and very high end, with incredible views, beds (real kings!), and bathrooms. The spa is huge with multiple private pool areas, saunas, massage treatment rooms, and common areas where you can try various scrubs and masks without appointments. You can even get a massage while floating in a private lagoon pool! There are a lot of celebrities (we actually shared a group salt/lava/algae treatment with a reality TV celebrity!) so privacy is enforced - like strictly no cell phones and cameras in the spa and pool areas. The one, very disappointing, downside: a very limited menu at the hotel Lava Restaurant. In fact, we were so disappointed that we left the table and drove to the nearby Max's Restaurant at the three star Northern Light Inn, which had a far better vegetarian menu. Yes, we made sure we told The Retreat about that. ### Day 12: Depart Iceland We had a 5pm flight back to the United States. The Retreat hotel was nice enough to give us a 2pm checkout, so that allowed for more soaks in the Blue Lagoon pools and fun in the spa. It takes less than 30 minutes to drive to the airport from the Blue Lagoon, and there are several gas stations along the way for filling up the rental car. Returning the rental car and checking in was easy. After moving to new hotels every night, relaxing the final 24 hours was definitely the way to end this vacation! ### Reconstructing Degraded Processes and a Yearning for Darkness URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reconstructing-degraded-processes-and-a-yearning-for-darkness/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:45:36.000Z Yesterday I returned from almost two weeks in Iceland, which was tacked on to two weeks exploring Maine. Nearly a month away from the home and office, and our first international trip in well over a year. We had a fantastic time with great weather, experiences, and food. Too much food. Travel takes me out of my comfort zone, exposes and challenges biases and perceptions, and I always return recentered, reinvigorated, and filled with new ideas. ### Degrading Processes I used to travel a lot, both domestically and internationally, and like many road warriors I had developed habits and processes that let me confidentially pack for a week away in about five minutes. I knew exactly what cords and power supplies I needed in the exact right places of my backpack, how to time the ride to the airport and connections, how much clothes to pack, and so forth. Or so I thought. A year without a significant trip created a year without my old habits and processes being reinforced. Multiple times over the two weeks prior to departing I remembered something I had forgotten to check or pack. This hurt my confidence, triggering my travel OCD, which led to overcorrecting and overcompensating. Yes, a written checklist, or standard work, would have helped. Before I knew it we had two large bags to check instead of being able to travel with a couple medium carry-ons - which in the past had been enough for even a month in Africa. The bags were filled with extra “just-in-case” clothes, cords, and incidentals. After the two weeks in Maine we realized we had overpacked, and we mailed a box of unnecessary gear back home. After the nearly two weeks in Iceland, even after mailing the box home from Maine, we still had one bag that had remained unopened, taking up space in the back of the rental car. What we had needed and used in both Maine and Iceland could have fit into two medium carry-ons. Just like before. ### Rebuilding Processes Reinforcing old processes is not the true ideal situation. Over the past month I’ve also realized that some aspects of travel had changed in response to both COVID and general systems and infrastructure modernization. My needs as a traveler had also evolved, generally toward being more simple and minimalist. I discovered new combo cords, was impressed with the prevalence of touchless payment methods like Apple Pay (accepted for even the smallest transaction in Iceland - I never changed or used cash!), and multipurpose convertible jackets and hiking pants are just a few examples. I also discovered that lightweight trail running shoes are fantastic for both walking around a city and fairly difficult hiking, and am now a big fan of my Hoka Stinsons, which survived hikes on glaciers and volcanos. Instead of lugging my laptop around in order to stay in contact with the office, I just took my iPad. With just one or two minor exceptions, it worked out just fine. Extra shoes, travel wallets, and so forth were not needed. Also not needed was the power brick for the laptop I didn't bring, which somehow ended up in one of our bags. Processes need to be reinforced in order to survive. They also need to be challenged to ensure they remain effective and relevant for the desired goal. Next time, when I know I haven’t used a process in a long time, I’ll try to *intentionally* reflect on whether it is still appropriate for what I’m trying to achieve. Critical processes should be documented into standard work and reviewed regularly - if not continually. Especially when you get to be my age... ### The Power of Darkness A final note on something at best tangentially relevant: We were in Iceland over the summer solstice, when it never really got dark. The sun would barely slip below the horizon from about midnight to 2am or so, but it was still like a bright dusk. We got used to it fairly quickly, but I soon realized that I missed real darkness. When it’s dark, distracting sensory inputs are reduced and therefore situational awareness is decreased - but that creates space for the analysis of what remains to increase. This creates a great environment for reflection, analysis, and understanding. With near constant daylight I found my ability to effectively reflect, which is one way I relax, was reduced. I’m looking forward to seeing stars again. ### On Learning, Listening, and Wisdom URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/on-learning-listening-and-wisdom/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:46:02.000Z I've long felt that the single best indicator of leadership success, especially at the executive level, is whether the person is a voracious learner. Bonus points if the person *intentionally* looks for opportunities to learn new knowledge outside of her or his traditional interests, and even more if the person can efficiently distill the new knowledge into concise experiments and then teach (not edict!) the organization on it. I haven't met a person yet with that trifecta that has not succeeded in both career and life. We've used several methods to get a feel for if and how a candidate likes to learn. One was to ask them to deliver a presentation on a subject of personal interest, where we learned about topics ranging from candle-making to beekeeping. There are downsides to this depending on other requirements for the position, which we're sensitive to and try to accommodate, but it has generally worked. ### How Do You Learn? Marc Zao-Sanders penned a piece for the Harvard Business Review this week that aligns with learning being an indicator of success. In [*Identify and Hire Lifelong Learners*](https://hbr.org/2021/05/identify-and-hire-lifelong-learners?ref=kevinmeyer.com) he posits that a single question can open a conversation that helps understand how the person views learning: > *How do you learn?* The answer will show whether learning is an important, and intentional, part of their lives - and how they go about doing it. > *This is not about simplistic learning preferences (such as schedules and modalities) or* [*broadly discredited*](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) *learning styles (such as being a visual or aural learner). This is about an individual’s personal system for updating, improving, and sharing her knowledge and skills. Does the job candidate you’re considering have such a system? And, for that matter, do you?* ### Hiring and Development This question can be used as part of the hiring process to gauge curiousity, intentionality, and method. Care should be taken to be inclusive in terms of learning opportunities, styles, and methods - all can be relevant and valuable. As a candidate, the question can be used in reverse to understand how supportive the organization is of learning, and how it is valued. The question can also be used as part of the development process (preferably not the traditional annual review, with all its inherent problems). How does the person discover gaps and opportunities in knowledge, and attempt to close them? And, in reverse, how does the organization support and value that activity? ### Applying Wisdom We traditionally conflate knowledge and wisdom, but as David Brooks describes in [*Wisdom Isn't What You Think It Is*](https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/04/17/david-brooks-wisdom-isnt/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) last week, wisdom is more how knowledge is understood and used. > *Wisdom is different from knowledge. Montaigne pointed out you can be knowledgeable with another person’s knowledge, but you can’t be wise with another person’s wisdom. Wisdom has an embodied moral element; out of your own moments of suffering comes a compassionate regard for the frailty of others.* Wisdom requires listening to the knowledge, and the context of that knowledge, of others. > *Wise people don’t tell us what to do, they start by witnessing our story. They take the anecdotes, rationalizations and episodes we tell, and see us in a noble struggle. They see our narratives both from the inside, as we experience them, and from the outside, as we can’t. They see the ways we’re navigating the dialectics of life — intimacy versus independence, control versus uncertainty — and understand that our current self is just where we are right now, part of a long continuum of growth.* > *People only change after they’ve felt understood. The really good confidants — the people we go to for wisdom — are more like story editors than sages. They take in your story, accept it, but prod you to reconsider it so you can change your relationship to your past and future. They ask you to clarify what it is you really want, or what baggage you left out of your clean tale. They ask you to probe for the deep problem that underlies the convenient surface problem you’ve come to them with.* This is an interesting angle for lean leaders, consultants, and coaches: listen first to understand, then challenge to find new pathways where other knowledge - and perhaps tools - can be applied. Don't simply convey knowledge or edict action. In effect, by applying wisdom in this manner, you are creating new knowledge - again. Perhaps my criteria for executive success should be extended to be "*if the person is a voracious learner, can distill the new knowledge into concise experiments, can teach the new knowledge... and has the wisdom to then help the organization generate more new knowledge.*" How do you learn? What do you do with the new knowledge? ### Uncovering New Perspectives URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uncovering-new-perspectives/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:47:03.000Z We often talk about the importance of getting "out of the box" to supposedly free ourselves of bias and be better at making informed decisions and capitalize on new opportunities. In reality, we often just barely ease ourselves out of the box and happily exist in the shadow cast by that box. There's comfort and familiarity in our bias, perspective, and past experience - especially when they are reinforced by those around us. Over the past several years I've worked to understand and confront my comfortable perspectives, and in many cases I've changed - even radically - both personally and professionally. [Research](https://www.businessinsider.com/personality-traits-open-minded-benefits-2019-10?ref=kevinmeyer.com) has shown that being more openminded to other perspectives leads to many positive effects, including health and creativity. > *A psychological study conducted by researchers Anna Antinori, Olivia L. Carter, and Luke D. Smillie revealed that open-minded people may live in a completely different reality. They found that openness and mood can affect how you visually perceive the world, which can affect creativity. Research shows that your personality traits (patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving) not only change your outlook on life but also change the way you perceive reality at work, and how you relate with family, friends, and romantic partners.* ### Language Shapes Thinking Language has a major impact on how we see the world. Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky presented a [TED Talk on how language shapes how we think](https://www.ted.com/talks/lera%5Fboroditsky%5Fhow%5Flanguage%5Fshapes%5Fthe%5Fway%5Fwe%5Fthink?ref=kevinmeyer.com), which included several interesting examples. - At 2:30 she gives the example of an aboriginal tribe that doesn't use terms like "left" and "right" but instead describes everything with cardinal directions. You have a pain in your "southwest foot" for example, which obviously changes as you move and converse with others. As part of "hello" when greeting, they also say "I'm heading south-southeast." So we like to think that some animals have "magnetic sensors" that tell them direction - or are they just thinking (and therefore sensitive to) a different perspective on orientation? Another facet is that to this tribe, time is relative to the landscape, not to the person. - At 7:50 she describes how many languages have gender tied to every noun, and the impact of different genderized nouns changes how speakers of that language think. For example, the word "bridge" is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish. If asked to describe bridges, German-speakers typically use terms like "beautiful" and "elegant" while Spanish-speakers use terms such as "strong." Other examples include how some languages don't have names for each number, categorize colors differently, and how the object of a sentence is different therefore "who is to blame" can be different. What are you understanding when you're reading? What are you conveying when writing? Language has impact on perspectives. ### Information Bias and Depth One impact of the Information Age has been the advent of multiple news sources. Typically those news outlets have two objectives: report the news and grow their audience to become financially sustainable. Those objectives inherently create bias and therefore confirmation bubbles as they begin to "report" on news that helps grow their specific audiences. An interesting website, [All Sides](https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news?ref=kevinmeyer.com), takes a stab at presenting the news from multiple biased sources, side by side, in an attempt to give the reader a full spectrum. It also categorizes over 800 [news sources by their bias](https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings?ref=kevinmeyer.com). I've long been a fan of both AP and BBC (especially as US-based sources provide less global news), but an alternative might be something like All Sides. Information depth is arguably even more important than bias, as with depth data and analysis could counteract bias. I used to be a fan of The Wall Street Journal. The news articles (unlike the Opinion section) were and, according to All Sides, remains right in the center, fairly unbiased. But over the past few years I've noticed that the articles, information, and especially the analysis conveyed have become significantly more shallow. A year ago I switched from The Wall Street Journal to the [Financial Times](https://www.ft.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) as my primary source of business news. Although both are rated as unbiased, I've found FT articles to be far deeper, more analytical and nuanced, and more international in scope. An example is this article (open, non-paywalled) on [excess deaths from COVID](https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The data is deep, the analysis thorough, graphics are meaningful, underlying data sources identified, and there's even discussion on the problems with the data and analysis. Nothing in the WSJ comes anywhere close. The point is that depth of information and analysis creates better understanding, which leads to better and more accurate perspectives. There may be a lot of fluff in most business books, but there are also important contextual nuggets that are missed by the short book summary services. Don't get me started on Twitter... ### Experiences - the Gemba of Information We've all had experiences that shape how we perceive various aspects of life and the information that surrounds them. Experiences are what converts information into actionable reality - which is why at Gemba Academy we tell our customers that watching a video isn't learning, taking a quiz isn't even real learning, but demonstrating that new knowledge through applying it to a real project can be (but not always!). We go to the gemba to experience and understand what is really happening. In our professional realms we learn from working with our customers and seeing our products and services through their eyes. We learn from working alongside more experienced colleagues, networking with industry experts, and seeing new concepts in action. Those interactions and that reality changes how we understand and perceive what was just information. On the personal side, living overseas and travel to many countries has changed my perspective on many topics, and helped me understand how others can perceive the same information or even experiences very differently. I've also learned a lot by dealing with close family and friends with mental illness. Knowing them, talking with them, and supporting them for many years has changed my perception and opinion from "buck up" (I'm ashamed I ever thought that way...) to being compassionate and understanding, to now being in awe of how they see the world completely differently than I do - sometimes even better or more realistic. It's made me aware of the severe flaws in our healthcare system, the damage of stigma, and the incredible opportunity to society when it's addressed effectively. Similarly, I have a now-adult niece with severe learning disabilities. Over the last couple decades I've watched my in-laws advocate and support her, and the toll it took on them. My sister in-law has a great [podcast that tries to help other special needs parents](https://www.larakitts.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) navigate those unique challenges while dealing with their own grief. It takes a conscious effort, but working to expand perspectives and understanding has many benefits, professionally and personally. Consider the language and information content of others. Strive to remove bias and add depth. Seek out new experiences to improve understanding. ### Neuroscience Reframes Aging URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/neuroscience-reframes-aging/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:47:37.000Z Exactly a year ago my wife and I were in Hawaii and I was trading emails back and forth with a few colleagues speculating on the impact of the virus on our businesses, conferences, and lives. We returned to California the day before the state locked down. Now, a year later, my wife has been vaccinated for a couple months, I have my vaccine appointment next week, and we had dinner - inside (at widely-spaced tables) - at our [favorite seafood restaurant](https://galleymorrobay.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) last night. During the past year we've all made adjustments and reframed major parts of our lives. Our passion for international travel was satisfied by a few long road trips through the southwest United States, where we realized that there was amazing beauty in places we had previously just flown over. We cooked more at home, leading to discoveries of unknown talents - and also lack thereof. Working out changed from the 5am group crossfit to taking up and becoming rather proficient at the crazy addicting game of [pickleball](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyZ5bcJvZRs&ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- which we now play with a growing group of over 20 for two or three hours every afternoon. Tennis now seems painfully slow, lumbering, and boring in comparison. We've all changed how we work, but I also took a hard look at my work hours and now find I'm crazy focused and productive if I work from when I wake up at 4:30 or 5am, to about 9:30am - six or even seven days a week. The rest of the day is for other projects, or playing if I feel caught up. In addition to a lot more reading, I've been doing quite a bit of reflecting on what's important to me - and what should change as I approach my seventh decade (!). That was part of the process behind modifying my work hours. I recently finished one of the best books I've read in a long time, Daniel Levitin's [*Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives*](https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Aging-Neuroscientist-Explores-Potential/dp/1524744204/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). As with his previous bestselling books on psychology and the scientific method, this one is filled with science and statistics, but presented in a very readable and actionable format. Daniel Pink says it "*Debunks the idea that aging inevitably brings infirmity and unhappiness and instead offers a trove of practical, evidence-based guidance for living longer and better.*" I especially like how the author takes the time to refute ideas and claims from pop "science," misinterpretation, and even conspiracy theories. If you've read his other book, [*A Field Guide to Lies*](https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Lies-Statistics-Scientific/dp/0593182510/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), you'll recognize the joy he takes in doing this. ### The Evolving Brain The first part of the book is dedicated to diving deep into the function of the brain and how it develops from birth through old age. As one important point, Levitin considers aging as just another developmental stage, not as decline. That's because he also takes the time to refute some common misconceptions about what happens as we age, such as assumed memory loss. As he puts it, the idea that we lose memory is really just due to how we think of the occasional loss for words, names, or events. If we're young we chalk it up to a few too many beers the night before or a lack of sleep. When we're older we immediately jump to the conclusion it's age or dementia. In reality it's the same with the exception that processing time does take longer - 1/25th of a second per year - as we age. Some aspects of memory actually improve as we age, even past 70, such as the ability to make decisions based on pattern recognition. As Levitin mentions in one of his interviews, if he was going to have an x-ray analyzed, he'd look for the oldest radiologist he could find. We see a version of this when we think of older people as more wise, and now there are scientific studies that prove it. Obviously this is in aggregate, and individuals vary due to genetics, environment, disease, and... upbringing. You see, there are direct scientifically-provable correlations between how you are raised as a toddler and how your brain will perform in old age. One example he gives is with cuddling and being physically nurtured at a very young age leads to changes in the glucocorticoid receptors in the hippocampus, which affects stress response and the immune system into old age. This particular example has been shown to be consistent across many mammals. Levitin cites studies that show that the single most important determinant of lifetime happiness, especially in later years, is personality. Personality results from environment and situations, but also neurochemistry. Specifically, the two critical personality traits are conscientiousness, such as taking care of yourself by going to the doctor, and being open to new ideas and experiences. CQ, or curiosity quotient, can thought of as a better predictor of life success than IQ and even EQ - depending on how you define success. The good news is that studies have shown that Sigmund Freud and William James are wrong, and personality can be changed even late in life. ### Choices Have Consequences The second part of the book looks at how we live our lives affects the brain and thereby how we age. Specifically, he talks about diet (and fad diets), sleep, and exercise. Diet is fairly simple - eat in moderation, stay hydrated (thirst detectors lose effectiveness as we age), and eat your vegetables. Fatty fish and B12 promote neural health, fat helps nerves. With the exception of certain caloric restriction diets such as intermittent fasting, most popular diet plans are not backed up by rigorous studies. Sleep is also important - though sometimes difficult to achieve. 99% of people need at least seven hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation correlates to hypertension, Alzheimer's, diabetes, anxiety, and stress. With our society often focused on productivity, turning sleep into a negative, Levitin suggests reframing sleep as an important restorative process. Exercise has some interesting angles aside from the expected effect of keeping muscles tones and joints limber. Letivin recommends hiking on trails outside, instead of sidewalks or especially being inside. The unfamiliar, unexpected, random terrain of trails causes your brain and body to work together to ensure balance and pace, and there are many other stimuli to the senses outdoors - birds chirping, the sight of clouds and waves, the smells of flowers blooming. All of this activates the hippocampus to stimulate the immune system, and the reinforced neuro pathways improve creative cognitive ability. This has been proven via several studies cited by the author. Some doctors are even formally prescribing wandering through fields and birdwatching as hobbies. ### The Glory Years In the final part of the book Levitin takes a look at, and often debunks, the strategies many are using to improve the aging process. He examines the human life span and several species that would be nearly immortal if not for predators. He describes the statistical flaws in detail of the popular "blue zones" - locations in Costa Rica, Italy, Greece, Japan, and even California where people have abnormally long lifespans. At the same time he is optimistic about the potential of telomere (the end segments of chromosomes) lengthening, where once again the there is a correlation between personality, stress, and telomere length - and telomere length is correlated to lifespan. Another popular cognitive enhancing tool that he debunks is those popular "brain games," such as puzzle apps and so forth. He describes a meta analysis of 132 papers cited by the brain-training companies and he describes it as "reading like an indictment from a federal prosecutor." He also takes aim at the overuse of stimulants like Adderal, Ritaline, and Nicotine, but is impressed with the data on memory enhancement medications like Rivastigmine and Memantine, especially when used together. Levitin believes psychedelic drugs, in particular psilocybin (magic mushrooms), have a lot of potential when used as part of a microdosing (5-10% of a regular dose) regimen. There are multiple reputable scientific studies showing enhancement of creativity, reduction of anxiety and depression, and release of fear - while having no addictive or other long term effects. Several clinical studies are underway at [top tier research hospitals](https://maps.org/other-psychedelic-research/211-psilocybin-research/psilocybin-studies-in-progress/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) such as Johns Hopkins. Perhaps the ancient peoples of the world, many of which also celebrated the low dose use of such substances, were on to something. He ends the book by putting it all together: be more conscientious about taking care of yourself and others, create nurturing parental attachment with the young, exercise in varied, natural environments, and create opportunities for in-person social interaction. Be curious, always exploring and learning. ### Humble Questions Before Setting Direction URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/humble-questions-before-setting-direction/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:48:11.000Z I've long been a fan of Ed Schein, and his book [*Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling*](https://www.amazon.com/Humble-Inquiry-Gentle-Instead-Telling/dp/1609949811/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) is one of my favorite leadership books. I wrote about Schein [several years ago](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2015/11/13/a-reflective-perspective-on-schein/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and a colleague recently pointed me to a [recent interview](https://www.egonzehnder.com/insight/in-conversation-with-ed-schein?ref=kevinmeyer.com) where he discusses the ramifications of humility on leadership and strategy. He begins by contrasting traditional and humble leadership. > *So many CEOs don't know how to ask their people what to do. They think they have to own it all. They have to be the big-shot hero, and the world expects them to be. In contrast, there are humble leaders who are appointed to fix or improve things, who take on that responsibility but are very smart about how dependent they really are on many other structures and people and processes. Being responsible does not mean for them that they have to do it alone, and they realize that they cannot implement the new and better things without the involvement of others.* We like to think the role of a leader is to set a direction, but before direction is set a leader needs to ask questions and develop a process. > *We have to have a lot of talk before the sense of direction emerges. Maybe the direction he needs to set is to create a safety program, or maybe it’s to create a new career program. But that will only come from figuring out, first of all: Who is he and what does he need to do as a manager? And then, what might be a better way to do it? Then he becomes more leaderly. But he has to figure it out in terms of the here and now: What's wrong? What's worrying him? What is the competition doing? It's very down-to-the-ground stuff, and he won't know all the answers. He’s going to have to ask a lot of people before he even knows what he should be doing differently.* ### Moving Beyond Transactional Leadership Ed Schein then goes deeper into discussing the importance of getting to know each other on a more personal level so that we help create a culture and environment where asking questions can be meaningful. > *One of the problems of the managerial culture is that it is built on a transactional concept of how people should relate to each other. You have your role, I have my role. And we maintain a lot of distance because, if we get too close, I'll be giving you favors and it’ll be too uncomfortable. Let's stay in our boxes and in our roles. But when we look at Gary Kaplan and Lee Kuan Yew and these other people, it’s clear that you can't get the job done that way. We have to get to know each other. We have to find out in a much more intimate way how we each work, because the job requires tight collaboration.* To move beyond a transactional relationship Schein says we need to "personize" - not "personalize" - the interaction. Get to know and understand what is important to each person, which is more than just getting to know them. Ask questions to get to know the individual, their wants and needs from a personal and organizational context, which can then lead to questions about the role the organization and leadership can play to create improvement. Trust and understanding creates a quality relationship. ### The Problem with Purpose Schein has a major problem with the concept of purpose. > *The word and concept of “purpose” comes out of psychology. I have learned that most of what comes out of psychology is kind of useless in this human arena. I'm a psychologist, so I'm entitled to say that. But the psychologists have never learned that everything that goes on inside motivation, purpose, and so on is based on a culture, a group, a tribe—and has been socialized into its members. And the tribal rules are what matters.* > *It's a useful concept for me to know my purpose, for you to know your purpose. Is it useful as a leader should have purpose? Meaningless statement, unless you define what leadership is and what particular purpose you're talking about. So let's drop all the psychological stuff and focus more on culture, ethnography, tribes, groups, how things really work. That's where it's really at.* He then focuses the rest of the interview on how consultants and advisors should use a similar form of questioning to help leaders understand their problems before setting direction, instead of simply providing a proposed solution. Get to know your team members, create a safe environment for questions and conversations, and then set direction. Create and support a process and culture for those questions. ### Norman Bodek and Respect for People URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/norman-bodek-and-respect-for-people/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:48:36.000Z Yesterday I learned of the passing of Norman Bodek and I have been reflecting on the impact this great man had on my life and career - and the lean and business world in general. A quarter century ago I was a new operations manager trying to figure out how to improve a large medical device factory. I had been introduced to tools such as 5S, value stream mapping, kaizen, and quick changeover and those tools were helping, but something, some key component, seemed to be missing. I don't remember the name of the conference or the title of Norm's presentation, but I remember the moment as if it was yesterday. I was a few rows back in the packed room and he began to talk about people. He described how the value of people was in their experience, creativity, and shared problem-solving - not in their pair of hands, yet traditional accounting methods determined cost and value in the exact opposite manner. He emphasized, emotionally and passionately, how respecting this value in people's brains could jumpstart and expand the potential of improvement. As he detailed, the concept of respect includes recognizing that value, providing compassion and empathy, but also being forceful in encouraging people to grow through new knowledge and especially learning from failure. He explained how "respect for people" is one of, if not the, most critical attribute of lean yet it is often forgotten in deference to just using the tools. Without growing and supporting people, tools will eventually fail and improvements will not be sustained. The realization of the potential power of people forever changed how I approach operations management, leadership, and even my personal life. I went back to my operation - now thinking of it as "our" operation - and began listening, learning, and teaching. I focused more on helping people improve both themselves and the operation than on the traditional metrics I was obligated to report on. Each crisis and each failure became an opportunity to analyze, to learn new knowledge, to generate new ideas and experiments, and thereby to improve. Our staff began to spend far more time on the factory floor, and we began to have regular midnight staff meetings so we could respect and listen to the brains that operated the overnight shifts of the 24/7 operation. Improvement accelerated, and the metrics, both traditional quality and throughput as well as our new ones measuring ideas and experiments, recorded those positive changes. Norm's wisdom influences how I see people in my personal life - including myself. How can I help people that may be less fortunate? What can I learn from people, especially when we have differences? How can I make the world a better place for everyone? That desire to give back became a big reason why I joined Ron and Jon in starting Gemba Academy. Thousands of people have met Norman Bodek, heard him speak, read one of the 100 books he published that helped make lean knowledge available, or joined him on 90 study visits to Japan. I'm sure most if not all of them have been similarly influenced and have therefore changed how they view and respect people. What a powerful legacy and valuable gift to the world. Rest in peace, Norman Bodek. ### Time to Stop URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time-to-stop/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:49:09.000Z As we approach the arbitrary end of the year, many organizations are beginning the planning cycle for next year. Part of that process should be identifying what projects and activities should be stopped, for several reasons - performance, alignment with strategy, and so forth. However, equally if not more important is creating a process (and supporting culture!) that encourages stopping at any time. Darrel Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez discussed the opportunity of stopping faster in a [recent article in Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2020/09/start-stopping-faster?ref=kevinmeyer.com). > *We are terrible at stopping work, even when it’s obvious that the work is a complete waste of time and money.* We've all been in those meetings where we discuss projects that are delayed but someone, often for purely political reasons, still sees a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Or we see wasteful activities and requirements that don't seem aligned with strategy or creating customer value. How many reports continue to be created every month simply because they've always been made, how many extra reviews of a product design, how many extra quality checks? It happens everywhere. The downside of not stopping is huge. In addition to consuming and wasting resources, fear of not being able to stop can dampen innovation itself - we become afraid of starting. The authors describe three ways to improve the ability to stop. There are some interesting ties with lean methods, and I'll add one more way that has been very valuable to me in the past. ## Make Decisions Reversible When we propose new projects we usually just discuss the benefits and ROI, which then leads to funding. Status meetings evaluate project performance, but always with just the end ROI in mind. There is often an analysis of project risk and sometimes ROI is discounted by this risk, but rarely are specific go/no-go milestones included - especially ones where the failure to meet a milestone is seen as a positive. The authors describe one possibility: > *Recognize business plans for what they really are: business experiments. Break large, risky gambles into a series of smaller, smarter tests. Clarify the hypotheses, the best ways to test them, and the metrics that will signal whether to persist, pivot, or pause.* That will sound very familiar to those of us in the lean world - it's a version of [Toyota kata](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/toyota-kata?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Iterate through a series of experiments from a current state to an end state, learning and adjusting along the way. ## Make Work More Visible Physical waste and problems are often very visible - if you [go to the Gemba](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/lean-daily-management/gemba-walk-essentials?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and have learned what to look for. Knowledge work and back office business processes are a different story. > *Increasing visibility is good for everyone. It helps senior executives uncover valuable initiatives, recognize the people pushing them, and accelerate their progress. It allows employees to see projects related to their own jobs, learn from them, and identify where their expertise could solve perplexing problems or save time and money. It makes it easier for everyone to identify duplicative work and triggers discussions about whether overlapping teams should collaborate or compete. It helps teams working on interdependent steps coordinate and minimize delays.* Once again, the lean concepts of [visual management](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/lean-daily-management/workplace-visualization?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and [obeya](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/lean-daily-management/obeya-essentials?ref=kevinmeyer.com) can play a role. What key metrics describe the performance of the activity, process, or project? What is acceptable, and what happens when the metric is not acceptable? Where are those metrics posted, when and how are they reviewed at multiple levels? ## Overpower Fear Many organizations and leaders are beginning to talk about failure in more positive light. Failure, done right, is a learning opportunity that can lead to future innovation and success. In the kata process, failure with a small experiment helps improve the effectiveness of future experiments. But we need to do more than just talk about failure in a positive manner. Culture, incentives, and leadership need to be aligned, and that can be very difficult. Are you comfortable giving more projects to someone that has failed in a visible and appropriate manner? There is additional upside to doing that: > *Finally, giving people more opportunities if their current project fails reduces the likelihood that they’ll stick with a bad idea longer than they should. Successful companies build a strong and visible backlog of compelling opportunities. They make it clear that until existing projects that aren’t panning out have stopped, new initiatives can’t be launched.* This aligns with the core lean concept of respect for people. Lean leaders help people in the organization learn and develop new skills, which can come about through appropriate failure. They reinforce the potential of ongoing experimentation to create improvement. To the three activities described by the authors, I'll add a forth that has been very powerful for me at multiple organizations: ## Map to a Clear Hoshin Plan Taking the time to create a clear and defined [hoshin plan](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/hoshin-planning?ref=kevinmeyer.com) can be a valuable tool to identify and stop unnecessary and low performing processes, activities, and projects. Start with your core values and principles, clearly define the current state, define the future state, and then determine what breakthrough objectives are needed to get you there. Create the first projects to achieve those objectives, using kata to experiment, learn, and iterate. That's when the power starts. Now list current activities, processes, and projects. Do they align with the hoshin plan? If they don't, why not? Perhaps they should and the hoshin plan needs tweaking, but most likely it is because they are zombie projects. This is when leaders need to step up and make the hard decision to stop or create alignment, while respecting the people involved. At a previous organization we stopped a scary number of activities and projects that freed up resources that could be better applied to improvement projects that were aligned with a path to a desired future state. This same process can be used when evaluating new activities. As you evaluate current plans and future strategies, take the time to evaluate what is happening now. Don't be afraid to stop, and turn that into a powerful and positive culture change for the organization that can drive future improvement and innovation. ### The Stabilizing Foundation of Values URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-stabilizing-foundation-of-values/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:50:04.000Z We're living through some crazy times and dealing with issues that were not anticipated during planning sessions. Every day we're confronted with new information, new analyses of facts and opinions, creating new decisions that need to be made that can dramatically impact our lives. The organizations, and individuals, that are handling the chaos (or opportunity!) the best are those with a strong foundation of values. ## What are values and why are they important? Values are the fundamental beliefs of an organization or a person. In many cases they are so fundamental that you'll sacrifice sales, or even the organization itself, in order to continue to adhere to them. Values both create and require courage and selflessness. Think of heroes on the battlefield or martyrs for injustice. Values are the guardrails and guideposts that define interaction, strategies, and decisions within and outside for the organization and its people. When I work with organizations to develop hoshin plans or traditional strategic plans, I first spend a lot of time helping them define their principles and values. This becomes a critical input into analyzing the current state, the desired future state, and the plans and experiments that will be run to bridge the gap. A similar initial introspection is used by many psychologists when providing therapy to individuals, or consultants when advising business leaders - perhaps not coincidentally a nearly identical process. ## Real vs. hollow values Values can be real and meaningful, or simply hollow. Real values can be tough, but that's often an indicator of their strength. As [Patrick Lencioni wrote](https://hbr.org/2002/07/make-your-values-mean-something?ref=kevinmeyer.com) back in 2002, > *Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values—and sticking to them—requires real guts. Indeed, an organization considering a values initiative must first come to terms with the fact that, when properly practiced, values inflict pain. They make some employees feel like outcasts. They limit an organization’s strategic and operational freedom and constrain the behavior of its people. They leave executives open to heavy criticism for even minor violations. And they demand constant vigilance.* After Collins and Porras wrote *Built to Last* in 1994, companies rushed to create statements of values, but very few put the work into truly adhering to them. In many cases they simply became art on the wall or paper in a dusty binder. Many companies that we admire have values that guide their actions, but we all know of other companies that may claim positive values that are really hollow - creating, in effect, a negative value. Consider Enron as just one example. Values may start off strong, providing a positive guide for leaders and the organization, but then devolve over time. A key reason for this is when choices are made to infringe or even disregard a value, often in pursuit of what may seem like a worthy end goal - perhaps even one that would actually align with the original values. "The ends justify the means" is almost never an effective strategy. Ryan Nicodemus, one of The Minimalists duo, recently said, "The road to misery is paved with compromised values." When we excuse, or rationalize, a degradation in values, especially character, integrity, and ethics, we may achieve a short term result but we've most likely created more harm than good. Supporting or accepting a degradation of values is also a reflection of our own values, especially in the eyes of others. ## How to use and reinforce values Leaders can demonstrate the importance of values by intentionally and overtly using them to guide decisions and action. Reference them when discussing issues in meetings, ask how a particular path or strategy would align with values, and positively encourage pushback or questions from people at all levels of the organization when they feel values are being infringed upon. It is particularly powerful when decisions are made that negatively impact key metrics but support values. As one example, at a previous company the owners actively promoted a value that we would not produce products for a specific market that could make employees morally uncomfortable. We turned down several lucrative contracts in that space, and although that created lower profits and profit sharing, employees respected the decision. Values should also be reinforced by formally reviewing them periodically. At my previous company, we reviewed the values at the beginning of our quarterly planning sessions, asking ourselves if they were still appropriate and were we still aligned with them. We challenged ourselves to identify areas where we may be infringing on the values, and defined areas where there may be some ambiguity. After this we then launched into the review and planning activities with the strong context of our values fresh in our mind. ## What is an example of good organizational values? One of my favorite examples of organizational values comes from Netflix. Their values have been stable for over a decade and their leaders, including CEO Reed Hastings, demonstrate and reinforce the values every day. The key values of Netflix are the following, and you can read more about how the define each of these values [here](https://jobs.netflix.com/culture?ref=kevinmeyer.com). - Judgment, Communication, Curiosity - Courage, Passion, Selflessness - Innovation, Inclusion, Integrity - Impact I recently came across a photo of the first set of Nike's values. Click on the image for a larger version, and number three might cause some lean folks to raise an eyebrow: "Perfect results count, not a perfect process. Break the rules, fight the law." Maybe it's a realization that a process is never perfect, but the cynic in me believes otherwise. Note that there aren't any "respect for people" values, and although Nike has been very successful, perhaps that says something about why some of the [darker criticisms](https://www.fastcompany.com/40444836/escalating-sweatshop-protests-keep-nike-sweating?ref=kevinmeyer.com) of the company exist. ## Gemba Academy's values Several years ago, soon after we hired our first team member, we set about to develop our own defined set of values. We used several inputs, including our own personal values as well as aspects of lean and continuous improvement, and apparently did a pretty good job as the values have changed very little since then. Our values govern how we interact with our employees, customers, suppliers, competitors, and community. They are reviewed periodically, and are a critical component of the planning, hiring, and onboarding process. Our key values are: - **Respect for people**: fostering independence, a learning environment, transparency, and being open and honest in all of our interactions. One key outcome from this is that we have very few policies, instead asking people in our organization to "use good judgment." We also have no set amount of vacation days or even work hours, but define the expectations of a position and use that to measure performance. - **Leadership**: competence, character, compassion, teaching, and catalyst. Doing the right thing, even when it's not convenient. - **Humility**: being self-aware and respectful, open to better ideas, quiet confidence without arrogance. - **Aptitude to learn**: embracing change and adaptability, valuing curiosity and experimentation even when it leads to failure, asking questions. - **Continuous improvement**: creating value through engaged employees by continually analyzing and improving, being evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Defining our purpose as a value that we provide to our customers. - **Creating value for the customer**: value from the perspective of the customer, high value content, efficient access, and support. Download a short presentation on the [Gemba Academy Culture Code](https://d16noius8a1b6z.cloudfront.net/PDFs/gemba-academy-culture-code-2020-corporate.pdf?ref=kevinmeyer.com) to learn more. What are your values as a leader and as an organization? Do they include a human element, such as "respect for people?" Are you actively using those values to define your actions and strategy? Do you reinforce them within your organization? ### Leveraging the Solitude of Leadership URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leveraging-the-solitude-of-leadership/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:50:58.000Z I've long relished intentional periods of solitude to reflect and renew. I'll often take advantage of the six mile stretch of beach between Morro Bay's \[hopefully\] extinct volcano a couple blocks from my house and the next seaside village of Cayucos. Aside from a handful of surfers there is almost no one on the beach, so it's a wonderful walk up to grab some of the world's best albacore tacos, then a walk back to work them off. I reflect on what is going on in my life, how it differs from the ideal, and what I can do to improve. Solitude is often a core characteristic of leadership. We hear the phrase "it's lonely at the top" and perhaps perceive that as a negative, but it's really a positive. Leveraged correctly, solitude is integral to effective leadership. In 2009, essayist William Deresiewicz delivered a lecture at West Point that dived into the [confluence of solitude and leadership](https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Over the last decade I've shared the text of this lecture with several new leaders who have asked for advice. ## What is... and isn't... leadership? Deresiewicz begins by explaining what leadership is... and isn't... beginning with describing his experience on Yale's admission committee. > *So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.” I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever. And this approach would indeed take them far in life.* > > *That is exactly what places like Yale mean when they talk about training leaders. Educating people who make a big name for themselves in the world, people with impressive titles, people the university can brag about. People who make it to the top. People who can climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to attach themselves to.* > > *But I think there’s something desperately wrong, and even dangerous, about that idea.* He goes on to describe how being able to effectively operate within a bureaucracy is not leadership, and how this was particularly important for the plebe class he was talking to as they would be working within the world's largest bureaucracy - the U.S. military. > *That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you.* > *I tell you this to forewarn you, because I promise you that you will meet these people and you will find yourself in environments where what is rewarded above all is conformity. I tell you so you can decide to be a different kind of leader.* So what does he believe is an important characteristic of leadership, one that is missing from the "world-class hoop jumpers"? > *What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.* ## Multi-tasking impedes thinking Before diving into how to think, he mentions a personal hot button of mine, multi-tasking, as a way not to think. > *Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.* > > *Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.* ## Enabling thinking with solitude Ok, so we need solid time to develop our own ideas. That's where the power of solitude (finally, you're probably saying...!) comes into play. > *You can just as easily consider this lecture to be about concentration as about solitude. Think about what the word means. It means gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input.* > *So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation.* Ok, that doesn't sounds like solitude. Except he means having an intimate conversation... with yourself. The person you (hopefully) trust and can be honest with the most. > *You need to know, already, who you are and what you believe: not what the Army believes, not what your peers believe (that may be exactly the problem), but what you believe. How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude?* Embrace the loneliness, the solitude, of leadership. Leverage it to reflect on your values, your life and organization, and to formulate your own unique ideas. ### When Customer-Supplier Partnerships... Aren't URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-customer-supplier-partnerships-arent/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:51:57.000Z Many years ago [I wrote about](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense/) how many companies were trying to get a one-time boost in working capital by extending their purchasing terms from typical net-30 to net-90 and even net-120\. In some cases they were even partnering with banks to offer the supplier a short-term loan to cover the longer payment terms. Really. At the time I was running a medical device component company that was a sole source for many parts, so I had the leverage to reply back with "no." I also had a letter that read along the lines of "I'm sorry to hear of your apparent financial distress and desire to ask our much smaller company for a loan, but we're not a bank." By the way, *Quality Digest* did a very funny video discussion of this craziness, calling out some of the well-known companies involved, which you can still [watch here:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYliRhKx1EA&ref=kevinmeyer.com) ### Here We Go Again with the Long Payment Terms I'm not sure if it's related to COVID, but over the past few months this has apparently become a thing again. I've heard from both our internal finance group as well as friends of mine at other companies that they are receiving many letters from customers saying that terms will be extended. In some cases the customers are also pushing suppliers into accepting third party purchasing cards (someone's earning some points in exchange for the fees...!), or requiring that the supplier cover the cost of some internal initiatives or even take mandatory price cuts. In all cases the letters usually state that the change is "to align with industry-standard terms" and "create a better supplier-customer partnership." In most cases suppliers aren't as fortunate as I was, and have to simply buck up and accept being bullied. I can understand needing a few days for a probably unnecessarily complex A/P process to pay a bill. But anything beyond that few days is really just taking a loan out from the supplier. The customer may get a one-time boost in working capital from this effective loan, but the usually smaller supplier may have real cash flow issues and may need to forego investment into improved knowledge, design, and processes. Who really loses in the end. ### Creating a Valuable Supplier-Customer Relationship Tasking your supplier for a loan, let alone mandatory price cuts, is not "creating a better partnership." It's a myopic bully tactic to achieve a short-term financial result that results in resentment and decreased long-term improvement and quality. At my previous company, guess which customers received the most focus and attention, with a value that extended beyond the financial bottom line. The ones that understood and accepted the value (and price) of the component we were delivering, and paid fast. We went the extra mile for them. In fact, I could eventually predict which potential customers would turn into high value accounts simply by reviewing their first purchase order. If terms were unnecessarily long, or there were bureaucratic pricing reviews, then we assumed it was not a real "partnership" and we'd price the components accordingly. At Gemba Academy we've had a policy since day one to pay our bills immediately. A bill comes in and we write a check or send the funds, which means we don't need complex A/P processes to receive and enter bills and then pay them on some schedule. Waste! This has engendered us considerable good will with our suppliers, which has paid many rewards in terms of a higher level of service, improvements, and simply the trust created by a friendly relationship. Negotiating pricing that appropriately compensates value and then paying bills quickly is just one aspect of a real supplier-customer partnership. You also want to be open, honest, and transparent with each other to create trust. Some level of NDA is probably necessary as part of basic good business, but it should not stifle communication and should be mutually protective. Contracts should not require an army of attorneys to decipher. Communication pathways should be known and standardized, but not constricted to the point that collaboration dies. Mutually agree on improvements, the framework for experimenting with improvements, and how the increased value will be shared. Focus on the potential long term value of the relationship, not the month-to-month transactional cost. Think about the value you might be losing in a potential real supplier-customer relationship when you ask for unnecessarily long terms (a loan...), onerous contractual terms that assume the negative, or arbitrary pricing changes. Instead, forge real partnerships that will create value in the long term. ### Southwest Solitude: A COVID-Era Road Trip Through America's Sacred Landscapes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southwest-solitude-a-covid-era-road-trip-through-americas-sacred-landscapes/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T13:36:08.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_0371.png) Our June 2020 Southwest road trip came at a unique moment in American history - when international travel was impossible and domestic exploration became both necessity and revelation. This 12-day, 2,000-mile journey through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada revealed the profound beauty and healing power of America's most dramatic landscapes during a time when solitude and open space felt essential to the soul. ## General Comments **COVID-Era Travel**: With international borders closed and air travel complicated by pandemic restrictions, this road trip represented freedom and safety in uncertain times. National parks had limited capacity, hotels required reservations, and the usual crowds were dramatically reduced, creating intimate experiences of iconic American landscapes. **Therapeutic Solitude**: Long drives through empty terrain provided meditative experiences impossible during normal travel periods. Hours of uninterrupted driving through desert landscapes, with minimal traffic and endless horizons, created space for reflection and mental restoration that felt particularly valuable during the pandemic's social isolation. **Hiking as Refuge**: Each destination's hiking opportunities provided physical activity and spiritual renewal during a time when gyms were closed and normal routines disrupted. The combination of exercise, natural beauty, and solitude addressed both physical and mental health needs. **Route Flexibility**: Road trip travel allowed complete schedule control and social distancing while still experiencing incredible destinations. We could adjust timing, extend stays at favorite locations, and maintain pandemic safety protocols throughout. **American Southwest Revelation**: This journey revealed how the American Southwest offers landscape grandeur, cultural depth, and spiritual experiences rivaling any international destination. The region's Native American heritage, geological wonders, and vast spaces provided perspective unavailable elsewhere. **Accommodations Variety**: From luxury resorts to national park lodges to small town hotels, each night's lodging reflected the local character while meeting enhanced COVID safety protocols. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Southern California Transition Our journey began with the familiar coastal drive from Morro Bay to Santa Monica, then transitioned to desert landscapes. **Joshua Tree National Park**: Our first wilderness encounter set the trip's tone. The otherworldly Joshua trees, dramatic boulder formations, and desert ecosystem provided immediate contrast to coastal California. Hiking the Skull Rock and Cholla Cactus Garden trails introduced us to Mojave Desert ecology while the wide-open spaces began the trip's meditative quality. **Desert Solitude**: The transition from populated coastline to empty desert created profound psychological shift. Miles of uninterrupted landscape with minimal human presence initiated the therapeutic solitude that would characterize the entire journey. ### Day 3: Grand Canyon - Natural Cathedral The drive through Arizona's high desert toward one of America's natural wonders built anticipation perfectly. **Williams, Arizona**: This historic Route 66 town provided authentic small-town American atmosphere and served as our Grand Canyon gateway. The town's railroad heritage and restored downtown revealed the charm of pre-interstate America. **Grand Canyon South Rim**: Even with reduced COVID capacity, the Grand Canyon's geological majesty remained overwhelming. The Rim Trail provided multiple viewpoints revealing how light and shadow constantly transformed the canyon's colors and depths. The reduced crowds allowed for peaceful contemplation of this geological masterpiece. **Hiking the Canyon**: The Bright Angel Trail descent, even just to the first rest house, provided perspective on the canyon's immense scale and geological complexity. The physical challenge and changing ecosystems as elevation dropped created comprehensive Grand Canyon experience beyond viewpoint photography. ### Days 4-5: Monument Valley - Sacred Landscape The drive from Grand Canyon to Monument Valley transported us into the heart of Navajo Nation and America's most iconic Western landscape. **Monument Valley Scenic Drive**: The 17-mile dirt road through towering sandstone buttes created cinematic experiences impossible to capture in photographs. Each formation - the Mittens, Merrick Butte, Elephant Butte - demonstrated geological artistry spanning millions of years. **Shiprock Encounter**: The drive toward New Mexico revealed Shiprock, the massive volcanic rock formation sacred to the Navajo people, rising dramatically from empty desert plains. This geological monument, standing alone against infinite sky, provided profound spiritual experience and reminded us we were traveling through landscapes sacred to Native American cultures. **Navajo Cultural Immersion**: Staying at Goulding's Lodge and exploring Monument Valley provided respectful introduction to Navajo heritage while supporting tribal tourism during economically difficult pandemic times. **Desert Solitude Deepens**: The vast emptiness between Monument Valley and Santa Fe - hundreds of miles with minimal towns or traffic - created meditative driving experiences. The endless horizons, dramatic cloud formations, and profound silence provided mental restoration impossible in populated areas. ### Days 6-8: Santa Fe - Cultural Oasis New Mexico's capital provided rich cultural immersion amid high desert beauty. **Hotel**: [Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi](https://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/inn-of-the-anasazi-santa-fe?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury hotel in Santa Fe's historic plaza perfectly captured the city's blend of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures. The adobe architecture and artistic details provided authentic regional atmosphere. **Santa Fe Cultural Exploration**: The plaza area's galleries, museums, and historic buildings revealed the Southwest's complex cultural heritage. The Palace of the Governors, San Miguel Mission, and numerous art galleries showcased how Native American, Spanish colonial, and contemporary American influences created unique regional culture. **Hiking the Sangre de Cristo Mountains**: Trails in the Santa Fe National Forest provided mountain hiking within minutes of the city. The Atalaya Mountain trail offered panoramic views over the high desert while aspen groves and alpine meadows created ecosystem diversity impossible to experience in lower desert regions. **Taos Day Trip**: The drive to Taos through high desert and small Hispanic villages revealed northern New Mexico's distinctive character. Taos Pueblo, continuously inhabited for over 1,000 years, provided profound connection to indigenous heritage while the town's artistic community showed how traditional cultures inspire contemporary creativity. **Bandelier National Monument**: These cliff dwellings and canyon ruins demonstrated sophisticated Ancestral Puebloan civilization while hiking trails through mesa country provided excellent physical exercise amid archaeological wonders. **Los Alamos**: The contrast between ancient pueblo ruins and the birthplace of nuclear weapons created sobering historical perspective on how the Southwest witnessed both indigenous sophistication and 20th-century technological transformation. ### Days 9-10: Mesa Verde and Arches - Ancient Architecture and Natural Sculptures Colorado and Utah's national parks provided spectacular conclusion to our Southwest journey. **Mesa Verde National Park**: The Balcony House and Cliff Palace tours (when available during COVID restrictions) revealed architectural sophistication of Ancestral Puebloan culture. These multi-story cliff dwellings demonstrated engineering skills and community organization spanning centuries. **Mesa Top Loop Road**: This scenic drive with archaeological sites and overlooks provided comprehensive introduction to Mesa Verde's cultural landscape while hiking trails connected multiple archaeological sites through pinyon-juniper forests. **Arches National Park**: Continuing into Utah, Arches showcased nature's geological artistry through over 2,000 natural stone arches. The Windows Section provided easily accessible dramatic formations while the hike to Delicate Arch revealed Utah's most iconic natural sculpture. Fiery Furnace walks (when available) demonstrated how water and time carved intricate slot canyons and chambers through solid sandstone. **Canyons of the Ancients**: This lesser-known national monument contained the highest density of archaeological sites in the United States. The combination of cultural heritage and pristine high desert landscape provided intimate encounters with ancient civilizations. **Hovenweep National Monument**: These remote tower ruins, built by Ancestral Puebloan people, demonstrated sophisticated astronomical knowledge and architectural skills. The isolation and excellent preservation created profound connections to ancient American cultures. ### Days 11-12: Utah Wilderness - Geological Wonderland Southern Utah's national parks provided spectacular conclusion to our Southwest journey. **Capitol Reef National Park**: This relatively uncrowded park showcased dramatic geological formations, pioneer Mormon settlements, and excellent hiking opportunities. Capitol Reef is probably the most underrated park we've ever visited - and we've been there many times. The park's incredible diversity of geological formations, from towering red cliffs to hidden slot canyons, combined with its Ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs and historic Mormon settlements, creates experiences rivaling any major national park. The Petroglyphs Trail provided ancient rock art encounters while the Cohab Canyon and Grand Wash hikes revealed slot canyon experiences and geological diversity that few tourists ever discover. **Grand Staircase-Escalante**: Driving through this vast national monument remains one of our favorite drives, dating back to when we lived in Utah years ago. This route reveals remote wilderness and geological formations spanning millions of years, with dramatic landscapes that change constantly as you traverse different geological layers. The solitude and stunning vistas - red rock formations, slot canyons, and endless desert vistas - provided perfect transition from populated areas toward journey's end. **Death Valley Crossing**: Our final wilderness encounter, crossing Death Valley from Nevada to California, demonstrated the Southwest's extreme environments. The below-sea-level desert, mountain views, and profound emptiness created fitting conclusion to our solitude journey. ## Hiking Highlights Throughout the Journey **Joshua Tree**: Skull Rock, Cholla Cactus Garden, and Hidden Valley trails provided desert ecosystem education and moderate physical activity. **Grand Canyon**: Bright Angel Trail descent demonstrated canyon scale while rim walks revealed constantly changing perspectives. **Santa Fe Area**: Atalaya Mountain and other Sangre de Cristo trails provided high-altitude hiking and panoramic desert views. **Bandelier**: Canyon trails connected cliff dwellings with mesa-top archaeological sites through diverse ecosystems. **Mesa Verde**: Archaeological trails combined cultural education with physical activity through pinyon-juniper forests. **Capitol Reef**: Slot canyon hikes and geological walks provided diverse Utah wilderness experiences. ## Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions **Pandemic Healing**: The combination of physical activity, natural beauty, and profound solitude addressed mental health needs during unprecedented social isolation and uncertainty. **Meditative Driving**: Hours of uninterrupted driving through empty landscapes created meditative experiences impossible in normal travel or daily life. **Scale and Perspective**: The Southwest's vast landscapes and ancient cultural sites provided perspective on both pandemic challenges and human civilization's broader timeline. **Sacred Encounters**: Visiting landscapes sacred to Native American cultures while respecting tribal sovereignty and supporting indigenous tourism created meaningful cultural exchange. ## What We'd Do Differently **Extended Mesa Verde Time**: The archaeological richness deserved additional days for more thorough exploration and cultural education. **More Hiking Planning**: Each destination offered hiking opportunities we didn't have time to fully explore. **Enhanced Cultural Preparation**: Deeper research into Native American history and contemporary tribal cultures would have enriched our experiences. ## Final Thoughts This COVID-era road trip revealed how domestic travel during challenging times can provide experiences rivaling any international adventure. The American Southwest's combination of geological grandeur, ancient cultures, and vast solitude created transformative travel experiences while maintaining pandemic safety protocols. The therapeutic value of long drives through empty terrain, combined with hiking in pristine wilderness and encounters with ancient civilizations, provided mental and physical restoration during a difficult period in American history. The trip demonstrated how travel can serve healing purposes beyond mere recreation. Most importantly, this journey revealed the American Southwest as a region offering landscape beauty, cultural depth, and spiritual experiences rivaling any global destination. The combination of natural wonders and indigenous heritage created pride in American cultural and natural treasures while fostering respect for Native American sovereignty and ongoing cultural vitality. For travelers seeking solitude, natural beauty, cultural education, and personal restoration, the American Southwest offers unmatched opportunities for transformative road trip experiences. **Total Distance**: Approximately 2,000 miles through six states **Most Spiritual Moment**: Encountering Shiprock rising from empty desert plains **Best Hiking**: Bandelier's canyon trails connecting cliff dwellings through diverse ecosystems**Most Meditative**: Long drives through Monument Valley and Grand Staircase-Escalante wilderness **Cultural Highlight**: Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings demonstrating sophisticated ancient American architecture **Perfect For**: Solo travelers or couples seeking solitude, cultural education, geological wonders, hiking opportunities, and therapeutic distance from urban life during challenging times. ### Metrics from the Perspective of the Customer URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/metrics-from-the-perspective-of-the-customer/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:52:26.000Z A core concept of lean is that value is defined from the perspective of the customer, and therefore waste is as well. We are familiar with both types of muda, waste that is unnecessary and must be removed and waste that is necessary perhaps due to regulations or inspection (be careful with that!), as well as mura (irregularity) and muri (overburden). These drive the [seven, or eight, forms of waste](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/seven-deadly-wastes?ref=kevinmeyer.com). But how many of us have metrics that are aligned to that customer-centric perspective? Gene Cornfield described this realignment of metrics and KPIs, which he calls CPIs - Customer Performance Indicators, in a [Harvard Business Review article](https://hbr.org/2020/04/the-most-important-metrics-youre-not-tracking-yet?ref=kevinmeyer.com) a couple weeks ago. > *A growing number of organizations are becoming more customer-centric by adopting, measuring, and optimizing CPIs — whether their customers are consumers or business buyers. And because customers are the one and only thing that fuel growth, how well a company performs against CPIs often serves as the most powerful lever for, and the most accurate predictor of, growth.* Sure, sales is inherently from the customer perspective as it demonstrates that customers have purchased. But sales is also a lagging indicator, with a lot of components that may mask true true potential value. Do they have to buy from you because you're the only supplier? If so, and they don't believe they are receiving appropriate value for the price, they will be cultivating alternatives. Unless considerable effort has been spent understanding value, it's likely that price, and hence sales, does not adequately represent value. Similarly, first pass yield, net income or margin, click rates, and the like may provide an indirect measurement of perceived customer value and waste reduction, but are not metrics the customer itself would use. > *There are two elements that qualify a metric as a CPI. Most importantly, it must be an outcome customers say is important to them. Second, a CPI must be measurable in increments that customers actually value. Time, convenience, number of options, dollars saved, or recognition of their achievements are some increments that customers value, and there can be many others depending on the context, and if they’re deemed relevant by customers.* What is important to your customers? What would be a characteristic that they'd pay more for? And just as importantly, what do you believe is important, and are perhaps spending money on to improve, that they don't really care about? Understanding your customer, by talking with them and not making assumptions, is critical to defining value from their perspective. Cornfield goes on to describe several examples from multiple industries. Within operations: > *A U.S. grocery delivery service measures the CPI Nothing Broke (eggs or fragile foods or containers). This CPI not only impacts KPIs like customer retention and lifetime value; it also impacts company savings associated with the cost of customer service, issuing credits, and/or replacing broken items.* Sometimes it can be as simple as flipping the value vantage point. > *While many organizations track Customer Lifetime Value, which is a KPI that measures the value the company derives from a customer over the duration of their relationship, some are beginning to also look at the inverse: the value delivered to customers over the same duration, which can be displayed to customers in user portals, or communicated prior to renewals. Impacted KPIs include customer retention, loyalty, and classic lifetime value itself.* Well, maybe that isn't as simple you might think. How would you measure value delivered to the customer, from their perspective? Do you even know what they value, or are you making assumptions. Talk to your customers, understand them and how they define value, and align your metrics to appropriately measure that value from their perspective. ### Restart to a Future State, Not the Previous State URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/restart-to-a-future-state-not-the-previous-state/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:52:57.000Z One of my favorite books is [*Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less*](https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Less/dp/B00IWYP5NI/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Greg McKeown. When I first read his book several years ago it put a new spin on lean's perspective on waste and value by applying similar concepts to individual and organizational decision-making. I've continued to use and refine that framework ever since. The idea of "what is essential?" has taken a whole new, deeper meaning as many of us deal with the chaos associated with COVID-19, especially business disruption and personal shelter-at-home requirements. "Essential" businesses are allowed to keep operating and we're allowed to engage in "essential activities," the definition of which can raise a few eyebrows. Recreational cannabis shops are considered essential here in California, gun shops and liquor stores in some states, craft stores in some others. Hardware stores? Restaurants when grocery stores are open? Even Gemba Academy has received several formal letters from suppliers, they themselves deemed "essential" by some other entity, informing us that we are an essential supplier to them for online training and asking that we remain operating. We have, with work-from-home and appropriate safeguards in the video studios and offices. If we are fortunate enough to be able to work from home, or perhaps especially if we're not and are just passing the time at home worrying about upcoming bills, we are being forced to think about our lives in a whole new way. Similarly, leaders and owners of businesses and organizations are having to do the same. Most of us had given some thought to a great disruption - an earthquake, perhaps a war or terrorist event, but probably not a pandemic. Even though we had been warned. Regardless, it's here, and we're living it. Some states like California that instituted a severe, early shutdown are seeing significant flattening of virus transmission that is preserving ICU capacity. Eventually other states will as well. We'll eventually all come out of it, probably in multiple cycles of relax/re-constrain until we find the right balance that keeps infection rates low while waiting on an eventual vaccine. That's the current state. So what will be the future state? Does it have to be the "previous state" or is now the chance to reimagine and reinvent something better? Jon Miller wrote a post a couple weeks ago, [*The Unexpected Benefit of Cancelling Everything*](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2020/03/16/the-unexpected-benefit-of-cancelling-everything/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), that touched on this. > *This wave of cancellation and disruption we are facing is decreed by necessity and not by collective choice. In the weeks and months ahead when things return to normal, we have an opportunity to decide whether we bring back everything we cancelled as it was, or restart in a better way.* The first step is reflection - it almost always is. And what a perfect time while stuck at home, perhaps while taking a long walk around the neighborhood. How is your organization operating - or not? What has been shown as essential to that operation, or to the customers that define the value of your products and services? More importantly, what hasn't been missed and what has been accommodated for in a different way? Do you even need offices or is work-from-home effective in some or all circumstances? What could that add as perceived flexibility value by your team while reducing real estate costs? What have you learned in terms of coordinating and communicating project status, KPIs, and general required interaction between team members? At Gemba Academy we've used a daily video huddle between our office and remote team members every day for a decade. What suppliers have stepped up, and what can you learn from them? What customers have similarly supported you, and how? How does that change the value calculus? Similarly, think about your own leadership competency - personal and professional. What are you learning during this massive disruption? What works, what doesn't, and what skills do you have or wish you had? What is important to you as a leader? Have you been able to shift from managing people by the hours they spend in the office to what their accomplishments are? How can you better define those activities, and what success or failure looks like, to enable that - and thereby giving them more ownership and flexibility over their time - another value? Which team members have shown skills you hadn't previously noticed, and which need some additional coaching or development? How has the definition of value changed? How are the human aspects involved? One person on our team mentioned that, although she is very independent and enjoys working alone at home, she has really missed being able to give heartfelt hugs to family and friends. I think many of us have a renewed sense of the value of family and community. I know I have discovered I really miss just sitting in a coffee shop watching people, or enjoying wine and dinner with friends. A Zoom conversation just doesn't quite cut it. How does this new understanding of value change our priorities - personally and professionally? Based on this, what would a new future state look like? What changes and plans can you put into place to get there? What experiments - kata - can you run to iterate and learn to achieve it? Many organizations will revert back to the previous state. They'll be competing with organizations that create a new, more efficient and agile, future state. ### Deepening the Lessons of Crisis URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/deepening-the-lessons-of-crisis/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:53:46.000Z I'm sure all of us are paying close attention to the evolving coronavirus (COVID-19) situation and thinking about how it has and will affect our families, organizations, and society. It's too soon to say whether this will be long-term disruptive crisis or eventually turn into "just" a more severe version of the flu. In the meantime, fear of the unknown is driving decision-making - both good and bad. I've seen my fair share of crises in my three decade career, which have made me more than a little conservative and perhaps a bit OCD about contingency planning. Some were even coincidentally compounded, like when the sharp downturn in the telecom market in 2001 led me have to announce the closure of a major manufacturing facility... the day before 9/11\. I've tried to learn from those incidents, as I am from the current. Lessons are being taught by the coronavirus outbreak, but it's important to use them to analyze the broader perspective. Some than I'm thinking about: **Don't ignore simple solutions**. We can significantly protect ourselves and others by simply [washing our hands correctly](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2020/03/02/one-point-lesson-how-to-wash-your-hands/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and by not touching our faces. In what other situations do we have similarly simple solutions, often known but not reinforced by standard work and requirement, and instead choose to invest in expensive countermeasures? **Understand the vulnerabilities of your supply chains**. Many of us have often criticized Apple for a supply chain predominantly dependent on an overseas supplier, even as they receive awards for supposed manufacturing excellence. The downside of [Apple's reliance on China has now become real](https://www.wsj.com/articles/tim-cook-and-apple-bet-everything-on-china-then-coronavirus-hit-11583172087?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Similarly, we are waking up to the potential issues of having a large percentage of [critical pharmaceuticals manufactured in just two countries](https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-coronavirus-stricken-china-cant-export-medicine-the-world-is-in-trouble-11583372431?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This isn't to say that all supply chains must be short or have redundancy - just that potential issues and true cost must be analyzed and understood. **Continue to learn and improve**. The best organizations know to use down or slack time to improve knowledge and processes so they can better capitalize on the eventual upturn, especially if their competitors follow a more traditional route of trying to maintain margins by cutting those same programs. In the case of the coronavirus, how do you do that if employees need to stay home or if groups are not a good idea? Online, on-demand continuous improvement training like Gemba Academy offers is obviously one solution. **Standard work and contingency planning is critical**. What happens if a critical person, or an entire facility, is no longer available? Do you have current standard work for each operation or activity to allow others, perhaps even cross training, to quickly step in? What activities are critical at a day, week, or month level? **Disruption can be quick, and devastating**. I experienced this when telecom went from hyper-growth to hyper-decline in less than 12 months in 2001\. Although I've never understood why a few thousand people would want to cohabitate in a floating petri dish, obviously many do. But what happens when an event like the coronavirus happens and bookings immediately drop by half as the [cruise industry is experiencing](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-leaves-cruise-industry-with-canceled-trips-and-half-empty-ships-11583330402?ref=kevinmeyer.com) right now? A similar situation is happening with the airlines, and secondary and tertiary travel support industries. Where are your vulnerabilities, and what would you do? **Optimize the value of brains**. The best organizations understand that the value of experience, knowledge, and creativity can be worth far more than what appears as a cost on the P&L, and therefore optimizing and supporting those brains has real value. Many benefits, like flexible schedules and working from home, are being revisited thanks to the coronavirus. Many organizations, like[ Trader Joe's just today](https://www.businessinsider.com/trader-joes-employees-additional-paid-sick-time-coronavirus-2020-3?ref=kevinmeyer.com), are also revisiting the concept of limited sick time as that could incentivize people to come to work while still contagious. Do your human resource policies support the larger vision and truly strengthen your organization? **What is "essential?"** I always raise an eyebrow when organizations decide to place limits on "non-essential" people, travel, or expenses. What is that? In the case of the coronavirus, many organizations are now [banning "non-essential travel"](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/ford-bans-all-non-essential-travel-as-coronavirus-spreads.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- augmenting the disruption I discussed above. Almost all organizations tend to become a bit loose with expenses when times are good, and then eventually reach a point, either slowly or suddenly in response to a crisis, where they decided it's time to ratchet back. If something is truly non-essential, it is probably a waste, so why is it happening in the first place? What standard work and processes can be put into place so that the non-essential is always recognized and removed? **What is "valuable" beyond the customer?** I think about this differently than the "essential" above. For example, conferences can be valuable from a sales or networking perspective. But since they involve large groups of people, [conferences and large events are being canceled in droves](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-devastating-the-conference-circuit-11583317802?ref=kevinmeyer.com) thanks to the coronavirus. This is forcing organizations to think about whether those conferences truly have value, and for the ones that do to find new and innovative ways to create that value. Smaller events? Streaming conferences? Online learning and networking? There are many other effects of the coronavirus crisis that are worth reflecting on, such as the impact on [air pollution](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/811019032/why-chinas-air-has-been-cleaner-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and [health policy](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/coronavirus-tests-insurance-policies-122468?ref=kevinmeyer.com) just for starters. What lessons can we learn, and what can we put into place so we can both mitigate and not have to learn the same lesson when the next crisis hits? ### Leverage Learning Environments to Create Customer Value URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leverage-learning-environments-to-create-customer-value/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:54:08.000Z A couple weeks ago a consultant friend of mine, who coincidentally focuses his practice on lean in healthcare, was complaining about issues with his healthcare providers. It's a story we hear often - doctors running late, very short and often superficial consultations, a rush to diagnosis, and a bias toward additional services like surgery that they happen to provide - and profit from. They may be great doctors, but the quality of care, patient experience, and even outcome is not great. This is also something my wife and I haven't experienced for several years. I have a fantastic local primary doctor. He's brilliant and could easily have a high-end specialty practice that would earn him multiples of what he probably makes now, but he decided early on that he'd like to help as many people as possible by being a general practitioner. He's a medical geek at heart, and almost a decade ago when I had an uncertain diagnosis (which thankfully turned out to be a non-issue) he suggested I go up to Stanford to see a specialist to be evaluated by what was then a new technology. That experience changed how we consume health care, and taught me a lot about how organizations can create value for customers. ## My Customer / Patient Experience The customer experience at Stanford, a world-class teaching hospital about a three-hour drive north of me, was different from what I've experienced at any private specialist. The facility was clean, quiet, and comfortable, and the appointment started right on time. At a local private specialist, a nurse or MA would take my vital information, and then I'd wait for another long period to have a 5 or 10-minute appointment with the doctor. However, at Stanford the nurse took the vitals, then a resident came in and spent 10 or 15 minutes with me to go over my situation in considerable detail. They listened and probed and asked a lot of questions. Turns out it's not just because you have to be exceptionally smart to be a resident at Stanford, it's also because the next step is for them to present my case to the doctor... quickly, concisely, and thoroughly. The doctor then comes in with the resident and together, in front of me, they review my case. It was fascinating hearing the doctor/teacher helping the resident analyze the case from multiple angles, considering even fringe possibilities, and coming up with potential diagnoses and next steps. I was included as part of that learning environment. ### The Teaching Hospital Difference The doctors at teaching hospitals are on salary, so they aren't trying to cram as many patients into as little time as possible. They're hired to be teachers, so I have found them to have far smaller egos than most private practitioners. I love watching the residents and students match what they've learned in class with the experience of the doctors. At a hospital like Stanford, the experience is both deep and very broad. Since they are measured on outcomes, there is a desire to understand rather than a bias toward action, such as surgery. They are also not afraid to say they don't have all the answers and that we should go to see a different specialist. A typical consult is close to an hour, not just five or ten minutes. The one downside of a teaching hospital is some loss of privacy. One time I was having a rather, uh, personal exam by the doctor while a half dozen med students watched. This possibility is made clear when I book the appointment, and I figure it's just a way I can contribute toward improving the capabilities of future doctors. Still, it can be a bit unsettling. When my wife began battling severe back pain that had an unusual constellation of symptoms, she went to specialists at UCLA, another world-class teaching hospital three hours south of us. The experience was the same. Appointments were on time, consultations were sometimes over an hour long, super smart residents and students analyzing the case in collaboration with very experienced doctors, and a focus on correct diagnosis instead of a rush to treatment. In each case, especially after any treatment, the doctor would give her his card with his direct email and phone number and was truly interested in hearing from her. Where else can you directly contact world-class doctors, and get a detailed response back within hours? When surgery was necessary, it was in a patient-centric environment, with the loved ones kept comfortable and well-informed, and there was no rush to discharge. This has changed how we consume healthcare. If it's anything beyond the routine we will now drive to Stanford or UCLA. Interestingly, while our health insurance company would dispute almost every local provider charge, they never dispute charges from those hospitals, even though they are usually two or three times the cost. They probably figure that it's hard to dispute the diagnosis and recommendations from a world-class facility, or perhaps they believe that the outcome from a more expensive but more thorough diagnosis will be less expensive long term. That's probably giving the insurance company too much credit. ## Value in the Eyes of the Patient Most importantly, there is value being created for me, the customer. Smart students and residents who have recently learned the latest knowledge, methodically problem-solving with experienced doctors who have probably seen everything, in facilities focused on creating a comfortable environment for customers while utilizing the latest technology. I have confidence that my situation will be reviewed and diagnosed by the best in the world. Yes, I feel lucky we can easily access this level of care. It shouldn't be luck. Everyone should be able to. ## Wrap Up So think about this from the perspective of the customer of your organization, which is probably outside of healthcare. How can you better unleash the knowledge and creativity of your people, combine it with the experience and perspective of other leaders, and use rigorous learning, problem-solving, and innovation processes to create value for your customers? How can you do this so that value is no longer directly associated with just price, but more so with satisfaction, confidence, and quality? How would that change your competitive landscape? ### Refining and Reinforcing Principles URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/refining-and-reinforcing-principles/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:54:46.000Z Earlier this month Ron discussed his [top ten lessons from the last decade](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2020/01/03/ten-lessons-i-learned-over-the-last-decade/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and Jon what he believes is the [most important word of the year](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2020/01/06/the-word-of-the-year-for-2019/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) ("daily"). Although I have tried to divorce myself from the arbitrary boundaries of a calendar year, I still take some time in December and January, deliberate time, to reflect on the past and create plans and experiments for the future. Over the last decade this process and activity has helped me identify some grounding principles that I try to live by, personally and professionally, which each year become more defined. I then work on reinforcing the principles throughout the year. The principles are simple: reduce friction, share, and grow. **Reduce Friction** I define "friction" as anything that keeps me from optimal effectiveness, so it takes many forms. Some examples: - Minimizing and reducing how many "things" we own reduces the friction of clutter, extra cleaning, storage and space requirements, and flexibility should we ever decide to move. My wife and I spend time each week gathering unused items to donate or get rid of. Somehow there always seems like more, which probably correlates to Amazon Prime and why the UPS deliveryman knows our names. - Similarly, having to find things creates friction by wasting time, so 5S, at home and at work, becomes valuable. - Distractions create friction to optimal productivity, so I'm working at shutting down email, social media, and web browsers when working during my most productive times of the day. - Meetings and commitments create friction by tying up potentially valuable time that can be used to grow (see below), so I'm working to ensure everything I commit to truly has value. Reading Greg McKeown's [*Essentialism*](https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382?ref=kevinmeyer.com) a few years ago helped with this. - Being humble, authentic, and always acting ethically and with integrity reduces the friction of not simply being myself. maintaining a facade, or dealing with regret. - Being physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy reduces friction by reducing doctors appointments, the energy required to move around and participate in activities, and unnecessary worry and anxiety. I make time to exercise, reflect, eat healthy, and recenter every day. **Share** I've been very fortunate in many aspects of my life. Although we all have dealt with challenges, I know that tonight I'll have a roof over my head and food to eat - in abundance. My daily gratitude practice, where I identify three very specific and new circumstances, events, or people that I'm thankful for, reinforces how lucky I am and encourages me to share. - Gemba Academy is one way my partners and I try to share the power of lean, six sigma, and continuous improvement, which has contributed to our individual success in the past. - Along similar lines, I guest lecture at my alma mater at a nearby university, I blog, and I once (but probably never again!) wrote [a book](https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243?ref=kevinmeyer.com). - Most of us volunteer in some form or another - that is sharing our expertise and time. I work with a startup incubator affiliated with our local university. **Grow** A deliberate practice of growth and learning is the best antidote to cognitive decline as we age. Curiosity and the joy of learning is probably the one characteristic that I'm most thankful to my parents for instilling in me. - Each year for over two decades I've decided on a "do something different" project to intentionally broaden my perspectives. These projects range from the intellectual to sports to basic skills and I spent 12 months and typically around 500 hours working on them. Learning html programming 20 years ago set the stage for Gemba Academy. Last year, after seeing how professional cannabis products eliminated the need for a loved one in extreme pain to use opiods, I grew and processed six (legal!) cannabis plants. This year I'm focusing on the Japanese carpentry and joinery expertise known as [edo-sashimono](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZd24mcO5lQ&ref=kevinmeyer.com). I've taken several woodworking classes over the years and have built a few pieces of furniture, but I'm fascinated by the precision, very complex joinery requiring no fasteners and created only with hand tools, and spiritual aspects of the Japanese form. - Traveling is one way my wife and I like to grow and experience new perspectives. After many years of extensive overseas travel, we're refocusing into longer experiences, such as staying a month in one of our favorite cities (Buenos Aires?) or driving across Canada with no set itinerary. - Speaking of experiences, we've also compiled a "bucket list" of those. Earlier this month we spent New Year's Eve on Times Square in New York City. Crazy, crowded, chaotic, and energetic. Glad we experienced it once, but we'll never do it again. What principles guide you? How will you refine and reinforce them this year? ### Empirical Evidence for the Power of Kata URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/empirical-evidence-for-the-power-of-kata/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:55:10.000Z We've long known that embracing failure with an aim toward learning and improvement can create future success. Organizations that see failure in that light, and support their people with cultures and systems to learn from failure, can become engines of innovation. Now there's quantitative evidence via a tested empirical model to support our thoughts on the potential power of failure. In their article in last month's issue of Nature, [*Quantifying the Dynamics of Failure Across Science, Startups, and Security*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1725-y.epdf?ref=kevinmeyer.com), Yian Yin, Yang Wang, James Evans, and Dashun Wang tackle the subject. The large-scale datasets they used are rather unique: grant applications to the National Institutes of Health, entrepreneurs trying to obtain funding, and terrorist organizations trying to execute mass casualty events. Radically different mindsets, perspectives, and activities. In each situation the authors looked a whether the organizations and individuals were successful, controlled for underlying demographic data, and compared past failure to both the efficiency and quality of future success. Two key findings from the study were that people who experience early failures often become more successful that those who achieve early success, and that there is a tipping point between failure and eventual success that is driven both by learning and the pace of subsequent failures. In [an interview with Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/ideacast/2019/12/the-tipping-point-between-failure-and-success?ref=kevinmeyer.com), Dashun Wang discusses this tipping point between eventual success and ongoing failure, which he calls stagnation. This is a transcript of an interview, so you'll have to pardon the imprecise grammar. > But depending on which side of the tipping point they are in, they could experience fundamentally different outcomes. One group of people, if you’re below the tipping point and may be failing over and over, you try to get up and try again, but over and over you’re not learning enough to actually achieve success. You’re trying over and over, but you’ll fail to learn enough to initiate an intelligent pattern with the improvement. > > On the other side of the tipping point, which is above this threshold, people fail over and over but they fail faster and faster to eventually approach success. So this creates a quite a surprising prediction because what it means then is first of all, not all failures lead to success. > > If you take these two groups of people, what you will find is that in the beginning, in their first failure, they essentially have the same kind of a performance and the same kind of characteristics. But as they fail over and over, they start to become two very distinct groups of people because they’re in the two sides of the tipping point. The authors then created an empirical model and tested it against the three radically different datasets described above. > I think not only I feel like our results support that fail fast mantra that’s very popular in Silicon Valley, but it also actually doubled down on its importance. For example, the way I see it is our results actually now suggest this idea of failing fast is not just prescriptive but also diagnostic. Kata is a methodical approach to improvement that ensures learning is derived from intentional experimentation and failure. Without failure there would be no learning, without which there would be no next step to move closer to an improvement goal. A critical component of kata is having an ultimate objective, and then iterating through defined experiments to break through obstacles and obtain new knowledge. Kata also prescribes experimentation cycles as short as possible, which improves the pace of failure - and learning. Kata, in effect, helps you be on the success side of the tipping point discovered by Dashun Wang and his colleagues. ### Question Yourself URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/question-yourself/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:57:14.000Z One of my favorite websites, [Brain Pickings](https://www.brainpickings.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), recently turned 13\. The reason it's a favorite is because it offers content that is challenging intellectually - but not to the point of not making sense to humble minds like mine. The logo creeps me out a bit, but the breadth and depth of subject matter is amazing. To commemorate that anniversary, Maria Popova authored [a post on 13 lessons from the 13 years](https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/10/23/13-learnings-13-years/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Two of those lessons, the somewhat-related numbers 1 and 11, connected with me more than the others. > **Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.* Cultivate that capacity for “*[*negative capability*](https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/11/01/john-keats-on-negative-capability/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)*.” We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.* > **Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.* Our maps are still maps, approximating the landscape of truth from the territories of the knowable — incomplete representational models that always leave more to map, more to fathom, because the selfsame forces that made the universe also made the figuring instrument with which we try to comprehend it.* Like all of us, I grew up within a framework of ideas and values provided by family, friends, and community. They were simply accepted as correct and true. And, like most of us, I went through a rebellious phase where I shed those ideas to try the opposite, then soon matured (or so I thought) and came back around. Rebellion at that age is generally not based on true reflection and questioning, but instead is driven by a simple, basal, desire for independence. Coming back around is often due to a yearning for what is known and stable while dealing with the chaos of adulthood. Later in life, sooner for some and probably later for most of us, we begin to question again. Perhaps it is driven by confronting mortality through our own or family medical situations, or by realizing that the fast-paced career isn't all it's cracked up to be. The questioning impacts both our personal and professional lives. Are the values of my community really my own? Are the engineering concepts I was taught (decades ago...) really valid? Perhaps there's a better way to lead? I know far too many people who simply follow the values and opinions of others, without questioning or "continually testing against the raw input of reality." And even if they do, and they discover gaps and differences, the are afraid of "the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind." And I also know far too many leaders that simply follow the precepts and guidelines of traditional management philosophy. Lean teaches us to always question, to ask why... and why... and why (and why... and why...). It tells us to throw traditional thinking on its head to understand and support the value of people rather than their cost, to process in units of one instead of a batch, and to play the long game of creating value from the perspective of the customer instead of chasing shareholder approval each month. The framework of our youth, the "we've always done it this way," is a barrier that must be breached. Question your maps and models, and have the courage to change your mind. ### Take the Time to Get the Full Story URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/take-the-time-to-get-the-full-story/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:57:39.000Z Most of us have learned that being busy does not mean you're being productive and that multitasking leads to being less productive - although I still see that being harped as a "skill" on resumes and profiles. Leading organizations manage by clearly defined objectives rather than arbitrary and often unrelated work hours, enabling flexible workplaces that create additional value for everyone. With that said, we still like deadlines and other time constraints. Used properly they enable progress and force decisions. Used improperly and arbitrarily, perhaps more common than not, they create chaos, stress, lower quality, and poor decision making. Where's the balance? We often say that a sign of a good leader is knowing when there is sufficient information to make a decision - not too little and not waiting for too much. Under the stress inherent in most organizations, this often skews toward too little. I've learned a few lessons over the years along these lines. In one situation we were trying to understand why there was a small but significant dip in quality on a machine that happened once and sometimes twice a day. We looked at data and tried to tie it back to machine parameters, with no success. We stood and observed the machine for two hours at a shot. Nothing. Then one day at the end of another observation session we were discussing what to investigate next when it happened: an unplanned operator rotation. We had detailed standard work and highly trained operators, but this observation led us to find a small difference in crossover communication that was not captured on the standard work and had an unexpected impact on the product. We had decided on two hour observation sessions believing that was a limit of the ability of an observer, would align with break times, and we wanted results quickly. But it was not aligned with the process itself, therefore we were missing information. An analogous situation happened to me a couple years ago. I had just read an article that mentioned a great way to show respect to homeless people is to simply take the time to talk with them. So on my next visit to a local market, instead of throwing down a buck in their bucket, I said "hi." Turns out the guy had a college degree and had owned a small one-person business in a nearby town, but lost it when he went bankrupt due to medical expenses. He has spent the last year trying to claw back, with his top priority keeping his cell phone so he could check email and make phone calls for potential interviews, which was difficult as he didn't have a credit card or permanent address. Taking the extra few minutes blew away the common misperceptions I had. Digging into it a bit more I discovered this driver of homelessness is very common and there are some organizations that now focus on providing that infrastructure, and [some states](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how?ref=kevinmeyer.com) have had remarkable success by simply providing housing. One final example: my wife and I love to travel and have visited over 65 countries. For the last several years we've avoided the typical tourist itineraries and tried to focus on the people side of those countries, but they have still been relatively brief visits - just a few days to maybe a week or at most two. We know we've been missing a lot. Our goal for future trips, hopefully starting next year, is to have longer and more open-ended itineraries. We'd like to go back to our favorite places and stay a month, perhaps longer, living in an Airbnb or home exchange. Tops on the list is Buenos Aires, Hobart, maybe Ljubljana or Dubrovnik. We'd settle in, wander around, meet people, and dive deeper into the area. Along similar lines, we'd also like to take a month a drive across the backroads of Canada, from Halifax to Vancouver, with no itinerary. If we liked some place, we'd stay an extra couple days. Sometimes it's necessary to slow down and dig deeper to get the real story. You might learn something new and unexpected, perhaps even [about yourself](https://tinybuddha.com/blog/the-art-of-slow-living-how-to-reclaim-your-peace-and-joy/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). ### The Wisdom of Humility URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-wisdom-of-humility/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:58:10.000Z Lately I've been reflecting 0n the impact of [mistakes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oh-the-mistakes-ive-made/) on leadership, and how important humility becomes to learning from those mistakes. An article in The Washington Post this week [describing the humility of Dr. James Peebles](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-can-learn-something-from-this-years-nobel-prizes-humility/2019/10/08/fbc7d22c-e9ef-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44%5Fstory.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com), who just won the Nobel Prize for physics, was a nice book end to the "great and unmatched wisdom" self-commentary we had heard earlier in the week. > *As job titles go, it’s difficult to find one more formidable than Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University, so we can’t be surprised when a longtime occupant of that post finally wins the Nobel Prize. At 84, Phillip James Edwin Peebles — Jim, to friends and colleagues — shares this year’s prize for his work that helped to explain more than nine-tenths of everything that exists.* The article goes on to not only describe the humility of Dr. Peebles, but how the quest for knowledge itself requires humility. > *Isn’t it likely, then, that we are closer to the beginning than to the end of learning and discovery? Perfect knowledge is not just around the corner, and yet we must act as though we know what we’re doing. Paralysis is not an option. The attitude of mind that balances these opposites — the awareness of our limits, on one hand, and the urgency of decisions, on the other — is humility.* > *Imagine how much happier and more productive our national and international debates could be if we all approached them with the humility of a genius professor (the Einstein Professor!) asking, “what if we’re missing most of this picture?” We’d be more open, more respectful, more inquisitive, more inclusive — all virtues that flow from the principle virtue: humility.* That becomes the classic leadership challenge. We are encouraged to act quickly, to make changes, to improve - yet we rarely have all the answers. As leaders we must search for knowledge, make decisions based on limited knowledge, and know that we may not have all the answers and even information. Humility opens our mind to accept inputs from others and to the possibility - and perhaps even desire - for mistakes that we can learn from. We don't know everything and we don't know what we don't know, and we will make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. Recognizing and accepting that, exposing our vulnerability to mistakes to others, is critical for effective leadership. ### Oh, The Mistakes I've Made URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/oh-the-mistakes-ive-made/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T18:58:44.000Z Lately we've witnessed what happens when leaders don't have the emotional intelligence to admit to even the smallest and most originally inconsequential mistakes. This has caused me to reflect on some of mine over the past few decades. I won't bore or entertain you with some of the personal doozies - we've all been there, done that - but there have been a few that have taught me career-changing lessons. That's the importance of reflecting on mistakes: to learn. Then move forward, change and improve, and perhaps even teach. **Dig Deeper** After committing a design error that cost a lot of time and money, one of my first bosses sat me down and admonished me to "sweat the details." Although over thirty years ago, I remember that day like it was yesterday. As an engineer, I thought I was detail-oriented, but what he meant was I should peel back the onion to understand what was really happening. Eventually I would realize that this is the same as asking "why?" more than one time. I've remembered this both professionally and personally, and I've learned to enjoy the thrill, and mystery, of investigation. What is really going on beneath the surface? Why is that machine producing bad parts? Dig past the simplistic answer of operator error (generally leading to the equally ineffective "retrain!" response) to discover poor procedures, maintenance, machine specification, even utility fluctuations. Poverty and homelessness? Think past the intellectually lazy "bad decisions" to understand education, discrimination, the cascading impact of medical conditions and cost, and social barriers and stigmas when trying to claw your way back up from the bottom. Take the time to dig deeper instead of jumping to conclusions. **Heed Early Warnings** At the turn of the century (man, that sounds weird to write...) I was leading a manufacturing operation making telecom photonics equipment, most of which was used to test the laser diodes at either end of long-haul fiber optic cable. It was a startup that had been acquired by a much larger company, therefore there were few procedures in place. We had an 18 month backlog and, thankfully, a team of people that were eager to learn and improve. Over the course of just five months we increased production 10x, with the same people, floorspace, and equipment, just by using lean manufacturing methods. A morning standup meeting at the obeya, visual controls, standard work, kanban and one-piece flow. In April of 2001 we noticed an order cancellation. Odd, but with a huge backlog we didn't care. By then we were building on our new productivity to expand and hire. Then there was another cancellation, and another. Still, the backlog was huge- almost a year. By August the cancellations began cascading and we started to analyze, and discovered that the industry had overestimated long-haul fiber optic data demand and had overbuilt capacity. Just four weeks later the backlog dried up completely and it looked like demand for the entire product line would be zero - zero! - for at least two to even five years. On September 10th, 2001, having hired a new employee just a week earlier and with openings still posted, the decision was made to shut down the facility and lay off over 100 people. The following day, September 11th, made the week even worse. Why, oh why, didn't we take that first cancellation seriously? Perhaps the ultimate outcome wouldn't have changed, but the effects, especially on people, could have been mitigated. Amazing how fast hyper growth can turn to hyper decline. Ever since then I've had my eye peeled for any sign of disruption in the flow of all things supposedly normal, perhaps to the point of being OCD. It goes both ways: looking for signs of downturn as well as signs of potential opportunities. Yes, I've been spending a lot of time lately analyzing the percolating signs of a recession, and thinking about what strategies to put into place to both shield us and capitalize on potential opportunities. Along those lines, in a few months you'll hear more about a big project that we're very excited about at Gemba Academy. **Learning Creates Sustaining** A few years after the telecom equipment operation I found myself leading a mid-market medical device company. I had learned about the power of lean and continuous improvement in previous operations, so I set the company on a path to implement those concepts. 5S, value stream mapping, basic training. I knew what had to be done, the tools required, so just do it. We even had a plan to "do two lean tools per year." You can probably guess what happened. I didn't ask "why?" - I just directed. By directing, learning wasn't happening, and we weren't focused on the right problems in the first place. And without learning, I knew lean wouldn't be sustaining. So we took a step back, went through a hoshin process, and decided on what needed to be done. As the staff became more adept and comfortable with identifying and analyzing problems, I became a guide, providing suggestions that they then took to identify tools, learn, and implement. I loved watching people learn, the excitement of seeing problems solved, and the energy when people felt they had the ability and support to create and improve. Interestingly, there were still a couple lean concepts that I knew were critical, but were so counterintuitive that the team wouldn't try them on their own. One example was a daily standup meeting. Who wants yet another meeting, let alone daily? So that was one I had to direct and put into place, starting on the factory floor at 6am and cascading to departments and eventually my executive staff (video conferenced to the other facilities) at 8:30am each morning. It took only a few weeks for everyone to understand the immense communication and coordination value of just one short ten minute meeting. Help people learn, analyze, implement, and become teachers themselves. By not simply directing, the initial progress may be slower, but the long-term results are greater. Those are just a few of the many lessons I've learned. Lately I've been reflecting on what really matters - people, relationships, and experiences. It's changed, again, how I think about my business and professional life. What is the value of growth? What brings real enjoyment - both to me and to the team? How do I hope to remember these years? Am I making any mistakes now that I'll have to learn from in the future? ### The Divergent Paths of Old Lean Dudes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-divergent-paths-of-old-lean-dudes/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:00:02.000Z I've been immersed in the lean world for over a quarter century. From the start when some folks from the [Association for Manufacturing Excellence](http://www.ame.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) showed me how quick changeover could save my injection molding operation (and probably my job) from imminent destruction, to now when I can share my own knowledge and experience through a company focused on helping others on their lean journeys. It's been challenging, fun, and rewarding. I've been lucky to get to know many people along the way, including some who were responsible for bringing lean and the Toyota Production System \[back?\] to the U.S. and many who have fought the battles to transform their organizations with a way of thinking that often flies in the face of traditional management practice. There were several others who have spent their career analyzing, thinking, and writing about lean. Conveyors, doers, experimenters, thinkers, and investigators - all have been critical to the movement. As I approach retirement, whatever that may be, along with and even behind many of the folks I mentioned above, I've started to realize something: old lean dudes (and dudettes) appear to take two completely divergent paths. One group, thankfully the majority, remains and even becomes increasingly focused on helping others succeed. They support and mentor the younger generations trying to transform and perhaps even save their own organizations, and they share their time, knowledge, and experience by speaking at events. Some of them are well-known, but many aren't, yet they are all having a significant impact. I'm saddened to see and hear from some of them less and less, but I have fond memories of how they've changed my career and our industry. Then there's the other group, thankfully smaller. They have also made significant contributions to the field and have helped me and many others, but something has changed. They have become bitter, confrontational, and seemingly more interested in self-promotion. Differences of opinion become angry arguments instead of an opportunity for shared learning. I obviously won't name names, but from discussions with many others I know I'm not the only person that has noticed this divergence. It's sad, really. So much knowledge and experience being overshadowed and under-appreciated thanks to unnecessary drama. Pretty un-lean. As we gain more knowledge and experience I believe we have a moral responsibility to share and teach. For many of us, that knowledge and experience, gained with the help of others who came with and before us, has created considerable success. The time comes to help create success in others. That is a big reason why Gemba Academy is so important to me: it's a way to give back, and the online medium is a force multiplier when delivering knowledge. It's not about us. Our legacy is the success we help create in future generations. Find ways to share, teach, mentor, and grow those who are just starting on or struggling with the continuous improvement journey. Do so with humility, grace, and respect. ### More Ways to Dig Deeper Using Five Questions URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-ways-to-dig-deeper-using-five-questions/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:00:46.000Z On a plane the other day I listened to a [Tim Ferris podcast with Chip Conley](https://tim.blog/2019/06/20/chip-conley/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). To be honest, I'm not usually a fan of Mr. Ferris or his long format podcasts, but I do scan his guest list from time to time to look for interesting topics. Chip Conley was one of those. He is the founder of the Joie De Vivre boutique hotel chain, which he sold several years ago, after which he joined Airbnb as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy. Mr. Conley is also the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, which tries to improve the midlife and aging experience. In the podcast he describes a rather unique perspective on life, partly driven by dealing with cancer. For example, in his latest ventures he is no longer focused on growth, but on developing successful company and organizational models that can then be used by others to create their own success. He's looking to create impact and legacy, not wealth. But it was his stories of Airbnb that were really intriguing, in particular how he uses a deep questioning process to develop strategy. In the lean, continuous improvement, and problem-solving worlds we're familiar with the "[Five Whys](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/practical-problem-solving-course/five-why-explained?ref=kevinmeyer.com)" - asking "Why?" five times to get to the root cause of a problem. The number five is somewhat arbitrary with the point really being to go beyond the superficial to try to truly understand what is happening. Each "Why?" is built upon the previous answer. Mr. Conley uses a similar process, but one where the exact same question is asked five times and previous answers are not allowed. It was via this process that Joie De Vivre moved from being a company that was competing with a bunch of other hotels in the hospitality business, to one that was focused on "identity refreshment" - taking existing properties and making them fresh and unique. He used the same process at Airbnb, which helped them move from "utilize excess bedroom capacity" to "belonging anywhere." That became their mantra and defined their differentiation from traditional hotel chains, and helped them explore other market areas to go into. *\[Note: this is described starting at about the hour and 22 minute point in the* [*podcast*](https://tim.blog/2019/06/20/chip-conley/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)*.\]* In those examples, he used what Peter Drucker called "the most important business question": what business are we in? Two executives would face each other and one would ask "what business are we in?" The first answer could be "we're in the hospitality business." Then the first executive would ask that same question again, but the same answer wasn't allowed. And on for a total of five rounds. Results from the groups of two were then consolidated and discussed. > *If you ask that same question five times it is really like an archeological dig to figure out what is the essence of your company. What is the soulful differentiator as an organization.* The concept can be applied elsewhere, such as finding a career direction. > *Another question could be: ‘What mastery can you offer?’ So have a friend of yours ask that question of you five times, and you’ll be sort of surprised at, by the fifth time you get asked that question, and you’ve had to come up with four other answers before that, what kind of revelation you may have in this archaeological dig.* Five questions can be very powerful for personal reflection. On our trip last week, my wife asked me (again...) "what does retirement look like for you?" I had something of an idea in my head as I'm approaching an age where it becomes relevant, but it was still pretty vague. By asking myself that question five times I was able to drill down and add a lot more definition... in a direction that surprised me. It gets hard - the last two answers took several hours of thinking to figure out. Think beyond asking "Why?" to asking what can be very specific and difficult questions. You'll be surprised what you learn. ### Creating Range Through Exploration URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/creating-range-through-exploration/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:02:21.000Z Last weekend I powered through David Epstein's new book, [*Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World*](https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized-World/dp/0735214484/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The book has received rave reviews from the likes of Daniel Pink, who calls it "*an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance.*” Through numerous stories and data, Epstein's primary premise is that generalists triumph over specialists. > *I dove into work showing that highly credentialed experts can become so narrow-minded that they actually get worse with experience, even while becoming more confident - a dangerous combination. An internationally renowned scientist \[later introduced in the book\] told me that increasing specialization has created a "system of parallel trenches" in the quest for innovation. Everyone is digging deeper into their own trench and rarely standing up to look in the next trench over, even though the solution to their problem resides there.* Epstein directly takes on those (ahem, Tim Ferris...) who propose spending ten thousand hours to become a supposed expert in something. I found the book to be a breath of fresh air from all the "get smart quick" self help books, and he includes data-driven concepts applicable to a wide array of personal and professional situations. He even spends considerable time on how it applies to raising children, and [Ashley Fetters at *The Atlantic*](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/05/david-epstein-range/590704/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) has a great review of the book from that particular perspective. In an interview, Epstein says the issues with children and sports is what originally led him to research this topic. There's a lengthy discussion on learning speed, with initial success being seen as failure, that will resonate with those of us in the lean world. > *I was stunned when cognitive psychologists I spoke with led me to an enormous and too often ignored body of work demonstrating that learning itself is best done slowly to accumulate lasting knowledge, even when that means performing poorly on tests of immediate progress. That is, the most effective learning looks inefficient; it looks like falling behind.* An underlying theme throughout the book is that we should feel free to explore alternatives, even if there is no ultimate goal or objective, as that creates "range" - a wide breadth of experience. This range creates understanding and the ability to connect concepts, which becomes a powerful tool. Over the past couple years I have become a big fan of kata. Originally I thought of it as simply another manifestation of basic PDSA, but have come to understand how it connects and resonates with everyday users ([even school kids](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2018/10/05/kata-in-the-classroom/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)!) and therefore creates meaningful improvement in almost any situation. I use it daily, professionally and personally. There has been one aspect of kata that troubles me, however, and that is the requirement that it is driven by a defined vision of a future state. I know that this is what creates focus, and is the linchpin that anchors the iterative improvement experiments. One of my favorite Yogi Berra quotes has always been "if you don't know where you are going, you might end up someplace else." It is intended to reinforce the need for a direction and a purpose. But what if that "someplace else" has more ultimate value than the place I thought I wanted to be? Does a focus on a goal or defined future state create a form of narrow-mindedness that prevents seeing other opportunities? Is that a downside to focus, clarity, and purpose? The reality is we need both. Problems can be resolved and opportunities achieved by developing a clear future state and methodically working toward it. But leapfrog innovation can also occur by intentionally exploring into the unknown. Epstein defines simply "trying something" as an "experiment." The purist engineer in me would argue that is not really experimentation. A scientific experiment, by definition, has a reason and a hypothesis with an expected outcome, and the gap to what actually happened is then reflected on and becomes the foundation for the next experiment. Trying something is probably more "exploration" - although I guess an argument could also be made that the general hypothesis is that there may be "potential value" in the activity - either unknown at the time or inherent in the range it creates. In hindsight I think one of the most valuable things my parents did was give me a lot of unstructured free time (long before the internet...!) to explore - which I used both for good and, admittedly, sometimes for evil - with corresponding consequences. It also taught me how to self-entertain, and therefore I have never really experienced boredom - something that seems to quickly afflict many overstimulated phone/TV/etc. people these days. Children and adults are often pushed to persevere in order to build character and tenacity in the face of adversity. Epstein says it is equally important to know when to quit, and to have the courage to do so, and this can lead to improved happiness - arguably a more valuable long-term result. The more you explore the more you must be willing to quit. As Fetters mentions in her *Atlantic* review, Seth Godin also promotes this concept - even saying that defining when to quit is important at the beginning of an endeavor. Being comfortable with quitting makes it easier to embark on other explorations and experiments, and to learn from their results. Many business and personal self-help books tell us to get organized, defined, and methodical. Although that definitely works in many situations, it is at the fringe, in ambiguity, the unknown, and uncertainty, where unexpected breakthrough learning and innovation can occur. Some organizations operate internal "skunkworks" organizations or allow employees to spend [a percentage of their time on ideas](https://www.fastcompany.com/1663137/how-3m-gave-everyone-days-off-and-created-an-innovation-dynamo?ref=kevinmeyer.com). For over twenty years I've had a "do something different" annual goal that has taught me many new skills and basic knowledge - a couple of which originally appeared to be way out in left field but ended up being critical to what I do today. Sometimes we need to simply explore, for no other reason and with no real objective, to create range. ### The Problem of Profit as a Purpose URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-problem-of-profit-as-a-purpose/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:03:19.000Z Just yesterday the Harvard Business Review presented an article by a London Business School professor suggesting that [companies don't always need a purpose beyond profit](https://hbr.org/2019/05/companies-dont-always-need-a-purpose-beyond-profit?ref=kevinmeyer.com). I had to take a walk on the beach to get my blood pressure back to normal. He starts off by lamenting that his school tries to instill in its students the desire to improve the human condition, but fails. > At London Business School, we often try to explain the purpose of our existence by showing pictures of our students who are working on environmental issues in rural India or improving sanitation in a township in South Africa. We also always highlight the wonderful work of our Professor of Economics, Elias Papaioannou, on clearing landmines in Mozambique. However, the reality of things is that most of our students go to work in management consulting, tech, or investment banking — even hedge funds. I would suggest this in itself is a fundamental failure to teach the value, and non-financial rewards, of a worthy purpose beyond simply making money. He then launches into how he believes the pursuit of profit has helped our world. > Economic growth, for example, is an effective way to reduce poverty – likely more so than aid – because it benefits the lowest income brackets in a country significantly. Moreover, increases in wages and wealth have been shown to have positive effects on other critical societal problems, such as crime, malnutrition, infant mortality, mental health, and general feelings of happiness. That's true, but context is needed. The benefits of capitalism are optimized for the greater good when they are combined with a deeper purpose and constrained by appropriate guardrails. I have lived in and visited countries where those guardrails didn't exist, where new buildings collapse, drinking water is contaminated, healthcare quality is stratified between those who can and can't afford it, and so forth. And, yes, the opposite can and often does occur where the system is too restrictive and great ideas and investment can't take root and thrive. One of the most dramatic examples I've experienced was when I visited Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Slovenia, two countries formed at nearly the same time with the breakup of Yugoslavia, but with different sociopolitical values and economic systems and *very* different results. Like everything in life, balance is needed. A primary focus on profit also creates situations like the Boeing 737 MAX, where a decision to [effectively design a new plane but not go through costly regulatory hurdles](https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and then make a necessary sensor an add-on option, cost hundreds of lives. Or Facebook where chasing profit has meant compromising privacy (who is *really* their customer?) with fiascos like Cambridge Analytica. Uber and background checks on drivers, Google and censorship in China, Wells Fargo and "improper" lending practices... there are innumerable other examples. A primary focus on profit can create short term rewards, but can also create tremendous if not deadly long term reputation and financial damage and, most importantly, hurt people and society. Purists would argue that the "invisible hand" will punish such situations, and eventually that's probably true, but not before a lot of harm can be done. The professor is correct, however, that many if not most corporate focus on purpose is just window dressing. > They come up with mission statements that appeal to some higher and lofty goals in society, proclaiming that they seek to “inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow” (Lego), “enable people to make new friends in different cultures” (Airbnb), and “inspire and nurture the human spirit” (Starbucks), rather than make money. Often, however, it seems to leave people feeling somewhat cynical rather than motivated. Valid point. Purpose, mission, vision, values, principles - they have to be more than words on a conference room wall. They have to have true meaning and be driven and reinforced every day by leaders who also support employees who make tough decisions based on them. They have to be discussed, challenged, and embedded in culture and standard work. I used to run a company where the owners intentionally refused to take orders for a certain class of very profitable products because it would conflict with their religious beliefs. Making those kinds of decisions is tough, far more than a simple focus on profit, but the rewards, non-financial and even financial, are far greater. The most successful organizations have a purpose that improves and satisfies a human need, place it in a foundation of principles rooted in sound ethics and integrity, and create customer value and delight by delivering a product to support the purpose. They know profit is a byproduct, and a metric of how they are doing on their purpose. I like to think we've done that at Gemba Academy, where our purpose is to improve the world by spreading the knowledge and power of continuous improvement. To do that we hire great people, provide great benefits, continually reinforce a people-focused [culture code](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Gemba-Academy-Culture.pdf?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and endeavor to first understand and then help others, not just our customers, solve problems. We try to add value to the community in everything we do, from our core products to our blog, podcasts, speaking, collaborating with organizations like AME and Lean Frontiers, and even working with what others might consider to be competitors. To us we share a similar purpose. We strongly believe that if we help make the world a better place, we will also be successful. After ten years we know it's true. ### Harnessing Deliberate Reflection to Create Personal Improvement URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/harnessing-deliberate-reflection-to-create-personal-improvement/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:05:01.000Z My favorite part of last week's [podcast with James Clear](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2019/04/04/ga-261-building-the-habit-of-excellence-with-james-clear/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), author of [*Atomic Habits*](https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299?ref=kevinmeyer.com), was the last five minutes when he talked about a potential downside of *good* habits. When we decide to improve, and create a new practice with the right cues and rewards, we form a new habit. But habits can put us on autopilot and, if we're not careful, we can stop improving or even regress. This is why surgeon effectiveness can peak four or five years after they start practicing - unless they actively try to improve their craft, and why "number of surgeries" may not be a metric that correlates to quality of outcome. James Clear suggests that *deliberate reflection* is critical to loop back to learning to create further improvement, which can then lead to mastery. Interestingly, Taiichi Ohno said something very similar: > Most of us look for reasons when we fail, but very few of us look for reasons when we succeed. It is important to search for the reasons why you were able to succeed, and make sure to use the acquired learning in the future. Not only should we reflect on success in order to continue to improve on that success, we should also reflect on success so we can learn and apply those lessons to other activities. The *deliberate* in deliberate reflection is the key. Deliberate (or "intentional") reflection is not simply thinking about a circumstance or situation, but actively planning for and methodically executing the reflection process itself. In fact, some of us who have come to embrace deliberate reflection will deliberately reflect on the reflection process itself. Like any process it can always be improved. I try to practice deliberate reflection daily, [weekly](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/preparing-for-reflection/), [monthly](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-solitude-and-silence-to-enable-reflection/), and [annually](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-time-to-read-and-reflect/) \- all with different formats and purpose. Preparing for deliberate reflection includes deciding on a location with appropriate surroundings and stimuli (or lack thereof), time required, focus or topic, questions to be asked, and desired outcome. Questions always include some form of "what is the desired future state", "what is the current state", "what are the gaps", and "what should I do differently?" I also reflect on previous reflections and the activities and goals that derived from them. You'll recognize a lot of kata in that process... in effect, PDSA. On a daily and weekly basis the topics are more short-term or smaller in scope, and that grows as the time period expands. My annual reflection takes a couple weeks of preparation, and at least a week to execute. All of it, from preparation through conclusions, is written in my journal. This practice has had a profound impact on my life, especially with improving aspects I was dissatisfied with. The James Clear podcast made me realize that I need to use the process to improve aspects (not just habits) that I am already generally satisfied with, and the Ohno perspective reinforces that I need to understand and apply what I've learned to other activities. I can think of a couple examples already. I have travelled a lot, beginning with exploring most of South America during the seven years I lived there decades ago. My wife and I continued the practice, usually traveling at the last minute, often knowing nothing about the destination before reading about it on the plane trip over. We've visited nearly 70 countries. Pro tip (from experience...): visiting a country with an AK-47 on its flag warrants at least minimal preparation. We learned a lot about the world, met interesting people, and that changed our perspectives on many issues. We consider it a very positive aspect of our lives - a success. A couple years ago we deliberately reflected on our travel and decided that sacrificing some of the allure and excitement of last-minute travel for more planning could yield a more fulfilling experience. We tried that out with a trip to Tasmania last year and found it more relaxing and felt we saw and experienced more. We improved on a success. Where else could I apply the lesson of improved pre-planning? Well, where couldn't I might be the better question. I've taken a similar approach to interesting ideas and projects, where I've never had a problem finding things to interest me - a positive. For the past two decades I've taken time at the beginning of the year to reflect on all the projects available or interesting to me and choose one to be my "do something different" goal. This goal has led me to run a full marathon, rebuild a '73 Triumph Spitfire, and explore the history of several religions - among many, many others. This year I'm going to learn about and try some specialized horticulture. I've been successful with finding interesting projects with an ultimate "why" of becoming a well-rounded human, and a reflection process improved on that by helping me focus on just one major "something different" project each year. One of my favorite books, Greg McKeown's [*Essentialism*](https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), also helped with that. Where else can I apply those lessons? Lately I've been reflecting on my daily productivity. For many years I've written down my top three projects for the day and used the pomodoro method to focus on a single key activity for an hour without distraction, then take a break. I'm generally satisfied with my productivity, and the balance with healthy free time. The new functionality in iPhones that reports on screen time was a wake up call - far too much time was being spent gazing at small screens. I reflected on why and how I was using my phone, and realized I was getting too sucked into social media, especially Twitter, and that I was seeing a lot of duplicate information - even if I was learning a lot. So two weeks ago I reviewed all 5000+ folks I follow and whacked it down to just 150\. Those were the most interesting 25 or so people in a half dozen topic areas that interest me. Now with a quick check I can see relevant, interesting information. With that, and some other changes such as [switching my screen to gray scale](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2019/02/01/boost-your-personal-productivity-with-these-iphone-hacks/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) instead of "look at me" eye candy color, my screen time has dropped by nearly 80%, freeing up hours of time. I felt I was successful at being productive and through reflection I was able to improve on that. Where else can I apply the lesson of saving time by reducing the number of information sources to just the key relevant ones, or even using a "top three" or pomodoro method? Where would you like to improve? Don't forget to consider habits or areas where you are already competent or satisfied, and think about where else those lessons from success can be applied. Develop a deliberate, intentional reflection process to understand the desired future state, current state, gaps, and experiments and activities to achieve the desired future state. ### The Limits of Learning From Failure URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-limits-of-learning-from-failure/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:05:57.000Z Experienced leaders know that failure is not necessarily a negative, and can lead to both individual and organizational learning. We try to embrace failure and create a culture where appropriate failure is accepted as long as it's learned from, giving our team members the space and support to fail. That creates learning and innovation. Preferably the possibility of failure is an intentional result. To achieve this positive outcome an experiment is defined, with expected potential outcomes identified, and then there is an intentional reflection activity on what actually happened. This reflection creates the learning and becomes the foundation for future experiments. Many of us are beginning to see this manifestation of the PDCA process as *kata*. Sometimes it's unintentional, where we are thrust into an unexpected situation with even more unexpected results. An family medical emergency years ago taught me a lot about compassion, self-care, and the insurance industry. Two decades ago a rapid change in an industry taught me how to manage extreme business disruption. And, yes, sometimes it's just stupidity. Most of us have experienced this often particularly painful form of learning in our (hopefully) earlier years. Somehow we survived. Failure as a learning tool has limits. Would you put a chef in the cockpit of a plane and be ok with him learning that he doesn't know how to fly? Or letting a child try driving a car? Of course not. The learning experience of failure is one thing, but the consequences of the failure itself must be considered. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, [The Truth About Failing Spectacularly](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-failing-spectacularly-11550293225?ref=kevinmeyer.com), looks at this balance. Consider this example: > [sinking of the MS Explorer](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21935099/ns/world%5Fnews-americas/t/cruise-ship-goes-down-antarctica/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Or this one: > On Feb. 3, however, that parade got rained out. The New England Patriots, coached by the 66-year-old veteran Bill Belichick, devised a stifling defensive game plan that limited the Rams to three points. On a day that Mr. McVay became the youngest coach in Super Bowl history, he also tied another record—fewest points scored. Maybe I'm trying to make a case for experience, and I'm a bit biased as I hit my mid 50s. > The main reason veteran leaders rarely fail dramatically is that they’ve failed before. They’ve learned where problems come from and how to spot them in the larval stages. Their genius is being able to identify a ship’s weakest rivets before setting sail, and formulating a plan that protects them from unsustainable pressure. Experience definitely plays into the failure equation, but in order to learn we need to provide opportunities for failure to everyone on the experience continuum. In fact, we know that some of the best and most innovative ideas often come from folks with less experience and hence less blinders from preconceived frameworks. So what do we need to put into place to hit the sweet spot? For starters, a less experienced person can be supported by others with more experience. This new leader must be receptive to receiving the lessons of that experience, but also confident and able to evaluate those lessons balanced with new ideas and thinking. Perhaps more importantly is an environment that encourages and supports a scientific approach to problem-solving and investigating new opportunities, such as PDCA and the kata derivative. What is the current state? What is the ultimate goal? What barriers are in the way of achieving that goal? What is the next experiment that can be run to remove a barrier, and what are the expected results? What are the potential risks, and are those risks reasonable and acceptable? If not, can they be mitigated to an acceptable level? Then run the experiment and reflect on what actually happened, what was learned, and how that be applied to the next experiment. Failure can be a great learning tool, especially if it is planned. Create an environment that supports and learns from failure, but also use the scientific method, coupled with experience, to understand and mitigate the risks. ### Teaching Thinking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/teaching-thinking/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:06:59.000Z *In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few. - Shunryu Suzuki* A couple of recent Harvard Business Review articles have discussed how [higher education isn't preparing graduates](https://hbr.org/2019/01/does-higher-education-still-prepare-people-for-jobs?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for the workforce and how [engineers need experience in nonlinear thinking](https://hbr.org/2019/01/how-mindfulness-can-help-engineers-solve-problems?ref=kevinmeyer.com). There's an interesting relationship between the topics, and it also brought back fond memories of my own experience in [engineering school](https://www.rpi.edu/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) over three decades (!) ago. Chemical engineering provides an exceptional foundation for process thinking. Chemicals generally flow in continuous fashion via pipes through various reactors to create a finished product. Small batches and work-in-process inventory are rare as the stability of WIP intermediates can be low. I mastered the theory and knew the equations, and enjoyed the puzzle of how do you turn raw component A into finished product B. I've always been a hands-on guy, and after three years of heavy duty theory and equations I felt a need to see it in action. I took a semester and a summer off and did a co-op at a Nestlé manufacturing and research facility in Connecticut. This turned out to be one of the favorite experiences of my life and set the stage for my career in manufacturing. The Nestlé facility was a large production operation that made hydrolyzed plant protein for bouillon cubes. It's a very nasty process where plant foods such as soy and corn are boiled in hydrochloric acid to break down the proteins into amino acids which are then neutralized in sodium hydroxide. Nearly continuous flow, tens of thousands of gallons per day, strong acids and bases, and a very, very pungent product. Heaven! Well, not for the owner of the house I was renting a room in, who kicked me out after a couple months due to the stench I always came home with. The research side of the facility was also working with continuous flow production of chocolate custards. This was interesting as the entire production line, miles of stainless steel piping, was completely disassembled every night, cleaned, and put back together before the much smaller day production shift arrived. My first introduction to quick changeover. They were also experimenting with removing the alcohol from wine (why??) using reverse osmosis and the first attempts to package liquid in brick cartons - which we see everywhere today. My engineering courses had taught me *convergent thinking*, which is "linear, going through a list of steps to get to a single answer." I was assigned projects at Nestle that required *divergent thinking*, where there were many potential answers, and pathways to achieve them. I wasn't prepared for this, and it took some time to break out of the strict linear thinking mindset and start using what I'd eventually learn is a "beginner's mind" perspective when looking at problems. As the HBR article describes, *"both types of thinking are important to finding the best final solution, but divergent thinking is particularly important for developing innovative solutions. However, divergent thinking skills are largely ignored in engineering courses, which tend to focus on a linear progression of narrow, discipline-focused technical information. This leads engineering students to become experts at working individually and applying a series of formulas and rules to structured problems with a 'right' answer."* When I returned to school I had an even more difficult time focusing purely on the theory when I knew reality required a completely different perspective. But I muddled through, graduated, and have spent the next three decades making stuff and then helping people continuously improve how they make stuff. I do know of some schools that are putting a lot of effort into developing more open-ended thinking skills with a hands-on "learn by doing" approach. [CalPoly,](https://www.calpoly.edu/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) near me, is one good example. But more can be done. The second [HBR article](https://hbr.org/2019/01/does-higher-education-still-prepare-people-for-jobs?ref=kevinmeyer.com) points out that, in addition to divergent thinking skills, employers are asking universities to train students on soft skills. Not just the "how to act in a business setting" but also "how to learn." > *While employers want candidates with higher levels of EQ, resilience, empathy, and integrity, those are rarely attributes that universities nurture or select for in admissions. Additionally, employers like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, have highlighted the importance of learnability — being curious and having a hungry mind — as a key indicator of career potential.* That "hungry mind" is important both to drive creative innovation, but also to help organizations ensure the investment they're making in their own internal training will create a return. Without knowing how to learn, and wanting to learn, both will fail. I've mentioned before that a demonstrated hunger for new knowledge, and the ability to distill, apply, and teach it, is the primary characteristic I look when hiring managers and especially executives. The same characteristic is increasingly important for all employees at all levels. ### Herb Kelleher: Creating Economic Value Based on Human Values URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/herb-kelleher-creating-economic-value-based-on-human-values/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:08:16.000Z A legendary CEO, Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, passed away last week. Many articles have already been written memorializing him, including [this one by Bill Taylor](https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-legacy-of-herb-kelleher-cofounder-of-southwest-airlines?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in the Harvard Business Review and [this one](https://www.leanblog.org/2019/01/remembering-herb-kelleher-the-power-of-authentically-engaging-employees/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by our friend Mark Graban, but I'd like to reinforce a couple attributes that are important to me. The key to Kelleher's success was his focus on people - customers, employees, and suppliers. He epitomized the "respect for people" (or "[human nature](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2018/12/10/respect-for-respect-for-human-nature/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)") pillar of lean and demonstrated how effective and powerful humble, authentic, and empathetic leadership can be. Bill writes, > *As I take stock of his life and legacy, what strikes me is how much all of us can learn from what he created and how he led—that you can create vast economic value based on genuine and generous human values, why what you hope to achieve in the marketplace must be reflected in what you build in the workplace, how in an age of disruption and transformation, simplicity and consistency matter most.* Southwest's mission was to "democratize the skies" by making it easy and affordable for everyone to fly. Kelleher and Southwest succeeded, and to this day reinforces this mission by eschewing tactics such as charging for carry on baggage. Kelleher viewed corporate rules as guideposts, but not walls, and encouraged his employees to "serve the customer regardless of what the rules were." The focus on people was also internal, with Southwest's "8 Freedoms" that created an incredible corporate culture, which includes the "freedom to innovate," the "freedom to achieve financial security," and the "freedom to learn and grow." Kelleher viewed business as an ecosystem where everyone could achieve success if they worked together, and there are many stories about how he actually helped competitors. Andrew Wagner described this well in a reply to Mark's article: > *There was an MIT Leaders for Manufacturing dissertation written about ten years ago by Ted Piepenbrock that studied “enterprise architectures.” It outlined two different approaches, “modular”, in which the company, shareholders, employees, suppliers, and customers were all interchangeable parts, and “integral” in which the opposite was true: companies, their shareholders, employees, suppliers, and customers were interlinked, committed, and interdependent on each others success.* > *Two companies most epitomized the “integral” enterprise: Toyota and Southwest Airlines.* I would add "competitors" to that list as, similar to Southwest, Toyota has partnered with competitors such as GM (NUMMI) in an attempt to create mutual value. Unfortunately that mindset is so unusual that those partnerships aren't often successful. Finally, a third characteristic that led to Southwest's success is a focus on simplicity and consistency - perhaps an anathema to the pressure most organizations feel today to rapidly innovate. A single type of plane to reduce maintenance costs and increase interchangeability, a simple boarding method rather than the ten or more zones of larger carriers, and a point-to-point network instead of hub-and-spoke. Take some time to reflect on Herb Kelleher. How can we learn and improve from his drive to build value via a focus on people? How can we grow customer value while also being authentic, and empathetic to the needs of our team? How can we look outside of our organization, even at our competitors, and help them succeed so we all succeed? And where can we grow by embracing simplicity and consistency? ### Avoid the Arbitrary Constraints of Time URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/avoid-the-arbitrary-constraints-of-time/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:12:56.000Z It's that time of the year again when many people ask "where did the year go?" and furiously try to wrap up projects, crank out potentially unnecessary production, create plans and budgets for next year, and perhaps start reflecting on the past twelve months. Why? What is so special about the calendar year? Over a decade ago Steve Player did a presentation at a [Lean Accounting Summit](http://www.leanfrontiers.com/lams/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) where he challenged us to stop "budgeting to an arbitrary wall" - the end of the calendar year. That resonated with our team (which included our CFO), so we went back to our company and announced we were stopping budgeting altogether, and would instead make the best financial decision at whatever point in time we were at. It was a dramatic, and positive, change for our company. We also took the concept a step further. We tried to no longer constrain projects to arbitrary timeframes like "years" or "months," but instead determined was was an appropriate, and challenging, target for completion. Early in most lean journeys companies learn to stop trying to maximize production at the end of a calendar month just to "make the month look good." Instead, production is matched to demand, regardless of time frame. For many organizations a subsequent and similar hurdle is to get over the fear of insufficient demand. Traditional companies like having sufficient demand in the following month to ensure the operation is fully loaded, but as they remove waste and streamline processes their lead times may shorten to less than a month. This is good - but can be a bit gut-wrenching not having the next month "filled." The increased value to the customer almost always creates a good outcome, and over time the confidence is regained. The importance of the arbitrary concept of "months" decreases. I'm trying to become more cognizant of when I put activities into arbitrary time blocks, and I even attempt to minimize the impact of time altogether. For example, I stopped wearing a watch years ago and recently I've even stopped wearing my Fitbit. Having my phone in my pocket is sufficient for when I really need to know the time, and is remote enough so I'm not continually aware of it. My wife and I are currently in Hawaii for twelve days (not two weeks!) to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We're staying on the north shore of Oahu, right on the Banzai Pipeline beach where world class surfers are participating in the [Vans World Cup of Surfing](http://www.vanstriplecrownofsurfing.com/vansworldcupofsurfing2018?ref=kevinmeyer.com). It's spectacular to watch right from the house we're renting, especially a few days ago when there was a [monster swell](https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2018/11/25/high-surf-warning-effect-parts-state/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). It took a little getting used to waves far taller than our house coming right at us, but then breaking and flattening, ending just a few feet from the deck. Somewhat unsettling, especially at night. Surfing competitions are interesting as they are completely dependent on weather, which destroys any attempt to align with time. The competition only takes a couple days, but is scheduled for two weeks. Each morning the organizers determine if conditions are right and make a call as to whether it will be held. If it is, then the competitors, judges, spectators, press, and support services such as food vendors and traffic control, are notified. A complex logistics chain must remain flexible, independent of time, ready to respond within just a couple hours. A similar defocusing on time can happen to us as individuals. Consider the difference between chronological and biological age. Some of us are lucky enough to have a biological age considerably younger than our chronological age - or at least it feels that way. Yet we make decisions on our future based on our chronological age. My father in-law worked hard his entire life, and unfortunately due to a biological age that was older than his chronological age he passed away just a couple years after retiring from GM. He was unable to enjoy a long retirement filled with the travel and projects he was looking forward to. In some cases you can influence your biological age while in some, such as with my father in-law and his battle with brain cancer, you can't. But how could decisions change? Although I feel like I'm in good health and great shape, I know I don't know everything. So I try to live life to the fullest, every day, and not put off new experiences. Time can be an appropriate measure of progress or relative change, such as my anniversary or a reduction in manufacturing lead time. Time can be a valuable tool, but as with most concepts in lean it is just that - a tool. It needs to be used deliberately, judiciously, and only after understanding the "why?" it is needed. For example, I do use the pomodoro method to be more productive, and I have a 30 minute hourglass on my desk. I have found that removing all distractions and focusing on a single task is more productive and hence adds value. However, I do not try to constrain the task to 30 minutes - that is just the amount of time I will focus solely on it. Some tasks take more time, some less. I have also found that a deliberate and planned reflection activity is powerful every four to six weeks. It is not a "monthly" activity anymore (it used to be), but is based on what I have found to be a timeframe that allows both sufficient activity and with sufficient recall of the past. I do not constrain the reflection to a set amount of time, but go through a planned set of questions. As I begin to organize more around kata experiments driving toward a desired end state, this reflection process may change again. So at this arbitrary time of the year, think about how time influences you. Where does it unnecessarily create constraints? Does it add value? If not, how will you change your relationship with time? ### Looking Forward With Alfred Adler URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/looking-forward-with-alfred-adler/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:13:41.000Z *Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations. - Alfred Adler* I'm not really sure how it started, but one day a couple months ago I found myself diving down an internet rabbit hole in search of more information on a guy named Alfred Adler. Adler was an Austrian psychotherapist in the early 1900s who, although a good friend of Sigmund Freud, developed a theory of individual psychology nearly the opposite of Freud's. Adler's perspective can most simply be described as "look forward, not backward." Whereas Freud focused on how the past affects current decisions (etiological), Adler suggested focusing on how a current decision will affect the future (teleological). Like every varietal of both legitimate and fad psychological theory, this spawned some self-help books. Not usually my genre, but I came across a fascinating book with a unique presentation style, and spent a few days knocking it out. [The Courage to Be Disliked](https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happiness/dp/1501197274/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga is sort of like Adler meets Stoicism. The entire book is a Socratic dialogue between a student and a philosopher, which helps make it an enjoyable read for the non-psychologist. It doesn't veer off the deep end too often, and simply tries to help you reframe your perspective to focus on a future driven by goals that then guide current day decisions. Now the reason I will sometimes venture into individual psychology is because there's often an analogue to organizational psychology or even basic organizational leadership. This book slides right into that, and I immediately thought of several relevant parallels. Consider the craziness of budgeting that most organizations unfortunately endure. Sometime around September or October the process will begin, looking backwards at financial history then imposing some arbitrary mandate like "keep spending flat while increasing sales 25%." That preliminary budget will go up the chain, get bloodied up to further veer from any potential reality, and after lots of anguish and gnawing of teeth, will be set in stone retroactively around February or March. At which time it's already outdated and the underlying assumptions, if there were any meaningful ones to begin with, have probably diverged from current business reality. Therefore it's obviously time to start spending countless hours on variance analysis, coming up with explanations for missing budget, and presentations to executives on what will be done to fix it. To top it off, the entire process is based on an arbitrary calendar year, which is usually completely unrelated to desired business activities which are often unrelated to creating customer value. A decade ago I was president of a mid-sized medical device company. We were well into our lean journey, and I was starting to think about [lean accounting](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/lean-accounting-course?ref=kevinmeyer.com). I dragged our CFO to one of the first [Lean Accounting Summits](http://www.leanfrontiers.com/lams/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), where there were several presentations on the craziness of budgeting, the silliness of arbitrary calendar year timeframes, and the incredible waste created by the budgeting and then variance analysis process. At the end our CFO looked at me, nodded, and the day we got back we told the entire company that we were going to stop budgeting. Effective immediately. As a private company, we could do that. We stopped, and after some initial panic the accounting department found they could now spend a lot more time helping the operations group analyze and thereby improve costs, and the other departments could focus on improvement. We stopped looking backwards and using the past to guide our decisions. Instead we set goals for the future and made financial decisions with that in mind. Those goals were tied to hoshin plans, and reviewed quarterly. Although we still reported financials monthly with a calendar year summary, projects and goals, and the associated funding, were not tied to the calendar year. (Side note: one interesting downside we observed after a couple years was that the old traditional budgeting process had provided a lot of informal Finance 101 training for the non-accounting folks. Without budgeting we ended up having to find other ways to provide that exposure.) Yes, understanding the past can be important for context. But just as with a balanced individual life you should put the past behind you and focus on the future, spend most of your organization's time looking forward, focused on goals that are tied to principles, strategies, and creating customer value. ### Treating Lean Psychosis URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/treating-lean-psychosis/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:14:35.000Z The treatment of people with severe mental illness often means locking them away in large, impersonal facilities or letting them bounce between short stays at in-patient units at major hospitals, followed by a rapid decline of functioning sometimes resulting in homelessness, then back again. This is especially true for psychotic disorders such as experiencing hallucinations and hearing voices. It's a broken, ineffective system with minimal respect and compassion for the patient, and hasn't changed much in centuries. The only real change is that the patients are now highly medicated, often further hindering recovery. Many psychiatrists don't believe a full recovery from severe psychotics disorders is even possible. My wife is a therapist at a small non-profit organization that operates facilities for the severely mentally ill, usually including psychotic disorders. Their approach is radically different, with "community members" (not "patients") living in an actual home in a small town, with full-time support via a trained "room mate" and therapists that spend several hours at a time with the community member. Their entire purpose is to help community members help themselves by understanding their issue, confronting it, and overcoming it - while living in society. It's not traditional therapy, but more just being with them as a supporting companion. The person is treated as an equal, and respected to the extent that they are included in all treatment meetings. The program is very expensive, not covered by insurance, and due to the highly respectful and individualized regimen, is difficult to scale. But it is also very effective, with lasting results. To further understand the concepts behind the program, my wife is reading one of the foundation texts, [*Recovering Sanity*](https://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Sanity-Compassionate-Understanding-Pyschosis/dp/1590300009/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Edward Podvoll. I always like to explore and learn something a bit different, so I thought I'd read it too. The author tells several stories of people who have been able to fully recover from severe psychotic disorders by becoming self-aware and confronting the psychosis on their own. One such person was John Perceval, who was an English nobleman in the very early 1800s. He began to hear voices, started to listen and respond to them, and consequentially was institutionalized in an asylum for several years. He goes through a cycle of first listening to the voices, responding to and being guided by them, then being self-aware enough to doubt the voices. Those doubts create moments of clarity that allow him to confront the "spirits and demons," and after a lot of hard work and introspection he is then eventually able to fully recover. But the system doesn't believe recovery is possible, so it takes several more years before he is released. Upon his release he sues the asylum, various doctors, and even his mother for malpractice. Perceval publishes the detailed notes he kept (and hid) while institutionalized, leading to public awareness of the problem. He goes on to found a patient advocacy group that was very successful in changing the English laws to support, respect, and show compassion for the patients. This included mandating a judicial review before confinement, improved conditions inside hospitals, treatment regimens that include using homes and keeping families and especially children together, and standardized care models backed by outcomes and science, not societal fear and paranoia. This was in the mid-1800s, in England. And he was building off of similar changes that had already taken place in France a couple decades earlier. How little has changed since then, and perhaps we've even regressed. The core concept driving my wife's organization is a rejection of "asylum mentality." Asylum mentality is the traditional method of exerting power over others, in this case "therapeutic power" which leads to "therapeutic aggression" that can thwart the process of recovery. Instead the patient, the community member, is respected as an equal, and is supported while he or she actively confronts the psychosis. It's a much longer process, but far more sustainable as the person learns how to take individual corrective action when relapses occur. There is also the recognition, and acceptance, that recovery is non-linear. Setbacks are to be expected, and learned from. In a way, that's analogous to a lean transformation (and I don't really like that term - it's a journey). The ones that are the most solid and sustainable take a long time, but the organization understands the underlying concepts. It is not just a set of tools that can be thrown at a problem, perhaps by a consultant from outside the organization, but a true understanding of *why* it is being done. What is the problem or opportunity and what is the appropriate tool for that specific circumstance? What is the next experiment being run within a scientific PDCA problem-solving framework? It's the power of owned understanding versus simply being told what to do. That's not the only analogy. Another one has to do with observation, which is critical to both recovering from psychosis and a lean transformation. Consider what Podvall, and indirectly Perceval, say in *Recovering Sanity*: > So when a leader goes to the gemba and observes the process, is it non-reciprocal or reciprocal? Is just the leader observing or are others involved? What lenses, or biases, is the observer limited by? Is the patient, the people working at the gemba, involved? Are they being heard, respected, and shown empathy and compassion? Are they being taught to observe, to learn, to own, and to confront and fix the problems? Supporting, respecting, and encouraging the patient to observe, understand, and take action to confront issues is what makes change effective and sustainable. ### Midnight at the Gemba URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/midnight-at-the-gemba/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:15:10.000Z In the late 1990s I was working in the Silicon Valley for a Fortune-50 medical device company, responsible for a drug infusion pump manufacturing operation. I had just completed a crazy period where I had also "temporarily" (months and months...) led the advanced engineering department after that manager had transferred to a different location. I was finally settling back into one job when I was offered a position to run the company's largest molding facility in a different state. Of course I accepted, without asking more than a couple questions. A month later I arrived to a large operation with 60 heavy presses in a monster cleanroom, running at full capacity, 24/7/365, to make medical device components for other company operations throughout the world. And it was several *months* behind schedule. Downstream plants were shutting down every week, the scrutiny ("help") from corporate was enormous, and I knew I wouldn't be sleeping much for a while. How do you increase capacity, quickly, when you're already pushing every machine to the limit, around the clock? This became my introduction to lean. We went down the traditional path of spending millions on new presses, which had a lead time of a few months. In the meantime I also did some research and came across the [Association for Manufacturing Excellence](http://www.ame.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) where some fine gents like Doc Hall, Dan McDonnell, and Dave Hogg taught me about quick changeover. By the time the new presses arrived we had caught up with demand and were even starting to think about retiring old presses. I was hooked on lean and it changed the trajectory of my career. Gemba Academy, and our strong support of AME, is one way I try to give back to help others be similarly successful. But that's not the point of this story. Those of you who have worked at 24/7 facilities know that the night shifts can be a bit crazy - or even scary. This operation worked a 4/3/3/4 rotation of 12 hour shifts, which gives the benefit of long weekends but can be pretty grueling long hours. I soon learned about some "interesting" issues on the night shift. Let's just say that sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll covers about 50% of it, with the other half being quality and productivity. Which is how you'd like critical medical device components to be made, right? Perhaps I should have asked a few more questions before taking the job? On the positive side I had a terrific staff that genuinely wanted to improve the operation. They gave a young kid like me a lot of support, even when I started trying those crazy lean ideas that my new AME friends were telling me about. But even before we dug into quick changeover, and before I knew what a "gemba" was, I knew we had to get those issues on the night shift resolved. I thought a big reason for the issues was lack of attention and awareness by the managers, who primarily worked the day shift. So I had my first idea: once a month we'd have our staff meeting at midnight. You can imagine how that went over. Ka-boom. To their credit, my entire extended staff (I requested that supporting managers from QA, finance, HR, etc also attend) really did show up for that first meeting, even though some of them had an hour commute. We went over the usual agenda items for a half hour, then we all went and walked around. We met people we had never seen before, talked to supervisors, and experienced the operation at night. What was planned to be a one hour meeting actually ended around 3am... there was just so much to see and learn. We realized that the issues weren't just due to a lack of awareness by the day shift managers, but were usually driven by the night shift feeling like they were being ignored and unsupported. They also experienced unique problems ranging from being unable to quickly change to a new job due to lack of materials control and QA support to having a much worse break and "lunch" experience due to the cafeteria and nearby fast food options being closed. Snowy parking lots weren't plowed at night, without natural light the factory felt more dark and cold, and the perception was that they were outcasts and loners even though many wanted that shift for a variety of reasons - usually to support their families. Our eyes were opened, we paid attention, and we took action. Over the next several months most of the issues were resolved and the productivity and quality of the night shift began to match the day shift. We were also able to capture and capitalize on the ideas and creativity of that shift, and since they had operated so independently they were actually better at developing and implementing solutions than the day shift. As Toyota's Fujio Cho famously said, "Go see, ask why, show respect." Before we even knew about Toyota and lean, we realized the power of going to the gemba, discarding preconceived beliefs, and listening to and supporting the people. When we soon began to try quick changeover and then other lean tools, that respect paved the way for more support, enthusiasm, and results. Are you respecting *all* of your people and tapping their potential? ### When Noise Masks the Problem URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-noise-masks-the-problem/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T00:59:30.000Z Last week I was reading Mark Graban's latest book, Measures of Success, which does a great job of discussing how to use data to effectively lead and manage an organization. With new technologies it has become so easy to capture data that we often go overboard - and really never understand why we are grabbing data and what it actually means. One concept in the book is learning to discern true signals from noise, and then doing something about them. This made me ponder when signals might be lost (or improperly conjured?) among noise in qualitative situations. Actually, a more correct analogy is the classic lean concept of draining water - waste - to expose rocks - problems. It hit me that I had just experienced such a situation with a medical condition I hope I'm recovering from when you read this. The day before this post is scheduled, I'm [having surgery](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shoulder-surgery-for-rotator-cuff-tear-and-calcific-tendonitis-my-story/) for a painful shoulder condition - calcific tendonitis. As a result of an injury to a tendon, the body sometimes screws up and starts replacing tendon tissue with calcium. Usually it soon realizes the mistake and reabsorbs the calcium and replaces it with tissue, but in some situations, like mine, it doesn't. So I now have a 2 centimeter hard calcium spike shredding my right supraspinatis tendon. Through the wonders of arthroscopic surgery the calcium will be removed and the tendon repaired. It's not a fun recovery - four weeks in a sling and sleeping upright followed by three months of physical therapy - but it has a very high rate of success. \[Update: surgery went well, but he also found and repaired a bone spur and torn rotator cuff.\] I began noticing the problem a few years ago after I injured my shoulder yanking a bag out of the overhead compartment of a plane. Work outs, particularly movements that put pressure or strain on the shoulder (pull ups, push ups, burpees, sled push, even a downward dog!) have become increasingly painful. However until recently it has been easy to modify and still get a decent work out so I just chalked it up to aging and moved on. During regular daily activities I usually don't notice any pain, and I've always been able to sleep well. Those daily activities covered the real problem, which I realized when I did [the silent retreat I told you about last June](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-solitude-and-silence-to-enable-reflection/). Surrounded by silence and tranquility, I soon realized I was really, and unexpectedly, in constant pain. I also realized that I was modifying my normal activities to compensate far more than I realized, from eating to how I hold a book while reading, to even how I grip the steering wheel in a car. That was the signal that something needed to be done. An MRI and visit to the doctor confirmed the diagnosis and that the problem was only going to get worse. Surgery was recommended. Where else may you be experiencing a qualitative problem that is being hidden? Is the overall great outward performance of a team member masking an underlying issue where she or he is actually unhappy or has untapped potential? Perhaps that overgrown section of garden is hiding the gopher hole of a varmint that is silently destroying your yard? Does your team need to go offsite for a day, without cell phones and email, to properly focus on and discuss issues? The analogy is admittedly not perfect, but the point is that sometimes problems, and their scope, do not become apparent until extraneous information is removed. If you see a potential issue, isolate it and focus on it, and see if it is something larger. Then do something meaningful to correct it. ### Shoulder Surgery for Rotator Cuff Tear and Calcific Tendonitis - My Story URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shoulder-surgery-for-rotator-cuff-tear-and-calcific-tendonitis-my-story/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:18:04.000Z This is the story of my journey through shoulder surgery. I've been helped by many such stories, so I thought I'd try to give back by sharing my own story with some tips and recommendations. **Background** In early 2010 I yanked a bag out of the overhead compartment of a plane and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. I didn't do anything about it thinking the pain would go away, which it did over the next couple weeks. A little over a year later I realized that the range of motion of my right shoulder and arm was much less than my left. There wasn't any pain, I simply couldn't move my arm behind my back like I should be able to. I went to the doctor and after an MRI with contrast I was diagnosed with frozen shoulder. Basically since I didn't do anything for the original pain a year earlier, I subconsciously didn't move my arm through the full range of motion to avoid pain, so it "froze" in the injured configuration. A cortisone shot and three months of physical therapy restored near full range of motion. Six years after that I began to notice increasing pain and limited range of motion (limited more by pain than a physical stop) in that same shoulder. After another MRI with contrast and an ultrasound I was diagnosed with calcium deposits. Apparently when a tendon is injured the body will sometimes replace the tendon tissue with calcium. It usually realizes the mistake and reabsorbs the calcium (which is actually a painful process). In my case that wasn't happening - the calcium was increasing. I've always known I had issues with extra calcium, be it from needing to have my teeth cleaned every three months to issues with my eyes to even the multiple very strong baby teeth I still have. It's one reason I stay away from dairy when possible. I lived with the pain for a couple years but it has had an increasing effect on my workouts and general living. Anything that puts strain on the shoulder, be it pull ups, push ups, planks, even downward dog in yoga, has become very painful. In mid-2018 I saw the orthopedic surgeon and we agreed it was time to remove the calcium deposits. **Preparing for Surgery** I knew that the surgery itself was arthroscopic and wouldn't be too bad, but that the recovery would be tedious - though with a high probability of success. My wife had had a much more difficult shoulder surgery less than a year ago to fix a very rare condition where the rhomboid muscles detach from the scapula. In fact, there are only a couple surgeons in the country that perform that surgery. So I knew from helping her what life would be like with a sling, how difficult sleeping and daily activities would be, and how long physical therapy would take. Her surgery was successful, by the way. Since I was over 50, a battery of lab work was required to ensure I could safely undergo surgery. I had had surgery before - strabismus surgery to correct an eye alignment issue - so I knew I tolerated full anesthesia well. I had an EKG, chest x-ray, and blood work done at a local medical center, which was then reviewed and signed off on by my primary care doctor. All looked good. I spent the next couple weeks working on tasks and projects around the house that required two good arms since I knew it would be several months before I'd be able to do them after surgery. Cleaning up the garage, doing some gardening, and so forth. A week before surgery I had my pre-op with the surgeon where he verified that my lab worked good, fitted me for a sling (one of the large ones with a pillow to keep the arm several inches away from the chest), went over the details of the surgery, and gave me a couple prescriptions for pain meds (Oxycontin and Naproxen). A couple days before the surgery I picked up the two prescribed pain meds. I also set up the bed for sleeping upright. Many people choose to sleep in a recliner, but I thought a bed with a tall wedge pillow and a "pillow fort" around me would be better. I also plugged in an iPhone/iPad charger with a long enough cord so I could use it in bed, cleared off the night stand, and so forth. **Surgery** My surgery was scheduled for 1pm, with arrival at the surgery center at 11:30am. They expected that I'd be released around 3:30pm. No eating OR drinking after midnight, so we had a nice big dinner out the night before. The surgery center is about a half hour drive from my house so my wife drove me and planned on running errands while I was being worked on. I wore elastic-waist shorts, which I'd end up wearing for a long time since buttoning/snapping/etc would be nearly impossible. I also wore a button-front shirt to make it easy to get dressed after surgery. I was checked in, taken back to the prep area, changed into a gown, and an IV was started in my left hand. I'm fortunate that I have huge veins with very little fat on my hands so that was a piece of cake. The nurses each verified that I was having my right shoulder worked on. The surgeon came in and also re-verified this, signing his initials on that shoulder. We went over the surgery plans again, and he mentioned the anesthesiologist would give me a choice of full heavy anesthesia, or lighter (but still full) anesthesia but with a nerve block on my right shoulder and arm. The advantage of the nerve block is that anesthesia could be lighter which could lessen nausea, and it would also keep the surgical area completely numb for 12-18 hours which is the most painful period. Seems like a no-brainer so when the anesthesiologist stopped by I opted for that. He did say I'd already be sedated before he used a needle to deliver the nerve block, so I wasn't concerned. I'll tell you more about the nerve block experience in the next section. I was wheeled into the OR at 1pm sharp. The cuffs around my ankles were connected to a machine to apply pressure so I wouldn't get blood clots. The sedative was added to the IV, and that's the last thing I remember before surgery. I woke up pretty groggy with the nurse and my wife trying to get me to sip some apple juice. I did, and remember that there was very little pain - just a lot of pressure on my right shoulder. I was already dressed with my sling on. They helped me go to the bathroom (apparently a full two liters of fluid was pumped into me!). By 4pm we were on our way home, and I crawled into bed (upright!) by 5pm. The surgery took a bit longer than expected because, in addition to the expected calcium removal, they found and removed a bone spur, cleaned the labrum, and repaired a partially-torn rotator cuff. So much for a quick recovery - rotator cuff repairs apparently take a lot more PT. Since I hadn't eaten since midnight I was pretty hungry, but the effects of the anesthesia caused anything in my mouth to dry out. It seemed like I couldn't drink enough to keep crackers from creating a cement-like mixture in my mouth. But I got a few down. **Week 1 After Surgery** The first night was rough, very rough. Not because of the pain, but almost because of the lack of it! The nerve block, which sounded great initially, started to freak me out. Imagine your entire shoulder and arm feeling like your mouth does when it's numbed for a tooth to be pulled, but for 12+ hours. I'm somewhat claustrophobic, so having no feeling in such a large part of my body was disturbing - especially in a very tired state. Next time I may opt for regular anesthesia instead. The nerve block wore off somewhat suddenly around 5am, and I downed a couple oxycontins and a naproxen. It took about an hour for those to kick in, and they made me pretty drowsy so I actually dozed off for a couple hours. I spent most of the first day wondering if I had done the right thing. 30 days in a sling sleeping upright felt like it was going to be a nightmare. Did I really have sufficient pain to warrant surgery? Yes I did, and it was only going to get worse, but at the time I was second-guessing myself. The pain meds were very effective - I never felt much pain. I did feel like there was a heavy brick on my shoulder though! That was from the big compression bandage, as well as the large amount of fluid pumped into the shoulder to open it up to make surgery easier. The second night was better. I took the pain meds right before I crawled into bed for the last time, and they made me drowsy enough that I fell asleep for a couple hours. I made sure to have pillows and a yoga bolster on both sides so I wouldn't slump or roll either off the bed or onto my bad shoulder. "Better" still meant being up most of the night though. The second day was fairly productive, and I even got in a short walk. I was eating normally, but noticed that, as I was warned, the pain meds were slowing down "the pipes." A little Dulcolax resolved that. I tried typing and doing some small movements with my right hand, but after a few minutes my arm and shoulder would start hurting, so I decided that was a bad idea. The third night was easier, thanks to a tiny sliver of Xanax, maybe 0.1 mg. Just that small amount relaxed me enough to sleep almost through the night. That morning I took the last dose of pain meds and have had very little pain since. Being on pain meds for just over two days feels pretty good to me. I was also able to take off the heavy compression bandage on the third day, which was a huge relief. I could then finally see the four sutured cuts for the arthroscope instruments - two more than they expected thanks to finding the bone spur and rotator cuff tear. All looked good so I put simple bandages on them for a few more days. What was a bit more freaky was the bruising down my arm and especially bicep. This continued to get worse for a few days, but I had read online that it was normal. The next few days became increasingly easier. I was able to type and do office work by the end of the third day, do some small house projects, and by the sixth day I even took a shower instead of a sponge bath - though I did cover the stitches. I am allowed to have my arm hanging at my side for brief periods. Showering with one arm takes some creativity, but isn't too hard. The sling is a bit of a pain, but I was getting used to it. As requested on the post-op instructions, I took my arm out three times a day to do "pendulums" - just leaning over and swinging my arm in circles with no active muscle movement. This is important to avoid scar tissue buildup, which will limit range of motion. I did notice that the range of motion was pretty limited, especially in the upward direction, but I had been told to expect that. After I started walking longer distances I found my arm would sweat quite a bit in the sling, but it can be easily washed. I started driving short distances a day after I took my last pain pill. Some docs will say to wait until the sling is off, but others say it's ok to drive short distances with an automatic transmission as long as you're not on narcotics. Since it's my right shoulder, fastening the seat belt is a bit of a chore and the twisting hurts a bit. I also find that using just one arm can be fatiguing, so it will be short distances for quite a while. I'm in a small coastal fishing village of just 10,000 people, so driving isn't exactly difficult. Holding any kind of weight your surgical side hand is difficult and not a good idea, even with the arm in the sling. Even a coffee will cause some pain the first few days. This became easier toward the end of the week, perhaps too easy as it's still not a good idea since you need to protect the arm and shoulder. I also started walking a lot to get back up to my 10,000 steps a day. I had spent the last several years getting into pretty good shape and I was worried that the surgery would kick me off track. I knew my upper body strength was going to suffer from several months of recovery, but I want to stay in as good of shape as possible. One key event of note was bumping into (thankfully not literally) someone on the street who said he had had the same surgery just two months ago. He was out of his sling and moving his arm, though he was still working on raising it higher than his shoulder. Talking to someone who was on his way back to normal was a big motivator. My first followup appointment was on the seventh day after surgery and went well. The stitches were easily removed and I was reassured that the bruising was typical - and actually less than normal. Apparently sometimes it spreads across the chest as well. A prescription for physical therapy was also called in, to start in a couple days. I was told to expect 3 months of range of motion therapy followed by 3 months of strengthening therapy. Ending my first week I'm not excited about three more weeks in a sling, sleeping upright, and months of PT. But since I am sleeping better I feel I can get through it (like I have a choice...). The pain has been minimal and I've been able to return to my work - though I'm lucky to work from a home office. **Week 2 After Surgery** PT started on Monday, which was the 10th day after surgery. I had a couple places to choose from, both with great reputations, but one was known for having the same person working with you the entire time, each time while the other moved you between stations with different therapists. I chose the one with the same therapist as I figured the relationship and continuity could be important. So far I think that was the correct decision. The first session was primarily an assessment. Filling out forms, the PT person reviewing my situation and analyzing my pain and range of motion, and then assigning some initial exercises. The initial exercises were (twice per day): - continue the pendulums - curls to move the elbow, taking care to keep the bicep close and in line with the side of the body - wrist movements - up/down, left/right, rotating clockwise/counterclockwise (forearm twists) - hand grip and splay (spreading the hand as wide as possible - just as important as grip!) - neck movements - up/down, laterals, rotating She then explained that my good shoulder (and back, and pec) has probably been compensating for my bad shoulder, even if I didn't realize it. I also explained that I have always had very tight hamstrings and would like to continue stretching those while avoiding any stress on the shoulder. The same with core strength, which I had worked hard at building up over the last few years. So she added the following that are somewhat unrelated to direct PT on the shoulder: - left (good) shoulder doorway pec stretch - bending hamstring stretch with the leg on a stool, using the good arm to hold onto something for balance - crunch with no upper body movement - body weight squats, taking care not to tense the upper body This particular PT place is affiliated and actually inside a large gym, so we added a couple items to keep my strength up where possible: - Calf raise machine - Leg curl machine (appropriate weight to avoid having to grip the machine or tense the upper body) - Leg extension machine - Leg press machine I discontinued the leg press as I immediately realized that I tensed my upper body and shoulders. Squats will have to do for now. I am also using the recumbent stationary bike to get in some cardio, being careful with the tension to avoid having to flex and tense the upper body. A regular stationary bike usually requires gripping the handles so that's probably not appropriate at this time. I find stationary cardio machines immensely boring, even with music or TV, so this is a tough one for me. I still prefer long walks, trying to keep over 10,000 steps each day. I did 16,000 steps on day 10 after surgery and that was a bit much - even in the sling my shoulder was jostled a bit too much and ached. Icing fixed it fast, but I dialed back the walking a bit for now. PT sessions were scheduled for 3x/week - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. The above exercises are on my own, so in the PT sessions she works on moving some of the smaller muscles around the shoulder, back (both sides), and arm. Then she pushes the range of motion of the arm and shoulder, taking note of how many degrees of movement I can get - and then pushing ever so slightly more. This is uncomfortable but not painful. The last 10-15 minutes of each session are for an electric stimulation (electrodes placed around the shoulder, current applied, feels like a very light electric shock pulsing the muscles) combined with ice. Very relaxing, and I usually nod off a bit. **Week 3 After Surgery** What has amazed me is how long the bruising has lasted. At 16 days after surgery my arm bruise is slightly better, but still very dark. I've asked about this and done my own research and it is apparently normal, and I won't have a long-term discoloration that I'll have to pass off as some kind of botched "wave tattoo." The incision wounds have healed very nicely and, in fact, are barely visible. This photo is right after I got out of the hot shower, so they are more pronounced. So I probably won't have any nice big "shark bite" type marks on my shoulder - so much for a great surfing story! PT continues, with no new exercises added. I've started to take a shower almost every day so I do my first round of exercises in the shower first thing, then I do the second round in the evening when we're watching some \[usually mindnumbing - I'm not a TV person\] TV. Icing is always a good relief, especially in the evening when it relaxes me prior to going to bed. Sleeping has become easier - perhaps too much so. I've tried just using a couple thick pillows instead of the wedge but have found the angle doesn't allow my arm/sling to hang right, so I wake up with some aching. I've skipped the sliver of xanax several nights and will probably discontinue that completely in the next day or two. I still haven't taken any pain meds since the third day or so after surgery. Amazing. Probably the biggest thing I'm noticing is that even with the walking and handful of gym exercises, I'm just not active enough to balance out even the reduced calorie intake, so I've put on a couple pounds. I'm looking at taking some more carbs out of the diet, more straight protein, and starting to up the walking a bit more. Yes, the recumbent bike is probably the best solution, but I get bored out of my mind after just five minutes. It's actually the only place I get bored - I can be happy in a white (padded?) room with just my thoughts. But put me on a recumbent bike and I go insane. I did start back up on the handful of supplements I take. Some of them, like fish oil, can thin the blood so I was told to stop them prior to surgery and for a couple weeks after. I definitely noticed the difference not taking my tumeric supplement. I've also loosened the sling a bit, especially around the waist. It's starting to look a little frayed on the sides, and the fuzzy material (to allow velcro to attach) does a great job of catching crumbs, hairs, and dirt. I need to fly to Dallas (two flights, longest is 3.5 hours) at the beginning of week 4, so I'm starting to think about that. I'm traveling with a couple coworkers, so they can help with my bag (which will be small anyway - just a 3 day trip). I've reserved seat locations so that my sling is not on the aisle side, and is between me and my smallest coworker to avoid annoying others. If I'm lucky my/our upgrades will come through and it will be a non-issue. **Week 4 After Surgery** The bruise is still there, but finally starting to fade. The incision points are nearly invisible, which is almost disappointing. PT has been going very well, though it does create some pain. The sessions usually begin with a review of the exercises I do on my own, my pain level, and so forth. Then she does some work on my back while I'm sitting up, then I take the sling off and lie down and she pushes the range of motion. External rotation is definitely the most constrained (about 25 degrees now) and also the most painful as she pushes it. Internal rotation is near normal, and up/down is at about 90 degrees which isn't too bad. This is all passive - I go limp and she moves my arm. The last 15 minutes of each session is spent connected to a STEM machine with a cold ice pack, which does a great job on the pain. I'll usually ice at least once more a couple hours later. What has been interesting is what she says about my "good half" - nonsurgical shoulder/back/arm/neck. They have been compensating for my painful side for years, and are also being stressed by the sling creating asymmetrical forces. So she spends a lot of time on that side loosening muscles and removing knots. I definitely notice it in the neck exercises (rotation, left/right, up/down) she has me do on my own. Lots of crackling and popping, which is a bit disturbing. This should go away, especially after I stop using the sling. The sling came with a ball to work on grip strength. Something my PT mentioned is that everyone works on grip strength, but you also need to work on "splay" strength - spreading the fingers. So I bought a [finger extension exercise band](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071JL6PYZ/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and it's working well. I have a three-day business trip this week so that will test flying. A TSA friend said that I'll be able to go through the normal scanner if the Pre-Check lane is open, but if it's not I'll have to go through the full body scanner that requires everything to be removed and my arms over my head - so I'd have to be manually wand checked. Shouldn't be a big deal. The sling comes off in a week. Just in the past week, perhaps from basic healing or the PT or probably a combination, I've felt a lot more comfortable and confident when the sling is off in the shower. I guess that confirms it's about time. I'll probably keep the sling (or sling without the abduction pillow) on while sleeping, although I've found I move very little. I'll also use it while traveling to help people avoid bumping me. Getting dresses is easy, even with zipping/buttoning jeans which was impossible a couple weeks ago. Tying shoes is still nearly impossible, but I've long been a fan of Olukai slip-ons. At the gym I've added the leg press back in, so getting some good lower body strength work in. I can do crunches with a slight shoulder raise without any pain or stress so that's helping the core. Hoping to start doing back extensions soon, then maybe side crunches in another couple weeks. **Month 2** You'd think I would be excited about removing the sling, which the doctor confirmed I could do 4 weeks after surgery. Up until two or three days before that date I was excited. Then I rapidly became apprehensive, and from my reading this is apparently common. The sling was protective. So when that day came, I kept it on until my PT appointment later in the day. She gave me some pointers on what to do and not do, which amounted to "protect it in crowds and from rolling on it at night, but everything else is ok as long as it doesn't cause sharp pain." Pretty simple. Also - don't lift anything heavier than a cup of coffee for the next few weeks. The sling came off at PT, and for the next several days at least I'll wear it at night (not a chore, since sleeping had become fairly regular and comfortable). I also put it on if I'm going to be in a crowded area and might get bumped. But I do go to the store and out for walks with it off. My shoulder ached quite a bit the first few days with the sling off. It just wasn't used to the movement. But this became easier and easier. I ice more with the sling off than with the sling on, and it helps. I also notice that the arm is extremely weak. In fact, for some of the exercises I need to use my good arm to hold and move my right arm because it can't even support itself! After three days I already notice a LOT more movement. PT is rough. In addition to the inactive movements the PT now has me help a bit - semi-active. Pushing those few extra degrees is painful - but not sharp pain. Just a stretch pain. It is rewarding to see the movement increase ever so slightly each time. More home exercises have been added, like sliding the arm along a table both in front and to the side, using a light stick for the good arm to move the right arm up and over. Range of motion is returning quickly in various directions, with the exception of external rotation. That will be the slowest recovery. The bruise is also clearing up rapidly, perhaps because moving the arm is getting blood flowing better? By the end of month 2, 8 weeks after surgery, I basically have full range of motion in all directions! There's perhaps a bit more that can be done when rotating the arm behind the back, but other than that I'm very happy. The pain is also completely gone, as is the bruise. I had a followup visit to the surgeon during week 7 and he thought I was about two weeks ahead of where most people are at this stage. I'd like to chalk it up to great PT, but the mechanics of what was done in my shoulder, as well as the surgeon's technique, is probably more important. Strength is a different matter. I've followed my PT's instructions to not add any weight to my exercises, and I notice that my bicep is fatigued after only a few reps of light curls. But I'm confident that will come back. I was struggling a bit to do all of the PT exercises every day. As I started to feel more back to normal it became harder to remember to do them. So I've gotten in the habit of going to the nearby gym first thing each morning and getting the PT exercises out of the way, as well as doing some strength work on other parts of the body. This new habit has accelerated my recovery. **Month 3** Going to the gym every morning has made all the difference. During month 3 I did not focus on real strength, but just flexibility and movement. I did several exercises with the cable machines, such as inner and external rotation, then up/down, side, and front. This seemed to both strengthen and add range of motion to the shoulder in all directions. I did it for both shoulders just to stay consistent. I also added quite a bit of core work - abs and back especially - to get those moving again. By the end of month 3 I really didn't have any signs that I had a significant surgery. There is no pain, and range of motion is probably 95% or so. The only time I can still feel a little stiffness is when I lie on a roller (along the spine) and spread my arms out and down to the floor. This has become a really good stretching exercise, doing several sets with the hands coming together in four different configurations - palm/palm, back/back, side/side, etc. **Month 4** This will be the last entry unless something significant occurs as I basically don't know what else to write. In Month 4 I began to add weights to strengthen the arms, and that strength came back very fast. By the end of month 4 I was very close to the strength for biceps, triceps, shoulder press, bench press, and so forth that I had been at before the surgery. I'm trying to remember how limiting the pain was before surgery, but really can't. There is no limiting pain now. Range of motion is at least as good as it was before the surgery. Strength is back. Onward. ### Thinking About Thinking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thinking-about-thinking/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:19:27.000Z For the past several years I've been fascinated by how we think - and how that affects us, our leadership, and the organizations we're a part of. A couple years ago I wrote about the beginner's mind and the [various forms of bias](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-the-beginning-with-ohno-suzuki-and-yoda/), particularly confirmation bias. Over the past couple months I've read three books that have expanded my view of how the world around us can influence how we think, and they have made me wonder about the impact on observation, discovery, and problem solving. First off was [Factfulness](https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Hans Rosling. Why do our perceptions seem to err to the negative when it comes to facts and opinions about the world? In the last fifty years the percentage of people living in poverty has fallen from 50% to less than 9%. 90% of girls (and 92% of boys) worldwide attend primary school, and violent crime has fallen significantly everywhere, yes including the U.S.. There are similar stories for the vaccination rate, deaths from disease, and deaths from war. Not every statistic, of course, but many of the ones we often read about. After millions of years of evolution our brains are wired to look for the dramatic and to pay attention to the negative as that often signals potential danger. In addition, we also retain a frame of reference partially governed by facts fed to us in our early education - which for some of us can be forty or fifty years ago. Perhaps most importantly, it is difficult for us to recognize the compounding effect of slow but continuous improvement. It's not "dramatic" and there is also little incentive for journalists to report on it so we simply may not hear about it. Next up was [But What If We're Wrong?](https://www.amazon.com/But-What-If-Were-Wrong/dp/0399184139/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Chuck Klosterman. Yes, the cover is really upside down. Klosterman's books are always a bit of a crazy treat as he likes to dive into unusual subject areas, but they are enjoyable and thought-provoking. In this book he tries to "take a look at this present as if it were the past." In effect, many years from now, what will people think of us? He dives into a variety of topics such as music, literature, the plight of the Native Americans, architecture, and physics. Klosterman interviews a variety of people, often on two sides of a perspective on a single topic, for example Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Green on whether we believe our understanding of current physics will remain solid into the future. Aristotle created an understanding of gravity that was accepted for almost two thousand years until it was upended by Newton, whose version was significantly tweaked by Einstein just relatively recently. Tyson argues that thanks to the rigor of math-based experimental physics over the past century, current theories will stand the test of time. Green believes we have only scratched the surface and our current understanding will appear analogous to old theories we've discarded and sometimes even ridicule. How quantum physics is beginning to link the physical world with consciousness and the incredible unknowns of a potential multiverse makes me lean toward Green's position. Finally, Walter Isaacson's [Leonardo Da Vinci](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501139150?ref=kevinmeyer.com) is easily the most intriguing and well-written biography I've ever read - on anyone. At over 600 pages it is daunting, but after you start it is hard to put down. Like a typical biography, I learned about his stupendous intellect - such that he had inferred the first and third laws of motion two hundred years before Newton and figured out how the heart's aortic valve worked more than four hundred years before medical science. But where Isaacson really shines is his description of Da Vinci as a human and his creative process. He had no ego, loved knowledge for the sake of knowledge, didn't compete with other intellectuals, and didn't care what other people thought of him. Unlike another genius of his era, Michelangelo, he was comfortable about being openly gay, and society and the Church accepted and even embraced that. Like many geniuses he was a perfectionist, but unlike most he was also an admitted procrastinator. This led to many failures, and he learned to embrace it. He knew when to stop and simply abandon a creative direction - whether it was art, a machine, or an anatomical investigation. He would then take a step back, reflect on what was learned, and often try a radically different approach instead just an incremental adjustment. He was conscious that what he was observing may not be the whole story - or even accurate - and believed a small change could be just a waste of time. The three books impact completely different angles of thinking, but have made me ask more - and deeper - questions about thinking and observation. When we're enlightened enough to leave the conference room and visit the gemba to "observe reality" are we really seeing it? In addition to the usual biases, are we able to recognize small ongoing activities that may compound to have a major impact in the future? Is the inner Neanderthal in us skewing the impact of the negative over the positive? Much has [been written](https://www.leanblog.org/2018/05/lessons-from-tesla-schooling-toyota-did-you-get-the-memo/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) lately about Elon Musk and Tesla building Model 3s in a tent, with lots of inventory, fixing problems after the cars are built (like GM did decades ago), "nano management," and pounding on people. Seems like a trajectory to catastrophe, and I count myself in the camp of those that don't want it to happen but believe it probably will. But if we take Klosterman's "look back from the future" perspective, what if these difficulties are the birth throes of something new and improved - perhaps even over lean and TPS? Highly unlikely in my opinion, but I should be open to the possibility. Can we discard the perspective of lean purism (or is it "puritanism"...?) and our own experiences with manufacturing and objectively consider it? Failure is something we all deal with, in different ways. Kata teaches us to try planned experiment after planned experiment, learning from the results of each and making small incremental changes to iterate to a desired future state. But what if, in some cases, a better approach was to just say "screw it!" (ok, in a more reflective manner and creating some learning!) and point the arrow at a radically different place? It's not "scientific" (or maybe there could be some PDCA around that new radical direction?) but maybe it would save another year of iterating down a path that may not bear fruit? The important point is to question what we are observing, thinking, and intuiting. How are we affected by bias, by our framework and viewpoint, and by not fully understanding that context? If we took a "look back from tomorrow" perspective, how would our thoughts change? ### Going to the Gemba with Anthony Bourdain URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/going-to-the-gemba-with-anthony-bourdain/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:20:43.000Z *It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.* \- Anthony Bourdain Forty-five years ago, my parents uprooted our family from a comfortable existence in west Texas and moved to Peru, which at the time was in the middle of a military dictatorship. This was before the internet and Amazon, news and our usual comforts were hard to come by, and the heavily-armed police on every corner were a little disturbing. My sister and I weren’t exactly thrilled about leaving our friends and first world problems, nor did we appreciate seven years of visiting probably every nook and cranny in Latin America. Now I am very, very thankful. The experience gave me a perspective of the world that has proven invaluable in life and my career, as well as a wanderlust that has led me to visit over 65 countries. I always encourage people to go overseas with their kids, even if just for a visit, as the experience is truly life-changing. There were a lot of Americans in Peru at the time, thanks to the oil and copper industries, and we attended a large American school. I was on the swim team, which was often like a mini Olympics – we competed against the British, Japanese, and German schools. But we didn’t just hobnob with expats – my parents insisted that we spend a lot of time with typical Peruvians, at all levels of the socioeconomic scale. We’d take long trips on back roads through small villages, spend a Sunday afternoon tramping through a slum trying to find a furniture woodworker, and go to parties at the homes of dad’s local staff. My wife and I have carried that concept with us when we travel – domestic and overseas. Instead of spending weeks planning how we’re going to hit all the tourist hot spots, we’ll often do a quick scan of a guide book on the plane over and perhaps a quick traditional tour the first day. Then we spend the rest of our time off the beaten path, trying to learn how typical people live. Yes, we miss a lot of museums, but I think we gain a more real understanding of the locale. Some memories are truly special. We’ll always remember spending Christmas at an orphanage in Panama, sipping tea with villagers in the high mountains of Bhutan, touching old bullet holes in the walls of a new yoga studio in Bosnia-Herzegovina, visiting a hospital in Tanzania (that happens to apply lean principles – see the [impromptu video series](https://www.gembaacademy.com/gemba-live/at-the-gemba/ccbrt-tanzania?ref=kevinmeyer.com) I filmed for Gemba Academy!), having a beer while listening to a concert in a small beach town in Cuba, and contemplating the incredible violence of years past while having a sunset drink at a café on the Mekong River in Laos. The experiences change you. They are truly a [gemba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba?ref=kevinmeyer.com), as value is created there both for the local people and for us in terms of accurate perspectives on the world. Reality is often far different from what many people think it is, especially in the U.S. where so few people travel outside of the country, let alone continent. Sort of like running a factory from a conference room instead of visiting the shop floor. The walls of our home are filled with photos of our travels, almost all with people. The old man in the photo above, taken in Dhulikhel outside of Kathmandu in Nepal, still haunts me. Take a moment and really look at the leathered skin, the tired eyes, and the gnarled hands. You can almost feel the extreme hardship he’s endured. When I face a struggle I remember people like him and realize, again, how blessed I am to have the pure luck to be born where I was. The passing of Anthony Bourdain in early June impacted me more than the death of any other celebrity, perhaps because I don’t really watch mindless TV or keep up with celebrities. Bourdain was an exception. We shared his love of food and travel, and especially how he went out of his way to connect with the local culture. Over eleven seasons his Parts Unknown series visited 100 locations. Oftentimes we had already been where he went and could relive the experience, but several times he added new places to our wanderlist. Lots has been written on how Bourdain struggled with his own demons. Maybe that’s why Bourdain was able to connect with people, creating real understanding, empathy, and compassion. And that’s why my wife and I connected with Bourdain’s show. In his travels he found what we also seek when we explore the world: a true understanding of the lives of people. As Dave Infante wrote in [his tribute to Anthony Bourdain](https://www.thrillist.com/amphtml/eat/nation/remembering-anthony-bourdain?ref=kevinmeyer.com), > *We live in strange, dark times that often seem bereft of fellow-feeling. For many (me included), Bourdain was an ideal of how empathy and curiosity could be wielded against the world’s ignorance and fearfulness. He felt deeply. Now he’s gone, and we’re still here. We need to be people who feel things deeply. We need to interrogate our assumptions about the world and the strangers in it. We need to try to know each other.* Rest in peace, Anthony. Thanks for inspiring us to discover and connect with real people. ### Using Solitude and Silence to Enable Reflection URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/using-solitude-and-silence-to-enable-reflection/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:22:15.000Z *I will take time to be alone today. I will take time to be quiet. In this silence I will listen… and I will hear my answers. – Ruth Fishel* Last Memorial Day weekend, while the rest of the country was enjoying the roar of the Indy 500, screaming crowds at the NBA playoffs, or just noisy families, I was sitting in complete silence - by myself. Three nights and nearly four full days, with much of that time sitting on the bench you see in the photo above. Regular readers know I work hard at cultivating a [process of personal reflection](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/preparing-for-reflection/), and I'll take a couple days a few times a year to get away. This past weekend, on fairly short notice, a "room" opened up at the [New Camaldoli Hermitage](https://contemplation.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), a Benedictine monastery only about 50 miles north of me on the dramatic Big Sur coastline of California. It wasn't my first time at a monastery, but it was the longest stay - and the first one where total silence was required of the dozen "retreatants" that stay with the fourteen monks. Total really means nearly total. If you want to speak with a fellow retreatant, you head down the two mile driveway to the Pacific Coast Highway. After just a few hours I removed the battery from the clock in my room as the faint tick-tock was unbearable. The only human-created sound is the church bell that rings before prayer services four or five times a day beginning at 5:15am, and you can attend to hear the monks chanting the Psalms. I did several times as the spiritual energy puts some aspects of life into perspective. You can also request spiritual guidance from a monk, which would be verbal while in a private room. I did, as I'll describe below. I put "room" in quotes because the accommodations are decidedly minimalist. A tiny room, single \[very hard\] bed, desk, and a half bath. You share a shower. The monks provide one cooked meal each day at noon which you take back to your room to eat, and you can use the well-stocked kitchen to snack at other times. It's your responsibility to make your bed, clean your room, do your dishes, and take your towels and bedding to the laundry at the end of your stay. There is no TV, phone, cell service, or internet, so you are completely cut off. Your room isn't locked. Not my usual travel expectations, but perfect for this experience where I wanted to simply reflect on what I really need and want in life. The monks from the Order of St. Benedict are a great bunch, and I've always admired their particular tradition of contemplative spirituality. They find a lot in common with eastern meditative traditions like Buddhism, and in fact, the Hermitage bookstore is filled with books on other faiths, particularly Buddhism. There were even books that I considered too new-agey for even my granola-munching legal-cannabis-toking Californian mindset. I was still a little surprised to find a [Dhammapada](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.intro.budd.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in my room, in addition to the Bible. One of my favorite authors, in addition to Trappist monk Thomas Merton, is Benedictine monk [David Steindl-Rast](https://gratefulness.org/brother-david/about-brother-david/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), who coincidentally spent some time at the Hermitage. Steindl-Rast has studied and written extensively on the commonalities between aspects of Christianity and Buddhism, and even has a fantastic [TED Talk on the power of gratitude](https://www.ted.com/talks/david%5Fsteindl%5Frast%5Fwant%5Fto%5Fbe%5Fhappy%5Fbe%5Fgrateful?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Pretty spry guy for being over 90, eh? If you just have a couple more minutes, skip the rest of this post and go watch his talk. I devoured several books by Steindl-Rast, Merton, and Thich Nhat Hanh on this trip. I've long felt that a regular habit of *intentional* reflection is a very powerful component of effective leadership - both professional and personal. Back in my corporate days I'd take my executive staff offsite for a quarterly retreat where we'd spend the morning reflecting on how we were doing vis-a-vis our principles and strategies, then in the afternoon we'd spend time together interacting on a more personal level, which is when some of our most brilliant ideas arose. Having it at [a winery a mile away](https://www.jlohr.com/visit/paso-robles-wine-center?ref=kevinmeyer.com), with the free-flowing amenities you can imagine, helped everyone feel comfortable participating. Before I go on a retreat I set some goals and create a rough schedule. This time I wanted time to reflect on various aspects of my life - personal, professional, health, friends, family, and so forth. I also wanted time to do quite a bit of reading, and I especially wanted time to just sit. It's in those times of sitting, in solitude and silence, when I often have the greatest insight. Jon Miller has written [several](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2015/05/04/three-tips-for-more-effective-reflection-hansei/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) [articles](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2006/11/30/hansei%5Fon%5Fhansei/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) on [tips for doing hansei](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2012/05/04/how%5Fto%5Fdo%5Fhansei/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- reflection - which I also reviewed. Over those four days I took nearly thirty pages of notes in my journal. I had several insights on how issues I thought were a big deal were in reality far less significant, and on aspects of my life that I thought were unimportant really should be more important. I reviewed old goals and created new ones, decided on activities to start, and perhaps most importantly, what I should stop doing. One of my favorite books, Greg McKeown's [*Essentialism*](https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), was part of my reading at my reflection in Panama a couple years ago, and the concepts have stuck. I did meet with a monk for "spiritual guidance," but in my case the guidance was directly related to my reflection. He was intrigued with my reflection *process* (because, done right, it really is a defined process), and offered a great suggestion to take time to intentionally reflect *again* on the thirty pages of notes from my reflection. I took his advice, and after a few hours I had a new distilled and condensed set of notes that added even more clarity and direction. That second level of hansei is something I'll incorporate into my regular reflection from now on. As is usually the case, my wife immediately noticed the difference when I returned home. She knows how important this process is to me and encourages me to take a few days alone every so often. Or maybe she just enjoys having the house to herself for a bit. Do you have a process of personal reflection? If so, is it really a *defined and intentional* process? I believe it is a critical component of effective personal and professional leadership. Consider my process and Jon's tips I linked to above, but it's important to make it your own. Then take some time and reflect. You'll be amazed at what you learn and the clarity it creates. If you're up for it, try doing it in silence, perhaps at your nearest monastery! But you'll find it really hard to beat the view at the Hermitage! ### Learn by Preparing to Teach URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learn-by-preparing-to-teach/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:22:50.000Z Many studies have shown that one of the most effective ways to learn new material is not just to perform an activity with the new knowledge, but to teach it. It's the reason why several companies ask interview finalists for new positions to teach a small group about some topic they're passionate about. You are able to assess teaching ability - which is a function of the ability to distill and apply knowledge - and often learn something unexpected about a potential team member. I know several people in my last company who are into beekeeping after seeing the presentation of successful quality engineering candidate. I also leveraged this concept by asking people I sent to conferences to come back and, as a team, present to us the top three concepts they learned about that we needed to begin working on immediately, and the top five to put on the parking lot so we could review at future planning activities. But what is it about teaching that supports effective learning? A recent research paper titled [The Learning Benefits of Teaching: A Retrieval Practice Hypothesis](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3410?af=R&ref=kevinmeyer.com) provides some analysis. Prior research referenced by the authors delve into how teaching improves both comprehension and retention. Of particular interest to us at Gemba Academy is research led by Vincent Hoogerheide that suggests [teaching via video is more effective than presentations and writing](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X16000102?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The authors performed several experiments where participants were asked to either simply solve problems (ie no teaching), taught with externally-prepared notes, taught without externally-prepared notes, or just had to retrieve knowledge previously learned. Factors such as teaching ability and style, prior knowledge, and perceived difficulty were controlled for. It's important to note that "retrieval" from the perspective of the authors is very different than simply "restudying." Retrieval requires reflecting on the new knowledge, distilling it, and determining how to apply to a current circumstance. The groups that taught without prepared notes and that had to retrieve knowledge previously learned performed better than the ones that didn't teach or taught with prepared notes. The authors concluded that the knowledge retrieval process was the key element that created effective learning, not necessarily the act of teaching itself. > *The condition that best evaluates whether the learning benefit is fundamentally a retrieval benefit might be a retrieval condition in which learners are given "standard" learning instructions and then retrieval practice.* Sound familiar? Knowledge retrieval and the reflective learning process is one reason why [TWI Job Instruction](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/twi-ji-facilitators?ref=kevinmeyer.com) is so powerful. This also applies to leadership competency. When I've recruited for leadership positions, especially at the executive level, [I've found](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2016/07/07/ga-118-how-to-use-lean-and-zen-to-become-a-better-leader-with-kevin-meyer/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) the best indicator of success is having a strong learning process. A candidate that has a thirst for new knowledge, including outside of their usual scope of interest, and then knows how to distill, apply, and especially teach that new knowledge, has a higher likelihood of being successful. Digging into and understanding this characteristic has become a primary focus of my interviewing process. How can you provide your team members with more opportunities to both obtain new knowledge - and then to truly learn it by reflecting, applying, and teaching? ### The Importance of Respect for People in Problem-Solving URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-importance-of-respect-for-people-in-problem-solving/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:23:41.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/P1030101-1024x768.jpg) Respect for people is one of the two core pillars of lean, if not the most important. We talk and [write](http://blog.gembaacademy.com/2008/02/03/exploring%5Fthe%5Frespect%5Ffor%5Fpeople%5Fprinciple%5Fof%5Fthe/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) about it a lot, and it is a [significant component](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/culture-of-kaizen/respect-for-humanity?ref=kevinmeyer.com) of Gemba Academy's online lean training programs. When respect for people is combined with the other pillar, continuous improvement, dramatic organizational transformation is possible to drive customer value. Not understanding and working hard on respect for people while focusing purely on lean tools is probably the main reason lean efforts fail. When lean is mashed into "lean six sigma," respect for people is generally left out, hence one reason we hesitate to embrace LSS. Respect for people is not simply treating people in your organization in a positive manner. It is challenging them to grow, providing them the tools, training, and experiences to do so, and creating an environment where mistakes and failures are allowed and even encouraged. Respect extends beyond the immediate organization to suppliers, customers, and the community as a whole. The value of respect is especially important in kaizen, continuous improvement, and the problem-solving that supports those activities. You want to be able to effectively harness the creativity, experience, and knowledge of everyone on a team in order to analyze the problem and identify and implement the best solutions. Last week Alison Reynolds and David Lewis published an article in Harvard Business Review titled [The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams](https://hbr.org/2018/04/the-two-traits-of-the-best-problem-solving-teams?ref=kevinmeyer.com). What are those two traits? Cognitive diversity and psychological safety. Teams with a high level of cognitive diversity have *a blend of different problem-solving behaviors, like collaboration, identifying problems, applying information, maintaining discipline, breaking rules, and inventing new approaches. These techniques combined were more effective than in groups where there were too many rule-breakers, or too many discipline-maintainers, for example*. But cognitive diversity is not enough. After finding teams that were diverse yet produced suboptimal results, the authors dug deeper and looked at the importance of psychological safety. > *The groups that performed well treated mistakes with curiosity and shared responsibility for the outcomes. As a result people could express themselves, their thoughts and ideas without fear of social retribution. The environment they created through their interaction was one of psychological safety.* > *Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. It is a dynamic, emergent property of interaction and can be destroyed in an instant with an ill-timed sigh. Without behaviors that create and maintain a level of psychological safety in a group, people do not fully contribute — and when they don’t, the power of cognitive diversity is left unrealized. Furthermore, anxiety rises and defensive behavior prevails.* Reynolds and Lewis go on, based on data from 150 executives from around the world, to analyze behaviors in each of the four quadrants of a matrix of low-high cognitive diversity and psychological safety. The Generative quadrant, with both high diversity and safety, is characterized by being curious, encouraging, experimental, forceful, inquiring, and nurturing. > *We choose our behavior. We need to be more curious, inquiring, experimental and nurturing. We need to stop being hierarchical, directive, controlling, and conforming. It is not just the presence of the positive behaviors in the Generative quadrant that count, it is the corresponding absence of the negative behaviors.* > *A psychologically safe environment ignites cognitive diversity and puts different minds to work on the bumpy and difficult journey of strategy execution.* Embracing a diverse set of problem-solving behaviors while providing an environment where they can be safely expressed and explored is respect for people. It is *intentionally* working to optimize their potential, which leads to positive transformation, improvement, and value for the customer. ### Australia Discovery: From Tasmania's Wilderness to the Great Ocean Road URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/australia-discovery-from-tasmanias-wilderness-to-the-great-ocean-road/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T13:45:50.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_4399.JPG) Our March 2018 Australian adventure revealed a continent of extraordinary diversity - from Tasmania's pristine wilderness and unique wildlife to Victoria's dramatic coastal formations along the legendary Great Ocean Road. This two-week journey provided a comprehensive Australian experience, combining world-class cities, UNESCO World Heritage wilderness, and some of the planet's most spectacular coastal scenery. ## General Comments **March Timing Perfect**: Late summer/early autumn weather proved ideal - warm but not oppressive, minimal rainfall, and comfortable temperatures for both city exploration and wilderness hiking. Tourist crowds were manageable, and accommodation availability excellent throughout our journey. **Driving Excellence**: Australia's well-maintained roads, clear signage, and courteous drivers made rental car exploration both safe and enjoyable. Driving on the left proved less challenging than anticipated, while the scenic routes ranked among the world's most spectacular. **Wildlife Encounters**: Tasmania in particular offered incredible endemic wildlife experiences impossible elsewhere on Earth. From Tasmanian devils to echidnas, the island's unique evolutionary isolation created extraordinary animal encounters. **Cultural Sophistication**: Both Melbourne and Tasmania's cultural scenes far exceeded expectations. World-class museums, galleries, cuisine, and local arts created sophisticated travel experiences rivaling any global destination. **Accommodation Quality**: From luxury Melbourne hotels to wilderness lodges to coastal resorts, each property perfectly matched its setting while providing excellent service and amenities. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-3: Melbourne Introduction Flying into Melbourne via the long trans-Pacific route, we immediately experienced Australia's sophisticated urban culture. **Hotel**: [Park Hyatt Melbourne](https://melbourne.park.hyatt.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Located on the Yarra River with views of the city skyline, this luxury hotel provided the perfect introduction to Australian hospitality and design. The modern architecture and riverside location created ideal Melbourne headquarters. **Melbourne Cultural Immersion**: The city's famous laneways revealed incredible street art, hidden cafes, and creative energy throughout the urban center. Federation Square's cultural attractions, the Royal Botanic Gardens' peaceful landscapes, and the Southbank's dining scene showcased Melbourne's reputation as Australia's cultural capital. **Food Scene Discovery**: Melbourne's renowned coffee culture, diverse restaurants, and excellent vegetarian options provided outstanding culinary experiences. The city's multicultural influences created dining variety rivaling any international food capital. ### Days 4-5: Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair Flying to Launceston and driving to Cradle Mountain introduced us to Tasmania's pristine wilderness. **Hotel**: [Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge](http://www.cradlemountainlodge.com.au/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This wilderness lodge perfectly balanced comfort with authentic Tasmanian environment. Individual cabins nestled in temperate rainforest provided intimate connection with the natural surroundings while offering luxury amenities. **Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park**: This UNESCO World Heritage wilderness area offered some of Australia's most spectacular hiking. The Dove Lake Circuit provided stunning mountain reflections and diverse ecosystems, while shorter walks revealed ancient rainforests, unique alpine flora, and pristine wilderness areas. **Wildlife Encounters**: Tasmania's unique fauna provided extraordinary experiences. We encountered echidnas, wombats, and various marsupials found nowhere else on Earth. The island's evolutionary isolation created endemic species impossible to see elsewhere. **Wilderness Experience**: The complete absence of crowds and pristine natural conditions created profound wilderness connections. The combination of ancient landscapes, crystal-clear water, and unique wildlife demonstrated why Tasmania ranks among the world's great wilderness destinations. ### Days 6-7: Freycinet Peninsula Driving to Tasmania's east coast revealed completely different landscapes and coastal experiences. **Hotel**: [Tidelines of Bicheno](http://www.tidelinesofbicheno.com.au/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This coastal accommodation provided perfect access to Freycinet National Park while offering comfortable seaside atmosphere and excellent local hospitality. **Freycinet National Park**: The park's combination of pristine beaches, granite peaks, and turquoise waters created some of Australia's most beautiful coastal scenery. Wineglass Bay, accessible via moderate hiking, revealed one of the world's perfect beaches - white sand, clear water, and dramatic mountain backdrops. **Coastal Hiking**: Multiple trails revealed different aspects of Tasmania's diverse coastline. The Hazards Beach walk, Cape Tourville lighthouse circuit, and various short walks demonstrated the island's incredible coastal diversity and pristine natural conditions. **Marine Life**: Seal colonies, abundant bird life, and pristine marine environments showcased Tasmania's position as one of the world's great wildlife destinations. The clear waters and healthy ecosystems provided excellent snorkeling and beach experiences. ### Days 8-10: Hobart Cultural Exploration Tasmania's capital provided sophisticated urban culture within dramatic natural settings. **Hotel**: [Hotel Grand Chancellor Hobart](http://www.grandchancellorhotels.com/hotel-grand-chancellor-hobart?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Located in central Hobart with harbor views, this hotel provided convenient access to the city's cultural attractions while offering comfortable accommodations. **MONA (Museum of Old and New Art)**: This extraordinary museum challenged artistic expectations with provocative contemporary art in dramatic underground galleries. The combination of ancient artifacts and cutting-edge contemporary pieces created unforgettable cultural experiences. **Salamanca Market**: Saturday's famous market revealed local arts, crafts, food, and culture in historic warehouse settings. The combination of local producers, artisans, and performers created vibrant community atmosphere and authentic Tasmanian cultural immersion. **Port Arthur Historic Site**: This UNESCO World Heritage convict settlement provided sobering insights into Australian colonial history. The preserved buildings, guided tours, and dramatic coastal setting created comprehensive historical education about Australia's complex past. **Tasmanian Cuisine**: Hobart's sophisticated dining scene featured incredible local ingredients - fresh seafood, unique vegetables, excellent wines, and creative preparations. The city's restaurants rivaled any Australian food destination while maintaining distinctive Tasmanian character. ### Days 11-13: Great Ocean Road Adventure Returning to Melbourne and beginning our Great Ocean Road journey revealed Australia's most famous coastal drive. **Day 11 - Lorne**: [Mantra Lorne Hotel](https://www.mantralorne.com.au/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This beachfront resort provided perfect introduction to the Great Ocean Road's coastal culture. The combination of beautiful beaches, coastal forest, and resort amenities created ideal relaxation after Tasmania's wilderness intensity. **Great Ocean Road Beginning**: The drive from Melbourne through surf towns like Torquay and Lorne revealed Australia's famous surf culture and stunning coastal scenery. Perfect beaches, coastal forests, and charming seaside towns created ideal introduction to Victoria's coast. **Day 12 - Port Campbell**: [Loch Ard Inn](http://www.lochardmotorinn.com.au/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Located near the Twelve Apostles, this accommodation provided convenient access to the Great Ocean Road's most famous attractions while offering comfortable coastal atmosphere. **Twelve Apostles**: These magnificent limestone sea stacks rising from the Southern Ocean created one of Australia's most iconic experiences. The visitor center, multiple viewpoints, and walking trails revealed how wave action carved these dramatic formations over millions of years. Sunset lighting transformed the limestone pillars into glowing monuments against the dark ocean. **Port Campbell National Park**: Beyond the famous Twelve Apostles, the park contained numerous spectacular formations - Loch Ard Gorge with its tragic shipwreck history, London Bridge (partially collapsed), the Grotto's coastal cave system, and the Arch's natural stone bridge. Each formation demonstrated different aspects of coastal erosion and geological processes. **Coastal Walks**: The Great Ocean Walk provided extended hiking opportunities along dramatic clifftops, through coastal forests, and to secluded beaches. Shorter walks connected major viewpoints while revealing the coast's diverse ecosystems and wildlife. ### Day 14: Melbourne Return and Departure The drive back to Melbourne completed our Australian circuit and provided time for final urban exploration before departure. **Melbourne Revisit**: Our final day allowed for additional Melbourne experiences - last-minute shopping, favorite restaurants revisited, and reflection on our comprehensive Australian introduction. ## Cultural and Natural Insights **Geological Education**: Both Tasmania's ancient landscapes and the Great Ocean Road's coastal formations provided excellent geological education. Understanding how these landscapes formed over millions of years enhanced appreciation of their current beauty. **Wildlife Uniqueness**: Tasmania's endemic species demonstrated how geographic isolation creates unique evolutionary outcomes. Encountering animals found nowhere else on Earth provided perspective on biodiversity and conservation importance. **Aboriginal Heritage**: Respectful encounters with Aboriginal cultural sites and contemporary indigenous art revealed Australia's ancient cultural heritage and ongoing indigenous contributions to modern Australian identity. **Environmental Conservation**: Visiting UNESCO World Heritage areas and marine parks demonstrated Australia's commitment to preserving unique natural environments while balancing tourism and conservation needs. ## What We'd Do Differently **Extended Tasmania Time**: The island's wilderness areas, unique wildlife, and cultural attractions deserved additional exploration time. Each region offered experiences justifying longer stays. **Great Ocean Road Extension**: The coastal drive contained numerous attractions beyond the famous Twelve Apostles. Additional time would allow for more comprehensive coastal exploration and inland detours. **Melbourne Cultural Depth**: The city's world-class museums, galleries, and cultural events could easily occupy additional days for more thorough urban cultural immersion. ## Final Thoughts This Australian introduction revealed a continent offering extraordinary diversity within accessible travel frameworks. Tasmania's pristine wilderness and unique wildlife provided experiences impossible elsewhere on Earth, while the Great Ocean Road showcased coastal beauty rivaling any global destination. Australia's combination of sophisticated urban culture, pristine natural environments, and unique wildlife created comprehensive travel experiences addressing multiple interests. The excellent infrastructure, friendly people, and well-maintained facilities made exploration both safe and enjoyable. Most importantly, Australia demonstrated how modern nations can balance development with environmental preservation, creating destinations where world-class tourism experiences coexist with protected wilderness areas and unique wildlife habitats. For travelers seeking diverse experiences within a single destination, Australia offers unmatched variety. From cosmopolitan cities to pristine wilderness, from unique wildlife to dramatic coastal formations, the continent provides travel experiences justifying repeated visits and extended exploration. **Best Wildlife Experience**: Encountering Tasmania's endemic species in their natural habitats - echidnas, wombats, and diverse marsupials found nowhere else on Earth **Most Spectacular Scenery**: Wineglass Bay's perfect white sand beach surrounded by granite peaks and turquoise waters **Greatest Surprise**: Tasmania's sophisticated cultural scene and world-class wilderness experiences in compact, accessible formats **Most Iconic Moment**: Sunset at the Twelve Apostles watching limestone pillars glow against the Southern Ocean **Perfect For**: First-time visitors to Australia seeking comprehensive introduction to the continent's urban culture, pristine wilderness, unique wildlife, and spectacular coastal scenery. ### The Critical Thinking Value of Writing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-critical-thinking-value-of-writing/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:24:18.000Z Almost three years ago I wrote about [the power of writing - by hand](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/). Sure, it's easy to take notes on an iPad app or on a laptop, but the result is not nearly as beneficial as writing by hand. One of the studies I cited compared college students who took [notes by hand vs. a computer](https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Benefits-of-No-Tech-Note/228089?ref=kevinmeyer.com). > Students tested right after a lecture tended to answer factual questions equally well regardless of how they took notes, but students who handwrote their notes did consistently better on conceptual questions. What's more, when students were tested again a week later, the longhand note takers performed consistently better on both factual and conceptual questions. This has since been confirmed in studies among other types of populations. As Isaac Asimov said, "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." But maybe we need to take a step back and discuss writing, regardless of the method. Some of us have long enjoyed writing, be it notes, books, or blogs. However, many people have never picked up or embraced the skill. In the January edition of EdSource Theresa Harrington describes the [impact of writing at a high school](https://edsource.org/2018/a-focus-on-writing-in-every-class-is-key-to-success-in-this-rural-california-district/592228?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in southern California. > "What I was reading wasn't making any sense," said \[Jesse\] Sanchez, principal of the main high school in Brawley, a town in a remote desert region of California a half-hour drive from the Mexican border. What worried him most was the poor quality of students' writing, which showed some lacked the ability to make coherent arguments for projects they wanted to do to earn a special graduation sash and a note on their transcripts recording project completion. Sanchez responded by creating a school-wide program that requires all students to write regularly in every class, including P.E., where earlier this year, students wrote about what they had learned regarding muscle anatomy and weight training. This wasn't just a mandate to write, but a program coordinated across all aspects of the school, with faculty supported with their own training programs. What was the result? > English language arts scores rose 30.6 percentage points to 64.6 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards on Smarter Balanced tests from 2014-15 to 2016-17, while math scores increased by nearly 17 percentage points to 29.9 percent achieving those benchmarks. It's a significant achievement for the Brawley high school, where 74 percent of students are low-income; 22 percent are learning English; and 10 percent are migrants, who change schools during the year to follow their parents' work in agriculture or other industries. Other results include more kids writing better applications for colleges, resulting in furthering their education and eventually their careers. Writing is thinking, and writing well helps clarify thinking. The writing program at Brawley is undergoing continuous improvement while promoting critical thinking. > The school is tweaking its writing program each year, based on student and teacher feedback, Sanchez said. All teachers are receiving training in grading writing assignments according to a rubric that requires students to respond to a question by restating the issue, answering the question, citing sources, and using evidence to support conclusions. What is the problem? What are potential solutions? What data and evidence supports the conclusion? How can writing be incorporated as a value-adding activity into the workplace? A3 reports, analysis of quality issues, proposals for new equipment or human assets, customer and supplier collaboration, project presentations - there are many areas. Improving and reinforcing writing skills adds critical thinking value to both the team member and the organization. ### Lessons from Perfecting the Pour Over URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lessons-from-perfecting-the-pour-over/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T20:59:49.000Z For years my wife and I had been fans of our Keurig. Pop in a pod and in a minute you had a decent cup of coffee. Simple, clean, and seemingly "lean" since the process was optimized with very little waste. That changed when The Atlantic published [an article](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) in 2015 describing just how wasteful it really was. So much so that even the inventor of the machine has disavowed it, and over 10 billion K-cups now make their way to the garbage every year. "Recyclable" K-cups are on the way, but importantly they are still not compostable, hence most will still end up in the garbage. Keurig machines themselves are not reparable, so hundreds of thousands of them are also [ending up in landfills](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207166763521072&set=a.1771733506766.94455.1642136739). This was a major problem for us, both because we live in a beautiful part of the country and are environmentally sensitive, and also because of my strong belief that "respect for people" is the most important component of lean. "Respect for people" [is really "respect for humanity"](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/culture-of-kaizen/respect-for-humanity?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- and extends outside of the organization, outside of suppliers and customers, to the community. Environmental stewardship is therefore important to a true lean organization, and is why, for example, Toyota paints the "smoke" stacks of their factories [yellow](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/54142904?ref=kevinmeyer.com) so the community can see that very little pollution is being created. So what options besides the Keurig do we have for a single cup of coffee? Even though I switched to decaf over two years ago, I still love the flavor and like having a cup of joe first thing in the morning. We tried a couple of conventional drip brewers, but were disappointed with the taste. For several months we even did a quick 5 minute run to the local coffee shop each morning, but that also seemed a bit ridiculous from a value perspective, even though we did use our own flasks or recycled the cups and lids when we forgot it. Then one day a friend introduced us to the pour over. The flavor was rich and deep, with an aroma you could smell from across the room. We started the research, and were soon overwhelmed with the components and process. It seems simple, but it's really not. Just throw some grounds in a filter, dump hot water on it, and you have coffee, right? Not if you want a really good cup. Many call it an art, but I don't like that term - everything is a process in some form. First you need the equipment. After reading a lot of reviews we settled on the [Osaka](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NH06W40/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), which has a stainless steel filter. Some people prefer paper filters, but they can interfere with the taste - and they create some waste. The Osaka is simple, inexpensive, and easy to clean. Then you need a proper kettle. A standard tea kettle doesn't have a precision spout which, as I'll describe shortly, is critical. We ended up getting the [Fellow Stagg](https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/fellow-stagg-pour-over-kettle-with-thermometer/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) from Williams-Sonoma, which also has a built-in thermometer to ensure the proper water temperature. To really get a tasty brew you should grind the beans just before use, preferably with a burr grinder. Blade grinders shatter the beans creating uneven particles. For raw materials you need water, preferably filtered. A high quality coffee is also best, and we enjoy [Peet's Major Dickason's Blend](https://www.peets.com/coffee/by-type/decaf-half-caf-coffee/decaf-major-dickason-s-blend.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Buy the smallest quantity of beans possible so they are fresh. The process is critical. Even minor variations can cause major changes to the flavor of the final product. Here's ours: 1. Ensure all equipment is available and clean, and all raw materials are available. 2. Fill the kettle half full and turn on the stove. 3. Grind enough beans to make four tablespoons of ground coffee, which is enough to produce a 16 oz cup of coffee. 4. Place the filter into the flask and evenly add the ground coffee. 5. By now the water should be at the proper temperature: 195-205˚ F, easily determined thanks to the thermometer in the kettle. 6. The bloom pour: gently pour twice as much hot water as grounds onto the grounds, starting in the center and spiraling outward. Wait 30-45 seconds. This saturates the grounds and starts the extraction process. 7. The main pour: gently and slowly pour hot water onto the saturated grounds, again beginning in the center and spiraling outward, then inward. The grounds should never be swimming, therefore this is a slow process and will take 3-5 minutes to yield 16 ounces. It is also a very mindful, meditative activity. You must be focused on that one activity, clearing the mind of other thoughts. A perfect way to condition and calm the mind for the day. 8. Pour the coffee from the flask into your coffee cup, adding cream or sugar as desired. But you're not done! Now it's important to thoroughly clean all equipment, and returning them to their proper location so the process can be repeated the next morning. If more raw materials - coffee - are necessary, write a note to pick up more. Yes this is several more steps than the Keurig, but the resulting value - and reduced waste - is also much greater. Equipment needs to be sized and specified to match and support the desired process. Spending a bit more can optimize this relationship, improving value and even reducing cost later on. The process, and process parameters, need to be very well defined. Many components of the process are related to individual taste - value from the perspective of the customer. Methodically experiment with coffee brand, grind size, and equipment to find the right combination. Kaizen. Executing the process must consistent and requires total focus. From start to finish, which really takes all of 5-10 minutes, there needs to be total focus, especially during the main pour. Standard work. Inventory the smallest amount possible, and prepare and use exactly the amount of raw materials needed. Just in time. At the end, the work area and equipment is cleaned and returned to the defined original condition. This will make it easy to repeat the process the next morning. 5S. Enjoy the coffee! A perfect pour over is a great way to start the day! ### Preparing for Reflection URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/preparing-for-reflection/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:25:41.000Z *"We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience."* \- John Dewey I've [written before](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-time-to-read-and-reflect/) about how I've worked hard to develop a habit of reflection... daily, monthly, and annually. Although the end of the year is an arbitrary time, it is a convenient time to find a few days to be alone and look back on the prior months. This year I'm taking advantage of a couple days when my wife will be at a conference to sequester myself on a beach, disconnect, and ponder some questions. What had I planned on doing, what ended up happening, how can I improve on that, and what will I plan on doing this coming year? A few weeks before my annual ritual I also look for some inspiration that will help me look at the process of reflection - it *is* a process - from a new perspective. One year Jon Miller [recommended](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2013/12/17/review%5Fof%5Fhumble%5Finquiry%5Fby%5Fedgar%5Fschein/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Edgar Shein's *Humble Inquiry*, which I [found fascinating](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-reflective-perspective-on-schein/) from many angles. This year a friend told me about John Dewey, and specifically his book [*How We Think*](https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Think-John-Dewey/dp/0486298957?ref=kevinmeyer.com). It's definitely not as easy of a read as Schein's, but there are some jewels. Dewey dives deeply into thinking processes, and how our thoughts create beliefs that may be fallacious. > Such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the attainment of correct belief. They are picked up — we know not how. From obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture. Tradition, instruction, imitation — all of which depend upon authority in some form, or appeal to our own advantage, or fall in with a strong passion — are responsible for them. Such thoughts are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence. So we need to look at how we think, and how that's contributed to what we perceive, ie reflective thought. > Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought… It is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons. Thinking therefore becomes an intentional process of analyzing thoughts and beliefs. > \[There are\] certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation. These are: (a) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (b) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief. From which reflection is also a process. > Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence — a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors. The successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to something — technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow becomes a train, chain, or thread. *Intentional* reflection, therefore, is not just sitting on the beach and letting a "medley" of thoughts on the past year flow through my head. It is a planned analysis. I'll begin with the foundation of last year's plan and the data of the results from that plan. I can then review what happened to each element of the plan and break that down to look at potential root causes for failures. It's important to also look at root causes for successes, as those can be built upon and optimized. Then what are the commonalities between what happened with various elements of the plan? What experiments can I try to improve? What do I expect to happen? How and when will I know if I have succeeded or failed? How can I apply and integrate that into what I want to accomplish over the next year? How does that align with my personal principles, values, and my "why?" What do I want to stop doing? I've loosely followed that process in the past, but I want to be more disciplined this year. A couple of solid, disconnected days in solitude sound about right for this activity. ### The Multi-Faceted Power of Walking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-multi-faceted-power-of-walking/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:26:19.000Z *Walking is man's best medicine. - Hippocrates* Walking has become a much larger part of my life over the past few years. It started when I embraced *kinhin* \- walking meditation. Walking slowly on the beach for an hour or so, one step per breath, barefoot and silent to engage all of the senses. The mind is calmed, allowing reality and ideas to flow in. Since then I've added regular walking, averaging over 15,000 steps a day, and actively trying to increase that average each week. Over forty years ago, growing up in Peru, my parents would take us on grand walking tours of Lima and other cities every weekend. Hours on end, probably a hundred miles or so a day - at least it seemed like that to a young kid. I hated it at the time, but looking back I'm very thankful for the experience. Living overseas widens perspectives and creates understanding and acceptance. I lost that walking fever when I returned to the U.S. to go to college. Perhaps it was the notorious icy blizzards of upstate New York, but somehow a walk down to the dorm kegerator seemed sufficient. Anything else required begging a ride from someone lucky enough to own a car. After college I'd use a car to drive a block to the store. Pathetic. And I didn't realize what I was missing. I did know I wasn't missing the pounds that slowly crept onto someone who used to be on the high school swim team. A few years ago, and especially over the last two years, I started to work hard to get into better shape. Crossfit, running on the beach, even running a marathon. It's worked and I feel great (thanks, Paul Akers!). But I realized that even though I looked for opportunities to exercise, I was still driving just a few blocks to the gym, post office, bank, and so forth. Our little beach town isn't large - just 10,000 people. Is driving really necessary? So one day I walked to the gym, then the next day to the post office, then the next day to lunch. Within a week I was hooked. Soon I was taking a few hours on Saturday morning to walk to the end of our 6 mile beach, and back. Now when I travel I have to find time for walking. While at the AME conference in Boston a few weeks ago I was able to convince a few colleagues to walk the several miles to dinner. Great sights, great conversation, great exercise. You see, I discovered it's not just about exercise, although it's amazing what just a few thousand steps a day will do to your body. Walking calms your mind. Even if you don't formally practice kinhin, walking slowly, preferably without supplemental audio, lets your thoughts slow and settle. After even a short walk you feel more balanced, upbeat, and creative. Walking lets you (and teaches you?) observe at the speed of reality. I've been surprised at what I've found in our small town, even though I've lived here for seventeen years. Just the other day I noticed a plaque buried in what used to be a garden across the street from city hall. Looking closer, I discovered it was in memory to a Hope Miller, and later I looked her up and learned an interesting story about our town. I'm sad that the garden planted in her memory two decades ago has become unruly. Maybe I'll change that. Walking lets you meet and get to know new people. On my long walks I've met several neighbors, merchants, and tourists from around the world. Some of these connections have turned into new friendships. While walking to dinner at the AME conference I was able to get to learn more about a couple team members that I rarely see in person since we're in different offices. In the lean world we know the power of going to the gemba to observe the reality of the value creating process, to help team members see through your eyes, and to challenge processes. Walking, even around your neighborhood, can be similar - and more. Slip on those shoes, step outside, and take a few steps! ### From Linear to Roundabout Thinking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/from-linear-to-roundabout-thinking/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:27:01.000Z Ever since I visited Italy over a decade ago my inner geek has had a fascination with traffic engineering. If you've visited Italy, or many similar places, you probably know why. Traffic appears chaotic, thanks in part to what appears at first glance to be a lack of signals and other controls. To those of us with highly-regimented traffic control systems this feels crazy and even scary. Until we realize something: Traffic flows continuously, pretty much everywhere. Now it may not be a fast, but the net effect is often more flow than the stop-and-go signal-driven batch movement that exists in many U.S. cities. Traffic engineers have recognized this as well, with many cities [intentionally removing signals](https://www.salon.com/2004/05/20/traffic%5Fdesign/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). > In fact, the chaos associated with traffic in developing countries is becoming all the rage among a new wave of traffic engineers in mainland Europe and, more recently, in the United Kingdom. It's called "second generation" traffic calming, a combination of traffic engineering and urban design that also draws heavily on the fields of behavioral psychology and -- of all subjects -- evolutionary biology. Rejecting the idea of separating people from vehicular traffic, it's a concept that privileges multiplicity over homogeneity, disorder over order, and intrigue over certainty. In practice, it's about dismantling barriers: between the road and the sidewalk, between cars, pedestrians and cyclists and, most controversially, between moving vehicles and children at play. The psychology of this is particularly interesting. In countries with highly-controlled traffic the emphasis has been on reducing chaos by removing human decisions. This has had the negative effect of disengaging drivers (and pedestrians, bikers, etc.) from the environment, which can actually create more risk. > Hamilton-Baillie argues that the key to improving both safety and vehicular capacity is to remove traffic lights and other controls, such as stop signs and the white and yellow lines dividing streets into lanes. Without any clear right-of-way, he says, motorists are forced to slow down to safer speeds, make eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, and decide among themselves when it is safe to proceed. Removing traditional signals can be scary or disturbing. A first step is often replacing intersections with traffic circles, or roundabouts. Those of us that have lived in the northeast U.S. know they are fairly common, but here on the west coast they're still rare. A few years ago my small town of 10,000 replaced a complex five-way intersection with a traffic circle. Believe it or not, that circle reduced the number of stop lights in our town by 33% - from 3 to 2! Even though the number of traffic accidents dropped to about zero and flow is far smoother, the community remains very divided. I personally love it, and zip through the circle at least a couple times a day. Now the city wants to replace one of the two remaining lights with another traffic circle. Once again it makes a lot of sense as the intersection being considered is complex - three streets plus the on and off ramps for the Pacific Coast Highway. One issue is that it is a half block from the high school, and some residents are concerned about kids walking and driving near a "dangerous circle." We have part of the community that has looked at the science described above, as well as the improved results from our first traffic circle, and are proponents of the new circle. And we have another part that is analyzing the proposal on a more emotional level, often based on a handful of anecdotal close calls with the existing traffic circle, and legitimate and understandable concern about our school kids. I don't know what the city will decide. It strikes me that this is very similar to what many of us have gone through with lean transformations. Traditional batch manufacturing makes sense, and one piece flow feels counterintuitive. Even after seeing it in action, perhaps even something as "real" as the [envelope-stuffing exercise](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/transforming-your-value-streams/one-piece-flow-simulation?ref=kevinmeyer.com), [dishwasher kaizen](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/the-kaizen-way-course/kaizen-overview?ref=kevinmeyer.com), or [lean bathroom](https://www.gembaacademy.com/promos/the-lean-bathroom-at-fastcap?ref=kevinmeyer.com), it sometimes just doesn't seem right. Similarly, many organizations like having detailed and inflexible controls to ensure employees stay on the straight an narrow. Innovative organizations like Netflix (and Gemba Academy!) [intentionally remove policies and procedures to create more employee engagement](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/performance-not-policy/). Removing controls makes people think and be more aware of their environment. Where does your organization have traditional signals that need to be replaced by free-flowing, people-engaging, roundabouts? ### Monuments to the Lean Journey URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/monuments-to-the-lean-journey/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:27:36.000Z Nearly two decades ago I had left the medical device industry to jump into telecom photonics equipment. My team was responsible for the operations side of a facility that was a recently-acquired startup in the space, with a product that became so popular it created an almost immediate 12-18 month backlog. Nice problem to have, eh? I thought so, which is why I jumped. To top things off, it also happened to be located in one of the nicest small towns on the California central coast. This was no average piece of equipment. It was a large rack that could concurrently test up to 500 lasers used for long-haul fiber optic communications. Depending on configuration a single rack could cost nearly a million dollars. When I joined, the operations group was struggling to ship one unit a month, and orders were coming in a multiples of that. With just a couple of exceptions no one had worked on a manufacturing floor before, let alone a lean one. Partially-built racks were scattered around, parts were missing for most subassemblies, and a large amount of time was spent un-building racks to scavenge parts in hopes to complete one of the others. The first thing I did was institute a morning stand up meeting. We discussed and documented on a board the schedule and current status of all racks. We then spent time on 5S to reduce "lost" parts, one piece flow to get out of the habit of partially building then un-building racks, and standard work to document processes. There were many struggles and lots of educating on the sometimes counterintuitive perspective of lean. Just five months later, in March 2001, we were shipping 10 racks a month, with the same floorspace and people. The team was thrilled at what they accomplished, and they took certain liberties with the production bar chart that we would color in at each morning's meeting. Signatures, fish tank motifs, the overflowing water when we significantly overachieved the goal for the month. I had it framed, and it has been hanging next to my desk at every subsequent position I've held. You can click on the image to see a larger version. Corporate management, 200 miles south, liked the dramatic change in cash flow, but never really understood how we did it. That chart is my personal monument to lean. It celebrates the power of lean, reminding me of how much value can be created in just a few short months. But it also reminds me of many lessons, lean and otherwise. You see, the month after this achievement, our customers suddenly realized that they had overbuilt long-haul fiber optic capacity. We had seen a cancellation or two in the previous few months, considered them odd anomalies and didn't dig deeper, but then over the next couple months the entire 18 month backlog was cancelled. By August we were almost idle and hoping for orders, and on September 10th, 2001 - the day before 9/11 - the company announced that the operation would be closed and the product line discontinued. From 0 to 100 to 0 in less than a year. One lesson was that lean can create amazing improvements, but it can't offset a lack of demand - and it's imperative to keep a keen eye on external factors. Our leadership team, sometimes against the wishes (or even the knowledge) of our corporate parent, did things right for the employees. We negotiated significant severance, helped with job searches, and bent our ears and held many hands. It was rough, but all of them eventually landed on their feet, locally or elsewhere. Many of them went on to improve their new operations, demonstrating again that the true (compounding?) power of lean is in the teaching and knowledge of people - not just the tools. Another lesson. Monuments are interesting artifacts. Not only do they celebrate the past and remind us of lessons, they continue to teach. As I've continued on my own journey, new experiences add context and answers to what happened in the spring of 2001\. I've thought about how valuable it would have been to know about Training Within Industry - TWI - during those days. Coincidentally, Gemba Academy has just released a series of videos on [Job Relations](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/twi-jr-facilitators?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and earlier this year released a course on [Job Instruction](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/twi-ji-facilitators?ref=kevinmeyer.com). When I eventually got the top job at a multi-site medical device company, my monument continued to remind me of the power of people. Just looking at it encouraged me to leave the office to spend time at the gemba. Reporting to our board of directors I was reminded of how, back in 2001, I failed to educate my offsite corporate boss on how lean enabled the success of our photonics operation - and I took a different path. Today my monument reminds me of the fragility of improvement, the importance of focus, and how critical it is to go beyond the gemba to see the value of your products from the eyes of your customer. Most importantly, it reminds me of the power of people. When times get tough I'll reflect on my monument, conveniently only a couple feet away, and often see an answer. Or at least realize that if I made it through those crazy times, I can make it through this one. What are your monuments to the journey? How are they still helping you today? ### Walking (and Swimming, Biking, Running) the Talk URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/walking-and-swimming-biking-running-the-talk/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:28:17.000Z Many of you know Paul Akers of Fastcap. He's a very passionate lean practitioner, and Gemba Academy has several videos where we talk to him and tour his company. Almost two years ago I was talking to him and he told me how he, in his 50s, was finally getting into great physical shape. He had lost fifty pounds by focusing on diet and exercise and creating accountability by telling his story on social media. Last year he published [Lean Health](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Health-Paul-Akers/dp/0990601021/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), which goes into more detail why he made this change and how he leveraged several lean principles to help with it. We're almost the same age, and his story really resonated with me. After talking with him I went home and made my first green super smoothie and committed to the journey. A year later I had lost over 30 pounds and continue to be in the best shape I've been in since I was on the swim team in high school many decades ago. I've run a full marathon and do crossfit (actually, "[surf fit](http://studiofitnessmorrobay.com/surf/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)") pretty much every day. Ron at Gemba Academy has achieved similar results, and we've created a wellness program at the company that encourages and rewards healthy behaviors and choices. Paul continued his journey by adding other training components, and last month he completed the [Lake Placid Ironman](http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman/lake-placid/race-info/about-this-race.aspx?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Think about it: a couple years ago he was an overweight executive. This year he swam two miles, biked 112 miles, and ran 26.2 miles - on the same day. And I thought running 26.2 miles was an achievement. He even beat my marathon time... *after* swimming two miles and biking over 100 miles! Paul doesn't just talk about lean and health, he does it. He walks, and swims and bikes and runs, the talk. As our [two](https://www.gembaacademy.com/gemba-live/at-the-gemba/fastcap-2012?ref=kevinmeyer.com) [video](https://www.gembaacademy.com/gemba-live/at-the-gemba/fastcap-2014?ref=kevinmeyer.com) series on Fastcap show, his company does a remarkable job with leveraging the power of small, daily improvements. Even their bathroom is kept clean thanks to kanban and 5S. Many people talk about lean or how to lose weight and get into shape, but far fewer actually do it, every day. As leaders we need to practice what we preach. This will mean accepting and owning failure, but then learning from it. I know we often struggle with this at Gemba Academy, but we learn, and we're better for it. One reason we're different is because we're practitioners who learned how to make great videos, so we've been in the shoes of our customers with the difficulty of of the continuous improvement journey. I also struggle daily to stick to my plan, to keep my desk organized, and to stay in shape. Once you experience the rewards it becomes easier, but the struggle remains in some form and requires ongoing reflection and recommitment. Thanks, Paul, for the motivation - in lean and in health. ### The Simple Leader: Communication, Not Structure URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-communication-not-structure/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:28:41.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective. – Stephen R. Covey* Changing an organization’s structure seems to be the common knee-jerk response to internal issues. My prior company embarked on a reorganization to eliminate arbitrary site- and function based structures so that we could align around corporate-wide value creation processes. During the restructuring process, an organization typically inserts a new management layer, such as a Chief Operating Officer (COO). Think about this from a "respect for people" perspective. The now-lower heads of each functional group no longer receive the mentoring of the CEO. They have been diminished in stature, and their voices and concerns have to go through another layer to be heard by top management. This is not likely to solve any of the internal problems facing a company. If you look at the root causes to internal problems, you’ll often find that certain groups and their leaders aren't communicating effectively. They aren't aligned, and changing the organizational structure will not change that one iota. In fact, it will just shift the problem around and probably create new troubles. Years ago, I was having similar issues in my company. Leaders weren't leading, they weren't talking, and they weren't aligned. Different levels of commitment and different interpersonal communication styles were causing misunderstandings, leading to quality and customer issues. So we took the entire extended executive leadership team through Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and accompanying workbooks. Over the course of a year, we addressed our absence of trust, misalignment, communication, and the like. Sometimes the training was very difficult, like the exercise where each member of the leadership team stood up and listened while the others openly and candidly discussed their "areas for improvement." We nearly lost a couple team members that day. But in the end, our leadership team learned how to openly and honestly communicate, which helped us align ourselves with one another. (Later, we found we needed to work hard to sustain this improvement; otherwise, we’d lapse into traditional silo politics.) The second thing we did to improve the leadership team happened by accident. We had to demolish one of our new buildings to make room for a new facility, and during the two-year construction period, I moved my leadership team into a triple- wide trailer. We planted a couple of pink flamingos out front and nicknamed it the “Flamingo Hilton.” The new office was uncomfortable and the walls were paper-thin. We had to learn to live close together and deal with the conversations we heard on the other sides of the walls. The proximity, though not always fun, improved our communication. The daily executive leadership team standup meeting, where we video conferenced with the leadership of our other sites, also helped. The lessons we learned in the trailer changed how we planned our company’s future. As we were designing our new facility, we had a lot of debate about where the senior leadership team members should reside. Initially, I favored an approach that is common in Lean environments, where each leadership team member is with his or her team, often on the production floor itself. However, we decided to go against Lean convention and locate the senior leadership team together on the second floor of the building. One big reason for this was that we noticed when a senior leader- ship team member spent too much time with his team, the supervisory and decision-making capability of junior leaders suffered. As much as we tried to encourage younger leaders to take initiative, it was just too easy to revert to the senior manager making the decisions. One set of stairs removed the temptation for upper management to get involved when it shouldn’t, thereby creating respect for our people by enabling their independence, autonomy, and growth. Additionally, we found it was easier to focus the senior leadership team on future strategy instead of the day-to-day mayhem. Physically separating the executive and junior management workspaces did not prevent senior team members from spending a lot of time mentoring, teaching, and helping their teams. But the small change in our physical location, which changed our focus and perspective, was important. Our junior leaders learned to step up and make decisions, eventually adding a lot of leadership strength to our company. As we learned, simply changing the structure of an organization does not create excellence and effectiveness. You have to dig deep to improve the underlying leadership competence and communication. As you do that, the organizational structure becomes less and less relevant. When you find your company is not producing the results you want, it may be time for some big changes, but not the ones you think. Instead of reorganizing your corporate structure, first look to solve conflict issues by improving leadership capability and communication—not by adding a new layer of management. Respect your managers by providing training, mentoring, and feedback to improve their leadership skills. Respect your managers by allowing them to interact across a wide span, and be mentored by senior leaders. Respect others in the organization by reducing layers and barriers to communication, and you will be much more likely to produce the changes you are looking for. ### The Simple Leader: Confront Mortality URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-confront-mortality/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:29:05.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *There is only one true wealth in all the universe—living time. – Frank Herbert* I was hesitant about discussing this topic, but decided it truly does impact my perspective on work and life. As we get older (I’m now in my 50s), the end of our lives—our impending doom, rebirth, or whatever you believe—is more on our minds. Whether we like it or not, our mortality can motivate us to be more productive. We each have a finite amount of time in this existence (sadly for some, less than we expect). Make the best use of it. Being aware (mindful) of my mortality has added focus and priority to what I want to get done, both personally and professionally. Experiencing how time seems to accelerate as I age (and recognizing that there’s a finite amount of it), has encouraged me to look at how I’m consuming my limited inventory of minutes. What projects and activities truly create value from the customer’s (my) perspective? What projects, accomplishments, and dreams have I been putting off ? Do I have the right balance of professional and personal activities? I want to be careful to not overdo it, however. Even at my age, I have some friends and family who are still too single-mindedly focused on a career or ambition, even if they do not like it. In your own life, ensure there’s balance, explore other aspects of life, do something you enjoy and learn from. There isn’t much time left. ### The Simple Leader: Break the Routine URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-break-the-routine/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:29:20.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- New habits can be powerful. But habits can also create barriers that limit our perspective, which can hinder kaizen, creativity, and even our knowledge of ourselves. This is known as the proverbial “rut,” and we’ve all been there at times in our lives. Sometimes you just need a break to re-center, recalibrate, recharge, or readjust your horizons. In the Zen world, this is *datsuzoku*, a break from the routine. Datsuzoku can be as simple as getting a good night’s sleep or as common as taking a week of vacation. I try to insert breaks in my routines in many ways. My wife and I visit a couple of new countries each year—we’re up to over sixty now. Later on, I’ll tell you about how every year for over twenty years I’ve had an annual goal to do or learn something different. These have included running a marathon, learning HTML programming, and researching Biblical history. Each month, I try to read a book on a topic I otherwise wouldn’t have been interested in. Each week, I take some time for myself and try to find a new place to walk. With all of these breaks, my perspectives change and I learn something. What habits or activities do you have at home, at work, or with your team, that need to be examined? What would happen if you broke those routines? What would you learn? How would perspectives change? Could it enable change or innovation? ### The Simple Leader: Zen and Business URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-zen-and-business/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:29:34.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- There are numerous books describing how Zen can be applied to business, so I will just give you an overview and avoid the minutiae. Zen helps leaders grow by letting them understand their true nature, in the present. Zen helps organizations grow by enabling them to understand their true values and their present state. It helps integrate those into a long-term strategy with supporting activities that are continually adjusted based on events in the present. One of the most important ways Zen does this is by encouraging simplicity. Our leadership lives are complex. In a 2010 study of over 1,500 chief executive officers by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, the number one challenge they faced was “the rapid escalation of complexity.” Over 80% predicted even more complexity in the future. Zen’s push for simplicity can free up leaders’ time and other resources and help them be more effective. In his oft- circulated treatise titled “Things Leaders Do,” GE CEO Jeff Immelt pushes leaders to “Simplify constantly—every leader needs to explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can’t, then you’re not leading well.” As organizations become more complex, conventional solutions to problems become less effective, so solutions must be out of the box. Zen teaches us to think in new ways, always considering unconventional ideas instead of dismissing them outright. Solutions created in this fashion are more likely to be competitive disruptors. Zen brings us back to understanding the value of our people, the value of purpose, the importance of ethics. The human side of business is sometimes sacrificed to create future value, and the seductive power of an external extrinsic reward may become overpowering without some level of reflection and introspection that Zen provides. It grounds a leader in the present and reminds him or her what is really important. ### The Simple Leader: Map the Value Stream URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-map-the-value-stream/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:29:48.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- One of the most powerful Lean tools is called value stream mapping, a visual management method used to document the flow and creation of value in a process. The definition of a value stream is all steps—value-added and non-value-added—that contribute to taking the process from raw materials (or raw data, etc.) to the customer. As with the other tools I’ve discussed, value stream mapping can be used to understand and document the production floor, in-office processes, hospital surgical wards, and, once again, even at home. The first step in value stream mapping is to choose the process you want to improve, which will then be mapped. I recommend starting with a small, easily-defined process before tackling something more complex. For example, instead of trying to map an entire manufacturing operation, start with a specific work cell or operation. In an office environment, start with the accounts payable process instead of the entire financial management process. Sometimes, especially early on in a Lean transformation, it can be difficult to identify specific processes. I’ve seen way too many organizations take their first steps into value stream mapping by trying to map their entire organization. This generally results in mass confusion, disappointment, and walls covered with sticky notes. Once again, it is best to perform the value stream mapping exercise at the process so it can be observed in real time. Traditionally, you use a large sheet of paper and draw the map by hand with a pen or pencil. If more than one person is involved, it may be easier to use a whiteboard or a wall with sticky notes. (You can use software too, but as I described earlier, I believe you learn more by writing by hand.) The first step is to create the current state value stream map. Observe the process and detail each step in flowchart form. Traditional value stream mapping uses specific icons and symbols, which you can see on examples in the Resources section. Focus on material flow first, then look at information flow. Write down the average amount of time each step takes and how each step relates to the others. Be sure to observe multiple runs of the process so you can also note variations in the process and any issues that arise. Also, note the rate of customer demand so that you can calculate takt time as well as the total time the process takes. Once everyone is satisfied that the value stream map accurately reflects the process, it is time to review, discuss, and envision ways to improve it. Ask yourself where waste is being generated, particularly in terms of time or idle materials and equipment. Determine which steps are value-added and which are non-value-added. (Think about “value” from the perspective of the customer.) Remember that some steps may not be value-added from the perspective of the customer, but may still be required, such as paper- work required by regulations or additional testing the company is undertaking as part of a continuous project. You want the process flow rate to match to takt time driven by customer demand and make the process flow better to reduce waiting or transportation. Look for any bottlenecks and how can they be resolved. Remember the seven forms of waste and attempt to eliminate them. From that discussion, create a new future state value stream map incorporating the ideas for improvement. While doing so, also create an action plan to change from the current state to the future state. Answer questions such as: What equipment needs to be moved? How does the process need to be rearranged? What visual controls will you use to monitor the new process? What is the timing and priority of these action items, and who is responsible? Document these required actions visually on an A3 report and monitor any changes you make via the daily accountability process that we will discuss later. ### Combating Shallow Information with Page-Turning Statistics URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/combating-shallow-information-with-page-turning-statistics/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:30:10.000Z Over the past decade or two I've become very aware of the importance of depth of knowledge, and how technology has changed our ability to obtain that depth. Reading books and newspaper articles has been replaced with news soundbites. superficially-researched blog posts (uh... ahem...), and 140 character tweets. I grew up in the 70s in the middle of a military dictatorship in Peru, with three quasi-government TV channels and where it was often not a good idea to go out of the house in the evening. Reading was the only entertainment, and I embraced it. Several years ago I got out of the habit, and even subscribed to a service that provided short 2-3 page summaries of business and leadership books. Hey, most of those books are fluff and the concepts can be easily summarized, right? I thought so. Then, after a concerted effort to read more - on many topics - I realized that what I had called "fluff" was actually the depth that provided context and understanding. I've cancelled the summary service and now read the entire book - even the boring sections - and believe that what I've lost in breadth I've easily gained in depth. Breadth becomes a function of time, while depth is a function of intent. While technology has increased our breadth and connectedness, you can see the negative impact on depth almost everywhere. From politics to science to social issues, we increasingly believe we understand the topic but it's really just the superficial concept, not the complexity that lies beneath. It's not really the rise of the "low information" consumer or voter, but "shallow information." As part of my attempt to read more, I'm always on the lookout for new books, preferably on topics that stretch me a bit. Over the last few weeks I came across a couple articles mentioning that the like of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg thought one particular book was especially important to them. Usually I'm pretty skeptical as those suggestions can be irrelevant or sometimes, as with benchmarking, even dangerous. But this one was a little different. They were recommending a book that dived deep into the history of violence, Steven Pinker's [*The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined*](https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). An 800 page book filled to the brim with the statistics and history of violence over the past 5,000 years? Why? It seemed odd, so of course I had to order it. I started it one morning, and read it nearly non-stop for the next two days. It really is that good. The book is exceptionally well-researched, the statistics are presented in a manner that even I can understand - and stay engaged with, it challenges perceptions driven in part by our sound bite world, and provides many underlying leadership lessons if you look for them. Fundamentally, as Pinker says, "As one becomes aware of the decline of violence, the world begins to look different. The past seems less innocent, the present less sinister." It really does change your perception of the world, on many levels. Violence really has declined to a tiny fraction of what it once was, even since the end of the Cold War in 1989\. News soundbites make it seem like jihad and terror are rampant, but even compared to just a couple decades ago, statistically violence is down. So what causes this? Pinker dives into this in detail, but fundamentally it is driven by an increase in connectedness among societies, leading to an increase in both understanding (and reasoning) and the value of individuals. Technologies have allowed information and reason to be shared and consumed. An increase in reasoning leads to solutions that support the common good and to debunk superstitions. The ominous thing is that the book is also a warning. Will the statistics continue to improve? Or are we at the bottom? Over the last few years we've seen an increase in separatism... people want to only associate with others that believe just like themselves instead of using differences to increase understanding. Science, even when 99% of scientists agree, is discounted, and any news that doesn't align with what you want it to be is considered "fake." Instead of understanding a complex issue in depth, we rely on news soundbites, Facebook, and Twitter - and only from sources we self-select as "trustworthy." Will the Flynn Effect start moving in reverse? There are indications, none yet statistically relevant, that it might. Consider the importance of depth. Immerse yourself in the detail of fluff. *Better Angels* is a great read and a good place to start. ### The Simple Leader: Go Visual URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-go-visual/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:30:23.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Make your workplace into showcase that can be understood by everyone at a glance. – Taiichi Ohno* We’ve all heard the phrase that a picture is worth a thousand words. There’s actually a scientific rationale for that: the brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than written information. Almost half of the nerve fibers in the brain are linked to the retina and ninety percent of the information processed by the brain is visual. As such, when running an organization, it makes much more sense to visit the gemba and see what is happening there than to sit in an office reading reports about it. Two core concepts of Lean are removing waste and showing respect for people. Managing your workplace more visually helps with both. By making information visual and public, you convey information more quickly and efficiently. You also show respect for people by clearly communicating the status and expectations of the organization to them. With effective visual management, all employees can align their actions to the goals of the organization. As Taiichi Ohno said (see quote above), the goal of visual management is to convey the status of the organization at a glance. This can be done in various ways, including posting A3 reports on strategies and projects, metrics boards, production schedule boards, shadow boards for tools, kamishibai boards, and kanban. In Lean operations, you will see andons, which are visual status indicators such as red/green lights on machines, and there will often be markings on the floor to indicate the correct location of equipment and supplies. Many Lean organizations also have an obeya, a single room that has the key visual management and control charts for the organization. (Note: the obeya is not a “war room!”) To respect people, it should be open and accessible to as many employees as possible. In my last company, a wide section of the main hallway effectively served as an obeya, The hallway was also where we held our daily executive standup meeting. The meeting, and the information on the wall, were open to everyone, so that anyone passing through the hall could quickly check the status of the company without having to sit down and read through a long report. This allowed us to leverage the capacity of the human brain to process visual information, reduce waste, and show more respect for our employees ### The Simple Leader: Create the Hoshin Plan URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-create-the-hoshin-plan/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:30:37.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *A goal without a plan is just a wish. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry* Now that you have defined your future state and understand what gaps you need to bridge to get there, it’s time to create a plan for action. In Lean, there is a form of strategic planning called hoshin kanri, also known as hoshin planning, or policy deployment. Hoshin means “set direction” and kanri means “together.” With hoshin planning, you set a direction together with your team and organization, which is a bit different than a traditional strategic planning process. The first step in creating a hoshin plan is to list the top three to five long term or ultimate goals from your future state. Then, you and your team develop a set of intermediate term (three to five years out) breakthrough objectives. Breakthrough objectives are very significant improvements or changes, and they should be linked to each of the long term goals from above. Next, you develop a set of annual objectives for the next year that are tied to each of the breakthrough objectives. Keep SMART in mind for the objectives: you want them to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. I once ran a very successful company that manufactured products based on a single material: silicone. Although we were the leaders in the industry and the properties of the material were very unique, we were always aware of the danger that a competitor could develop an alternate or improved material. In our hoshin plan, we had a long term goal to be more diversified and protected from such a disruption. The related intermediate term break through objective was to have a specific but small (due to lengthy development timelines) percentage of our business use non-sili- cone materials. Our annual objectives were to first identify specific types of alternate materials that might fit with our technology and existing customer base, then determine whether that investment should come from an organic development or an acquisition, and then to start production. Many leaders forget two critical components when planning: who will implement the objectives and how they will be implemented. Sometimes, a leader will assign the who and let that person decide how it will be done. It is critical to assign specific people to be responsible for each breakthrough and annual objectives and also to determine how the objectives will be accomplished. It is important to know in advance if there will be sufficient resources to accomplish all of the goals or if other activities may need to be reduced in priority. The last step is to validate the hoshin plan with all stake- holders by performing what is known as catchball. Catchball is a process where the plan is circulated among the people who will be responsible for its implementation, prior to undertaking it. Stake- holders confirm that the plan is realistic and supports the principles and why? of the company, then offer suggestions for improvement if necessary. The output of catchball is a plan that everyone agrees on and has ownership in. ### The Simple Leader: Authentic Character URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-authentic-character/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:30:51.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *The time is always right to do what is right. – Martin Luther King, Jr.* A mindful leader has awakened to his or her true meaning, purpose, and values. Hopefully, those values align with a strong sense of integrity, character, passion, and people-centered leader- ship. The authentic leader takes these values and overtly leads with them. The people surrounding and working for an authentic leader recognize and witness the values of that leader every day. They know the leader genuinely believes in and lives those values, both at work and at home. In Zen, this authenticity and natural- ness is shizen. Shizen inspires confidence in followers, leading to increased motivation and better performance. Authentic leaders truly lead. They are the first ones to go into battle, and they focus on building up their own troops. They take risks, and explain the reason for the risks as well as the possible consequences. The authentic leader leads with character and integrity. However, being authentic does not mean that you should embrace your inner jerk or narcissist. It also does not mean you should be inflexible. Authentic leadership is built on character, not style, and is flexible to fit the situation and capabilities of the team. Character matters, especially in leadership. We’ve seen many examples where character flaws compromise effective leadership, politicians and otherwise. I was disappointed when the constituents of each of them tried to excuse the behavior as part of their personal life and not representative of their professional leadership. Sorry, that doesn’t fly. There is no great wall between personal and professional leadership. Both are directly interrelated and aligned, which is exactly why this book focuses on both. A leader without personal character cannot be a great professional leader. Character is not divisible. Thought patterns in the brain are not divisible. You cannot say a person has a high level of character in one area and then forgive a lack of character in another. You cannot say a person can make great decisions in one aspect of life and be a complete idiot in another. It's the same brain. Choices are made consciously, and when a seemingly upstanding leader makes poor decisions, the evidence points directly at a lack of character. (It is important to note that there are cultural considerations with character. The personal follies of leaders may be issues in one culture, but not in others. However, an authentic leader is also aware of context, and leads accordingly, without narcissism and intellectual dishonesty.) Mahatma Gandhi once said “Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” Zen builds character by removing and controlling people’s material and superficial desires. As D.T. Suzuki writes in Essays on Zen Buddhism: “Zen may be considered a discipline aiming at the reconstruction of character. Our ordinary life only touches the fringe of personality, it does not cause a commotion in the deepest parts of the soul. We are made to live on the superficiality of things. We may be clever, bright, and all that, but what we produce lacks depth, sincerity, and does not appeal to the inmost feelings. A deep spiritual experience is bound to effect a change in the moral structure of one’s personality.” Like all of us, I'm not perfect. I've wronged people and made the occasional poor choice. But I learned my lessons. When I moved into a leadership position, I received the trust of others and very consciously began to hold myself to a higher standard. I deeply felt that trust and responsibility, from when I had just one direct report to when I had a thousand. My decisions and actions, both personal and professional, influenced and affected lives and livelihoods. I soon realized that in my personal life, I had leader- ship responsibilities of a different form and should hold myself to higher standards at all times. When a leader’s weaknesses are exposed, it becomes an opportunity for the leader to demonstrate authentic leadership. At that moment, he has the opportunity to show us what we should do when we are faced with our own shortcomings and mistakes. This creates trust. However, when a leader tries to cover up his weaknesses, lie about them or blame others, he demonstrates that he does not have the character to be a leader. Is your leadership style and method overtly aligned with your values and principles? Do your team members, including your friends and family, experience your values every time they interact with you? Are you unwavering in those principles? When you make a mistake, do you admit them, learn, and change? ### The Simple Leader: Kanban Work URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-kanban-work/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:31:03.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. – Lee Iacocca* These days, thanks to a simplified personal and professional life, my task list isn’t very complex. It’s lengthy, but not convoluted; therefore, a simple list in my journal works very well. However, this was not always the case, and probably isn’t the case for many of you. To simplify your task list, one tool you can use is a kanban. Kanban, meaning “signal” or “card” in Japanese, is a way to define and visually show the work, and components of work, in a sequence of operations. Kanban boards for personal or knowledge work were developed by the agile software development community and inspired by how Toyota manages work-in-process . The boards have a series of columns, with the leftmost one being the parking lot or backlog, holding tasks that are waiting to start. The next column to the right is for tasks that are ready to start, labeled as “Ready” or “This Month.” Then comes the “Today” column and, if you really want to tightly manage it, one for “Big Three.” Finally, a column for “Done” so you can see (and celebrate!) results. I often used additional columns for tasks that had been delegated, or were waiting on external input. Although a simple whiteboard works for most people, various apps and programs exist to use the kanban concept to manage task lists. Be careful to not allow a software solution to overcomplicate a simple process. Magnetic cards, or even sticky notes, can be used for tasks, making it easy to move them around. Additional visual cues can be developed and used to indicate priority and the amount of time estimated to complete the task. I would date the cards so I could easily tell how long were aging—perhaps an indicator in itself of importance. Kanban is just one potential tool for task management, and there are many potential variations of it. Experiment, don’t simply adopt. Figure out what works best for you. ### The Simple Leader: Embrace Solitude URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-embrace-solitude/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T20:43:18.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty, unfamiliar and perilous…. – Thomas Mann* We have become used to a world that floods our senses and keeps us entertained 24/7\. Think back to a time before radio and TV, perhaps even before books. Besides working to increase the population, what did people do? They thought, and pondered, and created new ideas. They learned about others and themselves. In the modern world, we’ve lost some of that ability, and we need to make a conscious effort to get it back. When we’re alone, with just ourselves and when not overtly meditating, our thoughts gel and reassemble into priorities and actionable concepts. What used to be a jumble begins to make sense. Conflicting priorities give way to clear direction. Seemingly insurmountable obstacles are put in their proper perspective. Most of us have experienced this, either alone or perhaps when our team is at an offsite meeting (in solitude as a team). As I described in the introduction, the power of solitude was my first experience with Zen. In the midst of personal and profes- sional chaos, I flew myself to Hawaii on a few hours notice, and just sat on a beach. I breathed in the fragrant air, listened to the birds and waves, and had a glass of wine by myself. My thoughts slowed, my priorities realigned, and I reconnected with myself. Lately, I’ve found I can obtain the same benefit by driving with the radio off, taking a walk on the nearby beach, or even just sitting on the porch in the morning. Alone, just my thoughts and me. Embrace solitude as an intentional part of your leadership routine. Take your daily commute with the radio turned off, or go for a weekly walk on an empty beach. Find a place to be alone, even if it is just a few times a year while on vacation (many executives plan a couple days alone at the end of business trips). The more frequently you make solitude part of your leadership habits, the more settled and aligned your thoughts will be. In addition to having it be part of your personal routine, consider ways to make solitude a part of your team’s dynamics, such as via offsite meetings. ### The Simple Leader: Standard Work URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-standard-work/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:31:17.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Where there is no standard, there can be no kaizen. – Taiichi Ohno* Before you can create change, you must know exactly what you’re currently doing. Beware—it’s probably different than what you think it is! Earlier, in the Clarify section, I encouraged you to detail the current state of your organization. Now it’s time to drill down and do the same for individual processes. There are two ways of doing this in a Lean organization, and they should be used together: The first is standard work, and the second is value stream mapping, which I’ll cover in the next section. Standard work can and should be used for all types of processes—manufacturing, office, and even leadership activities. People and organizations are sometimes leery of implementing standard work because they believe it could hinder flexibility, but in reality, standard work enables change by documenting the current state. Once the current state is deeply understood by employees, they can look for ways to improve it. At its most basic level, standard work is the documented sequence of operations in a process. In most cases, though, people implementing standard work incorporate additional information. The three components of standard work are: - The sequence of steps in the process - The takt time of the process, which is the rate the process needs to operate at to satisfy (but not exceed!) customer demand. - The inventory necessary overall and at each step required for the process to operate at the defined takt time. Companies use a variety of forms to implement standard work, including those that show the physical layout of the process (including machines, equipment, supplies, and workstations), as well as sheets that document the time required by steps in the process. Sometimes they use a combination sheet that includes both. These forms become part of the visual management of the process and are usually posted at the process location. Leaders can use a form of standard work called leader standard work. Similar to process standard work, leader standard work defines the activities an individual leader performs as part of his or her responsibilities. The type of leader standard work varies considerably, depending on the level and responsibility of the position. For example, production cell leaders may spend only part of their day on leadership activities, spending the remainder of their time actually working in the production process. Others may spend the majority of their time performing tasks on their leader standard work sheet. They may audit the 5S and workplace organization of the cell each morning and each evening, review order flow, review quality issues, and ensure appropriate staffing is planned, etc. A senior executive may have a leader standard work sheet that is completely different. On a daily basis, the executive may review operating and quality statistics from the previous day, lead the daily standup meeting, review the leader standard work sheets of other leaders, and do a gemba walk. Other activities, such as reviewing customer information, providing feedback to team members, leading a kaizen event, providing information to other executives, ensuring alignment to the hoshin plan, and so forth, may happen on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annual basis. The key point is that these leadership activities are listed and standardized, and completion is documented each day. The completed leader standard work sheets are often posted in a common area or near the leader’s work area as part of visual management. Similarly, standard work and leader standard work can be used on a personal level. You could have standard work for how to close down your house before leaving for an extended period of time, how to prepare for winter, and what to do in case of an emergency. You could create leader standard work to ensure you review financial accounts, plan meals and check the pantry, perform regular maintenance on your car, or replace furnace filters. More information on standard work and leader standard work, including forms and examples, are in the Resources section. ### The Simple Leader: Core Concepts of Zen URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-core-concepts-of-zen/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:31:30.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- The central concept of Zen is mindfulness—becoming intentionally aware of yourself in the present. You focus on the current moment by eliminating distractions and embracing solitude and stillness, letting go of the future and the past, which are both outside of your control. By clearing our minds of worries and regrets about the future and the past, we begin to pay attention to the present. We cease to be on automatic pilot. When we do this, we begin to understand the true essence of who we are. We recognize our values, desires, and beliefs. From this understanding, we can influence the present to steer us toward a desired future, always knowing that we cannot control the future and we must continually adjust the present. Focusing on the present is difficult. If you are doing two things at once, e.g., surfing the Internet while talking on the phone, or cooking dinner while watching television, you aren’t being mindful. Multitasking, as we’ll discuss later, simply doesn’t work. Having an inability to focus and be mindful is one reason why. Meditation is at the core of Zen, and can be as simple as taking a few minutes to sit quietly, removing both internal and external distractions. Embracing solitude and stillness helps you become mindful, aware of yourself, of your breathing, of the thoughts flying through your head. By actively engaging with the present through meditation you become more calm and relaxed, even when you are not intentionally meditating. Eventually, you will be able to find tranquility, even in a noisy room. Imagine being calm while stuck in traffic or flying through O’Hare the day before Thanksgiving. It can happen! Another way Zen opens our minds is through the use of koans. Koans are stories or riddles with no clear logical answer— or any specific right answer, for that matter. Here’s an example of a popular one: “Looking into a well, a man without shadow is drawing water. Why?” Koans can drive us nuts (especially Westerners), but by focusing on such riddles, we become more aware of ourselves and the sometimes counterintuitive aspects of our environment. For example, if we are agitated while waiting in a line at a bank, is it the bank’s fault, or is it ours for not allowing enough time? At the present moment, unable to control the past or the future, is there value in being agitated? Remember when I mentioned that Lean is often counterintuitive, using the example that it is more efficient to prepare one complete Christmas letter at a time than to separate the steps? Now you are beginning to sense the nexus. Although Zen creates focus in the present, it does not preclude having goals for the future. There is nothing wrong with goals as long as they reflect the truth that we have discovered inside ourselves. Most self-help books try to change who we are. Zen wants us to discover who we are, then use that as a platform for growth. A common symbol in Zen is the ensō, a circle created with a single brush stroke that symbolizes minimalism, strength, elegance, and the universe. The circle is generally open, indicating the opportunity for improvement while striving for perfection. Similarly, Lean tells us to work continually on small, incremental improvements. Instead of bench- marking against others, Lean organizations compare themselves to perfection. Simplicity (kanso) is another core principle of Zen. Striving toward simplicity in all aspects of our lives helps make it easier to experience and understand the present—in other words, to be mindful. Simplicity creates balance (kyosei) and the ability to embrace austerity (koko), so we can appreciate what Tanveer Naseer calls the “white spaces,” or open spots on our calendar and in our lives. Zen is humanistic, compassionate, and communal, while at the same time focused within ourselves. We exist in the present with our friends, relatives, coworkers, and fellow citizens. It teaches us that we do not need to feed our egos or acquire more material goods, allowing us to better help others without comparing ourselves to them. The prevalence of this mindset became very evident during the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami in early 2011\. There was no looting. It simply didn’t exist because people were more concerned about their community than themselves. ### The Simple Leader: Life as Art URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-life-as-art/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:31:40.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art. – Maya Angelou* Life is a canvas, shaped by what is in your soul, the environment you are in, your decisions, and your interactions with others. Your life is an individual, unique work of art. How can you change what’s on that canvas, the art of you? Here are some suggestions: - Be present. Truly use all of your five senses. In fact, when sitting, purposely go through all your five senses and experience what they are telling you. - Explore. Add new experiences and knowledge to the canvas. Take risks. - Synthesize. Just as an artist mixes paints and even media, think about how the various aspects of your life are mixing together. When I first started painting my canvas, I thought I would be a fireman or superhero, but over time this changed to physicist, then chemical engineer. I went from manufacturing to executive management to being the cofounder of an e-learning startup. I started out fairly conservative, then as I witnessed and reflected on the experiences of myself and others, I evolved into a far more complex sociopolitical individual. As I began to learn and explore, I experimented with and adopted intellectual and spiritual frame- works that made sense and were relevant to my situation. My time growing up in South America eventually led me to visit and experience more than sixty countries, and after more than fifty years, these experiences have given my canvas many complex layers. What will you add to your canvas today? This year? What will your life’s canvas eventually look like? Become aware, reflect on your personal and professional leadership life, and improve every day. Add depth, color, and texture to your painting. Make it a work of art you can be proud of. ### The Simple Leader: Reduce Information Overload URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-reduce-information-overload/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:31:52.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. – Gertrude Stein* Information overload is a big problem in modern society. We only have so much time and mental capacity to process information, and if we are not careful, the abundance can overwhelm us. We need to make it a priority to wisely manage the information-sharing systems at our companies, including email, phone calls, and voicemail. Emails can be a big productivity killer if not managed properly. How many emails are in your inbox right now? If you’re like most people, you have dozens, perhaps hundreds. I know a couple folks who have over a thousand! What good is that? Having so many emails in your inbox will make you feel overwhelmed just by looking at it. How is that respecting yourself ? I used to have more than a couple hundred emails in my inbox at any one time. When it got to be too many, I’d re-sort the inbox by sender and mass delete emails from people I considered to be a lower priority than others. Yes, I really did that. I was not exactly showing respect for people, let alone being mindful of the problems it could create for them and the organization. This changed for me when a few years ago I came across a blog post touting “Inbox: Zero.” My reaction was, really? Zero emails in your inbox? Although I was skeptical, I gave it a try and haven’t looked back since. I can’t remember the last time I had more than ten emails in my inbox, and I try to get to zero by each evening. To stay near or at Inbox: Zero takes effort and discipline, which needs to turn into habit. These are the steps to do it: 1. Aggressively unsubscribe from newsletters and promotional emails, unless you are willing to read them within one day. With the ones that remain, move them to a “To Read” folder immediately, or send them there automatically via an email rule. 2. Aggressively remove yourself from group distribution lists that are not critical. 3. If you were just cc’d or bcc’d on an email, scan quickly and make every attempt to not reply, then delete. Ask the sender to remove you from the chain if your attention isn’t critical to the matter. 4. Add (or decline) invitations to your calendar immediately. Be aggressive about declining if you don’t believe the meeting adds value—remember the Just Say No section above. 5. Try to take action (or respond) to an email immediately whenever possible. Otherwise, move it to a “To-Do” folder. I’ve now become good enough at this that my inbox is my residual to-do folder, generally with less than five tasks to be completed. Many people say this is the worst use for an inbox, but with so few emails it works well. I can’t describe how liberating this process is. Now, I can give far better attention to the few remaining emails I have and generate more thoughtful and focused responses while respecting the senders and their issues. Beyond cleaning up your own inbox, you can also help create a better email culture within your organization. First, be very judicious about who is copied on emails, and insist others respect your time as well. An “FYI,” if truly needed in the first place, does not need to be sent to a broad audience—that’s generally more a “CYA” (cover your you-know-what). Second, insist that any desired action be very clearly stated in an email, right at the top. Third, be very concise with original and reply emails. I had a big problem with this, and was known as the king of the long- winded email. I continue to struggle with being too wordy, and have a goal to try to keep emails to three sentences or less. There are other aspects to email management that help increase your productivity. For example, I try to only check email four times a day, keeping in line with the pomodoro method I described earlier. I hope to reduce that to three times next year. I turned off auto-checking on my phone so I don’t get disturbed with each new email. I also aggressively clear out old saved emails. They may not technically cost anything, and they are searchable history, but they still seem like clutter. I am now actually very close to not only Inbox: Zero, but also Mailbox: Zero! While email is a known productivity killer, phone and voicemail can also create information overload, if not managed properly. I have never been a fan of using the phone, even though I know it is often a more effective and immediate communication tool than email. I prefer to receive an email so I can properly contemplate and formulate a response. Many organizations, such as Coca-Cola, are turning off their voicemail systems to push people to use email or live phone conversations. Because of this, and because people know I’m not very good at responding to phone calls, I more regularly use voicemails. (If I did, I’d probably manage very similarly to my email inbox: aggressively filter, and respond immediately.) One thing about the voicemail system that I do love is that any incoming voicemails are also sent to my email inbox. There’s even a service that will auto- transcribe them into the email, so I don’t have to listen to the audio (plus, they are searchable). I know several people that like sending audio messages via email, but in my opinion, they are wasteful for the receiver, as they cannot be quickly scanned and searched. My friend Paul Akers uses them very effectively, but I know others that take two minutes to convey ten seconds of information—which isn’t respecting my time. Regardless of how you accomplish it, reducing your information overload is very important if you want to be an effective leader. By taking steps to slim down the amount of information that reaches you, you will be able to be more effective with the tasks that truly need your time and attention. ### The Simple Leader: Envision the Future State URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-envision-the-future-state/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:32:05.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else. – Yogi Berra* So now you have defined your principles, your why? (purpose), and your mission, and you’ve thoroughly analyzed the current state of your organization, process, or even you. It’s time to look into the future. This is exciting as you get to dream and be creative! Based on your why?, what would the ideal future state of your organization, process, or yourself look like? Think toward the long term, perhaps a very long term. What would happen if there were no constraints? What would your metrics be? What new business segments or technologies should you bring online to grow or to mitigate risk? What does your team and employees look like in terms of function and capability? You could look at other organizations for ideas, but be very careful with benchmarking. Simply adopting someone else’s best practice usually doesn’t work. Every organization’s context, perspective, goals, capabilities, and values are different. Another way to look at a potential future state is to consider what perfection would look like. If your goal is perfection, then some other organization’s best practice may seem like a mere stepping stone. Thinking about perfection as a possibility can radically change your perspective. Finally, once again, think about you. Where would you like to be—physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally—in ten or more years? Document this future state, just like you did for the current state. Now compare the current and future state documents. Where are the gaps? What are the priorities of the gaps? Which are the most critical to your survival? Which have the most promise? Which are low hanging fruit that can be bridged quickly? Does the future state still align with your principles, why?, and mission? Do all of the stakeholders agree? After going through this process and answering these questions, you should have a defined future state document, showing prioritized gaps and opportunities. ### Scalable Learning, with a Lean Twist URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/scalable-learning-with-a-lean-twist/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:32:27.000Z Last week John Haley and John Brown penned an interesting piece in the Harvard Business Review titled [Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations](https://hbr.org/2017/06/great-businesses-scale-their-learning-not-just-their-operations?ref=kevinmeyer.com). They began with a bit of history on how scalable efficiency used to be a critical foundation for business, but that's no longer the case today. > Today we live in a world that is increasingly shaped by exponentially improving digital technologies that are accelerating change, increasing uncertainty, and driving performance pressure on a global scale. Consumers are less and less willing to settle for the standardized offerings that drove the success of large institutions in the past. Which is where scalable learning comes in. > We believe there still is a compelling rationale for large institutions, but it’s a very different one from scalable efficiency. It’s scalable learning. In a world that is more rapidly changing and where our needs are evolving at an accelerating rate, the institutions that are most likely to thrive will be those that provide an opportunity to learn faster together. So what is "scalable learning?" > We’re not talking about sharing existing knowledge more effectively (although there’s certainly a lot of opportunity there). In a world of exponential change, existing knowledge depreciates at an accelerating rate. The most powerful learning in this kind of world involves creating new knowledge. This kind of learning does not occur in a training room; it occurs on the job, in the day-to-day work environment. New knowledge being created at the gemba. Unfortunately the authors don't dive much deeper into the ramifications of that statement, specifically that it requires a focus on respect for people. That new knowledge comes from the creativity, ideas, and experience - the brains - of the folks creating value on the manufacturing floor, in the ICU, the lab, the HR office, or, in the small handful of exceptional organizations, even the executive office. Organizations must first recognize and truly embrace the potential value of their people, then go far beyond simply putting signs on walls saying "people are our most important asset" to really capture, enable, optimize, and leverage that potential. > What if we went further, redesigning our work environments (physical, virtual, and management systems) to help accelerate learning and performance improvement on the job? We have not been able to find a single company that has undertaken this in a systematic and holistic way. Perhaps not to the extreme the authors would like to see, but I do know of several organizations that do a pretty good job. Companies like Danaher and Toyota where people-driven kaizen generates several points of productivity improvement - and competitive advantage - each year. Companies like [Menlo Innovations](https://www.gembaacademy.com/gemba-live/at-the-gemba/menlo-innovations?ref=kevinmeyer.com) where extreme transparency and teamwork optimizes group learning. And companies like [Aluminum Trailer Company](https://www.gembaacademy.com/gemba-live/at-the-gemba/aluminum-trailer-company?ref=kevinmeyer.com) where a focus on TWI - Training Within Industry - embeds new learning into standardized yet evolving processes. Organizations large and small, in all industries, where the common denominator is an understanding of the true value of people and a commitment to leveraging and optimizing what they truly believe is their most important asset. ### The Simple Leader: Serve URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-serve/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:32:41.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders. – Robert Townsend* Servant leadership has unfortunately become something of a leadership buzzword, yet the concept is sound. Building off of respect, humility, and trust, the servant leader truly thinks of him or herself differently. Instead of being at the top of the pyramid, they are at the bottom. Their job is to serve the organization, their team, or their family by enabling the success of others. By doing so, they enable the success of the organization. Servant leaders ignite the passion in an organization by drawing the human connection to the task or goal. They unite people rather than place them into silos. They sacrifice when the going gets tough, and this earns them the respect and commitment of the organization. You may find it hard to think of examples of servant leaders, because most do not desire fame, accolades, or prizes and are therefore not often in the public eye. Two servant leaders who did become famous are Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. President Lincoln could have taken the easy route and let the Union dissolve or simply let slavery remain intact. However he took the far more difficult path because he knew it would be better in the long run for the people he was serving. Dr. King eschewed recognition and desired to be remembered for helping drive social justice. He also took the harder approach to creating change by promoting non-violence. Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Teresa are other examples. Incredible people, but anyone can be a servant leader. What would happen in your organization, in your team, or even in your family if you acted like a servant instead of a boss? How would that make you feel? Where and how can you enable success by working to enable the success of others? ### The Simple Leader: Journal URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-journal/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:32:53.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. – Lee Iacocca* As you become more mindful of yourself and your world and formally reflect on the gaps between what you want to happen and what really happens, you will have a lot of “Ah ha!” realizations. Some will stay in your head, but most won’t, especially as you get older. This is why you should keep a journal. In his book, Getting Things Done, David Allen discusses how the brain is made for processing information, not storing it. As I age, I become more and more aware of how true this is. In fact, I’d say that my processing capabilities have actually improved, while my storage, or at least the speed of accessing that storage, has declined a bit. Because of this, I try to record or write down as many of my thoughts as possible, as soon as possible. Whenever I have an idea, a new task or project, a new meeting, or someone to call, I immediately jot it down in my journal. In effect, I am downloading my brain. A key, therefore, is that the journal needs to be with you everywhere. We’ve all had those great ideas during the day without anything nearby to record them. Keeping a journal will ensure you capture those brilliant sparks of wisdom. When you write your journal, you should record your plans, the results of carrying out those plans, the factors causing the gaps between your expectations and your results, and any insights from your reflections. This same process can be applied to team meetings, family meetings, and mentoring or counseling sessions with individuals. As part of your reflections, consider past experiences and insights that have been documented in your journal. Do patterns emerge? How do those patterns change your awareness? What will you do about it? There are many different technologies that can be used to keep a journal. Electronic journals have become the rage, and I’ve tried many devices and apps, but they just don’t work for me. Instead, I prefer paper notebooks. Instead of having to open my iPad, turn it on, select the right app, and then start writing in a clumsy manner, I just open my Moleskine and start scribbling with a pen or pencil. I start a new journal each year, beginning with an annual end-of-year reflection where I look back at the past year and think about personal and professional goals for the upcoming one. I’ll tell you more about that reflection process later on. Each morning before I start work, I write down my Big Three tasks for the day and I take a moment to record something I’m grateful for. It’s amazing how that creates focus and a positive perspective. During the day, I sketch out ideas and keep a list of to-do’s. And at the end of the day, I review and reflect (hansei) on my Big Three and on the rest of my day to see if I accomplished what I set out to do. If I didn’t, I write down how to improve next time. I also jot down action items, notes from phone calls, and questions to follow up on. Roughly once a week, I review previous pages, putting a check mark in the top corner of each page that no longer has open items (an easily seen visual cue). Every month or so, I do a more thorough review, copying uncompleted action items and issues to a new page so I don’t have to skim through the journal to find them. All this seems cumbersome, right? Could this be done more effectively electronically? Probably for some people, but not for me. Writing by hand is powerful for me. Experiment and discover what works best for you. The important action is the recording and reviewing, however it is done. ### The Simple Leader: Seek Stillness and Quietude URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-seek-stillness-and-quietude/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:33:05.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *I will take time to be quiet. In this silence I will listen… and I will hear my answers. – Ruth Fishel* We live chaotic lives, often surrounded by noise and commotion. We deal with kids, coworkers, traffic, and the barrage of thoughts in our own minds. We move constantly, almost as a way to show that we’re active and productive. What would happen if you just sat and listened? If, in the middle of the chaos, you were simply quiet and still? How would you, your team (or family) react? How would it impact your perception (and reality) of strength, wisdom, and confidence? How would it help you to understand yourself and help others to grow? There is a power that comes from stillness and quietude. Pausing actually adds information and context to our lives. Being quiet calms us, and then calms others. A quiet leadership style provides the time to observe, contemplate, connect, and focus, both on the world around us and within on our own thoughts. My wife and I try to make time for being quiet. When we are together, we regularly discuss the activities of our day and upcoming decisions we need to make. But we’ll also sit on a beach or enjoy breakfast on the porch together, observing the world in silence. The silence actually creates an emotional bond between us, strengthened by quietly sharing the nature around us. Be still, be quiet, and observe what is happening around you. ### The Simple Leader: A Short History of Zen URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-a-short-history-of-zen/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:33:27.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. The word Zen comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word chán, which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as “meditation” or “meditative state”. If you mention Zen to many people in the West (well, at least outside of California), they almost always think about fruits and nuts, and not the breakfast cereal variety. (“What kind of craziness are those pot-smoking, surfing yoga instructors up to now, dude?”). But to a large part of the rest of the world, particularly in Asia, Zen is a way of life: a simple, non-materialistic, human-centric existence. The emergence of Zen as a distinct school of Buddhism was first documented in China in the 7th century CE. From China, Zen spread south to Vietnam, and east to Korea and Japan. As a matter of tradition, the establishment of Zen is credited to the South Indian Pallava prince-turned-monk, Bodhidharma, who came to China during the rise of Tamil Buddhism in Tamilakam to teach a “special transmission outside scriptures, not founded on words or letters.” Thus, Zen developed as a way to concentrate on direct experience rather than on rational creeds or revealed scriptures. Wisdom was passed, not through words or concepts, but through a lineage of one-to-one direct transmission of experience from teacher to student. It is commonly taught that such lineage continued all the way from the Buddha’s time to the present. Although it is difficult to trace when the West first became aware of Zen as a distinct form of Buddhism, the visit of Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Zen monk, to Chicago during the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 is often pointed to as an event that enhanced its profile in the Western world. It was during the late 1950s and the early 1960s that the number of Westerners, other than the descendants of Asian immigrants, pursuing a serious interest in Zen reached a significant level. The first Chinese master to teach Westerners in North America was Hsuan Hua, who taught Chán and other traditions of Chinese Buddhism in San Francisco during the early 1960s. Although it is a form of Buddhism, Zen does not have to conflict with other organized religions, and many Jews and Christians practice components of Zen. Even those who subscribe to a higher power find it worthwhile to look inside and truly under- stand themselves. For example, in 1989, the Vatican released a position paper that supported the use of Zen concepts in Christian prayer. Thomas Merton, a Catholic priest, once said, “Without Buddhism I could not be a Christian.” ### The Simple Leader: Discovering Zen URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-discovering-zen/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:33:52.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. – Shunryu Suzuki* In many respects, my discovery of Zen paralleled my discovery of Lean. For the first decade or so after college, I threw myself headlong into my career and the rewards that came from it—long hours, good pay, and fun toys. It seemed like a pretty good life and I looked forward to where it was headed. I was able to have a fairly good work life balance that allowed me to take a couple long vacations a year and maintain a solid network of friends and family. Then life took a couple of unexpected turns. Both happened while I was attempting to turn around the large molding operation in Utah. First, I met and eventually married my lovely wife. Second, the sideline activities resulting from my exploration of Lean, including overseeing websites and being on the boards of industry associations, began to grow. The result was that most of my free time disappeared. The loss of free time crept up on me almost imperceptibly, and only became evident after moving back to California when a family member began to have significant, often unpredictable, medical issues that I had to manage. My free time no longer existed, and my stress level shot up. Soon, I was dangerously close to cracking—emotionally, physically, and mentally. Very few people realized how close I was to hanging it all up, flying to an empty beach on Samoa, and just living incognito for a while. Then, one Thursday afternoon, I did crack, but I didn’t buy a one-way ticket to Samoa. Instead, I flew myself to my favorite beach in Hawaii that very evening. I spent the next three days by myself. Each day, I would wake up and go to the pool, turn on the laptop and catch up on emails and projects. When the laptop battery died, I’d take it back inside and head to the beach for a couple hours while it charged. I repeated this process throughout the day, until it was time for a caipirinha or glass of Malbec at sunset, followed by more work back in my room until midnight or so. I returned to the mainland refreshed, caught up, and feeling centered, so after a few months, I did it again. And again, and again. My wife was very supportive, since she could see the positive impact. (There was one interesting dynamic: all of her female friends began asking what was wrong with our marriage, while all of my male friends wanted to know my secret for getting away with such audacity. Vive la différence!) The impact was noticeable to others besides my wife too. The owners of the company I was running at the time also fully supported my last-minute excursions, and would sometimes even send an email to my staff admonishing them to leave me alone for a few days. I discovered this after probing into why my work-related email volume dropped off suddenly when I escaped. After a few such trips, I began to realize that the key reason they worked, why they de-stressed and rebalanced my psyche, was not that I got caught up on my tasks, rather that I got away from them. For a few days, I was in control again, I was close to nature, I was living simply. The beach has always been special to me (my wife was born in Hawaii and we were married there), and I found that a couple hours spent sitting alone on a beach had a tremendous rebalancing effect. The time gave me solitude and quietude. And yes, heightened productivity. On the plane over, I would make a prioritized list of projects I wanted to accomplish, and I would nail them once my mind was cleared. Back home, I soon discovered that I could achieve a similar “mini-escape” of solitude and quietude on my commute. Fortunately, my commute was much different than what most people would expect in California. Instead of ten lanes of bumper-to- bumper traffic, I drove up the gorgeous Pacific Coast Highway a few miles, then inland on a winding road past avocado and lemon orchards, and finally through several of the vineyards that dot this very unpopulated part of the state. Many days I would see just one or two cars. Most of the time, I would drive with the radio off, alone with my thoughts. I contemplated problems, but more importantly, I planned my entire day as I was driving. On the drive home in the afternoon, I reflected on the day’s events. Over time, I turned the commute into a form of meditation practice (including a period of giving thanks, which does wonders to create a positive frame of mind for the day). Interestingly, I am now unable to listen to books on CD or podcasts in the car because my mind immediately tunes them out and creates silence. My subconscious recognizes the healing power of quietude. During this time, as I learned how to clear my mind from distractions, I also learned it was okay to give up some control over my circumstances. The unpredictable chaos of the medical situation made it impossible to plan more than a couple days in advance, a direct affront to my engineering-driven mindset. For years I fought to create control, often by micromanaging and creating backup plan after backup plan. I learned that I simply could not control every possible outcome of every problem, no matter how hard I tried. So, I came up with a new mindset: Don’t think so much about tomorrow, let alone waste tremendous amounts of time on layers of contingency plans. Live in the moment. Make decisions based on what is best now, and if something goes south, then and only then do some- thing about it. Just before the stress situation peaked and I began my Hawaiian escapes, my wife and I had been thinking about moving to a new house. Our existing house was more than large enough— it had a unique and pleasant design and was located right on California’s Central Coast, with views of the ocean to boot. Why move? Because that’s what people did, at least before the housing bust. The bigger the better, right? We found a beautiful Asian-inspired house surrounded by vineyards that was exactly our style, except that it was twice as large and more than twice the price of the home we had. We set a maximum limit, placed an offer and countered a couple times, but then we realized we had set the limit for a reason. We ended up losing it. To tell the truth, we were more relieved than disappointed, especially now, looking back and realizing that we would have bought and leveraged ourselves at the peak of the market. I still shudder to think about how different our lives would have been if we had ended up underwater, owing more money than our home was worth and staring at a huge mortgage payment. I honestly consider our fortune one of the cases of divine intervention in my life. It really feels that way. Losing the house didn’t just create a feeling of relief, it also prompted us to question our motives. Why did we need something larger? We didn’t. In fact, perhaps we should have been looking for something smaller. That realization was transformative, and launched our ongoing effort to get rid of excess “stuff ” in our lives. We went through the house, throwing out extra, expiring (or expired!) food in the pantry, books we’d never read again, clothes we hadn’t worn since the ‘90s. Once we started, the feeling of liberation, of simplicity, was infectious. This is how I gained a better awareness of being present in the moment, as well as an awareness of simplicity and minimalism—the core concepts of Zen. ### The Simple Leader: Find Your Unique Path URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-find-your-unique-path/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:34:14.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new. – Thomas Merton* I was rather surprised when Pope Francis mentioned Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, philosopher, and author, in his address to Congress during the pope’s visit to the United States in 2015\. I first came across Merton’s work during my deep dive into Buddhism a few years back, and his Thoughts in Solitude is one of my favorite books. Merton is a controversial figure in the Catholic church, because in addition to being a priest, he was also a student of Zen Buddhism. Hence, it was remarkable that Pope Francis lauded Merton, who once said: “I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.” Driving Merton’s interest in Zen was his belief that most Christian traditions had become so focused on ritual and dogma that they had forgotten about the quest for understanding and having a true personal relationship with the ultimate source of that knowledge. In both his writing and his own spiritual journey, Merton embraced the fundamental Buddhist concept that there is no one perfect path to enlightenment or salvation, and that each of us has to understand ourselves before creating our own unique journey. This idea does conflict with many Christian (especially Catholic) traditions, but not all of them. In 2015, my annual goal was to dive deeply into the history of the Bible, partly to assuage some family members concerned about my foray into Buddhism. I read about palace intrigue at the Vatican and in the early Church, mysterious sailors carrying fragments of scriptures to faraway lands, scribes with hidden agendas, and archeological finds that both confirmed and denied prior sets of beliefs. It was an enlightening experience. One of the subjects that came up in my research was the Gnostics. For most of the current era, the Gnostics were more commonly known as “those crazy Gnostics.” They had strange rituals and beliefs, only loosely associated with Christianity, which is why the early Vatican councils quickly discarded their scriptures and did not include them in the traditional Biblical canon. Then, in 1945, the Nag Hammadi texts were found and translated (interestingly, with financial support from none other than the noted psychiatrist, Carl Jung). The new texts supported some of earliest- known manuscripts that had been deemed too controversial by the early church to use in the Bible. They described a spiritual belief system far more aligned with traditional Christianity than originally thought, although there were still differences. One of the major differences was that Gnostics did not insist everyone must believe as they did. To the Gnostics, faith was an inner experience (the same as in classical Christianity), but it did not have to be the same for everyone, as long as it was grounded in individual investigation, introspection, reflection, and circumstance instead of ritual. In other words, faith is a dynamic process of seeking truth, not arrogantly declaring it. Sound familiar? Almost daily, I come across articles, questions, and comments about the “true path” to Lean and the supposedly correct sequence of methods required to accomplish a transformation. This misconception, along with not understanding the respect for humanity pillar, is what causes most Lean failures. Like the spiritual journeys of Buddhists, Gnostics, and Christians like Thomas Merton, when you are on your own journey, you must first seek to learn, understand, contemplate, and reflect on your circumstances and beliefs. Only then can you apply what makes sense to create your own path. Don’t simply accept what others say or copy what others do. ### The Simple Leader: Go and See URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-go-and-see/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T20:43:49.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *When you are out observing on the gemba, do something to help them. If you do, people will come to expect that you can help them and will look forward to seeing you again on the gemba. – Taiichi Ohno* I briefly introduced you to the concept of the gemba earlier in this book. The definition of gemba is “the real place” or “where value is created,” i.e., the production floor in a manufacturing company or a surgical ward in a hospital, and so forth. I briefly introduced you to the concept of the gemba earlier in this book. The definition of gemba is “the real place” or “where value is created,” i.e., the production floor in a manufacturing company or a surgical ward in a hospital, and so forth. Walking the gemba is different. You go to where value is being created and do more than just walk. You observe the process and ask questions, such as: What is the ideal state? What is the standard? Is there a problem? What is causing the gap between the ideal and the current state? You also check with the area manager to see if she sees the same things you do. Respect your team by helping them see the gemba the way you do, and listen to them describe what they see. Use the gemba walk as a daily method to observe the process, identify areas for improvement, support kaizen, and mentor others. During problem solving, your leadership team should be at the gemba observing the problem, not in a conference room discussing it. In many Lean organizations, you will also see managers, executives—even presidents—with their desks at the gemba so they can observe it throughout the day. When my own team decided to put our offices on the second floor of a new building, we faced some potential downsides by being away from where the work was being done. However, our production operators and supervisors were developing rapidly and becoming independent and confident in their capabilities, so we felt that if we put our executive team on the shop floor, we would stymie that growth, which wouldn’t be respecting people. On the other hand, consider what I witnessed at the Sheraton Hongqiao in Shanghai a few years ago. As I walked into the bustling lobby of this large hotel, a man was working at a desk on the side. It was Thomas Mueller, the hotel’s general manager. Mueller would work from that desk most of the day, able to directly observe the key gemba of his operation. Despite being very busy, he welcomed questions from guests, and if he had to leave for a few minutes, his assistant took over. Working in a bustling lobby probably wasn’t the most productive location, but for him it was the most valuable one. If you want to find out what is truly going on at your company, get out of the office or conference room and go and see what is happening where value is being created. Find the gemba and actively observe it, then look for ways to improve the work taking place there. ### The Simple Leader: Just Say No URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-just-say-no/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:34:50.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Clarity about what is essential fuels us with the strength to say no to the nonessentials. – Greg McKeown* Two years ago, while on my end-of-year reflection trip, I read Greg McKeown’s Essentialism. What a great book! In it, McKeown discusses how to identify your essential projects, activities, and belongings, so that you can then identify (and eliminate) the nonessential ones. Once you know what is not necessary, you figure out how to get rid of it. Similar to how we eliminated projects that didn’t align with our hoshin plan, we need to get rid of activities and things that are not essential to implement it. One of McKeown’s admonitions is “if it isn’t a ‘hell yes’ then it’s a ‘hell no’.” I was able to convince several people at my current company to read Essentialism, so we’ve used that last statement on many occasions. When interviewing candidates for a position, we ask ourselves if he or she is a “hell yes.” If we don’t have that level of enthusiasm, then it’s back to the applicant pool. The same goes for potential partnerships, new projects, and equipment. Yes, it’s somewhat subjective, and we do use more quantitative analyses when appropriate, but that last gut call is valuable. Another key revelation from the book was on how to say no to requests in a way that conveys your time is valuable. If you explain the reasons why you cannot help someone and do so in an authentic manner, requestors will get over their disappointment and you will still have their respect. Perhaps the hardest thing to do, but something that can really improve productivity, is to say “no” to things we want to do—even to good and valuable projects and activities. This forces us to prioritize, thereby focusing our time, resources, and attention on what really matters. I have used this concept with considerable success over the past year. I’ve turned down speaking engagements I wasn’t interested in, collaborations that I didn’t think would go anywhere (in the past, I might have tried anyway), and meetings where I was invited but didn’t really need to be there. This has freed up a lot of my time and reduced the stress and drudgery of having to do things that didn’t add value, allowing me to invest my limited time more wisely. Sure, I still use a lot of my time to help others, but I now do it more methodically (and, in my opinion, better and more mindfully). ### The Simple Leader: Document the Current State URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-document-the-current-state/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:35:04.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. – Galileo Galilei* Before you can improve something, you must first have a very clear understanding of what its current state is. Don’t assume you know what it is. Go to the gemba, be it the factory floor, the shipping and receiving area, your office, or even take a minute to focus on yourself, and observe what is going on. It is important that you get close to the action. The worst thing you can do is try to document the current state from a meeting in a faraway conference room. To document key processes, such as accounts payable, production, sales, and so forth, document the current step-by-step activities of each of those processes. How long does each step take? How are they physically laid out? Where do backlogs occur? If you are documenting the current state of a company or organization, there are a variety of ways to do it. You can use the key metrics of the organization, including financials, customer service, quality, operations, and so forth. If they are not the appropriate metrics, create new ones. Then decide how your observations compare to your expectations, industry average, etc. What are your suppliers saying about you? Your customers? Your employees? What about your competition? Once you have your observations, you might want to consider using some standard analysis methods as well. These include a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis, Porter’s Five Forces (to analyze your industry), a PEST analysis (for the external macroenvironment), and BCG or GE methods to look at product lines. From a Lean perspective, you may also want to look at how some key Lean tools are being used (5S, kaizen, poka-yoke, etc.). But remember, they are just tools. Moving forward, you need to determine if they are the right tools for the problem you are trying to solve. What is the problem or opportunity you want to address? When documenting the current state, be sure to include other people with potentially other perspectives to validate the results. This will help you counteract your own biases. The current state becomes the baseline from which you will start improving. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, consider documenting the current state of you. What are you currently dealing with, your hopes, fears, and aspirations? ### Waste Whack-a-Mole URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/waste-whack-a-mole/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:35:39.000Z Today is garbage day in my neighborhood, and like most people in California and probably most of the U.S. if not the world, our trash is neatly segregated into green, blue, and gray containers for pickup - yard waste, recyclables, and general non-recyclable trash. Actually a fourth if you count the food scrap container that we all received a year or so ago, with the scraps simply dumped into the green bin on garbage day. We're a pretty waste-conscious county. Way back in 1982 we became one of the first to [ban drive-through restaurants](https://www.qsrweb.com/articles/drive-thru-bans-a-wave-of-the-future/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) to save gas and reduce air pollution from idling cars, then in 1990 we became the first to [ban smoking in all indoor public areas](http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-02/news/mn-1350%5F1%5Fsan-luis-obispo-support?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and in 2012 we became the first to [ban plastic bags](http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article39424434.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- which was followed by [all of California voting](http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article113898813.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) to ban them last November. Over-regulated overreach? Perhaps. But you know what? It was surprising how fast - literally a couple weeks - the roads became noticeably cleaner with fewer bags, and all the stuff that's often in bags, blowing around. You easily get used to bringing a reusable bag to the grocery store or simply holding takeout containers, and the only pain is if you're behind unknowing tourists in the checkout line. Back to the trash cans. In our case we already try to recycle quite a bit, so we've opted for the medium size gray can with a large blue can. Earlier this year my wife and I, with no kids and frequently eating out, noticed that our neighbors even with kids had the small size gray can, and a medium blue can. How did they do that? How could they have both less general trash and less recycling than us? We started to pay closer attention to what was put in both trash cans. Amazon Prime became an immediate culprit. We've become very used to ordering pretty much everything on Amazon, with near daily deliveries... each in an often oversized cardboard box. I dutifully break them down for recycling, but they still fill the blue bin pretty fast - leaving just enough room for all the other used food containers, newspapers, and such. What waste. So instead we've started to look at buying local again, especially floor models that are already unboxed (I guess there's still a box somewhere though?). Speaking of newspapers... and magazines and junk mail. I've recently cancelled my remaining hard copy newspapers and magazines, and now read everything on my iPad. I've done this for years with the morning Wall Street Journal, so that change wasn't difficult. Bills are all electronic as well. Junk mail? That is harder. I have had good luck with the [PaperKarma](https://www.paperkarma.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) app, where you take a photo of the address label on junk mail and it tries to remove you from whatever mailing list it was part of. This has worked very well for catalogs and such, but general flyers and coupons are still a problem. An improvement though. Our analysis showed another source of both recyclable and non-recyclable trash was food containers. So in restaurants we started splitting meals so we wouldn't have extra to bring home. We also buy more food from our local farmers markets where we can put the produce directly into our reusable bag instead of buying it in containers that have to be thrown away. We've also worked hard at just buying the food we need for a couple days, thereby fresh and often without containers, instead of stocking up and filling the pantry with cans and containers that will eventually be thrown out. There's a lot more, but you get the picture. We've been able to significantly reduce our overall waste each week, and we're getting close to no longer being embarrassed by our neighbors. The frustrating thing is that reducing waste often means you discover another layer of waste you didn't know about, or it creates unexpected waste in another area. Just like playing whack-a-mole. Perhaps it's analogous to the lean metaphor where the water level (inventory) is lowered thereby exposing more rocks (problems to be solved). Perhaps it's also analogous to the lean journey itself. If you're seriously on the journey you soon learn to recognize waste, value, and opportunities for improvement wherever you are - at work or even at home. It can easily become an obsession. The same with trash. Reducing it became a challenge that tickled my OCD tendencies. A quick search will identify many online forums (support groups?) for people with a similar focus that sometimes may go a bit over the edge. Once you observe and analyze, you become aware and can understand. Once you understand you can start to solve the problem. Once you solve the first problem, another, deeper problem or opportunity often presents itself. That's the process of improvement - with trash or otherwise. ### The Simple Leader: Share Generously URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-share-generously/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:35:54.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Teaching is a gift you give not only to others, but also to yourself. You give and you receive, you teach and you learn. – Andrea Goeglein* When I became president of the medical device company, I already had a decade of Lean experience. I knew what fundamentals needed to be put in place, what systems needed improvement, and what knowledge needed to be transferred. Instead of ordering this or that program to be implemented, I decided to help the team identify problems and point them to potential solutions. For example, when we were taking too much time to find production supplies, I suggested they consider using a Lean concept known as 5S. Instead of teaching them everything myself, I let the team take charge of implementing it. The team embraced this management style: first they learned about 5S, and then they implemented what they learned. We repeated this process with several other Lean concepts. They would go and learn about it, and I would coach them on implementation. I shared my knowledge and experience, but a funny thing happened along the way: the team also taught me some new methods they had identified and developed. In the end, there were still a couple of changes I needed to dictate, one being the morning standup meeting. The team did not think that adding a new daily meeting would be beneficial. But when I made the meeting mandatory, I also let them know exactly why it was being done, why it was important to me, and what results we should expect from it. Within a few weeks they also saw the value, and I know that it continues to this day, more than three years after I left the company. Another thing we did at the company was to emphasize employee training. People want to learn, and it’s a measure of your respect for them (and their brains) that you provide opportunities for them to learn. I’ve seen far too many organizations that believe it is too expensive to send employees to conferences, work- shops, and other events. Yes, it costs money, but those folks come back motivated and wanting to improve! Isn’t that worth a couple grand? If you cannot recapture the investment of a conference or workshop, you aren’t asking enough of your team. Every year, I sent quite a few employees to events, choosing people that had demonstrated a passion for learning as well as some that I thought could learn a lot if they were appropriately motivated and respected. In each case, I asked them to come back with three to five ideas that we should implement now, as well as three to five ideas that were pretty cool and we should keep in mind for the future. They presented these ideas to our leadership team as a group, and it was then up to us to evaluate and implement them. The process was difficult, but the new ideas easily paid for the trips, many times over. Properly nurtured, the employees who had gone to the trainings became forceful proponents for improvement. Sharing your knowledge and experience doesn’t just have to be within your organization. One of my most rewarding activities is writing the blog I started over ten years ago. My posts have ranged across many topics, some far outside of Lean, but the response I’ve received has been tremendous. I’ve also met some incredible people who have become very valuable friends and colleagues—some are now business partners. The effort has also improved my writing ability and helped me organize my thoughts, which eventually even led to this book! I’ve also learned a lot about recruiting over the years. I’ve had several failures where professionals with great experience and resumes ended up not being the right fit. I have learned that the best predictor of executive success, more than experience, education, references, or personality, is the ability to share and teach new knowledge. More specifically, executives should have a craving for new knowledge, the capability to distill the knowledge, and an ability to effectively share the knowledge. Those types of individuals are few and far between, but they are incredibly valuable and can radically change an organization. ### The Simple Leader: Deal with it Now URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-deal-with-it-now/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:36:07.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything. - Samuel Johnson* So how many questions, issues, and decisions are bouncing around in your head? As an elderly family member aged I became increasingly frustrated with how she was making her life complex when it didn’t need to be. Simple decisions, eventually even tasks such as deciding what to watch on TV, became impossible. Her anxiety was skyrocketing and I realized it was a vicious cycle. The more we put off decisions and tasks, the more we are juggling in our heads. This makes it increasingly difficult to calmly and rationally evaluate an issue and come to a conclusion, which just adds to the chaos. Stop the cycle. Do you really need more time or more data to evaluate an issue? Sometimes you legitimately do in order to stay focused on a task at hand, but I bet you’d be surprised how often you don’t. Think about what more information you’d really need and whether it would change your mind. What is the worst that could happen if you were wrong? Take the extra second and make the decision. When an employee asks to talk to you, do it now rather than putting it off. Deal with it once, then it is out of your head, decluttering your mind. ### The Simple Leader: Self-Inquiry URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-self-inquiry/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:36:19.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do. – Eckhart Tolle* Last year, some colleagues and I were discussing books we’ve found to be interesting, and my business partner suggested Edgar Schein’s *Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling*. I read the book and loved it. Schein describes three types of humility and four types of inquiry, focusing on the power of here-and-now humility. This form of humility happens when we presume to be dependent on someone else because that someone has something we need (e.g., knowledge). Consider the following excerpt: > *What we ask, how we ask it, where we ask it, and when we ask it all matter. But the essence of Humble Inquiry goes beyond just overt questioning. The kind of inquiry I am talking about derives from an attitude of interest and curiosity. It implies a desire to build a relationship that will lead to more open communication. It also implies that one makes oneself vulnerable and, thereby, arouses positive helping behavior in the other person.* It strikes me that, although Schein was intending to describe a relationship between two or more people, his concepts are also very appropriate for our discussions with ourselves (assuming we have them). Creating a humble, vulnerable relationship with your- self opens you up to being able to inquire, discover, reflect, and perhaps create change. Accepting yourself for who you are gives you peace. We’ll discuss reflection in more detail later on. ### Ensconcing Paranoia in Rules URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ensconcing-paranoia-in-rules/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:36:52.000Z *Silly boy you got so much to live for* *So much to aim for, so much to try for* *You blow it all with, paranoia* *You're so insecure you, self-destroyer* *paranoia, they destroy ya* It's been over a week since the United incident where Dr. David Dao was forcibly removed from a flight. It takes about that long for the hysteria to die down and for some meaningful analysis to start coming out. Yes, the airline was within its right to remove anyone for safety reasons, and perhaps for other reasons - though there's some doubt that accommodating employees after a passenger has already been seated is in their contract of carriage. Yes, not getting those employees to the next flight could have created a travel nightmare for many more customers on a different flight. Yes, Dr. Dao could have just complied, and yes he has an interesting history. Apparently United didn't offer up to the full amount authorized to bribe passengers to give up their seats. And, yes, the actual altercation was created by the Chicago airport police. All of that finger-pointing and victim shaming misses the point. A point that both [The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-united-airlines-fateful-decision-to-call-police-1492384610?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and [Harvard Business Review](https://hbr.org/2017/04/companies-like-united-need-to-cultivate-good-judgment-and-free-their-employees-to-use-it?ref=kevinmeyer.com) eventually discussed a few days ago: the real problem is an extreme rules-based culture at United that makes no allowance for situational judgment. My subconscious must have realized this earlier as I couldn't get my [favorite tune from The Kinks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q%5F57hFyRY8E&ref=kevinmeyer.com) out of my head from the day the United story broke. A party staple from my college days, which I guess dates me a bit. *Paranoia, they destroy ya*... And there you have the root cause of most rule-based organizational cultures. Paranoia. As [HBR describes](https://hbr.org/2017/04/companies-like-united-need-to-cultivate-good-judgment-and-free-their-employees-to-use-it?ref=kevinmeyer.com), "*The public reacted to the video with horror. Those flight attendants must have been appalled, too, as they watched the customer — who just a few minutes earlier was supposed to have been greeted on the plane with smiles and welcomes — being dragged, face bleeding, past other customers. What must they be thinking now? We were powerless to intervene, they might say. Civility was no longer an option. We called security. That was what management told us to do.*" Powerless, because they were controlled by rules. The depth of those rules is discussed in the [WSJ article](https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-united-airlines-fateful-decision-to-call-police-1492384610?ref=kevinmeyer.com): *Like most other airlines, United follows strict rules on every aspect of handling its passengers, from how to care for unaccompanied minors to whether someone gets a whole can of Coke.* *Deviating from the rules is frowned upon; employees can face termination for a foul-up, according to people familiar with the matter. At United, this has helped create a rules-based culture where its 85,000 employees are reluctant to make choices not in the “book,” according to former airline executives, current employees and people close to United.* Of course some procedures do require strict consistency and adherence to ensure safety. Some rules are necessary. But it's important to also understand that rules can remove the ability for decisions to be made based on specific context and circumstance, and in effect assume every hole is round and can be filled by a properly-specified peg. An organizational culture driven by an overabundance of rules indicates a lack of trust in the caliber, training, and experience of employees - and a paranoia for what might happen. Yes, United is probably paranoid about the impact on the bottom line of too many people getting a whole can of Coke. Instead, they could hire great people (perhaps they already do), provide a clear understanding of corporate objectives, draw some general guidelines, and describe the impact of potential decisions, and then set them free to make the best decisions at the right time. This is the essence of respect for people. Leveraging the value in brains instead of focusing on the hands. *Companies like United need to cultivate good judgment, and free their employees to use it.* Some companies do. Netflix has it built into their [culture code](https://blog.gembaacademy.com/2016/06/10/performance-not-policy/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). *There is no vacation policy, and the travel and expense policy is literally five words: “Act in Netflix’s best interests.” That’s it.* *Netflix believes high-performance people should be free to make decisions, and those decisions need to be grounded in context. Mission, vision, and value statements do not create context. To demonstrate this, Netflix’s presentation provides the example of how Enron’s value statement included “integrity.” Real company values are shown by who gets rewarded for embodying desired behaviors and skills. The document goes on to describe the primary Netflix values and the associated behaviors.* *At Netflix, flexibility is more important over the long term than efficiency.* At Gemba Academy we have adopted a [very similar culture code](https://www.slideshare.net/GembaAcademy/gemba-academy-culture?ref=kevinmeyer.com). We have have very few policies and procedures, which helps us be very agile and customer-centric. This has been a major driver of our success. What would have happened if United allowed - even encouraged - employees to make context-based decisions instead of being bound by paranoia-driven rules? A flight attendant might have said "there must be a better way," offered more money, found someone else, or come up with an even more creative alternative. And United would not have lost a billion or more in market capitalization over the next few days. A quick call to arrange a Netjet private jet for Dr. Dao, albeit extreme, would have been comparably cheap. Or a Netjet for the employees they needed to get to the next flight. HBR branches off into an interesting side note, discussing the potential impact of increasingly AI/algorithm-driven decisions. Perhaps the ultimate rules-based decision-making? *Machines follow orders. People use discretion. Learning the importance of that truism is the lesson of this awful situation, and it will be a lesson of growing relevance and application as algorithms and machines play ever larger roles in service delivery.* Something to keep in mind. In the meantime, hire great people, train them on the clear "why?" of the business, then set them free. It might keep you out of the news. ### A Painful Perspective from the Goofy Foot Pop Up URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-painful-perspective-from-the-goofy-foot-pop-up/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:37:01.000Z For the past couple years I've worked hard at getting into the best shape I've been in in decades. In fact, many of us at Gemba Academy have, and we have a wellness program that encourages and rewards positive efforts toward physical, spiritual, and emotional health. In my case I've been very conscious of what I eat, and I exercise every day with crossfit classes, personal strength training, running on the beach, and yoga for stretching and balance. As I enter my 50s I've been particularly focused on working those smaller muscles that create balance as falling is one of the top dangers for the age group I'm approaching. A month or so ago I was getting an itch for a bit of a change. Crossfit has a lot of variety, but after over a year it was becoming routine. I needed a different angle to stay motivated. Coincidentally the owner of the small gym I had been taking classes at had been looking for a way to differentiate himself from the other small gyms, and as an avid surfer in our very popular [surf town](http://www.morrobay.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), created a specialty "[Surf Fitness](http://surfstrongfitness.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)" series of classes. I'm a very occasional surfer, probably more of a surfer wannabe, but I still thought, "why not?" The owner warned me it was a bit more intense than the classes I had been taken, but after over a year of a lot of exercise and now being able to run several miles, how hard could it be? Hard. After that first 6am Monday class, I hurt, bad. The next day I hurt worse. Like I haven't hurt in over a year. Where did these hidden muscles come from? I thought I had been working everything. The difference was due to a change in perspective. The previous classes and workouts focused on traditional, even stances to provide stability while lifting, jumping, and so forth. In the surf fitness classes the traditional exercises were modified to align with the unbalanced, offset, uneven movements found in surfing. One example was the modification of burpees and pop ups, common (and already potentially brutal) exercises in almost any class, to be intentionally uneven and with asymmetric rotation - which would get you yelled at in a traditional class. When popping up on a surfboard to catch a wave, you push hard with your arms in a narrow width to hold on to the board rails, further back than a traditional pushup or pop up, and jump your feet between them. Your right is in front at a different angle than the left in back, while leaning forward and then back while rotating. The "goofy foot pop up" in surfer parlance, shown in the video below. Analogous modifications were made to other traditional exercises and stretches, and muscles were moved and strained in ways they weren't used to. A similar modification of perspective is often necessary to create meaningful change. Just like I experienced with exercising, it can be surprising and painful, especially when you are under the delusion that you're already pretty good. Consider a traditional organization that starts out on the lean journey, learns how to identify waste, and suddenly sees waste everywhere in an operation. The challenge appears insurmountable, and the only effective way to manage it is to start taking small steps and creating small experiments, kaizen, always moving toward an ultimate goal of perfection. Unfortunately many organizations try to minimize the pain, rather than continuing to exercise the muscles let alone changing how they are exercising the muscles, and their lean journey comes to an end. Organizations that truly embrace the journey understand that the challenge only increases even as they improve, and that represents the inherent opportunity of lean and continuous improvement. You never truly arrive, you have never already "done lean." You just find more and more opportunities for improvement, more changes to make, more experiments to run, and more failures to learn from. Just as people who embrace exercise learn to love the ongoing dull ache of their muscles as they add weight or different movements because they know it means they are increasing endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance. Perseverance, leadership, change, and acceptance of occasional hurt lead to improvement. ### Mother Nature Takes On the Lean Home URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mother-nature-takes-on-the-lean-home/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:38:01.000Z A few months ago [I told you](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/designing-a-lean-home/) how my wife and I had found a mid-century remodel project only a couple blocks away from where we currently live. We wanted to create a "lean home" - smaller with a simple layout, *less* storage space, and as few walls and doors as possible to optimize flow. The remodel has the ideal bones, with a single level, open layout, and a dramatic location perched on a hill overlooking the Morro Bay estuary and Pacific Ocean. We drew up plans for the remodel which included removing many unnecessary storage cabinets, completely gutting and replacing the bathrooms, new and fewer doors, retiling the fireplace, all new appliances, and removing multiple layers of pink flowery wallpaper. To take advantage of the incredible views we decided to replace all the windows on the ocean-facing side with huge floor-to-ceiling behemoths custom made by our good lean friends at Pella. We also had to stabilize and level the hillside foundation with six caissons to bedrock as over the past 50 years the house had slipped a couple inches, and we did a complete plumbing repipe. I engaged a contractor I've worked with for over a decade on other projects, and in mid-December we launched what was planned to be a two month project. The sequence was carefully planned, with foundation work and plumbing first, then the new custom windows, and finally the interior work. The very first activity was digging the holes for the caissons. Which is when Mother Nature decided to hit the central coast of California with the rainiest six weeks in over twenty years. Yes I guess that's a good thing in our extreme drought, but it's not exactly favorable for a tight construction schedule. For the first few days we simply shut down, thinking that hey this is California where most people don't even own umbrellas so we should soon be dry for the rest of the year. But it didn't stop, and we had to take a hard look at the schedule. My contractor already uses a lot of lean construction principles. Materials are ordered and delivered only when they are needed to reduce storage and optimize cash flow. With the rain delays the materials were coming in and getting stored in the garage. 19 windows, half of which are 9'x7' weighing several hundred pounds each, take up a lot of room - not leaving much for boxes of tile, appliances, and fixtures. So how did we manage this situation and get back on track? What my contractor also does is hire top notch people, from project managers to tradesmen. They cost more, and therefore his projects do cost more overall, but higher value is delivered to the customer - in terms of trade quality, schedule, and oversight. That people side of the equation is what has made the difference when dealing with Mother Nature. The on-site project manager is highly-experienced and is given a lot of autonomy by the contractor. He has been able to look at changes to the weather on an hourly basis and quickly make adjustments to work activities. The lean concept of quick changeover talks about analyzing internal vs. external activities, which takes on a new, literal, meaning when "external" is impacted by wind-driven rains blowing off the ocean right into the wall where large plate glass windows (aka "sails"...) are being installed via a narrow outside scaffold. Larger jobs were broken into smaller activities that could be completed when the weather allowed. Multi-skilled tradesmen were brought in that could easily pivot between woodworking, plumbing, and electrical work. Plywood covers were constructed so that the openings being cut into the walls for the new windows could be quickly covered and uncovered when rains hit, instead of simply shutting down for the day or allowing the wet weather to damage the interior. In effect the job is now being managed, scheduled, and rescheduled by the hour instead of the day or even week. The ability to manage smaller increments of time creates agility and flexibility. We're still a bit over two weeks delayed from the original schedule, mostly driven by the early disbelief that it was actually raining in California, but I also know it could have been much worse. The difference has been created by the quality and experience of people, who are delivering a higher value to me, the customer. ### The Simple Leader: A Short History of Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-a-short-history-of-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:33:39.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- To many people, Lean manufacturing was invented in Japan and is synonymous with the Toyota Production System (TPS). They will tell you that TPS is the manufacturing philosophy that enabled Toyota to effectively conquer the global automobile market by reducing waste and improving quality. While that is true, it is not the whole story. Lean has far deeper roots and broader potential. Fundamentally, Lean is about creating value and empowering people, not just eliminating waste. It was developed long before Toyota—long before the 20th century, in fact. Some trace the roots of Lean all the way back to the Venice Arsenal in the 1500s, when Venetian shipbuilders could roll complete galley ships off the production line every hour, a remarkable achievement enabled by several weeks of assembly time being sequenced into a continuous, standardized flow. (The genius that helped the military engineers at the Venice Arsenal was none other than Galileo himself— perhaps the first-ever Lean consultant!) By 1760, the French were using standardized designs and the interchangeability of parts to facilitate repairs on the battle-field. Eli Whitney refined the concept to build 10,000 muskets for the U.S. government at previously unheard-of low prices. Militaries around the world fine-tuned continuous flow and standardized processes throughout the 1800’s. Over time, standardization slowly entered into commercial manufacturing. In 1910, Henry Ford moved his nascent automobile manufacturing operations into Highland Park, Michigan, which is often called the “birthplace of Lean manufacturing.” Ford used continuous flow and standardized processes, coupled with innovative machining practices to enable highly consistent, repetitive assembly. Ford often cited the frugality of Benjamin Franklin as an influence on his own business practices—especially Franklin’s advice that avoiding unnecessary costs can be more profitable than increasing sales. Ford was able to reduce core chassis assembly time from twelve hours to less than three. This reduced the cost of a vehicle to the point where it became affordable to the masses and created the demand that helped build Ford’s River Rouge plant, which became the world’s largest assembly operation with over 100,000 employees. In 1911, Sakichi Toyoda visited the United States and witnessed Ford’s Model T production line. He returned to Japan to apply what he saw on his company’s handloom weaving machines. As Ford and Toyoda were streamlining their operations, others were making parallel improvements in the quality and human factors of manufacturing. In 1906, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth was in the hands of 20% of the population, a ratio he found could be applied to areas beyond economics. J.M. Juran took the Pareto Principle and turned it into a quality control tool that focused on finding and eliminating the most important defects. A few years later, Walter Shewhart invented the control chart, which allowed managers to monitor process variables. Shewhart went on to develop the Plan-Do- Study-Act improvement cycle, which Dr. W. Edwards Deming then altered to create the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle still in use today In the early years of twentieth century, efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth advanced the science of management by observing construction and factory workers. He and his wife, Lillian, started a consulting company to teach companies how to be more efficient by reducing human motion during assembly processes. Sakichi Toyoda, having already benefited from Henry Ford’s ideas, became an expert at reducing human-induced variability in his factories. Then came World War II. At the beginning of the war, Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego was able to build one B-24 bomber per day. Ford’s Charles Sorensen thought he could improve that rate, and as a result of his efforts, a couple years later the Willow Run plant was able to complete one B-24 per hour. With almost all of the traditional male factory workforce deployed overseas for the war, the human aspect of manufacturing moved front and center. Training Within Industry (TWI) was born as a method to rapidly and effectively train women to work in the wartime factories. After the war, TWI found its way to Japan even as it faded away in the U.S. (only recently has it returned). The end of the war saw a divergence in philosophies between the two countries. In the U.S., Ford adopted the GM style of top-down, command-and-control management and effectively abandoned Lean manufacturing. Meanwhile in Japan, Toyota led the acceleration of the development and implementation of Lean methods. The company transitioned from a conglomerate that still included the original loom business to a company focused on the auto market. Taiichi Ohno was promoted to machine shop manager and under his watch, Toyota developed the elimination of waste, and creation of value, concepts. The human side of manufacturing was especially important to Ohno, who transferred increasing amounts of authority and control directly to workers on the shop floor. After being sent to Japan in 1946 and 1947 by the U.S. War Department to help study agriculture and nutrition, Dr. Deming returned to Japan in the early 1950s to give a series of lectures on statistical quality control, demonstrating that improving quality can reduce cost. Toyota embraced these concepts and embedded them into the Toyota Production System (TPS), leading to Toyota winning the Deming Prize for Quality in 1965\. Over several years, Taichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo continued to refine and improve TPS with the development of pull systems, kanban, and quick changeover methods. By the early 1970s, the rest of the world was beginning to notice Japan’s success, and managers assembled for the first study missions to Japan to see TPS in action. Norman Bodek and Robert Hall published some of the first books in English describing aspects of TPS, and by the mid-1980s, several U.S. companies, notably Danaher, HON, and Jake Brake, were actively trying the “new” concepts. The term “Lean” was first coined by John Krafcik in his MIT master’s thesis on Toyota, and then popularized by James Womack and Daniel Jones in the two books that would finally spread a wider knowledge of TPS: The Machine That Changed the World in 1990 (written with Daniel Roos) and Lean Thinking in 1996\. Lean Thinking described the core attributes of Lean as: - Specify value from the perspective of the customer. - Define the value stream for a product, then analyze the steps in that stream to determine which are waste and which are value-added. - Establish continuous flow of products from one operation to the next. - Create pull between process steps to produce the exact amount of products required (i.e., make to order). - Drive toward perfection, both in terms of quality and eliminating waste. Those books, as well as organizations such as the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and the Lean Enterprise Institute, drove a widespread acceptance of Lean as a path to productivity and profitability. By the year 2000, Lean methods were moving out of manufacturing and into office and administrative environments. The spread of Lean continues today, and currently, Lean healthcare, Lean government, Lean information technology (and Agile software development), and Lean construction are particularly popular. ### The Simple Leader: Continue to Learn URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-continue-to-learn/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:38:29.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Learning is not compulsory…neither is survival. – W. Edwards Deming* Many, if not most people go to school and college, and then, when they are finished, rarely open another book (at least one with big words in it). They may continue to grow their skills and knowledge through experience, but this is the slow boat to improvement. Over the years, I’ve found that the primary predictor of executive leadership competency is the desire to seek, learn, analyze, distill, and share new knowledge. It doesn’t necessarily have to be within the leader’s current field or competency, nor does it have to be strictly via reading books. There are multiple path- ways to new knowledge, including online courses, magazines, and workshops. Gaining new knowledge can also mean gaining new perspectives. As I discussed earlier, in a world of multiple sources of information, it is very easy to succumb to confirmation bias and only embrace information that fits our existing perspective. In reality, there is almost always some truth in every perspective. Challenge yourself to mindfully look at other perspectives on political, scientific, or social issues in an unbiased manner. You may not change your mind, but you will grow and your positions will be more authentic. I try to read one fiction and one non-fiction book each month, which is sometimes difficult with my schedule. The non- fiction books, generally business-related, challenge me intellectually. The fiction, often science fiction or action thrillers, challenge my imagination. Each morning, I read The Wall Street Journal on my iPad, forwarding articles to friends and family that I find interesting. I purposely try to read articles from different political sources instead of only the ones that agree with my perspectives. I try to continually evaluate my perspectives, think about where bias is setting in and develop countermeasures to overcome the bias. Think about your own pursuit of knowledge. What have you learned recently? What do you want or need to learn this year? How will you do it? What will you do with the new knowledge? How does it fit in with your new self-awareness? How will you encourage and provide opportunities for your team to learn? ### The Simple Leader: Connected Spirit URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-connected-spirit/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:38:45.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. – Stephen R. Covey* The majority of humans believe in some type of a connection to a greater power, be it truly divine or just universal. Some may believe but simply go through motions drilled into them since birth, never questioning or validating the experience. Some, like myself, affirm the existence of something else—even if we don’t understand what that is. The scientist in me stares up at the stars, knowing there are countless billions of them potentially with civilizations vastly older and more developed than ours. Then I contemplate recent advances in fields like quantum mechanics, where entanglement creates instantaneous connections over vast distances, making me wonder if we’re starting to see the connection between the physical world and the soul. I see how the evolution of the “internet of things” has already made billions of devices instantly accessible and controllable, and wonder how long will it be before every molecule in our world can be similarly addressed and manipulated. The curious learner in me has spent years reading and analyzing numerous books on the history of religions, and I am amazed at the remarkable similarities between them. As one religious scholar friend once told me, it’s as if different groups of people were watching the same game from different parts of a stadium—some from the front row, others from high up in the standing-room-only section, still others from behind obstructions where they could only see part of the field. Each group recorded their experience in ways that were then distorted over time. Episcopalian bishop and theologian John Shelby Spong has written about the impact of perspectives on religious literalism. One example he gives is the many ways ancient peoples described the rise of the sun each morning, from it being a star to being the powerful god Ra. Culture, religion, and knowledge shaped how different groups understood the same event. Other theologians, such as Catholic priest Thomas Merton, have found how seemingly disparate religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity, can be very complementary. Like many people, I have felt an unequivocal, undeniable force at many times in my life. When dealing with exceptional stress, loss, or difficult decisions, it was there. It’s no longer faith for me—it’s real. I feel it while walking in nature, or even at this very moment, while looking out over the Caribbean while on vacation. Each person’s experience is unique. But take time, perhaps while surrounded by the beauty of nature, to contemplate your spiritual existence. Being able to draw strength from that will bring peace. Peace will help calm your mind, enabling you to understand who you are. ### A Time to Read and Reflect URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-time-to-read-and-reflect/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T00:33:46.000Z It's that time of the year when we reflect on the past and plan for the future. An arbitrary time, which has always bothered me. We should really be doing this in a continual fashion. I try, with daily, monthly, and quarterly reflection, but I'll admit that the end of the year is still a special time. As is customary for us, my wife and I head off to a remote beach house for a couple weeks, which also lets us reconnect a bit. By the way, I've found that two solid weeks is really what's required to appropriately decompress, relax, and reflect at the end of a year. Anything less and your mind is distracted by the logistics of travel, meal planning, and so forth. I need two weeks in a chair with a view, preferably with no people around. Ok, except my wife. Overall it's been a good year. I've gotten into the best shape I've been in in the past thirty years, we bought a house that we're doing an extensive remodel on to turn into a "[lean home](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/designing-a-lean-home/)," I finally finished and published [*The Simple Leader*](https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and I've been able to reinforce a more robust daily reflection practice. I've also been successful at significantly reducing my travel, and for the first time in decades I will have no (zero!) status on any airline going into next year! Scary, but strangely liberating. The perks of United 1K and American Executive Platinum are simply not worth the intangible costs. Hello row 35! Perhaps the goal I'm most satisfied with is reading - a lot more. Decades ago I used to devour books every couple days, but as the pressures of life and business took hold, the habit slipped. I still read a lot of blogs, online newspapers, the WSJ each morning, and so forth, but books are different. The length of books creates context and complexity, which leads to contemplation and personal growth. I believe it's important to avoid becoming superficial in thought. Last January I told you how my [annual "do something different" goal](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/explore-out-of-the-box/) for this year was to read a work of literature from a different culture each month. I'm happy to say I've been successful and it's been a very rewarding experience. Here's how it turned out: - January: [One](http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/0060531045/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)[ *Hundred Years of Solitude*](http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/0060531045/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Latin America) - February:[*The Kite Runner*](http://www.amazon.com/Kite-Runner-Khaled-Hosseini/dp/159463193X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan) - March:[*Things Fall Apart*](http://www.amazon.com/Things-Fall-Apart-Chinua-Achebe/dp/0385474547/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Chinua Achebe (Africa) - April:[*One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*](http://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Life-Ivan-Denisovich/dp/0451228146/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Russia) - May:[*Men in the Sun*](https://www.amazon.com/Men-Sun-Other-Palestinian-Stories/dp/0894108573/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Ghassan Kanafani (Palestine) - June:[*The God of Small Things*](https://www.amazon.com/God-Small-Things-Novel/dp/0812979656/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Arundhati Roy (India) - July:[*Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out*](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Are-Wearing-Out/dp/1611454271/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Mo Yan (China) - August:[*The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle*](https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Up-Bird-Chronicle-Novel/dp/0679775439/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Haruki Murakami (Japan) - September:[*Ceremony*](https://www.amazon.com/Ceremony-Classics-Leslie-Marmon-Silko/dp/0143104918/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Leslie Marmon Silko (Native American) - October:[*Breath, Eyes, Memory*](https://www.amazon.com/Breath-Eyes-Memory-Edwidge-Danticat/dp/1616955023/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Eldridge Dantikat (Haiti) - November: [*Hunger*](https://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics-Hamsun/dp/0141180641/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Knut Hamson (Scandinavia) - December: [*Sightseeing*](https://www.amazon.com/Sightseeing-Rattawut-Lapcharoensap/dp/0802142346/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Rattawut Lapcharoensap (Thai) *The Kite Runner* was easily my favorite, followed by *Ivan Denisovich*. *Ceremony* started out rather slow, but became an intriguing look at Native American society as well as the experiences of returning war veterans. *Life and Death* and *Wind-Up Bird* were interesting immersions into Chinese and Japanese life, although keeping track of the multiple reincarnations in *Life and Death (*some not as humans!) became a bit difficult. While staring at the ocean the past couple weeks I've also cranked through several more books, but from a wider variety of genres. I started off with a couple that my wife challenged me to read as they are definitely outside my normal spectrum: [*The Glass Castle*](https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Castle-Memoir-Jeannette-Walls/dp/074324754X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Jeannette Walls and [*Wonder*](https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-R-J-Palacio/dp/0375869026/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by R.J. Palacio. I then dug into [*The Undoing Project*](https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-Minds/dp/0393254593?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Michael Lewis, then [*When Breath Becomes Air*](https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Paul Kalanithi, which lead to [*The Language of God*](https://www.amazon.com/Language-God-Scientist-Presents-Evidence/dp/1416542744/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Francis Collins. That kicked me onto a more spiritual reading path with [*The Book of Joy*](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Joy-Lasting-Happiness-Changing/dp/0399185046/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which referenced Brother David Steindl-Rast so I devoured his [*The Way of Silence*](https://www.amazon.com/Way-Silence-Engaging-Sacred-Daily/dp/1632530163/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). I ended on a more superficial level with Tim Ferriss' latest, [*Tools of Titans*](https://www.amazon.com/Tools-Titans-Billionaires-World-Class-Performers/dp/1328683788/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). As usual, Tim is a bit over the top in many areas, but there were also some really interesting nuggets of wisdom. *The Language of God*, *The Book of Joy*, and *The Way of Silence* are phenomenal books and highly recommended, regardless of your spiritual persuasion. Several concepts from those books were great reflection points, such as the eight pillars of joy as described by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu: perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity. Based on that I've come up with a plan for the upcoming year, continuing to reinforce daily practice. And I've also determined my new "do something different" goal. But this time I'm keeping it private, at least for now. A hint: it could involve extreme endurance. And I spent a lot of time on my "stop doing" list. Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and productive new year. Take the time to slow down and reflect. What will you improve next year? ### The Simple Leader: The Human Side of Change URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-the-human-side-of-change/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:40:21.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *People don’t resist change, they resist being changed. – Peter Senge* To survive, an organization must be continually improving and changing. This requires both leadership commitment and the support and input from all employees. It is important to be mindful and aware of the concerns of everyone involved, in order to leverage their support. As Peter Scholtes, author of *The Leader’s Handbook*, noted, people don’t automatically resist change. But they do want to understand the change and be given the opportunity to provide input, which creates ownership. This is one of the key advantages of kaizen: the change process includes people from all levels of the organization, particularly those that are part of the production process. Additionally, involving people in the kaizen efforts and giving people the training and support they need to create change shows respect for them. Employees want to understand the impact of change on their livelihoods. Leaders can forget what it is like to live from paycheck to paycheck, and when people are fearful of how they will support their families, they tend to have a very conservative perspective on change. This will slow down the improvement process, unless leaders give workers transparency, trust, and ownership. To create security, some Lean organizations tell their employees that no one will lose their jobs as a result of improvement activities. This is powerful, but you also want to be careful. Be sure to link the security directly to the improvement activities and avoid giving the impression that it transcends issues outside of your control, such as sudden changes in the market. You want to create trust, and trust requires transparency and only making promises you can keep. To optimize improvement efforts, respect your people by asking them to play a key role in the improvement process. Give them confidence they will not be harmed by potential side effects of the improvement effort, offer training and mentoring so they know how to create improvements, and provide them with the time to identify and execute improvement activities. If you do these things, you will find they are more likely to embrace the changes you want. ### The Simple Leader: Align and Eliminate URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-align-and-eliminate/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:40:34.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things. – Bill Gates* Once you have a hoshin plan detailing what your organization’s priorities are, it’s time to face the reality of all the other projects you and your group are currently working on. This is often a “come-to-Jesus” time when organizational politics can reach a fever pitch, as project owners pitch why their projects, perhaps their raison d’être, deserve survival. It is also a great time to demonstrate the power of the hoshin plan as well as your leadership commitment to a new, defined path forward. Compile a list of all current projects and significant activities. (This in itself will probably be an eye-opening experience.) Then, as a team, map that list against your principles, mission, why?, and hoshin plan. The hoshin plan will not list all the company’s appropriate or valuable projects, but it should contain the highest- priority objectives. All other projects must align to the principles, why?, and mission, and support and not conflict with the plan. Project managers and teams on projects that no longer align with the organization’s future path should not be fearful. If done correctly, the projects on the hoshin plan will stretch the organization and need experienced project managers and teams to work on them. Think about how much easier your leadership role will be when all projects are identified and aligned with a hoshin plan that the organization owns and supports, not to mention the resources that are being saved or better invested. Once again, consider doing the same for you personally. What are you working on that isn’t giving you value or contributing to your own plan? Eliminating the nonessentials in your life will give you more time and focus to create something you want even more. ### The Simple Leader: Observe the Now URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-observe-the-now/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:40:49.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *You can observe a lot by just watching. – Yogi Berra* Mindful observation takes effort and practice, but it is very valuable if you want to be a leader. It allows you to watch processes in action and look for small nuances and opportunities for improvement. For example, the wait staff at top-tier hotels do this every day. One waiter is always watching, looking for a shift in a customer’s eyes that says she might need something, detecting a growing line of people waiting to be seated, or checking on food that needs to be delivered. This allows the staff to anticipate and resolve problems, often before the customers are aware they exist. Being able to closely observe a situation allows things to flow much more smoothly. The benefits of observation extend to the manufacturing setting as well. Taiichi Ohno had an exercise for his engineers and students where he’d draw a circle on the factory floor and tell them to stand in it and simply observe for a half hour. If they came back and reported that they didn’t see anything to improve, he’d send them back out. The Ohno Circle exercise is very powerful and can be used on the factory floor, in the finance department, or even at home with the kids. In fact, it’s probably even more powerful in areas where processes are not visible or visibly defined. Just stand and watch. Resist the temptation to immediately jump into action. Think about and record what you’ve observed. Then improve it. In the Lean world, this is genchi genbutsu—go, see, and observe. High-end hotels generally have observation down to a science. It is a core component of how they deliver great service. Several years ago, I was having a quiet breakfast at the Four Seasons in Bangkok after arriving late the previous evening. My table was at the side of an open atrium, so I was able to watch the staff in action. I’ve always been amazed by how the Four Seasons staff, whether at the restaurants or elsewhere, will be at your side exactly the instant you need them, but are also never annoyingly intrusive. Now I know how they do it. Amidst the flurry of wait staff running around, I noticed there was always at least one person just standing and watching. It was not always the same person, but there was always one just looking around the room at the customers and the rest of the staff. If a customer looked up and around, indicating they needed something, the observing wait person immediately went over to that customer, while another staff member took over the watching and looking. If a line started to form at the front of the restaurant, the observer would head over and help with the seating. If another member of the wait staff needed help, he or she would have it within seconds and someone else would take over the watching. Someone was always standing, observing, and watching. To test my own observation, I looked up and to the side, as if I needed something. Instantly, a waiter was at my side. I asked what he was watching for, and his response? “Just observing, sir.” Yes, “just” observing. There was no “just” about it. Observation is a key to their exceptional customer service. I wanted to ask if process improvements were identified and acted on, but the language barrier between my server and me hindered our conversation. When observing a process, be it on the factory floor or in the accounting office, it is important to mindfully observe without prejudice, staying in the present, without trying to identify solutions. Simply watch, look for details, and, when appropriate, document them. ### The Simple Leader: Humility URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-humility/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:41:05.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Remain humble. Don’t worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head. – Dick Winters, Beyond Band of Brothers* About fifteen years into my career, I thought of myself as a strong manager. I had progressed up the ranks and was responsible for an entire telecom equipment manufacturing facility, leveraging Lean with a great group of people. Arrogance and ego have ruined many a leader. Unfortunately, these characteristics are still accepted today, although they shouldn’t be. If your goal is to optimize the value of your people, thereby improving the value of your organization, then you need to support and nurture them. You have to admit that you cannot know or control everything that happens and be humble enough to trust others to do their jobs. Humility means accepting that you’re human and that you have faults, vulnerabilities, and worries like everyone else. Humble leaders are actually more confident than ego-driven leaders, as they are secure enough to show and admit their vulnerabilities and even mistakes. They are open to alternative ideas because they know, understand, and respect that they don’t have all the answers. (Examples of successful CEOs that take a more humble approach include Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Tony Hsei of Zappos.) This creates confidence, and thereby motivation, within the organization. Humble leaders let people do their jobs, aren’t afraid to ask stupid questions, turn mistakes into learning and mentoring opportunities, encourage dissent and embrace opinions and methods different than their own, and forego the trappings of power. Years ago, when I was named president of the medical device company I ended up leading for eight years, my very first action—within the first hour of starting the job—was to remove the “Reserved for President” parking spot. Later, I removed the custom furniture from my office, and when we built a new building, I ditched the private bathroom. These were small actions in the grand scheme of things, but they sent a message to the company that I was no better than others who worked there. The approach paid dividends several years later, when I needed considerable time off and flexibility to deal with a family medical situation. I was open with my team about what was going on and I received incredible support, under- standing, and compassion from them. Do you display arrogance or ego at home or in the work place? Would your family or coworkers agree? What would happen if you made your vulnerabilities and shortcomings more visible? How would your peers, team, and family react? ### The Simple Leader: Leverage Productive Time URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-leverage-productive-time/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:41:18.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. – Stephen King* Similar to the Hour of Power is the concept that certain parts of the day are more productive than others. Once again we’re all different in this respect, and it’s why some people are “morning people” while others prefer the evenings. I once even had a star employee who worked best from one to three in the morning, and insisted on being in the office at that time. (I won’t divert our discussion by describing the other problems that caused.) I’ve long known that the most productive time of my day is in the mornings, especially the early mornings. I almost never set an alarm, but am generally awake at four. I take care of my morning meditation, breakfast, reading the paper, and then start the Hour of Power. After the Hour of Power, I usually hit the gym for an hour of strength or cardio work. After a quick shower, I head to the office, attend our morning team video call (our version of the “standup meeting” meeting I’ll describe later), and then get back into my productive time. I’ll use the pomodoro method to optimize the use of that time, which lasts until 11:30 a.m. or so. While I find that my mornings are usually very productive, afternoons are far more difficult. I find it harder to maintain focus, even when removing distractions, and I know my mental acuity is not at the level it was in the morning. Therefore, I schedule phone calls, more mindless tasks, and errands during this time. A couple times a week, I’ll also take do a walking meditation on the beach. During this time, work (improvement) is still being done, just not the most critical tasks. I’m working on improving my mental productivity in the afternoon, but so far nothing has changed—perhaps reinforcing how powerful the productive time of my day is. Evenings are a bit better than the afternoons, but my priority in the evening is my family. Therefore, I purposely don’t schedule any work tasks during this part of the day. When I have evening free time—which is common, since my wife requires more sleep than I do—I use the evenings to catch up on reading. If my brain feels a bit fried, I’ll turn on the TV. I end the evening with some reflection. ### The Simple Leader: Gratitude URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-gratitude/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:41:29.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. – Oprah Winfrey* Oftentimes we become so focused on fixing problems and resolving issues that our entire sense of reality shifts. We begin to live in a bubble that encompasses the negative and blocks the positive. Because they demand our attention, the negative aspects of work and life consume a disproportionate amount of our thinking, and eventually distorts our perceived reality. You can re-center your perspective by grounding yourself in thanks for what is good with you or your team. What are you thankful for? Think about your health, your relationships, your business success. There will be more to be thankful for than you realize. Use a few minutes in the shower each morning, the first few minutes of your meditation, or even the first few minutes of each staff meeting to identify specific people and situations to be thankful for. Try to say thanks to at least one person each day, meaning fully and mindfully. Even better, write someone a thank you note by hand. Make it a self-sustaining habit, a routine. I have much to be thankful for: my parents teaching me the joy of learning, which eventually led me to discover Lean and Zen; my wife teaching me how to be more compassionate, which has completely changed my perspective on life; and business partners and associates that have put up with some of my wild ideas. Reflecting on gratitude at the beginning and end of each day creates calm bookends to what can be chaos for me. As problem solvers, we are naturally predisposed to focus on the negative, taking for granted the positive to the extent that we often become oblivious and unaware of just how much positive there is in our lives. Intentionally focusing on gratitude brings that perspective back to reality. Expressing gratitude in daily life, complimenting and helping others, or just smiling, reinforces the power of being thankful. Intentionally finding gratitude every day, has changed my perspective on life more than any other personal or professional leadership habit. I’ve discovered I have a lot to be thankful for, which helps me be more generous, sympathetic, and empathetic. ### The Simple Leader: The Two Pillars URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-the-two-pillars/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:41:40.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- The majority of Lean transformations will fail. Sorry, that’s just the sad truth. The reason for this failure rate is because Lean has two fundamental pillars that most organizations don’t know about, let alone understand the importance of the second. These two pillars are: - Create value from the customer’s perspective through continuous improvement - Respect for people Lean actually differs slightly from the traditional Toyota Production System in the first pillar. Most organizations trying to become “Lean” focus on reducing waste while Toyota promotes creating flow. Although the approach is different, the tools are generally the same and the end goal is still to create value from the perspective of the customer. (One danger of the first approach is that focusing only on waste reduction can lead to an emphasis on cost-cutting instead of true improvement.) In Lean thinking, there are seven primary forms of waste: unnecessary transport, unnecessary inventory, unnecessary motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, and defects. Others add the waste of human potential, where employees are thought of as just a pair of hands instead of a brain with creativity, knowledge, and experience. These forms of waste are present in manufacturing as well as office and administrative environments. In fact, you can even find them at home. Did you cook too much food for dinner last night? Did you have to wait in line to take a shower? Did you have to search for hours to find a tool in your cluttered garage? All these are types of waste as defined by Lean principles. Is important to remember that something is only waste if it does not create value from the customer’s perspective. Identifying the customer and then looking for waste (and value) from the perspective of the customer is far harder than it sounds. Some activities may appear to be waste for one customer and not another. Is a long commute a waste of time? To some it is, to others it is a valuable time to relax and refocus. To add even more complexity, some forms of waste may even be necessary, such as regulatory paperwork. Another example is advertising, an expenditure that doesn’t generally add value for the customer but is necessary to help sustain the business. Even if a company is good at eliminating waste, it still needs to implement the second pillar—respect for people—if it wants to be successful. Respect for people grew out of Toyota’s concept of “autonomation.” Autonomation means “automation with a human touch.” At Toyota and in TPS, machines aid humans, not vice versa. To this day, when you visit a Toyota factory you will see far more humans than at comparable factories of other automakers. Robots are primarily used in dangerous processes and to lift heavy assemblies. I have come to believe that respect for people is the most important pillar of Lean. However, because it is the least under- stood (or accepted), it is often the primary reason why most Lean transformations fail. Companies focus on eliminating waste and do not emphasize having respect for people, which causes the whole system to collapse. People are the core value-creators of a Lean organization, something many companies do not understand. Toyota is known for saying “we develop people before we make cars.” Respect for people takes many forms. First, it aims to create an environment for employees where ideas, knowledge, creativity, and experience are valued. Traditional accounting practices measure the cost of the pair of hands, but do not measure the value of experience and creativity in the brain attached to the pair of hands. The lack of a defined value offset is why traditional accounting drives decisions to move factories to countries with lower labor costs, even if hundreds or thousands of experienced, creative people are replaced by even more people with less knowledge. Respect for people also applies to customers. Every customer is considered to be very important, and their problems are taken seriously. This is part of why Toyota failed with their series of recalls in 2009 and 2010\. Instead of holding to a strong culture of respect for its customers, the company tried to play down the stuck accelerator problem for years before the negative perception and press became too great. Imagine how much different those years—and the resulting financial and reputational costs—would have been if Toyota had publicly treated each incident as being extremely serious. Respect should also be promoted among a company’s suppliers and community, which is why a more accurate translation of Toyota’s “respect for people” is really “respect for humanity.” Engaging the entire value stream and business environment in continuous improvement efforts and knowledge development can pay huge rewards in terms of trust, ideas, and support. Lean’s reputation is not always one of having respect for people. When Womack and Jones wrote their book in 1990, they could not have anticipated the problems associated with “Lean” rhyming with “mean.” Not a day goes by without some reference to a “Lean and mean” organization. This is a misperception. Real Lean is definitely not mean to the people implementing it. Real Lean companies leverage productivity improvements to capture new business, which allows them to keep the people impacted by those improvements. Some Lean companies go so far as to pledge that there will be no layoffs due to Lean efforts. This is often necessary to get buy-in for what can appear to be job-threatening improvement programs. And Lean companies like Toyota are generally not unionized simply because the employees are already treated with respect and often paid better than at comparable organizations. At its most fundamental level, Lean is about enabling people to create improvements that add value for the customer. Leadership is also about people, including ourselves. Together, this is the foundation for our exploration of how Lean can help transform personal and professional leadership. ### The Simple Leader: Do Something Different URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-do-something-different/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:41:56.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. – Ralph Waldo Emerson* Acquiring new knowledge and perspectives helps you grow within your general area of comfort or interest. To really grow, you need to stretch yourself outside of that comfort zone by learning or experiencing something completely different. In addition to acquiring the new skill, knowledge, or experience, you also create confidence in your ability to break boundaries. This can help you awaken to your true meaning. A couple years ago, I came across an article by Heather Kelly on CNN.com (“Mark Zuckerberg’s Bizarre New Self-Improvement Goal”) about how Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg sets an annual “challenge” goal: Every year, the Facebook CEO sets some sort of challenge for himself. In 2009, he vowed to wear a tie to work every day to show he was serious about Facebook’s growth (and possibly get a break from the signature T-shirt and hoodie he wears to every public event). In 2010, he tried to learn Mandarin. The annual challenges sometimes make headlines, most famously in 2011 when Zuck vowed to eat animals only if he had killed them himself. That pronouncement led to a mixture of backlash and praise from animal-rights activists. This year \[2012\], the famously introverted Zuckerberg is seeking out more conversations with actual humans. Seeking out more human interaction as a goal seems a bit odd until you think about the world that the young founder of Facebook lives in: a rarified air of groupies, yes-men, analysts, and press types. Interacting with “actual humans” is probably a challenge. Why is that bizarre? I applaud him for it. In 2013, Zuckerberg’s goal was to meet someone new every day; in 2014, he challenged himself to write one thank you note each day; and in 2015, he read a new book every other week. A key outcome to these challenges is that he learns something new and (often) unexpected. Trying to learn Mandarin taught him that he didn’t listen well, and a year of killing animals made him consider becoming vegetarian. Zuckerberg’s 2012 goal, to converse with humans, helped him understand the personal side of immigration issues. The reason Zuckerberg’s “bizarre” goals resonated with me is because I have had similar goals for well over twenty years. At first they weren’t true goals—they were just something fun to do. But for the last decade or more, the goals have been formal, with a process for identifying, executing and reviewing progress. Over the past couple decades, I learned to scuba dive, windsurf, and code HTML by hand. I wrote a book, rebuilt a yellow 1973 Triumph Spitfire, became a vegetarian (rather, a “pescaterian”), skied in five different European countries over six days, started a blog, and ran a full marathon. Toward the end of each year, I identify something to try that is different, unique, or challenging, and develop a plan to dive into it. During the next year, I execute, reflect, and adjust based on my observations. Sound familiar? Plan, do, study, act. In 2012, my goal was to leave a great job as president of a medical device company and take more control of my life. I notified the board in January, executed a transition plan for myself and the company, and, like a skydiver jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, left full-time secure employment on December 31st. I’m loving it, and the move also created positive secondary effects for the company: a great new Lean leader was developed to replace me and the company got a fresh infusion of Lean energy. One of my other recent goals—related to this book—was to learn about and understand Buddhism, something I’d bumped into during my trips to Asia and also while living in California. I read books about it, talked to a lot of people, and in a sense, went to the gemba by spending a few weeks in Bhutan and Nepal. I learned about Zen’s history, how it evolved and split into the Theravada and Mahayana traditions, how Mahayana then evolved into Pure Land, Tibetan, and the Zen tradition that’s increasingly popular in the West. What I learned changed how I understood myself. My goal this year is to read an important work of literature from each of the major ethnic groups or cultures: Latin American, Chinese, Indian, African, and so forth. My annual exploration takes me down some interesting and often unexpected paths, teaching me new thoughts, knowledge, or activities. The point is that many people say they “think outside the box” but most do not actually explore outside the box. Relatively few people live with an open mind, and even fewer create goals to stretch themselves. Most people find it very difficult to put processes and hansei in place (Zuckerberg apparently does) because it is easier to talk than to act. I can’t claim credit for knowingly thinking outside the box, especially initially. I sort of fell into doing it. But trying new things has broadened my perspectives by challenging my old perceptions and beliefs. It has deepened my understanding of the world we live in and taken me to interesting places—both physical and spiritual—that I previously wasn’t even aware of. How will you explore out of the box next year? Perhaps more importantly, how will you ensure you actually do it, and why? ### The Simple Leader: Change for the Better URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-change-for-the-better/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:42:06.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *There are no big problems, just a lot of little problems. – Henry Ford* Kaizen is probably the most important concept in the Toyota Production System. The word kaizen can be broken into its two components: kai, meaning “change,” and zen, meaning “good.” It was brought to the West in 1986, when Masaaki Imai wrote *Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Success*. I agree with Imai and others such as Bob Emiliani that say “there can be no Lean without kaizen.” Although kaizen is generally thought of as large numbers of small improvements that add up to create a large overall change, it is important to understand that this is not a restriction. Kaizen can be small activities by individuals, small ongoing team-based activities, focused multiple-day events to make rapid, significant improvements, or large improvement projects driven by executive staff. In most companies, problem solving and improvement starts by having a team of managers carve an hour or two a week out of their schedules. Over several weeks, they discuss problems, typically in a conference room. They brainstorm ideas for changes or improvements and make detailed plans about how to implement their ideas. This process takes a lot of time, and may or may not actually solve any problems. With kaizen, less time is spent planning and more time is spent experimenting. The planning takes place at the gemba, typically by the people directly involved in the process. These people have a better understanding of what is actually happening on the floor and are more likely to take ownership in the improvement process when they are included in the kaizen. Each individual experiment is relatively small, so there is a low risk that any one change will cause large negative impacts. Over time, the changes, especially the learning from continually planning, doing, studying, and revising, create large cumulative positive effects. In addition to the individual or small-team kaizen activity with small experiments, Lean organizations also utilize kaizen events in order to aim for more radical changes. The events are generally three to five days long, with the entire team fully dedicated to the activity. During a kaizen event, the first day is spent planning, the next couple days are spent doing, and the final days are spent studying and acting on the results. Kaizen events can create very significant improvement in a short period of time. They are especially effective when someone from the senior leadership team helps facilitate the event, allowing approvals to purchase equipment or modify processes to be expedited. Kaizen and kaizen events follow the PDSA cycle we previously discussed. The steps are: 1. Define the problem. (Plan) 2. Document the current state. (Plan) 3. Determine the desired future state with measurable targets. (Plan) 4. Identify solutions or improvements. (Plan) 5. Develop the plan. (Plan) 6. Implement the plan. (Do) 7. Study the results and compare to the plan, targets, and desired future state. (Study) 8. Document the change in standard work, or use what was learned to create the next experiment. (Adjust) 9. Document and publicize the kaizen activity. (Adjust) The last step documenting and publicizing the kaizen activity—is important and should not be neglected. Many Lean organizations have kaizen boards, kaizen newspapers, or kaizen “wall of fame” areas where such activities are made visible. This is both motivating to others and can inspire other ideas for improvement. Another critical concept of kaizen, often missed by even the best Lean organizations, is “unlearning.” Chihiro Nakao said, “You have to go back to zero. Put yourself under dire circumstances to think differently.” Many business writers have discussed the “learning organization,” but unlearning old standards, methods, or even rationales is just as important, if not more. Learn, and unlearn. Remember the Zen concept of beginner’s mind? The role of the leader in kaizen is critical. You must demonstrate and explain why kaizen is important for your organization. You should lead by example and personally lead both big and small kaizen. Ask your employees to participate in kaizen activity and support it by providing time, training, and mentoring. What a great way to get to know the folks at the gemba, and also to teach them about PDSA and improvement methods! Ask your leadership team to do the same. When you implement kaizen, be careful about creating arbitrary goals for the number of kaizen activities; instead, create a culture where kaizen is supported. Finally, celebrate kaizen, especially when learning occurs from failure. Learning is an improvement in itself. When using kaizen, it is important to not sacrifice time for perfection. Remember, the goal is to create ongoing incremental improvements, not to find the perfect one-time solution. ### The Simple Leader: The Waste of Choice URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-the-waste-of-choice/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:42:18.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Owning fewer keys opens more doors. – Alex Morritt* An abundance of choices and the decisions that accompany them are both a benefit and curse of the modern world. Each decision we make, no matter how small, uses up a little bit of the mental energy we have available every day. By focusing on reducing our options and minimizing the number of choices we must make, life becomes simpler and calmer. David Cain recently wrote a great piece on his Raptitude blog on decision-making and minimalism called Why the Minimalists Do what They Do. As an aspiring minimalist, the topic appealed to me, and Cain’s commentary on choice and decisions was especially apropos. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve always had an ability to make good decisions quickly, regardless of whether I base them on real analysis or just wing it from the gut. (Yes, intuitive decisions can still be good.) This skill has been invaluable in my career and my personal life. However, most people I know are less fortunate, and I’ve noticed how indecision impacts many aspects of their lives. From professional decisions such as what path to take with a new product development project, to personal decisions such as where to go for dinner, not being able to make a decision creates stress for both the person making the decision and those being impacted by the decision. The problem is compounded with age. For example, in a relative’s last years, I watched her become literally debilitated and frozen by even the most basic decisions. Because she couldn’t make decisions, the number of undecided issues made her life appear to be unnecessarily and impossibly complex. To combat our indecision, we need to simplify our lives. Cain describes how he eats the same thing for breakfast every morning. By doing so, he removes a couple of decisions from his day, allowing him to focus better on other things. I can relate. My breakfast is the same cup of Greek yogurt and Grape Nuts each morning. I eat it while reading The Wall Street Journal on my iPad, just after my morning meditation and stretching, and just before reviewing my journal and starting my Hour of Power. I do this every day. The routine is satisfying, and calming. The implications of reducing our number of choices go far beyond our daily meals. Simple is clearer, and fewer options tax the brain less. For example, the best websites intuitively guide you among very few choices. Well-planned standard work reduces the variation of subjectivity while providing a foundation for kaizen. In other words, when workers don’t have to make unnecessary decisions, they have the mental energy to explore better ways to perform their tasks. Where can you reduce options in your life and in your organization, thereby reducing the waste and unnecessary complexity of indecision, and the variability of multiple decisions? ### The Simple Leader: The Beginner's Mind URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-the-beginners-mind/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:42:32.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki* In the discussion on habits, I mentioned how a significant percentage of our decisions are rarely thought about. A disturbing corollary to that is that how we think and what we believe is also subject to the same shortcuts, called cognitive biases. In the next section, I will discuss how we observe processes, examine our current reality, and search for truth. Therefore, it is important to first understand and recognize how our experience, perspective, and bias can distort our observations. One of the core concepts of Zen is shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.” This is a perspective that is free of preconceived ideas and opinions, and is open to new thought. I discussed earlier how some Lean concepts can be counterintuitive. Embracing shoshin requires “unlearning” what you thought you already knew—in effect, creating a beginner’s mind. As we become older and supposedly wiser, creating a beginner’s mind can become increasingly difficult. It becomes even more so when an entire team or organization needs to unlearn and develop a beginner’s perspective. Begin by focusing on questions, not answers. When observing a process, especially one you’ve seen many times, try to avoid jumping ahead to conclusions. Take one step (one question) at a time. Similarly, be aware that what seems like common sense may not be. Avoid using the word “should” as it implies a predeter-mined or expected outcome. Be careful with experience. What you already know should be an input, not a perspective. Be comfort- able with saying “I don’t know”—it shows a desire to learn and is a component of humility. Being biased is a result of not having a beginner’s mind. The most common and well-known bias is confirmation bias. This is our desire to believe what we want to believe, to the extent that we consciously or subconsciously distort or interpret information to fit our preconceptions. We can also seek out sources of information that align with our biases, while ignoring non-confirming data. You can see an example of confirmation bias in the politics of the United States. It is the reason the two major parties in the U.S. are moving away from the center and more toward the extremes. Even though the number of information sources has exploded over the last couple decades, people on the right of the spectrum consume news geared toward them, because they feel it is correct. In other words, it fits their biases. The same happens on the left. This has occurred to such an extent that heroes of each party—Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, for example—probably wouldn’t be welcome in their parties today. A second form of bias is loss aversion. Researchers such as psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have found that we’re twice as likely to try to avoid a loss than go after a gain. In effect, we are risk averse, which may be great for our survival as a species, but it hinders us as we try to create organizational change and improvement. A third form of bias is conformity bias, also known as groupthink (e.g., “When in Rome…”). By nature, most of us don’t like to stand out in a crowd and will be willing to agree with a group, even if we know the information is incorrect. A fourth type is survivorship bias, where we focus on the tiny fraction of people that are successful, ignoring the far greater numbers that have failed. An example of this is our fascination with and attraction to get-rich-quick gurus. We also look at highly successful people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and think that could be us. We then try to model ourselves after them. We find it easy to ignore, or not even understand, that every path is unique and what works for one person may not for another, for a multitude of reasons. Finally—and this one is very common in the business world—is anchoring, or first impression bias. This form of bias occurs because we subconsciously give the first piece of information we receive on a topic more relevance and weight than follow- up information. This is why public relations companies find it very important to get their story out first, and why it is so difficult to change minds after the fact—even if the subsequent information is more accurate. Once we know that we’re susceptible to these biases, what can we do? The most important thing to do is to be mindful and present. Observe your thoughts and ask validating questions. Why do you think this way? What are the arguments against your opinion? Review the forms of bias and honestly try to determine if they might be in play. Taking steps to neutralize your biases will help you make smarter, more rational decisions. Observe like a beginner. ### The Simple Leader: Empathy and Compassion URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-empathy-and-compassion/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:42:44.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these. – Lloyd Shearer* About fifteen years into my career, I thought of myself as a strong manager. I had progressed up the ranks and was responsible for an entire telecom equipment manufacturing facility, leveraging Lean with a great group of people. Then the demand for our product went off a cliff. One day, the vice president I reported to visited from headquarters, gathered all two hundred of us in a room, and proceeded to say, “My spreadsheet says this operation is no longer viable, therefore I am shutting it down.” Then he left and went back to his office 250 miles away. In all honesty, I knew the closure was coming. I had taken part in many meetings trying to figure out an alternative, but demand really had dried up, almost overnight. Management had little choice but to make the tough decision to close the facility. But the decision did not need to be communicated this way. Understandably, my team was very upset. They knew times were tough, but they didn’t know this decision was coming so fast. They didn’t want to hear that a spreadsheet had determined their fate. They wanted to hear how difficult it was, at least for me, to make the decision. And they wanted some understanding and recognition of how hard it would be for them and their families. Unfortunately, things would get worse before they got better. The next day was September 11th, 2001\. In one day, the world changed and we became even more fearful, while still processing the previous day’s announcement that everyone had lost their jobs. Our site leadership team’s response was a bit different from corporate headquarters’ response. We had long thought of our employees as part of our family, and we were empathetic and compassionate. We became completely transparent about the process, what had happened, and what we could do to help the employees until the closure date. We made special accommodations for some, helped others with their job searches, and simply listened, mindfully, to everyone. The employees recognized this and realized they could trust us, and that we would work for their best interests. Although it didn’t change the eventual outcome, we were able to execute a complex facility closure in a professional and human-centered manner. Many of us remain friends and even colleagues to this day. The lesson of this experience helped me several times later on when we had to make difficult but necessary decisions that negatively impacted people. By treating people like people (as I would like to be treated), truly listening to them and understanding their needs and fears, we made bad situations better. Most of all, we created trust in our organization’s leadership. ### The Simple Leader: The Hour of Power URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-the-hour-of-power/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:42:56.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives. – Jim Morrison* When you think about your days, including the weekends, do you see a pattern of times when you’re most productive? Studies have shown that there is an hour or so each day when we’re especially focused and energetic. For many of us, the time is early in the morning (perhaps a relic of our caveman past, when we had to get out early to find food for the family). For others, productivity spikes at other times of the day. Friends and colleagues have told me that their best times to work are mid-morning, afternoon, or even late in the evening. Over the years, I’ve found that my most productive time, my “Hour of Power,” is from five to six in the morning. Realiz- ing that particular hour is my most productive, I protect it at all cost and schedule nothing during that time, except for the first and most important (and usually most difficult) of my daily Big Three tasks. I take care of other morning activities such as eating, read- ing the paper, going to the gym, and meditation, before five a.m. Otherwise, they get delayed until afterwards. I also prepare to work on the task before my Hour of Power begins so that I don’t sacrifice any of that valuable time trying to figure out where to start. During the hour, I remove all distractions and focus solely on the task at hand. At the end of it, I mindfully make a decision on whether to continue. I often discover that I have finished the task. Either that, or I am exhausted and need a break before continuing. Experiment and discover when your Hour of Power is. Then protect it and take advantage of that period of heightened clarity and focus to give a kick to your productivity. ### The Simple Leader: Forgive Yourself URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-forgive-yourself/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:43:11.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Forgive yourself. It sounds simple, but don’t think for a second that it is easy. Getting free from the tyranny of past mistakes can be hard work, but definitely worth the effort. And the payoff is health, wholeness and inner peace. In other words, you get your life back. – Steve Goodier* We’ve all messed up, even folks like Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi made mistakes. So why do screw-ups burden us so much? The burden can sometimes overwhelm us, change our perspective, create excess caution, and severely impact our leadership effectiveness. Like everyone, I’ve had some doozies. Some are simply humorous or embarrassing, some I’m ashamed of, and some still make me cringe knowing how close I came to radically changing my life. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to move on fairly easily, sometimes perhaps too much so. As just one small example, nearly twenty years ago, I was hurrying through a store when I came up to an elderly woman blocking a narrow aisle. I moved around her a little too quickly and carelessly, nearly causing her to fall. I immediately felt remorse. To this day, I vividly remember the look on her face and on the faces of others around me, as well as how ashamed I felt. It was a mistake, but I couldn’t change it. I had to forgive myself and learn from the experience. The past is the past. Nothing is going to change it. To be at peace, you must accept that you will make mistakes. Learn from them, remember them just enough so that you know not to repeat it, make amends if appropriate, and move on. If you knew of someone else that had your past, how would you treat them? Probably with compassion. Do the same to yourself. ### The Simple Leader: Plan, Do, Study, Adjust URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-plan-do-study-adjust/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:43:26.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence— only in constant improvement and constant change. – Tom Peters* The PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycle is the core component of continuous improvement programs. You may have heard it called PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act)—and they are very similar— but I have come to prefer PDSA, with the A standing for Adjust, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. Understanding the cycle and its application to continuous improvement is critical for leadership. But first, a history lesson. In November 2010, Ronald Moen and Clifford Norman wrote a well-researched article in Quality Progress that detailed the history behind PDCA and PDSA. The cycles have their origins in 1939, when Walter Shewhart created the SPI (Specification- Production-Inspection) cycle. The SPI cycle was geared toward mass production operations, but Shewhart soon realized the potential application of the scientific method to problem solving, writing that “it may be helpful to think of the three steps in the mass production process as steps in the scientific method. In this sense, specification, production and inspection correspond respectively to hypothesizing, carrying out an experiment and testing the hypothesis. The three steps constitute a dynamic scientific process of acquiring knowledge.” At the time, W. Edwards Deming was working with Shewhart to edit a series of Shewhart’s lectures into what would become Shewhart’s Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, published in 1939\. Deming eventually modified the cycle and presented his DPSR (Design-Production-Sales-Research) cycle in 1950, which is now referred to as the Deming cycle or Deming wheel. According to Masaaki Imai, Toyota then modified the Deming wheel into the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle and began applying it to problem solving. In 1986, Deming again revised the Shewhart cycle, with another modification added in 1993 to make it the PDSA (Plan- Do-Study-Act) cycle, or what Deming called the Shewhart cycle for learning and improvement. (Deming never did like the PDCA cycle. In 1990, he wrote Ronald Moen, saying “be sure to call it PDSA, not the corruption PDCA.” A year later he wrote, “I don’t know the source of the cycle that you propose. How the PDCA ever came into existence I know not.”) The PDCA cycle has not really evolved in the past 40 years and is still used today at Toyota. The PDSA cycle continues to evolve, primarily in the questions asked at each stage. Although both embody the scientific method, I personally prefer the PDSA cycle, because “study” is more intuitive than “check.” Deming himself had a problem with the term “check,” as he believed it could be misconstrued as “hold back.” I also prefer “Adjust” to “Act,” as it conveys a better sense of ongoing, incremental improvement. Just be aware that some very knowledgeable and experienced people prefer the pure PDCA! Let’s take a look at each component of PDSA: - **Plan:** Ask objective questions about the process and create a plan to carry out the experiment: who, what, when, where, and a prediction. - **Do:** Execute the plan, make observations, and document problems and unexpected issues. - **Study:** Analyze the data, compare it to expectations, and summarize what was learned. - **Adjust:** Adopt and standardize the new method if successful; otherwise, identify changes to be made in preparation for starting the whole cycle over again. It’s important to realize that PDSA cycle is valuable at both process and organizational levels, something we have already discussed (in slightly different terms) in this book. For example, you start the plan stage of the PDSA cycle while evaluating your current state and creating a hoshin plan. As you execute the annual and breakthrough objectives of the hoshin plan, you move into the “do” quadrant. On a regular basis, you evaluate the hoshin plan and the results of the goals (study), then modify it as necessary for the next revision of the hoshin plan (act). Throughout the rest of this section, I will discuss various problem-solving and improvement tools and methods for process- scale improvements. Note that they all follow the same PDSA cycle. ### The Simple Leader: Minimize URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-minimize/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:43:38.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery* If you’ve removed the clutter in your life, then the last thing you really want to do is add something. Or so you’d think. Unfortunately, our culture has conditioned us to always want more. We like our toys. We buy impulsively. We take on too many projects. (Well, at least I used to.) Zen teaches us the value of *koko*, or austerity. This doesn’t mean you have to live the life of a monk, having no real possessions and relying on the morning alms for nutrition, but it does mean challenging yourself to find the point where you have what you need and nothing more. That point is different for each of us, and an item or expense that is a toy or luxury to one person may be a valuable component of another’s life. The purpose is to become consciously aware, and to make a conscious decision before adding something new. Most of us have seen the famous photo of Steve Jobs sitting in the middle of his living room on a mat, sipping tea, surrounded by just a single lamp and a couple of books. Living so frugally is probably not how most of us would choose to live, but consider the freedom—and focus—that lifestyle creates (not to mention the fatter savings account, which in itself creates more freedom). You should have seen the look on my real estate agent’s face years ago when I told her I wanted a house with less storage space and not more. It was obviously the first time she had heard that request, especially from someone looking for a nicer house. After looking at several options that did not fit our vision of a nicer but smaller house, my wife and I decided to build our own. The project has created many new minimization ideas, and our architect is working on a design that minimizes doors and walls, reduces angles and unnecessary trim, and lowers the number of horizontal surfaces upon which clutter can be stacked. All these features will help us reduce our lives’ clutter and avoid the temptation to buy more things. ### The Simple Leader: What's Your Why? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-whats-your-why/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:43:55.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose. – Leonardo da Vinci* Vision and mission statements have long been the rage in organizations as they supposedly define what the organization is about. Do you know what your organization’s vision or mission is? Could you tell me what either one is, right now—without looking it up? I thought not. I bet they’re hanging on the wall in some conference room, gathering dust. Unfortunately, this is all too common. Another problem with vision and mission statements is that the terms themselves aren’t very clear and create confusion. Employees always seem to wonder what the difference between the vision and mission is. Also, the mission statement of the company often does not reflect the reality of what the company is trying to create. I’ve seen many cases where the true mission of a company was to make money and the vision was to make a lot of money. Seriously. This is why I prefer a purpose, or “why?” statement. I believe it is far clearer in terms of definition, and therefore easier to own and promote. Why did you create your company? Why does it exist? What problem are you trying to solve? The why? of Gemba Academy is to “remove the struggle of continuous improvement training.” It’s simple, but it says a lot. We started the company to help smaller organizations that other- wise could not access high quality continuous improvement training, but we also include large multinationals that are struggling to deploy training across global locations. Like many other organizations that use a purpose statement instead of a vision statement, we also have a mission that further defines what we are trying to accomplish. Our mission statement talks about how we create high-quality content, then we help organizations undertake and sustain their continuous improvement journeys. The ideas behind these statements are only useful if a company puts them into practice, and to achieve this, everyone in an organization needs to be involved. Although the founders, owners, and leadership team often work to create an organization’s principles, why?, and mission, it is important to engage employees by involving them in the planning process (we’ll discuss this in more detail in the Create the Hoshin Plan section). By doing so, you create acceptance, ownership, and understanding of the foundational statements. Then everyone can use the same core set of principles, the same why? statement, and the same mission statement to review and analyze your organization. Going beyond your organization, what about you? What is your purpose, your why? Cornell University researchers recently confirmed that a sense of purpose decreases impulsivity, thereby making choices that pay of better in the long term. This is something to contemplate on your next seijaku (quietude) experience. ### The Simple Leader: Respect URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-respect/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:44:08.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself. – Spanish Proverb* Respect for people is one of the two pillars of Lean. However, “people” doesn’t just mean the people that report to you, but everyone else in your organization, including your team, your boss, your customers, your suppliers, your community, and your- self. The “respect for people” concept from Toyota is more accurately translated as “respect for humanity.” To respect people, you must take into account that there is a brain attached to each pair of hands in your company. In addition to the cost of the pair of hands that is represented on traditional financial statements, those brains hold tremendous value. As a leader, your job is to figure out what environment, both physical and organizational, is necessary to optimize and leverage that value. You increase the value by soliciting and using people’s ideas, creativity, experience, and knowledge. When dealing with people, don’t forget that respect can also mean being up-front with them, in an appropriate manner, giving them areas for improvement, or even letting the person know he or she is not the right fit for a position. Remember to be respectful in how you give such feedback, however. One of my early bosses had a favorite saying: “Are you incapable, or just incompetent?” When he offered me that choice, I didn’t know what to say. But I did know I wouldn’t grow in such an environment, so I soon left to join a different company on the other side of the country. (The man treated everyone, high performers and otherwise, with such disdain, and wondered why his group had such high—and expensive—turnover.) We must also remember to treat people with dignity. A couple years ago, I read an article on the power of calling people by their names. Using someone’s name creates a connection that can be very powerful. Instead of yelling “hey you!” to someone, learn their name and use it to address them. When you write emails, greet them before launching into the subject. Do the same when talking in person and on the phone. Great leaders are able to connect with their workers by taking a little time to acknowledge them first, before getting down to business. ### The Simple Leader: The Big Three URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-the-big-three/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:44:23.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe* Like most people, I maintain a fairly long to-do list of personal and professional projects. It’s a few pages long—especially the honey-do portion. Because the list can be intimidating, I need a good strategy to tackle it. Going about it sequentially isn’t appropriate, since the tasks have varying levels of importance and time sensitivity, so each morning, I take a few moments to review my list and decide on the “Big Three” tasks that I want to get accomplished that day. Just three—no more, no less. Sometimes, one of the three may only take ten minutes, but if it rises to the importance of being one of the top three, then it deserves a spot. Maybe I’ll have time to work on a fourth task during the day, but I won’t include it on the list. By limiting the number to just three, you are forced to prioritize and focus on getting the best return in the short period of just one day. The Big Three become the focus for the day, and I list them in my journal to ensure I stay on track. I try very hard not to insert another priority that may arise during the day, unless it absolutely, positively has to be there. (If such grenades are being launched into your schedule on a regular basis, then you might have other organizational or process issues to deal with.) At the end of the day, I reflect on the day’s activities, including the Big Three. If I did not finish one of them, I try to understand what happened and what barriers I encountered. Did I underestimate the scope of a task? Was I distracted or interrupted? Did a different high priority task “grenade” get lobbed into my day? If so, why? Was it truly more important, or just more interesting? After figure out the barriers, I try to put countermeasures into place to do better next time. Through this process, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve used this Big Three method for nearly ten years and although it is simple, it has probably created the largest boost in my productivity out of anything I have tried. It is amazing how much you can get done over a week, month, or year if you just finish three key tasks every day. ### The Simple Leader: Define Principles and Values URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-define-principles-and-values/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:44:51.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Clarity of purpose, Clarity of understanding. – Zen saying* Many organizations jump to trying to write down their vision or mission statement before taking the time to really think about and define their core principles. Principles are the foundation upon which the company is built and (hopefully) operates. They are so important that you should be willing to sacrifice significant business, or even the company itself, to preserve the principle. In private companies and smaller organizations, the principles often come from the values of the owners or founders. For example, a company I used to work for was owned by a couple of devout Catholics. Because of this, the entire organization knew there were some products that we would not make for any price because they conflicted with Catholic beliefs. The employees fully supported that principle, even though it cost the company business. I’m very proud that the company I co-founded, Gemba Academy, values ethics, integrity, and respect for people above all else. We know our success is built on the efforts and creativity of our people. We respect our people by having an unlimited vacation policy, being transparent with our business operations, and, for a very small company, having a strong benefits package that includes health care, 401(k), and profit sharing. This respect extends to our customers too. We’ve had situations where customers wanted to purchase a product, but we knew it wasn’t the right fit for them. We openly told them, demonstrating respect for the customers and our values. Think about your personal principles and values. What do you truly care about? Your principles should be so important that you’d be willing to give up business—such as not taking a job, even if your livelihood depended on it—to not cross them. Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and currently a professor at Harvard, calls this the True North, or inner compass. Principles are important because they create the perspective, boundaries, and culture for the organization. Without them, there is a good chance that the culture will evolve on its own, based on the values of the stronger- willed employees. What are the core principles and values of your organization and yourself ? ### Designing a Lean Home URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/designing-a-lean-home/ Last updated: 2026-05-07T00:04:44.000Z I've received several comments on [*The Simple Leader*](https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), with some of the most unexpected having to do with the section where I discuss my desire to design and build a home with Lean principles in mind. If I hadn't studied chemical engineering I probably would have gone to architecture school - it's been a passion of mine for decades. For the past several years I've been looking for the ideal piece of property to build on, but nothing has been the "right" one. In the meantime I've remodeled every room of our current house, but although we have a nice ocean view and the fixtures and amenities are perfect, it still has issues. 1940s house, many rooms, many halls, many doors. Barriers to simple, minimalist, meaningful living. Not to mention lots of maintenance. Still, I couldn't resist designing the ideal residence, so I worked with an architect friend of mine on several ideas. Then, just a week ago, an existing home came on the market all of two blocks from us that has nearly ideal bones, and we're now in escrow. Incredible unblocked views of nearly twenty miles of California coastline and our small fishing village of Morro Bay, privacy from nearby homes, and a simple layout that can be changed into what we want. So the plan has changed from a ground-up build to an extensive remodel of a current home with the right fundamental characteristics. So what are we doing to convert it into a "lean house" - and what are those characteristics anyway? Here are a few (my full list is a couple pages long!): **Optimized Floorspace** As I describe in my book, we almost bought a much larger home several years ago near the peak of the housing bubble. Thankfully it didn't happen when the bidding went above our price, which helped us think about our true needs - one of which was *less* space. This flies in the face of traditional thought where as you improve your financial situation you generally go larger - whether you need it or not. In our case we began to embrace a minimalist lifestyle, requiring less and less space. Remember that minimalism doesn't mean doing without - it means ensuring that everything has true value and getting rid of the rest. We've gotten rid of possessions that add little value, requiring less space. Our new home is almost 20% smaller than our current home, and that is still more than enough. Extra space is a waste that then requires additional cost in cleaning and heating, extra time to walk, and creates separation between you and your family. Though perhaps that's a benefit to some folks... **Less Storage Space** Nine years ago I wrote a post on how [my desire for less storage space](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/less-storage-sp/) created a conflict with my mother in-law, and eventually some puzzled looks on the faces of real estate agents. I now believe in this idea more than ever. Storage space, like extra space in a factory or home, has a tendency to get filled - whether needed or not. Back in the days when companies regularly moved me from place to place I had several boxes that hadn't been opened over two or even three moves. Value? I ended up simply tossing them, sometimes without even opening. So as part of the remodel of our new home, we are removing many extra and unnecessary cabinets, especially including a monster entertainment center. The kitchen, closets, and bathrooms are being remodeled with minimal cabinet space. Yes, this could affect the resale value since most people believe storage space to have value, but I'm hoping we're in this home for a long time - perhaps forever. **Remove Barriers to Flow** One of the problems with our current home is that there are several rooms on two levels, plus a detached garage. We're on a corner lot, on a hill to boot, so the easiest path from the kitchen to the trash bin is out the front door, around the corner and down the street, and into the garage. Really. To get anywhere in the house there are usually two or three doors and a flight of stairs involved. Single level living simplifies flow right off the bat, and that's one welcome characteristic of the new house. One challenge my architect friend and I often worked on was to see how few doors, walls, and corners a house could have. Bathrooms obviously need privacy, but for other spaces there are ways to create segregation without significantly disrupting flow. For example, removing line-of-sight but without disruption of walls or the feng shui poison of sharp angles can be accomplished with curved walls. No, I'm not designing a factory, but I'm using some lessons from when I did help design a large manufacturing facility several years ago. Spaghetti diagrams help locate processes and functions to minimize walking and transportation. Our garbage cans will now be just a few steps from the kitchen, with just one (necessary, due to fire regulations) door in the way. Doors themselves are interesting. A traditional swing door creates considerable non-usable space. Because of this I've become a fan of pocket doors, although they can be a nightmare if maintenance is ever necessary. There's a recent trend toward the similar barn door concept, which is something we'll be using in the new house. Barriers to flow are also barriers to communication - visual and otherwise. **Fewer Horizontal Surfaces** Although I'm not a big TV watcher, I'm a big fan of flat screen TVs. Perhaps some of you still remember its predecessor, the monster tube TV... with the big flat surface on top. Inevitably *stuff* would get stacked on top. Clothes on the bedroom TV, magazines on the living room set, and so forth. Flat screen TVs changed all that, hence why I'm a fan. I've [never liked](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5s%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fdang/) the impact that horizontal surfaces can have on clutter when, ahem, everyone in the household isn't as steeped in the [power of 5S](https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean/5s-workplace-productivity?ref=kevinmeyer.com) as I am. Because of this I've tried to remove as many horizontal surfaces as possible from my ideal home, and will in the remodel as well. No flat surface in bay windows, only the necessary counter space in the kitchen, and no extra chairs in the bedroom. If I was the boss even the counters would have an angle on them - flat enough so work could be done, but vertical enough that nothing could be stored on top. The real boss is probably right, though, that there would soon be sliced fruit and wine on the floor. But you get the idea. **Smaller Capacity Appliances** We've seen many homes that have the largest washers and dryers, multiple ovens in "chef's kitchens," and so forth. Why? Are they really necessary? I can see a large lawnmower if you have a large yard, or large washers if you have a large family. But for two of us? If we entertain, it's probably just another couple. So we need a small washer and dryer, just one oven, and I have come to like the [dish drawer](https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/kitchen/dish-washers/dishdrawer/24-single-dishdrawer3.DD24SAX9.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) concept. Instead of waiting to fill a standard size dishwasher over the course of a week, generally creating some odor in the meantime, a day or two's worth can be washed almost on demand. As an aside, I'm personally a fan of washing dishes by hand anyway. It's a classic mindfulness exercise, being aware of each dish and each activity to clean the dish, and provides some time for reflection. I'm sure it's similar for fans of gardening and other activities. In our current house I replaced the old huge hot tub with a small wooden soaking tub built for two - max. I've loved it. From a maintenance standpoint I used a UV unit so I wouldn't have to worry about the regular chemical treatment nightmare of traditional tubs. Perhaps some appliances aren't necessary at all. Do you really use the bathtub in the master bath? We don't, so out it goes so we can have a larger walk-in shower - which is more valuable to us. We'll keep the tub/shower combo in the guest bath. How many of you in factories have taken a similar lean approach, replacing a single large press with multiple smaller (and flexibly redundant) presses, and so forth. Same concept. Minimize the monuments. So there are some concepts for starters. How much space and support equipment capacity do you really need? How can you configure that space to remove barriers and waste? Can you reduce waste and clutter by minimizing the opportunities to create it in the first place? There is value in living simply, but living simply does not necessarily mean removing luxuries if they truly add value. I'll now get back to the fun of planning a big remodel. Besides the kitchen, closets, and bathrooms, we're replacing all the windows on the ocean side with floor-to-ceiling glass, refinished deck, new garage door, and possibly a new EPDM roof. Whew! ### The Simple Leader: Discovering Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-discovering-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:34:02.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- Ten years after graduating from college with a chemical engineering degree, I was doing pretty well. I had progressed up through the engineering ranks at a Fortune 50 medical device company, moved into operations, and was running a business unit responsible for a high-profile drug infusion pump product. Although work consumed much of my life in Silicon Valley, I was able to balance it with friends and recreation. Then I got a call from corporate headquarters asking me if I would like to run a large factory in Salt Lake City. To a young career-oriented guy, it sounded like a great opportunity. I would have my own operation, live in a new city, and take a big step up in the company. Without asking a single question, I said yes. (Soon thereafter, I learned an important lesson about why you ask questions when offered new opportunities. Questions can be good things, and the more you ask before getting yourself into an unknown situation, the better.) In Salt Lake City, I had to oversee a molding operation with sixty heavy presses running at full tilt, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. The plant was already three months behind schedule when I got there, and it was falling further and further behind every day. Additionally, the operation came with some unique extracurricular challenges. It supplied components to some critical downstream plants, which made it very visible in the eyes of executives, who closely monitored our output and put a lot of pressure on us to improve results. If that weren’t enough, there were also some questionable “activities” occurring during the night shifts. Soon after arriving, I realized that sleep would be a scarce luxury for a while. Luckily, I had one huge asset in my favor: a bunch of talented folks equally frustrated with the situation and eager to find solutions. Looking for new ideas, I poked around on the internet and discovered something called “Lean manufacturing,” also known as the “Toyota Production System,” as well as an organization called the [Association for Manufacturing Excellence](http://www.ame.org/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (AME). AME put me in contact with two of their board members, David Hogg and Dan McDonnell, who helped me analyze the situation and what Lean concepts could be applied. Shortly thereafter, I began collecting and sharing Lean concepts with my staff. (As I studied Lean, I collected many resources that would later turn into a side endeavor called Superfactory.) As a team, we learned how to describe value from the perspective of the customer and how to focus on flow, reduce inventory, and streamline processes. We experimented and failed often, but our efforts soon led to success. We discovered the concept of the “quick changeover,” a method that reduces down- time when preparing the machines to manufacture different parts. This allowed our operators to be much more productive, and after a year, we had caught up and were even finding ways to get rid of antiquated equipment while increasing production. When the new presses that headquarters had purchased to add capacity (spending millions of dollars in the process) finally arrived, we did not even need them. Lean really worked, and in the real world no less. Seeing our results, my passion for Lean grew rapidly, but the company wasn’t at a point in its evolution to fully embrace it. In hindsight, this was a lesson on the importance of executive commitment to the Lean transformation process—great improvements can be made at lower levels, but a true organizational transformation requires a cultural change driven from the top. After a frustrating couple of additional years, I decided to leave this company. (Interestingly, the company is now known for its Lean prowess—perhaps the early efforts by our team did have some residual impact after all.) In 2000, I moved back to California to run a facility recently purchased by a large telecom equipment manufacturer. When I came on board, the operation had an order backlog of nearly a year, and the long lead times were costing the company significant business. Once again, the pressure was on to improve operations. By implementing Lean methods, our team increased output from $500,000 to $5,000,000 a month in less than six months, using the same floor space, equipment, and people as before. Once again, our Lean transformation efforts were doing great things for the company. Unfortunately, around the middle of 2001, we began to experience a few order cancellations. Little did we know that this was the edge of the cliff that many technology companies went over later that year. The drop off came so fast that we were still hiring when we began planning our first layoff. On September 10th, I laid off the entire operations group, including myself (a painful experience, although the events of the next day would put that pain into a different perspective). The remaining operations were consolidated into the corporate facility several hundred miles away (a decidedly non Lean operation) and our product line was soon shut down, demonstrating that without executive leadership support, Lean transformations are very fragile. Although the companies I worked for did not believe in Lean, my own confidence with it had grown to the point that instead of looking for a new job, I got together with a couple friends and started a contract manufacturing company. We thought we could leverage the power of Lean to tackle the difficult jobs that no one else wanted. We also thought that since we had such a compelling business model we would have no problem finding business. On the first point, we were correct, but on the second one, not so much. Before having to find customers for myself, I was always somewhat envious of the jet-setting lifestyle of my friends in sales and marketing, never understanding why they were paid so well. My two business partners and I, all operations grunts, learned what selling is all about—the hard way. After three years of basically paying our employees but never ourselves, we decided to admit we had learned our lesson. We shut the company down and went our separate ways. Even though our contract manufacturing operation did not prosper, my knowledge of Lean continued to pay great dividends. Over the years, the list of Lean resources I had been collecting morphed into one of the largest and most comprehensive websites on Lean (Superfactory.com), bringing me into contact with Lean specialists from around the world. I also joined the AME board of directors. After shuttering our company, I leveraged the wealth of contacts from those activities to join the consulting world. One of the contacts helped me find some contract work at a medical device company a short drive from my home on California’s Central Coast. One thing led to another, and I soon found myself as the president of the company, overseeing plants in California and Michigan. In contrast to my earlier experiences, the long-term vision, commitment, and patience of the owners of my new company provided me the opportunity to try some radical Lean experiments over the eight years I was there. We reorganized the company into value streams, developed incredible teams, and even eliminated budgets. Thanks in large part to Lean improvements, we were successful enough to build a large new facility (in expensive California, no less) during the middle of a recession. We also turned traditional outsourcing thinking on its head by shipping products from California to China and India. Along the way, I learned many valuable lessons, including how to use many of the same Lean concepts to become personally more productive. Later in this book, I’ll be sharing these lessons, from both personal and professional perspectives. ### The Simple Leader: Evolution URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-evolution/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:46:27.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Once, after a particularly claustrophobic, stressful and over-populated time when there hadn’t been air or space to escape to, suddenly, for a few days, I was alone. It was like emigrating to another planet (in fact I was at home). Who was this person I was living with, this strange, this reasonable, serene foreigner in the house: a becalmed woman who spent her time inwardly humming? – Mirabel Osler* After meditating and focusing inward for several weeks (or even months), you may realize something: you aren’t who you thought you were. This moment of understanding your true nature, known as kensho in the Zen realm, can be a bit terrifying. What if I told you that your understanding of who you are would continue to evolve and change? This understanding can be very powerful from both personal and professional leadership perspectives. Your confidence in your decisions and your intuition will increase. You will feel and be seen as more authentic. Life will be more satisfying. Understanding who you are helps you identify your purpose, and knowing your purpose enables you to focus your efforts on improvement. Embrace and think about the unfolding revelation of your true nature. How does it change your leadership style, your decisions, your commitment to your family, and your career choices? Allow and relish those changes. ### The Simple Leader: Start, Now URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-start-now/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:46:40.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *The secret to getting ahead is getting started. – Mark Twain* Getting started on a new project is tough. If you’re trying to transform an entire organization, it can be even tougher because it requires you to make some changes. Changing yourself is often the toughest part—especially if it involves losing weight or modifying a habit. So what do you do? The secret is to just start, and to do it now. You’ve already clarified why and how you need to change. You just need to do it. This is easier said than done, as most of us are experts at coming up with reasons to procrastinate. We give ourselves excuses to avoid dealing with unacceptable behaviors or situations until the “right” time (e.g., the start of a new year) arrives. If our behavior is truly unacceptable, how can it be okay to wait to change it? Another way we like to procrastinate is to form teams and make sure every detail is in place before we start anything new. This is folly. Your team is ready, with you as their leader. It is impossible to plan for everything that could possibly go wrong before you start a project. What are you really waiting for? How does delaying look to your team? Is it authentic? Is it respectful? Last year, as soon as I learned how Paul Akers lost over fifty pounds, I was motivated to lose weight myself. If he could, I could—especially since I only needed to lose half that. Instead of waiting until the new year to change my eating habits I began at that very moment. Five minutes after reading his email describing what he had done, I went to Starbucks to get my usual vanilla latte. Instead, taking a cue from Paul, I bought a regular coffee and skipped the latte. That was the beginning of my health improvement journey. Ten weeks later, I was fifteen pounds lighter. (Coincidentally, the end of ten weeks happened to coincide with the new year, when I would have typically started pursuing a new goal.) Don’t wait. Start. Now. ### The Simple Leader: Declutter and Organize URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-declutter-and-organize/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:46:51.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. – Hans Hofman* Look around your office, your factory, and your home. What do you see? Do you really need all of that stuff on your desk and shelves? Is there a purpose to each item? Does it need to be available now, or can it be put out of sight for a few weeks, months, or even forever? How much time do you consume (and stress do you create) by looking for the appropriate tool, book, or utensil? Does your kitchen really need three beat-up measuring cups of the same size? How much does it cost to maintain and clean all of your extra stuff ? What does the space, additional complexity, and distraction cost? Over time, things in our lives (and our companies) accumulate, and we end up wasting a lot time and effort managing them. To reduce the cost of unnecessary stuff, we use a core tool of Lean called 5S. The term 5S comes from five Japanese words that roughly translate to sort, straighten, shine, standardize, and sustain: - Sort: Review each item, ensure it has a purpose, remove what isn’t needed - Straighten: Find a defined location for what remains, preferably as close to where it will be used as possible. - Shine: Clean and polish the newly uncluttered area. - Standardize: Create a checklist or other method to ensure the area doesn’t revert back to how it was. - Sustain: Create a habit, routine, or daily activity to keep the area clean and neat, and to audit that it has stayed that way. In short, you remove what isn’t needed, find a defined home for what remains, clean up your space, turn the activity into a habit, and find a way to ensure it continues. Using 5S ensures that your factory floor has only the tools that are needed, in just the right place, and are always returned to that place. On the best factory floors, and in the best restaurant kitchens, you will often find shadow boards where every required tool is hung on a wall with the outline of the utensil tool behind it. Everyone knows where to go to get the tool there are no extra tools that need to be sorted through to find the right one. It is visually obvious when a tool is missing. Decluttering also has a Zen component. I encourage you to find one room, or even one shelf, and evaluate the objects you see. Challenge each one. Why is it there, and what is its purpose? What would happen if it wasn’t there? If it has a reason and has real value, then find and define a home for it. Cleaning can become obsessive, so be sure the effort adds value and aligns with your principles. Does marking the location of your phone on your desk truly add value? Probably not. However, having a clean, neat environment will help give you the focus and strength to tackle more important challenges. Once you have your workspace in order, you will soon realize that simplifying and decluttering doesn’t just apply to physical stuff. To be most effective, the cleaning needs to be targeted, not indiscriminately applied. The same boss I described earlier, who asked his employees whether they were “incompetent or just incapable,” also had a painful (for us) Friday afternoon cleaning routine. Around three or four o’clock, he would take a look at his desktop, decide that any paperwork on it he hadn’t already looked at must not be important, and sweep everything into the trash can. This was three decades ago, when most reports were still typed on typewriters, so recreating them was difficult. His staff soon developed a routine of going to his office around two in the afternoon to retrieve any unread reports and paperwork from his desk, just to redeposit them there on Monday morning. Understanding value is critical before tackling a decluttering project. ### The Simple Leader: Oh the Humanity! URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-oh-the-humanity/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:47:02.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be. – Thomas S. Monson* We’re supposedly all human, but sometimes we don’t act that way. Traditional leadership thinking has taught us that it is acceptable, sometimes even expected, for leaders to be harsh, uncaring, and distant. We may even believe that improving the bottom line means making choices such as putting the organization ahead of individuals. Traditional business accounting skews our perspective to think of people only as costs. Nowhere on a profit and loss statement is the value of employee creativity, knowledge, and experience explicitly stated. This leads managers to make crazy decisions, like shedding thousands of years of experience in order to achieve a couple bucks an hour of labor cost savings. Being a leader (instead of just a manager) means you should think differently. Human-centric leadership recognizes that your people are human and they should be valued accordingly. By understanding this, you can promote and get the most out the human side of your organization, your team, or even your family. ### The Simple Leader: Remove Distractions URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-remove-distractions/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:47:21.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks. – Winston S. Churchill* When many people go into the office, they start their day by chatting with some colleagues, checking their email, and surfing the net for a while. Then they start working on whatever project is due that day. Soon, however, they hear the sound of a new email arriving, which they promptly open, leading them to other tasks. Before they know it, the day is over and they still don’t have that project finished. This happens repeatedly, making a thirty- minute task take two days to complete. Every interruption requires time to refocus, and during that interval we lose momentum, either physical or mental. We may be very disciplined with what tasks we want to accomplish and in what order, but we can still fail at actually getting them done. In most cases, distractions are self-inflicted: choosing to answer an email that could wait, saying hello to everyone that walks by, multitasking, or trying to find the end of the Internet. If you want to be more productive, it helps to get rid of the distractions that demand your attention. This could require you to communicate and manage expectations at your workplace. For example, you might need to explain to colleagues why you are keeping your door shut or not answering emails for a certain time period each morning. I get easily distracted by physical things—pictures, books, knickknacks, scraps of paper, and the like. Therefore, I work very hard to have a clean, organized work area. Several times a week, I straighten it up, transferring notes to my journal (you might wonder why didn’t they go in there in the first place—me too), emptying the trash, scanning and shredding paperwork, and cleaning up my computer desktop. I’m working on trying to standardize this activity, but it’s hard. Another way to be more productive is to understand how you work best. Everyone has an optimum length of time that they can focus on something. For most people, this is between twenty and ninety minutes, after which their attention spans rapidly decrease. For me, that amount of time is about one hour, after which a speck of dust is intriguing enough to divert my attention. Figure out what the best time interval is for you and leverage it. I use a timer application on my computer (and one on my iPhone when I’m away from the office). I set it for fifty minutes, giving me a ten-minute break every hour. All potential distractions, such as email, web browsers, and even my phone are turned off. (This type of focused work/break sequence is commonly called a pomodoro. Francesco Cirillo coined the term in his book, The Pomodoro Technique. Pomodoro, which means “tomato” in Italian, refers to the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo uses to divide his work time in to focused, manageable intervals.) Once I start my timer, I’ll then work on one task for those fifty minutes, stopping for a ten minute break at the end. During my break time, I try not to check my email, as email seems to draw me in for far longer than ten minutes. (In fact, I’m working at trying to check email just two or three times a day.) When the break is over, I start another fifty minutes. I repeat this cycle as many times as I can, especially during my most productive time of the day. ### The Simple Leader: Healthy Body URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader-healthy-body/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:47:33.000Z This is an excerpt from [*The Simple Leader: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1944847243/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1944847243&linkId=8b62507ba1271d43c0d3163d38ea2bc5&ref=kevinmeyer.com) --- *Physical fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence. – John F. Kennedy* Growing up, I was a pretty healthy kid. My parents did a great job of feeding me well. They never let me eat too much junk food, soda, or candy. We stayed active, too. During high school, I was on the swim team, and our family did a LOT of walking while exploring South America, where we lived for seven years. Then came college, where I discovered beer and pizza. I still remember the look on Mom’s face when I came home after that first semester, appearing somewhat rounder than when I left a few months earlier. Maintaining an acceptable weight and overall good level of fitness became a struggle for the next thirty years, when I was frequently twenty to thirty pounds above my optimum weight. During that time, being overweight impacted my personal and professional leadership. It hurt my self-confidence, lowered my energy level, and complicated my life. Clothes didn’t fit right, so business travel and presentations took more planning. I would try diets from time to time, but they were not well-planned and lacking in key nutrients, so the weight came back soon after I reached my goal. When I married my vegetarian wife, I became a “pescatarian” (including fish in a vegetarian diet), but, unfortunately, mushroom pizza is also vegetarian, so it was not easy to keep weight off. The best thing I did was to exercise regularly, especially during the last five or ten years. I even ran a full marathon to check one goal off my bucket list, but instead of taking advantage of the training to lose weight, I relished the fact that I could eat a whole pizza at night without gaining more weight! During times of extreme stress, even the exercise went out the window, further aggravating my weight problem. Then, my friend Paul Akers, a Lean leader about my age who I respect on many levels, told me about his own physical trans-formation that included losing 50 pounds. He has since written a book about the process called [*Lean Health*](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Health-Reverse-Paul-Akers-ebook/dp/0990601021/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). As the title implies, Paul applied Lean concepts to his health. At the most fundamental level, he writes, your body is your customer, and having too much weight and consuming too much food is waste. He created accountability by using a fitness app and by sharing photos of what he was eating, a technique he calls the “photo diet,” and he standardized his routine by creating standard foods, exercise, and eating schedules. With Paul’s encouragement, I began applying those same principles, and soon discovered that just about everything I thought I knew about nutrition and portion size was wrong. I adjusted portion sizes, eliminated unnecessary carbohydrates such as bread at dinner, and worked to balance my nutritional intake. In six months, I dropped thirty pounds while also meet- ing my balanced nutritional needs. The new diet, combined with the strength and aerobic conditioning I had been focusing on for the previous couple years, made me fitter than I have been since before college, more than thirty years ago. I feel great, and am more mentally sharp. Since I was careful to create a diet and exercise routine that I could be comfortable with over the long term, I have been able to sustain the improvements. Good sleeping habits have also helped me improve my health. Without good rest, exercise and proper nutrition are much less effective. Most experts recommend eight or even nine hours of sleep each night, but that can vary considerably. In my case, a little over six hours, coincidentally about two REM cycles, seems best. Unless I have an important meeting or flight, I never set my alarm and still wake up around four. I don’t drink caffeinated coffee, but feel very alert until noon. I’ll often take a quick thirty-minute nap right after lunch, leaving me invigorated for the rest of the day. Figure out what amount of sleep works for you, erring on the longer side, and keeping in mind that experts probably recommend more than you think you need. Getting enough rest will multiply the effects of exercise and proper nutrition. A fit body creates the foundation for a fit mind. Treat your body as your most important customer, reduce waste, gain energy, and create balance and harmony in your mind. This will help you be a more effective leader. ### The Value of Depth and Detail URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-depth-and-detail/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:48:05.000Z Nearly three decades ago one of my first bosses pulled me aside – I forget the underlying incident except that I had somehow screwed up – and bluntly told me to “sweat the details.” I clearly remember it to this day, and it became one of the defining pieces of advice I have ever received. It was also a lesson in the power of immediate feedback versus waiting for the annual review. I began to sweat the details, often obsessively, sometimes too much so. Just ask anyone who has traveled with me. Or lived with me. Learning the value of details, and how to distill, evaluate and discriminate, has helped me tremendously. Last January I told you how my [annual "do something different" goal](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/explore-out-of-the-box/) for this year is to read a work of literature from a different culture each month. Initially this was something of a struggle for someone who typically reads Clancy-esque technothrillers and dry business tomes. Twenty pages, if not more, just to develop a character? You must be kidding! Who has the patience? But I dug in and did it. After all, some of the most valuable goals are the ones that push you outside your comfort zone. It's been a very rewarding experience. So far this year I've read (just as part of this goal) [One](http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/0060531045/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)[ *Hundred Years of Solitude*](http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/0060531045/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Latin America), [*The Kite Runner*](http://www.amazon.com/Kite-Runner-Khaled-Hosseini/dp/159463193X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Afghanistan), [*Things Fall Apart*](http://www.amazon.com/Things-Fall-Apart-Chinua-Achebe/dp/0385474547/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Africa), [*One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*](http://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Life-Ivan-Denisovich/dp/0451228146/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Russia), [*Men in the Sun*](https://www.amazon.com/Men-Sun-Other-Palestinian-Stories/dp/0894108573/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Palestine), [*The God of Small Things*](https://www.amazon.com/God-Small-Things-Novel/dp/0812979656/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (India), [*Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out*](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Are-Wearing-Out/dp/1611454271/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (China), and [*The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle*](https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Up-Bird-Chronicle-Novel/dp/0679775439/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Japan). I'm currently reading [*Ceremony*](https://www.amazon.com/Ceremony-Classics-Leslie-Marmon-Silko/dp/0143104918/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Native American), and next month will be [*Breath, Eyes, Memory*](https://www.amazon.com/Breath-Eyes-Memory-Edwidge-Danticat/dp/1616955023/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) (Haiti). Any suggestions for November and December? *The Kite Runner* has easily been my favorite so far, followed by *Ivan Denisovich*. *Ceremony* has started out rather slow, but is now becoming an intriguing look at Native American society as well as the experiences of returning war veterans. *Life and Death* and *Wind-Up Bird* were interesting immersions into Chinese and Japanese life, although keeping track of the multiple reincarnations in *Life and Death (*some not as humans!) became a bit difficult. I've realized that what sets these works of literature apart is the depth and detail presented by the authors. *Ivan Denisovich* really is a couple hundred pages about just one twenty four hour day, but so engaging I couldn't put it down! In *The Kite Runner* I truly felt like I was struggling to survive in Afghanistan, dealing with the consequences of war on life, livelihood, and family. This created understanding, empathy, and compassion - exactly what I was looking for when I set this year's goal. Depth and details matter when telling a story. Understanding depth and details takes either a talented author, or perhaps a trip to the gemba. That's one big reason why my wife and I have traveled to over 65 countries - to get the real story. It's scary how often that real story is at odds with sound bite-driven popular perception. This is also evident in the lean world. We already know the value of visiting the gemba instead of making assumptions from a distant conference room. Knowledge leaders in the field often ask themselves why lean doesn’t take root at every organization and in a sustainable fashion when there is so much evidence that it works. There’s even a lengthy survey currently circulating among such folks asking that and other similar questions. I can tell you why: a lack of understanding of the depth and detail of lean. Instead of truly understanding what it’s about, we want to jump to the immediate benefits of 5S or value stream mapping without understanding the “why?” – and then the context of a simple tool within the overarching depth of the total lean methodology and philosophy. It’s why some of us push back on “lean six sigma” because it usually does not overtly include what I believe to be the most important aspect of lean: respect for people. Understanding respect for people, especially the roots from Toyota where it is really “respect for humanity,” is difficult. But without it, lean simply isn't lean. The true power cannot be realized and sustained. Lean is not just this or that tool. It is an operating system framework to increase customer value by leveraging the power of people. Understanding the depth and detail, including the historical underpinnings and how it can be uniquely applied to your specific circumstance, is critical for success. Otherwise, even if short-term gains are realized, long-term failure is almost guaranteed. Similar examples exist elsewhere. Consider all the blog posts on the latest get-rich-quick or weight loss schemes that don’t convey the underlying context and circumstantial variation. How many people assume an author has professional stature just because of a superficially-reasoned argument, perhaps peppered with big words, instead of true studied knowledge and scientifically-evaluated evidence? Tweets are 140 characters long and television and even some print news these days is reduced to sound bites. The depth and detail has disappeared, and our opinions and decision-making are becoming very superficial - for increasingly complex and global issues. We are losing the ability to access and process knowledge, lean and otherwise, based on detail and depth. How do we change that? Perhaps we should start reading literature again to see what we've been missing. ### Respect by Sharing Knowledge URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/respect-by-sharing-knowledge/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:48:37.000Z *Gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom. Sharing knowledge is the first step to humanity. – Unknown* Well over a decade ago when I became president of a medical device company, I already had many years of Lean experience. I knew what fundamentals needed to be put in place, what systems needed improvement, and what knowledge needed to be transferred. Or so I thought. Instead of ordering this or that program to be implemented, I decided to help our team identify problems and point them to potential solutions. For example, when we were taking too much time to find production supplies, I suggested they consider using a Lean concept known as 5S. Instead of teaching them everything myself, I let the team take charge of implementing it. The team embraced this management style: first they learned about 5S, and then they implemented what they learned. We repeated this process with several other Lean concepts. They would go and learn about it, and I would coach them on implementation. I shared my knowledge and experience, but a funny thing happened along the way: the team also taught me some new methods they had identified and developed. And they taught me to ask "why?" and "what problem are we trying to solve?" before just blindly implementing a new tool. As our team at Gemba Academy knows, I still struggle with focusing on the "why?" while getting a little too enamored with a new method or technology. In fact, it just happened again yesterday. Our transformation probably took longer than some, but I believe it was more rooted in understanding and would therefore be more lasting and resilient. In the end, there were still a couple of changes I needed to dictate, one being the morning standup meeting. The team did not think that adding a new daily meeting would be beneficial. Who would? But when I made the meeting mandatory, I also let them know exactly why it was being done, why it was important to me, and what results we should expect from it. Within a few weeks they also saw the value, and I know that it continues to this day, more than three years after I left the company. Another thing we did at the company was to emphasize employee training. People want to learn, and it’s a measure of your respect for them (and their brains) that you provide opportunities for them to learn. I’ve seen far too many organizations that believe it is too expensive to send employees to conferences, workshops, and other events. Yes, it costs money, but those folks come back motivated and wanting to improve! Isn’t that worth a couple grand? If you cannot recapture the investment of a conference or workshop, you aren’t asking enough of your team. Every year, I sent quite a few employees to events, choosing people that had demonstrated a passion for learning as well as some that I thought could learn a lot if they were appropriately motivated and respected. In each case, I asked them to come back with three to five ideas that we should implement now, as well as three to five ideas that were pretty cool and we should keep in mind for the future. They presented these ideas to our leadership team as a group, and it was then up to us to evaluate and implement them. The process was difficult, but the new ideas easily paid for the trips, many times over. Properly nurtured, the employees who had gone to the trainings became forceful proponents for improvement. I encourage you to consider high value conferences like the [Association for Manufacturing Excellence](http://www.gembaacademy.com/promos/ame?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and Lean Frontiers events. Similarly, at [Gemba Academy](http://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) we're often amazed at organizations, some with incredible resources, that question the value of a site-wide license to our 1000+ lean and six sigma training videos - for only $1995 per year. Where else can potentially hundreds of people have unlimited access to that amount of knowledge for that cost? We sometimes joke that if a company pays more for bottled water or toilet paper per employee than it does for training (of any kind), they have a prioritization problem. If one employee, let alone many, can't come up with an improvement idea worth a couple grand each year, the organization has other serious issues. I’ve also learned a lot about recruiting over the years. I’ve had several failures where professionals with great experience and resumes ended up not being the right fit. I have learned that the best predictor of executive success, more than experience, education, references, or personality, is the ability to share and teach new knowledge. More specifically, executives should have a craving for new knowledge, the capability to distill the knowledge, and an ability to effectively share the knowledge. Those types of individuals are few and far between, but they are incredibly valuable and can radically change an organization. To respect people, you must recognize and leverage the potential value of people’s brains. To optimize that value, you must share your experience, skills, and knowledge. Sharing is respecting people. ### Back to the Beginning with Ohno, Suzuki, and Yoda URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-to-the-beginning-with-ohno-suzuki-and-yoda/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:49:15.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2026/03/yoda.jpg) As I was researching the remarkable similarities between Lean and Zen for my book, [*The Simple Leader*](https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), one of the most interesting - and meaningful - was the concept of the beginner's mind. Taiichi Ohno said, "*Observe... without preconceptions and with a blank mind.*" Zen master Shunryu Suzuki similarly said, "*In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.*" One of the core concepts of Zen is *shoshin*, or “beginner’s mind.” This is a perspective that is free of preconceived ideas and opinions, and is open to new thought. We know how some Lean concepts can be counterintuitive. Embracing shoshin requires “unlearning” what you thought you already knew—in effect, creating a beginner’s mind. Yoda, back in one of the original (and, ahem, *good*) Star Wars movies recognized this and told Luke Skywalker "*You must unlearn what you have learned.*" As we become older and supposedly wiser, creating a beginner’s mind can become increasingly difficult. It becomes even more so when an entire team or organization needs to unlearn and develop a beginner’s perspective. So how do you revert to a beginner's mind? Begin by focusing on questions, not answers. When observing a process, especially one you’ve seen many times, try to avoid jumping ahead to conclusions. Take one step (or, as Ohno would emphasize, *one question*) at a time. Similarly, be aware that what seems like common sense may not be. Avoid using the word “should” as it implies a predetermined or expected outcome. Be careful with experience. What you already know should be an input, not a perspective. Be comfortable with saying “I don’t know”—it shows a desire to learn and is a component of humility. Being biased is a result of not having a beginner’s mind. The most common and well-known bias is confirmation bias. This is our desire to believe what we want to believe, to the extent that we consciously or subconsciously distort or interpret information to fit our preconceptions. We can also seek out sources of information that align with our biases, while ignoring non-confirming data. You can see an example of confirmation bias in the politics of the United States - and apparently in the United Kingdom as well. It is the reason the two major parties in the U.S. are moving away from the center and more toward the extremes. Even though the number of information sources has exploded over the last couple decades, people on the right of the spectrum consume news geared toward them, because they feel it is correct. In other words, it fits their biases. The same happens on the left. This has occurred to such an extent that heroes of each party—Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, for example—probably wouldn’t be welcome in their respective parties today. A second form of bias is loss aversion. Researchers such as psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have found that we’re twice as likely to try to avoid a loss than go after a gain. In effect, we are risk averse, which may be great for our survival as a species, but it hinders us as we try to create organizational change and improvement. A third form of bias is conformity bias, also known as groupthink (e.g., “When in Rome…”). By nature, most of us don’t like to stand out in a crowd and will be willing to agree with a group, even if we know the information is incorrect. A fourth type is survivorship bias, where we focus on the tiny fraction of people that are successful, ignoring the far greater numbers that have failed. An example of this is our fascination with and attraction to get-rich-quick gurus. We also look at highly successful people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and think that could be us. We then try to model ourselves after them. We find it easy to ignore, or not even understand, that every path is unique and what works for one person may not for another, for a multitude of reasons. Finally—and this one is very common in the business world—is anchoring, or first impression bias. This form of bias occurs because we subconsciously give the first piece of information we receive on a topic more relevance and weight than follow-up information. This is why public relations companies find it very important to get their story out first, and why it is so difficult to change minds after the fact—even if the subsequent information is more accurate. Once we know that we’re susceptible to these biases, what can we do? The most important thing to do is to be mindful and present. Observe and ask validating questions. Why do you think this way? What are the arguments against your opinion? Review the forms of bias and honestly try to determine if they might be in play. Taking steps to neutralize your biases will help you make smarter, more rational decisions. Observe like a beginner. Find your inner Yoda... or Suzuki or Ohno. ### Cuba Discovered: A Journey Through Time URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cuba-discovered-a-journey-through-time/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T13:53:19.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/trinidad---35-ford-taxi.JPG) Our June 2016 Cuban adventure came during a unique period in the island's history - just after diplomatic relations resumed with the United States but before mass tourism changed its character. This week-long journey through Havana, Viñales Valley, and Trinidad revealed a country frozen in time, where classic American cars from the 1950s still cruise past colonial architecture, and revolutionary history mingles with contemporary Caribbean culture. ## General Comments **Historic Timing**: Visiting Cuba in 2016 meant experiencing the island during a brief window when American tourism was newly permitted but mass development hadn't yet begun. The charter flights from LAX made access straightforward while maintaining the sense of visiting somewhere truly different and largely untouched by modern tourism. **Time Capsule Experience**: Cuba felt like stepping into a living museum where 1950s American cars, Spanish colonial architecture, and revolutionary history coexisted in ways impossible anywhere else. The combination of preservation by necessity and isolation by politics created authentic cultural experiences increasingly rare in the modern world. **Cultural Immersion**: Unlike typical Caribbean destinations focused on beaches and resorts, Cuba demanded cultural engagement. Every meal, conversation, and exploration revealed layers of history, politics, and resilience that made this trip as educational as it was enjoyable. **Infrastructure Challenges**: Cuban infrastructure reflected decades of embargo and limited resources. While this created occasional inconveniences, it also preserved authentic character and prevented the over-development that has affected many Caribbean islands. **Musical Heritage**: Cuba's incredible musical traditions - from son and salsa to rumba and mambo - provided constant soundtrack to our exploration. Live music in restaurants, streets, and plazas created immersive cultural experiences throughout our stay. **Warmth and Resilience**: Despite economic challenges, Cuban people displayed remarkable warmth, pride, and resilience. Their creativity in maintaining vintage cars, preserving colonial architecture, and creating art from limited materials was inspiring and humbling. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-4: Havana - Revolutionary Capital The American Airlines charter flight from LAX transported us directly into Cuba's complex history and vibrant present. **Hotel**: [Hotel Saratoga](http://www.hotel-saratoga.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This restored colonial hotel near the Capitol building provided luxury accommodations while maintaining authentic Cuban character. The rooftop pool and bar offered stunning views over Old Havana's colonial skyline, creating perfect evening relaxation after intense cultural exploration. **Old Havana (Habana Vieja)**: This UNESCO World Heritage site contained the largest collection of colonial architecture in the Americas. Walking the cobblestone streets revealed 500 years of architectural evolution - from Spanish colonial palaces to Art Deco theaters to revolutionary monuments. The ongoing restoration projects demonstrated Cuba's commitment to preserving this incredible heritage while adapting it for contemporary use. **Classic Car Culture**: The famous 1950s American cars weren't just tourist attractions but essential transportation maintained through decades of creative engineering. Riding in these floating pieces of history while learning about their mechanical adaptations provided unique insights into Cuban resourcefulness and ingenuity. **Revolutionary History**: Visiting sites like the Museum of the Revolution, Plaza de la Revolución, and various monuments provided comprehensive education in Cuban revolutionary history. Understanding Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and the 1959 revolution's ongoing impact on contemporary Cuban society was essential for appreciating the island's current character. **Malecón Waterfront**: Havana's famous seawall provided perfect evening strolls where locals gathered to socialize, fish, and enjoy Caribbean breezes. The combination of crashing waves, colonial architecture, and social energy created quintessentially Cuban experiences. **Culinary Discoveries**: Cuban cuisine, limited by embargo restrictions but rich in Caribbean and Spanish influences, provided authentic dining experiences. State-run restaurants and emerging private paladares offered different perspectives on Cuban food culture and economic changes. **Live Music Everywhere**: From the famous Buena Vista Social Club to street musicians and hotel bars, Cuban musical traditions provided constant entertainment. The combination of son, salsa, rumba, and contemporary fusion demonstrated Cuba's incredible musical heritage and ongoing creativity. ### Day 5: Viñales Valley Day Trip Our excursion to western Cuba revealed completely different landscapes and agricultural traditions. **Viñales Valley UNESCO Site**: This dramatic valley with limestone mogotes (hills) rising from tobacco fields created some of Cuba's most spectacular scenery. The combination of geological formations, traditional farming, and rural Cuban culture provided perfect contrast to Havana's urban intensity. **Tobacco Culture**: Visiting tobacco farms revealed how Cuba produces some of the world's finest cigars through traditional methods passed down through generations. Understanding the cultivation, curing, and rolling processes provided insights into one of Cuba's most famous exports and cultural traditions. **Rural Cuban Life**: Small villages in Viñales Valley showcased traditional Cuban rural culture largely unchanged by revolution or tourism. Horse-drawn transportation, traditional architecture, and agricultural practices demonstrated how much of Cuba remains connected to pre-modern lifestyles. **Cave Exploration**: The valley's limestone geology created extensive cave systems accessible to visitors. These underground formations provided geological education while offering cool respites from Caribbean heat. **Mural de la Prehistoria**: This massive cliff painting depicting evolution demonstrated Cuba's unique approach to public art and education, combining natural beauty with ideological messaging in ways characteristic of revolutionary Cuba. ### Days 6-7: Trinidad - Colonial Jewel The drive from Havana to Trinidad revealed Cuba's diverse landscapes and transported us to the island's best-preserved colonial city. **Hotel**: [Brisas del Mar](http://www.hotelescubanacan.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Located on the coast near Trinidad, this beach resort provided relaxation opportunities while maintaining easy access to the colonial city's cultural attractions. **Trinidad UNESCO World Heritage**: This perfectly preserved 16th-century city represented the pinnacle of Spanish colonial urban planning in the Americas. Unlike museum cities, Trinidad remained a living community where colonial architecture housed contemporary Cuban families, creating authentic cultural immersion impossible to replicate elsewhere. **Cobblestone Streets and Colonial Architecture**: Walking Trinidad's original cobblestone streets revealed architectural treasures at every turn - colonial mansions converted to museums, churches maintaining centuries-old traditions, and plazas where time seemed suspended since the Spanish colonial period. **Sugar Plantation History**: Trinidad's wealth came from sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. Visiting nearby plantation ruins and museums provided sobering education about Cuba's colonial economy and its human costs, essential for understanding contemporary Cuban social dynamics. **Playa Ancón**: This nearby beach offered pristine Caribbean coastal experiences with white sand, clear water, and minimal development. The contrast between colonial urban culture and tropical beach paradise demonstrated Cuba's diverse attractions within compact geographical areas. **Afro-Cuban Culture**: Trinidad's strong Afro-Cuban heritage revealed itself through music, dance, religious practices, and artistic traditions. Santería temples, rumba performances, and cultural centers provided insights into how African traditions survived and thrived despite centuries of oppression. **Local Artisans**: Trinidad's isolation preserved traditional crafts and artistic techniques. Local artists working in ceramics, textiles, and music maintained skills and styles disappearing elsewhere in the Caribbean. ### Day 8: Return to Havana Our final day allowed for last-minute Havana exploration and reflection on our Cuban discoveries. **Hotel**: [Melia Cohiba](http://www.melia.com/en/hotels/cuba/havana/melia-cohiba/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This modern hotel in Vedado provided contrast to our colonial accommodations while offering contemporary Cuban hospitality and amenities for our departure day. **Vedado District**: This more modern area of Havana, developed in the early 20th century, revealed different aspects of Cuban urban culture. Art Deco architecture, the famous Hotel Nacional, and contemporary cultural institutions provided perspectives on Cuba's evolution through the republican and revolutionary periods. **Final Cultural Immersion**: Last-minute visits to local markets, art galleries, and music venues provided final opportunities for authentic Cuban cultural encounters and souvenir shopping supporting local artists and craftspeople. ## Cultural and Historical Insights **Living History**: Cuba's unique position as a Caribbean nation that experienced successful revolution and decades of isolation created a society where historical periods coexisted in ways impossible elsewhere. Colonial architecture, 1950s cars, revolutionary ideology, and contemporary adaptation created layered cultural experiences. **Resilience and Creativity**: Decades of embargo forced Cubans to develop remarkable creativity in maintaining infrastructure, creating art, and solving daily problems with limited resources. This resourcefulness became part of Cuban cultural identity and national pride. **Complex Political Reality**: Understanding Cuba required engaging with its revolutionary history, ongoing political system, and economic challenges without oversimplifying complex realities. The island's achievements in education, healthcare, and cultural preservation coexisted with economic limitations and political restrictions. **Caribbean Cultural Fusion**: Cuban culture demonstrated how Spanish colonial, African, and indigenous influences fused over centuries to create something uniquely Caribbean while maintaining distinct national character. ## What We'd Do Differently **Extended Trinidad Time**: The colonial city and surrounding areas deserved additional exploration for deeper cultural immersion and more comprehensive historical education. **Santiago de Cuba**: Cuba's second city and the cradle of revolution would have provided different regional perspectives on Cuban culture and history. **More Rural Exploration**: Cuba's countryside offered traditional agricultural communities and natural areas we didn't have time to explore thoroughly. ## Final Thoughts Visiting Cuba in 2016 provided access to one of the world's most unique cultural destinations during a brief historical window. The combination of preserved colonial architecture, revolutionary history, vintage Americana, and resilient Caribbean culture created travel experiences impossible to replicate elsewhere. Cuba challenged typical vacation expectations by demanding cultural engagement and historical understanding. Rather than offering escape from reality, the island provided intensive education in Caribbean history, Cold War politics, and human adaptation to challenging circumstances. Most importantly, Cuban people's warmth, creativity, and pride despite decades of economic challenges provided inspiring examples of human resilience and cultural preservation. Their success in maintaining educational achievement, cultural traditions, and community solidarity offered lessons relevant far beyond Cuba's shores. For travelers seeking authentic cultural immersion, historical education, and encounters with societies that have chosen different paths from mainstream globalization, Cuba offered unmatched experiences. The island's preservation of alternative approaches to development, culture, and social organization provided perspectives increasingly valuable in our interconnected world. **Most Memorable Experience**: Riding through Havana in a 1950s Chevrolet while salsa music played from vintage radio speakers, surrounded by colonial architecture and revolutionary monuments **Greatest Cultural Insight**: Discovering how Cubans maintained dignity, creativity, and community solidarity despite decades of economic limitations **Best Historical Education**: Understanding how Cuban revolution affected not just politics but every aspect of daily life, architecture, culture, and social organization **Most Surprising Discovery**: Cuba's remarkable preservation of colonial architecture and cultural traditions through decades of isolation and limited resources **Perfect For**: Travelers interested in history and politics, cultural immersion experiences, colonial architecture, Caribbean music and dance, and societies that offer alternatives to conventional development models. ### Performance, Not Policy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/performance-not-policy/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:49:40.000Z Few people realize how employee policy manuals, usually given to you on your first day and then mostly forgotten, shape an organization’s culture and thereby its fundamental performance. To give you a reference point, one company I worked for had a forty-plus-page employee manual that started every section with "COMPLIANCE IS ESSENTIAL" highlighted in bold, with "required to conform" sprinkled liberally throughout the document. The manual ended with a meaty discussion of the punitive measures that would happen if someone deviated from the policies. And this was a company considered very innovative in many ways! The other extreme is Zaarly, a San Francisco-based startup. Its employee handbook, [posted online](http://handbook.zaarly.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) for even non-employees to see, talks directly about culture. The "Rules for Work" section begins with "We don't have these." And in a style prevalent throughout the document, it adds that "if you want to coast, we recommend you apply for a job at Craigslist." Included are some good thoughts on teams, work, and communication, but no rules. Another example is the famous [Netflix "business culture" PowerPoint ](http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664?ref=kevinmeyer.com)that serves as the company’s employee handbook. Similar to Zaarly’s handbook, it talks a lot about culture and a lack of rules. There is no vacation policy, and the travel and expense policy is literally five words: "Act in Netflix's best interests." That's it. Unlike Zaarly, Netflix does say some rules are necessary, such as: "Absolutely no harassment of any kind." In this case, I completely agree, especially on that item. Some topics relating to privacy, security, and regulatory requirements are important enough that they need to be spelled out in no uncertain terms. Netflix believes high-performance people should be free to make decisions, and those decisions need to be grounded in context. Mission, vision, and value statements do not create context. To demonstrate this, Netflix’s presentation provides the example of how Enron's value statement included "integrity." Real company values are shown by who gets rewarded for embodying desired behaviors and skills. The document goes on to describe the primary Netflix values and the associated behaviors. At Netflix, flexibility is more important over the long term than efficiency. To inhibit the chaos that too much flexibility in a large organization can create, the company hires (and keeps) only high-performance people. High-performance people make great decisions, so building a staff of them is better than having people who are good at following lists of rules. Later on in the Netflix document, there is a good discussion that encourages managing with context instead of trying to control people. That way, when something fails, managers look to figure out what went wrong with the process rather than with the people. One part of the Netflix document that gave me pause was an insinuation that defined processes (such as standard work) are all bad. But doing standard work doesn't necessarily mean the employee has zero flexibility. As those of us in the Lean world know, standard work is the foundation for kaizen. Once an employee deeply understands a process, he or she can (and is expected to) come up with ways to improve it and then share it, which is called *yokoten*. Gemba Academy has adopted many similar concepts in our own [Gemba Academy Culture Code](http://www.slideshare.net/GembaAcademy/gemba-academy-culture?ref=kevinmeyer.com). In January 2014, Brad Power posted a piece in Harvard Business Review titled [*Drive Performance by Focusing on Routine Decisions* ](https://hbr.org/2014/01/to-drive-performance-focus-on-routine-decisions/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)that hits at a similar concept. Instead of creating rule-bound defined processes, companies should focus on improving the quality of the decisions made by managers. Power illustrates the idea with an example those of us in the manufacturing world have all experienced: the maelstrom of materials control. He describes how the materials department of an electronics distributor was able to improve operations by better training managers to make key decisions about inventory. The goal of the training was to get managers to focus less on perfecting company processes (the “box and arrows” of a flowchart) and more on understanding what objectives the processes were supporting in the first place. When managers were able to understand how the processes affected actual business performance, they were able to make decisions (the “diamonds and arrows”) that improved performance: > These two stories highlight the advantages of focusing process improvement on “diamonds and arrows” — i.e., making better decisions. Project leaders who focus exclusively on the “boxes and arrows”of workflow action improvement will often find themselves caught up fixing yesterday’s operations and systems issues. Workers who participate in these interviews and workshops tend to fixate on the pain points they want fixed. This focus on immediate problems can actually distract the project team from the real goals of the business and the decisions that will help achieve them. Are your rules improving the boxes (company processes) but harming the diamonds (managers’ decision-making)? How is that rigidity affecting your long-term performance? Do you have a team of high-performance people that you can trust to deal with the diamonds in a flexible, agile way? And how do your under-lying documents, even down to the employee handbook, support or impede that? These are questions to consider as you look to improve your company’s performance. ### The Simple Leader! URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-simple-leader/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:50:21.000Z A few years ago I starting playing around with a book concept that described several personal and professional leadership methods and habits I had developed over my three decade career. I collected ideas, supporting information, and would occasionally - often on long plane trips - take a stab at writing a section or two. I even put those up on LeanPub for folks to review and comment. For many reasons I never made much headway. There was always something a bit more pressing, or seemingly more manageable, than tackling that behemoth of a project. I enjoy writing, and I felt I had something important to share, but it was never THE priority. In the meantime the project occupied valuable space in my brain. As I get older I'm realizing just how valuable that space is. Then, last fall at the Lean Accounting Summit, I was approached by an attendee who introduced himself and immediately asked when I was going to finish the book. He knew from my blog and LeanPub that I had been working on it, and he said the story so far had really helped him improve his own leadership style. I decided it was time to either put up or shut up (the polite version of the phrase), and one way or another resolve the project and get it out of my head. I put up. I sequestered myself on a tiny island for two weeks in December and finished the writing. That draft went through several rounds of brutal editing by a professional copy editor, then text and graphic design. Several colleagues provided very [valuable reviews](http://www.thesimpleleader.com/reviews/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and Matthew May was kind enough to write a [foreword](http://www.thesimpleleader.com/foreword-by-matthew-may/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Todd Clarke did a great "[visual one pager](http://www.thesimpleleader.com/visual-one-pager/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)" summary. A week ago I received the final proof, and yesterday the book went live on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Kindle and iBook versions are just a few days away. [**The Simple Leader*: Personal and Professional Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen*](http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Leader-Personal-Professional-Leadership/dp/1944847243?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Receiving that final proof felt incredibly good. It is done and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I'm sure I'll think of improvements over time, but for now the project is complete, and it is no longer consuming space in my head. The book is organized into eight parts, each with a different purpose: 1. **Fundamentals** \- A quick history lesson and exploration of the basics of Lean and Zen. 2. **Reconnect** \- Before doing anything, a leader has to be in touch with her or his inner self. 3. **Create** \- Methods to improve personal productivity to prepare for the work that is coming. 4. **Lead** \- How to engage and lead your team as you begin the improvement journey. 5. **Clarify** \- Clarifying what you and your organization are about, defining the current state and the desired future state, and creating a plan. 6. **Simplify** \- Using your new plan, you can take the first step and simplify your operation within the context of that plan. 7. **Improve** \- Methods to identify and execute improvement projects within the context of your plan. 8. **Grow** \- Within ongoing improvement projects in place, it is time to stretch yourself and your organization even further. I've been humbled by some of the initial reviews: I have long felt that Lean thinking and mindfulness are the two most important breakthroughs in recent years to help us sort out increasingly chaotic lives. Practicing Lean thinking is a clear path to professional success in hypercompetitive markets just as practicing mindfulness is the way to wellbeing in adverse conditions. It also turns out that both build on each other, which is what Kevin masterfully demonstrates in this frank, well-written and deeply insightful account of his own journey. *The Simple Leader* is simply a fantastic read! – **Michael Ballé**, author of [*Lead With Respect: A Novel of Lean Practice*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934109479/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1934109479&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=3GMMZJ2ZTQB6PQ43&ref=kevinmeyer.com) Leadership is at the core of any organization, and transforming leadership mindsets and practices is at the core of Lean management. Meyer is a rare author who’s not only studied Lean deeply but has also served as CEO. *The Simple Leader* is chock full of essential leadership practices that are key to organizational transformation and outstanding business performance alike. – **Karen Martin**, author of [*The Outstanding Organization: Generate Business Results by Eliminating Chaos and Building the Foundation for Everyday Excellence*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071782370/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0071782370&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=QZSMG67VCO2JNHIU&ref=kevinmeyer.com) If you’re thinking, “Not another book on leadership,” then you’re in luck. This is not the same old vacuous pablum that so many consultants peddle, or the same sophomoric insights that Zen fanboys wax lyrical over. Kevin’s experience as a business CEO, a student of Lean, and a practitioner of Zen combine to produce a uniquely insightful, wonderfully practical guide to management that will be useful to anyone seeking to be a better leader. I defy anyone to read this book and not learn something immediately useful, applicable, and valuable. – **Daniel Markovitz**, author of [*Building the Fit Organization: Six Core Principles for Making Your Company Stronger, Faster, and More Competitive*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1259587177/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1259587177&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=3BDFTTMPALOOJDCY&ref=kevinmeyer.com) I’ve always been impressed by Kevin’s dedication to simplicity. This book collects his insights from a lifetime of experiences, travel, reading, work and reflection into a simple and practical book. Open up the table of contents and place your finger down on any topic, and I guarantee that you will find practical hints and insights in this book to help you improve. Take a moment to invest in yourself by reading and reflecting on how to reduce complexity in your life and work. – **Jon Miller**,author of [*Creating a Kaizen Culture: Align the Organization, Achieve Breakthrough Results, and Sustain the Gains*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071826858/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0071826858&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=C2FFM4IRBRPBVQCQ&ref=kevinmeyer.com) Lean and Agile thinking are founded in a deep ‘Respect for People’, experiential learning, and a realization that continuous improvement and innovation come from direct observation at the Gemba. In our increasingly complex, distracted and over stimulated world, presence and mindfulness, captured in the Zen instruction to ‘Pay Attention!’, are increasingly relevant. This book may not only change how you lead, but also how you live. – **Steve Bell**, author of [*Run Grow Transform: Integrating Business and Lean IT*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1466504498/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1466504498&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=PQF2KJZSTEBNK7C2&ref=kevinmeyer.com) One might say then that Simple, Leader, Lean, and Zen are inherently conflicted, at odds with one another, and that reconciling them would entail a rather Herculean act of creativity. But creativity is the act of bringing something new into existence, the defining quality of which entails connections between seemingly disparate ideas. This is the beauty of *The Simple Leader*. This is power of the Lean-Zen nexus. – **Matthew May**, author of [*Winning the Brain Game: Fixing the 7 Fatal Flaws of Thinking*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1259642399/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1259642399&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=PH76UXEV67NV3T2M&ref=kevinmeyer.com) Effective personal leadership, requiring conscious individual reflection, is a critical foundation for effective professional leadership. Building on his deep hands-on experience with core Lean and Zen concepts, principles and practices, Kevin Meyer provides the reader with concrete advice and examples necessary to become that outstanding leader. In *The Simple Leader* Kevin demonstrates how each of us can gain leadership clarity by reducing leadership strategy and processes down to a handful of important truths. *The Simple Leader* is a short read that delivers with impact. Read this book. – **Adam Zak**, co-author of [*Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439838453/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439838453&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=PH76UXEV67NV3T2M&ref=kevinmeyer.com) The simple leader is not simple at all! The simple leader is the one who has tamed complexity with the notion that simplicity is true elegance. The irony is that the more successful we all become, the more we are enveloped by complexity and reject the intelligence of simplicity. The idea that Kevin could succeed in the business world and understand that success is rooted in simplicity is profound. *The Simple Leader* is a fantastic story of how Kevin has done this and I was taken with his honesty and brilliance. – **Paul Akers**, author of [*Lean Health: Aging in Reverse*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0990601021/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0990601021&linkCode=as2&tag=kevinmeyer-20&linkId=SDLCLVYSTTQK5Q36&ref=kevinmeyer.com) Thanks to all of you who have supported me on this journey! ### A Break to Reflect and Unlearn URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-break-to-reflect-and-unlearn/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:54:21.000Z Over the past few years I’ve been working hard on cultivating positive habits. New habits can be powerful. But habits can also create barriers that limit our perspective, which can hinder kaizen, creativity, and even our knowledge of ourselves. The proverbial “rut,” and we’ve all been there at times in our lives. Sometimes we just need a break to re-center, recalibrate, recharge, or readjust your horizons. In the Zen world, this is *datsuzoku*, a break from the routine. Datsuzoku can be as simple as getting a good night’s sleep or as common as taking a week of vacation. It is also a great time for reflection. I have a fairly standardized reflection routine, *hansei*, that includes a daily reflection in the evening, more extensive monthly and quarterly reflections, and an in-depth annual reflection where I also set goals for the upcoming year. How am I doing, mentally, spiritually, and physically? What am I grateful for? What do I need to forgive myself for? Am I on track to achieve my personal and professional goals? What countermeasures do I need to put in place? What new opportunities can I create? What should I do more or less of? What activities or thoughts should I stop? Regularly reflecting and asking (and answering!) those questions is critical for effective professional and personal leadership. I’m currently back in Hawaii for a few days, a break from the routine that helps augment a quarterly reflection. Hawaii is a special place for me as my wife was born here, we were married here, and the wind, sun, and waves seem to transmit and infuse nature’s energy in a deeper and more meaningful way than other tropical locales. I may do some work in the early morning or late evening, but during the day I disconnect, soak in the ocean, read, and reflect. It’s been a good start to the year and I’m happy with my progress toward several goals. As I [wrote in January](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/explore-out-of-the-box/), each year I set a goal to “do something different” and this year it was to read a work of fiction from a different culture each month. So far this year: - January: [*One Hundred Years of Solitude*](https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/0060531045/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - February: [*The Kite Runner*](https://www.amazon.com/Kite-Runner-Khaled-Hosseini/dp/159463193X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Khaled Hosseini - March: [*Things Fall Apart*](https://www.amazon.com/Things-Fall-Apart-Chinua-Achebe/dp/0385474547/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Chinua Achebe - April: [*One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*](https://www.amazon.com/One-Day-Life-Ivan-Denisovich/dp/0451228146/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn *The Kite Runner* was especially good, while *One Hundred Years of Solitude* was engaging but difficult due to a large family where everyone had very similar names. I have also made considerable progress on my own book, [*The Simple Leader*](https://www.thesimpleleader.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and it should be published in late May. The copyediting process was very humbling, but the comments I’ve received from other authors that have reviewed it are gratifying. And, after Paul Akers inspired me toward the end of last year, I’ve continued my lean health journey and have reached my original goal to lose 30 pounds and become much stronger. Being in better shape than I've been in over 30 years feels great! Now to sustain and refine. As I was reflecting on my personal and professional goals I began to realize that some of them may be based on faulty assumptions, based purely on my perceptions (or, even worse, the accepted perceptions of others!) and bias rather than fact. *In the beginner’s mind* *there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki* One of the core concepts of Zen is *shoshin*, or “beginner’s mind.” This is a perspective that is free of preconceived ideas and opinions, and is open to new thought. Embracing shoshin requires “unlearning” what you thought you already knew—in effect, creating a beginner’s mind. As we become older and supposedly wiser, creating a beginner’s mind can become increasingly difficult. It becomes even more so when an entire team or organization needs to unlearn and develop a beginner’s perspective. Unlearning is critical in a Lean environment as so many of the concepts initially appear counterintuitive, such as one piece flow vs. batch production. Being biased is a result of not having a beginner’s mind. There are many forms of bias – confirmation, loss aversion, conformity, survivorship, and anchoring just to name a few. How do we create a beginner’s mind? Begin by focusing on questions, not answers. When observing a process, especially one you’ve seen many times, try to avoid jumping ahead to conclusions. Take one step (one question) at a time. Similarly, be aware that what seems like common sense may not be. Avoid using the word “should” as it implies a predetermined or expected outcome. Be careful with experience. What you already know should be an input, not a given. Be comfortable with saying “I don’t know." So when you reflect – daily, monthly, quarterly, or whenever, also take the time to think about your perspective. Do you need to unlearn? Do you need to free yourself from bias? How will you do that? Being honest with yourself will enhance the reflection process and help you make smarter, more rational decisions. ### The Other Flow of Csíkszentmihályi URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-other-flow-of-csikszentmihalyi/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:51:18.000Z Those of us in the Lean world are accustomed to discussing "flow" - where work is performed in an even manner to reduce mura. Activities are synchronized, layouts are optimized, resources are available exactly where and when they are needed, and the pace is set by true demand. The operation just hums along creating value for the customer. Well, "just" is a bit of a misnomer as we know how difficult achieving flow can be. I remember being introduced to the work of Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi decades ago in a psychology class, and have recently become reacquainted with him while researching motivation and productivity. Csíkszentmihályi, a psychologist of Hungarian decent and a professor at Claremont, has also developed a theory of flow from an individual perspective - see his [TED Talk](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly%5Fcsikszentmihalyi%5Fon%5Fflow?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Different than Lean flow? Or maybe not? Csíkszentmihályi's concept of flow is being completely absorbed by what you are doing, energized, and with the creative juices flowing. Many of us already think of it as "being in the zone." It is truly a positive, invigorating experience, as opposed to "hyperfocus" which can be negative. He began researching the concept out of fascination for artists and other professionals that became so engrossed in their work that they forgot about all else, sometimes including basic needs. As the the model at the right shows, flow happens when the skill level and challenge environment is high. The ability to be creative and accomplished in such a situation is very fulfilling. Csíkszentmihályi once described flow as "*being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.*" Flow has parallels with concepts in Eastern religions and philosophy. Buddhism talks about "action with inaction" and Taoism has "doing without doing. The Hindu Ashtavakra Gita and Bhagavad-Gita have similar descriptions. Components of flow include a challenge-skill balance, the merging of action and awareness, clarity of goals, immediate and unambiguous feedback, concentration on the task, transformation of time, and the autotelic experience. He dove deeper into the autotelic personality, which is when people do work because it is intrinsically rewarding instead of to obtain external goals. Aspects of the autotelic personality include curiosity, persistence, and humility. So is it really different than the concept of flow in Lean? Completely involved, every action following inevitably from the previous, using skills to the utmost, clarity of goals, immediate feedback, curiosity, humility. Sounds like a finely-tuned work cell. Well funny we should stumble on that comparison. Csíkszentmihályi did go on to research "group flow," where both individuals as well as the group are able to achieve flow, with the characteristics being: - Creative spatial arrangements: Chairs, pin walls, charts, but no tables; thus work primarily standing and moving - Playground design: Charts for information inputs, flow graphs, project summary, craziness, safe place, result wall, open topics - Parallel, organized working - Target group focus - Experimentation and prototyping - Increase in efficiency through visualization - Using differences among participants as an opportunity, rather than an obstacle Add visual controls, open and transparent communication, and experimentation to the similarity with Lean. Which perhaps reminds us of one of the reasons Lean work cells work: they create a fulfilling, productive, and improving operation by leveraging and rewarding the brains of humans. ### The Liberating Lessons of Less URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-liberating-lessons-of-less/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:52:12.000Z My twenty plus year Lean journey has changed my life in many ways, perhaps none as significant as a creating a pervasive recognition of and disdain for waste. Coupled with respect for people, this has changed my career, leadership style, and personal life. Observing waste has led to a life of increasing minimalism, which isn't necessarily a bare bones existence but one where every activity and object creates value or joy. Let's take a look at some specific areas of impact. **In the home and office**: We've all seen the photo of Steve Jobs in his extreme minimalist living room. I've long been 5S-ing my garage, desk, and so forth. Of course I should be asking myself why I have to do it multiple times - somehow I (or, ahem, others in my household) are not implementing the Sustain "S' very well. Recently I've been devoting more time to this after reading Marie Kondo's bestseller, [*The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up*](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/1607747308/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Kondo goes a bit nuts with her approach, but it works and is addictive. I thought I was pretty minimalist beforehand, but the twenty or so bags of clothes, unused boxed food, books, tchotchkes and so forth that have left the house over the past few weeks has been stunning. And very liberating. We are approaching the point where the house almost looks *too* empty, which leads me to my next point. **The home itself**: For the last fifteen years my wife and I have lived in a very nice house. Ocean view, unique architecture, close to the coast and wineries that surround us, and average size. Like most people as they progress in their careers and become more successful, we occasionally think about a new house. In the past that led us to almost move to larger, even nicer homes. Luckily we never pulled the trigger as we have come to realize, especially after the last couple years of minimizing, that we need and want *less* space. We want less storage space and less floor space. But there's a problem: as homes become nicer, they typically also become larger. So, with the help of an architect friend of mine, we've been toying with new home designs. How little space can we get by with? How few doors, walls, angles, and other "blocks" to clean, usable space? Just a simple focus on minimizing doors creates some incredible designs that feel very liberating, even just on paper. I'm down to four interior doors in the latest design, with even those as pocket doors to avoid consuming space, and I'm obsessed with getting it down to three. Now to find some land. In California. With the ocean view we love. **Physically**: Like most folks entering their 50s, a few pounds have crept on here and there. I've made the occasional effort to work it off, and have actually been fairly fit for a long time thanks to daily crossfit and strength training. But the pounds remained. Then my friend Paul Akers wrote a book about his journey to lose what is now over fifty pounds from a Lean perspective: [*Lean Health*](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Health-Paul-Akers/dp/0990601021/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)*.* The concept of me being the customer resonated, and I soon realized that my concept of portion size was way, way off. Four months later I'm down twenty-five pounds, lower than I've been in thirty years, and have a lifestyle that can sustain it. Liberating - and it liberated a bunch of old clothes out of my closet for others to use! **Travel**: My wife and I love to travel, and have been to over sixty countries. Travel widens your perspective, well beyond what sound-bite television will tell you about the world. It's scary how different reality is from commonly-held opinions. Along the way we've become pretty good at it, perhaps because we like to plan a major part of our trip *after* we get to the destination and talk to locals, so we have to be flexible. A couple years ago we spent a month bouncing around southeastern Africa with just a small carry-on bag each. This was partly driven by the limitations of small bush planes, but also because we simply didn't need much. I can't think of anything we wish we would have had - in fact, there were some items we dragged along that we didn't use. Not having to check bags and being able to quickly change the itinerary is liberating. **Projects**: Up until a few years ago I chased every interesting project, every shiny ball, that came my way. In addition to my job, I was juggling all kinds of side projects, personal and professional, and not doing a great job at very many of them. Then I started to make a concerted, mindful effort to reduce projects to just those that I was truly excited about and could give me joy. A catalyst happened two years ago when I read Gregory McKeown's [*Essentialism*](https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), which described the power of saying "no." Politely and with respect for both your time and the requesting person. Admittedly it's still a struggle, but I've become pretty good at saying no. Fewer projects has meant more time, and also more success on the ones I am engaged on, which is liberating. **Decisions**: It's always been very easy for me to make decisions, sometimes too much so. I do trust my gut perhaps more than I should, but it has served me well in the past. Of course (see above), there's less gut now so perhaps I should be more careful! But I realize I'm a bit unusual in that way, and my wife would say in many ways, which became very clear when I was helping my mother in-law in the final couple years of her life. Decisions became increasingly difficult for her, to the eventual point where she couldn't decide which episode of Oprah to watch on her TiVo. Simple decisions completely paralyzed her. I realized that decisions "take up space" in your head, so the more that are being juggled and contemplated without resolution, the more difficult making them becomes. Therefore two approaches are needed. First, make decisions, especially simple ones, as quickly as possible. Be mindful of exactly what information is needed to make the decision, get it, and make it. Also think about the potential downsides, and the fewer or less impactful they are, the more you can trust your gut and make the decision quickly. Second, minimize decisions in the first place. Allow or empower others do make them, or simply don't get into situations requiring decisions - perhaps by saying "no" like I mentioned above. A head free of decisions is liberating. There are obviously many other areas. I know someone who gets by with just one car for his family. It takes some initial work, but is liberating on many fronts. The crossfit gym I go to is intentionally very small, with just the equipment necessary to create a holistic, simple fitness experience for a small number of clients (mostly surfers). Liberate yourself with less! ### Nevis Revisited: Finding Paradise in the Caribbean's Hidden Gem URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/nevis-revisited-finding-paradise-in-the-caribbeans-hidden-gem/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T14:15:14.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_1481.JPG) Our December 2016 return to Nevis marked our second visit to this extraordinary Caribbean island, confirming its status as one of the region's most perfect destinations. This two-week Christmas holiday retreat demonstrated why we keep returning to this small volcanic island - pristine beaches, lush tropical landscapes, warm local culture, and the kind of authentic Caribbean experience increasingly rare in the over-developed region. ## General Comments **Third Visit Validation**: Returning to Nevis for the third time validated our belief that this small island offers the Caribbean's most authentic and unspoiled experience. Each visit revealed new layers of the island's charm while confirming why we chose it over more famous Caribbean destinations. **Christmas Timing Perfect**: Spending the holidays in Nevis provided the ultimate escape from winter weather and holiday stress. The island's laid-back atmosphere, perfect weather, and festive but relaxed Christmas celebrations created ideal holiday experiences. **Authentic Caribbean Character**: Unlike many over-developed Caribbean islands, Nevis maintains genuine local culture, pristine natural environments, and small-scale tourism that enhances rather than overwhelms the island's character. The balance between visitor amenities and authentic island life remains perfect. **Private Villa Experience**: Staying at Tamarind Villa for nearly two weeks allowed us to experience Nevis like residents rather than tourists. Having our own space, kitchen, and direct beach access created the perfect combination of privacy and island immersion. **Island Scale Perfect**: Nevis's compact size (36 square miles) makes exploration easy while maintaining diverse experiences - from pristine beaches to rainforest hiking, historic plantations to contemporary art galleries, all within short drives or walks. **Repeat Visit Benefits**: Knowing the island allowed us to focus on favorite experiences while discovering new aspects of Nevisian culture, cuisine, and natural beauty we had missed on previous visits. ## The Nevis Experience ### Accommodation Excellence **Tamarind Villa**: Our private villa accommodation provided the perfect base for extended island living. Direct beach access, full kitchen facilities, spacious living areas, and tropical gardens created home-away-from-home comfort while maintaining authentic Caribbean atmosphere. The villa's position allowed us to enjoy both privacy and easy access to island attractions. ### Pristine Beach Paradise **Pinney's Beach**: This four-mile stretch of golden sand with calm Caribbean waters remained as pristine as on our first visit. The combination of perfect swimming conditions, minimal development, and stunning views of St. Kitts created ideal beach experiences. Daily beach walks, swimming, and sunset watching never lost their appeal. **Beach Culture**: Nevis beaches maintain authentic Caribbean character with local fishermen, beach bars serving fresh seafood, and the kind of relaxed atmosphere that defines genuine island life. The absence of cruise ship crowds and over-development preserved the peaceful beach experiences we originally sought. ### Natural Wonders Explored **Nevis Peak Hiking**: The island's volcanic peak, rising 3,232 feet above sea level, provided challenging hiking through tropical rainforest to cloud forest ecosystems. The trail revealed incredible biodiversity, from tropical birds to endemic plants, while summit views (when clouds permitted) encompassed the entire Leeward Islands chain. **Rainforest Adventures**: Multiple trails through Nevis's interior revealed lush tropical forests, hidden waterfalls, and diverse ecosystems. The island's volcanic origins created dramatic landscapes and rich soils supporting incredible plant diversity. **Botanical Garden**: The Nevis Botanical Garden showcased the island's native and introduced plant species while providing peaceful walks through beautifully designed tropical landscapes. The combination of education and beauty made this a favorite retreat during our stay. ### Cultural Immersion **Historic Charlestown**: The island's capital maintained authentic West Indian architecture and culture. Walking the streets revealed colonial buildings, local markets, traditional crafts, and the kind of small-town Caribbean atmosphere disappearing from more developed islands. **Nelson Museum**: Learning about Admiral Horatio Nelson's time on Nevis, including his marriage at the island's Montpelier Plantation, provided historical context for understanding the island's colonial period and British connections. **Local Festivals and Music**: December's holiday celebrations revealed authentic Nevisian culture through local music, traditional foods, and community gatherings that welcomed visitors while maintaining genuine local character. **Plantation Heritage**: Visiting restored sugar plantation ruins and learning about the island's colonial economy provided sobering education about Caribbean history while demonstrating how historical sites can be preserved respectfully. ### Culinary Discoveries **Local Cuisine**: Nevisian cooking, influenced by African, British, and indigenous traditions, provided authentic Caribbean dining experiences. Fresh seafood, tropical fruits, local vegetables, and traditional preparations created memorable meals throughout our stay. **Beach Bars and Restaurants**: Establishments like Sunshine's Bar and Pinney's Beach Hotel served fresh local cuisine in authentic Caribbean settings. The combination of excellent food, local hospitality, and beachfront locations created perfect dining experiences. **Villa Cooking**: Having kitchen facilities allowed us to shop local markets and prepare meals using fresh island ingredients. This domestic experience deepened our connection to island life and local food traditions. ### Water Activities **Snorkeling and Diving**: Nevis's coral reefs, protected by the island's small-scale tourism, offered excellent underwater experiences. Clear water, healthy coral formations, and diverse marine life created world-class snorkeling and diving opportunities. **Sailing and Water Sports**: The island's position in the Leeward Islands chain made it perfect for day sailing trips, deep-sea fishing, and water sports. The calm Caribbean conditions and stunning scenery created ideal marine experiences. **Beach Activities**: Beyond swimming and sunbathing, Pinney's Beach offered beach volleyball, kayaking, and the simple pleasure of long walks along pristine coastline with views of neighboring islands. ### Island Exploration **Scenic Drives**: Despite its small size, Nevis offered diverse landscapes accessible by scenic drives - from coastal roads with ocean views to mountain routes through tropical forests. Each drive revealed different aspects of the island's natural beauty and local life. **Hidden Beaches**: Beyond the famous Pinney's Beach, we discovered smaller coves and secluded beaches accessible by short hikes or drives. These private paradises provided intimate island experiences and perfect spots for peaceful reflection. **Local Communities**: Visiting small villages throughout the island revealed authentic Nevisian life - local schools, churches, traditional architecture, and the kind of genuine community atmosphere that makes small islands special. ## Why We Keep Returning **Authentic Caribbean Experience**: Nevis provides what many Caribbean islands have lost - genuine local culture, pristine natural environments, and tourism that enhances rather than overwhelms island character. **Perfect Scale**: The island's size allows comprehensive exploration while maintaining diverse experiences. You can hike a mountain, snorkel a reef, explore historical sites, and enjoy world-class beaches all within a single day. **Consistent Quality**: Each visit confirms Nevis's commitment to sustainable tourism and environmental preservation. The island maintains its character while improving amenities and experiences for visitors. **Peaceful Atmosphere**: Unlike crowded tourist destinations, Nevis offers the tranquility and relaxation that define perfect vacation experiences. The island's rhythm encourages slowing down and appreciating simple pleasures. **Local Hospitality**: Nevisians' genuine warmth and pride in their island create welcoming experiences that make visitors feel like temporary residents rather than mere tourists. ## Final Thoughts Our second visit to Nevis confirmed its position as the Caribbean's most perfect small island destination. The combination of pristine beaches, lush tropical landscapes, authentic culture, and ideal scale creates vacation experiences that justify repeated visits. Nevis demonstrates how Caribbean tourism can enhance rather than destroy island character. The commitment to small-scale, sustainable development preserves the natural beauty and cultural authenticity that attracted us initially while providing amenities and experiences that improve with each visit. Most importantly, Nevis offers something increasingly rare in our connected world - the opportunity to truly disconnect, slow down, and experience the simple pleasures of tropical island life. The island's rhythm encourages appreciation of natural beauty, genuine human connections, and the kind of peaceful restoration that defines perfect vacations. For travelers seeking authentic Caribbean experiences, pristine natural environments, and the perfect balance between amenities and authenticity, Nevis offers unmatched perfection in a compact, accessible package. **Best Beach Experience**: Daily sunset walks along Pinney's Beach with views of St. Kitts and the Caribbean Sea stretching to the horizon **Most Rewarding Adventure**: Hiking Nevis Peak through tropical rainforest to cloud forest ecosystems with panoramic island views **Greatest Discovery**: Finding new hidden beaches and local experiences despite this being our third visit **Most Relaxing Moment**: Morning coffee on our villa terrace listening to tropical birds and Caribbean waves **Perfect For**: Travelers seeking authentic Caribbean experiences, couples wanting romantic tropical retreats, anyone needing genuine relaxation and disconnection from modern life pressures **Why We Return**: Nevis provides the Caribbean experience we originally sought - pristine nature, authentic culture, perfect beaches, and the kind of peaceful island rhythm that restores the soul. ### Explore Out of the Box URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/explore-out-of-the-box/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:53:29.000Z *Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.* *– Ralph Emerson* It's that arbitrary time of the year when many folks reflect on the past and set goals for the coming year. I enjoy reading how other people in the Lean world approach this activity as planning, hoshin, and reflection, hansei, are core components of Lean. [Karen Martin](https://www.ksmartin.com/establishing-annual-goals-priorities-your-personal-hoshin/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) just went into hers with some nice detail, and I especially like the ritualistic aspect of her process. [Matt May](https://matthewemay.com/hansei-2012/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) has described his in the past as well, with a nod to Seth Godin's "shopping list" concept. I have a similar process that I've alluded to in a few previous posts. Each year toward the end of December my wife and I take a vacation to someplace nice and quiet. Instead of playing tourist to visit a bunch of new places like we usually do in the summer, this trip is purposely to have some R&R, reconnect, and recenter. This latest one, from which I returned just last night, was two weeks at a beach house on Nevis, with nothing to do except relax, eat, talk, and watch the sunset. And, for me, perform my annual ritual. I take a look at my journal - a well-worn Moleskine (usually volumes 1, 2, and 3 by the end of the year), compare the plan to what happened, read the notes, and generally reflect on the year. Although the process has weekly, monthly, and quarterly components, the end-of-year reflection is the most intense. What did I achieve, what did I miss, what countermeasures do I need to put into place, and what should I do the next year. This is all fairly standard, and many folks do it. It eventually turns into what I call "My Shibumi" - after Matt May's book, [*The Shibumi Strategy*](https://www.amazon.com/Shibumi-Strategy-Powerful-Create-Meaningful/dp/0470769505/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and also because it somehow makes me think of [My Sharona by The Knack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1T71PGd-J0&ref=kevinmeyer.com), a band I unexpectedly partied with a couple decades ago. I create key goals for the upcoming year, usually a couple each in categories such as physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and professional. But the most important goal I set is my "do something different" goal. This is the one that stretches me out of my comfort zone, challenges my perspectives and biases, and helps turn me into a well-rounded human and citizen of the planet. I've had this type of annual goal for about twenty years, initially informally but very formal for the past decade or so. Earlier ones were fairly physical, like ski five European countries in six days, learn to windsurf, dive, and hang glide, and run a full marathon. As I've become older they have become more intellectual, such as a deep dive into Buddhism and last year's exploration of the history of the Bible. I read over a dozen books on the topic, and it really opened my eyes to the complexity of the 500,000 variants resulting from intentional and unintentional translation and transcription errors, Church politics, and archeological methods. I've also learned to program HTML, rebuilt a 1973 Triumph Spitfire, explored being vegan and vegetarian (ending up as a "pescatarian" for the past decade), and quit a great job at a great company to do my own thing. I'm by far not the only one that creates such annual stretch goals. Consider Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. He has had goals to learn Mandarin, meet a new person each and every day, only eat meat he butchered himself, and write one thank you note each day. He choses the goal after an analysis of the gap between where he is and where he wants to be. A key outcome is that he learns something new, and often unexpected. Trying to learn Mandarin taught him that he didn't listen well and a year of killing animals made him consider becoming vegetarian. The goal to meet a new person each day, which he achieved by giving face-to-face chats at schools, helped him understand the personal side of problems with immigration policy. Those secondary effects are often more important and meaningful than the original goal itself. So what's my goal for 2016? I toyed with the perennial "get into shape" but after only a couple months on Paul Aker's [*Lean Health*](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Health-Paul-Akers/dp/0990601021/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) program, I've lost over 15 pounds and am in the best shape I've been since the 1990s. If you want to get into shape by leveraging Lean, get his new book. I also thought about a deep dive into minimalism and simplicity, but my wife and I have been doing that at a less intense level for several years so I decided it wasn't radical enough. The slow and steady improvement was working well. I've wanted to finish a book on the nexus of Lean and Zen, but I pretty much did that also while on Nevis (stay tuned!), so that's out. I've decided on another intellectual pursuit to broaden my horizons. I'm going to read one of the top works of literature from each of the major ethnic groups or geographical areas - European, Latin American, Chinese, Hindustani, Arabic, African, and so forth. It should work out to roughly one a month. I've decided to start this month with Latin American. Since I've already read several books by Mario Vargas Llosa, a Nobel Prize winner I met in Peru many years ago, the first one will be [*One Hundred Years of Solitude*](https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/0060531045/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, also a Nobel Prize winner. How will you explore out of the box this year? Perhaps more importantly, how will you ensure you actually do it, and why? You'll probably be amazed at what you learn about yourself - and the world. ### Now, At the Gemba URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/now-at-the-gemba/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:54:41.000Z *If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.* *– Thich Nhat Hanh* Many people have a problem with letting go of the past – whether painful or pleasant. Not me. I’ve always been able to let go of the past almost immediately. I’ve had a problem letting go of the future. Ever since my first job I’ve been a planner. I’ve been able to see and develop pathways to future goals, and in many cases that has served me well. Over time, especially as professional responsibilities increased, the level and detail of planning increased. When I was faced with a chaotic family medical situation for a few years, the level of planning reached past obsessive levels. I would literally have future plans laid out in excruciating detail, with contingency plans A, B, C and D for each potential branch of the path. I spent hours each day thinking about plans, tweaking strategies and tactics, personally and professionally. I spent hours identifying potential corrective actions to situations that, if even the worst occurred, might take a few minutes to fix… if it was even worth fixing. Some folks know I’m still that way about travel, and before even simple trips I meticulously plan the right combination of flights that have the highest historical on-time percentages with the right layover time buffers through the cities with the best weather. I’ve memorized terminal maps, airline club locations, best seats on different aircraft types, and frequent flyer rules. Crazy? Perhaps. But I haven’t experienced a flight disruption in several years – and I’m a Star Alliance million miler and have been to over 60 countries. I blame it on my first boss who told me to “sweat the details.” That simple statement apparently triggered some OCD-inducing neurochemical pathway. So before you tell me that I need to check myself in to a facility, let me tell you that I’ve changed. The change began a few years ago (surprisingly without professional intervention) by the Lean guy in me realizing it was a little ridiculous to spend more time planning contingencies than it would take to simply deal with the problem – if it even occurred. Waste. This was a struggle. I had to be ok with problems arising. I soon learned that, as the cliché states, problems are opportunities to learn. The change was fortified by the realization that I was missing what was happening in the present by focusing so much on the future. Time had flown by and I hadn’t even noticed. I had experienced many great things, but I didn’t remember them. I remember one day when I was standing in the middle of our production floor, trying to channel Taiichi Ohno and simply observe the process. After nearly an hour I realized I had noticed an issue in the first five minutes and my mind had spent the next fifty-five minutes thinking about solutions. I completely missed that the production team had also seen the problem and had already resolved it. Space case. Time to work on focus, on being present. Coincidentally it was about this same time that I started to discover and explore the remarkable nexus between Lean and Zen. The emphasis on the present moment is perhaps Zen's most distinctive characteristic. In our western relationship with time, in which we compulsively pick over the past in order to learn lessons from it, and then project into a hypothetical future in which those lessons can be applied, the present moment has been compressed to a tiny sliver on the clock face between a vast past and an infinite future. Zen, more than anything else, is about reclaiming and expanding the present moment. There are many exercises that can help us become more present. I won’t expound on those here, but simply say that by turning off the radio in the car, deliberately trying to experience each of the five senses while walking, and spending time alone in silence, you can slowly learn to be more aware. So as we reach the end of the year, an arbitrary time when many of us contemplate the past and plan for the future, don’t forget the present. Learn from the past and move on. Think about what level of planning is really necessary – and value-added – for the future. Then return to the present, the gemba, and experience life where it is truly happening. Relish the smell of the roses. ### A Reflective Perspective on Schein URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-reflective-perspective-on-schein/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:55:23.000Z *I will take time to be alone today. I will take time to be quiet. In this silence I will listen… and I will hear my answers. – Ruth Fishel* One of my great pleasures is going for a walk on the beach a couple blocks from my house. Contrary to the popular perception of California as a land of crazies, crowds, and freeways, Morro Bay is a small working fishing village with 10,000 residents and one stop light, at the southern end of Big Sur and the prettiest drive in the world. There are over 200 wineries within 30 miles. (end tourism bureau advertisement) And, of course, our six mile long beach with the remnant of a long-dead (hopefully) volcano at one end. Deserted, even in high season. A long walk in such a beautiful spot creates a connection between nature, body, mind, and God. A connection often never made while buried in the chaos of normal life. It is a time for reflection and recentering. How am I doing, mentally, spiritually, and physically? Am I on track to achieve my personal and professional goals? What countermeasures do I need to put in place? What new opportunities can I create? What activities – and thoughts – should I stop? Regularly asking, and answering, those questions is critical for effective professional and personal leadership. The walk is also an exercise in observation. I always try to find something I haven’t noticed before. Whether it has always been there or is a result of the ever-changing seascape from tides or storms. This exercise has helped me become more observant in other situations. Zen has a concept called *seijaku* – stillness, quietude, and solitude. It is in a state of seijaku when we become very self-aware and can harness the essence of creative energy. *Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty, unfamiliar and perilous…. -* *Thomas Mann* My walks, perhaps *kinhin*, on our deserted beach every day or two has that affect. It's when I [connect the dots](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/discovering-the-inner-merton/) and come up with new ideas - many admittedly crazy, some not. I find it sad, and perhaps disturbing, that more and more people seem to find it difficult to enjoy and embrace the power of solitude, of being alone. Many of the younger generations, raised in a world of artificial hyperstimulation, seem incapable of appreciating quiet solitude. In a business world of teams we may persuade ourselves that we are at our most wonderful in a group, drawing on its power and influence, but as Michel de Montaigne insisted, ‘The only true freedom comes in solitude.’ The sources of music, painting — and writing itself — are solitary. The presence of others can be a joy, but also a problem. Other people may offer a solution to our problems, but it is usually a solution to their problems, and if it helps us it is usually by luck. The simple reason we don’t find solutions this way is because we spend very little time with ourselves, and are discouraged from doing so in the modern world. *People go to the ends of the earth to see the great mountains, and wonder at them, and to explore the great rivers, and wonder about them. But the greatest wonder of them all — themselves — they never look at or wonder at. - Saint Augustine.* A couple weeks ago a few of us at Gemba Academy were discussing books we’ve found interesting. Jon Miller suggested Edgar Schein’s [*Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling*](https://www.amazon.com/Humble-Inquiry-Gentle-Instead-Telling/dp/1609949811/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Those of you who know Jon know he’s a bit of an intellectual powerhouse so, with a little trepidation that the book may not be appropriate for mental mortals like myself, I downloaded a copy. I loved it. Schein describes three types of humility and four types of inquiry, focusing in on the power of inquiry based on here-and-now humility. This form of humility happens when we presume to be dependent on someone else because that someone has something we need – perhaps knowledge. It struck me that, although Schein was intending to describe a relationship between two or more people, his concepts are also very appropriate for our discussions with ourselves – assuming we have them, of course. Consider the following excerpt: > *What we ask, how we ask it, where we ask it, and when we ask it all matter. But the essence of Humble Inquiry goes beyond just overt questioning. The kind of inquiry I am talking about derives from an attitude of interest and curiosity. It implies a desire to build a relationship that will lead to more open communication. It also implies that one makes oneself vulnerable and, thereby, arouses positive helping behavior in the other person.* > *Feelings of Here-and-now Humility are, for the most part, the basis of curiosity and interest. If I feel I have something to learn from you or want to hear from you some of your experiences or feelings because I care for you, or need something from you to accomplish a task, this makes me temporarily dependent and vulnerable. It is precisely my temporary subordination that creates psychological safety for you and, therefore, increases the chances that you will tell me what I need to know and help me get the job done.* Creating a humble, vulnerable relationship with yourself opens you up to being able to inquire, discover, reflect, and perhaps create change. Accepting yourself for who you are creates peace. Effective personal leadership, requiring conscious individual reflection, is critical for effective professional leadership. Take some time, alone and perhaps in the grandeur of nature, to humbly ask yourself some tough questions. You might be surprised at the response. ### Discovering the Inner Merton URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/discovering-the-inner-merton/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:56:42.000Z *If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.*― Thomas Merton, *[Love and Living](https://www.amazon.com/Love-Living-Thomas-Merton/dp/0156027992/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)* Sometimes there are dots just waiting to be connected... ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/thomas-merton-1.jpg) I was rather surprised when Pope Francis mentioned Thomas Merton in his address to Congress a couple weeks ago. I have learned a lot about Merton over the last decade while on a random intellectual quest that has included other seemingly unrelated modern day folks like Hernando de Soto and Mario Vargas Llosa – a Nobel prize winner who I happened to meet many years ago. Merton's [*Thoughts in Solitude*](https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Solitude-Thomas-Merton/dp/0374513252/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) is one of my favorite books. More on Thomas Merton in a bit. First some background. People close to me know that for over two decades I’ve had an annual goal to “do or learn something radically different.” From this I’ve learned to windsurf and dive, ran a full marathon, rebuilt a ’73 Triumph Spitfire (which, admittedly, is like working on a lawnmower…), and skied five different countries over six consecutive days. In the mid-90s I taught myself HTML programming which turned into various projects that eventually helped create [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). As I’ve become older the annual projects have become less physical and more intellectual, including a year-long immersion into Buddhism, with a trip to Bhutan. Just one of the 65 countries I have been to. Go and see... and learn. Perhaps to assuage the concerns of some family members who were concerned about that particular intellectual odyssey, this year’s goal is a deep dive into Biblical history. Not the stories and history IN the Bible, but a secular investigation of the history OF the Bible. I’ve read probably a dozen books written by respected scholars - from multiple perspectives since the historical accounts are far from settled. What an unexpectedly fascinating journey! Humor me for a couple paragraphs while I expose my inner geek. There are over 200,000 variants among 5,700 ancient Greek Biblical manuscripts alone, not even counting translation issues derived from them, created by the copying processes of amateur and professional scribes that were in some cases an attempt to please their benefactors and in others just plain sloppy. Most are minor and fairly inconsequential, but some aren't, for example the last twelve verses of Mark and John 7:53-8:12 which are not found in any of the oldest manuscripts and are now assumed by scholars to have been added by scribes. Compounding the intentional and unintentional copy and translation errors was the process of deciding what went into the Bible. From hundreds of potential texts, through lists developed by high profile folks including a disingenuous ship merchant in the second century (a great story itself), to the synod of Hippo and councils of Carthage, Nicaea, and Rome in the fourth century where in some cases the politics of church control outweighed what was effectively an exercise in hindsight called the five guidelines of canonicity. Just when things seem settled, for better or for worse, there were the discoveries of the Muratorian fragment in the Vatican archives in 1740, the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945, and the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947 to both confirm and throw doubts on some of those early decisions. History, perhaps especially religious history, has a way of being filled with more intrigue and drama than any novel written by even the best writer. Without getting into off-topic details, I will say that this year's quest has actually reinforced my own faith. Finding errors, and especially the process to understand the source of errors, can create authenticity. So let’s get back to Thomas Merton and the interesting connections between the dots – yes, eventually including Lean. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/07/merton-dalai-1.jpg) I first came across Thomas Merton during my deep dive into Buddhism a few years back. I was surprised to discover a large number of Christian scholars and Catholic priests, like Merton, who openly embraced components of Buddhism. Merton went further than most, with deep study into the Zen tradition, which he discussed in [*Zen and the Birds of Appetite*](https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Birds-Appetite-Directions-Paperbook/dp/081120104X/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), as well as a book he co-authored with none other than the Dalai Lama, [*The Way of Chuang Tzu*](https://www.amazon.com/Way-Chuang-Tzu-Second/dp/0811218511/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). At the core of Merton’s interest was his belief that most Christian traditions had become so focused on ritual and dogma that they had forgotten about the quest for understanding and a true personal relationship with the ultimate source of that knowledge. He embraced, both in his writing and his own spiritual journey, the fundamental Buddhist concept that there is no single, perfect path, and that each of us has to learn and understand ourselves before creating our own unique journey. That does conflict with many Christian and especially the Catholic traditions. But, as we'll soon see, not all of them. Hence why it was remarkable that Pope Francis lauded Thomas Merton, a Catholic priest that believed in multiple paths to salvation and once said "I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can." Wow. Allow me to add another dot. For most of the current era the Gnostics were more commonly known as “those crazy Gnostics.” Strange rituals and beliefs, loosely associated with Christianity, their scriptures quickly discarded by the early Vatican councils and not included in the traditional Biblical canon. Then the Nag Hammadi texts were found in 1945 and fully translated a couple decades later (interestingly with financial support from none other than the noted psychiatrist, Carl Jung), suddenly supporting some of earliest known manuscripts that had been deemed too controversial by the early church. Contrary to the prior perception of Gnostics, these newly-discovered texts described a spiritual belief system far more aligned with traditional Christianity than originally thought, with one of the major differences being they did not insist that everyone must believe as they did. To the Gnostics, faith is an inner experience, still generally aligned with classical Christianity, but one that does not have to be the same for everyone, and is grounded in individual investigation, introspection, reflection, and circumstance - as opposed to ritual. It is a dynamic process of seeking truth, not arrogantly declaring it. Starting to sound familiar? And this, finally, becomes the tie back to Lean. Almost daily I come across articles, questions, and comments about the “true path to Lean” – and the supposedly correct sequence of tools performed in the singularly correct fashion to accomplish a transformation. That misconception is what, along with not understanding the respect for humanity pillar, causes most Lean failures. Like the spiritual journeys of Buddhists, Gnostics, and many Christians like Thomas Merton, when on a Lean journey you must first seek to learn and understand, contemplate and reflect on how it applies to your circumstance and beliefs, and only then apply what makes sense to create your own path. Learn about Lean, create a relationship with the underlying knowledge of Lean, and apply it based on circumstance, data, and beliefs. Don’t simply accept what others say or copy what others do. *Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.*― Thomas Merton, *[Thoughts in Solitude](https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Solitude-Thomas-Merton/dp/0374513252/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)* Learn and experience new things. Live. Create dots. If you create a lot of dots, sometimes interesting connections can be made. ### Discovering the Value of People URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/discovering-the-value-of-people/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T00:58:52.000Z Big news in the business world: > Wal-Mart is famous for keeping costs down, including employee-related costs. In Joplin, the company is testing a new approach: investing in workers through higher wages and training, on the theory that this will pay off all around—for customers, the company and employees. Yes, at just one of their 4500 stores, Wal-Mart has discovered skills training. If it works they plan to roll out this innovative program to the other stores. That isn't a story from 1975 or even 1995\. It's from this past week. September, 2015\. Good for them, though, even if they did take a few decades to realize the potential value of people. A concept that many other companies in many other industries have leveraged to create competitive advantage for a long time. Pretty much every organization has a mission statement, often gathering dust on the wall in a corner of a conference room, that says "our employees are our most valuable asset." Really? How is that demonstrated? I bet Whirlpool had a statement like that, as they were laying off thousands of highly experienced people at their Fort Smith plant to chase "cheap" labor to a new facility filled with new inexperienced people in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, while hiring at their nearby Clyde plant, and then only a couple years later they started looking for people to refill a plant they had closed. You can't make [that stuff](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/assembly-mag-thinks-whirlpool-is-lean-really/) up. But that's what happens when you run a company based on traditional accounting methods, where labor is purely a cost and there is no offsetting P&L or balance sheet line for the value of people. There's a benefit to reducing cost, there is no balancing benefit to preserving the value of brains. It takes a strong manager to realize that those brains are creating value that more than offsets their cost, even if it isn't directly shown on the financial statements, and to buck the questions of their bosses and financial folks. It takes an even stronger and more capable leader to invest in, develop, and mentor those brains to really tap into the potential value. Organizations that have such leaders understand the problems with traditional accounting. As a side note, you can learn more about those problems, and get to know some of those leading organizations, at the Lean Accounting Summit next month. Truly empowered high-performing people can have an impact far beyond improvements in productivity and quality. Consider your perception of the Chipotle brand after reading this article about a fatal accident that happened in front of one of their restaurants. > The next day, I called the Chipotle restaurant to offer my appreciation to the store's manager. I told the leader how supportive, flexible, and respectful the Chipotle crew was to all in attendance. > > As our phone conversation drew to a close, I said, "I know that our presence last night was not what you expected. We no doubt hurt your business." > > Before I finished my thought, the store manager responded, "There are a lot more important things in life than making our numbers last night. I'm just glad we were able to be there." Great people, led by great leaders, create great companies. As Richard Branson says, "Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of and develop your employees, they will take care of the clients." I was thinking about a sandwich for lunch, but I think I'll head down to Chipotle for a veggie burrito. ### Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia & Slovenia Journey: Contrasting Paths in Post-Yugoslav Europe URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/croatia-montenegro-bosnia-slovenia-journey-contrasting-paths-in-post-yugoslav-europe/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T16:34:00.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/view-room.JPG) Our August 2015 journey through Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia revealed how differently these Balkan nations have navigated the post-communist transition. From Croatia's tourism boom to Bosnia's lingering war scars, Montenegro's natural beauty amid Soviet-era remnants, and Slovenia's successful European integration, this trip provided a compelling study in how history, geography, and political choices shape modern realities. ## General Comments **Post-Yugoslav Contrasts**: Twenty-four years after Yugoslavia's dissolution, the stark differences between these successor states and neighboring countries demonstrated how political systems, economic policies, and historical experiences create divergent national trajectories. Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were all former Yugoslav republics, while Montenegro had been an autonomous region within Serbia before gaining independence in 2006. **War's Lasting Impact**: The 1990s conflicts left visible and invisible scars throughout the region. From Sarajevo's bullet-marked buildings to Croatia's rebuilt old towns, the wars' legacy remained present in architecture, economics, and collective memory. **Tourism Development Spectrum**: Croatia had embraced mass tourism with remarkable success, transforming Dubrovnik into a global destination. Slovenia developed sustainable tourism within European Union frameworks. Montenegro was beginning to harness its natural beauty for tourism development. Bosnia remained largely overlooked by international visitors, creating both challenges and authentic cultural encounters. **European Integration Effects**: Slovenia's EU membership since 2004 and Croatia's 2013 accession contrasted sharply with Bosnia's complex governance structure and Montenegro's ongoing development challenges. These differences were visible in infrastructure, services, and economic opportunities. **Natural Beauty Throughout**: Despite political complexities, all four countries showcased extraordinary natural beauty - from the Adriatic coast to alpine lakes, medieval cities to pristine mountains. The region's geographical gifts remained constant despite changing political boundaries. **Cultural Continuity and Change**: Shared Yugoslav heritage created cultural similarities, while national independence fostered distinct identities. This tension between continuity and change defined much of our cultural exploration. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-7: Croatia - Tourism Success Story **Dubrovnik Base**: [Villa Dubrovnik Hotel](http://www.villa-dubrovnik.hr/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury clifftop hotel provided stunning views over the Adriatic while offering easy access to Dubrovnik's medieval old town. The property perfectly exemplified Croatia's successful transformation of coastal beauty into world-class tourism infrastructure. **Dubrovnik Old Town**: This UNESCO World Heritage walled city demonstrated Croatia's remarkable post-war recovery and tourism development. The medieval architecture, restored to pristine condition after 1990s war damage, created one of Europe's most beautiful urban environments. However, the success brought challenges - cruise ship crowds and high prices reflected tourism's double-edged impact. **City Walls Walk**: The 1.2-mile circuit around Dubrovnik's medieval fortifications provided panoramic views while revealing the city's strategic importance throughout Mediterranean history. The walls, damaged during the 1991-1992 siege, had been meticulously restored using traditional techniques and materials. **War History**: Learning about Dubrovnik's siege during Croatia's independence war provided sobering context for understanding the region's recent trauma. The contrast between war destruction and current tourist paradise demonstrated both human resilience and tourism's power to drive reconstruction. ### Day 4: Montenegro Excursion - Natural Beauty and Soviet Legacy Our day trip to Montenegro revealed a country of spectacular landscapes still marked by communist-era development. **Bay of Kotor**: This fjord-like inlet, surrounded by dramatic mountains and medieval towns, showcased Montenegro's extraordinary natural beauty. The UNESCO World Heritage sites of Kotor and Perast demonstrated the region's Venetian and Ottoman heritage while revealing how Montenegro's tourism potential was beginning to develop. **Soviet-Era Remnants**: Despite the stunning natural setting, concrete block buildings from the communist period created stark contrasts with historical architecture. These structures reminded us that Montenegro was still transitioning from socialist urban planning to market-economy development. **Kotor Old Town**: This medieval walled city, squeezed between mountains and sea, preserved authentic Adriatic culture while beginning to accommodate growing tourist interest. The combination of genuine local life with emerging tourism infrastructure showed Montenegro in transition. **Infrastructure Contrasts**: Modern coastal highways designed for tourism development contrasted with older inland infrastructure, demonstrating how Montenegro was selectively modernizing to compete for Mediterranean visitors. ### Day 6: Island Excursion - Adriatic Paradise **Elafiti Islands**: Our boat excursion to these islands near Dubrovnik revealed pristine Adriatic environments and traditional island life. The clear waters, secluded coves, and authentic fishing villages provided perfect contrast to mainland tourism intensity. **Lokrum Island**: This nature reserve just off Dubrovnik offered peaceful hiking, botanical gardens, and swimming in crystal-clear waters. The island's protected status demonstrated Croatia's commitment to balancing tourism development with environmental preservation. ### Days 8-10: Bosnia and Herzegovina - Time Frozen The drive from Dubrovnik to Sarajevo via Mostar transported us into a country where time seemed suspended between war and peace. **Mostar**: This city's famous bridge, destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt with international assistance, symbolized both the war's devastation and reconstruction efforts. The bridge's reconstruction represented hope, while nearby bullet-scarred buildings reminded visitors that healing remained incomplete. **Sarajevo**: [Hotel Central Sarajevo](http://www.hotelcentral.ba/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) provided comfortable accommodations in a city still bearing visible war scars. The hotel's location allowed walking access to sites where the 1992-1996 siege left lasting marks on buildings and collective memory. **Siege Scars**: Twenty years after war's end, bullet holes and mortar damage remained visible throughout Sarajevo. These unrepaired scars served as informal memorials while reflecting the country's ongoing economic struggles and complex governance structure. **Complex Governance**: Bosnia's post-war political system, with multiple co-presidents representing different ethnic groups, created governmental paralysis affecting infrastructure development, economic growth, and European integration progress. This political complexity explained why the country lagged behind its neighbors in post-war development. **Tunnel Museum**: The underground passage that sustained Sarajevo during the siege provided powerful education about civilian survival during wartime. This museum experience demonstrated how ordinary people endured extraordinary circumstances through ingenuity and mutual support. **Traditional Culture**: Despite political challenges, Sarajevo maintained rich cultural traditions blending Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and South Slavic influences. Coffee culture, traditional crafts, and architectural heritage created authentic cultural experiences largely unaffected by mass tourism. **Economic Stagnation**: Unlike Croatia's tourism boom or Slovenia's EU prosperity, Bosnia's economy remained constrained by political gridlock and war's lingering effects. This created hardships for residents while providing visitors with authentic cultural encounters unmediated by tourism development. ### Days 11-13: Slovenia - European Success Flying from Sarajevo to Ljubljana transported us into Central Europe's success story. **Ljubljana**: [Hotel Cubo](http://www.hotelcubo.com/en/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) provided modern accommodations in a capital that exemplified successful post-communist transition. The city's pedestrian center, restored architecture, and contemporary cultural life demonstrated Slovenia's integration into European mainstream. **European Integration Success**: Slovenia's 2004 EU membership and 2007 eurozone adoption created visible prosperity and infrastructure development. Modern highways, updated telecommunications, and contemporary urban planning contrasted sharply with Bosnia's stagnation. **Architectural Harmony**: Ljubljana's Baroque, Art Nouveau, and contemporary architecture coexisted harmoniously, reflecting successful cultural preservation within modern European frameworks. Jože Plečnik's architectural legacy created distinctive urban character while accommodating contemporary needs. **Environmental Leadership**: Slovenia's commitment to environmental protection was evident in pristine urban parks, clean rivers running through the city center, and sustainable transportation systems. The country's green initiatives demonstrated how small nations can lead in environmental stewardship. **Cultural Sophistication**: Ljubljana's galleries, theaters, and cultural institutions rivaled larger European capitals while maintaining distinctive Slovenian character. The city's intellectual and artistic life reflected successful preservation of cultural identity within European integration. **Economic Modernization**: Modern shopping districts, contemporary business centers, and thriving service economy demonstrated Slovenia's successful transition to market capitalism while maintaining social cohesion and environmental quality. ## Regional Insights and Contrasts **Development Trajectories**: Croatia chose tourism-led development, leveraging coastal beauty and historical sites for rapid economic growth. Slovenia pursued comprehensive European integration, modernizing all sectors while preserving cultural identity. Montenegro began developing tourism while managing Soviet-era legacies. Bosnia remained constrained by political paralysis and war's ongoing effects. **War's Differential Impact**: The 1990s conflicts affected each country differently. Croatia and Slovenia achieved quick recovery and growth. Montenegro avoided major conflict damage. Bosnia endured the longest siege and most devastating destruction, creating lasting developmental disadvantages. **Tourism vs. Authenticity**: Croatia's tourism success brought prosperity but also cultural commodification and overtourism pressures. Bosnia's lack of tourism development preserved authentic culture but limited economic opportunities. This tension between development and authenticity appeared throughout the region. **European Integration Benefits**: EU membership provided Slovenia and Croatia with development funds, market access, and institutional frameworks supporting democratic governance and economic modernization. Non-EU countries faced greater challenges in accessing capital and implementing reforms. ## Cultural Continuities and Differences **Shared Heritage**: Yugoslav-era infrastructure, cultural institutions, and social patterns remained visible throughout the region. Shared architectural styles, urban planning approaches, and cultural practices demonstrated common historical experiences. **Emerging National Identities**: Each country emphasized distinct cultural characteristics - Croatian Mediterranean orientation, Bosnian multicultural traditions, Slovenian Central European identity, and Montenegrin mountain culture. These identity constructions often contrasted with Yugoslav-era unity. **Religious and Ethnic Complexity**: The region's Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim communities created rich cultural diversity while sometimes reflecting political tensions. Understanding these religious and ethnic dynamics was essential for appreciating contemporary politics and social relations. ## Final Thoughts This Balkans journey revealed how historical forces, political choices, and geographical advantages create dramatically different national trajectories. The contrast between Slovenia's European prosperity, Croatia's tourism success, Montenegro's natural beauty amid development challenges, and Bosnia's war-scarred stagnation demonstrated how quickly countries can diverge after political separation. Most importantly, the trip provided education in how ordinary people navigate complex political transitions while preserving cultural traditions and maintaining hope for better futures. Despite political challenges, people throughout the region displayed remarkable resilience, creativity, and hospitality toward visitors interested in understanding their experiences. The former Yugoslav region offers travelers unique opportunities to witness historical transitions in progress, experience diverse cultural traditions within compact geographical areas, and gain insights into how societies rebuild after conflict. For those interested in European history, political development, and cultural diversity, these countries provide educational and emotionally powerful travel experiences. **Most Impactful Experience**: Walking through Sarajevo's bullet-scarred streets while learning about the siege from local residents who lived through it **Greatest Contrast**: Slovenia's modern European prosperity compared to Bosnia's visible war damage and economic stagnation **Most Beautiful Setting**: Montenegro's Bay of Kotor with medieval towns nestled between dramatic mountains and pristine waters **Biggest Surprise**: Croatia's transformation from war zone to mass tourism destination in just two decades**Most Authentic Culture**: Bosnia's preserved traditional life, largely unaffected by tourism development or EU modernization pressures **Perfect For**: Travelers interested in recent European history, post-communist transitions, cultural diversity, and understanding how political choices affect national development. ### Owning Numerical Ignorance URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/owning-numerical-ignorance/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T19:58:45.000Z Earlier this year I discussed the value created by [writing by hand](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/). By writing on whiteboards or scribbling in a notebook, ownership, learning, and understanding is created. Similarly, truly understanding numbers creates ownership, learning, and understanding - thereby creating the potential for action. I'm not talking about statistics or the interpretation of statistics. We all know that different perspectives can be "created" from otherwise accurate data to tell any story. Just ask anyone in Washington - from any side. I am talking about numbers that don't accurately reflect underlying conditions, or numbers that don't relate to the reality of the process owners. As one example, here's a photo from my local gas pump here on the central coast of California, just today. As my brother in-law remarked while visiting from Michigan last week, "that's not per gallon, right?" Yep, per gallon, typical for all gas stations around here, and yes far more than most other parts of the country are paying. Most Californians are used to it, most U.S. visitors from outside of California just look wide-eyed, and most visitors from Europe still go "wow, that's cheap." But how many understand that while everyone pays 18.4 cents in federal gas taxes, each state is radically different in terms of state gas taxes... taking California's gas tax to over 60 cents a gallon, among the highest in the country? How many understand that California requires a special gas formulation in the summer, produced only at in-state refineries, reducing scale and increasing risk from at-capacity refinery downtime, contributing to nearly an extra dollar per gallon in cost? My point isn't whether this price is too high or not - perhaps our air is cleaner due to special gas and perhaps our roads are better due to higher taxes (my brother in-law actually thought so) - but having the basic information in order to analyze that value relationship. In order to create simplicity, a laudable goal, critical information and knowledge is lost. Another example: home water use is typically measured in "units." Here's one article from last Sunday's paper on water usage here in California, obviously a popular subject. What the heck is "25 units of water?" To make matters worse, a "unit" is different in different parts of the world. Here in the U.S. it's typically 100 cubic feet, or 748.5 gallons. Elsewhere it's a cubic meter, or 220 gallons. But who relates to a "unit?" Here in California, where we're being asked to reduce water usage by 25%, how do we relate to the numbers we see on our monthly bill? I'm being asked to reduce water use from 10 to 7.5 "units." Whatever. But ask me to reduce by 1871 gallons a month and I start to think about shorter showers, low flow toilets, changing from grass to a more natural drought-tolerant landscaping, and so forth. Especially if my cost for those 2.5 units is about to skyrocket. I understand it, I own it, and I can learn how to improve. One final example: individual income taxes. Romney stepped into it a bit during the last election cycle by stating that 47% of taxpayers pay no federal taxes. A little misleading as all except for 14% (primarily the elderly) do generally pay federal payroll taxes for Social Security and so forth - just no direct federal income taxes. Still, the point that nearly half of taxpayers don't contribute to a general expenditure bucket they have voting control over and receive benefits from is an interesting point outside the scope of this post. But how many of those 47%, and even the rest, really understand how much taxes are being paid and especially how they are being used? For the vast majority of people taxes are simply lines on their pay stub, generally ignored, and an annual reconciliation effort where they are often excited that they gave a loan to the government and now get it back, without interest. Probably even more so now that paper pay stubs are becoming a rarity, and people have to take action to log into a system to review an online pay stub. How many really do that? How many can tell you how much they pay every two weeks in federal, state, Social Security, disability, and other taxes? The net amount becomes the reference value. Just like the gross amount is the reference value for gas prices. Those of us who are self-employed or own companies are a little different since we have to actually cut a physical check to the Feds (and state) each quarter. Ouch! Now it becomes reality, and you start to be very interested in how much it is and how it is used. Although it would be a bureaucratic and compliance nightmare, perhaps everyone should have to physically write a check, withdrawing real money from your account, instead of simply accepting the net deposit? If you have to give up the equivalent of a vacation, a dinner, or even a beer to make that payment, it becomes real. Ownership, understanding, and learning is created. So be careful with simplifying numbers. While simplification is a great goal, too much simplification may remove knowledge and create dangerous ignorance. ### When You Think You're Bad URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/youre-good-when-you-think-youre-bad-2/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T00:23:53.000Z Well over a decade ago I created my first lean enterprise assessment, just as a tool to help me understand gaps in my organization. I'm generally loathe to use such tools as they are often misinterpreted, gamed, or whatnot - but so be it. It's a tool and just a tool. Coincidentally that first assessment tried to measure the use of lean tools, which led us down the toolhead path - and smack into a wall. We learned our lesson, and began asking "why" and then "how" before choosing the appropriate tool for the problem. Over time that assessment morphed into something that tries to measure behaviors and perspectives, not tools. It's fairly lengthy, but still very well-received. And scary, as it is virtually impossible to receive a high score unless you have implemented lean from your suppliers through to your customers, and truly created a culture of continuous improvement. There are forty questions in four sections: respect for people and community, creating customer value, leadership and alignment, and accountability and results. > *Note: If you'd like a free copy of the assessment, just sign up for a Gemba Academy 7 Day Trial. In addition to being able to preview all 750+ lean and six sigma training videos, you'll receive a link to download a PDF of the assessment.* > *Gemba Academy subscribers receive access to an editable version, deployment and analysis tools, and the accompanying Lean Enterprise Strategy Kit.* But my point isn't to pander those tools. Along the way, both in my organizations and in the hundreds of others that have used the assessment, I noticed a common trend: - First assessment: high score - Second assessment (generally 1 to 2 years later): much lower score - Third assessment: static to even lower score Most people wouldn't consider that to be progress. How can you get worse? But think about what's happening. And that's fundamentally why the assessment is just a tool - it helps you prioritize areas to work on. Nothing more. Before starting down the lean journey, most organizations think they're pretty good. Inventory? Helps buffer issues obviously caused by suppliers and anyone except ourselves. Obviously. Waste? Comes with the territory because our products and processes are more complex, different, inherently unstable, "artsy," etc. (pick one). People? Can't be trusted. So they look at the assessment, especially the first one that didn't try to point out such fallacious fantasies (!), and skew it higher. In their own minds. Or consider it an impossible utopia. Then, if they have a solid lean leader, they start to learn. They visit other real lean organizations, attend seminars, workshops, conferences, and perhaps even training programs by the likes of [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). And they start to realize how far down the totem pole they are. That's fine, as long as they start to improve. As they learn, they discover even more areas for improvement. As they drain the inventory swamp they uncover more problems. As they train their people - and learn to respect their brains - more opportunities arise. And they feel even worse. They try a lot of tools. Perhaps judiciously, but probably without a lot of forethought. Many of those tools fail - but they were tried. And over time as appropriate problems and opportunities present themselves, they remember and apply them again with success. Nearly a decade later the organization sometimes feels horrible - almost like a failure. There are so many issues, so many problems, so many opportunities. So many tools have been tried and abandoned. But let me tell you about one such organization - and I know because it was the one I ran for over eight years, and I'm damn proud of those people. That organization trains on lean, has a solid 5S program, uses manual and visual systems to manage production across three facilities instead of shop floor MRP, has reduced lead times by 90%, has morning standup meetings in all key departments, is rated best-in-class for quality by its major customers, and outcompetes its "low cost country" competitors - on price and quality - from the not-so-cheap state of California. TWI is used extensively, autonomous teams have been deployed, and ridiculous budgeting processes have been eliminated. It hosts tours and workshops by AME, local and state business groups, and in all cases there's a big "wow!" It was even successful enough that it built a new 120,000 sq ft facility - in California in the middle of a recession no less - that leverages massive reconfigurability concepts. But in their minds, they have so, so far to go. The journey seems to get longer and longer. They don't want to apply for prizes or awards - there just isn't the time because there are so many issues to work on. Certifications? A rainbow of belts? Nowhere. The more you learn and the more you improve, the more you understand how far away perfection really is. The depression of excellence? Until you remember those days long ago, when you smugly thought you were great. ### The Value of Uber and Airbnb URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-uber-and-airbnb/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:00:36.000Z The following is not an advertisement, even if it sounds like it. I will admit I am a big fan of Uber and use the service pretty much anytime I travel. Now that they're in my relatively small town, I might start using the service instead of paying for airport parking, especially on longer trips. After dozens of rides I have yet to have a negative experience. The cars are new and clean, the drivers well-dressed and polite, and the cars arrive on time and within minutes of being requested. In Seattle a few weeks ago the car was a new Tesla, a few weeks earlier in Jacksonville it was a BMW 7 series. The convenience of having the financial transaction handled by the app eliminates the need for cash and negotiation. Sound like any taxi ride you've had? Ever? Nope. Welcome to disruption. ### This misnomer of "sharing." Services like Uber, Airbnb, and others are often called the "sharing economy." That's an incorrect characterization. No one is sharing - both parties are out to obtain value. Micro-scale demand is being matched with micro capacity. Such demand and capacity has always existed, however it took real-time computational power to match them in a dynamic fashion that creates value for both parties. Instead of a batch of taxis prowling the streets in search of fares, a single limo driver with an hour to kill between assignments can now fill that gap - that capacity. Hence why you often get nice rides like Teslas and BMWs with drivers in suits. At peak times fares go up, incenting an increase in capacity to match the increase in demand... instead of making the demand wait for hours in the rain. ### The value to our environment. The impact of this micro-scale demand and capacity matching is huge - and one that should be embraced by capitalists, socialists, and environmentalists alike. Uber, as of six months ago, is providing one million rides per day (yes, per day). Airbnb has over one million rooms in its portfolio, and is doing 37 million room-nights per year of bookings. More that some of the world's largest hotel chains. And that's last year's data. How many fewer cars, guzzling gas and expelling fumes, are on the streets because of the short-term capacity of unused limos and even private vehicles being freed up? One million rides a day equates to a lot of cars. How many fewer hotels, consuming utilities whether empty or full and contributing to urban heat islands, have been built because of the micro capacity of unused private rooms being freed up? 37 million room-nights is a lot of hotels. ### The value is growing, but isn't all roses. New such services are being created every day. You've seen all of those cranes and other pieces of construction equipment that sit idle for days at a time? No longer, thanks to Yard Club. Tutors, house cleaners, private aircraft. You name it. Have a short term availability? Match it to someone that needs it now. Sometimes it can go even deeper, such as with same-day delivery services partnering with the likes of Uber and Lyft to further improve their efficiency and reach. Sure there are issues, although many of those are more political than real. Uber's background checks are more extensive than taxi drivers... except in some key states and countries like California and South Korea. Airbnb does pose an issue for cities resting comfortably - until now - on hotel room tax receipts. Those problems will eventually be resolved, just like they have been in the past when innovation disrupts the status quo. Sometimes it won't be pretty, at least for a while. ### The potential value to you and your organization. But let's take the concept of matching micro capacity and micro demand to an even more immediate, direct level. Where do you have a few minutes of potential capacity in your day that can be filled by creating value - recognizing that value is sometimes the mindful pleasure of just sitting on a beach or enjoying a long lunch? Where can what seems to be larger chunks of demand by a group in your organization be divided and filled by smaller chunks of capacity? How do most meetings, CYA policies, ego, and lack of training or even trust affect your ability to match internal organizational demand with capacity? Does your organization look like a batch of beat up taxis driving around in search of demand, or smartly-dressed drivers in BMWs efficiently filling a few minutes of available time with a person willing to pay above par for that value? ### Slow... or Just Observant? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/slow-or-just-observant/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:01:15.000Z By Kevin Meyer The recent earthquake in Nepal has led me to reflect a bit on the importance of observation. Just over a year ago my wife and I were in Nepal, visiting various locations in the Kathmandu valley as well as Pokhara and Begnas Lake. It's a beautiful country with a beautiful people that work hard every day to scratch out a living. We got to see many of the numerous UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country, including Durbar Square in Kathmandu. I'm glad we did - here's the photo we took, and what it looks like now after the earthquake. A heartbreaking loss of culture, architecture, and history. We went, we observed, we [learned the other stories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/find-the-other-stories/), and, as often happens on our travels to what are now over 60 countries, we were humbled. I have a long list of places I still want to see, and the earthquake in Nepal has added a sense of urgency lest something similarly unfortunate happens. One of our other favorite places, Puerto Varas in southern Chile and across the Lakes Passage to Bariloche in Argentina, is currently dealing with the Calbuco volcano. But urgency can be dangerous, especially to observation. When I was first starting my career someone told me to "walk with purpose" - strong and quick. It projected authority and created confidence. Who knows, perhaps it did help. I rushed here and there, and climbed the ladder. The years flew by, never to be experienced again. Then one day I learned about the [Ohno Circle](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mindful-ohno/) and I paused. I stood, watched, and learned. I realized how much I was missing by moving quickly. I began to move slower, taking care to observe. I also began to plan observation. What was I going to observe? How? What is the problem or purpose? What would I do with what I learned? Outside of work I soon developed a habit that has become my favorite daily activity: a nice slow kinhin - walking meditation - on the beach a couple blocks from my house. One step per breath, slow and deliberate. It's amazing what you notice - both about your surroundings and about yourself. According to my wife I also began to drive slower or, in her words, became a "grandpa driver." Is there truly a rush? Usually not. We're just socially predispositioned to want to go fast, to compete, regardless of necessity. What are you missing? You may not know. So think about that slow driver ahead of you, causing you to speed and swerve and bolt ahead to probably just meet again at the next stop light. Is he old and senile, or happy and aware... and observing? Ok, from the swerving he might be old and senile. Maybe. Or maybe it's me. Slow down and observe, otherwise you might think you've arrived but not know where you've been. ### Find the Other Stories URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/find-the-other-stories/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:01:49.000Z By Kevin Meyer I recently came across the following TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie where she talks about the "danger of a single story." From growing up as a kid in Nigeria to studying in the United States and into adulthood, she describes how both herself and others, having only heard a single story about a certain situation, critically misunderstand the person or circumstance. We all experience the power of the single story, often without realizing the danger. How many of us get our news of the world, and thereby form opinions, from just a single news source? Or even worse, from news sources that we believe already reflect our opinions, thereby denying us the need to have to think about other perspectives, resulting in an increasingly polarizing form of confirmation bias? How many of us as leaders simply listen to the single story told to us by our staffs, or perhaps even just a computer system - both of which may be predispositioned or programmed to conform to our existing perspective? The single story may be an incomplete picture of the situation - or even dead wrong. This is the power of genchi genbutsu - go and see. Go to the real place to truly understand. My wife and I both lived overseas as kids, and experienced the danger of the single story when interacting with friends and family back home. Perspectives and opinions were sometimes just plain wrong. This is why we love to travel and have visited over 60 countries. With each new place we try to learn about and understand the overlapping tapestry of stories to get a true sense of the people and place, which is almost always very different from what we expected from the single story we'd read or heard about before visiting. In Laos, one of the few remaining hardcore communist countries, we learned about the vibrant undercurrent of capitalism that has put a TV in the middle of many Hmong grass huts - often showing western shows such as \[shudder\] The Real Housewives of Orange County. In Tanzania we ventured outside the game parks that most tourists stick to to see how a group of dedicated people are fighting an incredible infant mortality problem - which was documented in a Gemba Academy video series. In Panama last Christmas we left the relaxing beaches and spent a day at a women's shelter in the very dangerous city of Colon. We've been to the slums of India, animal rescue organizations in Nepal, broke bread with villagers in a small hill town in Italy, witnessed the social impact of an entire generation of men murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and walked through the vibrant township of Soweto outside the nearly abandoned and squatter-filled inner city of Johannesburg in South Africa. Every place has many stories. That tapestry of multiple stories is the real picture. Not the single story that you read about in the paper or hear about on CNN, let alone entertainment channels like Fox or The Daily Show. As leaders we must do the same. We can't rely on a memo from our staff or a report from an MRP system. Those are single stories, and will invariably be an incomplete picture - or just wrong. Just as a single story can give us a potentially dangerous misunderstanding about geopolitical events, so can it about situations within our organizations. Go and see. Observe, ask questions, challenge, and reflect. Learn the many stories to understand the true situation. ### Ecuador Revisited: Exploring Quito and Colonial Cuenca URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ecuador-revisited-exploring-quito-and-colonial-cuenca/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T16:45:03.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/quito-pichincha.jpg) Our March 2015 return to Ecuador focused on the country's cultural and architectural treasures, combining urban exploration in Quito with a memorable road trip to the colonial jewel of Cuenca. This week-long journey demonstrated why Ecuador continues to attract us - the combination of UNESCO World Heritage cities, dramatic Andean landscapes, indigenous culture, and the unique experience of standing on the equator creates travel experiences impossible to replicate elsewhere. ## General Comments **Return Visit Benefits**: Having visited Ecuador previously allowed us to focus on cultural depth rather than tourist highlights. We could spend quality time in Quito's historic center and undertake the challenging but rewarding road trip to Cuenca, experiencing Ecuador's diversity beyond typical tourist circuits. **High Altitude Acclimatization**: Ecuador's capital sits at 9,350 feet elevation, requiring adjustment strategies we'd learned from previous experience. The thinner air affects everything from physical activity to sleep patterns, but the spectacular mountain settings justify the adaptation period. **Colonial Architecture Excellence**: Both Quito and Cuenca showcase Spanish colonial architecture at its finest. These UNESCO World Heritage cities preserve 16th-18th century urban planning and building techniques while functioning as modern South American capitals. **Indigenous Culture Integration**: Ecuador's large indigenous population creates cultural experiences rare in South America. Traditional markets, artisan crafts, and cultural practices remain vibrant parts of contemporary Ecuadorian life rather than tourist performances. **Equatorial Geography**: Being able to stand on the equator while surrounded by snow-capped peaks creates unique geographical experiences. The combination of tropical latitude with high altitude elevation produces climates and ecosystems found nowhere else on Earth. **Transportation Infrastructure**: Ecuador's mountain highways, while challenging, connect diverse climate zones and cultural regions within short distances. The road trip to Cuenca revealed how dramatically landscapes and cultures can change within a single day's drive. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Quito Arrival and Acclimatization **Hotel**: JW Marriott Quito - This modern luxury hotel provided perfect headquarters for exploring Ecuador's capital. The comfortable accommodations and excellent service created ideal bases for cultural exploration while offering respite from high-altitude challenges. **Altitude Adjustment**: The first days required careful pacing and hydration while our bodies adapted to Quito's elevation. This adjustment period allowed gradual exploration of the city while building stamina for more challenging adventures. **Modern Quito Exploration**: The contemporary areas of Quito revealed Ecuador's modern development alongside traditional culture. Shopping districts, restaurants, and cultural institutions demonstrated how the capital balances preservation with contemporary needs. ### Days 3-4: Historic Quito Immersion **Old Town UNESCO Site**: Quito's historic center contains the largest, least-altered, and best-preserved historic center in the Americas. Walking these colonial streets revealed 500 years of architectural evolution, from Spanish conquest through contemporary restoration. **Churches and Monasteries**: The Compañía de Jesús church, with its intricate gold-leaf interior, and San Francisco monastery, one of the oldest religious complexes in South America, demonstrated the wealth and artistic achievement of colonial Ecuador. These religious buildings showcase how Spanish colonial art fused European techniques with indigenous materials and motifs. **Plaza Grande**: Ecuador's main square, surrounded by the Presidential Palace, Cathedral, and Archbishop's Palace, provided insights into colonial power structures while serving as a gathering place for contemporary Quiteños. The plaza's daily life revealed how historic spaces adapt to modern urban needs. **Equatorial Experiences**: Visiting the Mitad del Mundo monument and equatorial line provided unique geographical experiences. Standing with one foot in each hemisphere while surrounded by Andean peaks creates perspective on Ecuador's unique position on Earth. The tourist demonstrations of water supposedly swirling different directions on either side of the equator make for entertaining theater, though the Coriolis effect doesn't actually work at such small scales - but the vendors' enthusiasm and tourists' delight make it a charming cultural experience regardless of scientific validity. **Indigenous Markets**: Quito's traditional markets offered authentic cultural encounters with Ecuador's indigenous communities. Vendors selling traditional textiles, foods, and crafts provided insights into cultural continuity and contemporary indigenous life. ### Day 5: Road Trip to Cuenca The drive from Quito to Cuenca ranked among our most spectacular and challenging road trips, revealing Ecuador's incredible geographical diversity. **Andean Highway**: The route south through the Andes transported us through multiple climate zones and ecosystems. From Quito's high valley through páramo grasslands to cloud forests and back to high mountain valleys, the journey showcased Ecuador's compressed geographical diversity. **Mountain Landscapes**: Snow-capped volcanic peaks, deep valleys, indigenous villages, and dramatic mountain passes created constantly changing scenery. The road's engineering challenges - switchbacks, elevation changes, and weather variations - demonstrated the difficulties of mountain travel while rewarding us with spectacular views. **Cultural Transitions**: The drive revealed changing indigenous cultures, architectural styles, and agricultural practices across different regions of Ecuador. Each valley and mountain pass brought different indigenous communities with distinct traditional dress, markets, and cultural practices. ### Days 6-7: Cuenca - Colonial Perfection **UNESCO World Heritage Cuenca**: This remarkably preserved colonial city demonstrated Spanish urban planning at its most sophisticated. Built in the 16th century on an Inca settlement, Cuenca integrated European architectural concepts with Andean geographical realities. **Colonial Architecture**: Cuenca's churches, monasteries, and residential buildings showcased colonial architecture in pristine condition. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, with its distinctive blue domes, and numerous colonial mansions revealed the wealth and artistic sophistication of colonial Ecuador. **Rio Tomebamba**: The river running through Cuenca's center created beautiful urban landscapes while providing insights into how colonial cities adapted European urban concepts to Andean geography. The riverside walks and bridges offered perfect perspectives on the city's architectural harmony. **Artisan Traditions**: Cuenca remains famous for traditional crafts, particularly Panama hat production and indigenous textiles. Visiting workshops and markets revealed how traditional skills survive and adapt within contemporary economic realities. **Indigenous Culture**: The surrounding region's indigenous communities maintain traditional practices, languages, and cultural identities. Market days brought indigenous families to the city, creating cultural encounters impossible in more touristed destinations. **Mountain Setting**: Cuenca's position in a high Andean valley, surrounded by mountains and agricultural terraces, created dramatic urban landscapes. The combination of colonial architecture with Andean geography produced some of Ecuador's most photogenic cityscapes. ## Cultural and Geographical Insights **Altitude Adaptation**: Living at high altitude for a week provided insights into how geography shapes culture, architecture, and daily life. Indigenous populations' adaptation to thin air, intense UV radiation, and temperature variations created unique cultural practices. **Colonial Heritage Preservation**: Both Quito and Cuenca demonstrated how South American cities can preserve colonial heritage while accommodating modern urban needs. These preservation efforts support tourism while maintaining cultural continuity for local populations. **Indigenous Cultural Continuity**: Unlike many South American countries where indigenous culture exists primarily in rural areas, Ecuador's indigenous communities maintain strong presence in urban areas and national life. This integration creates cultural richness rarely encountered elsewhere. **Geographical Diversity**: Ecuador's position on the equator combined with dramatic elevation changes creates incredible biodiversity and climate variety within compact geographical areas. This diversity supports different indigenous cultures and economic activities within short distances. ## Mountain Road Trip Challenges and Rewards **Driving Conditions**: Mountain highways required careful attention to altitude changes, weather variations, and road conditions. The rewards - spectacular scenery, cultural encounters, and geographical education - justified the challenging driving conditions. **Weather Variations**: Traveling from Quito to Cuenca meant experiencing multiple climate zones in a single day. Preparation for rain, sun, cold, and heat within hours of each other required careful packing and flexibility. **Cultural Encounters**: Stopping in small mountain towns and indigenous markets provided authentic cultural experiences impossible to achieve from tour buses or organized excursions. ## What We'd Do Differently **Extended Cuenca Time**: The colonial city and surrounding region deserved additional exploration. The combination of architecture, culture, and mountain landscapes could easily justify a longer stay. **Otavalo Market Visit**: Ecuador's most famous indigenous market, north of Quito, would have provided additional cultural experiences and artisan encounters. **Galápagos Islands**: While not part of this trip, the famous islands remain Ecuador's most internationally recognized attraction and would complement mainland cultural exploration. ## Final Thoughts This return visit to Ecuador confirmed the country's position as one of South America's most culturally rich and geographically diverse destinations. The combination of preserved colonial cities, vibrant indigenous culture, and dramatic Andean landscapes creates travel experiences impossible to replicate elsewhere. The road trip from Quito to Cuenca provided insights into how geography shapes culture and how traditional societies adapt to challenging mountain environments. These experiences, combined with architectural treasures and cultural authenticity, demonstrated why Ecuador deserves multiple visits for comprehensive exploration. Most importantly, Ecuador's indigenous communities' continued cultural vitality and integration into national life provides hope for cultural preservation within modern development. The country offers travelers opportunities to experience authentic traditional cultures while contributing to communities that maintain Ecuador's cultural heritage. **Most Spectacular Drive**: The Quito to Cuenca road trip through multiple climate zones and indigenous communities**Best Cultural Experience**: Exploring Cuenca's traditional markets and artisan workshops **Greatest Architectural Wonder**: Quito's Compañía de Jesús church with its gold-leaf baroque interior **Most Unique Experience**: Standing on the equator while surrounded by snow-capped Andean peaks **Perfect For**: Travelers interested in colonial architecture, indigenous culture, mountain landscapes, and authentic South American cultural experiences **Return Visit Value**: Previous Ecuador experience allowed deeper cultural exploration and challenging independent travel like the Cuenca road trip. ### The Engaging Value of Risk URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-engaging-value-of-risk/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:02:53.000Z By Kevin Meyer Humans tend to abhor chaos, and love to invoke rules to supposedly create order. We like rules because they make us feel protected, aligned, and perhaps operating on a fair playing field. At the same time we dislike rules because they can protect us to the point of being smothering, align us to the point of being constraining, and fair to the point of being unfair. Regardless of perspective, there are an increasing number of them - thousands per year. Most folks don't blink an eye. What are we doing to ourselves as a society? As organizations? Or individually as humans and leaders? Stay tuned... Years ago I visited Italy and was surprised at the traffic. There are very few traffic signals in Italy. The town of Naples, with a million people, has about three. Signage is basically ignored. Miniature cars, and the rare larger sedan or SUV, rush all over the place intermingling with Vespas, buses and trucks. Sorrento, Rome, Florence... all roughly the same. This seems like pure mayhem and insanity to visitors from the U.S. with our highly disciplined traffic control... until you start to realize something: Traffic flows continuously, everywhere. It may appear slower, but without the batch stop-go-stop of mindless obedience to signaled intersections, often waiting for no cross traffic, there is actually more flow. Batch vs. continuous flow? Ahh... but it can't be as safe, right? Wrong. Statistics show that Italy has a motor vehicle accident rate that is 30% better than the United States. There's actually some science behind the chaos - and some towns that are exploiting the science - as this Salon article description. > "One of the characteristics of a shared environment is that it appears chaotic, it appears very complex, and it demands a strong level of having your wits about you," says U.K. traffic and urban design consultant Ben Hamilton-Baillie, speaking from his home in Bristol. "The history of traffic engineering is the effort to rationalize what appeared to be chaos," he says. "Today, we have a better understanding that chaos can be productive." And another from Der Spiegel with a story on how seven European cities are participating in an experiment to remove all traffic signs. Not just signs, but parking meters, lights, sidewalks, and even the painted lines on streets. > The new traffic model's advocates believe the only way out of this vicious circle is to give drivers more liberty and encourage them to take responsibility for themselves. Chaos can be productive, liberty creates responsibility. Last year I [wrote](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-of-high-performance-decisions/) about how some enlightened companies are applying this concept to their own internal rules. > In the world of Netflix, flexibility is more important long term than efficiency. To inhibit the chaos that too much flexibility in a large organization can create, hire (and keep) only high performance people. High performance people make great decisions, which are better than rote rules. [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) has adopted a similar Culture Code, where we have a simple General Policy: use good judgment. Our friend Brad Power posted a piece in Harvard Business Review titled Drive Performance by Focusing on Routine Decisions that hits at a similar concept. Instead of creating rule-bound defined processes, improve the quality of the decision points. He illustrates the idea with an example those of us in the manufacturing world have all experienced: the potential maelstrom of materials control. > These two stories highlight the advantages of focusing process improvement on “diamonds and arrows” — i.e., making better decisions. Project leaders who focus exclusively on the “boxes and arrows” of workflow action improvement will often find themselves caught up fixing yesterday’s operations and systems issues. Now we may have more psychobiological understanding on why this is the case. And it comes from some interesting experiments with school playgrounds in New Zealand. > Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don't cause bedlam, the principal says. The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing. > > "When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an adult's perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they don't." > > Swanson School signed up to the study by AUT and Otago University just over two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play. However, the school took the experiment a step further by abandoning the rules completely, much to the horror of some teachers at the time, he said. I bet there was some horror, but what are the results? > Mudslides, skateboarding, bullrush and tree climbing kept the children so occupied the school no longer needed a timeout area or as many teachers on patrol. Instead of a playground, children used their imagination to play in a "loose parts pit" which contained junk such as wood, tyres and an old fire hose. > > "The kids were motivated, busy and engaged. It was expected the children would be more active, but researchers were amazed by all the behavioural pay-offs. > > Schofield urged other schools to embrace risk-taking. "It's a no brainer. As far as implementation, it's a zero-cost game in most cases. All you are doing is abandoning rules," he said. "All you are doing is abandoning rules." If only it was that easy. > Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks, meaning they work out consequences. "You can't teach them that. They have to learn risk on their own terms. It doesn't develop by watching TV, they have to get out there." Risk creates engagement, and engagement creates understanding - be it of the environment, consequences of actions, or simply new concepts. Understanding creates high performance decisionmaking. Whether it's in the chaos of traffic, the corporate offices of Netflix, or on the playground. So what about all those rules? In the quest for structure, equality, and serenity, what are we doing to ourselves? And the next generation? Instead, how can we leverage chaos and risk to improve engagement? ### The Mindful Ohno URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mindful-ohno/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:04:07.000Z Mindfulness has become all the rage in personal and professional leadership these days, which is good and bad. Understood and done right, it is a very powerful concept. But as with most concepts it is also often misunderstood, therefore sometimes maligned, and even misapplied. Somewhat similar to lean, which is also a powerful concept, with supporting tools that must be appropriately leveraged in conjunction with a system that includes people with brains (really!), otherwise it often fails. And is therefore sometimes maligned. Mindfulness is simply becoming aware. Taking the time to slow down, look around, analyze context, and based on that new awareness, improve. It isn't just calming the mind, although that can be a key component, it isn't prayer, it isn't contemplation, it isn't dreaming or getting lost in thought. It is not dwelling on the past, not planning on the future, but being purposely present right here, right now, with what is truly important. I first discovered the concept many years ago during a time of intense personal and professional stress. I developed a habit of escaping to Hawaii on literally a couple hours' notice, embracing quietude and solitude to let my racing thoughts settle so the important ones could be analyzed. I was amazed at how some of my perspectives and opinions changed, how unexpectedly wrong they had been before, and how that newfound knowledge freed me to become calm and engaged. Mindful meditation is one of many forms of meditation where you focus on becoming aware of your thoughts, usually by working to slow the torrent so that individual thoughts can be noticed, analyzed, and considered. Those new to the process are usually shocked at just how many thoughts are flowing through their heads, the distortions created both by perhaps skewed perspectives and the interaction with other thoughts, and therefore just how difficult this form of meditation is. As with lean, the process is especially powerful when, after considerable practice, the new knowledge and awareness is coupled with a framework to create and support change. The physiological changes in the brain created by meditation are rather astounding. Mindful leadership starts to focus a bit more externally, but still with an awareness of the impact and influence of individual action in the present. What is the present situation, what am I listening to, are my perspectives correct, what is the problem, what should I be working on, why is my opinion what it is? Right here, right now. One area where I try to leverage this is with email. Colleagues know that I used to be (and when I fail, still am) a master of the long-winded flaming email. Nowadays when someone pushes one of my buttons I try hard to take a step back. Why is the topic a hot button for me? Why do I have such a strong opinion? Is my opinion correct, or is my perspective skewed? Do I have all the data? Is it really an important enough topic to take a strong stand? And finally, if it still is important, is there a better way to convey my opinion? I think I've improved, but admittedly I still struggle. Taiichi Ohno is famous for sending students to the shop floor with instructions to just stand and observe - for at least a half hour. Coincidentally that's about how long it takes for the mind to calm after some experience with meditation. Just observing is difficult. We want to jump to analysis and improvement. But as Ohno was trying to point out, first you must simply observe, become aware of the process, become aware of what is going on that you probably didn't notice when rushing to and fro on factory floor. Only then can you truly see the process in the present moment, understand what's important right now and how perspectives can be biased, and begin to formulate plans for improvement. It starts with simple observation. Whether it's the thoughts in your mind, your actions as a leader, or the process you're involved with. Perhaps even a restaurant you're dining at, as [I witnessed in Bangkok](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-observing/) a couple years ago. Take the time to simply observe. You may be surprised at what you discover. ### Panama Christmas: Engineering Marvels and Holiday Giving URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/panama-christmas-engineering-marvels-and-holiday-giving/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T17:01:18.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_7865.JPG) Our December 2014 Christmas holiday in Panama combined exploration of one of the world's greatest engineering achievements with meaningful community service. This week-long journey through Panama City and the famous canal, culminating in delivering Christmas gifts to children at a local orphanage, created a holiday experience that balanced tourism with genuine cultural connection and charitable impact. ## General Comments **Christmas in Central America**: Spending the holidays in Panama provided escape from winter weather while experiencing Latin American Christmas traditions. The warm tropical climate, festive decorations, and local holiday celebrations created a completely different but equally meaningful Christmas atmosphere. **Engineering Wonder**: The Panama Canal ranks among humanity's greatest construction achievements, and witnessing its operation firsthand provided education in engineering, history, and global commerce impossible to gain from books or documentaries. **Charitable Holiday Focus**: Organizing Christmas gift donations to a local children's orphanage transformed our vacation from pure tourism into meaningful cultural exchange and community service. This experience provided perspective on privilege while creating genuine connections with Panamanian families. **Central American Base**: Panama's position connecting North and South America, combined with its canal-driven prosperity and political stability, made it an ideal introduction to Central American culture and geography. **Urban Development Contrast**: Panama City's modern skyline and developed infrastructure contrasted with rural areas, demonstrating how the canal's economic benefits concentrated in specific regions while other areas maintained traditional Central American characteristics. **Historical Significance**: Understanding Panama's complex relationship with the United States - from canal construction through invasion and return of sovereignty - provided essential context for appreciating contemporary Panamanian identity and development. ## Itinerary and Experiences ### Accommodation and Base **Hotel**: Intercontinental Playa Bonita - This beachfront resort provided luxury accommodations outside Panama City while offering easy access to urban attractions. The Pacific Ocean setting and tropical gardens created perfect relaxation between cultural explorations and community service activities. ### Panama Canal Exploration **Miraflores Locks**: Witnessing massive cargo ships navigate the canal's lock system demonstrated the engineering precision required to move vessels between ocean levels. The visitor center provided comprehensive education about construction challenges, operational complexities, and global economic importance. **Canal Transit Experience**: Taking a partial canal transit revealed the engineering marvel from water level. Experiencing the locks from inside while learning about daily operations provided perspectives impossible to gain from observation decks alone. **Historical Context**: Learning about the French failure under Ferdinand de Lesseps, American success under Theodore Roosevelt, and the human costs of construction - including thousands of deaths from disease and accidents - provided sobering context for this engineering triumph. **Economic Impact**: Understanding how canal revenues fund Panama's development while observing the contrast between canal-zone prosperity and rural poverty revealed the complex economics of major infrastructure projects. ### Panama City Cultural Immersion **Casco Viejo**: This UNESCO World Heritage colonial quarter showcased Spanish colonial architecture beautifully restored for contemporary use. The narrow streets, baroque churches, and colonial mansions revealed Panama's historical importance as a Spanish trade route connecting the Pacific and Caribbean. **Modern Skyline**: Panama City's dramatic contemporary architecture, rivaling Miami or Singapore, demonstrated how canal revenues funded urban development. The contrast between colonial quarter and modern skyscrapers illustrated Panama's economic transformation. **Local Markets**: Traditional markets revealed authentic Panamanian culture through food, crafts, and social interactions. These experiences provided cultural encounters beyond tourist attractions while supporting local vendors and artisans. **Cultural Fusion**: Panama's position as a crossroads created unique cultural blend combining indigenous, Spanish colonial, African, and North American influences. This cultural diversity appeared in food, music, and architectural styles throughout the city. ### Christmas Charitable Mission **Orphanage Visit**: Our planned visit to deliver Christmas gifts to children at a local orphanage provided the trip's most meaningful experience. Organizing appropriate gifts, coordinating with facility staff, and preparing for cultural differences required careful planning but created genuine community connections. **Gift Selection and Preparation**: Choosing culturally appropriate toys, school supplies, and clothing for children of various ages required research and local guidance. This preparation process enhanced our understanding of local needs and economic conditions. **Cultural Exchange**: Interacting with children and facility staff provided authentic cultural encounters while contributing to community welfare. These personal connections transformed our holiday from consumer tourism into meaningful cultural exchange. **Perspective on Privilege**: Witnessing children's gratitude for simple gifts provided perspective on material privilege while demonstrating how small contributions can create significant impact in communities with limited resources. **Local Staff Insights**: Conversations with orphanage workers provided insights into Panamanian social services, economic challenges, and community support systems impossible to gain through typical tourist experiences. **Holiday Meaning**: Celebrating Christmas through giving rather than receiving created more meaningful holiday experiences while connecting us to local communities in authentic ways. ### Additional Cultural Exploration **Indigenous Heritage**: Learning about Panama's indigenous communities - including Guna, Emberá, and other groups - provided context for understanding pre-Columbian culture and contemporary indigenous rights issues. **Biodiversity Encounters**: Panama's position as a biological bridge between continents created incredible wildlife diversity. Even brief nature experiences revealed tropical birds, plants, and ecosystems representing both North and South American species. **Culinary Discoveries**: Panamanian cuisine, influenced by Caribbean, Latin American, and international traditions, provided excellent dining experiences. Fresh seafood, tropical fruits, and traditional preparations created memorable meals throughout our stay. ## Historical and Contemporary Insights **Canal Construction Legacy**: Understanding the human costs of canal construction - disease, dangerous working conditions, and environmental challenges - provided sobering context for appreciating this engineering achievement while honoring those who died building it. **US-Panama Relations**: Learning about American involvement in Panamanian independence, canal construction, military presence, and eventual canal transfer provided education in complex international relationships and their long-term consequences. **Economic Development**: Observing how canal revenues funded urban development while rural areas remained economically challenged demonstrated both the benefits and limitations of major infrastructure projects for national development. **Contemporary Challenges**: Despite canal prosperity, Panama faces ongoing challenges including income inequality, environmental protection, and maintaining cultural identity amid rapid development and international influence. ## Community Service Lessons **Cultural Sensitivity**: Organizing charitable activities in foreign countries requires cultural understanding, local partnerships, and respect for community dignity rather than imposing external solutions. **Sustainable Impact**: One-time gift giving, while meaningful, highlighted the importance of supporting ongoing local organizations and understanding long-term community needs rather than brief charitable gestures. **Personal Growth**: Combining tourism with community service created more meaningful travel experiences while providing perspective on global inequality and the responsibilities that come with travel privileges. ## Final Thoughts Our Panama Christmas demonstrated how holiday travel can combine exploration with meaningful community service. The Panama Canal's engineering marvel provided educational experiences about human achievement, while our orphanage visit created personal connections and perspective on global economic differences. Panama's unique position as a crossroads between continents, cultures, and economic systems created travel experiences impossible elsewhere in Central America. The combination of historical significance, contemporary development, and community service opportunities made this holiday both educational and personally transformative. Most importantly, spending Christmas focused on giving rather than receiving created more meaningful holiday memories while contributing to a local community. This experience demonstrated how travel can serve purposes beyond personal enjoyment by creating connections across cultural and economic differences. The contrast between canal engineering marvel and children's simple gratitude for Christmas gifts provided perspective on human achievement and basic human needs. Panama offered lessons in both technological accomplishment and community compassion that enriched our understanding of progress and privilege. **Most Educational Experience**: Witnessing massive cargo ships navigate Panama Canal locks while learning about construction history and global commerce impact **Most Meaningful Moment**: Delivering Christmas gifts to children at the local orphanage and witnessing their joy and gratitude **Greatest Historical Insight**: Understanding the human costs and international complexities behind the Panama Canal's construction and operation **Best Cultural Discovery**: Exploring Casco Viejo's colonial architecture and experiencing how historical preservation can support contemporary urban development **Perfect For**: Travelers interested in engineering marvels, Latin American history, community service opportunities, and meaningful holiday experiences that combine education with charitable impact. ### Reflecting on the Intentional Routine URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflecting-on-the-intentional-routine/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:05:05.000Z My post a couple weeks ago on [Gratitude, for Gratitude](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gratitude-for-gratitude/), generated a large number of responses. Interestingly, most were private, commenting on both the nature of gratitude but especially on my daily routine. I had detailed my regular set of activities in the morning, including meditation and the setting of three key priorities, and in the evening of reflecting on my performance with those priorities. Many folks mentioned that they had morning and perhaps evening routines, but said they had not thought about reflection - let alone intentional reflection. My contemplation of those comments was brought into focus a bit when I came across a passage in the book Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield. It's a fascinating, funny, and, since it's Vonnegut, sometimes freaky book that takes you inside the mind of the famous author. The passage of import is a letter he wrote to his wife Jane where he describes his daily routine. > In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach of prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. Of course most people have routines, and many people like learning about the routines of famous or successful people. One common characteristic that most people know of is that they are almost invariably early risers - Winston Churchill being the exception as someone who loved to stay in bed until 11am. I tend to agree - my favorite, and most productive, time of the day is between 4 and 8 am. Benjamin Franklin is famous for his routine, which he meticulously tracked on a daily log. Yes, that does look remarkably similar to a leader standard work sheet, doesn't it? Notice the two tasks on the left. *The morning question, What good shall I do today?* *The evening question, What good have I done today?* In other words, setting tasks for the day in the morning, and reflecting on them in the evening. When you search for the routines of successful (however defined) people, that evening reflection is also a common attribute. Reflection, along with gratitude as I previously discussed, is a key attribute of leadership success. Many, if not most, people have daily routines. It is the reflection at the end of the day that makes it an intentional routine. That intentionality is also a core component of mindfulness. An awareness of the routine itself, instead of being simply a habitual series of activities. Reflection looks back at the process and results and, most importantly, provides the introspection and analysis to improve the routine and performance generated by the routine. How did the routine affect performance against the key tasks for the day? How effective is that task selection itself? How can the routine be improved to better support task completion? Reflection, hansei in the lean world, is a powerful professional leadership tool. It's how we look back on projects and performance, and identify ways to improve. But it is also a powerful, and critical, personal leadership characteristic to improve daily performance. Reflection converts simple habits into an intentional, high performing, routine. It's worth a few minutes each evening. ### Gratitude, for Gratitude URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gratitude-for-gratitude/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:05:48.000Z This Thanksgiving I am thankful for learning the power of being thankful. More than ever I am convinced it is the most powerful personal and professional leadership habit. For years I have had an increasingly refined and meaningful daily routine. Each morning I begin the day with the following: 1. Twenty minutes of meditation in classic Zen style using the counting of breaths to slow the mind and become truly aware of the present. This is remarkably difficult to do - it took months of practice to get to even five minutes, a reflection of how voluminous the flow of ideas and thoughts really is. Meditation is often confused with prayer, but it's very different although also very complementary. It is an intentional slowing of the flow of thoughts in order to understand that flow of thoughts, to become mindful and aware. 2. Five minutes of giving thanks and prayer, always trying to find one new person or thing to be thankful for. 3. Five minutes of silent planning, identifying the three key tasks I want to complete today, in line with my personal and professional hoshin. With practice, five minutes is more than enough time. I then write those down. Once again, writing by hand into a notebook creates ownership and understanding - unlike typing into an electronic planner. Only afterwards do I read *The Wall Street Journal*, have coffee, and check email. At some point in the day there's a crossfit class, beach run, or other exercise. Then in the evenings I have a complementary routine: 1. Review the three key tasks I wrote down to see if they were completed. It's amazing how much can get done if just three meaningful tasks are truly accomplished each and every day. 2. A few minutes of hansei reflection on why or why not those tasks were accomplished and, most importantly, what I will change in order to do a better job at accomplishing them tomorrow. 3. A few minutes of thanks and gratitude. Lately this is done out under the stars in my new ofuro soaking tub, with a glass of rhone blend. There is nothing quite as humbling as looking up at millions of stars, especially with a minor buzz. The periods of reflection on gratitude at the beginning and end of each day create calm bookends to what can be chaos. As problem solvers we are naturally dispositioned to focus on the negative, taking for granted the positive - to the extent that we often become oblivious and unaware of just how much positive there is in our lives. Creating an intentional focus on gratitude realigns that perspective back to reality. Then expressing that gratitude in daily life by realizing the waste of complaining, complimenting and helping others, or just smiling, reinforces the power of being thankful. Intentionally discovering gratitude, every day, has changed my perspective on life more than any other personal or professional leadership habit. I've discovered I have a lot to be thankful for. I am thankful for parents and family that continue to instill in me the ability to think independently and trust my instincts, act courageously and take appropriate risks, have a desire to see the world, and explore the strong spiritual foundation that they have surrounded me with. I am thankful that this desire to explore has let me visit over fifty countries, going and seeing, to better understand. This helps create reality where most just have perceptions, unfortunately generally incorrect, created by sound bites and the Facebook culture. I am thankful that the strong spiritual foundation I was raised on has grown even stronger as I explored its nooks and crannies, morphed into forms I wouldn't have expected, and has become very real. I feel sad for those who have not felt the hand of God, very visibly and directly in my case, as that unmistakable reality creates incredible comfort and peace. I am thankful for my wife, who accepts me for the sometimes strange creature I am, trusts me to make good decisions for our family, and is my enthusiastic partner in exploring the world. I am thankful for the lessons learned from difficulty, in particular the struggles over years with a family member's medical condition that has helped me become much more understanding, compassionate, loving, and kind. I am thankful for special friends that have been there for me during those times of difficulty, helping to guide and support me in many ways. They ask for nothing in return, although I will spend the rest of my life trying to find ways to return the favor - to them and to others. I am thankful for the opportunity to live where I do, in the peacefulness of a small town on the coast, being able to look at the sun setting over the ocean each evening. The beauty of nature reflects God. I am thankful for the ability to think abstractly, to wonder about what I don't know, and to embrace possibility. As just one example I am fascinated by quantum entanglement theory and the potential ramifications on communication, the connections between life in the universe, and the soul itself. Is this the link between science and God? I am thankful for the wisdom of colleagues I have met over the years, in the lean world and beyond, who have taught me so much which has enabled my success. Those colleagues, including readers of this blog, continually challenge me and help me grow. I am thankful for my [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) business partners who align with my desire to teach, give back, and create a great company for our team members, instead of simply focusing on growth and profit. Interestingly, more growth and profit seems to come by teaching, giving back, and creating a great company. Funny how that happens... I am thankful for our Gemba Academy team members, who are the foundation for our success, and are truly a pleasure to work with each day. Every day I am energized by their creativity, talent, and drive. But more than anything, I'm thankful, for being thankful. ### Airbnb and Uber - From Batch to One Piece Flow URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/airbnb-and-uber-from-batch-to-one-piece-flow/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:06:16.000Z Some of the more interesting internet-driven companies these days are the likes of Airbnb and Uber. They call themselves part of the “sharing economy.” But let’s take a look at the word “share.” From the MacMillan dictionary, share is “to allow someone to have something you own.” Is that what’s happening here? Not really. It’s not free. There is a small unit of demand in the form of a single room or a single car ride, and there’s a small unit of availability in the form of a room in a house, an apartment, an empty cab, or even someone with a car going in the same direction. The are matched, a value is being transferred, and there’s also a financial transaction representative of that value. That’s really micro supply and demand management. Previously such small units of supply and demand were never taken advantage of, let alone optimized, unless aggregated. Now internet connectivity and computational power can dynamically and efficiently track, match, and transact such small units. The results are rather astounding. > Since its founding, in 2008, Airbnb has spearheaded growth of the sharing economy by allowing thousands of people around the world to rent their homes or spare rooms. Yet while as many as 425,000 people now stay in Airbnb-listed homes on a peak night, the company’s growth is shadowed by laws that clash with its ethos of allowing anyone, including renters, to sell access to their spaces. Over 400,000 rooms – on a single night. That’s the equivalent of over 3,000 average size hotels. Empty space that was being wasted, now going to good use, eliminating the need to build 3,000 hotels. Think about the positive impact on the environment, urban sprawl, energy use, and so forth. Similarly, in March 2014, seven months ago and a lifetime in the timescale of a hypergrowth company, Uber was providing 1.1 million rides per week. In this case it is only partially displacing the required capacity of the old business model, taxis, as many taxi drivers are switching to the Uber platform. Still, think about the impact of that optimized micro capacity and demand utilization on the required supply of taxis – and hence steel, plastics, and gas. I happen to be a big fan of Uber, and use their service almost every time I travel. The speed, convenience, and ease of transaction creates significant value. Yes, their business practices may make me hold my nose a bit. Other companies are looking at similar concepts. Amazon is looking at using micro units of delivery capacity in the form of taxis and Uber competitor Flywheel to provide same day – and perhaps same hour – delivery. Very large numbers of previously wasted supply units being matched with demand in a very efficient manner. The batch unit of a large delivery truck, a bus, or a hotel is being broken down into units approaching one. Obviously any change like this doesn't come easily, and cities - often dependent on bed taxes - are pushing back on Airbnb while traditional taxi services are pushing back on Uber. But value is being created in an efficient and popular manner, therefore change will occur. Where have I heard about that concept before? ### On Asiana, Driverless Cars, and Factories URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/on-asiana-driverless-cars-and-factories/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:07:13.000Z I've always been interested in technology - its use, advantages, and disadvantages. Regular readers know that I often advocate for manual solutions first, such as [whiteboards to run factories](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget%5Fsap%5Frun%5F/) and a [handwritten notebook](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/) for notes. Some believe that I'm against technology, but nothing could be further from the truth. I'm more like the guy that stands in line at the Apple Store to spend money on the latest iPhone that is supposedly but in reality indistinguishably better than the previous version. A few weeks ago there was a long discussion on this topic in the Lean CEO LinkedIn group, and after over 100 comments we all had to basically agree to disagree. My belief is that you need to first understand and improve the underlying process, and only then apply technology to further refine and automate it. Otherwise you may simply automate waste, which is not true improvement. Manual methods also create more learning and understanding, which creates the foundation for improvement. Holman Jenkins penned an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last week that brings up another downside of technology: losing the understanding of the underlying process, and how to control it, in the first place. > *As nobody disagrees, Asiana Flight 214's crew failed in a basic task, keeping track of the plane's airspeed on final approach. Before they could correct their error, the plane's tail smacked a sea wall, breaking off.* > *The chief pilot later claimed "it was very difficult to perform a visual approach with a heavy airplane," according to the NTSB, which would seem to indicate the real problem: The crew was nonplused, perhaps nearly panicked, at the prospect of having to maintain a proper glidepath without help from the airport's sophisticated landing aid.* That's basic flying. Yes, there were also cultural issues involved. The downside of a culture deeply respectful of elders and superiors was in play when communication between pilot and copilot was delayed. We were warned. > *Diligent annotators of this column will recall Captain Malcolm Scott from nearly a decade ago, who criticized a British Airways decision to ban manual thrust control (which Asiana's pilots should have employed to maintain the plane's airspeed) by its Airbus pilots. Flying skills would atrophy, he warned, suggesting that the industry's implicit goal was to remove the human factor from the cockpit altogether.* Mr. Jenkins goes on to draw a link to the current fascination with Google’s driverless cars. The nascent technology is working surprisingly well, even at this early stage, and many are predicting full adoption by 2020. But what will happen to our skills to actually... drive? Even Porsche, builder of driving machines for purists, has their PDK doppelkupplung automatic transmission that is so refined that 0-60 times are faster in an automatic than with a stick. They are even considering eliminating manual transmissions as an option. But is the purpose of driving a Porsche to go faster off the line, or to experience *driving*? An automatic does make it easier to hold your latte, which I guess is why cup holders also had to be installed. Is that what driving a Porsche has devolved into? Unfortunately, for many, yes. What will happen if the software or system fails? Will we just sit there staring at each other hoping we don't go into a wall, or worse? An analogous situation exists with many forms of technology in factories and organizations. We feed data into the machine and trust that the supposed best practice algorithms created thousands of miles from the gemba will optimize operational performance. We're confident that the software geeks at SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle must know best how to deal with the nuance of our situations, even to the point of limiting the ability to modify and improve. Ya... > *In practice, though, all cars would likely have to be driverless—or at least capable of taking control away from a driver in heavy traffic situations—for any cars to be driverless. Otherwise, effectively one jerk in a '74 Buick would own the only right of way.* Maybe that’s actually the opportunity. An organization that has a team of folks that actually know how and why the operation works, instead of relying on pre-programmed algorithms, can take the right of way. They can find the weaknesses in the algorithms used by others, improve, and exploit them as a competitive advantage. Systems are great, but so is the joy of actually driving a car, the safety of understanding how to fly, and the opportunity of truly understanding and running an organization. Not just letting technology do it. ### African Adventure: South Africa, Mozambique & Tanzania Safari URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/african-adventure-south-africa-mozambique-tanzania-safari/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T16:53:34.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/DSC01542.JPG) Our June 2014 African journey combined the cosmopolitan attractions of Cape Town, a meaningful family visit to Mozambique, and Tanzania's incredible diversity from the exotic spice island culture of Zanzibar to the ultimate wildlife experience in the Serengeti. This three-week adventure showcased Africa's remarkable variety across three distinct nations. ## General Comments **Three-Country Diversity**: This African circuit demonstrated the continent's remarkable variety within a single journey. From South Africa's developed tourism infrastructure to Mozambique's Portuguese colonial heritage and Tanzania's incredible diversity - from Zanzibar's Swahili culture to the Serengeti's world-famous safari experiences - each destination offered completely different African perspectives. **Family Connection in Mozambique**: Visiting my sister Jana in Beira added personal significance to our African adventure. Experiencing Mozambique through a resident's perspective provided authentic insights into contemporary African life impossible to gain as typical tourists. **Bush Plane Logistics**: The strict baggage limitations for flights between safari camps in Tanzania required strategic packing. Limiting luggage to soft bags under 15kg per person meant careful selection of essentials and leaving most belongings at previous hotels - a logistical challenge that enhanced the authentic bush experience. **Portuguese Colonial Heritage**: Both Mozambique and parts of Tanzania revealed Portuguese colonial influences distinct from British colonial areas we'd experienced elsewhere in Africa. The architectural styles, culinary traditions, and cultural practices demonstrated how different European colonial powers shaped African development. **Indian Ocean Paradise**: Zanzibar's position as a historic trading hub between Africa, Arabia, and India created unique cultural fusion while offering some of the world's most beautiful tropical beaches. **Wildlife Authenticity**: Tanzania's Serengeti provided the classic African safari experience with vast wildlife populations, dramatic landscapes, and the sense of witnessing nature as it existed for millennia. ## Itinerary ### Days 1-4: Cape Town - African Sophistication **Hotel**: [One&Only Cape Town](http://capetown.oneandonlyresorts.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury resort on the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront provided world-class accommodations with views of Table Mountain and easy access to Cape Town's attractions. The contemporary design and exceptional service created perfect introduction to African luxury tourism. **Table Mountain**: The cable car ride to the top of Cape Town's iconic mountain provided panoramic views over the city, coastline, and wine regions. The unique fynbos vegetation and dramatic geological formations demonstrated South Africa's position as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. **Cape Peninsula Tour**: The drive to Cape Point revealed spectacular coastal scenery, penguin colonies at Boulders Beach, and the dramatic meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Cape of Good Hope's historical significance as a maritime landmark added cultural context to the natural beauty. **Wine Region Exploration**: Day trips to Stellenbosch and Franschhoek revealed world-class wine production in spectacular mountain settings. The combination of excellent wines, gourmet cuisine, and Cape Dutch architecture created sophisticated experiences rivaling any global wine destination. **Robben Island**: The ferry to Nelson Mandela's former prison provided sobering education about apartheid history while demonstrating South Africa's remarkable transition to democracy. Former political prisoners serving as guides created powerful personal connections to recent history. **Cape Town Culture**: The V&A Waterfront, Greenmarket Square, and Bo-Kaap neighborhoods revealed Cape Town's multicultural character through food, arts, and architectural diversity. The city's blend of African, European, and Asian influences created unique South African urban culture. ### Days 5-6: Mozambique Family Visit **Beira Experience**: Visiting my sister Jana in Beira provided authentic insights into contemporary Mozambican life. Staying with a resident allowed experiences impossible for typical tourists - local markets, neighborhood exploration, and understanding daily life in post-civil war Mozambique. **Portuguese Colonial Architecture**: Beira's colonial buildings, though weathered by time and conflict, revealed the distinctive Portuguese architectural style that differentiates Mozambique from British colonial territories. The blend of European design adapted to tropical African conditions created unique architectural heritage. **Local Culture**: Through Jana's connections, we experienced authentic Mozambican hospitality, traditional foods, and contemporary challenges facing the country's development. These personal encounters provided perspectives on African life beyond tourist experiences. **Indian Ocean Coast**: Mozambique's pristine coastline showcased some of Africa's most beautiful beaches, though infrastructure limitations meant these natural treasures remained largely undeveloped compared to other Indian Ocean destinations. ### Days 7-8: Johannesburg Transition **Hotel**: Intercontinental Hotel - This modern business hotel provided comfortable stopover accommodations while arranging onward travel to East Africa. Johannesburg's position as southern Africa's economic hub was evident in the modern city center and efficient airport connections. **Urban Africa**: Brief Johannesburg exploration revealed contemporary African urban development, though security concerns limited extensive city exploration. The contrast between modern business districts and historical townships provided insights into South Africa's ongoing social transformation. ### Days 9-12: Zanzibar - Spice Island Paradise **Hotel**: [Sea Cliff Resort](http://www.seacliffzanzibar.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This beachfront resort north of Stone Town provided luxury accommodations on pristine Indian Ocean beaches while maintaining easy access to Zanzibar's cultural attractions. **Stone Town UNESCO Site**: This historic trading center preserved Swahili, Arab, Persian, and European architectural influences from centuries of Indian Ocean commerce. Walking the narrow streets revealed how cultural fusion created unique Zanzibari identity. **Spice Tour**: Visiting clove, cardamom, cinnamon, and vanilla plantations demonstrated why Zanzibar became known as the "Spice Island." Understanding how spice production shaped the island's economy and culture provided historical context for contemporary Zanzibar. **Beach Paradise**: Zanzibar's white sand beaches and crystal-clear turquoise waters created tropical paradise experiences enhanced by the island's cultural richness. Unlike purely resort destinations, Zanzibar combined perfect beaches with fascinating history and authentic local culture. **Dhow Sailing**: Traditional sailing vessels provided sunset cruises and cultural connections to Zanzibar's maritime heritage. These wooden boats, unchanged for centuries, demonstrated the island's continued connection to Indian Ocean trading traditions. **Cultural Fusion**: Zanzibar's blend of African, Arab, and Indian influences created unique cuisine, music, and artistic traditions. The combination of Islamic architecture, Swahili culture, and tropical African setting produced experiences impossible to replicate elsewhere. ### Days 13-16: Serengeti Safari - Wildlife Spectacle **Hotel**: [Four Seasons Serengeti](http://www.fourseasons.com/serengeti/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury safari lodge provided world-class accommodations within the Serengeti ecosystem. The property's integration with the natural environment allowed wildlife viewing from the lodge while offering comfort and sophistication. **Great Migration**: Witnessing millions of wildebeest, zebras, and gazelles during their annual migration created one of nature's most spectacular displays. The sheer scale of animal movement across vast grasslands demonstrated ecosystems as they existed before human interference. **Big Five Encounters**: Game drives revealed lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards, and rhinos in their natural habitats. These close encounters with Africa's most iconic animals provided understanding of wildlife behavior impossible to achieve in zoos or controlled environments. **Bush Flight Logistics**: The strict baggage limitations for small aircraft transfers between safari camps required careful packing strategies. Soft bags under 15kg per person meant prioritizing essentials and leaving most belongings at previous hotels - a logistical challenge that enhanced authentic bush experiences. **Maasai Cultural Encounters**: Visits to traditional Maasai villages provided insights into indigenous African cultures maintaining traditional lifestyles within modern Tanzania. These encounters, when conducted respectfully, offered cultural education while supporting local communities. **Endless Plains**: The Serengeti's vast grasslands, extending beyond every horizon, created perspectives on Africa's scale and natural majesty impossible to comprehend from photographs or films. This landscape, largely unchanged for millennia, provided connections to prehistoric Africa. **Conservation Education**: Learning about anti-poaching efforts, habitat preservation, and community conservation programs provided insights into contemporary challenges facing African wildlife. Understanding these conservation efforts enhanced appreciation for the privilege of witnessing intact ecosystems. ### Day 17: Dar es Salaam Departure **Hotel**: Hyatt Regency - This modern hotel provided comfortable final-night accommodations while preparing for the long journey home via Zurich. **Urban Tanzania**: Brief exploration of Dar es Salaam revealed contemporary East African urban development and the contrast between safari wilderness and modern African city life. ## African Insights and Contrasts **Development Spectrum**: Our four-country journey revealed Africa's development diversity - from South Africa's first-world tourism infrastructure to Mozambique's reconstruction challenges, Zanzibar's emerging tourism economy, and Tanzania's conservation-based safari industry. **Colonial Legacy Variations**: Portuguese influences in Mozambique contrasted with British colonial heritage in South Africa and Tanzania, while Zanzibar's Omani sultanate created different cultural foundations. These varied colonial experiences shaped contemporary African realities in different ways. **Wildlife Conservation Success**: Tanzania's commitment to wildlife preservation through national parks and safari tourism demonstrated how conservation can support economic development while protecting natural heritage. This model offers hope for balancing human development with environmental protection. **Cultural Authenticity**: Each destination maintained distinct African cultural identities despite tourism development and modernization pressures. From Cape Malay culture in South Africa to Swahili traditions in East Africa, authentic African cultures remained vibrant and accessible. ## Logistical Lessons **Bush Flight Preparation**: Safari destinations require specific packing strategies due to small aircraft weight limitations. Soft luggage, essential-only items, and leaving most belongings at gateway hotels becomes necessary for authentic bush experiences. **Health Preparations**: African travel requires comprehensive health planning - vaccinations, malaria prevention, and understanding regional health risks. Proper preparation allows focus on experiences rather than health concerns. **Transportation Complexity**: Multi-country African travel involves various airlines, visa requirements, and logistical challenges requiring careful planning and flexibility when schedules change. ## Final Thoughts This African adventure demonstrated the continent's remarkable diversity within a single journey. From cosmopolitan Cape Town to pristine Serengeti wilderness, Portuguese colonial heritage to Swahili island culture, Africa offered experiences impossible to replicate on other continents. The family connection in Mozambique added personal significance while providing authentic insights into contemporary African life. The contrast between luxury tourism experiences and authentic local encounters created comprehensive understanding of Africa's complexity and beauty. Most importantly, witnessing the Serengeti's intact ecosystems and abundant wildlife provided hope that natural wonders can be preserved while supporting local communities through sustainable tourism. Africa's combination of natural majesty, cultural richness, and conservation success stories offers inspiration for how humans can coexist with the natural world. **Most Spectacular Wildlife Experience**: The Great Migration in the Serengeti with millions of animals moving across endless plains **Best Cultural Encounter**: Experiencing authentic Mozambican life through family connections in Beira**Most Beautiful Setting**: Zanzibar's white sand beaches with turquoise Indian Ocean waters and historic Stone Town nearby **Greatest Surprise**: Cape Town's sophisticated wine country rivaling any global destination **Most Logistically Challenging**: Bush plane baggage restrictions requiring strategic packing for authentic safari experiences **Perfect For**: Travelers seeking diverse African experiences, wildlife enthusiasts, cultural explorers, and those interested in conservation success stories. ### Big Data, Small Data URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/big-data-small-data/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:07:50.000Z I’ve been following the panting exuberance of big data apostles for the past few years, rolling my eyes at most of it. Sure, it can be interesting, but maybe my age showing when I say “so what?” to most of it. What finally pushed me over the edge enough to comment on it was a tweet I saw from none other than our friends at SAP, saying (I’m paraphrasing) “you have lots of data, let SAP analyze it.” But of course. There’s gold in them there data… at least to SAP. Just because we have lots of data, does it mean it has to be analyzed? What is the question, what is the problem, what is the opportunity being addressed? As Einstein said, “not everything that can be counted, counts. It has become easier and easier to create, capture, and store data. Just ask the NSA. Or Target. Sure, it doesn’t take up physical space, but it still takes time, equipment, and people to manage that inventory of data. And perhaps inventory it is… excess, over-produced inventory. What does lean tell us about inventory…? Sure, there is potential value in linking disparate datasets to come up with interesting and perhaps profitable conclusions. Unfortunately the most common outcome I’ve seen are an increasing number of KPIs, dashboard indicators, and the like tied to data. And once again, an increasing number usually creates a dilution of focus. Just ask those companies that have a two inch thick strategic plan. A year ago Rufus Pollock penned an article for The Guardian that described how the real revolution isn’t big data, but the increased accessibility to small data. > Just as we now find it ludicrous to talk of "big software" – as if size in itself were a measure of value – we should, and will one day, find it equally odd to talk of "big data". Size in itself doesn't matter – what matters is having the data, of whatever size, that helps us solve a problem or address the question we have. Bingo. Just like the 5S of lean or [micro meditation of mindfulness](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-dangerous-lite-side-of-mindfulness-and-lean/), data is just a tool. First identify the problem, question, or opportunity. Only then determine what data, and analysis, is necessary. > Meanwhile we risk overlooking the much more important story here, the real revolution, which is the mass democratisation of the means of access, storage and processing of data. This story isn't about large organisations running parallel software on tens of thousand of servers, but about more people than ever being able to collaborate effectively around a distributed ecosystem of information, an ecosystem of small data. Smaller data, more interconnected and accessible. > This next decade belongs to distributed models not centralized ones, to collaboration not control, and to small data not big data. What size is your data? ### The Devil on the Bus URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-devil-on-the-bus/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:08:10.000Z The other day while skimming LinkedIn I came across yet another one of those cheesy quotes that, unfortunately, have become all too common on the site: "Surround yourself with people on the same mission." I proceeded to get into an online discussion with several people who have probably never held a serious leadership position in their careers. I should have known better, or maybe I've just spent too many decades in the trenches. This concept has bothered me for many years, back to when I first read the similar concept floated by Jim Collins of "get the right people on the bus" with the corollary of "get the right people in the right seats." I'll give most of you a couple minutes to finish genuflecting since I mentioned the name Jim Collins. Many of you probably still do the same when someone utters the name "Jack Welch," even if you know of his ridiculous hypocritical postulations on the value of people. The turkey. Jim Collins' metaphor is well-intended, but often misinterpreted to mean that everyone must be perfectly aligned and think the same. Similarly, the statement of "surround yourself with people on the same mission" is misinterpreted to mean that everyone must be looking forward and following the leader... even if she is leading the flock off a cliff. In my experience the people that have helped my organizations progress the most, capitalize on the unique opportunity, or address the hidden underlying issue, are those that are a little different - a little out of line. I've often vehemently disagreed with some of them until I stopped to think about their perspective. Then I, and others on my staff, found value. Yes there is a fine line between being a contrarian with a unique perspective and someone who is simply negative - and perhaps destructive. It's definitely more difficult to lead an organization with such people, and it can be frustrating to others in the organization. The natural human desire is to have a calm, positive, aligned environment. Kumbayah... off a cliff. I'd argue that such unquestioning alignment is even more dangerous that the potential impact of a contrarian crossing the line to destructive negativism. Opportunities may not be discovered, and risks identified and addressed. Organizations that try to root out troublemakers and politicians and scientists that try to squelch debate by calling something "settled" do so at their own risk. Lo and behold, the world is not flat. A scene in the recent movie World War Z was intriguing along these same lines. We are surprised to learn that Israel is already prepared for the highly unlikely zombie outbreak thanks to a concept called "the tenth man." Basically when nine people on Israel's intelligence directorate (AMAN) are convinced of one direction, it is the responsibility of the tenth to investigate and find facts to argue the opposite. Just a movie? Actually no. The Brookings Institution documented this leadership strategy in a 2007 paper titled Lessons from Israel's Intelligence Reforms. An interesting read on many levels, believe it or not. > The devil’s advocate office ensures that AMAN’s intelligence assessments are creative and do not fall prey to group think. The office regularly criticizes products coming from the analysis and production divisions, and writes opinion papers that counter these departments’ assessments. The staff in the devil’s advocate office is made up of extremely experienced and talented officers who are known to have a creative, “outside the box” way of thinking. Perhaps as important, they are highly regarded by the analysts. As such, strong consideration is given to their conclusions and their memos go directly to the office of the Director of Military Intelligence, as well as to all major decision makers. The devil’s advocate office also proactively combats group think and conventional wisdom by writing papers that examine the possibility of a radical and negative change occurring within the security environment. This is done even when the defense establishment does not think that such a development is likely, precisely to explore alternative assumptions and worst-case scenarios. > > While the devil’s advocate office is an institutional level safeguard against group think, there is also an individual-level safeguard. The analysts themselves are given venues for expressing alternate opinions. Any analyst can author a “different opinion” memo in which he or she can critique the conclusions of his or her department. Senior officers do not criticize analysts who choose to write such memos. Sorry about the long excerpt, but it's valuable. The Israelis aren't the only ones to embrace this concept. The term "Devil's Advocate" actually came from none other than the Catholic Church. The formal term was "Promoter of the Faith" and the position was created in 1587 to provide an intentional dissenting perspective when discussing whether to grant sainthood. Their job was to make an argument for why canonization should not occur. The position and practice was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983\. Interestingly, there have been an unprecedented number of canonizations and beatifications since then, including Pope John Paul II. So what do you do with people in your organization that bring up alternatives, especially in a constructive way? How about those that may not be as deft at doing it in a constructive manner? Do you kick them off the bus? Or do you find them a seat, working with them so they understand how to still be constructive and respectful, realizing that they are potentially one of the most valuable parts of the organization? Alignment of mission and being on the same bus does not mean that everyone must always agree. In fact, it's best if they don't. ### The Dangerous Lite Side of Mindfulness and Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-dangerous-lite-side-of-mindfulness-and-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:09:08.000Z By Kevin Meyer I’ll preface this post by saying that yes, I’m from crazy California, I eat granola with fruits and nuts in the morning, am vegetarian (well, pescatarian), dislike wearing shoes, and practice yoga. At least I don’t have dreadlocks – yet. So there – now you’re warned. I’m currently winging my way over to Hawaii’s Big Island, probably my favorite U.S. destination, and a place I’ve been to a few times a year for over a couple decades – including only three weeks ago. It’s a special place for me and especially my wife, who was born in Hilo and then eventually married me in Makena. Unfortunately this trip isn’t really for pleasure as we’ll be scattering the ashes of both of my wife’s parents, who long ago went to Hawaii on their honeymoon… and quit their jobs and just stayed. Yes, it’s that kind of place. I guess in a way we’re experiencing the circle of life, and perhaps this time closing one of its intricate loops. Long-time readers will remember that years ago I would often [escape to Hawaii](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/recharging-aloha/) on my own for a couple days to decompress and recalibrate. Solitude, silence, and the sea can do wonders when life is throwing some incredible work and personal chaos at you, as it was at me. This is where I discovered the concepts and power of Zen, where I read Matthew May’s [The Shibumi Strategy](https://www.amazon.com/The-Shibumi-Strategy-Powerful-Meaningful/dp/0470769505?ref=kevinmeyer.com) that tied it all together, and where I became human again. The chaos that had enveloped me had turned me into a bit of a neurotic mess. I created contingency plans A, B, C, and D for every possible business and personal situation, spending far more time and energy creating those multiple redundant backup plans than it would have taken to simply recover from the rare occurrence when something actually did go wrong. Learning to be mindful helped put the world into proper perspective, created a calm mind and being, thereby freeing up a tremendous amount of energy. On the plane I’m listening to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, a great album for calming the mind, and contemplating a couple of recent articles on mindful leadership. I’m a little concerned. Just as lean is much more than 5S and value stream mapping, mindfulness is much more than simply being aware as a leader. A lean “transformation” based on simply implementing a set of common lean tools, without realizing it’s a holistic management system, will inevitably fail. Some lean consultants and writers, perhaps angling for the quick buck or out of ignorance, have focused on the tools at the expense of the system. Now I fear we’re seeing the same with mindfulness. A couple days ago Maria Gonzalez wrote a piece for HBR titled Mindfulness for People Who Are Too Busy to Meditate. It’s a good article, and I agree with many of the techniques, and especially the benefits. > *For instance, researchers have found that mindfulness can reprogram the brain to be more rational and less emotional. When faced with a decision, meditators showed increased activity in the posterior insula of the brain, which has been linked to rational decision making. This allowed them to make decisions based more on fact than emotion. This is good news since other research has found that reasoning is actually suffused with emotion. Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive and negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds. We push threatening information away and hold friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators but to data itself.* She goes on to describe a concept of “micro meditation” for those who don’t want to practice full meditation. I also use “micro meditation” to re-center throughout the day. Taking just a minute to become aware of my breathing, the feeling of the steering wheel beneath my hands, or the sounds when the car radio is turned off. Just being truly aware in the moment, of your senses and emotions, without thinking about projects, people, things – or the past or the future. A minute or two is obviously easier than a full 20 to 30 minutes each morning. As with tool-based lean, it works – temporarily and superficially. But it’s not transformative. To become truly aware and present in the moment, long term, takes a lot of very hard work. Micro meditation, as with the individual tools of lean, is just a tool. It supports the larger concept, but it is not the larger concept itself. Last week there was also an article in The Wall Street Journal on Khajak Keledjiano, CEO of Intermix, now part of Gap. Mr. Keledjiano discovered mindfulness and meditation on a dare. > *A friend bet Khajak Keledjian $15,000 six years ago that he wouldn't be able to sit still for 15 minutes in complete silence. After nearly five months of trying, the 41-­year-­old CEO of high-­fashion retailer Intermix couldn't do it.* Real meditation is not just silence, it’s purposely not thinking about projects or people, the past or the present. Silencing the mind to become aware of underlying thoughts, emotions, environment, and perspectives. And it is incredibly difficult – it took me two months before I could successfully count ten breaths without my mind going off on a tangent with other thoughts. Counting ten breaths is the most basic exercise. It took a year to build my meditation practice from 5 to 10 to now 20 minutes. Here’s an introductory article, and a short but much deeper one from a more Zen Buddhist perspective. To a Buddhist, even real meditation is just a tool of a much larger belief system. Many confuse meditation with prayer. It’s completely different – but they are very complementary. My morning practice has four components: a twenty minute (and I still struggle) period of meditation to clear the mind and become aware in the present. Then a few minutes where I focus purely on gratitude for family, friends, and blessings. That sets the stage – and perspective - for a period of prayer. Amazing how little you need to ask for when you’re present in the moment and realize how much you already have to be thankful for. Prayer then becomes focused outward, as it should be. Finally, I end with a couple minutes identifying my top two to four projects for the day. In the evening, just before bed, I usually take time for a couple minutes of hansei – reflection – on how I did with those goals and how I can improve, then a couple minutes of meditation to calm the mind, then sleep. If you simply pause a moment to count a breath or two you don’t realize how much hard work it takes to become truly aware in the present – every moment. And, as with lean, it is still a never-ending journey – both to continually reinforce and sustain, and to improve and grow. You can easily identify someone who doesn’t get lean because they say they’ve “done lean.” The same with being mindful. You don’t “do” or become mindful – you’re continually working very hard at it. Mr. Keledjian does work hard at it. Even with an incredibly busy schedule he makes his morning practice a priority, which is something I still struggle with. To reinforce the personal practice he takes classes at least once a week, and goes on a retreat once a year. He’s also diving into Kundalini – the yoga of the mind – and something I’ve just recently started to explore. Mindfulness, and mindful leadership, is becoming very popular as the benefits become better known. It’s taught at the leading business schools, in the military, and on the sports fields. That’s great. But just as lean has sometimes been simplified to a set of tools in order to grab the quick short-term win at the expense of a long-term, sustained transformation, quick-and-easy mindfulness has a similar risk. Real transformation is a journey that takes hard work and perseverance… forever. ### The Engagement of Risk URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-engagement-of-risk/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:14:54.000Z By Kevin Meyer Rules are a funny thing. We like some of them because they make us feel protected, aligned, and perhaps operating on a fair playing field. We dislike them because they can protect us to the point of being smothering, align us to the points of being constraining, and fair to the point of being unfair. Regardless of perspective, there are an increasing number of them. Over 3,000 new laws and regulations each year, for starters. I won't get into the political side of the increasing number of rules, but what are we doing to ourselves as a society? Or individually as humans? Stay tuned... Years ago I visited Italy and [was surprised](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thoughts%5Fon%5Fone/) at the traffic. > *There are very few traffic signals in Italy. The town of Naples, with a million people, has about three (and I'm being serious). Signage is basically ignored. Miniature cars, and the rare larger sedan or SUV, rush all over the place intermingling with Vespas, buses and trucks. Sorrento, Rome, Florence... all roughly the same. This seems like pure mayhem and insanity to visitors from the U.S. with our highly disciplined traffic control... until you start to realize something:* > > *Traffic flows continuously, everywhere.* > > *Ahh... but it can't be as safe, right? Wrong. Statistics show that Italy has a motor vehicle accident rate that is about 30% better than the United States.* There's actually [some science](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fspeed%5Fof%5Fch/) behind the chaos - and some towns that are exploiting the science as this Salon article points out. > *In fact, the chaos associated with traffic in developing countries is becoming all the rage among a new wave of traffic engineers in mainland Europe and, more recently, in the United Kingdom. It's called "second generation" traffic calming, a combination of traffic engineering and urban design that also draws heavily on the fields of behavioral psychology and – of all subjects – evolutionary biology. Rejecting the idea of separating people from vehicular traffic, it's a concept that privileges multiplicity over* homogeneity, disorder over order, and intrigue over certainty. > > *"One of the characteristics of a shared environment is that it appears chaotic, it appears very complex, and it demands a strong level of having your wits about you," says U.K. traffic and urban design consultant Ben Hamilton-Baillie, speaking from his home in Bristol. "The history of traffic engineering is the effort to rationalize what appeared to be chaos," he says. "Today, we have a better understanding that chaos can be productive."* And another from Der Spiegel with a story on how seven European cities are participating in an experiment to remove all traffic signs. Not just signs, but parking meters, lights, sidewalks, and even the painted lines on streets. > *Drivers \[in regulated areas with many signals\] find themselves enclosed by a corset of prescriptions, so that they develop a kind of tunnel vision: They're constantly in search of their own advantage, and their good manners go out the window.* > > *The new traffic model's advocates believe the only way out of this vicious circle is to give drivers more liberty and encourage them to take responsibility for themselves.* Chaos can be productive, liberty creates responsibility. A month ago [I wrote about](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-of-high-performance-decisions/) how some enlightened companies are applying this concept to their own internal rules. > *\[At Neflix\] there is no vacation policy, and the travel and expense policy is literally five words: "Act in Netflix's best interests." Netflix believes high performance people people should be free to make decisions, and those decisions need to be grounded in context.* > > *In the world of Netflix, flexibility is more important long term than efficiency. To inhibit the chaos that too much flexibility in a large organization can create, hire (and keep) only high performance people. High performance people make great decisions, which are better than rote rules.* Now we may have more psychobiological understanding on why this is the case. And it comes from some interesting experiments with school playgrounds in New Zealand. > *Ripping up the playground rulebook is having incredible effects on children at an Auckland school.* > > *Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don't cause bedlam, the principal says. The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing.* > > *"When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an adult's perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they don't."* > > *Swanson School signed up to the study by AUT and Otago University just over two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play. However, the school took the experiment a step further by abandoning the rules completely, much to the horror of some teachers at the time, he said.* I bet there was some horror, but what are the results? > *When the university study wrapped up at the end of last year the school and researchers were amazed by the results.* > > *Mudslides, skateboarding, bullrush and tree climbing kept the children so occupied the school no longer needed a timeout area or as many teachers on patrol. Instead of a playground, children used their imagination to play in a "loose parts pit" which contained junk such as wood, tyres and an old fire hose.* > > *"The kids were motivated, busy and engaged. It was expected the children would be more active, but researchers were amazed by all the behavioural pay-offs.* > > *Schofield urged other schools to embrace risk-taking. "It's a no brainer. As far as implementation, it's a zero-cost game in most cases. All you are doing is abandoning rules," he said.* "All you are doing is abandoning rules." If only it was that easy. > *Society's obsession with protecting children ignores the benefits of risk-taking, he said.* > > *Children develop the frontal lobe of their brain when taking risks, meaning they work out consequences. "You can't teach them that. They have to learn risk on their own terms. It doesn't develop by watching TV, they have to get out there."* Risk creates engagement, and engagement creates understanding - be it of the environment, consequences of actions, or simply new concepts. Understanding creates high performance decisionmaking. Whether it's in the chaos of traffic, the corporate offices of Netflix, or on the playground. So what about all those rules? In the quest for structure, equality, and serenity, what are we doing to ourselves? And the next generation? Instead, how can we create and leverage chaos and risk to improve engagement? ### Just a Simple Strategy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-a-simple-strategy/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:15:32.000Z By Kevin Meyer I remember two decades ago when I was in my first real executive role and I was asked to come up with a strategy for my business unit. I was in control and I could develop and set a direction! I could finally use some of what I had learned in those traditional business school courses and seminars. SWOTs, PESTs, Porter Five Forces, and the like were created and analyzed. Assessments performed, gaps identified, and finally strategies created. A plan for technologies, markets, people, and quality was developed, with detailed action plans for each. It took up a binder - a very nice-looking binder that was duplicated and presented to my management team. We all dutifully looked in awe at what we had created. And proceeded to put it on a shelf. I bet some are still on those same shelves, even if the date reads 1995\. And then we went back into the business of firefighting the day-to-day issues. Why? For starters it was too long, by about a factor of twenty. Did we really think we'd refer back to it on an ongoing basis? And just as with traditional budgeting, the vast majority of it was obsolete within a couple months. The exercise of multi-faceted self analysis was valuable - the first time. But it was a point in time. You'd think I would have learned my lesson, but I didn't. I went through that same exercise a couple more times in different, larger, organizations. More pretty binders sitting on shelves. One of the last ones was even a hoshin style plan, with long term strategies tied to intermediate term objectives, which were then tied to annual goals. Just a whole long list of them. And that was the problem: the desire for detail, specificity, depth, and breadth that created abundance and complexity. We realized this issue when we became fairly good with hansei - a quarterly reflection on our performance that we happened to have at a local winery. Luckily we had a scribe to record our brilliant a-ha's before the wine erased them from our memory. We took a step back and looked at ourselves again. We reduced our long-term strategies to three, tied to a similar number of intermediate term objectives, tied to about five annual goals. That was it for a fairly large multi-site operation. We allowed the hoshin plan to evolve and change throughout the year as situations changed - similar to how some enlightened companies have dispensed with the annual budgeting process to use rolling and ongoing financial decisionmaking. We mapped all existing activities against that plan, and killed or put on hold projects that weren't aligned. That's when real forward progress began to happen. And it was amazing how much time we freed up by not working on supposedly worthy projects that were not aligned with the strategy. When I go into organizations I often see similar binders on the shelves, almost always gathering dust. I counsel the executives to try it again, this time dramatically reducing the length, and creating an ongoing hansel process. It seems to work well. Earlier this month Nick Tasler wrote a piece for HBR titled "It's Time to Put Your Strategy on a Diet" where he drew several parallels between strategic planning and eating - and dieting. Limit your plate size by reducing the number of priorities. Let them eat cake tomorrow by putting off but not forgetting about great ideas that don't happen to align with the strategy. Avoid the "what the hell" effect though strict adherence to the strategy. And surround yourself with healthy eaters that are skilled at leading. That last point relates to creating a culture where leadership can thrive. Leadership by smart, thinking leaders, not by control. Similar to what [I mentioned](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-of-high-performance-decisions/) a few weeks ago when I told you about how Netflix hires great thinking leaders, then sets very few rules. It's also what Peter Drucker meant when he said "culture eats strategy for breakfast" - which Mark Fields of Ford embraced a few years later. But another article in HBR by Allesandro Di Fiore may take the concept of strategy brevity a little too much to the extreme. In "The Art of Crafting a 15-Word Strategy Statement" he suggests just that: 15 words. Really? Although you wouldn't know it from this post, and colleagues who interact with me via email would laugh, I happen to be fond of the 5 Sentences concept. Fond of it, but completely ineffectual at implementing it. A 15-word strategy statement? He gives a few examples, such as IKEA, and it could be a good exercise as part of the strategy development process. I'm a little skeptical of it though, for the same reason that in my last couple of positions I've purposely not wasted time on mission and vision statements. They are either so broad as to be meaningless, or so narrow that they are constraining, and in almost all cases they end up on a wall in the corner of a conference room. Often next to the shelf holding a thick binder labeled "strategic plan." Be honest, the real mission of a company is to create money for the shareholders, and the vision is a lot of money. Instead we created a short statement of principles which guided our organization, and that was more than sufficient. So as you look up from reading this post and perhaps notice your own binder on a shelf, think about taking another stab at it. Narrow it down. Very concisely, what are the three, at most four long-term strategies that your organization needs to be focused on? What three or four measurable objectives must happen in the intermediate three to five year time fram for that to happen? What four or five projects must be accompllished this year to enable that? Then, perhaps most importantly, what is your organization working on right now that doesn't align with that plan? Stop it. Formally reflect on that strategic plan at least once a quarter, with your team. Adjust and evolve - don't just set it in stone once a year. You'll soon be amazed at how much you can accomplish. ### Gemba Academy is 5 Years Old! Come celebrate with us! URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gemba-academy-is-5-years-old-come-celebrate-with-us/ Last updated: 2026-05-08T02:10:57.000Z Five years ago I, and two good friends of mine, began what’s turned out to be an incredible journey. Specifically, in March of 2009 [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) was born. We had no way of knowing whether there would be interest in what we were doing… but we started nonetheless. We wanted to create an easy and affordable way to deliver high quality lean training to the masses. Now, here we are five years later, with over 500 lean and six sigma training videos used by over 2,000 companies around the world. ### **Growing Up** We’ve made many mistakes over the years, but we've taken the opportunity to learn from them. We do our very best to practice what we preach… when we make a mistake we learn from it and try to understand the "why" before jumping at the easiest fix. We try to do the same with successes. In other words, we’re constantly doing our best to practice continuous improvement! I know there are all kinds of statistics out there regarding how many companies fail to succeed after a year or two. I don’t know how much of that is true… nor do I really care. But it's been five years...! And we feel like there's even more opportunity today than there was the day we started. ### **Thank You!** I’m thankful for the success, but also thankful for incredible business partners and an even more amazing team. But, most importantly, I’m thankful for current and past customers of Gemba Academy. We’d obviously not be around without you. It is very fulfilling helping others learn, and gratifying seeing the success they then create. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you! ### **Celebrate With Us!** Lastly, as we’ve done every March, we’re celebrating Gemba Academy’s birthday with our free DVD promotion. So, if you’re interested in learning more please head on over and check us out! We’d be honored to earn your business. ### Peru Return: Sharing Childhood Memories with Family URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/peru-return-sharing-childhood-memories-with-family/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T17:28:31.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/machu-picchu-postcard-shot.JPG) Our December 2013-January 2014 journey to Peru carried profound personal significance - returning to the country where we lived from 1973-1980 and sharing those formative childhood places with my parents and sister. This carefully orchestrated family reunion across Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, Arequipa, and Colca Canyon combined nostalgic pilgrimage with Peru's greatest cultural and natural treasures. ## General Comments **Generational Journey**: Bringing my parents back to Peru 40 years after we left created powerful intergenerational connections. Seeing familiar places through adult eyes while sharing childhood memories with family members who had lived through those experiences added emotional depth impossible to achieve through typical tourism. **Family Coordination**: Orchestrating travel for five family members from different starting points (Miami, Houston, São Paulo) required careful logistics but created shared adventure from the moment we reunited in Lima. The multi-generational group dynamics enhanced every cultural encounter. **Altitude Management**: Peru's high elevations, particularly Cusco at 11,200 feet, required careful acclimatization planning for family members of different ages and fitness levels. The staged approach - Lima, then Cusco, then higher Sacred Valley locations - proved essential for comfortable adaptation. **Christmas and New Year Timing**: Celebrating the holidays in Peru while revisiting childhood places created uniquely meaningful family experiences. The combination of familiar landscapes with family togetherness made this more than typical vacation travel. **Professional Tour Support**: Using Pachatusantrek's comprehensive services allowed us to focus on family connections and childhood memories rather than logistics. Their coordination of transportation, guides, and accommodations across multiple cities proved invaluable for multigenerational travel. **Childhood Memory Integration**: Visiting places I remembered from ages 5-12 while accompanied by family members who had shared those experiences created opportunities to understand childhood memories within adult perspective and family context. ## Family Reunion and Nostalgic Exploration ### Lima: Urban Childhood Memories Our Lima days combined family reunion time with revisiting neighborhoods where we had lived as children. The city's dramatic growth since the 1970s meant many areas were transformed beyond recognition, but underlying geography and certain landmarks remained familiar. **Hotel**: JW Marriott Lima - This luxury property provided comfortable family headquarters while we adjusted to being together and prepared for high-altitude destinations. **Neighborhood Exploration**: Using private cars, we visited former residential areas including San Isidro, Rinconada, and La Molina. Seeing these places through adult eyes while sharing childhood memories with parents who had navigated raising young children in 1970s Peru created fascinating intergenerational dialogue. **Coastal Excursions**: Trips to Leon Dormido and other coastal areas revealed how Lima's relationship with the Pacific had evolved since our childhood. These excursions provided relaxed family time while exploring Peru's diverse geography beyond the urban center. ### Cusco: Imperial City at Altitude Flying from Lima to Cusco transported us into the heart of Inca civilization while testing our family's altitude adaptation. **Hotel**: JW Marriott Cusco - This modern hotel provided comfort and altitude-appropriate accommodations while maintaining easy access to Cusco's UNESCO World Heritage historic center. **Christmas Day City Tour**: Spending Christmas exploring Cusco's cathedral, Qorikancha (Temple of the Sun), and surrounding archaeological sites created unique holiday memories. The combination of Christian colonial architecture built over Inca foundations reflected Peru's layered cultural history. **Sacsayhuaman and Surrounding Ruins**: The massive stone fortifications and nearby archaeological sites demonstrated Inca engineering mastery while providing spectacular views over Cusco. These visits sparked discussions about the civilizations we had learned about as children living in Peru. **Family Altitude Adjustment**: Watching different family members adapt to Cusco's elevation while sharing coca tea and taking frequent rest breaks created bonding experiences unique to high-altitude travel. ### Machu Picchu: The Ultimate Peruvian Experience Our full-day Machu Picchu expedition represented the journey's cultural climax and most physically demanding adventure. **Vistadome Train Journey**: The scenic train ride from Poroy to Aguas Calientes through the Sacred Valley provided spectacular Andean scenery while creating relaxed family time en route to Peru's most famous attraction. **The Lost City Experience**: Experiencing Machu Picchu as a multigenerational family group added emotional dimensions to this archaeological wonder. Seeing my parents' amazement at the site's preservation and engineering while sharing the experience with my sister created memory-making moments extending far beyond typical tourism. **Sanctuary Lodge Lunch**: The buffet lunch at the only hotel adjacent to Machu Picchu provided recovery time and spectacular views while processing the morning's archaeological exploration. **Physical Challenge Management**: Helping family members of different fitness levels navigate Machu Picchu's stone steps and elevation while ensuring everyone could fully experience the site required patience and teamwork that strengthened family bonds. ### Sacred Valley: Traditional Andean Culture Our Sacred Valley exploration revealed traditional Peruvian culture continuing practices dating to Inca times. **Pisac Market and Ruins**: The traditional market with indigenous vendors selling textiles, crafts, and food provided authentic cultural encounters while the nearby archaeological site demonstrated Inca agricultural terracing still used today. **Ollantaytambo**: This living Inca town, where traditional architecture houses contemporary Peruvian families, showed how ancient urban planning adapts to modern needs while maintaining cultural continuity. **Family Cultural Education**: Experiencing traditional Andean culture as a family group created opportunities to discuss how indigenous traditions we had encountered as children living in Peru continued thriving in contemporary settings. ### Arequipa and Colca Canyon: Natural Wonders Our southern Peru adventure combined colonial architecture with natural spectacles. **Arequipa's White City**: This UNESCO World Heritage colonial city built from white volcanic stone provided architectural education while serving as gateway to Colca Canyon adventures. **Colca Canyon Depth**: At over 13,000 feet deep - more than twice the Grand Canyon's depth - Colca Canyon created geological perspectives impossible to achieve elsewhere. The drive to reach the canyon, climbing to over 16,000 feet elevation, tested our family's altitude adaptation limits. **Condor Flight**: Witnessing Andean condors soaring through Colca Canyon at Cruz del Condor viewpoint provided wildlife spectacle highlighting Peru's incredible biodiversity and dramatic landscapes. **Luxury Canyon Accommodations**: Casitas del Colca's individual villas nestled in the canyon provided comfortable family accommodations while maintaining connection to the dramatic natural environment. **Agricultural Terraces**: The pre-Inca stepped terraces still used for cultivation demonstrated how traditional agricultural techniques continue supporting Andean communities, connecting us to Peru's continuous cultural heritage. ## Childhood Memory and Family Dynamics **Intergenerational Perspectives**: Comparing childhood memories with adult observations while accompanied by parents who had guided us through those original experiences created unique family dialogue about how travel experiences shape personal development. **Cultural Education Continuation**: Returning to Peru as adults with family members who had introduced us to South American culture as children demonstrated how early travel experiences influence lifelong interests and perspectives. **Family Travel Logistics**: Managing multigenerational group travel - different physical capabilities, interests, and energy levels - required patience and compromise while creating shared experiences impossible to achieve through individual travel. **Nostalgic Place Recognition**: Identifying familiar geographical features, architectural styles, and cultural practices from childhood memories while sharing those recognitions with family members created emotional connections transcending typical tourism. ## Cultural and Historical Insights **Peru's Development Evolution**: Observing how Peru had changed since the 1970s - infrastructure development, tourism growth, urban expansion - provided insights into how countries develop while attempting to preserve cultural heritage. **Indigenous Culture Continuity**: Experiencing contemporary indigenous culture in markets, traditional communities, and agricultural practices demonstrated how pre-Columbian traditions adapt to modern circumstances while maintaining essential characteristics. **Family Travel Education**: Understanding how family travel experiences during childhood influence adult interests, cultural understanding, and travel preferences provided insights into how early exposure shapes lifelong perspectives. ## Final Thoughts This Peru family reunion transcended typical vacation travel by combining personal history with cultural exploration and family bonding. Returning to childhood places with parents and sister created opportunities to understand formative experiences within adult perspective while strengthening family connections through shared adventure. The combination of nostalgic pilgrimage with Peru's incredible cultural and natural treasures demonstrated how meaningful travel integrates personal history with broader cultural understanding. Experiencing Machu Picchu, Colca Canyon, and traditional Andean culture as a family group created memories extending far beyond individual travel experiences. Most importantly, this journey revealed how childhood travel experiences influence adult perspectives, cultural interests, and family relationships. The investment our parents made in exposing us to different cultures and countries during our formative years continued paying dividends through adult appreciation for cultural diversity, travel adventure, and family connection. Peru's combination of archaeological wonders, natural beauty, and living indigenous culture provided perfect settings for multigenerational family bonding while honoring the country that had shaped our childhood understanding of the world beyond the United States. **Most Emotional Moment**: Standing at Machu Picchu with parents and sister, realizing how our childhood years in Peru had influenced our lifelong love of travel and cultural exploration **Greatest Physical Challenge**: Managing different family members' altitude adaptation while ensuring everyone could fully experience Cusco and Colca Canyon's high-elevation attractions **Best Family Bonding**: Sharing childhood memories of Peru with parents who had guided us through those original experiences while creating new memories together **Most Spectacular Sight**: Andean condors soaring through Colca Canyon's massive depths while surrounded by snow-capped volcanic peaks **Perfect For**: Families seeking multigenerational adventure, travelers with personal connections to Peru, anyone interested in combining archaeological wonders with natural beauty and living indigenous culture. ### The Power of High Performance Decisions URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-power-of-high-performance-decisions/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:16:41.000Z By Kevin Meyer For the past couple weeks I've been digging into employee handbooks as a startup I'm involved with has grown to the point of needing one. Few perhaps realize how that document, usually given to you on your first day and then mostly forgotten, shapes culture and thereby fundamental organization performance. As one reference point, a company I've recently worked for has a 40+ page tome that starts every section with "COMPLIANCE IS ESSENTIAL" highlighted in bold, with "required to conform" sprinkled liberally throughout the document, ending with a meaty discussion of the punitive measures that would happen upon deviation. And that's a company very innovative in very many ways. On the other extreme is Zaarly, a San Francisco startup. Their employee handbook, posted online, talks directly to culture. In the "Rules for Work" section it begins with "we don't have these." And in a style prevalent throughout the document, adds that "if you want to coast, we recommend you apply for a job at Craigslist." There are some good thoughts on teams, work, and communication - but no rules. Then there's the famous Netflix "business culture" PowerPoint that serves as their employee handbook. Similar to Zaarly it talks a lot about culture and a lack of rules. There is no vacation policy, and the travel and expense policy is literally five words: "Act in Netflix's best interests." That's it. But unlike Zaarly, Netflix does say some rules are necessary, such as "Absolutely no harassment of any kind." Completely agree, especially on that item. Netflix believes high performance people people should be free to make decisions, and those decisions need to be grounded in context. Mission, vision, and value statements do not create context - and Netflix provides the example of how Enron's value statement included "integrity." Real company values are shown by who gets rewarded, and embody behaviors and skills. The document goes on to describe the primary Netflix values and the associated behaviors. In the world of Netflix, as basically summarized on slide 74, flexibility is more important long term than efficiency. To inhibit the chaos that too much flexibility in a large organization can create, hire (and keep) only high performance people. High performance people make great decisions, which are better than rote rules. Later on there is good discussion on managing with context, context not control of people, and when something fails figuring out what went wrong in the context rather than in the people. Perhaps a part of the Netflix document that gave me pause was an insinuation that defined processes are a negative. As those of us in the lean world know, standard work is the foundation for kaizen. To improve you need to know what you're doing - consistently. But it doesn't necessarily mean a lack of flexibility, and the level of detail in the standard work is dependent on the application. Yesterday our friend Brad Power posted a piece in Harvard Business Review titled Drive Performance by Focusing on Routine Decisions that hits at a similar concept. Instead of creating rule-bound defined processes, improve the quality of the decision points. He illustrates the idea with an example those of us in the manufacturing world have all experienced: the potential maelstrom of materials control. > *These two stories highlight the advantages of focusing process improvement on “diamonds and arrows” — i.e., making better decisions. Project leaders who focus exclusively on the “boxes and arrows” of workflow action improvement will often find themselves caught up fixing yesterday’s operations and systems issues.* Are your rules improving the boxes but constraining the diamonds? How is that rigidity affecting your long term performance? Do you have a team of high performance people that you can trust to deal with the diamonds in a flexible, agile way? Why not? And how do your underlying documents, even down to the employee handbook, support or impede that? ### 2013 Management Blog Review URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2013-management-blog-review/ Last updated: 2026-05-05T20:16:56.000Z By [Kevin Meyer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-shaping-of-scripture-translation-politics-and-the-excluded-voices-of-early-christianity/) Once again I have the privilege to be part of [Curious Cat's annual management improvement blog review](http://curiouscat.com/management/carnival/2013?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and will be taking a look back at three of my favorite blogs. [TimeBack by Dan Markovitz](http://timebackmanagement.com/blog/category/timeback-blog/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Dan has become one of my favorite bloggers, and a good friend, by showing how lean can be applied to personal productivity as well as business. - Dan enjoys telling it like it is, blunt and to the point, which he does again in [More Bullshit Business Blather](http://timebackmanagement.com/blog/more-bullshit-business-blather/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). This time it's a *boneheaded analysis by a supposed expert business journalist* that suggests that hated companies do well. - Sometimes small mundane changes can create remarkable savings. To find them you must [Go and See](http://timebackmanagement.com/blog/go-and-see/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- even at small organizations where you may already be "there." What will you find? - Just as automating a wasteful process doesn't change the fact that it is a wasteful process (you knew that, didn't you?), Dan describes how [Doing Stupid Work Faster Is Still Stupid](http://timebackmanagement.com/blog/doing-stupid-work-faster-is-still-stupid/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Before you try to do something faster or more efficiently, ask whether it needs to be done in the first place. [Edit Innovation by Matthew E. May](http://matthewemay.com/blog/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- Matt has long been one of my favorite authors. His [The Shibumi Strategy](http://www.amazon.com/The-Shibumi-Strategy-Powerful-Meaningful/dp/0470769505?ref=kevinmeyer.com) literally changed my life, and I was honored to play a part in [The Laws of Subtraction](http://www.amazon.com/The-Laws-Subtraction-Winning-Everything/dp/0071795618/ref=pd%5Fbxgy%5Fb%5Ftext%5Fy?ref=kevinmeyer.com). His blog provides thoughtful discussion on applying elegance and simplicity to design, business, and life. - We've all experienced frustration when trying to create simple change - and bumping up into the a supposedly unchangeable "system." Why does it have to be like this? Matt's [When Systems Rule... and When They Don't](http://matthewemay.com/when-systems-ruleand-when-they-dont/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) probes at *should the normal situation be that when you put a good person in a bad system, the system automatically wins?* - More and more companies are innovating by leveraging close and sometimes direct involvement with customers. This is great... usually. But in the case of radical innovation it may not be best. [When It Pays to Listen to Users... And When It Doesn't](http://matthewemay.com/when-it-pays-to-listen-to-usersand-when-it-doesnt/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) discusses this situation. - In [The Presence of Purpose](http://matthewemay.com/the-presence-of-purpose/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Matt hits home at a problem I've struggled with in both business and personal life: discovering true purpose. And then figuring out how to describe it in words. [HBR: Brad Power](http://blogs.hbr.org/brad-power/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- I've been following Brad's blog for several years and his wide-ranging posts never fail to stimulate thoughts on how to improve my business. - Some companies have become successful via customer intimacy, and some via operational excellence. In [Customer Intimace, Meet Operational Excellence](http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/customer-intimacy-meet-operati/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Brad describes how the best are doing both - which is sometimes difficult when the *autonomy to make customer-specific decisions seems to be in conflict with the use of standards, which are essential to delivering consistency, reliability, and low cost*. - In [Standard Operating Procedures Can Make You More Flexible](http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/04/standard-operating-procedures-can-make-you-more-flexible/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Brad strikes at one of the most inaccurate presumptions of standard work: that it stifles innovation and kaizen. Standards and standard work can create a known and understood foundation from which real improvement can be created. - The frustration of trying to create change in a bureaucracy is a reason why many of us are now running our own companies. In [Innovating Around a Bureaucracy](http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/innovating-around-a-bureaucrac/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) Brad tells us that it is possible to create change if the right combination of people, leadership, and motivation is available. ### About that "Human Error"... URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/about-that-human-error/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:44:47.000Z By Kevin Meyer Thanks to Twitter, again, I recently came across one of the most insightful articles I've read in a long time - on a safety blog no less. Steven Shorrock takes on the concept of "human error" and adds considerable more perspective to this oft-used term. *In the aftermath of the \[Spain rail\] accident, initial investigations ruled out mechanical or technical failure, sabotage and terrorism. That appeared to leave only two possible explanations – ‘human error’ or ‘recklessness’, or both. When society demands someone to blame, the difference – whatever it might be – can seem trivial. What followed was a display of our instinct to find a simple explanation and someone to blame.* When something bad happens - an accident like this, an inappropriate comment, a disastrous rollout of a website - we seek action, fast. We want accountability, and usually by that we mean rolling heads. Rarely do we probe further into the context of the event, and especially into the system. As just one example: *Several claims appeared about the driver in the media, often without relevant context. It was reported that the driver “admitted speeding” on the occasion of the crash. However, there appears to be no evidence that the ‘speeding’ involved conscious disregard for, or indifference to, the dangers of the situation or for the consequences of his actions. This would have been an extreme act. Rather, it seems that the driver was unaware of the context.* Shorrock goes on to bemoan the effect of overuse of the term "human error." *Indeed, the popularisation of the term ‘human error’ has provided perhaps the biggest spur to the development of human factors in safety-related industries – with a downside. When something goes wrong, complexity is reduced to this simple, pernicious, term. ‘Human error’ has become a shapeshifting persona that can morph into an explanation of almost any unwanted event. It is now almost guaranteed to be found in news stories pertaining to major accidents.* And then eventually comes up with the reasons why he is abandoning the term: - **‘Human error’ is a often a post hoc social judgement.* ‘Human error’ is one of few things that often cannot be defined unambiguously in advance of it happening.* - **‘Human error’ requires a standard.* To know that something is an error, it must be possible to describe a non-error. This can be surprisingly difficult, partly because there are so many “it depends”. In the context of complex interacting systems such as ATC, there are many ways to get an acceptable result.* - **‘Human error’ points to individuals in a complex system.* In complex systems, system behaviour is driven fundamentally by the goals of the system and the system structure. People provide the flexibility to make it work.* - **‘Human error’ stigmatises actions that could have been heroic in slightly different circumstances.* What are described as heroic actions could often have been described as tragic errors if the circumstances were only slightly different. The consequences of heroic actions are not known in advance.* - **Underlying processes of ‘human error’ are often vital for task performance.* In the context of error, we often refer to psychological activity involved in perception, memory, decision making or action. Taking one example, without expectation, radio-telephony would be very inefficient. Occasionally, one may hear what one expects instead of what is said, but this must be set against improved efficiency during thousands of other occasions.* - **‘Human error’ is an inevitable by-product of the pursuit of successful performance in a variable world.* The context and conditions of performance are often vague, shifting and suboptimal. The ability to adapt and compensate comes at a cost.* The need for standards, the importance of context, the fine line between error and heroism, and perhaps even the positive aspects of error when pushing boundaries. So what does Shorrock now use instead of "human error"? *Left with a ‘human error’-shaped hole in my vocabulary several years ago, I found an alternative concept thanks to Erik Hollnagel: *performance variability*. This is not simply a replacement term or a euphemism, but a new way of thinking that acknowledges how systems really work. Performance variability, both at an individual level and at a system or organisational level, is both normal and necessary, and it is mostly deliberate.* Something to think about next time an incident happens and you feel that instinctual urge to blame, instead of understand. ### Reflections on 25 Years of Lean - with Womack, Shook, and Jones URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/reflections-on-25-years-of-lean-with-womack-shook-and-jones/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:45:43.000Z A heads up to Evolving Excellence readers that Gemba Academy has just added a group of videos to its [Gemba Live!](https://www.gembaacademy.com/products/gemba%5Flive.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) series titled "Reflections on 25 Years of Lean." Gemba Academy, in collaboration with the Lean Enterprise Institute, created and produced this 70 minute discussion between the original thought leaders who coined the term "lean" twenty-five years ago: Jim Womack, John Shook, and Dan Jones. The first video is open to the public, but the rest require a subscription to either the School of Lean or the School of Six Sigma. Not a subscriber? Gemba Academy is running an 80 free DVDs promotion this month! The value of this incredible discussion between Womack, Shook, and Jones is probably worth the subscription cost alone! Over 1,000 companies count on Gemba Academy to bring them the best and latest in lean and six sigma videos. Here's the list of videos included in "Reflections on 25 Years of Lean": 1. **Calling it Lean**: If they had to do it over again, would they still call it "lean"? 2. **Learning to See**: The group continues the discussion on their concerns with the word "lean" and especially their hesitation with introducing new tools such as value stream mapping. 3. **Lean Management Behaviors**: The group discusses their early struggles with finding the correct balance between management systems and tools - the humanists and the technocrats - and realizing the fundamental importance of practice. 4. **Starting with Purpose**: The importance of being able to state a purpose for an organization, and then creating alignment to support that purpose. 5. **Lean Healthcare**: Why lean is resonating so well within the healthcare community, and how it has the potential to radically change the entire industry. 6. **Lean Government**: Lean seems to develop and thrive within a crisis, and therefore government may be ripe for lean thinking. 7. **The Great Stagnation**: The impact of the recession, and what Jim Womack calls "the great stagnation," on lean thinking. We need to shift out of left-right thinking into a process of running experiments to improve value and outcomes. 8. **Lean Startups**: The group gives their thoughts on the lean startup movement - is it real or just a new flavor? 9. **Lean NGOs**: The opportunity and rapid growth of lean in NGOs - non-government organizations - especially with operations providing aid to Africa. This directly demonstrates the potential of lean to change people's lives. 10. **Lean Shoring**: How lean is impacting offshore outsourcing and creating the opportunity for reshoring - or "lean shoring." 11. **Final Thoughts**: Where lean is headed over the next 25 years, and why it is important for organizations to look at an entire holistic approach instead of considering lean to be a basket of tools. As always, Gemba Academy subscribers receive immediate access to all new content. Check out the School of Lean and School of Six Sigma and subscribe today! ### Of Meetings, Metrics and Dishwashing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/of-meetings-and-dishwashing/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:46:33.000Z By Kevin Meyer Last week I started a discussion post in the Lean Six Sigma LinkedIn group on Gemba Academy's latest featured video showing the morning executive standup meeting at my old company, Specialty Silicone. I had started the morning meetings years ago, and my successor has added some really interesting daily accountability components to it. The meeting works very well to ensure daily discussion and progress. I've been rather amazed at some of the comments to the post in a lean-oriented group, with many suggesting that the stand up meetings are a waste of time, or that technology-oriented solutions should be used instead of in-person meetings with whiteboards and Post-It notes. I'm not against technology - in fact I'm one of those geeks that will often stand in line to get the latest. But there's a place. I've seen many companies start the daily five minute meeting because they hear it is great, then after a couple weeks they change it to every two days or once a week. It immediately fades away into non-existence. It takes time and discipline to stick with it. Similarly I've seen many companies try to transition from handwriting numbers on a whiteboard to typing numbers into a computer so they are displayed on electronic boards. Seems to be an improvement, but the learning and understanding that accompanies handwriting goes away, and soon they become "just numbers" instead of something meaningful. I recently wrote about the [power of writing by hand](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/). Perhaps one analogy is why and how Zen Buddhism teaches mindfulness - intentional awareness. Sometimes you need to simply slow down and really sense and understand your surroundings. One exercise is washing dishes by hand, taking the time to really feel each dish and understand the movements and process. You notice things like small chips and discolorations in the dishes, which you usually wouldn't when just loading a dishwasher. Applying such mindfulness leads to improved creativity and focus - exactly what we often need in business environments. That's very similar to the issues that come up in an in-person five minute standup meeting. After finishing the regular agenda, almost invariably everyone says they have nothing more to discuss, then someone mentions something minor. That minor issue turns into a deep discussion of a previously unnoticed underlying problem, leading to awareness and improvement. Almost every time. That's what you capture and act on, which a computerized database with data entered remotely wouldn't provide. Don't forget the value and power of the human element, the manual element, and becoming aware. ### Of Maps, ERP, and Basic Thinking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/of-maps-erp-and-basic-thinking/ Last updated: 2026-05-07T00:01:47.000Z By Kevin Meyer A hat tip to Mark Graban for pointing out this article on a problem the Fairbanks airport has been experiencing with Apple Maps. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Ok, it's still funny. *There’s a way to get to the Fairbanks Airport, just don’t ask your iPhone for help. Apple has disabled driving directions to the Fairbanks International Airport after a glitch in its maps app guided drivers to the edge of a runway instead of a terminal, airport spokeswoman Angie Spear said Friday.* *Previous directions on newer iPhones and iPads guided drivers to the edge of the tarmac instead of the correct route to the terminal. In incidents Sept. 6 and Sept. 20, drivers went through a gate, past warning lights and signs, and then across an active runway, to reach the terminal.* Now there's obviously a bunch of bad things happening here. The app, of course, but also a physical security system that let's folks just drive right onto active runways. But what really struck me was the lack of extremely basic perceptual/analytical skills on the part of the drivers. How can you drive past warning lights and signs, through a gate, and across runways without realizing that something might just be wrong? That something doesn't fit conventional experience. Seriously? Are we so entranced and trusting of our world of apps that we can no longer recognize a conflict with expected reality? Apparently so. I'm obviously dating myself, but I remember keeping real map books in the car, driving blindly around cities like Boston having to stop every couple blocks to check the book, and even ordering TripTiks from AAA for longer trips. A drive, even into a new town, took a certain level of research, analysis, and writing. That often lead to a certain level of getting lost - failure - and then learning from that failure. No longer. Now you just turn on the app, and if it seems strange to have to avoid a landing jet along the way you chalk it up to the vagarities of "the shortest route." Common sense exempted. And this is the exact reason why one of my hot buttons are systems like ERP, MRP, and the like where gigabytes of data are dumped into a machine and results are miraculously spit out and displayed on reports or monitors. The results are taken for granted and assumed to be correct, even if they fly in the face of common sense. $50 million in [extra chocolate bars](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wanna%5Fbuy%5Fa%5Fcru/)? $1 billion in extra Blackberry phones? The system said so, therefore it must be correct. We have to learn to think again. We have to allow, and encourage our people to think. Training them to read the output on a monitor, or the results of an app, isn't thinking. A few months ago I wrote a piece on [Learning by Writing... by Hand](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/). *The process of writing by hand creates understanding, ownership, introspection, and thus learning.* *This is also why I regularly harp on the [advantages of scribbling on whiteboards](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget%5Fsap%5Frun%5F/) over typing into "the machine" and then coercing that data onto reports or electronic displays. When you write a production number, metric, or problem on a white board you own that number, you immediately see the relationship between it and the numbers next to it, you recognize patterns and trends, and you may have to even explain it to peers standing around you. Action can be taken immediately to change an unfavorable situation.* *Typing into a computer? Not so much. Somehow that data is mysteriously transformed into other numbers and analyses that you may see a week or even month later and the linkage, understanding, and ownership of that relationship is lost. You end up with a bunch of folks trained to feed the machine, and a different bunch of folks trained to supposedly interpret what the machine spits out. The problem - and opportunity - is obvious.* Every day I find more examples where this is true. Whether it's managing a factory or using a map app. Write. Think. Learn. Please, before you hit a plane. ### Bhutan & Nepal: Himalayan Kingdoms of Beauty and Spirituality URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bhutan-nepal-himalayan-kingdoms-of-beauty-and-spirituality/ Last updated: 2025-09-03T13:12:16.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/bhutan-tigers-DSC00313-across-gorge.JPG) Our September 2013 journey through Bhutan and Nepal revealed two Himalayan kingdoms that preserve ancient traditions while navigating modern challenges. From Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" philosophy to Nepal's stunning mountain vistas and rich cultural heritage, this adventure combined breathtaking natural beauty with profound spiritual encounters, including the challenging trek to Bhutan's legendary Tiger's Nest monastery. ## General Comments **Two Himalayan Kingdoms:** Visiting Bhutan and Nepal consecutively highlighted both similarities and contrasts between these mountain nations. Both preserve spectacular Himalayan landscapes, yet their religious foundations and approaches to development, tourism, and modernization differ dramatically. While Bhutan remains predominantly Buddhist, Nepal is primarily Hindu, creating fascinating contrasts in spiritual practices, architecture, and cultural expressions. **Bhutan's Unique Philosophy:** The kingdom's "Gross National Happiness" approach, prioritizing spiritual and environmental well-being over purely economic growth, created travel experiences unlike anywhere else. The government's "high value, low impact" tourism policy meant fewer crowds but higher costs and more authentic cultural encounters. **Visa and Access Challenges:** Bhutan requires special visa approval through selected authorized guides, making independent travel impossible. Additionally, arrival into Paro Airport ranks among the world's most difficult and potentially dangerous landings, with only a handful of certified pilots qualified to navigate the narrow valley approach surrounded by towering peaks. **Altitude and Physical Challenges:** Both countries' high elevations required careful acclimatization and physical preparation. The Tiger's Nest hike in Bhutan, climbing to over 10,000 feet, demanded fitness and determination but rewarded us with one of the world's most spectacular monastery settings. **Buddhist and Hindu Cultural Immersion:** Moving between ancient monasteries, participating in religious festivals, and observing daily practices provided deep spiritual and cultural education. The contrast between Bhutan's Buddhist traditions and Nepal's predominantly Hindu culture offered insights into how different spiritual frameworks shape society. **Luxury Accommodations in Remote Settings:** Both countries offered world-class hotels that enhanced rather than detracted from authentic cultural experiences. Properties like Uma Punakha and Dwarika's Hotel demonstrated how luxury tourism can support cultural preservation and local economies. **September Timing:** Post-monsoon September provided clear mountain views, moderate temperatures, and excellent trekking conditions while avoiding both summer rains and winter cold. ## Bhutan: The Last Shangri-La ### Days 1-3: Thimphu - Modern Buddhist Capital **Hotel:** [Taj Tashi Hotel](http://www.tajhotels.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This luxury property in Bhutan's capital perfectly balanced modern amenities with traditional Bhutanese architecture and design. The hotel's integration of local materials and artistic motifs created authentic luxury experiences. **Thimphu Exploration:** Bhutan's capital, one of the few world capitals without traffic lights, revealed how traditional Buddhist governance adapts to contemporary needs. The weekend market, traditional architecture requirements, and absence of commercial advertising created urban environments unlike anywhere else on Earth. **Tashichho Dzong:** This fortress-monastery housing Bhutan's government demonstrated the unique integration of spiritual and temporal power in Buddhist kingdoms. The massive whitewashed walls, golden roofs, and intricate woodwork showcased traditional Bhutanese craftsmanship at its finest. **Traditional Crafts:** Visiting textile workshops, traditional paper makers, and woodcarving studios revealed how ancient skills remain vital parts of contemporary Bhutanese economy and cultural identity. The government's support for traditional arts created living cultural preservation rather than museum displays. ### Days 4-6: Punakha Valley - Ancient Capital Beauty **Hotel:** [Uma Punakha Resort](http://www.comohotels.com/umapunakha/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This COMO property demonstrated how contemporary luxury could enhance rather than compete with spectacular natural settings. The resort's integration with the valley landscape and traditional architectural elements created perfect bases for cultural exploration. **Punakha Dzong:** Located at the confluence of two rivers, this dzong (fortress-monastery) ranked among Bhutan's most beautiful religious complexes. The strategic position, architectural harmony, and active monastic community demonstrated how traditional Buddhist institutions remain central to contemporary Bhutanese life. **Himalayan Landscapes:** The drive from Thimphu through the 10,000-foot Dochula Pass revealed Bhutan's incredible mountain scenery while providing perspectives on how geography shapes culture, architecture, and daily life in Himalayan kingdoms. **Rural Buddhist Culture:** Village visits revealed how traditional Buddhist practices, sustainable agriculture, and community cooperation create social systems prioritizing happiness and environmental preservation over material accumulation. ### Days 7-9: Paro Valley - Gateway and Tiger's Nest **Hotel:** [Zhiwa Ling Resort](http://www.zhiwaling.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This traditional-style resort provided authentic Bhutanese accommodations while offering modern comfort and spectacular valley views. **Tiger's Nest Monastery (Paro Taktsang):** The challenging 3-hour hike to this cliff-hanging monastery represents one of the most spectacular and meaningful treks we've ever undertaken. Beginning at 8,000 feet, the trail winds through pine forests adorned with colorful prayer flags before the final dramatic ascent to the monastery perched impossibly on a sheer rock face 3,000 feet above the valley floor. The physical demands - steep switchbacks, high altitude, and narrow cliff-side paths - pale in comparison to the spiritual impact of reaching this sacred site where Guru Rinpoche is said to have meditated for three years, three months, three weeks, and three days in the 8th century. The monastery complex, seemingly defying gravity as it clings to the vertical cliff, creates an almost otherworldly experience that justifies every difficult step of the ascent. Standing on the narrow balconies carved into the rock face, surrounded by the scent of burning juniper and the sound of monks' chanting echoing off the stone walls, provided one of our most profound travel experiences. The combination of architectural wonder, spiritual significance, and the personal achievement of reaching this remote sanctuary created memories that continue to inspire years later. **Paro Dzong:** This fortress-monastery, one of Bhutan's finest examples of traditional architecture, housed both monastic community and government offices. The integration of spiritual and administrative functions demonstrated Bhutan's unique approach to governance. **Traditional Bhutanese Life:** Market visits, farmhouse encounters, and conversations with locals revealed how traditional Buddhist values create social systems emphasizing community welfare, environmental stewardship, and spiritual development alongside material needs. ## Nepal: Roof of the World ### Days 10-12: Kathmandu Valley Heritage **Hotel:** Dhulikhel Mountain Resort - This hilltop retreat provided spectacular Himalayan sunrise views while offering peaceful respite from Kathmandu's urban intensity. **Bhaktapur:** This medieval city, preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site, demonstrated traditional Newar architecture, culture, and craftsmanship. The wood-carved temples, ancient palaces, and traditional pottery workshops revealed Nepal's artistic sophistication predating modern development. **Thimi:** This smaller traditional town provided intimate encounters with Newar culture without Bhaktapur's tourist crowds. Traditional mask-making, pottery, and agricultural practices demonstrated how ancient skills remain economically viable. **Himalayan Vistas:** Morning views from Dhulikhel revealed the entire Himalayas from Everest to Annapurna, providing perspective on the world's highest mountains while demonstrating how geography shapes Nepali culture and spirituality. ### Days 13-16: Pokhara and Begnas Lake - Mountain Serenity **Hotel:** [Begnas Lake Resort](http://www.begnaslakeresort.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This lakeside retreat provided peaceful mountain and water experiences away from Nepal's urban centers while offering easy access to Annapurna region attractions. **Annapurna Range:** Daily views of these 26,000-foot peaks provided constant reminders of nature's power and beauty. The combination of pristine lakes, terraced hillsides, and snow-capped summits created some of the world's most spectacular mountain scenery. **Lake Experiences:** Boating on Begnas Lake while surrounded by Himalayan peaks created serene experiences highlighting Nepal's natural beauty beyond famous trekking routes. These peaceful encounters provided balance to intense cultural exploration. **Traditional Ayurveda Experience:** The resort offered authentic Ayurvedic treatments that proved unlike anything we had experienced before or since. The traditional massage involved lying completely naked and undraped on a stone slab while skilled practitioners ritually applied warm oils to every single square inch of the body. This intensely thorough and methodical approach to wellness, while perhaps initially uncomfortable for Western sensibilities, provided profound relaxation and demonstrated authentic Ayurvedic healing practices that have remained unchanged for centuries. The experience was simultaneously wonderful and slightly unsettling, but ultimately represented the kind of authentic cultural immersion that separates meaningful travel from mere tourism. **Traditional Hill Culture:** Village visits around Pokhara revealed how Himalayan communities adapt traditional agriculture, architecture, and social systems to mountain environments while maintaining cultural continuity across generations. ### Days 17-19: Kathmandu - Cultural Immersion **Hotel:** [Dwarika's Hotel](http://dwarikas.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- This architectural masterpiece, constructed using traditional techniques and materials, provided authentic Newari cultural immersion while offering luxury accommodations. The property demonstrated how traditional craftsmanship could create contemporary luxury experiences. **Pashupatinath Temple:** This sacred Hindu temple complex along the Bagmati River provided one of our most profound and moving cultural experiences. Watching families perform cremation rituals for recently deceased loved ones on floating funeral pyres created powerful encounters with Hindu death traditions. The sight of these orange flames reflected in the sacred river, while families maintained vigil and performed ancient rituals, offered intimate insights into Nepal's spiritual practices and the Hindu concept of death as transition rather than ending. **Bodhnath Stupa:** This massive Buddhist stupa, one of the largest in the world, dominated the Kathmandu landscape with its impressive white dome and golden spire. The most striking feature was the painted eyes of Buddha gazing out in all four cardinal directions, creating an omnipresent spiritual presence that seemed to watch over the entire valley. The colorful prayer flags streaming from the central spire and the steady stream of pilgrims circumambulating the stupa while spinning prayer wheels created a mesmerizing spiritual atmosphere. **Swayambhunath Stupa (Monkey Temple):** This ancient Buddhist stupa, perched on a hilltop overlooking Kathmandu Valley, provided spiritual experiences while offering panoramic views of urban Nepal and surrounding mountains. The resident monkey population added character to this sacred site, though visitors needed to guard belongings carefully. **Living Goddess at Kumari Bahal:** The tradition of the Kumari, where a young girl is selected as the living incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga, offered fascinating insights into Nepal's unique blend of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The ornate palace housing the living goddess and the rare glimpses of this revered child created encounters with living mythology. **Krishna Temple:** This stone temple dedicated to Lord Krishna showcased exquisite Newari architecture and provided insights into Nepal's Hindu devotional practices, with its intricate carvings telling stories from Hindu mythology. **Hiranya Varna Mahavihaar (Golden Temple):** This Buddhist monastery, known for its golden facade and intricate metalwork, demonstrated the sophisticated artistic traditions of Kathmandu's Newar craftsmen while serving as an active center of Buddhist learning and practice. **Durbar Square Complex:** Kathmandu's traditional royal complex showcased centuries of Newar architectural achievement through temples, palaces, and courtyards demonstrating sophisticated urban planning and artistic traditions. The entire complex served as a living museum where daily Hindu rituals continued alongside tourist visits, creating authentic cultural encounters. **Cultural Preservation:** Visiting traditional craft workshops, ancient libraries, and cultural institutions revealed how Nepal maintains cultural heritage despite modernization pressures and economic challenges. ## Spiritual and Cultural Insights **Living Buddhism vs. Living Hinduism:** The journey highlighted how ancient Buddhist traditions in Bhutan and Hindu practices in Nepal remain vital parts of contemporary life rather than museum displays. Daily religious practices, monastic education, community cooperation, temple rituals, and family ceremonies showed these as living philosophies addressing modern challenges. **Environmental Harmony:** Traditional approaches to environmental stewardship, particularly evident in Bhutan's carbon-negative policies and forest conservation, provided models for sustainable development that other nations might emulate. Nepal's traditional terraced farming methods also demonstrated sustainable mountain agriculture. **Alternative Development Models:** Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" philosophy offered insights into development approaches prioritizing spiritual and environmental well-being alongside economic growth. **Cultural Preservation Strategies:** Both nations demonstrated different approaches to maintaining cultural identity amid globalization - Bhutan through controlled tourism and traditional architecture requirements, Nepal through community-based heritage preservation and the continuation of ancient religious practices. ## Mountain Challenges and Rewards **Physical Demands:** High-altitude hiking, particularly the Tiger's Nest trek, required physical preparation and careful acclimatization. These challenges enhanced appreciation for the spiritual dedication required of monks living in such remote locations. **Weather Variables:** September's post-monsoon conditions provided clear mountain views but required flexibility for weather changes that could affect both sightseeing and transportation in mountainous terrain. **Transportation Logistics:** Mountain roads, limited airports, and weather dependencies required flexible scheduling and patience, but these limitations also preserved authentic experiences by preventing mass tourism development. ## Post-Visit Edit: Earthquake Considerations *It's important to note that we visited Nepal in 2013, two years before the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck on April 25, 2015\. This catastrophic event significantly damaged many of the cultural sites we experienced, including portions of Durbar Square, several temples, and other heritage structures throughout the Kathmandu Valley. While reconstruction efforts continue, visitors should be aware that some of the architectural marvels we describe may have been altered or damaged. The resilience of the Nepali people in rebuilding their cultural heritage while preserving ancient traditions continues to inspire, though the full extent of restoration remains ongoing.* ## Final Thoughts This Himalayan journey revealed two kingdoms that successfully balance tradition with modernization while preserving spiritual values increasingly rare in our materialistic world. Bhutan's deliberate approach to development and Nepal's resilient cultural preservation provided hope that ancient wisdom can guide contemporary societies. The physical challenge of reaching Tiger's Nest monastery symbolized the broader rewards of Himalayan travel - spectacular beauty, spiritual encounters, and cultural insights require effort and dedication but provide transformative experiences impossible to achieve through casual tourism. Most importantly, both countries demonstrated how different spiritual philosophies - Buddhism in Bhutan and Hinduism in Nepal - create societies that, despite their differences, both prioritize community welfare, environmental stewardship, and spiritual development alongside individual achievement. These alternative approaches to development offer lessons relevant to addressing global challenges of sustainability and social well-being. The combination of breathtaking Himalayan landscapes, authentic spiritual cultures, and encounters with societies choosing different paths from Western materialism created travel experiences that changed our perspectives on success, happiness, and humanity's relationship with the natural world. From the soaring heights of Tiger's Nest to the sacred fires of Pashupatinath, this journey reminded us that the most meaningful travel experiences often require us to challenge ourselves physically, spiritually, and culturally. **Most Challenging Adventure:** The 3-hour trek to Tiger's Nest monastery, climbing to over 10,000 feet on cliff-side paths **Most Spiritual Experience:** Sunrise meditation at mountain monasteries while surrounded by Himalayan peaks, and witnessing cremation ceremonies at Pashupatinath **Greatest Cultural Insight:** Understanding Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" philosophy and its practical applications alongside Nepal's living Hindu traditions **Most Spectacular Scenery:** Himalayan sunrise views from Dhulikhel revealing the entire mountain range from Everest to Annapurna **Perfect For:** Travelers seeking spiritual experiences, cultural immersion, challenging mountain adventures, and encounters with societies that prioritize well-being over material wealth. ### Eiji Toyoda (1913 - 2013) - Leading Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/eiji-toyoda-1913-2013-leading-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:48:26.000Z By Kevin Meyer Ever since I heard of the passing of Eiji Toyoda several days ago I have struggled to find the appropriate words to convey the impact he has had on the world of work. Mr. Toyoda is the leader that created what lean and kaizen is today, and he did so by understanding the power of people. The respect for people side of lean is more powerful than any tool, yet it remains the component least understood and underleveraged, thereby leading to most lean transformation failures. Others with a deeper and sometimes even personal understanding of Eiji Toyoda have already penned some great commemorative thoughts. - The Man Who Saved Kaizen by Jon Miller - Eiji Toyoda Passes Away at 100 by Mark Graban - Eiji Toyoda - The Master Innovator by Bill Waddell I'd encourage you to take the time to read them, think about the wisdom of Mr. Toyoda - especially his respect for people, and carry his memory forward as you work to transform your organizations. Rest in peace, Eiji Toyoda, you will be missed. And thank you. ### The Process of Exploring Out of the Box URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/exploring-out-of-the-box/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:49:12.000Z By Kevin Meyer On the long series of flights back home from Bhutan and Nepal last weekend I came across an article on CNN on Mark Zuckerberg's Bizarre New Self-Improvement Goal. I haven't really been a fan of the arrogant wonderkind, and the article didn't change that much, but this particular aspect of Zuckerberg did resonate - and the fact that CNN's Heather Kelly would call it "bizarre" perplexed me. *Every year, the Facebook CEO sets some sort of challenge for himself. In 2010, he tried to learn Mandarin. In 2009, he vowed to wear a tie to work every day to show he was serious about Facebook's growth (and possibly get a break from the signature T-shirt and hoodie he wears to every public event).* *The annual challenges sometimes make headlines, most famously in 2011 when Zuck vowed to eat animals only if he had killed them himself. That pronouncement led to a mixture of backlash and praise from animal-rights activists.* *This year, the famously introverted Zuckerberg is seeking out more conversations with actual humans.* That does seem a bit odd until you realize the world that the young founder of Facebook lives in - a rarified air of groupies, yes-men, analysts, and press types. Interacting with "actual humans" is probably a challenge. Why is that bizarre? I applaud him for it. And a key outcome is that he learned something new, and often unexpected. Trying to learn Mandarin taught him that he didn't listen well and a year of killing animals made him become more vegetarian. This year's goal, which he is achieving by giving face-to-face chats at schools, helped him understand the personal side of problems with immigration. The reason Zuckerberg's "bizarre" goals resonate is because I have had similar goals for well over twenty years. At first it wasn't a true goal - just something fun to do. But for the last decade or more it has been formal, with a process for identifying and executing and reviewing progress. This "do something different" annual goal is coupled with another goal my wife and I have had for the past decade: visit two new countries each year. We've sort of blown that one out of the box - averaging three new countries each year, including five so far in 2013. Over the past couple decades I've learned to scuba dive and windsurf, hard code HTML, written a book, rebuilt a car (a yellow 1973 Triumph Spitfire!), explored and became vegetarian (ok, "pescaterian") myself, skied five countries in six days (Germany, Italy, France. Switzerland, Austria), started this blog, and ran a full marathon. Last year my goal was to leave a great job as president of a great medical device company to become more in control of my life. I notified the board in January, executed a transition plan for myself and the company, and like a skydiver jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, left full-time secure employment on December 31st. I'm loving it, and as positive secondary effects a great new lean leader was developed and the company got a fresh infusion of lean energy. This year my goal is to learn about and understand Buddhism, something I'd bumped into during my many trips to Asia and yes, even living in California. So I've read books, talked to a lot of people, and in a sense gone to the gemba by just spending a couple weeks in Bhutan and Nepal. I've learned about the history, how it evolved and split into the Theravada and Mahayana traditions, how Mahayana then evolved into Pure Land, Tibetan, and the Zen tradition that's increasingly popular in the West. I didn't realize how little I knew, and how different reality is from popular western perception. As with each goal, the annual exploration takes me me down some interesting and often unexpected paths - thought, knowledge, or activity. I didn't know that there are an increasing number of practicing Catholic priests that also consider themselves Buddhist, since most Buddhist traditions are not deity-based and technically not a conflicting religion. Or how much the Bible has changed - in content, context, and even wording - especially during the 3rd and 5th century as the Catholic church sought to increase control by managing the message. And how the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, including texts written closer to the time of Jesus but discarded by the Church in the 5th century, creates some interesting mismatches with current evolved interpretation. Some of those "missing" texts bear a remarkable resemblance to Buddhist sutras, which themselves have likely evolved and changed since for a couple of centuries they were passed down verbally by memorization. Telephone game anyone? Something to think about when people mention "unerring scriptures" - be they Christian or Buddhist. Buddhism's inter-being concept is very similar to Christianity's Trinity. There's a fascinating book, [Living Buddha, Living Christ](http://www.amazon.com/Living-Buddha-Christ-Thich-Nhat/dp/1573220183?ref=kevinmeyer.com) by Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Buddhist monk, with contributions by religion scholars and Catholic priests, on how similar Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam actually are when you get past the blinders of evolved narrow dogma and go back to the origins. Have I become Buddhist? No, I can't say that, although the Zen tradition and aesthetic appeals to me. But I've learned what it is really about, I've incorporated many parts of the dharma that make sense to me spiritually (which is actually a core concept of Buddhism itself), and my eyes have been opened to some unexpected issues with traditional Christianity - which has actually strengthened my faith in the original message while lessening it with current dogma. It's been an interesting journey - and I still have a few months left. But that discussion is not the point - it just serves to support my point. The point is that many people say they "think outside the box" but how many actually "explore outside the box?" How many do it with an open mind? And how many create goals around that concept, and then put processes and hansei in place to ensure it happens? Zuckerberg apparently does. I sort of fell into doing it - I can't claim credit for knowingly doing it, especially initially. And at the midpoint of my current life (!), it has broadened my perspectives by challenging perceptions and beliefs, deepened my understanding of the world we live in, and taken me to interesting places - physical and spiritual - I previously wasn't even aware of. Toward the end of each year I identify something different, unique, or challenging, and develop a plan to dive into it. During the year I execute, reflect, and adjust. How will you explore out of the box next year? Perhaps more importantly, how will you ensure you actually do it, and why? ### The Productivity Impact of Pesky Intermediates URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-productivity-impact-of-pesky-intermediates/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:50:48.000Z By Kevin Meyer Seven years ago, yes seven, we started to wonder something about the [seemingly rosy U.S. productivity numbers](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2006/12/american%5Fmanufa.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com): *At its most fundamental level, productivity is manufacturing output divided by labor. If a company can produce more with less labor, the productivity number goes up. If a company moves an entire factory overseas, that manufacturing output and its associated labor are removed entirely from the domestic productivity number.* *The complication arises with the increasingly common practice of sourcing intermediate components from overseas factories. The final assembly is finished at a domestic factory, therefore the manufacturing output is counted. But the labor is only what was used at the domestic facility. The same output divided by a lower domestic labor content creates a higher domestic productivity number... even though the conversion efficiency of that factory was not necessarily higher. The reported productivity number has increased and jobs were sent overseas.* This troubled us and since we didn't claim to be economic experts, we [enlisted the help](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/manufacturing%5Fp/) of some notable economists like Alan Reynolds, Donald Luskin, Russell Roberts, Alex Tabrarrok, Steve Conover, and Brad Setser. They added their take to our analysis, basically agreeing that "there might be a problem." And, seven years later, it appears we were right. A report in the latest Manufacturing News describes how government statisticians are studying the issue and now believe that output growth may be 50% lower than than previous reported. *The federal government's statistical agencies have acknowledged that they have not measured -- and have even mis-measured -- the real impact on the U.S. economy of surging imports and outsourcing of U.S. production and services to low-cost foreign locations. As a result, the U.S. government has substantially over-reported productivity growth, manufacturing output and gross domestic product. Inflation and import data may also be wrong, as well as the assumption that automation is the primary cause for the loss of millions of American jobs.* *"The shift by U.S. manufacturers from domestic to low-cost imported intermediates has likely imparted a significant upward bias to measured growth in the sector's real value added," according to researchers from the Upjohn Institute and MIT. " 'Offshoring bias' occurs because the price decline associated with a shift from a high- to a low-cost supplier is generally not captured in the import or input price deflators. As a result, real import growth is understated, and the growth in real domestic value added and multifactor productivity is overstated."* *This statistical lapse is the likely reason why productivity rates have increased, but wage gains have not -- a situation that poses an intellectual quagmire for most economists who have been ignorant about the statistical anomalies associated with globalization's impact on the United States.* The good news is that the outsourcing trend appears to be slowing and in some circles even reversing. The bad news, as we see now (or seven years ago in our case...) is that the baseline of where we thought we were may not be correct. ### Leadership by Welch, Immelt... and Layer URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welch-immelt-and-layer/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:52:41.000Z By Kevin Meyer Regular readers know that I'm no big fan of Jack Welch, to put it mildly. My opinion is [shared](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a%5Fwretched%5Fexcu/) by many in the lean world, at least those that recognize that the second, oft-forgotten, pillar of lean is "respect for people." A concept diametrically opposed to Welch "leadership" methods. Unfortuntely the idol worship took hold. A generation of GE "leaders" and Welch worshippers barfed forth onto the business world and proceeded to decimate American manufacturing, and common sense for that matter. Welch held, and to some extent still holds, a power unrivaled since the pagan idols of ages old. I believe this was a significant contributor to the economic malaise of the last several years as the gullible followed his advice to outsource, chase cheap labor, whack employees, and measure success and value purely by the increase in stock price. Under Jack's successor, Jeff Immelt, GE has started to return ever so slightly to the real world. Some GE folks have realized the fallacy of chasing cheap labor and have even decided to [move appliance manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-reshoring-story-of-ge-appliances/) back to America. The company even claims to have "[discovered lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-as-the-last-resort/)"... 25 years after many other companies. So be it, kudos to where kudos are due. But they still have a long ways to go, especially from a leadership, particularly servant leadership, perspective. That was reinforced again this past week when Immelt penned a piece for LinkedIn on How to Differentiate Great Leaders from Good Leaders. In it he lists five questions he uses to discern great from the merely good: 1. Is the leader self-aware? 2. Is the leader committed to the organization and do they drive change? 3. Is the leader a giver or a taker? 4. Is the leader a critical thinker? 5. Does the leader have a dream for themselves and the company? Good characteristics, but the lean cognoscenti will immediately recognize a couple missing key aspects of real leadership. Before I get to that, let's compare this list to another article published last week. This piece was by Mike Myatt, in *Forbes*, describing Brigadier General Brian Layer's 10 Ways to Make Each Day a Leadership Masterpiece. The ten: 1. Excel in the moment. 2. Invest in a relationship and build trust. 3. Help someone else achieve and grow. 4. Listen. 5. Connect someone to your vision, mission, and priorities. 6. Thank someone. 7. Prepare for the known and study for the unknown. 8. Prepare for an important decision. 9. Leverage white space. 10. Grow physically, mentally, spiritually. Now... compare that to Immelt's list. Everyone should be able to see what's missing - the core of real leadership. And why Immelt and GE still have such a very long ways to go. I'll distill it down to two key concepts: 1. Leverage people... including yourself. 2. Learn... and teach. I've discussed both many times in the past as they are my personal hot buttons. Respect for people is a core pillar of lean, and not recognizing that is probably the primary reason lean transformations fail. Do you consider people a cost, or a value? A liability, or an asset? Regardless of what your traditional P&L tells you, and what that mission or vision statement on the wall, which hasn't been looked at in years, says. Are people really your most important asset? If so, how do you protect, nurture, and grow that asset? Or do you just fly all over the world chasing a lower cost for the [hands attached to the valuable brain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/this-is-your-brain/) you ignore? Be honest... In a somewhat similar manner since it also leverages people, I've also found that the best leaders are those that [voraciously seek out and consume knowledge](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-importance-of-the-knowledge-distillery/), then distill, implement appropriate new concepts, and especially teach. In my experience this has also become a consistently powerful predictor of future leadership ability. Do you augment your leveraging of people by mentoring and raising the knowledge level of your organization? Not just by paying for training, but by making a personal commitment of time and effort? Brian Layer gets it. He's a leader that challenges himself, is humble, and recognizes the value of people. Jack and Jeff could learn a thing, or actually two, from him. ### The Creativity of the Low Score URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-creativity-of-the-low-score/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:53:11.000Z By Kevin Meyer A few years ago when I was a young lad, a friend of mine introduced me to a newfangled gizmo called "Pong." We temporarily disconnected his Betamax from his 27" big screen TV (a new color model!) and connected up the game. I was hooked. I couldn't get enough of moving a white rectangle up and down the screen to intercept a moving white dot. Perhaps realizing I perversely enjoy estimating angles and trajectories is one reason I eventually went to engineering school. I didn't realize that this was a real addiction until a couple years later when I poured a small fortune of quarters into a Defender machine I discovered in a local fast food joint. Luckily the financial limitation, coupled with sufficient sanity to recognize and accept that limitation instead of resorting to, uh, unorthodox measures, helped me move on. Since then I have purposely and deliberately stayed away from video games. No Xbox, no Nintendo, nothing. I am self aware. Until two weeks ago when a friend of mine insisted I try Words with Friends - basically a repackaged online version of Scrabble. I was leery, but thought what the heck I'm now all grown up and should be able to handle it, and within hours completely understood how a certain actor could get kicked off a plane for refusing to stop playing. Dammit Edwilda! (Name changed to protect the guilty.) I proceeded to get sucked into game after game after game... and basically lost three days of my life before my evening hansei made me realize I had seriously diminished my productivity and that simply couldn't continue. Funny, only one game was with Edwilda. The evil game finds you other random anonymous opponents while you wait for others to play. Talk about feeding addiction, sneaky bastards. And so I stopped, cold turkey. Ok, after just one last game. Seriously. And that's where I finally get around to the point of this post. Yes it really was just one last game, but my anonymous opponent proposed something different: instead of the traditional goal of achieving the high score, how about saying the winner is the person with the lowest score after all tiles are played? Wow. Interesting way to play. Suddenly I'm looking at a Scrabble (ok, Words with Friends) board and trying to figure out how to use the lowest value letters, the least letters, and strategically use my one swap to push "X" and "Q" to my opponent. The game lasted much, much longer than a traditional game, and the screen was eventually filled with "do" and "it" and "no" type words. Think about how much harder that gets when you can't build off of letters in long words, you work avoid the dreaded double and triple letters and words, and so forth. Less is more valuable. More is a waste. The creativity required to be simple and short, again and again, is far greater than what it takes to be wordy and superfluous. There's a lesson in that. A life lesson, and perhaps even a lean lesson. ### Donating Cash... or Kaizen URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/donating-cash-or-kaizen/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:53:35.000Z By Kevin Meyer There was a fantastic story in The New York Times yesterday on how Toyota is helping various charities in the New York City area. Most charities simply like donations, especially cash. Toyota decided to give something different: expertise. *The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.* *Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.* As you might expect, at first there was skepticism. *But Toyota’s initial offer to the charity in 2011 was met with apprehension. “They make cars; I run a kitchen,” said Daryl Foriest, director of distribution at the Food Bank’s pantry and soup kitchen in Harlem. “This won’t work.”* Probably sounds like several executives we know in business as well, eh? But Toyota kept at it, and prevailed. And since then the results have been astounding - or what those of us in the lean world would have expected. *Toyota’s engineers went to work. The kitchen, which can seat 50 people, typically opened for dinner at 4 p.m., and when all the chairs were filled, a line would form outside. Mr. Foriest would wait for enough space to open up to allow 10 people in. The average wait time could be up to an hour and a half.* *Toyota made three changes. They eliminated the 10-at-a-time system, allowing diners to flow in one by one as soon as a chair was free. Next, a waiting area was set up inside where people lined up closer to where they would pick up food trays. Finally, an employee was assigned the sole duty of spotting empty seats so they could be filled quickly. The average wait time dropped to 18 minutes and more people were fed.* It didn't stop there. *At the Project Hospitality food pantry on Staten Island, which is part of the Food Bank network, Toyota engineers tried to expedite the pickup process. They drew a layout identifying spots where there were slowdowns. They reorganized the shelves by food groups and used colored tape to mark the grain, vegetable, fruit and protein sections. The time clients spent in the pantry was reduced nearly by half.* And another. *Lisa Anderson, an engineer with a background in manufacturing, watched as volunteers walked around a warehouse in Brooklyn and scrambled to pack boxes of food. So Ms. Anderson created an assembly line and volunteers dropped food items into boxes as they moved across a conveyor belt. The average time to pack one box shrank to 11 seconds from 3 minutes.* Imagine what would have been the result if Toyota had followed the traditional path and just donated cash. Which is the better long term solution, especially in the eyes of the end customer? When your organization donates to charitable causes, are they just fueling an inefficient process, or are they actually trying to create improvements? ### Yes, Carlos Danger, Character Still Matters URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/yes-carlos-danger-character-still-matters/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:54:10.000Z By Kevin Meyer It's been just over two years since Anthony Weiner's first admission to behaving badly, leading to his resignation from Congress. At the time I was amazed at how many folks tried to rationalize his behavior, prompting me to write a post on [The Character of a Weiner](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-character-of-a-weiner/). I basically argued that character is character and comes from a single brain, so trying to rationalize acceptance of poor character in one area while hoping for good character in another is ridiculous. *Character is not divisible. Thought patterns in the brain are not divisible. You cannot say a person has a high level of character in one area and forgive a lack of character in another. You cannot say a person can make great decisions in one aspect of life and be a complete idiot in another. It's the same brain. The differences are made consciously, and the fact that there are differences points directly at a lack of character. That's especially true when it wasn't one lapse of judgement but many. And we probably don't know everything yet.* Today's latest admission by Anthony Weiner, aka Carlos Danger, is a confirmation of my point. That was two years ago, and here we are. And once again we have some nuts that somehow believe that this is "simply about someone's personal sex life" and are completely oblivious to the bigger picture - such as Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory. Thankfully The New York Times already has a different opinion. I've become pretty disgusted with politics and politicians, to the extent that this year I've purposely tried to ignore most of it to avoid wasting time and energy on something I can't truly affect. To a lurching libertarian like myself, a financial conservative but a social liberal, both major parties are equally pathetic. Democrats basically trying to eliminate personal responsibility and put everyone on the government dole, and the hypocrisy of Republicans yammering about smaller, less intrusive government - except when it comes to our love lives, bedrooms, and wombs. Kennedy and Reagan wouldn't recognize their parties. But when leadership and the critical character component of leadership become an issue, then you've touched a part of me that I care about deeply, and I can't resist proferring an opinion. You see, Ms. Clark-Flory, this isn't about sex. This is about character. A critical aspect of leadership. Perhaps THE most critical. Like all of us I'm not perfect. I've wronged people and made the occasional poor choice - thankfully not to the extent of Mr. Danger. But when I moved into a leadership position I received the trust of others and I very consciously began to hold myself to a higher standard. I felt that trust and responsibility, deeply, from when I had just one direct report to when I had a thousand. My decisions and actions influenced and affected lives and livelihoods. Funny thing, I soon realized that even as an individual contributor, even in my personal life, I effectively had leadership responsibilities of a different form and should hold myself to higher standards at all times. Similarly I judge the leadership ability of others, and whether I choose to be lead by them, by their character. And actions reveal character. Character matters, Mr. Danger, because people have put their trust in you. Character matters, Mr. Danger, because you can influence others. Character matters, Mr. Danger, because you wield power - be it financial or authority or words. Anthony Weiner, you were elected to be a leader. When you resigned you remained in a leadership position because to some less enlightened folks you were still influential. You convinced yourself that you could still hold a formal, elected leadership position - even while continuing to display a shocking lack of character. Unfortunately you will always be Carlos Danger. And Mr. Danger does not have the character required for leadership. ### Snakes, GM, Engineers, and Wine URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/snakes-gm-engineers-and-wine/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:54:49.000Z By Kevin Meyer It's time to clear out some thoughts on an eclectic mix of articles I've been reading, so please pardon the potential mental whiplash. So what does your company do to keep an eye on competitors? Perhaps it's informal through the sales department, or perhaps there's a database of some sort. If you're GM, you of course create a committee. Seriously. *GM forms committee to keep eye on Tesla. General Motors dwarfs Tesla Motors in virtually every way -- number of cars made, sales and profits. But that doesn't mean GM isn't worried about the upstart electric car maker. GM has confirmed that CEO Dan Akerson has formed a task force within the company to look at the impact from alternative automakers. The only alternative car company it named: Tesla.* Mark Graban reminded me that this is exactly what the "old GM" used to do - to the amusement of their nemesis Ross Perot. As he put it back in 1988: *At GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes. Then you get a committee on snakes, and then you discuss it for a couple of years. The most likely course of action is -- nothing.* What's old, is new... A couple days ago there was an article in The Wall Street Journal asking whether engineering students should be charged higher tuition than those in the liberal arts. *Why does a student majoring in English have to pay the same tuition as an engineering student with much higher earning potential? In a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, one economist suggests looking at differential tuition—the practice of varying tuition costs across areas of study.The rationale behind differential tuition is that fees for majors should align with program-specific teaching costs and post-graduation income potential.* So, since engineers will presumably make more dough, they should be charged more. Hmmm... what about secondary effects? *The share of degrees awarded in engineering and business decreased within three years after putting in place the differential tuition program.* But of course. So, is the purpose to extract more moolah from higher income folks, or is it to encourage more people to go into fields where there is a strong demand and that often create even more jobs? Perhaps tuition should be inverse to demand, instead of being linked to income potential? Oh, wait, that would be market-based... Finally, a large winemaker just destroyed $145 million of the nectar of the gods. *One of the world's biggest vintners \[Treasury Wine Estates\] has a roaring hangover from poor U.S. sales, leading it to destroy thousands of gallons of wine past its prime.* This is particularly troubling to me as I live within 30 miles of over 250 wineries on California's central coast. Strangely, these nearby wineries are not suffering. In fact, U.S. demand is higher than ever. *Treasury Wine's struggles set it apart from the broader wine industry in the U.S., which is posting record sales after 19 straight years of volume growth and an increased thirst for imported labels. U.S. wine consumption rose 2.2% last year, reaching 345.1 million 9-liter cases, and rose 3.6% to $32.3 billion in retail sales, according to Technomic, an industry tracker.* So demand is up, but somehow one of the world's largest winemakers still screwed up. Why? *Much of Treasury's U.S. sales are in low-priced wines at a time when American tastes are turning more expensive. U.S. store sales of wine bottles priced between $3 and $5.99 edged up just 1.5% and bottles priced $6 to $8.99 dropped 3.3% in the 52 weeks ended May 25 in volume terms, according to Nielsen. By contrast, volumes of bottles priced $9 to $11.99 and $12 to $14.99 rose 13% and 9%, respectively, and those above $15 increased more than 6%.* So many lessons... chasing cheap instead of quality, focusing on illusions of volume instead of demand. And demand is down because friends don't let friends drink cheap wine! ### Online Lean and Six Sigma Training from Gemba Academy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/online-lean-and-six-sigma-training-from-gemba-academy/ Last updated: 2026-05-07T17:27:40.000Z And now a rare word from what is effectively our sponsor...! As many of you know, I am one of the partners in [**Gemba Academy**](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), a company that has been providing online lean and six sigma training for over four years. We now offer over 520 videos online. The **School of Lean** includes courses on all core lean topics, including 5S, Value Streams, Quick Changeover, and the just-released A3 Thinking. A recent addition has been the Gemba Live! series, featuring on-site videos showing lean in action at companies such as FastCap, Specialty Silicone Fabricators, and Pro CNC. The **School of Six Sigma** includes over 200 videos supporting an optional Black Belt certification. Our unique model is very simple: a *single price for unlimited, on-demand online training at a single site*. No per-seat, per-person, or per-use charges. Compared with the cost, let alone inconvenience and complexity, of traditional training methods, this represents an incredible value. Unlike other options, our videos are created by real lean practioners that learned how to make great training videos. We're thrilled that over 1,000 companies and organizations are now using Gemba Academy online training products. Companies range from small single-site machine shops to large multinationals, one with over 60 sites, and in industries from manufacturing to healthcare, food service, financial services, government, and the military. Subtitles are available in multiple languages, including Spanish and Chinese. July is a great month to sign up as we're running a promotion in collaboration with LeanPresentations.com. Specifically, between July 1st and July 31st anyone that purchases a Standard or Premium subscription to the School of Lean, School of Six Sigma, or the Combo of both will receive 115 PowerPoint training presentations plus a Lean Enterprise Strategy Kit which, sold separately, retails for $499. The fully customizable PowerPoint presentations cover a wide variety of lean manufacturing, lean leadership, lean enterprise, quality, and safety topics. The customizable Lean Strategy Kit takes your organization through the development and implementation of a lean enterprise strategy. This promotion will remain open to the first 500 customers or until July 31st, whichever comes first. All the details can be found by clicking here. I invite you to check out Gemba Academy! ### A Brush with Innovation URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/brush-with-innovation/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:55:51.000Z By Kevin Meyer Stories of U.S.-based low margin commodity manufacturers successfully competing against companies from "low cost" countries always intrigue me. Perhaps because they provide such a stick to poke at high margin companies that claim they can't compete. Those whiny, lazy blokes. An article in The New York Times was the most recent source of such fodder. *Chinese manufacturers long ago wreaked havoc on the U.S. textile, apparel, toy and electronics industries, but the disruption came slowly to the brush business. The collapse of the housing market in 2007 and the subsequent recession turned out to be a boon for China’s brush exports. With far less construction and far fewer jobs, not as many people needed paintbrushes (or brooms or toothbrushes). Those who did need them chose cheap imports over more expensive products made in America.* *That’s a familiar story for U. S. manufacturing. The strange thing here is that there are still more than 200 brush, broom and mop makers in the U.S. These companies have employed two strategies to stave off Chinese competition: 1) change everything all the time, or 2) don’t ever change a thing.* Two models. Reliable perfection and constant innovation. Which do you suppose works best? First there's reliable perfection. *Kirschner hasn’t changed a thing. He makes brushes the very same way, employing many of the same machines, that his father did 50 years ago. He told me that he sticks with the old ways because, unlike with toys and T-shirts, a big chunk of the brush business caters to professionals who aren’t merely shopping for price but rather for quality. Michael Wolf, who runs the Greco Brush Company, a supplier to professional house painters, told me that his customers need to know before each job that every single bristle on every single brush will be attached properly. One loose fiber left on a wall can damage a painter’s reputation, which in turn can hurt Wolf’s too. Wolf said that he can buy brushes for between a quarter and a dollar cheaper in China, but he is never sure exactly what he’ll get.* Then there's constant innovation. *At the other end of the business is Lance Cheney, 53, the fourth-generation president of Braun Brush, who told me that he would close his company rather than make the same kind of brush, the same way, for 50 years. He is constantly creating innovative brushes so that he never has any competition. His clients, he said, now include General Mills (he made a brush for their cereal-manufacturing line) and the energy industry (a line of expensive brushes for cleaning pipes in nuclear reactors). He even developed Brush Tile, fuzzy panels used in artistic wall hangings. He said his proudest creation is a tiny brush that helped Mars rovers dust debris from drilling sites. When Cheney sees other firms making one of his brushes, he often drops the product rather than enter a price war.* Both companies are still in business, in the U.S., which is something to celebrate in itself. But which is doing better? *Braun Brush \[constant innovator\] has grown at 15 to 20 percent annually for the past five years. Kirschner’s don’t-change-a-thing strategy has not brought anything like this kind of growth. Last year, he says, “was a disaster.” As was this spring. But June, so far, has been “unbelievably good.”* Constant innovation, or at least change, it is. *Our economy used to be built around Kirschners. Typical factories made money by reliably producing the same standard suite of products year in, year out. This provided stability to owners, workers, customers. Very quickly, though, America has become a nation of Brauns — one in which a product faces extinction, or a rebooting, shortly after it is unveiled.* *This flexible economy has many advantages. It brings a lot more wealth to those who do it right; over time, it should deliver more economic growth. But it also destroys much of the stability and predictability to which Americans had grown accustomed. These days, nearly every competitor in every field senses that one day, out of the blue, the entire logic of its economic value will be overturned by events it can’t foresee or control.* Remember, these are paint brush manufacturers we're talking about. Competing from the U.S. by leveraging speed, agility, innovation, and kaizen. Not encumbered by high labor "costs" or excessive regulation or whatnot. So explain to me, again, why you can't compete? As my first boss was fond of saying to his "team", "Are you incapable, or just incompetent?" ### Leadership: the Force Multiplier of Kaizen URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-the-force-multiplier-of-kaizen/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:56:33.000Z By Kevin Meyer Jabil's website promotes their commitment to lean, especially their report showing the following: That truly is impressive, and I happen to know something about Jabil and know it is real. Those numbers are driving significant increases in shareholder value - which is a result of creating value for their customers. They are committed to lean, and it starts at the top leadership levels. Toyota and other lean-driven companies are similar. Large numbers of kaizens - or just plain improvements - drive productivity improvements. In the case of Toyota it helps a labor-intensive factory in a high labor cost country be one of the company's [most efficient](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-1-toyota-kyushu/) \- without automation. When I see huge numbers like those at Jabil, Toyota, and elsewhere, I have to wonder a bit. The average impact of an individual kaizen is presumably fairly small, but the cumulative effect is very large. It takes serious leadership commitment to create a culture and environment where that can occur. I'm confident the leadeship of such companies is directly involved in kaizen themselves. Think about the other companies just starting down the lean journey, or those struggling to gain momentum. We know how absolutely critical leadership is at that time. Lean can start and even blossom from within the organization, but to truly succeed its value must be recognized, embraced, and driven from the top - the CEO, President, owner, or whatever. If it's not then the tough calls on resource commitments, priorities, keeping the faith when the inevitable early results aren't immediately financially favorable, will not be made. And the lean transformation will fizzle and stall. But leadership can also be a force multiplier of the kaizen effect. While tens or hundreds or even thousands of small kaizens are happening throughout the bowels of an organization, imagine the impact of just a handful of kaizens at the executive and especially CEO level. Instead of saving a thousand bucks here and there - which can definitely add up - a CEO that effectively practices kaizen can save millions or create millions in customer and shareholder value. I'm thinking of kaizen events that proactively identify a new market instead of reactively chasing competitors, plug a cash drain at an ineffective operation so the cash can be invested elsewhere, or implement an effective corporate training program that allows the company to better leverage the brains of its employees. Saving a few minutes or dollars here and there is very important, especially when mutiplied by all of the potential improvements in an organization. Saving or creating a few million bucks by making the really big improvements is equally important. And that, just as with driving and cultivating the lean journey itself, takes leadership. Leadership that commits to lean as a priority, that engages daily with the entire organization, that sets and continually reinforces a clear, concise vision of the ideal future state. I have come across many companies where the employees get it, and are trying to create a lean transformation, but the executive leadership is disengaged or even overtly skeptical. It's sad. I know where those organizations will be in a few years. Forgetting about the respect for people pillar of lean will cause a lean transformation to fail. Leadership that doesn't truly commit to and engage with the lean transformation will also cause it to stagnate and fail. But leadership, top leadership, that truly commits to the lean journey and leverages the power of people can create incredible value. Just ask Jabil. ### The Paralyzing Waste of Indecision URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-paralyzing-waste-of-indecision/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:57:38.000Z By Kevin Meyer One of my favorite blogs, Raptitude by David Cain, recently had a post on decisionmaking and minimalism. As an aspiring minimalist this appealed to me, but the commentary on choice and decisions was especially apropo. I've been lucky in that I've always had an ability to make good decisions quickly, whether based on real analysis or winging it from the gut. It's been invaluable in my career and even personal life. But most people I know are less fortunate, and I've noticed how indecision impacts many aspects of their lives. The problem is compounded with age, and in her last years I watched my mother in-law become literally debilitated and frozen by even the most basic decisions. Because she couldn't make decisions, the number of undecided issues made her life appear to be unnecessarily - and impossibly - complex. The impact of decisions begins with breakfast. *After years of being confronted with a decision shortly after waking, I decided to be done with deciding what was for breakfast. My usual is now the only thing on the menu, and since I stopped deciding what’s for breakfast, mornings have had a significantly different feel. They are clearer and more spacious.* I can relate - my breakfast is the same cup of greek yogurt and Grape Nuts each morning. I eat it while reading The Wall Street Journal on my iPad, just after my morning meditation and stretching, and just before [reviewing my journal](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/). Every day. Routine is satisfying, and calming. An abundance of choices and the decisions that accompany are both a benefit and curse of the modern world. *As affluent Westerners we’re fortunate to have so many choices, but according to psychologist Barry Schwartz, having too many possibilities — which we do in almost every area: breakfast, clothing, careers, lifestyles and creative pursuits to name some major ones — makes it consistently harder to be happy with the options we choose. In his [TED talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM&ref=kevinmeyer.com) he identifies the ways too many choices erode personal welfare instead of serving it.* By focusing on reducing options - minimizing choices - life becomes simpler... and calmer. *Although I didn’t always know why, I know that the more I simplify my life, in terms of its moment-to-moment options, the happier I am. Owning [fewer things](https://www.raptitude.com/2011/01/i-dont-want-stuff-any-more-only-things/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)made me immediately calmer and more grateful. Having an inflexible regular day for starting my weekly article drastically reduced my anxiety around writing. Cutting my monetary spending (almost) [down to the essentials](https://www.raptitude.com/2013/04/how-much-of-your-life-are-you-selling-off/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)gave me an immediate sense of control and abundance I never had before. I also suddenly have more money than ever — the side-effects of voluntary simplification tend to be wonderful and freeing, at least when you’ve been living the Western consumer status quo your whole life.* *The reason behind these breakthroughs, I see now, is the same. Each one reduced the number of decision points in my life. Every time I reduce the number of decisions I have to make just to move my life along, everything gets less difficult and I feel better about my direction. It becomes easier to be grateful and to get myself to do what is most important to me.* The implications go far beyond your daily meals. The best websites intuitively guide you among very few choices. Well-planned standard work reduces the variation of subjectivity while providing a foundation for kaizen. Where can you reduce options in your life and in your organization, thereby reducing the waste and unnecessary complexity of indecision, and the variability of multiple decisions? ### Learning by Writing... by Hand URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/learning-by-writing-by-hand/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T20:49:41.000Z I'm an early adopter tech geek at heart, and generally am among the first to embrace a new technology. I love my gizmos, although I focus on how they can be used to streamline and simplify life, not add unnecessary complexity. But there's one area where I'm still decidedly old school. I like to write... by hand. I've tried electronic planners and journals, but they just don't work for me. Instead of having to open my iPad, turn it on, select the right app, and then start writing in a somewhat clumsy manner, I prefer to open my small moleskine and just start scribbling. Each morning before I start work I write down my top three tasks for the day and I take a moment to record some gratitude - it's amazing how that creates focus and changes your perspective and outlook. During the day I'll take notes on calls, ideas, and to-do's. And at the end of the day I'll review - hansei - my top three to see if I accomplished what I set out to do, and if not then why not and how I'll improve. I'll record any final thoughts, which at my age is starting to be a necessity so the next morning I'll remember where I left off. Instead of an electronic task manager or online personal kanban, I have Post-It notes arranged in careful symmetry and order on my desk. Portable? No. Effective? Very much so. Journaling is an incredibly powerful tool Robin Sharma also talks about the power of journaling in this video. But there's another aspect of journaling that gives it power: handwriting it vs typing. Mark Gavoor dug into this this morning. *Yet, there is something more intimate and old school about hand writing. It is a different mind, eye, hand, pen, and paper interaction and interface than the mind, eye, finger, keyboard, and screen interaction and interface. It is hard to explain, but having done a lot of both there are differences. Perhaps it is quite simple explained by the fact that I first learned handwriting and, until recently, did all my writing that way. It may just feel more natural and comfortable. Another way of looking at it that with handwriting I am creating, more artistically, my own words and thoughts directly onto the paper. I can watch a notebook fill with my scribbling. Handwriting is more personal than typing on a screen even though there are limitless fonts to choose from. Handwriting into a notebook, where the cover gets worn and weathered (might I use the word Patina ?) is different compared to the anonymity and sameness of a list of .docx files stored on a hard disk or cloud.* I would distill it into something similar: The process of writing by hand creates understanding, ownership, introspection, and thus learning. This is also why I regularly harp on the [advantages of scribbling on whiteboards](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget%5Fsap%5Frun%5F/) over typing into "the machine" and then coercing that data onto reports or electronic displays. When you write a production number, metric, or problem on a white board you own that number, you immediately see the relationship between it and the numbers next to it, you recognize patterns and trends, and you may have to even explain it to peers standing around you. Action can be taken immediately to change an unfavorable situation. Typing into a computer? Not so much. Somehow that data is mysteriously transformed into other numbers and analyses that you may see a week or even month later and the linkage, understanding, and ownership of that relationship is lost. You end up with a bunch of folks trained to feed the machine, and a different bunch of folks trained to supposedly interpret what the machine spits out. The problem - and opportunity - is obvious. Write it, don't type it. You might be surprised with what happens. ### Two Phones, One Genius URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/two-phones-one-genius/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:00:19.000Z I admit it, I love Apple products. For me they just work how I want them to, and I haven't seen the "blue screen of death" since I switched from PC to Mac years ago. But as I've said many times in the past I really dislike Apple's manufacturing "strategy" and I hate having to bump up against a moral, ethical, and operations philosophical question every time I walk into an Apple Store. Besides the much discussed worker (don't tell me Apple really considers factory folks "team members" or "associates") safety issues, what really perturbs me is when the traditional business community lauds Tim Cook as a "supply chain genius." Give me a break. On what planet is putting virtually all of the manufacturing capability of a multi billion dollar company in pretty much the same place in a socially unstable country with unpredictable future economic policies that is often in overt political conflict with your home country, requiring product transport across the largest ocean in the world, considered "genius"? Sorry, that flunks elementary school risk analysis, and as I wrote a year ago, it's just an [average, traditional supply chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/apples-average-traditional-supply-chain/) that happens to be very big. So this morning The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is going to diversify its manufacturing. A big, bold move? Not exactly. *But under current Chief Executive Tim Cook, Apple is dividing its weight more equally with a relatively unknown supplier, giving the technology giant a greater supply-chain balance. Pegatron Corp., named after the flying horse Pegasus, will be the primary assembler of a low-cost iPhone expected to be offered later this year. Foxconn's smaller rival across town became a minor producer of iPhones in 2011 and began making iPad Mini tablet computers last year.* You read that right - "smaller rival across town" - in this case Shanghai. Not exactly a huge amount of risk abatement, let alone supply chain "genius." And how many of you Office Space movie fans snickered at "Pegatron"? Meanwhile we have another mobile phone company, Motorola, with a stunning announcement this morning. *Cellphone pioneer Motorola announced Wednesday that it’s opening a Fort Worth manufacturing facility that will create 2,000 jobs and produce its new flagship device, Moto X, the first smartphone ever assembled in the U.S.* *Motorola’s partner in the Texas project, global contract manufacturer Flextronics, has leased a 481,000-square-foot factory - about the size of eight football fields - in Fort Worth and has begun recruiting the nearly 2,000 workers who will assemble the Moto X, due to be released this summer. The factory, built by cellphone maker Nokia in the 1990s, had employed 3,800 people at its peak before it was closed in 2007, according to news reports at the time.* Wait... high volume electronics manufacturing in the U.S.? How is that possible? *Motorola Mobility officials said they see significant business logic to having a factory close to the engineers who are designing a new flagship smartphone and the customers they hope will buy it. Officials say it aids innovation while allowing for leaner inventories and lower shipping costs.* *“Doing that work of actually assembling the phone close to home will allow us to fix things faster, innovate faster,” said Dennis Woodside, chief executive of Motorola Mobility, a division that was bought by Google last year for $12.5 billion.* Bingo. There's more, much more, to manufacturing than just the "cost" of labor. Other companies in similar industries are also recognizing this, and to be fair, Apple is actually one of them. *Chinese computer maker Lenovo announced in October that it would build laptops and tablets in North Carolina, and Apple said this month that it would invest $100 million in a plant to assemble some of its Mac computers in Texas. Google, meanwhile, is producing the initial versions of its wearable Glass mobile devices in California.* And also to be fair, a huge market for Apple will be China and it is a good supply chain strategy to build product close to your customers. We'll see if there will be any long-term meat on those $100 million bones. I have hope. Meanwhile, thanks and congrats Motorola (and Flextronics) for thinking smarter about manufacturing. ### The Reek of Creativity URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-reek-of-creativity/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:00:41.000Z When I first read Justin Brady's article on creativity in *The Wall Street Journal* last week I immediately thought here comes another puff piece regurgitating worn-out cliches on the catch-all called leadership. Perhaps that's still true, but sometimes what is effectively the basic Senge's leadership model is worth revisiting. *Most leaders talk about creativity (or its cousin, innovation) without understanding what it is and how it happens. The process of real creativity is messy, chaotic, sometimes even disgusting, and it reeks of failure, experimentation and disorganization. Because of this, most leaders don't actually want creativity, they just want the results of it.* And most "leaders" - and I use that term loosely - especially don't like the reek of failure. Notably those that manage with a long-term vision that extends to the next quarterly earnings report. The author goes on to describe his particular take on leadership. *The creative output of any company always comes out of leadership that exhibits one very basic principle with three facets. Creative environments aren't planted, they are cultivated by leaders who:* *Listen. Listening is much different from hearing. When someone is truly listening, they keep eye contact and they strain to find meaning. When you are listening, you discover insights that weren't obvious before. In addition, your demeanor noticeably changes, making the person who is talking feel valued and thus more likely to be helpful—and creative.* *Empathize. This is a giant problem today, not only in companies but in politics and even relationships. Empathizing takes work. People who truly empathize not only try to put themselves in the other person's shoes, but they also make it a priority to find truth in their words. This shift of focus is dynamic, and unlocks explosive creativity.* *Trust. Listening and empathizing are useless if you can't trust another individual. Some ideas or concepts won't make sense to anyone but the innovator. That's what makes them innovators, they were capable of seeing a solution or connection no one else could. Any groundbreaking innovation is always poked and prodded when it comes out. Trusting is the final step of the creative process.* Ya, whatever. Add it to the heap. Not that he's wrong - he's not. It's just that it's all been said before, over and over, and the underlying key concept is glossed over: Effective leadership... and creativity and innovation and all that fine stuff... is a function of recognizing the value of people. To be a bit more specific, the value of the brains of people - not just the hands. If you treat the people (and their brains, if you realize there actually is a brain attached to the pair of hands) as a cost instead of a valuable asset, you will fail - regardless of how many times "employees are our greatest asset" is mentioned on the walls conference rooms. If you ply those people with free lunches and massages, yet you don't trust them, you will fail. But if you recognize, support, nuture, and cultivate the value in those brains then the rewards will follow. ### Net Nonsense - hilarious commentary URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense-hilarious-commentary/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:02:08.000Z My [Net Nonsense post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense/) from a couple weeks ago on the evils of large companies trying to force long payment terms on suppliers received considerable coverage, including being [reposted in Quality Digest](https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/net-nonsense.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) this week. However the best - and funniest - commentary was by the editors of Quality Digest in their Quality Digest Live video. For ten minutes, beginning at about the 13:20 point, they savage some well-known companies like DuPont, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly Clark, JC Penney, and more. Check out their review of the hypocrisy of the mission statements of these companies. Ha! No kidding. Actually rather sad. Enjoy! ### Portugal, Spain & Morocco: From Lisbon's Hills to Marrakech's Souks URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/portugal-spain-morocco-from-lisbons-hills-to-marrakechs-souks/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T17:19:10.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_5375.JPG) Our April 2013 journey through Portugal, Spain, and Morocco revealed three distinct cultures united by centuries of historical interaction across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar. From Lisbon's colorful neighborhoods to Seville's Moorish architecture and Marrakech's vibrant souks, this adventure combined European sophistication with North African authenticity while retracing ancient trade routes and cultural exchanges. ## General Comments **Three-Country Cultural Arc**: This itinerary traced the historical connections between Iberian Peninsula and North Africa through Islamic conquest, Reconquista, and ongoing cultural exchange. Moving from Portuguese maritime heritage through Spanish Moorish influences to Moroccan Islamic culture revealed how geography and history create cultural continuities across political boundaries. **Seville's Personal Connection**: Having Kim revisit Seville, where she spent a college semester abroad, added personal significance to our Spanish exploration. Returning to familiar places with adult perspective while sharing those experiences created meaningful travel dimensions beyond typical tourism. **Marrakech Sensory Immersion**: Morocco's imperial city provided complete cultural immersion through chaotic souks, traditional crafts, haggling adventures, and the haunting beauty of Islamic call to prayer echoing across the city five times daily. These experiences challenged Western sensibilities while revealing sophisticated Islamic civilization. **Culinary Exploration**: Each country's distinctive cuisine reflected historical influences - Portuguese seafood and pastries, Spanish tapas and Andalusian specialties, Moroccan tagines and mint tea. The progression revealed how Mediterranean and Islamic culinary traditions influenced each other across centuries. **Spring Timing**: April weather proved perfect across all three destinations - comfortable temperatures for city walking, clear skies for architectural photography, and pleasant evenings for outdoor dining and cultural exploration. **Accommodation Excellence**: Luxury properties in each destination enhanced cultural experiences while providing comfortable bases for intensive sightseeing and cultural immersion. ## Portugal: Maritime Heritage and Urban Charm ### Days 1-4: Lisbon - City of Seven Hills **Hotel**: Four Seasons Lisbon - This modern luxury hotel provided contemporary comfort while maintaining easy access to Lisbon's historic neighborhoods and cultural attractions. **Alfama District**: Lisbon's oldest neighborhood, with narrow cobblestone streets winding up steep hillsides, preserved authentic Portuguese character despite tourism development. Fado music echoing from small restaurants, traditional tile work, and panoramic viewpoints created quintessentially Portuguese urban experiences. **Belém Cultural Complex**: The Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower demonstrated Portugal's maritime golden age when explorers like Vasco da Gama opened sea routes to Asia and the Americas. These UNESCO World Heritage monuments showcased Manueline architecture unique to Portuguese Renaissance. **Tram Adventures**: Lisbon's historic trams, particularly the famous Tram 28, provided scenic transportation through diverse neighborhoods while offering authentic local transportation experiences. These vintage streetcars remain functional parts of city infrastructure rather than mere tourist attractions. **Culinary Discoveries**: Portuguese cuisine surprised us with sophisticated seafood preparations, excellent wines, and the famous pastéis de nata custard tarts from their original birthplace at Belém's monastery bakery. Traditional markets revealed fresh ingredients and local specialties unavailable elsewhere. **Sintra Day Trip**: This fairy-tale mountain town, just 30 minutes from Lisbon, showcased romantic Portuguese architecture through colorful Pena Palace and mysterious Quinta da Regaleira gardens. The UNESCO World Heritage landscape demonstrated how Portuguese nobility created fantastic architectural environments. ## Morocco: Islamic Civilization and Sensory Overload ### Days 5-8: Marrakech - Red City Adventure **Hotel**: Four Seasons Marrakech - This luxury resort provided peaceful retreat from medina intensity while incorporating traditional Moroccan design elements and offering comprehensive spa and dining facilities. **Medina Exploration**: Marrakech's ancient walled city created labyrinthine experiences through covered souks, traditional crafts workshops, and hidden courtyards. The UNESCO World Heritage medina preserved medieval Islamic urban planning while functioning as contemporary commercial and residential center. **Jemaa el-Fnaa Square**: This central plaza transformed throughout the day from fruit vendors and snake charmers to evening food stalls and traditional storytellers. The constant activity, sounds, and aromas created sensory experiences impossible to replicate elsewhere. **Souk Adventures**: Negotiating purchases in traditional markets provided cultural education in Islamic commercial traditions, craftsmanship appreciation, and bargaining skills. From carpets and leather goods to spices and traditional clothing, these encounters combined shopping with cultural immersion. **Call to Prayer**: The haunting beauty of muezzin calls echoing across the city five times daily provided spiritual atmosphere regardless of religious belief. These ancient Islamic traditions created temporal rhythms connecting contemporary Marrakech to centuries of Islamic civilization. **Traditional Crafts**: Visiting artisan workshops revealed how traditional skills - metalwork, textiles, ceramics, leather working - remain economically viable while preserving cultural heritage. These encounters supported local craftsmanship while providing authentic cultural education. **Majorelle Gardens**: This botanical garden, restored by Yves Saint Laurent, demonstrated how colonial and contemporary influences blend with traditional Moroccan design. The combination of exotic plants, Islamic architecture, and modern artistic sensibilities created unique urban oases. **Hammam Experiences**: Traditional Moroccan baths provided cultural immersion through ancient bathing rituals while offering relaxation after intensive medina exploration. These authentic spa experiences connected us to Islamic wellness traditions spanning centuries. ## Spain: Moorish Heritage and University Memories ### Days 9-12: Seville - Islamic Legacy and Personal Returns **Hotel**: Hotel Alfonso XIII - This historic palace hotel provided luxury accommodations in traditional Andalusian style while offering central location for exploring Seville's cultural treasures. **Personal Reconnection**: Kim's return to Seville, where she studied during college, provided opportunities to revisit favorite places while sharing those formative experiences. Comparing youthful impressions with adult perspectives revealed how travel experiences evolve with life experience. **Alcázar Palace**: This royal complex showcased the finest Islamic architecture in Spain through intricate geometric patterns, peaceful courtyards, and sophisticated water features. The ongoing use as royal residence demonstrated how Islamic artistic traditions influenced Spanish culture permanently. **Cathedral and Giralda**: Seville's massive Gothic cathedral, built on the mosque's foundation with the minaret converted to bell tower, symbolized the complex relationship between Islamic and Christian civilizations in Andalusia. Climbing the Giralda provided panoramic city views while revealing architectural evolution. **Barrio Santa Cruz**: This former Jewish quarter, with narrow streets and hidden plazas, preserved medieval Seville character while housing contemporary restaurants, shops, and cultural attractions. Walking these streets revealed layers of Seville's multicultural history. **Flamenco Culture**: Attending authentic flamenco performances provided insights into Andalusian cultural traditions blending Islamic, Jewish, and Gypsy influences. These passionate artistic expressions demonstrated how diverse cultural traditions create unique regional identities. **Tapas Traditions**: Seville's incredible tapas culture, from traditional bars to contemporary interpretations, provided culinary education in Andalusian ingredients, preparations, and social dining customs. These experiences revealed how food traditions reflect historical and cultural influences. **University Nostalgia**: Visiting Kim's former study abroad locations, favorite restaurants, and memorable sites provided opportunities to share personal history while reflecting on how travel experiences shape individual development and cultural understanding. ## Cultural Connections and Historical Insights **Islamic Architectural Legacy**: Moving from Marrakech's authentic Islamic architecture through Seville's Mudéjar adaptations revealed how artistic traditions transcend political boundaries and religious differences. The geometric patterns, courtyard designs, and decorative techniques demonstrated shared aesthetic values across cultures. **Trade Route Continuities**: Following ancient commercial connections between Morocco and Iberian Peninsula provided education in how economic relationships create cultural exchange, linguistic borrowing, and artistic influences that persist across centuries. **Religious and Cultural Synthesis**: Each destination revealed different approaches to managing cultural diversity - Morocco's Islamic civilization, Spain's Christian-Islamic synthesis, and Portugal's maritime cosmopolitan traditions. These varying approaches demonstrated multiple paths to cultural sophistication. **Contemporary Challenges**: Observing how each country balances tradition with modernization, tourism development with cultural preservation, and local needs with international visitors provided insights into contemporary challenges facing historically significant destinations. ## Culinary and Sensory Adventures **Spice Market Education**: Marrakech's spice souks provided comprehensive education in North African cuisine through aromatic encounters with saffron, ras el hanout, preserved lemons, and dozens of unfamiliar seasonings. These sensory experiences enhanced understanding of Moroccan culinary traditions. **Traditional Cooking Methods**: Observing tagine preparation, couscous techniques, and traditional bread baking provided insights into how Islamic dietary laws and desert conditions shaped North African cuisine over centuries. **Cross-Cultural Influences**: Tasting Portuguese-influenced Moroccan dishes, Moorish-inspired Spanish preparations, and African elements in Portuguese cuisine demonstrated how historical connections continue influencing contemporary food cultures. ## Final Thoughts This three-country journey demonstrated how geographical proximity and historical interaction create cultural continuities transcending political boundaries. The Islamic influences visible in Portuguese tiles, Spanish architecture, and Moroccan traditions revealed how civilizations share artistic and intellectual achievements across religious and ethnic differences. Kim's return to Seville added personal dimensions to our cultural exploration while demonstrating how revisiting formative travel experiences with adult perspective deepens appreciation for both places and personal growth. Sharing these meaningful locations enhanced our understanding of how travel shapes individual development. Most importantly, experiencing Islamic call to prayer, traditional souks, and ancient architectural traditions provided respectful encounters with civilizations often misunderstood in Western media. These authentic cultural experiences fostered appreciation for Islamic artistic achievements, commercial traditions, and spiritual practices that continue enriching global culture. The combination of European sophistication and North African authenticity, historical education and contemporary cultural encounters, personal memories and shared discoveries created travel experiences demonstrating how thoughtful cultural exploration enhances understanding of our interconnected world. **Most Memorable Sensory Experience**: Islamic call to prayer echoing across Marrakech five times daily, creating temporal rhythms connecting the ancient city to centuries of Islamic tradition **Best Cultural Immersion**: Bargaining in Marrakech's souks while learning traditional craft techniques and supporting local artisans **Most Personal Moment**: Kim revisiting her college study abroad locations in Seville and sharing formative travel memories **Greatest Architectural Wonder**: Seville's Alcázar palace showcasing the finest Islamic decorative arts adapted for Christian royal residence**Perfect For**: Travelers interested in Islamic culture, historical connections between Europe and Africa, authentic market experiences, and understanding how civilizations influence each other across political boundaries. ### Net Nonsense URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/net-nonsense/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:03:07.000Z A few months ago I told you how, in my past life as president of a medical device company, I had two [reliable leading indicators of a potential customer relationship](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/payment-terms-a-leading-indicator-of-partnership/). Basically if the customer demanded automatic annual price decreases, or if their payment terms were greater than net-30\. Those few customers that offered to pay faster would become strong partners as they knew supplier financial stability is in their best interest. Those that tried to insist on longer terms just considered suppliers a necessary evil. The correlation was nearly perfect. Luckily my company supplied unique components, so we also had leverage. Upon receipt of a request for long terms I'd fire back a letter saying that in my book the oft-forgotten "respect for people" pillar of lean also applies to suppliers (and customers for that matter), and trying to turn a relatively small supplier into a bank for a Fortune-50 was an affront to a productive relationship. Our terms would remain net-30 or less, or we wouldn't take the order. Occoasionally I received more pushback, including from a very large multinational, coincidentally in the news lately for "discovering" lean (in 2012...) and moving their appliance manufacturing back to the U.S., asking for net-120\. Sorry, still net-30 to you, buddy. So imagine what went through my mind when *The Wall Street Journal* reported last week how many companies like Procter & Gamble are pushing to lengthen terms even further. *Procter & Gamble is planning to add weeks to the amount of time it takes to pay its suppliers, a shift that could free up as much as $2 billion in cash for the consumer products giant. P&G could use that cash to fund investments in new factories overseas or to help pay for stock buybacks.* Obviously there's another party to that transaction. *That added flexibility, however, will come at the expense of the companies that supply P&G with materials or services. The suppliers will have to tie up more of their own cash in receivables or eat the interest costs charged by banks to bridge the gap until P&G pays its bills.* Yep, that's partnership. Turn your much smaller suppliers into a bank. And sure, it could "free up" $2B in cash for the large customer, but obviously that reduces by $2B the cash those smaller suppliers have to develop new processes and technologies. So who really loses in the end? *The moves are creating ripple effects. Companies that hold on to cash longer create deficits at suppliers that have to find financing, raise prices or squeeze other firms along the supply chain. Smaller companies with little bargaining power and less access to credit ultimately could see their costs rise, pinching funds that could otherwise be spent on hiring or investments.* And speaking of banks... *To help suppliers deal with the changes, P&G is working with banks that will offer to advance cash to suppliers after 15 days for a fee, some of the people said.* Wait... so not only are they sucking cash out of suppliers so they can't invest in the innovations that presumably their customers - and end customers - will want later, they are adding to overall supply chain cost by giving banks a piece of the pie. I bet some of these companies even have the gall to call themselves "lean." I was stewing over this when our friend Bill Conerly wrote a fantastic rebuttal to this nonsense in Forbes. If I was the CFO of P&G I'd feel pretty ashamed, or just plain stupid, after reading it. Not that most CFOs understand the real world anyway. *Procter & Gamble is about to lose money thanks to CFO hubris. It won’t be the only large corporation, however, to get caught up in false economy. The Wall Street Journal reported that P&G will extend its payment terms to suppliers. This sounds like normal corporate practice, and it is. But normal is not always good.* Bill then digs in... *I understand working capital management, but many of these corporations don’t understand. P&G has a Aa credit rating on its bonds. It can probably float 60 day commercial paper for 0.10%. Small companies with bank lines are often borrowing at 3.5% to 4.5% interest. Many small businesses, though, are not eligible for bank lines. They may use finance companies to factor receivables, or even the owner’s credit card. So 4.0% is very conservative as an estimate of borrowing cost for small business.* *Let’s say that the small business sells the large corporation $100,000 of materials. Instead of paying in 10 days, the corporation demands 75 day terms. OK, that extra 65 days save the corporation $8\. (60/365 times 0.10% times $100,000). What does it cost the small business to let the payment wait an extra 65 days? $329\. (60/365 times 4.0% times $100,000). So the big fish saves $8, costing the small fish $329.* Yep, that's partnership. Have I said that before? But here's the kicker: the stated reason for this nonsense is to "free up cash." Is sticking it to the suppliers really the best way? *The idea mentioned in the article was to “free up cash,” but cash is readily available from cheaper sources. Perhaps Wall Street would rather see “accounts payable” on the balance sheet than “commercial paper outstanding.” After the recent financial crisis, one can get nervous about commercial paper becoming unavailable. However, any company dependent on its suppliers needs to also worry about the suppliers’ credit being jerked away. History is full of examples of small businesses losing access to credit, to the detriment of their customers.* Bill then reaches a conclusion that the truly lean company will understand: *The focus of both parties to each supply agreement should be how to provide better products at lower cost. When one party gets too focused on getting the better side of the bargain, then the joint effort is less likely to succeed. If one of the parties in a transaction has to borrow, it should be the party with the cheaper debt cost.* Amen. So next time a customer asks you for long payment terms, perhaps you should just ask them why their financial situation is so difficult that they want to use a much smaller supplier as a bank, risking your financial solvency let alone investment in new and improved processes, instead of tapping a much cheaper line of credit. Fools. ### A Lesson on Leadership from Marrakech URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lesson-on-leadership-from-marrakech/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:04:50.000Z My wife and I are currently in Marrakech, Morocco, on one of our increasingly frequent trips to explore new locales. Truly a remarkable place, and with the tall snowcapped Atlas Mountains only an hour away in one direction, and the ocean in another, I'm convinced it's destined to become another mecca for sports enthusiasts similar to Queenstown, New Zealand. The people are exceptionally friendly - just three weeks ago CNN ranked it the third most welcoming country to visitors, coincidentally right after New Zealand. The craziness of the souks in the medina provide an interesting diversion. One of the reasons my wife and I enjoy traveling so much is because we've become convinced of the importance of first trying to understand differences before making judgments. I guess we're sort of going to the gemba on our worldview. One example from right here in Morocco is how Islam is practiced as a positive, inclusive, compassionate religion - and they are appalled at how it has been corrupted to the contrary by the fringe fundamentalists. Gee, sounds familiar. As a side note, I've found the djellaba robe to be exceptionally comfortable, and I even bought one. Not sure I'll wear it to Walmart when I get home though. The influence of Islam is pervasive, and one way it's readily apparent is through the Adhan, the "call to prayer" that you hear the Muezzins chant five times a day, usually via loudspeakers high on the minaret in every mosque. You might think that's a bit annoying, but aside from issues resulting from poor amplification, it's actually quite beautiful. Here's a [YouTube version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF2bf8hC%5FsU&ref=kevinmeyer.com) with English subtitles. But think about this from a leadership perspective (yes, I finally got around to that...). Five times a day Muslims are reminded of their faith and are asked to reflect on it. And practicing Muslims will, whenever possible. Upon hearing the call at one point yesterday, our tour guide asked for a moment, found a corner in a private room, and performed the ritual. It only took a couple minutes. Five times a day the distraction of daily chaos (especially in a place like Marrakech!) is realigned to a larger ideal and purpose. Leadership can be tough. Lean transformation and hence lean leadership even more so. One of the greatest difficulties is keeping both the leader and the team focused on what can be counterintuitive goals. Moving forward while grenades and distractions are being lobbed from all sides, trying to pull you back into a short-term mindset. Take the time to discover and define the true purpose of the organization. Translate that into a long-term strategy with short- and intermediate-term objectives. Then communicate and reinforce that purpose, strategy, and thinking... over and over and over. At least five times a day. ### The Last 100 Feet of Walmart's Supply Chain URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-last-100-feet-of-walmarts-supply-chain/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:05:15.000Z I've written a lot about Walmart, in particular their supposedly glorious supply chain. To be honest, they execute a traditional supply chain exceptionally well. They source from cheap labor countries, put it on big ships, and distribute it to thousands of stores incredibly efficiently. For a traditional supply chain. They still run into issues with too much inventory floating on slow-moving ships, arriving after that particular style has lost favor. And they beat the crap out of their suppliers to get every last penny of margin out of them, and then claim they deliver that to their customers. If they actually get the product to their customers. Something Walmart is apparently forgetting is that the supply chain is not complete until the product is in the hands of their customers. That last hundred feet from the store's big back room to the shelves has become an issue. *During recent visits, the retired accountant from Newark, Delaware, says she failed to find more than a dozen basic items, including certain types of face cream, cold medicine, bandages, mouthwash, hangers, lamps and fabrics. The cosmetics section “looked like someone raided it,” said Hancock, 63\. “If it’s not on the shelf, I can’t buy it,” she said. “You hate to see a company self-destruct, but there are other places to go."* As I mentioned, it's only a hundred feet away. If that. *It’s not as though the merchandise isn’t there. It’s piling up in aisles and in the back of stores because Wal-Mart doesn’t have enough bodies to restock the shelves, according to interviews with store workers.A thinly spread workforce has other consequences: Longer check-out lines, less help with electronics and jewelry and more disorganized stores, according to Hancock, other shoppers and store workers.* *At the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Wal-Mart where Mary Pat Tifft has worked for nearly a quarter-century, merchandise ready for the sales floor remains on pallets and in steel bins lining the floor of the back room -- an area so full that “no passable aisles” remain, she said. Meanwhile, the front of the store is increasingly barren, Tifft said. That landscape has worsened over the past several years as workers who leave aren’t replaced, she said.* Of course Walmart has a different perspective... *“Our in stock levels are up significantly in the last few years, so the premise of this story, which is based on the comments of a handful of people, is inaccurate and not representative of what is happening in our stores across the country,” Brooke Buchanan, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement.* A lot of good that does you if you can't get it onto the shelves. Perhaps that spokeswoman should talk to some Walmart execs. *Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Wal-Mart was “getting worse” at stocking shelves, according to minutes of an officers’ meeting. An executive vice president had been appointed to work on the restocking issue, according to the document.* Ouch. *“When times were good and people were still shopping, the lack of excellence was OK,” said Zeynep Ton, a retail researcher and associate professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Their view has been that they have the lowest prices so customers keep coming anyway. You don’t see that so much anymore.”* *Shoppers are “so sick of this,” said Ton, whose research, published in Harvard Business Review, examines how retailers benefit from offering good wages and benefits to all employees. “They’re mad about the way they were treated or how much time they wasted looking for items that aren’t there.”* In Walmart's eyes it's apparently those pesky workers again. What a "cost"... *Retailers consider labor -- usually their largest controllable expense -- an easy cost-cutting target, Ton said. That’s what happened at Home Depot in the early 2000s, when Robert Nardelli, then chief executive officer, cut staffing levels and increased the percentage of part-time workers to trim expenses and boost profit. Eventually, customer service and customer satisfaction deteriorated and same-store sales growth dropped, Ton said. “When you tell retailers they have to invest in people, the typical response is: ‘It’s just too expensive,’” Ton said.* *Wal-Mart is entangled in what Ton calls the “vicious cycle” of under-staffing. Too few workers leads to operational problems. Those problems lead to poor store sales, which lead to lower labor budgets. “It requires a wake-up call at a higher level,” she said of the decision to hire more workers.* As opposed to the cost - and not just in sales - of empty shelves. Like the rest of us, even Walmart is only as good as the last 100 feet of its supply chain. Sometimes all it takes is the "cost" of another human or two. ### The Postal Service Forgets the Customer URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-usps-forgets-the-customer/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:06:33.000Z A recent CNN article pretty much describes the problem at the US Postal Service, although that wasn't really its intent. You see, there's this new startup called Outbox that is working to digitize traditional paper mail, and our beloved USPS is having a bit of a conniption about it. I think this is a terrific idea as I've been trying to make more and more of my life electronic - and thereby location independent. A few years ago I subscribed to a voicemail service that emails me the voicemail so I don't have to be near a phone. Last year that service even began transcribing those voicemails (with remarkable accuracy by the way) so I don't even have to listen to the audio file - I can just rapidly scan the "voice"mail. For the last year I've also been able to take a photo of checks with my phone and deposit them to my business or personal bank accounts. Another app on my phone lets me photograph documents, sign, convert to PDF, and email or fax them to a recipient. No more going to banks, fax machines, or sometimes even a computer. I can work just as efficiently from home, the car, or Tahiti. In your face [Marissa Mayer](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/disposable-people-and-rethinking-time/)! Almost. The missing piece has been incoming paper mail. But with Outbox and a couple of other competing services, that may soon be resolved. Unless the USPS gets in the way. *A driver of a white Prius with a giant, red plastic flag affixed to its side is rolling through the hilly streets of San Francisco, undelivering mail from mailboxes.* *The driver is not a thief. He and the car are part of a startup called Outbox that is attempting to pick up where the embattled United States Postal Service leaves off -- by digitizing physical mail.* *He collects the letters, bills, magazines and advertisements that were deposited there by official postal workers and delivers them to a warehouse. There they are opened and photographed, and the resulting digital files are sent electronically to the recipient through the Outbox website or iPad or iPhone apps.* *The company already has more than 600 customers in Austin, Texas, and starting Tuesday it's rolling out in its second city, San Francisco.* And it all costs $4.99 per month. Even with the USPS standing in its way. *Creating a shadow, reverse postal service may not be the most efficient way to improve the struggling mail system, but Outbox is unable to intercept clients' mail any sooner in the process. The company has met resistance from the United States Postal Service, which has refused to collaborate with Outbox or let its workers pick up mail directly from local post offices.* Why does the USPS have a problem? *"The Postal Service is focused on providing an essential service in our mission to serve the American public and does not view Outbox as supporting that mission," the USPS said in a statement. "We do have concerns regarding the destruction of mail -- even if authorized by the receiver -- and will continue to monitor market activities to ensure protection of our brand and the value and security of the mail."* And that statement describes why the USPS is a sinking ship. "Protection of our brand and the value and security of the mail." But what about the customer? I mean the home customer, not the providers of bulk junk that is [increasingly the primary revenue source](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/knowingly-jumping-off-a-cliff/) of the USPS. Imagine a different path. A postal service that is focused on increasing value to its customers rather than protecting its "brand." Instead of fighting startups like Outbox they'd be creating that innovation themselves, converting paper mail to electronic digital formats for folks like me that immediately scan and shred anything we have to keep anyway. Or maybe they go even further an enable the sending of original mail electronically, instead of [trying to entice companies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poster-boys-for-lean-accounting-strategic-pricing/) to remain paperbound to create "demand." But no. That would mean thinking of value from the perspective of the customer. And that's apparently not as important as the brand - whatever value that has anymore. ### 68 Free Lean and Six Sigma Training DVDs! URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/68-free-lean-and-six-sigma-training-dvds/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:07:20.000Z Gemba Academy is excited to announce its March promotion! Specifically, between March 1 and March 31 anyone that purchases a 1-year subscription to the School of Lean and School of Six Sigma will receive all of Gemba Academy's 450+ training videos on 68 DVDs absolutely free, including worldwide shipping. Sold by themselves these 68 DVDs retail for $2,295\. Additionally, subscribers will also receive a single user license to Minitab 16/Quality Companion 3 and SigmaXL for no additional charge. This promotion will remain open to the first 500 customers or until March 31, whichever comes first. For more details on the promotion please visit: Learn why over 2,000 companies in over 30 countries use Gemba Academy lean and six sigma training products. “The fact the courses are delivered into small, bite-size modules, makes learning easier and allows the students to go back to a particular module for refresher training. This reinforces particular learning points for the student and makes learning much more effective. This results in a more engaged and active participant.” Jeff Miller, Global Best Practices Group Chair, Toyota ### Those Disposable People URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/disposable-people-and-rethinking-time/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:07:58.000Z Several articles over the past week have once again raised my hackles on the oft-forgotten second pillar of lean: respect for people. Two weeks ago Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made the news by mandating that Yahoo employees can no longer work from home. This raised the hackles of many, especially those of us that do work from home. Dan Markovitz admonished us as bit, but appropriately, reminding us that since we're not in her shoes we should respect her - and her decision. *I have my own opinions about her decision, but in the absence of observable fact, my opinions are based on preconceptions, personal biases, and assumptions. It would be both foolish to judge her decision without knowing what’s really going on.* *Before we condemn Mayer’s new policy as showing a lack of respect for her employees, we should show \*her\* some respect by going to the gemba and seeing first-hand what’s happening at Yahoo. Until then, we have no right to opine on her new policy.* Ok, I still don't like it, but Dan has a point that I am not intimately familiar with the innards of Yahoo. And then Best Buy followed suit. This time the CEO, Hubert Joly, gave a reason that presumably even Marissa Mayer would get livid at: *“In a turnaround transformation, direction needs to come from the top. I make sure it gets to a conclusion based on fact," Joly said. "You need to feel disposable as opposed to indispensable.”* Employees need to feel disposable? Now there's some leadership - to the extent that I bet there are some fine Best Buy employees willing to jump ship right about now. Some knowledgeable folks have correctly criticized this rollback of ROWE - the Results Only Work Environment. *Erin Kelly, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota who has authored studies on ROWE, said companies are unfairly scapegoating flexible work programs for their subpar performances. “I’m concerned that these flexibility initiatives and telework initiatives are getting blamed for what may be other problems those organizations are facing in the broader market,” Kelly said.* Exactly. Subpar products, service, and leadership come to mind. Whether it's a result of traditional accounting methods recording the "cost" of employees without understanding the "value" side, or if it's simply a lack of understanding of human psychology and potential, people are the kneejerk reaction. How about another example, coincidentally from my very first post-college employer. *German light bulb maker Osram, soon to be spun off by its parent company, engineering giant Siemens, said on Thursday it was selling a factory in China as part of a drive to slash 8,000 jobs worldwide.* *"With the planned disposal of Shaoxing, Osram has achieved half of its planned cuts of 8,000 jobs by 2014 worldwide in our traditional business activity," the firm said in its statement.* Now granted the article probably doesn't give the whole story, but it sure seems like the goal is to slash 8,000 jobs, period. Really? I sure hope it's part of a product rationalization and longer-term growth strategy - not just a goal to reduce headcount. Although it is interesting that they chose probably the "cheapest" 4,000 people they could find. Finally Eleanor Bloxham had the cohones to really nail the underlying issue that drives most layoffs: the failure of management. Actually she calls them lazy, in addition to incompetent. *Probably every worker today has experienced -- or known someone who has experienced -- at least one layoff. Layoffs are an abomination -- for the pain they cause innocent victims -- and the lack of accountability they often represent.* She echoed John Hunter's sentiments of five years ago. *Layoffs are a failure of management. If the company has not been executing a long term strategy to respect people and manage the system to continually improve, manage for the long term, working with suppliers… it might be they have created an impossibly failed organization that cannot succeed in its current form.* Yes there are always exceptions, but they are rare. The inability to develop a strategy, execute the strategy, and grow is a failure of management, let alone leadership. Believing that employees are purely a cost, not understanding that just because the value of employees is not explicitly stated on a P&L and balance sheet doesn't mean that there is no offsetting value to the "cost," is a faiure of management. By not leveraging the potential of his employees to help turn around Best Buy, I'm betting that Hubert Joly will soon personally understand exactly what "disposable" means. Those employees - and sharehoders and customers - deserve better. ### Data, Facts, and Truth URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/data-facts-and-truth/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:09:05.000Z I've been observing the growing love affair with "big data" with increasing skepticism, and perhaps even worry. Long-time readers know I've always been this way; in fact, one of my first posts - seven years ago - was on the mis-use or over-use of data and algorithms: [The False God of the Almighty Algorithm](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/keep%5Fone%5Feye%5Fon/). Later posts demonstrated how [a simple white board](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget%5Fsap%5Frun%5F/) can sometimes analyze and plan a situation - such as a factory floor - better than software. Years later I believe that more than ever. Recently Dr. Art Langer of Columbia University has written a couple of articles that align with my concerns over an obsession with big data. In CIOs Shouldn't Let Big Data Rule Their Decision-Making he discusses how data can sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions. *Once you rely on big data, it tends to become omnipotent in the decision-making process.* *We must remember that our markets are constantly changing and the variables that dominate decision-making are extremely complex—and there are many great decisions that are made by people that go on intuition and “gut-feel.” And there are many CEOs that consistently state that many of their decisions have little to do with logic.* *CIOs beware—don’t forget the power of the human factors.* Data is a tool, like many others. Dr. Langer's most recent article, It's Not Just the Data, Stupid, expounds on this a bit more. *We are being overwhelmed with the use of digital data to make decisions. You can’t read much these days without immediately seeing buzzwords like “Big Data,” “Business Analytics,” or “Business Intelligence.” Discussing process issues is passé; how to deal with data is the “in” thing for business discussions, especially at board meetings.* *More and more, I’m seeing other ways in which we’ve become increasingly reliant on data testing.* And once again we are losing sight of the context and perspective. Dr. Langer quotes Ron Sentz, VP of EMSI: *“The biggest limit to big data is our ability to interpret it. People need to understand why they are using data. What is the end goal?” Sentz said. “Data is also like an assembly of facts, which aren’t necessary the same thing as truth. If facts are poorly interpreted, it could lead to the wrong conclusions.”* That last sentence needs to be repeated: Data is also like an assembly of facts, which aren't necessarily the same thing as truth. We see that in so many areas. Politics, climate change, marketing, and even when trying to schedule a complex factory floor. We get so sucked into data that we assume it is fact. We get so sucked into facts that we assume it is truth. Our LeanBlog friend, Mark Graban, wrote about this a couple years ago, referencing a great photo from FailBlog. Mark also references two quotes that I've both enjoyed and been troubled by: *"In God we trust, all others bring data." - Dr. W. Edwards Deming* *"Data is of course important in manufacturing, but I place the greatest emphasis on facts." - Taiichi Ohno* The problems I see with people and organizations caught in big data, or just plain old data, are two-fold: The desire if not requirement that data must be used with every decision creates paralysis. In the lean world we are taught to seek perfection, but sometimes we forget that the one thing more important than perfection is simply progress. I've been part of situations where the data is never quite good enough, the analysis of data never quite complete, the conclusions from analyses never quite solid. So nothing happens. Equally dangerous is an overconfidence on data, and subsequent analyses and conclusions. Data becomes facts becomes truth. In the two articles I referenced by Dr. Langer there are several examples where this is not the case. Because truth requires perspective, context, reference, and understanding. Knowing when outliers are relevant or irrelevant, when the dataset is complete or incomplete, and how to make the correct, or necessary, conclusions when data is incomplete or inappropriate. Experience and intuition create relevance. The ability to create relevance is a core component of leadership. Facts are not just data. Truth is not just facts. Don't forget the human factors. ### Disruption, Mission, Measurement, and Families URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/disruption-mission-families-and-problems/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:10:27.000Z It's time for a smorgasborg to clear out a few articles I've been meaning to write about, so prepare to bounce a little all over the place! First off, with a hat tip to Jason Yip, is an article on how disruption could destroy Apple, Tesla, VCs, and academia. The problem with Apple: *Successful innovative products like the iPhone are usually based on proprietary technology because that is how the dominant business carves out, protects and builds its top market position. But at some point as they get better and better, they start to exceed what people actually need or are willing to pay extra for.* And Tesla: *“Who knows whether they will be successful or not,” he said. “They have come up with cars that in fact compete reasonably well and they cost $100,000 and god bless them.”* *“But if you really want to make a big product market instead of a niche product market, the kind of question you want to ask for electric vehicles is, I wonder if there is a market out there for customers who would just love to have a product that won’t go very far or go very fast. The answer is obvious.* And VCs: *“Venture capital is always wanting to go up market. It’s like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 'Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.' People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying to raise money at the low end and find that they can’t get funding because of this mismatch. I think that there is an opportunity there.”* And finally, academia: *“Right now, Harvard Business School is investing millions of dollars in online learning, but it is being developed to be used in our existing business model, and we’ll sell it to other universities to use in their existing business models.* *“But there is a different business model that is disrupting this in addition to online learning. It’s on-the-job education. This model of learning is you come in for a week and we’ll teach you about strategy and you go off and develop a strategy. Come back later for two weeks on product development. You learn it and you use it. These are very different business models and that’s what’s killing us.”* *“Fifteen years from now more than half of the universities will be in bankruptcy, including the state schools. In the end, I am excited to see that happen.”* And that's why some of us are so excited about the likes of [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Watch a few of the over 440 lean and six sigma video training modules, and try the concept. Then come back for more. As often as you want, for one price. This weekend The Wall Street Journal ran an article on agile and lean guys that are bringing those concepts home, and using them to improve how their families run. Some of us have dared do such a thing, with sometimes interesting results. *A new generation of parents is now taking solutions from the workplace and transferring them home. From accountability checklists to family branding sessions, from time-shifting meals to more efficient conflict resolution, families are finally reaping the benefits of decades of groundbreaking research into group dynamics.* *When my wife and I adopted the agile blueprint in our own home, weekly family meetings with our then-5-year-old twin daughters quickly became the centerpiece around which we organized our family. The meetings transformed our relationships with our kids—and each other. And they took up less than 20 minutes a week.* Ok admit it. How many of you have applied 5S to your garage and kanban to your pantry? Dan Rockwell penned a post quoting our friend Karen Martin's recent book, [The Outstanding Organization](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071782370?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0071782370&linkCode=xm2&tag=superfactorycom&ref=kevinmeyer.com). *“I think there’s so much time and effort wasted on setting forth mission statements and vision statements…” [Karen Martin](https://www.ksmartin.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), author of, [The Outstanding Organization](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071782370?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0071782370&linkCode=xm2&tag=leadefreak-20&ref=kevinmeyer.com).”* *Compelling vision doesn’t cure sick organizations. Martin said, “Many organizations have these lofty visions and they can’t even deliver product to customers…”* I've never been a fan of vision and mission statements. They are either too vague and therefore useless, or too specific and therefore constraining. And don't get me started about organizations that claim "employees are our greatest asset." Right before they whack a few. Instead figure out some core principles, and live them. Bill Gates penned an op ed for The Wall Street Journal on the importance of finding good measurements in order to tackle the world's problems. *In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal—in a feedback loop similar to the one Mr. Rosen describes.* *This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of the total amount of money invested—and during the Cold War, by whether a country stayed on our side—but not by how well it performed in actually helping people. Closer to home, despite innovation in measuring teacher performance world-wide, more than 90% of educators in the U.S. still get zero feedback on how to improve.* Bill goes on to describe how developing new measurement methods, leading to improved goals, led to health care improvements in Ethiopia, very recent efforts to finally eradicate polio, and education. Speaking of measurement, and along the lines of our Fun With Statistics series,The Wall Street Journal recently published an article describing how inconsistencies in measurement methods sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions. The author referred specifically to a widely-publicized study that seemed to indicate that health care outcomes in the U.S. were falling behind the rest of the world. But when you dig deeper you discover that even the study's authors suggested the opposite. *As the report points out, the U.S. has the highest infant-mortality rate among high-income countries. Again, this isn't a good indicator of the quality of the American health-care system. The elevated U.S. rate is a function of both the technological advancement of American hospitals and discrepancies in how different countries define a live birth.* *Doctors in the U.S. are much more aggressive than foreign counterparts about trying to save premature babies. Thousands of babies that would have been declared stillborn in other countries and never given a chance at life are saved in the U.S. As a result, the percentage of preterm births in America is exceptionally high—65% higher than in Britain, and about double the rates in Finland and Greece.* *Unfortunately, some of the premature babies that American hospitals try to save don't make it. Their deaths inflate the overall infant mortality rate. But most premature babies are saved, largely because America's medical research community is exceptionally innovative.* *Thanks to such technologies, the U.S. neonatal mortality rate has dropped to just 5% today from 95% in the 1960s. The Institute of Medicine report ignores one of America's chief health-care assets: the country's superiority in medical innovation.* But of course you have to dig a bit to discover those nuances, and in the meantime the simple headline is the news. Think about where else that could be happening... And speaking of babies, many probably haven't noticed how the birth rate in developing countries, including the U.S., has declined over the last few decades. The impact can and perhaps will be significant. *Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff. Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate.* *The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman bears over the course of her life. The replacement rate is 2.1\. If the average woman has more children than that, population grows. Fewer, and it contracts. Today, America's total fertility rate is 1.93, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it hasn't been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s.* America's middle class fertility rate is 1.6\. And China, with it's one child policy? 1.5\. Who needs a policy when you do it to yourself? *For two generations we've been lectured about the dangers of overpopulation. But the conventional wisdom on this issue is wrong, twice. First, global population growth is slowing to a halt and will begin to shrink within 60 years. Second, as the work of economists Esther Boserups and Julian Simon demonstrated, growing populations lead to increased innovation and conservation. Think about it: Since 1970, commodity prices have continued to fall and America's environment has become much cleaner and more sustainable—even though our population has increased by more than 50%. Human ingenuity, it turns out, is the most precious resource.* The impact? *Low-fertility societies don't innovate because their incentives for consumption tilt overwhelmingly toward health care. They don't invest aggressively because, with the average age skewing higher, capital shifts to preserving and extending life and then begins drawing down. They cannot sustain social-security programs because they don't have enough workers to pay for the retirees. They cannot project power because they lack the money to pay for defense and the military-age manpower to serve in their armed forces.* The solution? *Conservatives like to think that if we could just provide the right tax incentives for childbearing, then Americans might go back to having children the way they did 40 years ago. Liberals like to think that if we would just be more like France—offer state-run day care and other programs so women wouldn't have to choose between working and motherhood—it would solve the problem. But the evidence suggests that neither path offers more than marginal gains. France, for example, hasn't been able to stay at the replacement rate, even with all its day-care spending.* *Which leaves us with outsourcing our fertility. We've received a massive influx of immigrants from south of the border since the late 1970s. Immigration has kept America from careening over the demographic cliff. Today, there are roughly 38 million people in the U.S. who were born elsewhere. (Two-thirds of them are here legally.) To put that in perspective, consider that just four million babies are born annually in the U.S. If you strip these immigrants—and their relatively high fertility rates—from our population profile, America suddenly looks an awful lot like continental Europe, which has a fertility rate of 1.5., if not quite as demographically terminal as Japan.* Sort of changes the immigration debate, doesn't it? Dig deeper. You might learn something that flies in the face of the headline. ### Of GE and Boeing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/of-ge-and-boeing/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:11:16.000Z While the world watches Boeing and the FAA trace a 787 Dreamliner battery problem from Seattle to Japan to Arizona to Italy then back to Japan, our recovering outsourcing addict friends at GE continue to move in the right direction. Maybe there should be a twelve step program for supply chain managers that still believe outsourcing helps lower costs. Well, true overall costs I mean - not just the labor costs shown on a P&L. The Wall Street Journal this morning gives us more news of GE's about face. And this time it's not just a realization that chasing low labor costs doesn't work - they've already moved some appliance manufacturing back to the U.S. based on a true overall cost analysis. Nope, this time it's a realization of how outsourcing can impact the safeguarding of key technologies and processes. *As Boeing Co.pays a price for having farmed out crucial parts on its new Dreamliner, General Electric Co.'s aviation division is busy bringing work on its engines back in-house.* *In late December, GE Aviation agreed to buy Italian parts supplier Avio for $4.4 billion. That comes alongside the acquisition of a three-dimensional printing company, a joint-venture with a component casting company in Montana and another venture to secure access to a key raw material—silicon carbide, which is used to make high-tech ceramic parts.* *This year, GE plans to open a pair of parts factories in Mississippi and Alabama and soon will announce the location of a third.* The reason: *The strategy is aimed at safeguarding a key source of the industrial conglomerate's sales.* *By doing more of the work itself, GE hopes to protect its technology, speed up development and secure supplies of needed components. The move is a turnabout for a company that helped pioneer soup-to-nuts U.S. manufacturing and then switched gears to help pioneer industrial outsourcing.* This renaissance of clear thinking isn't just happening within the aviation division. *GE now plans to replicate its new vertically integrated approach across its businesses from gas turbines to medical imaging devices to subsea oil wells.* *"We want more under our control," said Colleen Athans, who runs supply chain management for GE Aviation. "Rather than pay a supplier to do it, we would like to protect our intellectual property." Late last year, Ms. Athans gave GE's board of directors a presentation on the moves undertaken by the aerospace unit as a model for GE's other divisions.* It's not just a direct cost equation anymore. Now it's about the long-term strategic business implications of long, fragile supply chains. The article goes on to bash Boeing, which has become the poster child for understanding how outsourcing can influence more than just direct labor cost. Funny, I predicted there might be a problem... [six years ago](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boeing-plays-wh/). And I'm not boasting about my crystal ball - just a little common sense from understanding that you can't run a business by focusing purely on traditional financial statements. One final mostly unrelated tidbit. 3D or additive printing technologies are fascinating. In case any of your didn't think they are in the real world yet, here's your evidence: *Last year, GE Aviation bought Morris Technologies, an additive manufacturing company outside Cincinnati. GE will use Morris's 3-D printing machines to make the guts of the fuel nozzle on its Leap engines. The equivalent part used in existing engines is made by an outside supplier that brazes together 21 tiny pieces.* Coming to a plane near you. ### This is your brain... URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/this-is-your-brain/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:12:32.000Z The other day I was talking to a couple execs at a local manufacturing company, and the usual topic of the evils of doing business in California came up. I responded that yes, it is difficult, but if you used some brains it was possible to out-compete even Asian sweatshops even from the state that does everything possible to bite the hand that feeds it. And as usual, since this conversation is unfortunately rather common, they looked at me with an expression asking if I was already taking advantage of the “medical” marijuana dispensary nearby. One of them then said, in a bit of a huff, “I do use my brain, and we can’t compete.” To which I said “It’s not your brain that I’m referring to.” You see, these guys still thought of the hundred or so folks in their factory like this: As those of us in the lean community know, that’s an incomplete picture. Those folks really look like this: That funny-looking attachment, unrecognizable by many executives, is a brain. The brain has a bunch of functions, detailed here: Now, to be fair, I’m sure many execs do realize there’s some mysterious blob attached to the hands, especially since OSHA requires them to put safety glasses or a hard hat on it. But I’m guessing they think the only valuable component of that brain is this: Obviously something has to control that pair of hands - so they do value a part of the motor control area! How enlightened! However lean types, especially real lean types that fully understand, embrace, and leverage the respect for people pillar of lean, know that the rest of the brain is a beautiful thing: It is fairly easy to distinguish which executives, especially CFOs, understand this. Ask them two simple questions: 1. How much will it cost me to hire a person (I dare you to say “a brain”)? 2. How much will I save if I can reduce my headcount (uh, “braintrust”?) by one? Typically the answer to the first question will be “well, add up the wage dollars, then tack on benefits, then tack on an overhead "costs", and it’s about $100 per hour.” If that was the answer to the first question, then almost invariably the answer to the second question will be “add up the wage dollars, and a portion of the benefits, so about $25 an hour.” Hmmm… something doesn’t add up. Why does it cost more to bring someone on than can be “saved” if the person goes away? I won’t get into that particular insanity here, but most of us have experienced it. Funny, there’s a particular anatomical entity that isn’t even considered. Where is the value of the brain? The ideas that lead to improvements that lead to increased productivity, improved processes, and increased customer value? Somehow that’s not “real” because it’s not on a P&L or balance sheet. But I bet that company still has a slogan on a wall somewhere that says “Employees are our most valuable asset.” Really? Show me. And that’s why those kinds of companies chase “cheap” labor around the world. Perhaps to China, then now to Vietnam or Burma or someplace. They look at a P&L and balance sheet sort of like this: Now a few people are lucky enough to work for organizations where the answer to those two questions would be: “How will that person help us create customer value? Are we paying enough to respect the knowledge and experience she’ll bring to our team?” “Are you really sure we can afford to lose his experience and knowledge? Could he add value in another area? How will losing his ideas impact our productivity?” Yes, you sometimes have to dream a bit. But I’ve known a couple CFOs that really talk like that. A rare breed. And they look at a P&L and balance sheet analysis of a potential offshore move this way: Those execs, and even CFOs, realize that traditional financial statements are flawed. The value of the brain - the experience and knowledge that drives creativitity and ideas - isn't represented. Therefore there isn't an offsetting brain value to the "cost" of the pair of hands. Not realizing this is why [some companies](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/understanding%5Fl/) do crazy things like whack a couple thousand highly experienced people, move overseas, and hire a couple thousand replacement unexperienced people. And claim it adds value. I've seen some of those enlightened CFOs even try to find ways around a traditional P&L and balance sheet. One capitalized all the training time applied to people, so if a person left they then had to expense a portion of that capitalized cost. It's stretching a few concepts and even GAAP, but at least she understood reality. More and more companies and organizations are beginning to understand the value of the brain - which is why more and more companies are returning to North America. They leverage their brains to be agile, create custom solutions, and find innovative ways to add value to their customers. Even in California. Sometimes it takes a brain to know one... ### And Movin' On... URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/and-movin-on/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:13:41.000Z Just a brief personal note thanking Bill for his contributions to Evolving Excellence over the last seven years (really, that long?). When I first met Bill I liked his style as it meshed well with my own attitude and opinions - especially when discussing the numbskulls that are unfortunately way too common in our industry. Like all of you I have learned a lot from Bill, and I expect to continue learning from him. This isn't a surprise - Bill and I discussed his new endeavors over a year ago. I'm excited for him, and we've even talked about other ways to continue to collaborate. As [you read a few weeks ago](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shibumi-daruma/), I recently completed a transition of my own, and I'm hoping that will begin to free up a bit more time - some of which I plan to use to do some more writing - on Evolving Excellence and elsewhere. So stay tuned. There will probably be the occasional guest post, and I welcome submissions. After all, that's how I discovered Bill! Thanks Bill, and best wishes! ### Movin' On Up URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/movin-on-up/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:15:05.000Z By Bill Waddell Seven and a half years after scribbling my first post on Evolving Excellence I'm moving - whether I'm moving on, moving up or just moving over remains to be seen, I suppose - but moving I am. From here on out you can find my stuff at: The Center is an effort supported by a tech partner, iDatix, and the good folks there have given me free reign to write and post at my own discretion. While you will find it dominated by my work as we get things launched, the plan to is keep a judicious eye on the available literature, videos. etc... and have it be a source of the very best in manufacturing management information. The run at Evolving excellence has been a great one, and I will always have a warm spot in my heart for Kevin and the EE readers who made it possible. Thank you so much. I hope to see you over at the Leadership Center. ### The Limits of Imitating Toyota URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-limits-of-imitating-toyota/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:15:31.000Z I recently received an email from a guy challenging the legitimacy of organizing into value streams and lean accounting. The linchpin of his argument: "*I can't find anything saying Toyota has done any of that*". This seems to be a fairly common view - something of a Toyota acid test for all things lean. Of course, at the same time the most common arguement offered up in resistance to lean is, "*We're different - we aren't like Toyota*." Seems to me if we want to get all Toyota-y about things we have to take Shingo's words to heart when he wrote, "*We have to grasp not only the Know-How but also Know-Why*." Most plants are very much unlike Toyota plants, because making cars has some very unique characteristics - like one value stream per plant. That's the nature of the auto industry. It's tough enough to make one type of car, let alone making a bunch of them. When the auto companies make more than one model under one roof, even Toyota can only do it when the cars are very similar. They don't make full size pick-ups and small sedans on th same lines, or even in the same plant. Most manufacturers make something with a lot fewer parts than cars; and they make more than one product type - hence the need for value streams. An auto plant basically has one big value stream map, and all of the costs in the plant are incurred somewhere along that map. Most plants - with multiple value streams - have a trickier challenge with costs: To figure out which value streams go with which costs. In fact, there are a lot of things that are easier in a Toyota plant than in most plants - kanbans, for instance, and heijunka. When everything in the plant is flowing to one place - one assembly point - these tools are a whole lot simpler than when they can flow to multiple points with differing demand volumes and rates of demand variability. Doesn't mean the underlying principles don't apply - Shingo's "Know Why" - but it does mean the math and application techniques have to be different. I wouldn't dream of taking anything away from Toyota. Making cars is tough, and their conjuring up the principles of lean changed the world. That said, however, using Toyota as the acid test for whether something is lean or not is rather naive and intellectually lazy. In most companies and most plants, asking 'what would Toyota do?' is the appropriate question - not 'what did Toyota do?' And when you head down that path, you inevitably get to things like value stream organizational structures, lean accounting and a whole lot of other managerial and shop floor techniques that you won't find in a Toyota plant. *Originally posted at: http://www.idatix.com/the-limits-of-imitating-toyota/* ### Lean Speak URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-speak/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:16:02.000Z Consider the following: *In order to accomplish a best-in-market customer experience, instill a differentiated skill-set, and bring the relevant institutional knowledge, skills, and facilitation expertise in-house, we have identified five mission-critical goals.* Or *Designers work to envision and create spaces, systems, languages, tools and infrastructure that afford specific kinds of relationships and predispositions towards each other and our world.* Now I know I probably have a touch of ADD since I stop at "differentiated," but does anyone really understand those two statements? At least the first time? Megan Hustad penned a piece for CNN Money that discusses how even in the age of Twitter we seem to have a propensity to cram multiple thoughts into a single sentence. *So, what if the problem isn't incomplete sentences but the fact that we are using lists to convey big, unwieldy ideas that lists aren't capable of communicating?* Megan even talked to our old friend Matthew May: *I asked Matthew E. May, author of The Laws of Subtraction, where the compulsion to stuff multiple ideas into a single sentence comes from. He faulted a lack of self-control. "Without the discipline, instinct takes over," he says. "Our hardwired instinct is to add, as slack resources make us feel safe."* *In competitive work situations, overstuffing your communications often seems like a safer bet than running the risk of leaving something out. But that instinct for self-preservation may be doing more harm than good, says May.* Perhaps. Although I seem to think unnecessarily complex sentences are sort of like unnecessarily complex words: the mark of an insecure intellect. The same reason I immediately ignore anyone that uses the term "vis-à-vis" - always the sign of a wonk that doesn't live in the real world. Ok, maybe I'm just a simple man and I should stick with Matt's thesis. Here's an interesting concept from the article, in the same vein as applying 5S concepts to email and such: how about 5Sing your actual writing? *A routine revision process also helps. May says he scans his paragraphs for every instance of the word "and." Then he tries -- "not always successfully," he adds -- to eliminate what follows each "and." Hot and sticky becomes hot, period.* *Deciding what can go unmentioned is hard work. It involves, as Bezos suggested, clear thinking. It means assessing the importance of each element in isolation and as part of the whole.* I like that idea. Scrutinize "and" and (oops) I'd probably add commas, and (oops) harshly evaluate what comes after. As Matt May points out in his recent book, [*The Laws of Subtraction*](https://www.amazon.com/The-Laws-Subtraction-Winning-Everything/dp/0071795618?ref=kevinmeyer.com), what isn't there can often convey more meaning that what is. ### Losing Before the Game Even Begins URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/losing-before-the-game-even-begins/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:16:24.000Z All over the country - all over the world, for that matter - managers are confronting year end surprises from annual inventory counts. Strenuous efforts to reach profit goals have been undone by inventory write-offs they never saw coming. Too late to do anything about it at this point, they resolve to take steps to assure it doesn't happen again. How the problem is defined is the key to the whole matter. The manager could assemble the staff and tell them, "*We have to come up with a plan to eliminate these year end inventory adjustments*." Or the staff could be assembled and told, "*We need to get inventory under tighter control in order to assure accuracy*." The first approach defines the problem broadly, opening the company to a wide range of options - the best of which is to get rid of the inventory, thereby eliminating the problem all together. The second is based on the assumption that all of the existing processes are OK and the task is limited to controls over those processes. As one CEO recently told me, how we define problems is 90% of the game. He is absolutely correct - maybe even conservative. Far too often we assume we know the root cause before we even get out of the starting gate. We assume that all of the existing processes, policies, procedures and so forth are necessary and inviolate, putting people into a very small box in terms of the range of solutions at their disposal. Challenging people to reduce direct labor costs, or to cut material prices, rather than challenging them to improve profitability ignores the reality of integrated processes that cust across the business. It assumes the problem - and the solution - lies entirely within a particular functional silo. Of course, as a consultant I hear this all the time. Would be clients call me asking for help with problems so narrowly defined that it is apparent they have already made assumptions about the root cause, and have limited the scope of recommendations from which they want me to make a recommendation. A typical one is a request for my help in their selection of an ERP system. They don't want me to look at the underlying problem that led them to conclude that ERP is the solution. Typically they blew right past that step. When I ask them what the problem is they are trying to solve, a typical answer might be, 'we built a second plant and now we are having problems delivering on time because our old system can't support multiple locations'. My response is usually, *'if you want me to look at your supply chain processes and help you solve the delivery problem, with more robust ERP as simply one option among many that might help, I will be glad to do so, but if you have already determined that all of your processes are fine and you simply have a computer problem then I am not the guy for the job. You need an IT consultant*.' Of course, how we define problems is not just a manufacturing issue, or even just a business issue. Husbands, wives and kids complain long and loud about their each other's attitude or laziness in supporting each other in the execution of basic household chores, never thinking that the basic process for getting those chores done might be at the root of the problem. Now would be a great time to take a long look at the problems the organization is tasked with solving in 2013\. I bet most of those definitions doom the company to having this year look a whole lot like last year. Redefining the problem just might be the key to fundamentally changing the trajectory of the business. ### A Sucker for a Slow Boat URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-sucker-for-a-slow-boat/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:16:54.000Z You're looking at the Marco Polo, owned by CMA CGM, which can hold more than 16,000 containers and reach a speed of 24 knots. Regular readers know Bill and I have often derided the idiocy of such vessels, idols to the false gods of cheap overseas labor and the fallacious financial fabrication known as economy of scale. In reality these ships might as well be floating banks, as they are effectively holding cash - at an average of $100,000 per container, presumably more if they hold MacBooks instead of smokey-smelling garments from a factory in Bangladesh. Non-performing cash in fact, doing nothing but float for a few weeks while quality issues go unrecognized, clothing styles change, and whatnot. Most of us would be smart enough to rule it out as a bank, let alone a component of a value creation process. Fortunately some manufacturers are beginning to wake up to the reality that doesn't appear on traditional P&Ls and are recognizing the value of speed, agility, and brains. Apparently container ship companies are not part of this intelligent awakening, because they are doubling down on crazy. How so? Well that ship you see above can cruise at 24 knots, but they are intentionally slogging about at 14 knots. *The Marco Polo's size and pace on the Europe-to-Asia route show an interesting dynamic at play in the container-shipping industry: Grappling with excess container capacity and declining shipping fares, companies such as CMA CGM of France, owner of the Marco Polo, are racing to operate the biggest-possible ships so they can benefit from economies of scale, and run them at moderate speeds to save on fuel costs.* *Slowing down ships, known as slow steaming, doesn't only offer environmental benefits. By making fewer trips, ships can adjust to the lower demand for cargo space. Analysts say the practice has helped avoid a complete collapse in shipping fares.* *"Surely, if we did not have slow-steaming at all implemented on the Far East-to-Europe trading lane, I'm not sure rates would be higher than a few dollars per container," said analyst Peter Sand, with Denmark-based shipping association Bimco.* You read that right. Surely. To operate more efficiently there should be more, larger ships, running slower. Sort of like auto companies building more, and larger, factories filled with expensive equipment (perhaps larger as well?), then intentionally slowing them down to a single shift to match to a much lower demand. Oh wait, they did try that. And learned. Well some of them did. Let's slow down the movement of value, increase the risk of a quality issued buried in larger inventories, increase the potential for obsolescence, and reduce the utilization of a capital asset - although admittedly focusing on that utilization often creates inventory issues in the first place. "a few dollars per container" is saved in fuel costs by slowing down, and by the supposed other operating efficiencies of the mega ships. And what is the interest on, or depreciating value of, the cash tied up in inventory for a few weeks? *Rates for shipping a 20-foot container from Asia to Europe stood at $1,237 in late December, compared with about $2,000 in the spring, according to data compiled by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange. Still, the French company said it decided to go ahead with the Marco Polo order, betting that the vessel's extra-large size and lower operating cost per container would help CMA CGM elbow out smaller competitors.* *"Those who have small ships will gradually have to withdraw and those who have large ones will keep on developing," CMA CGM's deputy chief executive, Rodolphe Saadé, said in an interview.* Ya, stick with that strategy. It's apparently served you well. *For 2011, CMA CGM posted a net loss of $30 million on revenue of $14.9 billion, while debt was at $5 billion.* Meanwhile, in the real world... ### Shareholders versus Stakeholders URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shareholders-versus-stakeholders/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T14:17:25.000Z The horrible shootings in Connecticut have set off another round of debates over the fundamental goals of a business - pitting financial gain against social responsibility. The core principles of lean - including respect for all of the people working for the business, true partnerships with suppliers committed to the same view of their people, creating genuine value for customers, and so forth - are very much built around the idea that the two are not mutually exclusive: The idea that the best way to make money for the stockholders is to take very good care of all of the stakeholders. Lean proponents believe that fairly, even well, compensated employees; suppliers sure they will be dealt with fairly if they invest in the long term health of their customers; customers who receive the most for their money; and communities living with assurance that local employers are long term residents will all go beyond the call of duty to assure the success of the business. The alternative is the traditional economic view - that labor (the employees) and capital (the stockholders) are engaged in a zero sum battle with each other - that one's gain is the other's loss; that relationships with both suppliers and customers should be adversarial - again a sort of zero sum approach that a nickel negotiated away from a supplier or a customer is a nickel gained for the stockholder; that communities are sources of labor and infrastructure to be pitted against each other with the company to locate within the city limits of the lowest bidder for both. The difference in views is very much a function of the time frame. The holistic, lean approach is a proven winner, but is a long term winner. Optimizing long term shareholder value often means sub-optimizing short term shareholder value. In publicly traded companies the long term view just isn't in the cards. The costs of dumping an investment in one company and putting the money into another are just too low and the whole thing is structured to enable the trillions of dollars in the markets to lurch from one company to another in a continual quest for the best short term returns. Lean literature is rife with advice on leadership, most of it assuming that lean is simply dependent on a CEO who gets it - and exhibits all of the qualities of some great historical leader. Middle management people often complain long and loud about the leader they work for not 'getting it', or being unwilling to demonstrate such leadership. The reality, however, is that the CEO, unless he is a sole proprietor (or at least the majority owner) has a boss just like that frustrated middle manager. When that boss - the board of directors - hasn't bought into lean's long term, holistic philosophy, all of the high sounding leadership behavior in the world on the part of the CEO is unlikely to serve as the linchpin for lean success. He or she is simply not going to get the necessary support for that short term shareholder sub-optimization needed to get to ong term shareholder optimization. It is not a coincidence that Toyota conjured up much of the lean philosophy as a family owned business, dominated by a patriarch in a position to do whatever he wanted to in the short term, without fear of shareholder backlash. It is not coincidental that Henry Ford bought out and booted out all of the other shareholders to clear the decks so he could double worker pay and halve prices the way he wanted to. The ideal of mutually supportive goals between shareholders and stakeholders requires support from the top. Lean success trickles down and cannot be driven from the shop floor, or even the middle. The top means the top, however, and we can't simply put the onus on the CEO when he or she is not really at the top. Certainly the CEO is uniquely positioned to educate and sell the board, but in the end, the real lean battleground is in the boardroom, rather than in the executive suite. ### Customer Driven Management URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/customer-driven-management/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:25:43.000Z The good folks over at Bloomberg/Business Week wrote about Cisco's failure to make good on their big investment in LinkSys. Cisco makes big, complicated gear to manage big complicated computer networks. LinkSys makes basic, cheap wireless routers you can buy at places like Walmart. The problem, they say ... *"When tech companies that have been successful supplying enterprise customers with all manner of digital gear decide to go consumer, they usually hype the potential synergies, such as using components that go into both sets of products. Trouble is, those synergies rarely materialize, or are not enough to offset other problems. You see, consumer electronics businesses operate on razor-thin margins, yet still require an investment in R&D as well as heaps of marketing dollars. You need to sell humongous volumes through retail just to make the effort pay off."* They - B/BW and I believe it is a safe bet, Cisco - missed the point. For one, the problem has nothing to do with 'tech companies". History - especially recent history - is littered with the wreckage of companies of all sorts that sought to leverage their product and/or process technology by getting into a new market ... companies that machine parts for aerospace trying to get into automotive. Companies fabricating parts for Ag looking to make parts for energy OEM's. There were lots and lots of these strategies crashing and burning early in the recent recession as manufacturers looked to find other outlets for their capacity when sales dropped off in their primary market. Mostly, though, they missed the point that a different market means a different value proposition. What is value adding and what is waste for a big company buyer of Cisco network technology is different from the definitions of value and waste for the guy who goes to Walmart to buy a wireless contraption for his house. And different value propositions mean different management infra-structures - different supply chain processes, different quality systems and thinking, different metrics, different organizational structure. The companies that succeed - John Deere, for instance, selling big, expensive equipment into the Ag market branching out into lawn mowers for consumers - succeeded by creating an entirely different management concept. The fundamental supply chain, quality, engineering and operating management approach is different for each market. Failure, on the other hand, results from one-size-fits-all management. I have no idea what Cisco knew or did not know, but the proof that B/BW missed the point lies in the statement "consumer electronics businesses operate on razor-thin margins." Apple hardly operates on "razor thin margins" and they are most certainly a consumer electronics company. Now I don't advocate anyone operating by Apple's skewed management approach, but they are proof-positive that there is nothing inherent to the consumer electronics business that makes it less profitable than any other business. In fact, when they say 'razor thin margins' they mean the gap between selling prices per unit and standard costs - an utterly meaningless ratio. There is nothing razor thin about the overall profitability of lots of companies making and selling consumer products in the United States. Those companies, however, understand what creates value in the consumer market, and what doesn't. The bottom line: The right management structure and processes for any company are a function of its customers, and how those customers define value. Attempting to create maximum value for two radically different sorts of customers with one, standard management infrastructure won't work, no matter how much effort the management experts and schools put into searching for the Holy Grail of the 'one best' way to manage. ### Uruguay: South America's Hidden Gem - A Perfect Summer Escape URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uruguay-south-americas-hidden-gem-a-perfect-summer-escape/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T17:50:11.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/colonia-street-church.JPG) Our December 2012 journey to Uruguay proved to be one of our most relaxing and unexpectedly delightful South American adventures. This small country wedged between Brazil and Argentina offers a perfect blend of cosmopolitan culture, pristine coastal resorts, and countryside tranquility - all without the crowds and chaos often found elsewhere in the region. For travelers seeking an authentic South American experience with European sophistication, Uruguay delivers an unforgettable summer escape. ## Why Uruguay? Uruguay remains refreshingly under-touristed compared to its giant neighbors, making it perfect for independent travelers who prefer discovering destinations before they hit the mainstream travel radar. The December timing put us right in the middle of South American summer, when locals flock to the coast for their own vacations, giving us an authentic glimpse into Uruguayan leisure culture. ## General Comments **Best Time to Visit**: December through March offers warm weather and long days, perfect for coastal activities. December is ideal as it's the start of summer before peak January crowds arrive. **Getting Around**: We rented a car through Hertz, which proved essential for exploring beyond Montevideo. Uruguay's roads are well-maintained, and distances between major destinations are manageable - perfect for a relaxed driving experience. **Culture and Atmosphere**: Uruguay feels distinctly European in many ways, with a laid-back sophistication that sets it apart from the rest of South America. The country has a strong secular tradition and progressive social policies, creating a uniquely welcoming atmosphere. **Language**: Spanish is the official language, though many in the tourism industry speak English. Uruguayans are notably patient with visitors attempting Spanish. ## Detailed Itinerary ### Days 1-2: Montevideo - Sophisticated South American Capital **Hotel**: Sheraton Hotel Montevideo Montevideo surprised us with its blend of colonial architecture, Art Deco buildings, and modern waterfront development. The city feels more like a European capital than a typical South American metropolis. **Must-See Montevideo**: - **Ciudad Vieja (Old City)**: Wander cobblestone streets lined with colonial buildings and vibrant street art - **Plaza Independencia**: The city's main square featuring the imposing Palacio Salvo - **Teatro Solís**: One of South America's most prestigious opera houses - take a guided tour - **Rambla de Montevideo**: The world's longest continuous sidewalk along the Rio de la Plata - **Mercado del Puerto**: Historic market building now filled with traditional parrillas (grills) **Unique Montevideo Experiences**: - **Tango show at a traditional milonga**: Experience authentic tango culture away from tourist performances - **Sunset along the Rambla**: Join locals for evening walks along the waterfront promenade - **Candombe drumming**: Catch spontaneous street performances of this UNESCO-recognized Afro-Uruguayan tradition - **Feria de Tristán Narvaja**: Sunday flea market with antiques, books, and local crafts **Culinary Highlights**: Uruguay's beef rivals Argentina's, and the asado (barbecue) culture is central to social life. Don't miss chivito (the national sandwich), mate tea culture, and excellent Tannat wines. ### Days 3-5: Carmelo - Wine Country Retreat **Hotel**: Four Seasons Resort Carmelo The drive from Montevideo to Carmelo takes you through Uruguay's pastoral heartland - rolling hills dotted with cattle ranches and eucalyptus groves. Carmelo sits on the banks of the Rio de la Plata, offering a perfect blend of luxury resort amenities and authentic countryside experiences. **Four Seasons Carmelo Experience**: This resort epitomizes the relaxing nature of our Uruguay trip. Set on a former estancia (ranch), the property seamlessly blends luxury accommodations with authentic gaucho culture. **Horse and Wine Culture**: - **Horseback riding through vineyards**: Explore the property's extensive grounds on horseback, following trails through Tannat grape vineyards - **Wine tastings**: Sample Uruguay's signature Tannat wines along with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from local bodegas - **Gaucho demonstrations**: Watch traditional horsemanship skills and cattle herding techniques - **Estancia BBQ experiences**: Participate in traditional asado preparations with resort staff **Day Trips from Carmelo**: - **Colonia del Sacramento**: UNESCO World Heritage colonial town with Portuguese and Spanish influences (30-minute drive) - **Local wineries**: Visit boutique bodegas like Bodega Cordano and Alto de la Ballena - **Rio de la Plata excursions**: Boat trips to explore the river delta and spot local wildlife **Resort Activities**: - Championship golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus - Spa treatments incorporating local ingredients - Tennis and swimming in peaceful countryside setting - Sunset river cruises from the resort's private dock ### Days 6-8: La Paloma and Punta del Este - Coastal Contrasts **Hotel**: UY Proa Sur Hotel (La Paloma base) The drive east to La Paloma reveals Uruguay's stunning Atlantic coastline - endless beaches backed by sand dunes and pine forests. Using La Paloma as our base allowed us to experience both the authentic beach town atmosphere and the glamorous party scene of nearby Punta del Este. **La Paloma - Authentic Beach Town**: - **Playa La Paloma**: The main town beach with calm waters perfect for swimming - **Playa La Pedrera**: Dramatic rocky coastline popular with surfers and photographers - **Lighthouse (Faro de Cabo Santa María)**: Climb for panoramic coastal views - **Laguna de Rocha**: Nearby nature reserve with excellent bird watching **Punta del Este - South America's St. Tropez**: Just a 45-minute drive from La Paloma, Punta del Este provided the perfect contrast with its sophisticated party atmosphere and international glamour. - **La Mano sculpture**: The iconic giant hand emerging from the sand at Brava Beach - **Casapueblo**: Carlos Páez Vilaró's stunning white architectural masterpiece overlooking the ocean - **Peninsula beaches**: Playa Mansa (calm bay side) vs. Playa Brava (Atlantic surf side) - **Puerto de Punta del Este**: Upscale marina with luxury yachts and waterfront dining **Punta del Este Nightlife**: The party vibe was infectious - elegant beach clubs, sophisticated cocktail bars, and late-night dancing that epitomizes South American summer social life. We enjoyed the energy while appreciating our quieter La Paloma retreat. **The Perfect Balance**: Staying in La Paloma while exploring Punta del Este gave us the best of both worlds - authentic Uruguayan beach culture by day and glamorous nightlife when we wanted excitement. **Other Coastal Attractions**: - **Cabo Polonio**: Remote fishing village accessible only by 4WD through sand dunes - **Valizas**: Bohemian beach town known for its artistic community - **Santa Teresa National Park**: Historic fortress and pristine beaches ### Day 9: Return to Montevideo **Hotel**: Sheraton Hotel Montevideo Our final day allowed for last-minute shopping in Montevideo's boutiques and one final stroll along the Rambla before departure. ## What Made This Trip Special **The Pace**: Uruguay naturally encourages a slower travel rhythm. Distances are manageable, attractions aren't overwhelming, and the culture emphasizes enjoying life's simple pleasures. **Authenticity**: We felt like we were experiencing the real Uruguay rather than a tourist version. From gaucho culture at Carmelo to beach town life in La Paloma, our interactions felt genuine. **Diversity in a Small Package**: Despite Uruguay's compact size, we experienced three distinctly different environments - urban sophistication, countryside tranquility, and coastal relaxation. **Quality of Life**: Uruguay's high standard of living and progressive social policies create a welcoming atmosphere for visitors. The country feels safe, clean, and well-organized. ## Practical Tips **Money**: The Uruguayan peso is the local currency, though US dollars are widely accepted in tourist areas. Credit cards are commonly used in cities. **Safety**: Uruguay is one of South America's safest countries, with low crime rates and stable politics. **Driving**: Roads are excellent by South American standards. Traffic is light outside Montevideo, making for pleasant countryside driving. **Seasons**: Remember that December is summer in the Southern Hemisphere - pack accordingly for warm weather and strong sun. **Language**: While Spanish is helpful, many Uruguayans in tourist areas speak some English, and the locals are remarkably patient with visitors. ## Minor Considerations The only challenge was the limited flight connections, requiring routing through São Paulo. However, the journey proved worthwhile for such an authentic South American experience. ## Final Thoughts Uruguay exceeded all expectations as a destination that perfectly balances relaxation with cultural discovery. The country offers sophisticated pleasures without pretension - from world-class wines in countryside settings to pristine beaches without overdevelopment to a capital city that feels both cosmopolitan and manageable. For travelers seeking an authentic South American experience away from crowds, Uruguay provides the perfect introduction to the continent's more refined side. The combination of Montevideo's urban culture, Carmelo's estancia luxury, and La Paloma's coastal serenity created our ideal summer escape - one that left us already planning a return visit to explore more of this remarkable country. This trip reminded us that sometimes the best travel discoveries come from choosing destinations not yet on everyone's list. Uruguay's blend of European sophistication and South American warmth, combined with its manageable size and authentic experiences, makes it a perfect choice for discerning travelers seeking something genuinely different. ### Filling in the Other Eye URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shibumi-daruma/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:29:28.000Z If that title doesn't make sense, Google "daruma." Or pick up a copy of Matthew May's [*The Shibumi Strategy*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470769505?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0470769505&ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- a short business novel that changed my life a few years ago. Perhaps some good holiday reading? Regular readers know that my real gig is running a medical device contract manufacturing company. Or was, until yesterday. Last December, a year ago, while doing some hansei on a beach in Hawaii, I realized that yet another year had flown by. The nth in a row. I decided something had to change if I was to have a more balanced life, one where I could pursue other professional and personal goals, and basically live a little more. So I notified the executive team in January of my desire to step down, which kicked off a year-long transition process, and here we are. The position has been a great experience from many angles, and quite honestly I couldn't have asked for more. I had owners and a Board who were very open to even the wildest ideas - we even got rid of budgets in literally three days after our CFO and I attended the 2007 Lean Accounting Summit. We tried and learned a lesson from going down the toolhead path to lean, then backtracked and learned the value of asking "why" and then "how." Along the way we implemented great programs in 5S, TWI, autonomous teams, value stream management, and the like. Lean helped us be successful enough in the middle of a recession to build a new 120,000 sq ft building. Since we understood that the brains of people added value and made us competitive, and weren't only a cost, we built that building in one of the most expensive states in an expensive country, and we still out-compete "low cost" suppliers from overseas. Sure there were some hard times and really tough decisions, decisions that impacted people and their families, but we did the best we could. I learned a lot, and that's fundamentally what motivates me. I learned about running a complex technology business in a regulated industry and about implementing lean in such an environment - the real world vs. what most consultants would have you imagine. And I learned a lot about myself. Although I'd like to think I've become pretty good at general management, I learned that I really enjoy coming up with the big disruptive ideas, building something out of scratch from those ideas, and helping others learn. I also learned that I really enjoy being in control of my own time, being able to go for a run on the beach when I want, and being able to travel and see the world. For fifteen years my wife and I have had - and easily exceeded - an annual goal to visit two new countries a year. We'd like to double that while we still can. So after eight years I decided it was time to move on, even from a great company with great owners that supported doing great things. The transition process has worked out very well, with a great lean leader identified from within the company who basically started taking over for me last July. I'm excited with what he will bring to the table and how he'll continue to evolve the company. As you read this we're on our way to Uruguay for a couple weeks to decompress over the holidays. I guess if the apocalypse happens we'll get to see it from the air. After returning I'll start to work on all the projects that have taken a back seat for several years. [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) continues to grow rapidly, with thousands of customers including none other than Toyota. We're actually helping teach lean at Toyota! I'll do more writing, consulting, spend more time advising a couple companies I've been working with for the last few years, and I'll continue to play a role at my previous company. And I'll run on the beach and travel. On my own schedule. My wife already has a list of new countries she'd like to visit. As my favorite shirt says, Escape-Travel-Live. To which I would add, "learn." What have you learned about yourself this year? What will you learn in 2013? What action will you take with that knowledge - before it's too late? ### Scrooge or Fezziwig? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/scrooge-or-fezziwig/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:31:16.000Z I have always thought that you could tell an awful lot about a company's values, culture and leadership by what happens in the weeks running up to the holidays. If the company is near the average make-up of the US population, more than 3/4 of the employees are practicing Christians or Jews, which means the holidays are pretty important to them. 100% of them are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, grandmothers or grandfathers, which means the holidays may be an even bigger deal to them. At Barry-Wehmiller, a great lean company under a great lean leader, Bob Chapman, they "*take pride in the family environment we create within the walls of Barry-Wehmiller and in the ways the environment extends beyond our walls*". Anything that important to the families of their employees is pretty important to the leaders of the company. Greg Wahl is spending the week individually meeting with every one of their many hundreds of employees, wishing each a Merry Christmas, and giving each of them boxes of meat, cheese, fruit and a couple of extra days off. Again, anything so important to the people who work at Wahl is very important to the man whose name is on the building. And then there are the countless companies and their leaders who operate at the other extreme. No point in naming any of them. Paid days off are acknowledgement of the holidays enough for them. So, read the following and see which best approximates the view of your company and its leadership: *At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.* *"You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?'' said Scrooge.* *"If quite convenient, Sir.''* *"It's not convenient,'' said Scrooge, \`\`and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I 'll be bound?''* *The clerk smiled faintly.* *"And yet,'' said Scrooge, \`\`you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work.''* *The clerk observed that it was only once a year.* *"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!'' said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. \`\`But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!''* *’Yo ho, my boys!’ said Fezziwig. ‘No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,’ cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, ‘before a man can say Jack Robinson!’* *You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters-one, two, three-had them up in their places-four, five, six-barred them and pinned then-seven, eight, nine-and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.* *‘Hilli-ho!’ cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. ‘Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!’* *Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.* *In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after nother; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them. When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, ‘Well done.’* **Bob Chapman and Greg Wahl would have liked old Fezziwig. Like them, I think Fezziwig would have made a great lean leader.** ### 2012 Management Improvement Blog Review URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2012-management-improvement-blog-review/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T00:19:26.000Z By Kevin Meyer Once again I'm honored to participate in John Hunter's annual Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Review. Check out the link to read reviews of some of the best management blogs and posts from the past year. As a more frequent compilation, check out the biweekly Management Improvement Carnival. This year I chose three blogs that I read without fail, although one of the blokes might be a bit surprised by that. **Matthew May's Edit Innovation** and **Dan Markovitz's TimeBack Management** blogs take lean out of manufacturing and into personal productivity, which is also a passion of mine. And as I'm exploring new frontiers, **Tim McMahon's A Lean Journey** provides an almost daily recalibration back to the core. It's been a good balance. So on to what I consider to be the three or so best posts from each of those blogs over the past year. **Edit Innovation by Matthew May.** I first came across Matt years ago when I read one of his first books, [*In Pursuit of Elegance*](https://www.amazon.com/In-Pursuit-Elegance-Something-Missing/dp/0385526504/ref=sr%5F1%5F2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355675645&ref=kevinmeyer.com). The concept of elegant simplicity really resonated with me. Just a few months later I read his short business novel, [*The Shibumi Strategy*](https://www.amazon.com/The-Shibumi-Strategy-Powerful-Meaningful/dp/0470769505?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and that book literally changed me. It linked lean and zen concepts to personal leadership transformation, which was exactly what I was beginning to explore in response to some stressful situations. Just two months ago his latest book, [*The Laws of Subtraction*](https://www.amazon.com/The-Laws-Subtraction-Winning-Everything/dp/0071795618?ref=kevinmeyer.com), was published. This book brings it all home, and includes supporting stories from yours truly as well as several other lean-oriented bloggers you'll recognize. Highly recommended. Some of my favorite posts from the past year: - The Power of Reflection. Matt tells the story of how the Los Angeles Police Department uses a formal process to review important evens, with one of the most critical components being the AAR - After Action Report - which was originally developed by the US Army. The AAR asks three simple questions: what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, and what accounts for the differences. As Matt points out, this is very similar to the lean and Japanese concept of *hansei* \- reflection. - The "Less is Best" Approach to Innovation. As you might guess from his focus on subtraction, Matt enjoys pointing out areas where less is actually more. The same goes for the innovation process. Matt describes how successful products "often achieved the maximum effect with an elegant, minimalist approach." Three components of that concept: a lean feature set, loose reigns with a flatter organizational structure, and quiet minds where innovators meditate and are self-aware to stimulate the personal creative process. - The Greatest Day of Your Life. Are you so focused on your professional life that you are letting your personal life suffer? Do you even know what you want your personal life to be like? I was there once, and I bet I'm not alone. Matt describes the work of Rich Horwath (built upon that of Clayton Christensen) the helps apply the language of business strategy to achieving personal goals. There are two questions: what would be the greatest day of my life, and how would I get there. **TimeBack Management by Dan Markovitz.** Similar to Matthew May, I came across Dan's blog years ago while exploring how lean could apply to personal leadership processes. Dan was coming from a different direction - while exploring how personal leadership processes could be improved he happened upon lean. We've since been in close contact and have realized we are of like minds. So much so that John Hunter mentioned that when we were selecting blogs to review, unknowingly we both chose each other's and we both chose Matthew May's. Fortunately I got to call dibs on Matt's, and here's Dan's review of Evolving Excellence. Earlier this year Dan's book, [*A Factory of One*](https://www.amazon.com/Factory-One-Applying-Principles-Performance/dp/1439859930?ref=kevinmeyer.com), was published. I highly recommend this book if you would like to apply lean to personal leadership. Some of my favorite posts from the past year: - First, Identify the Value. So what is the "deliverable" of your position - or the positions of the people that work for and with you? Or meetings or basically any other business activity? Dan points out that the deliverable is often unrelated to the value that is desired - from the customer's perspective or otherwise. Is the deliverable or value an "open door policy" or increased sharing and communication? Are there other, perhaps more efficient, ways to accomplish that? - What Will You Be Judged On? Dan relays a story from Tony Blair that reinforces how important taking time for thinking, just thinking, is. We often get so consumed by tactically crisis management that we lose our grip on long-term strategy. How appropriate for this time of the year when many of us look up and ask where the year has gone. - That's Just Our Culture and We Can't Change It. We relentlessly attack defects and manufacturing process problems, but we seem to just want to accept analogous issues with personal effectiveness. Why is that? It's not any company's culture to accept a 25% product reject rate, so why is it ok to simply accept a 25% reduction in personal productivity because of poor leadership and say "it's just our culture?" **A Lean Journey by Tim McMahon**. Unlike Matt and Dan, I don't know Tim very well, but we've both come up through manufacturing and we've both volunteered with The Association for Manufacturing Excellence. What I really like about Tim's posts - which he somehow finds the time to do almost daily - is that they create some grounding for my ruminations about lean in strange places. Through his Lean Quotes and Lean Tips series he brings back the core. Some of my favorite posts from the past year: - The Key to Success is Customer Focus. Without the customer you don't have a product, a company, or a job. So why wouldn't everything revolve and align with creating value for the customer. Sometimes we kid ourselves that shareholders and employees are just as or even more important. - Don't Let Lean Myths Stand In Your Way. Tim nails it with this list, and I really wish it would be required reading for journalists before they use the unfortunate term "lean and mean." Lean is not about cost reduction, it does not make employees feel like robots, it is not about tools, to name a few. - Debunking Six Common Misconceptions of Standardized Work. Standard or standardized work is critical to the lean environment as it creates the platform from which kaizen, or change, can occur. But the concept of "standardized" can often be misinterpreted as rigid. It is not - it is simply a documented starting point for change. How can you improve if you don't know where you are? ### Silly Lady! Long Lead Times are for Losers URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/silly-lady-long-lead-times-are-for-losers/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:32:08.000Z Interesting article on the Wall Street Journal's site about the challenges facing Marie Robinson - the Toys R Us head of their supply chain. In a growing on line selling world the big issue is the role of stores versus the role of distribution centers. The conundrum- as defined by the retailers - is that the inventory is best kept in the stores in case walk in customers want it, but distribution centers are more efficient when it comes to shipping it to the person who orders on line. *"If a store does too much packing and shipping it could disrupt in-store shoppers. If it doesn't do enough, it can be more expensive than shipping from a distribution center where workers are doing it all day."* *"Filling orders from stores also adds new layers of complexity. At Toys "R" Us, analysts have to determine whether it is ultimately more economical to ship from a company distribution center or a store, depending on how much inventory is in each and how fast it is moving.* *For example, it might be more profitable to ship from a store farther away from a customer, if it has slower-selling inventory that might otherwise be marked down."* So what's a girl to do ..... ? The answer is simple- hire new accountants. With a little more common sense and a little less old school thinking the answer is fairly obvious. Whether Ms. Robinson is capable of asking 'why?' a few times and getting to the root of the matter (and the only long term model that will enable Toys R Us to survive in the long haul) is in doubt in light of the fact that her boss - Toys R Us CEO Jerry Storch - is looking to "*increase the amount of inventory the company can offer online, and increase its overall profit*." Only believing the old accounting numbers would lead someone to think that increasing inventories will increase profits. Here's the deal: The big question is where to put the inventory. Why do they have so much inventory in the first place? Supply chain 101 - because they have long lead times. If Toys R Us had very short supplier lead times - i.e. suppliers located in the USA who could ship the same day either to replenish small store inventories or directly to Toys R Us customers who bought on line - they would not need the "*cavernous distribution center*", nor would they have to "*disrupt in-store shoppers*." So why does Toys R Us source from long - really, really long - lead time suppliers in China, instead of from very short lead time suppliers located in the same regions in which they sell? Because their accountants don't know the cost of lead times. A worker takes five minutes to make a toy. Take that workers hourly rate, divide it by 60 and multiply that number by five and hang a "$" sign in front of it - that math is easy. On the other hand, place a purchase order and wait months for it to arrive, and carry enough inventory to cover all of the unexpected demand that might happen while you wait for it - that math is a complete mystery. Two time driven, resource consuming events ... the one with easy math drives decisions, strategies and ultimately the fate of the company. The one with hard math is relegated to 'non-financial measure' status of secondary importance simply because management cannot see a clean cause and effect relationship between it and profit. It actually has a huge impact on profit - just not as simple to see. And so it goes. Of course, the problem is rooted in the whole fixed and variable quagmire that has accounting completely stumped. Moving one toy from China to the United States saves nothing. That "cavernous warehouse" and all of its employees, equipment and the mega-computer to run things will not change one iota. The savings is nil and the price of that one toy is higher. It is not incremental; it is a strategic matter . Move most of the toys to the USA and millions of dollars are saved. The future of the toy retailing business - and every other business far that matter - belongs to the big thinking, risk taking leaders who really understand the underlying economics of their business and the supply chain. The losers will be those who focus on direct purchase prices, think lead times have little cost impact, and spend their time wrestling with whether work should be done in cavernous warehouses or in stores disrupting customers. ### Like Teenagers Discovering Sex URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/like-teenagers-discovering-sex/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:32:51.000Z I'm sure the European explorers of old were startled to find the Americas squarely in the middle of the path heading west from Europe to Asia. The millions of aboriginal people already living in the Americas knew it for centuries, but the Europeans were absolutely gob smacked to learn what the least intelligent of the aboriginals held as an obvious fact. That's usually the way of it. Most amazement comes not so much from discovering something new to everyone- just something new to you. So here we have The Atlantic expounding on " *the startling, sustainable, just-getting-started return of industry to the United States*." Just because The Atlantic, GE and are "startled" it doesn't mean much of anyone else in the manufacturing community is. It is actually a pretty good article and I recommend reading the whole thing, but when you get to the part where GE discovers employee engagement and design for manufacturability you have to scratch your head. *"By considering the workers who would have to put the water heater together—in fact, by having those workers right at the table, looking at the design as it was drawn—the team cut the work hours necessary to assemble the water heater from 10 hours in China to two hours in Louisville."* *"So a funny thing happened to the GeoSpring on the way from the cheap Chinese factory to the expensive Kentucky factory: The material cost went down. The labor required to make it went down. The quality went up. Even the energy efficiency went up."* *"Time-to-market has also improved, greatly. It used to take five weeks to get the GeoSpring water heaters from the factory to U.S. retailers—four weeks on the boat from China and one week dockside to clear customs. Today, the water heaters—and the dishwashers and refrigerators—move straight from the manufacturing buildings to Appliance Park’s warehouse out back, from which they can be delivered to Lowe’s and Home Depot. Total time from factory to warehouse: 30 minutes."* The big error in the article is "*What is only now dawning on the smart American companies, says Lenzi, is that when you outsource the making of the products, your whole business goes with the outsourcing*.” Lenzi is the guy in charge of GE design. The mistake is the rather self-serving assertion that this is dawning on "smart American companies". Actually it is dawning on the slow learners - the not too terribly bright ones. The "smart American companies" have known this for a very long time, but the big corporate mentality is that, if they are figuring it out, it must be a new insight. In this regard GE is a whole lot like Apple, the leadership of which is convinced that America doesn't have the manufacturing know-how to make iStuff. It really means that Apple doesn't have the manufacturing know-how. Mainstream American manufacturing knows quite a bit about it - much more than Apple's vaunted Chinese buddies, but these big companies are so insular, so full of themselves and convinced of their own genius that they honestly believe that, if they don't know something no one else could know it either; and that when they learn something, the whole world must be learning it for the first time too. How insular are they? Consider "*Lean management is not a new concept, but outside of car making, it hasn’t caught on widely in the United States.*" I can't think of a more erroneous assessment of the state of lean manufacturing in the United States. In fact, the US auto companies are laughable lagging the rest of manufacturing, but I have yet to see anyone from GE at the serious lean events, so how would they know? In fact, lean management has caught on very widely - just not at the big off-shore outsourcing cheap labor chasers - an approach for which GE has set the gold standard. But to know that, the leadership of GE would have to attend a few learning events and visit a couple of of their potential suppliers to learn something ... and GE doesn't learn from suppliers - it dictates to them; and GE doesn't learn at conferences - it sends keynote speakers to them. It is great that GE is learning what so many already know - much, much better late than never. But to read articles such as this one, barely masking GE's sheer giddiness at discovering lean 101, it is like eavesdropping on teenagers who just discovered sex for the first time. They are convinced that they invented it for the simple reason that they cannot imagine how they could have been so completely oblivious for so long to something that wonderful. ### Elephants Make Lousy Supply Chain Models URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/elephants-make-lousy-supply-chain-models/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:33:38.000Z The folks at The Christian Science Monitor wrote about some head-shakingly bad experiences with on line shopping the other day: *"First up is Kohl's, which is notoriously guilty of slow processing; according to our own staff experiences, it can take a week between a "Thank you for your Kohls.com order" email and the subsequent "Your Kohls.com order is ready to be shipped" message."* *" ... one of the most frequently-named and disappointing retailers amongst our own readers and staff is Best Buy, as many have complained about the store's processing and shipping policies. Our Editor in Chief checked his numerous past orders and discovered that Best Buy usually takes five days to process an order ..."* *"... the slowest shippers in the past six months have consistently been Target, Overstock, Dell, and HSN ..."* CNN ( and a lot of customers) ripped into Toys R Us for their abysmal on line performance - *"Many shoppers claimed that they had placed orders to take advantage of some of Toys R Us' hottest deals, only to find out later that they were canceled because there weren't enough items in stock."* This a bit hard to believe ... Best Buy is under siege to compete with on line sources, trying to figure out how to keep people from using their stores as showrooms and buying elsewhere. Seems as though delivering like the on line guys would be a pretty high priority. Same with Toys R Us. Incredibly, Toys R Us explained their Black Friday delivery problem with, "*This week is one of the busiest for online shopping across the industry -- and Toysrus.com is no exception. The number of questions to our call center increases proportionately with the increased business*." No kidding? Black Friday is busy? I guess they never saw that coming. It seems as though the big box retail world is suffering from a lack of agility problem. I looked it up and did the math and found that a container ship moves at just a shade under the flat out running speed of an elephant - about 24 miles per hour. That elephant style is an apt description of things. The big lumbering load rolls into a big distribution center where it is controlled by a big computer. The priority is size, rather than speed; scale rather than nimbleness. As impressive as elephants are for their sheer size and power, the fact is that, in a race between a person and a pachyderm, bet on the human. If the course has a few twists and turns, the human will win by an even greater margin. In an increasingly digitally driven supply chain world, the human-centered model beats the elephant model as well, for the same reasons. Case in point: In Uganda, where computers and Internet connections can be a bit scarce, a company called Afrocyber is cobbling together cell phones, tablets and GPS systems to drive one-piece-at-a-time distribution. A Tanzanian juice company called Azam uses it and ... *"Finding out what their customers actually wanted to buy, rather than effectively dictating demand based on the contents of a lorry, meant the company had to overhaul production lines. They have been able to cut the size of their transport fleet, reduce their fuel bill, and sell more juice."* Seems when the big system is not an option a logical solution using cheap, available technology turns out to be even better. I am intimately familiar with the creative work a tech company called iDatix has done with a personalized garment company called Antigua to enable them to personalize shirts and ship them faster than the elephants can even confirm orders. The key is taking the Antigua value stream map and all of the appropriate manual and visual signals and controls and making them available for everyone to see in near real time - using technology to enhance the human powered process, rather than bending humans to support a big computer based process. Same approach works at West Paw Design - another company I know well. Place an order for a pet toy with them and, faster than Best Buy or Toys R Us can say "We'll see if we have one in stock" West Paw has the order shipped and, more often than not, has a replacement one halfway through production to fill the kanban your order triggered. Like Antigua, they do it with vale stream mapping, kaizening things to death, cross trained employees to deal with spikes, and an appropriate amount of home-grown information technology to supplement the people driven optimized process. For the big guys, there is clearly a lot more to competing in an on line world than building a cool web site. The elephantine supply chain model behind the big box store is wholly incapable of driving an online business model. For the smaller guys, the speed and agility that comes from applying minimal, appropriate technology in a creative manner to a human-centric delivery model can be your single biggest competitive advantage - nurture it! ### iPads and Chia Pets URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ipads-and-chia-pets/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:35:14.000Z By now I am sure just about everyone has read that Apple's Tim Cook has announced that Apple will start making some computers in the United States. Lots of blather about the USA not having the engineering talent, the schools not generating tool and die makers and on and on ... all of it nonsense. The United States, for all of the manufacturing loss over recent decades, still has the most technically capable people in the world. It is apparent that Tim Cook and Apple don't really know why they left the USA for Singapore and Ireland, at first, then to China for their manufacturing. They think it was because of labor costs - they sincerely believe that - but it wasn't. And they are very likely to fail in their US manufacturing venture, and they will probably think it is somehow attributable to people when they do. In fact, it has nothing to do with labor in the USA, Singapore, China or anywhere else. They will fail because they do not understand how to run a truly integrated manufacturing company. Few of the Fortune 500 companies do. Instead, they all pursue the same business model as Joseph Enterprises - the Chia Pet folks (who incidentally outsourced manufacturing first to Mexico and now to China). Both Apple and the Chia guys have design and their sales effort completely disconnected from manufacturing. Their common goal is to conjure up something completely new that a slew of people will want - then sell as many as they can as fast as they can in as many places as they can. Whoever is manufacturing the iStuff and Chia stuff is tasked with figuring out how to ramp up the factory to meet the demand. As anyone who manages manufacturing knows, the steeper the ramp up, the more demand exceeds planned capacity, the more difficult (and costly) it can be. But the Apple and Chia business models are actually aimed at creating just that manufacturing challenge - make that ramp up as steep as possible. Of course, sometimes it doesn't work. They latest model doesn't sell like hotcakes. When that happens someone is left holding the bag in terms of the cost of all that manufacturing capacity - expensive to own when it is sitting idle. That disconnected approach - cut the innovators and sellers loose and tell manufacturing to chase them and do whatever it takes to keep up - works well enough when demand is high and growing. It worked well for Apple from the early 80's to the mid 90's. But when Apple missed the boat with its PC designs and sales dropped, the cost of all that idle capacity was staggering. Apple's solution was to get out of manufacturing - contract it out. Make all of those capacity challenges and costs someone else's problem. In China, Apple has found that their friends at FoxConn can house people in dorms right at the factory and compel them to work sixty hours or more a week to handle the ramp up when demand is hot - and not worry about the implications of cutting them all loose and tossing them out on the streets if the time comes when demand dies. Make all that investment in capacity FoxConn's problem if the factory is idle. When you own factories in the United States, however, it is a much different story. You can't force people to work 60+ hours a week and there is a price to pay - both a financial price and a PR price - when you dump them in huge numbers onto the unemployment line. Wall Street loves that business model - when demand for Blackberry's is going through the roof they invest in RIM (the Blackberry maker); but when Apple comes up with a better phone, they can dump their RIM stock and put their money into Apple. Whatever happened to all of the people and manufacturing assets it took to make Blackberries isn't their problem. That sales driven business model - all sales increases are good no matter what the implications may be to manufacturing capacity utilization - is standard operating procedure for companies that really don't understand that they are a manufacturing company. Toyota's success has largely been due to the fact that they do understand. The huge driver of profitability ( or lack of it) in manufacturing is not labor cost - it is capacity utilization. Meteoric sales one year, followed by a precipitous drop the next, and then another meteoric rise the next is what happens to innovation and fad driven companies. Manufacturing is expected to drag that huge factory money pit up the mountains and down into the valleys chasing sales. Lurching from willy-nilly hiring, excessive overtime and pedal-to-the-metal supply chain expediting one year to massive layoffs and idle machines the next Toyota doesn't play that game. Their entire business model is driven by a goal of being just a hair under 100% capacity utilization. A sales increase of 20% is just as bad as a sales drop of 20% - either scenario misaligns sales with capacity and results in large scale wastes of money. That takes a long term view of things. It takes a sales and pricing strategy based on a goal of slow, steady growth over decades - not selling as much as they can of whatever they can to whoever they can. It takes a product strategy of continually cranking out solid, dependable, reliable products, rather than trying to come up with the next huge selling fad. In the proverbial race, they are the tortoise to just about everyone else's hare. The folks at Apple are dreaming about an Apple TV that will shoot sales back through the roof; and the folks at Joseph Industries have high hopes that the Chia Kung Fu Panda will do the same. If so, the factories in China will wear people out by the thousands to keep up, but their bets are hedges and those Chinese folks will be sitting on their hands doing nothing if they fad moves in a different direction. A company like Apple can't manufacture well no matter where they do it so long as they are driven by the Chia Pet economic model. Without being capacity driven they cannot provide stable employment, which precludes them from having stable processes and a kaizen culture. That can only happen when the driving objective is driven by a clear understanding that profits are maximized over the long haul by operating at that full capacity sweet spot, which takes a level of sales, manufacturing and accounting integration few companies are willing to pursue. The allure of making a lot of money now and worrying about the future in the future is just too great. ### So Many Lessons, So Little Time URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/so-many-lessons-so-little-time/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:42:48.000Z The New York Times has run a series of stories written by a guy who runs a woodworking company in the Philadelphia area in which the author/ business owner shares his insights and lessons learned. The latest post is here, in which we learn about the high cost of training. Go ahead and click on a the links to some of his other pieces and get a feel for this guy's business. I actually read this piece a few days ago and have been stymied. This guy's thinking provides so many lessons in how not to do things it is hard to know where to start. First, perhaps, is to wonder why the New York Times picked Paul Downs Cabinetmakers as the paragon from which their readers should learn. It is funny how some industry segments embrace lean at a different pace than others, but the woodworking and cabinetmaking folks have been early and eager embracers of lean. There are hundreds of cabinetmakers who realize that, in light of the fact that if GE can build you a locomotive in about four weeks, taking ten weeks to get a dining room table built is a bit extreme. Imagine the exposure had the NYT chosen to cover a lean journey, rather than this exercise in long outdated thinking. I could highlight the abysmal accounting, some of it from simply getting the math wrong. He writes: "*I pay Bill* \[the guy being trained\] *$24 an hour (like Bill himself, this is a made up number but a good approximation of the wages I pay experienced bench hands). With taxes and benefits, he costs me $30 an hour. When he’s working at the bench, I can sell his labor for $80 an hour. If I move him into the office, no product will be built. So that costs me $80 an hour in lost production, but I’m still paying him his wages. That means the cost of his training is already $110 an hour.* *Of course, someone has to train Bill. That would be my engineer. Guys like him cost about $48 an hour, including taxes and benefits. We bill him out at $90 an hour. If the engineer stops doing productive work and starts training Bill, I forgo both his production and the revenue we charge for it — but I still have to pay him for his services. That’s another $138 an hour. So the initial cost of* *training Bill is $248 an hour*." Actually you can't double count the hourly pay. The cost is $170, as the math shows: Of course, even this math assumes the engineer and the trainee won't be working on real jobs during the training, otherwise the engineer will still be generating revenue. And it assumes that no one will be hired to replace the cabinetmaker when he goes off to become an engineer - a curious assumption if cabinetmakers can bring in a net contribution of $50 an hour ($80 revenue - $30 cost). One would think you would want to bring in Bill's replacement before he starts training to be an engineer. If you factor in that the engineer still does billable work - training Bill on real live projects - and Bill can be replaced with someone who can send $50 to the bottom line, the training becomes a lot less costly. In fact, keep thinking about the subject and it doesn't take much creativity to realize that training Bill - and everyone else - is a real good investment. One lesson is that there are lots of ways to look at the cost of training. He seems to have gone out of his way to build a case for not doing it ... just as easy to make a case for doing more of it. How often do we see that? Deciding the outcome in advance, then gathering the numbers to support that preconceived outcome. Another lesson is in the time it takes to do all of this training. It is hardly unique to this company - seems to be a common failing at lots of companies - especially small ones - but standard work is obviously lacking. The real value of standard work is not for existing employees in existing processes. Yeah, there are benefits to be had, but for the most part, they already know the process. The real benefit is when someone new has to learn the job, whether that is a new employee or someone being cross trained. When standard work and job instructions are done right, training is easy; when it is not it takes forever with big productivity losses along the way, as the cabinetmaker describes. TWI is not just historical trivia - it is the difference between quickly and effectively training people and this guy's sad story. With TWI women made the huge leap from housewife to aviation mechanic in weeks, while Paul Downs takes three months for people to make the relatively small step from cabinetmaker to cabinet designer. But the real problem at Paul Downs Cabinetmakers is embodied in the last paragraph: "*additional training has the potential to upset the balance of power between labor and management*." The "balance of power"? Are you kidding me? He sees the fact that his niche CAD software means training his people will not translate into marketable skills at other companies as a good thing. He doesn't have to pay them as much. Now there''s an inspirational leader - one who figures out to make sure that not only he, but no one else will pay his employees much. If you click back through his history you will see that, when the economy dropped his immediate reaction was to fire 13 of his 23 people. When he and his partner got the cash flow all screwed up he hit his employees with a 15% pay cut. With that mentality it should be no surprise that he could only see the numbers that made investing in his people a losing proposition. Obviously the tables Paul Downs makes are very good, otherwise this whole approach to people and management would have put him out of business long ago. That is not an unusual story ... companies that take three steps forward via a great product and two steps backwards via lousy management, netting the one step gain. The sad part is that they think that is what running the business is all about - fighting a battle over the balance of power and bulling through absurd lead times, and then calling the one step forward a success. In fact, none of that is necessary. Too bad the NYT chose this company rather than any one of the outstanding lean companies that could explain that engaging, training and looking for ways to enrich employees works so much better than racking your brains to come up with strategies to minimize their earnings and beat them in a power struggle. That would have made for a small business blog worth reading. ### Contextual Comparison URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/contextual-comparison/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:43:28.000Z I love reading The Wall Street Journal on the iPad. More than any other newspaper or magazine, the WSJ got it right in terms of functionality and readability. And the format sometimes leads to the ability to derive comparisons between articles that add context - or at least ridicule. Or in the case of this morning's edition, ridicule a deux. Now if I did this right, you'll be able to see the full view of this particular WSJ iPad screen by clicking on the image. Two sets of stories I'd like you to see: 1) "Big Gains in November Auto Sales"... and further down there's "GM Moves to Reduce Inventory." Yep, we've told you about this many times. GM counts a "sale" as when a vehicle leaves the factory and is "sold" to a dealer... not necessarily when it is sold to an end customer. Hence the initial apparent conundrum of gains in sales with gains in unsold vehicles. Hmmm... 2) "Singapore Airlines' Troubled Investment" which discusses the problems with the 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic it bought a while back... and right beneath it "Virgin Atlantic Would Fill a Hole for Delta" describing Delta thinking about buying a 49% stake in... Virgin Atlantic. Perhaps Delta should talk to Singapore Airlines? Hmmm... Obviously there's more to all four stories, and it's not as simple as just the headline. Or is it? ### Who Are We Kidding? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/who-are-we-kidding/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:44:06.000Z We call them the LLCC's - the Low Labor Cost Countries - and we rationalize having the goods we buy made there through a convenient, but entirley fabricated, interpretation of an economic theory called ['Comparative Advantage'](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/new-definition-of-comparative-advantage/). It is a fabrication because the theory is based on productivity - not hourly wages. It is driven by the idea that goods should be made wherever the collective combination of hours results in the overall minimum consumption of human effort - not wherever the economic and regulatory framework is most abusive. And it is convenient because it enables us to avoid acknowledging why we are really buying from these countries. We could just as accurately call them LWSCC's - Low Workplace Safety Cost Countries - just as great a contributor to the low cost as labor - but it doesn't really have a moral ring to it, does it? The similarities between the fire in Bangladesh last week and the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York in 1911 are striking Locked doors, blocked exits, abusive management in a factory full of over-worked, grossly underpaid women doing garment work. Those practices were shamefully common in the Unites States a hundred years ago, but we don't allow that sort of thing any more. We collectively examined our consciences and decided that, while we want the things we buy to be cheap, we don't want to save money so badly that workers should suffer and even die in the process. That's the way of it in democracies with functioning economies driven by free enterprise principles. We strike that balance, or attempt to anyway. Similar decisions have been made in the UK,and in Australia and New Zealand, in Japan and throughour western Europe, in Canada and in every legitimate democracy. Or we could call them LECC'c - Low Environmental Cost Countries - again, a big contributor to why the costs are low, but not the sort of thing people in advanced countries want to acknowledge. Or perhaps we could call them NCLLC''s - No Child Labor Limit Countries, but, again, we don't want to live with that. There are lots of reasons why the cost of the shirt in Bangladesh or Gutamala is lower than in North Carolina. It is most convenient to focus on the hourly labor rates and to hide behind an economic theory from a book no one has read, even though everyone connected with manufacturing knows that the cost of production labor is a pretty low element of the total cost of shirts or much of anything else. It is also convenient to delude ourselves into thinking payng those women in Bangaldesh 18 cents an hour helps them - it's better than nothing. In fact, the only thing that is going to help the women in Bangladesh is a functional economy with a government that is a whole lot better than 120th on Transparency International's corruption index. Walmart, Target, Sears, Disney and the rest of the retailers whose goods were made in the factory that burned claim ignorance, as I imagine their customers do who Walmart and the rest say compel them to buy in Bangladesh rather than in countries that have chosen to preclude such human tragedies from happening. But they knew ... maybe not about that specific factory, but they knew they were buying from factories where such events are likely to happen. It is why they are there - to avoid the cost of such things not happening. Giving these countries a free pass on what we know is fundamentally right and fundamentally wrong because they are 'developing nations'? Another senseless, but convenient, rationalization. How about they develop to the point that they have a basic level of respect for their citizenry first, then we help out with the economics ... but such respect adds to the cost of running their factories - doing things the right way is often not doing them the cheap way - and that cost will be embedded in the Disney shirt we want to wear ... hence the convenience of the free pass for developing nation status. I am foursquare in the camp of those who believe that the United States and most other western nations have let the pendulum swing too far - that we are grossly over-regulated, burdening manufacturing with exhorbitant costs to comply with unnecessary restrictions. But I am also a firm believer that we solve the over-regulation problem by battling it out with the regulators in Washington - not by throwing out the collective morality that drove us to resolve that another Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire would never again happen. It is high time all of us westerners took a good, long, honest look in the mirror and asked ourselves just what it is we really stand for. Our predecessors had the principles to decide that our natural desire to have the good things in life at the lowest cost was not worth killing workers, trashing the planet and abusing children. I sure don't want for anything badly enough that women should die, children should be abused or people in China can't breathe so I can have it. ### You're Good When You Think You're Bad URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/youre-good-when-you-think-youre-bad/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:44:25.000Z Over a decade ago I created my first lean enterprise assessment, just as a tool to help me understand gaps in my organization. I'm generally loath to use such tools as they are generally misinterpreted, gamed, or whatnot - but so be it. It's a tool and just a tool. Coincidentally that first assessment tried to measure the use of lean tools, which lead us down the toolhead path - and smack into a wall. We learned our lesson, and began asking "why" and then "how" before choosing the appropriate tool for the problem. That assessment morphed into something that tries to measure behaviors and perspectives, not tools. It's fairly lengthy, but still well-received. And scary, as it is virtually impossible to receive a high score unless you have implemented lean from your suppliers through to your customers. Here's the assessment, free to download. It is now a small part of the Lean Enterprise Strategy Kit that takes an organization through a combined traditional and lean enterprise strategy development, communication, execution, and review process. But my point isn't to pander those tools. Along the way, both in my organization and in the hundred or so others that have used the tool, I noticed a common trend: - First assessment: high score - Second assessment (generally 1 to 2 years later): much lower score - Third assessment: static to even lower score Most people wouldn't consider that to be progress. How can you get worse? But think about what's happening. And that's fundamentally why the assessment is just a tool - it helps you prioritize areas to work on. Nothing more. Before starting down the lean journey, most organizations think they're pretty good. Inventory? Helps buffer issues obviously caused by suppliers and anyone except themselves. Obviously. Waste? Comes with the territory because our products and processes are more complex, different, inherently unstable, etc. (pick one). People? Can't be trusted. So they look at the assessment, especially the first one that didn't try to point out such fallacious fantasies (!), and skew it higher. In their own minds. Then, if they have a solid lean leader, they start to learn. And visit other real lean organizations. And attend seminars, workshops, and training programs by the likes of AME and [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com). And they start to realize how far down the totem pole they are. That's fine, as long as they start to improve. As they learn, they discover even more areas for improvement. As they drain the inventory swamp they uncover more problems. As they train their people - and learn to respect their brains - more opportunities arise. And they feel even worse. They try a lot of tools. Perhaps judiciously, but probably without a lot of forethought. Many of those tools fail - but they were tried. And over time as appropriate problems and opportunities present themselves, they remember and apply them again with success. Nearly a decade later the organization sometimes feels horrible - almost like a failure. There are so many issues, so many problems, so many opportunities. So many tools have been tried and abandoned. But let me tell you about that organization - and I know because it is mine, and I'm damn proud of those people. That organization trains on lean, has a solid 5S program, uses manual and visual systems to manage production across three facilities instead of shop floor MRP, has reduced lead times by 90%, has morning standup meetings in all key departments, is rated best-in-class for quality by it's major customers, and outcompetes its "low cost country" competitors - on price and quality - from the not-so-cheap state of California. TWI is used extensively, autonomous teams have been deployed, ridiculous budgeting processes have been eliminated. It hosts tours and workshops by AME, local and state business groups, and in all cases there's a big "wow!" It was even successful enough that it built a new 120,000 sq ft facility - in California no less - that leverages massive reconfigurability concepts. But in their minds, they have so, so far to go. The journey seems to get longer and longer. They don't want to apply for Shingo Prizes or AME Excellence Awards - there just isn't the time because there are so many issues to work on. Certifications? A rainbow of belts? Nowhere. The more you learn and the more you improve, the more you understand how far away perfection really is. The depression of excellence? Until you remember those days long ago, when you smugly thought you were great. ### Executives to the Rescue URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/executives-to-the-rescue/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:44:46.000Z Once there was a manufacturing executive who was concerned about the inaccurate financial information he was getting, so he moved his desk up to the accounting department so he could figure out what was going on. Soon he found out that about 80% of the way through month end close the accountants calculators' batteries were dying so any numbers bigger than they could count on their fingers and toes were wrong, so he bought them all rechargeable calculators and the problem was solved. Now that isn't a true story, but it is the equivalent of the supposedly true story recounted in CFO Magazine. The story goes that the company had manufacturing problems so the CFO moved his desk to the factory floor. "*A key problem for the company was a high return rate for some products. For example, part of the process for making one product involved cutting 20 foot bars into smaller pieces and punching regularly spaced holes in them. But when the bar was down to the last piece, it tended to move slightly as the hole puncher tried to do its work. Lots of pieces were created with holes that were off by the 1/16th inch of tolerance called for in the engineering specs. 'You could be an inch and a half off, and no one realized that or tested it,' Litowotz \[the CFO\] says.* *The simple remedy was creating a jig: a template for metal products similar to a stencil for painting on a wall. In order to make a hole in a bar, it was necessary to punch through a corresponding hole in the jig. The number of returns dropped immediately and dramatically*." If that's true the root of the problem was not a lack of jigs, rather an HR process that hired morons. If the people in production were routinely an inch and half out of a +/- 1/16" spec and didn't realize it they have much bigger problems than fixtures can resolve. Don't get me wrong - the idea of a CFO (or any other senior manager) moving his desk to the shop floor is a great one, but not so he can quickly see the stupid mistakes of the production people and fix them. It isn't so he can fix and preach - it is so he can learn. There is certainly value in having an outsider's perspective - someone to ask the dumb, obvious questions - to point out the 800 pound gorilla in the living room who has been there for so long we ignore and work around it. But 999 times out of a thousand there is a very good reason for the gorilla to be there. Everyone knows it and it is still there because lots of good people have burned lots of brain cells trying to get it out of the living room and came up empty. The likelihood of anyone - especially an exec with little or no technical knowledge - going out to the floor and quickly solving the big problems through his superior powers of observation, logic and intellect are virtually non-existant. The lack of respect and humility the CFO article exudes is stunning, but sadly, not all that uncommon. It is the top down mentality driven by an unshakable conviction that the people in management are simply smarter than the people doing the work; and problems are best solved by having those smarter people go out and straighten things out ... then write a policy to make sure the dummies don't screw things up again. A far more likely scenario is fo the CFO to go out into the factory and find out that everyone on the floor knows the cause and the cure for the defect, but they cannot get past the budget restrictions and the financial justification hurdles necessary to get the jig made. The lack of common sense is not on the factory floor so much as it is in the management processes. When senior people go to the gemba - the factory floor - any quick fixes they can contribute are most apt to be to learn how management can improve in order to enable the people doing the work to be more successful. The title of the article: What Holds CFO's Back From Operational Roles? The answer more often than not: Ignorance, arrogance, a lack of respect for the deep knowledge held by people on the cutting edge of the value adding effort. Managers must go to the gemba, but they have to go there with the mindset of a freshman walking into his first day of engineering school - excited but struck with a profound sense of how much he has to learn. ### Random Notes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/random-notes/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:45:58.000Z An interesting article over at Industry Week: **[Lean's High Tech Makeover - Toyota matches its Toyota Production System with advanced automation tools to create a high tech ballet of lean manufacturing](https://www.industryweek.com/technology/leans-high-tech-makeover?page=1&ref=kevinmeyer.com)** This is the article I mentioned for which I was interviewed a while back. **New Lean Management Article** If you are so inclined, you can read my latest article on the fundamentals and importance of management in the lean journey over on my web site. **[Managing the Lean Enterprise](https://www.bill-waddell.com/articles.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com)** **Two cents worth of coffee** Kevin wrote [a piece the other day likening the Keurig single cup system to lean](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-value-of-coffee/). Lots of good comments. Seems to me many of those suggesting that making less than full pots with old style drip coffee makers and the French press advocates (including the author of the lengthy email Kevin and I received argiung in favor of EOQ and forecasting to solve the problem of coffee waste) ignored the part of Kevin's post that mentioned "*the varying demands of a crowd*". Making a partial pot in a drip maker is efficient enough so long as there is only one kind of coffee needed. Introduce two products, however - she drinks regular and he drinks decaf, for instance - and the math changes. Brewing a partial pot of one, then cleaning out the pot and reloading it for the other type wastes a lot of time. The Keuring beats that approach hands down. Having more than one product is the norm in production and Kevin's analogy of the Keuring system to one piece flow in the factory is right on point -IMHO, of course. **The Unlean Education System** One reason the cost of a college education is totally out of whack relative to the value it provides is the propensity for academia to create bureaucracy. This article about "The Troubling Dean to Professor Ratio" over at Business Week should leave you shaking your head. ### The Lean Value of Coffee URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-lean-value-of-coffee/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:47:05.000Z Now that I can reliably [see again](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thanks/), I have something of a pent-up list of topics I'd like to write on. But it's the weekend, so let's start with something a bit more fun - and perhaps closer to home. So how many of you have already run down to the nearest Starbucks to get your coffee? Or how many cranked up the Keurig or (gasp!) made a full pot at home? For those of you that made a pot, how much will be left in the pot in a couple hours? Come on, admit it - you end up dumping out most of the pot. Think about that. Apparently many consumers are, which is why those single serving machines are all the rage. I know I made the switch from the morning Starbucks stop to a Keurig about two years ago. Paid for itself in less than three months. I had previously switched from the traditional pot to the Starbucks run simply because I was the only coffee drinker in the house, and dumping a several scoops of ground coffee into the basket to make a pot for just little ole me didn't make sense. Wasting coffee didn't make sense, paying a fat markup to Starbucks didn't make sense, but paying a little extra for a single use K-Cup did. Waste reduction, and value from many perspectives besides just price. Which is how the article describes it as well. *Having already replaced the office coffee pot, single-cup coffee systems now want to conquer households. Already, 24% of U.S. homes are equipped with a single-cup coffee machine, making it second only to standard drip makers in terms of household penetration, according to market research firm Mintel.* *The rise of single-cup brewing begs shoppers to do the math. Using one of the new single-cup machines to brew a serving of regular coffee costs anywhere from 55 cents to 80 cents, depending on the machine and the coffee. That compares with $1.65 or more for a "tall" coffee at a Starbucks shop.* Yep, that was the three month payback for one-cup-a-day me. By far, the most cost-effective option remains to brew a whole pot of coffee at home using a traditional method, at a cost of anywhere from a dime to a quarter per serving. But that assumes you drink the whole pot. The more-common scenario, as any coffee lover knows, is to brew a pot of coffee but only drink one or two cups, significantly raising the per-serving cost. The real-world realization of that common misperception of mass production. Waste happens, if not tied directly to demand. Whether it's extra coffee in the pot, or cars sitting on a sales lot. *One indisputable advantage of single-cup brewers is that they are fast. At dinner parties they can efficiently accommodate the varying demands of a crowd. Many hosts find the machine provides a welcome post-dinner activity, as guests select and concoct their own drinks before dessert is served.* Velocity of flow. Quick changeover leading to mass customization. Increased value - through time and price and desire matched to demand - to the customer. Lean right in front of you in the kitchen. ### Think for Yourself URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/think-for-yourself/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:47:30.000Z The good folks at McKinsey have put out a massive report called "Manufacturing the Future: The Next Era of Global Growth and Innovation". The pdf version runs to 184 pages and everyone serious about manufacturing should read it. The trick is to absorb and consider the data and ignore their interpretations of that data. You have to think for yourself - draw your own conclusions. The problem with the report is that McKinsey sees themselves as big thinkers of big ideas that are useful to big companies, and their business model is to do big projects for those big companies and send them big bills for their services. They are hardly alone in this slant. If you read most of what comes from academia they have the same big bias, as do the politicians -typically experts at little other than their own re-election and enrichment, let alone manufacturing. So the report does a good job of describing the world and it's implications for manufacturing; but all of its recommendations revolve around what the mega-multi-nationals ought to do about it. For instance, the report says, "*In recent years, some companies have started to embrace a 'granularity of growth' approach* \["granularity", by the way is big in the report - must be the cool buzzword these days\] *to markets. This involves looking for niches and underserved sources of demand that can be more profitable than broader markets where more competitors are present. However, few companies have mastered the crossfunctional routines to consistently translate granular market understanding into granular operations strategies. In the next era of manufacturing, getting to this micro view of manufacturing strategy will be a key difference*." The idea that markets are comprised of niches - there is no 'mass' and the mass marketers underserve those niches - is fundamental to lean thinking. In fact, lots of companies have "mastered the crossfunctional routines" to serve them - they have done so in the form of organizational structures made up of customer facing value streams. It is just the big guys who haven't mastered value streams. Financially obsessed control freaks who dominate big company headquarters are constitutionally incapable for empowering local value streams to serve unique niches. By nature they will always pull the organization into a one-size-fits-all mode. (Everyone in the company is fully empowered to do whatever best serves the customers .... provided they all meet the same short term functional financial goals and don't violate any of the policies in the thousands of pages of company policy manuals governing every aspect of the job). The McKinsey folks cite a study in which they have identified 22 unique markets within China; a one-size-fits-all-Chinese-people approach won't work. So how to design a strategy that works for each of the 22 niches? Big Data according to McKinsey. Big data is basically gathering enormous amounts of information from point of sale, Facebook, or wherever you can find it, then get your hands on a mega-computer and develop staggeringly complex algorithms to sort through all of that data and figure out what the folks in each of those 22 Chinese niches wants. A good example is Walmart, which uses big data-type applications to figure out what its customers want. The alternative, of course, would be for each store to decide what its customers want. A store manager doesn't need big data and big computers. He or she just has to talk to the customers. In fact, he or she already talks to customers and already knows. But Walmart is fundamentally incapable of letting those folks call the shots to any significant degree - what would there be for all of the intellectual horsepower in Bentonville to do if the people closest to the customers were empowered? Big data is the crutch for those who cannot or will not empower people. Too many leaders of too many small and medium companies become star struck with this big cmopany nonsense. Right now there are 22 small Chinese companies fully capable of providing exactly what is needed in their local market ... or a handful of medium sized companies that can organize into a handful of value streams that can be empowered to serve those markets very well. They don't need to follow any of the McKinsey strategies to succeed. The economy of scale die-hards would argue that those small firms can't leverage a central product development effort - a high powered team that can develop core products and customize them for each market. The cost of development will have to be spread among too few customers. True enough ... but those smaller companies won't have to pay for a monolithic headquarters and millions of dollars worth of big data hardware and software - and they will come up with better solutions for customers by personal interaction with them than anyone sifting through big data ever will. The moral of the McKinsey report story is that globalization is leading to market fragmentation - niches of one - and the big challenge for big manufacturers is to figure out how to operate like a collection of small manufacturers. The last thing small manufacturers should do is to use McKinsey type recommendations to figure out how to behave like big manufacturers. ### The Anatomy of A Twinkie URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-anatomy-of-a-twinkie/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:48:09.000Z It seems rather curious that Hostess Brands CEO Gregory Rayburn would have so much time to talk to the business press over the last week or so as his company was racing toward liquidation, but he did and the message was consistent. The unwillingness of the baker's union to take some 30% in compensation reductions was the cause of the demise of the Twinkie. Don't get me wrong, unions in general and the bakers at Twinkie in particular are a useless relic of the past. Paying people $48,000 a year, along with a solid health plan and retirement benefits takes a lot of productivity to justify and unions are productivity killers. Regardless, the union didn't kill Hostess. That much is clear from a basic look at their business. They are a private company so their financials aren't out there in the open, but looking over the numbers from the last few years when they were publicly traded, as well as the figures from their bankruptcy filings, the cost structure look something like this: Now 15% for factory labor is on the high side for any product, especially bakery products, but when better than half the cost of a Twinkie has nothing to do with the value of a Twinkie it is pretty plain that Hostess' inability to make a profit has everything to do with management - or, more appropriately, mismanagement. It was something of an understatement when Food Industry expert David Pauker said, Hostess' brand name and recipes will "*most likely will be purchased by a competitor that will bolt the additional sales to a more efficient delivery system*." My guess is that pretty well describes just about everyone in their industry. Throw in the costs and profits of the grocery and convenience stores and, at best, 25 cents out of every dollar spent on Twinkies actually went into making the Twinkie - the rest went for something else. Even the value adding chunk of the Hostess cost structure is overblown. Unprocessed sugar goes for about 19 cents a pound on the global market these days, but thanks to sugar tariffs that have been on the books since the Depression US companies pay nearly double that. At 19 grams of sugar per Twinkie X a half a billion Twinkies a year, Twinkie eaters have been paying better than $4 million a year just to prop up US sugar growers ... add in the sugar it takes to make Ho Ho's, Ding Dongs, snack cakes and the rest of the Hostess line-up and you are talking real money. The liquidation of Hostess was written in the stars long before last week. Gergory Rayburn does thai sort of thing for a living. You can read some of his career highlights here, but the one thing glaringly missing from his resume is actually running anything profitably. He is a 'restructuring expert', which basically means he doesn't worry about running the business - just getting whatever he can out of it for the stockholders, regardless of where that leaves employees, customers, suppliers and much of anyone else connected with the business. The details of the script for Hostess end were left up to him, but ending it was decided upon when he was brought in eight months ago. What we saw last week was little more than a clumsily executed stage play to blame the unions for a decade of mismanagement. Everyone is predicting that Twinkies will live on, provided by someone else. I hope so. With such powerful forces aligned against me in my campaign to defend the American tradition of obesity I need all the Hostess products I can get, but Twinkies will only survive in the hands of someone who can make them with a much better value proposition. And make no mistake, like so many other 'brands' Hostess died of a pathetic value adding ratio, and that is 100% on the management of the company. ### 5 Questions - Meet Mark Graban - 1 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-mark-graban/ Last updated: 2026-05-08T19:11:53.000Z In this edition of 5 Questions we meet Mark Graban, a good friend of ours that has become focused on the opportunities lean creates in the healthcare industry. \------ 1) Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-related activities? These days, I often get asked “so what \*do\* you do, anyway?” It’s an understandable question, because I wear many proverbial hats. In no particular order: 1) chief improvement officer at KaiNexus, a technology company that “makes improvement easier” for healthcare organizations; 2) Lean healthcare consultant and speaker, both under my own personal banner of Constancy, Inc., and as part of the team of Lean Pathways, Inc. (led by Pascal Dennis); 3) an author, of *Lean Hospitals* and Healthcare Kaizen, as well as LeanBlog.org. I haven’t been a traditional full-time employee of an organization since mid 2010 after being an employee the first 15 years of my career. I love the variety and the challenges and all of that work is very synergistic (I think the MBA buzzword actually applies here). 2) How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion? I was initially exposed to Lean as an undergraduate at Northwestern, but it was basically taught as a production planning and materials management method (pull production, kanban, etc.). I was fortunate that my dad attended one of Dr. Deming’s famous four-day seminars at GM/Cadillac in the late 1980’s when I was in high school. I was a total nerd and read Deming’s “Out of the Crisis” while in college, even though it wasn’t assigned for a class. It wasn’t so much the statistics that interested me, but the “psychology” that Deming wrote about. It all made so much sense, even with my limited part-time job experience. When I graduated, my first job was at a struggling GM engine plant... the furthest thing from a Lean environment. They supposedly lived by a copy of the “Deming Philosophy” with their union contract, etc. but that philosophy was, ironically, just a bunch of posters on the wall and empty slogans (Deming would have hated that). I saw how miserable people could be working under the traditional top-down, “make the production numbers” GM management style. But, I was lucky that GM Powertrain had hired some people from the Toyota supply base to come help the plant. But, as in many cases when somebody from headquarters is here to help, the local management didn’t want anything to do with them. So, they had plenty of time on their hands and me as an eager student… so I got a lot of mentoring. We’d see waste and the resident Lean thinkers would tell me how things would be at their old plant and what we’d have to do to fix it there. Our next good fortune was getting a plant manager who was one of the first GM people sent to NUMMI. He was an amazing leader and, again, a mentor to me. So, my passion has always been people – create an environment where people can do the high quality work they want to do. Everybody deserves that. So, when I got into healthcare in 2007, it was really sad to hear nurses and other highly educated front-line staff describe what sounded exactly like the old GM environment and management approach. As at NUMMI, the thing that turns around hospitals isn’t the application of Lean tools in the old culture… it’s the changing and the transformation of the culture that matters. In healthcare, it really matters for the sake of the patients, not just the employees. My passion for people is amplified working in healthcare. 3) What is the most powerful aspect of lean? I think it all comes back to Deming, the PDSA cycle, and scientific problem solving. As with so many other Lean methods, there really needs to be alignment across the organization about mindsets and culture. We can teach PDSA in a classroom (and people in healthcare have generally heard of Deming and PDSA), but that doesn’t necessarily mean the culture exists for effective improvement work – whether we call it kaizen or PDSA. Do we have an environment where people can freely point out problems, errors, or near misses in a fact-based, blame free environment? One reason the preventable patient harm incidents still occur so much in healthcare is that healthcare professionals are afraid to speak up because they might be blamed. Dr. Deming had it right when he said we have to eliminate fear. Does the culture encourage people to take the time for effective root cause problem solving or do we just jump to solutions? Can we insist on countermeasures that go beyond saying “be more careful next time” or that we need more training or more inspection? Anybody can copy 5S, for example. I’m convinced that people would, given enough time and the right leadership, invent 5S if they had never been exposed to it. So, teaching people how to problem solve (and giving them the right environment) will ensure that people adopt and adapt the right methods to solve the problems that really matter. 4) What is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean? One major misunderstanding is that Lean or Kaizen equals weeklong events. There’s a time and a place for events (aka “Rapid Improvement Workshops” in healthcare), but my book Healthcare Kaizen is primarily about daily continuous improvement as taught by Norm Bodek and Masaaki Imai. KaiNexus was founded by an emergency room doctor who was given Imai’s book Kaizen. The reason I got involved with KaiNexus was that the software really helps support everybody getting involved in improvement every day. Many of our customers practice daily Kaizen and weeklong events… so based on that customer input, our system now helps people manage both. Kaizen isn’t a choice of weeklong events OR daily Kaizen or PDSA… we need both modes of improvement. It all fits together and, well, it’s all based on PDSA. 5) What is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished? Healthcare. We can, using Lean effectively, probably reduce our national healthcare spending by 25% without resorting to rationing (or use that money to provide more care). Improving patient safety and quality leads to huge cost savings. For example, when a hospital does great work to reduce central line associated blood stream infections (a nearly preventable infection that can kill >25% of those infected), they are not only saving lives, but they are saving the health system money, and they are reducing the patient’s length of stay by two weeks. This creates free capacity (free beds) that can be used to reduce waiting times for other patients. Flying commercially used to be very dangerous for passengers. I hope we will, in my lifetime, look back at the time when healthcare was very dangerous for patients. I think the next frontier (already being worked on at organizations like ThedaCare) is improving the health system so it keeps us healthy rather than just treating our sickness. The payment system needs to change to enable this – Lean alone can’t do it all. ### Do You Have Binders Full of Women? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/do-you-have-binders-full-of-women/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:50:53.000Z I have two two clients that are both lean and successful, but with very different cultures. Both have female dominated factory floors - I don't know the numbers but easily 2/3 of the front line folks are women. One of them has a female COO and when the top management group gets together better than half of them are of the fairer sex. The other has two women out of a top management group of 35-40 people. Both companies are led by men who are compassionate, fair and do not have a discriminatory bone in their body. So why the difference? The one with fewer women at the top does not do anything wrong. They don't go out of their way to only hire and promote men. Their approach is generally to promote and hire the best person who falls into their lap when management openings arise. In short, they follow the letter of the law and, beyond that, are genuinely willing to hire and promote qualified women, but few qualified women maneuver their way into the candidate pool. The one with more women than men doesn't exclusively look for women when they hire - they don't reverse discriminate. Rather, they do a couple of subtle things: For one, they are more aware of the qualifications and capabilities of all of their employees. Most companies have a lot of people in the front lines, at the bottom of the organizational totem pole, who are punching well below their weight. These people have a few years of college but left without a degree, or they have unique experience elsewhere, or they are simply very, very smart but for one reason or another never applied those smarts to their advanced education or their early career. For a whole lot of reasons, women tend to fall in one of those categories quite often. This company simply finds and takes advantage of their diamonds in the rough very, very well. Since most of their shop floor diamonds are women, they mine more women than men for advancement. The other thing they do is to hire more through networking than through unrelated third parties. They don't look to recruiters or ads in Monster or the like except as a last resort. Their first move is always to talk to their employees and aggressively urge them to identify friends, neighbors or relatives who might be qualified and interested. Not too surprising that, when they look to a predominantly female work force for such recommendations, they get a lot of women - old friends, classmates and the like - referred to them. The importance of the resulting gender diversity at the top was brought home to me in a recent conversation with a friend - a female - who works for a Fortune 500 manufacturer. She works in a relatively low level accounting position in a clerical-type office dominated by women in similar clerical-type roles. I had always thought of her as kind, but not terribly sympathetic to those claiming to be victims of discrimination ... the sort of person whose inclination is to believe that people generally make their own luck and that most 'victims' of discrimination actually did something to cause the perceived slight. Her employer recently announced a major senior management reorganization and, based on her generally self-reliant world view I was surprised when her reaction to the reorganization was to rather derisively point out that 18 of the 20 new executive appointments were men. Until then I didn't think she was the sort of person who cared ... or noticed - but, of course, she does. When I think about it, the level of shop floor engagement and the overall honesty - often harsh honesty - at the company with a strong female management presence is much higher than at the testosterone heavy company. Good people don't care whether the boss is male or female, black or white, Anglo or Hispanic. But when people look at the leadership team - the folks with the power and bigger paychecks - and see few or no people that look like themselves it sends a message, whether that message reflects management's honest views or not. When all of those women on the shop floor see women in the low paying ranks and men at the top, how could they fail to notice and personalize it? In fact, the approach of the company that looks to its workforce for talent, regardless of resume highlights, reflects both superior respect for its employees and simply better management that more effectively utilizes the talent it has. There are lots of generally valid explanations for the generally lower earnings of women - women don't major in engineering and science to the extent men do, women take more time off for child bearing and raising, etc... - but generally valid truths are irrelevant to specific situations. That woman - the one running that machine over there - is not some philosophical, universal entity. She is (as is everyone in the company) a unique entity with unique skills, motivations and capabilities and what may be generally true of women has nothing to do with the truth about her. Maybe she deserves a shot at greater responsibility and maybe she doesn't. But when the company is like my client that rarely has capable women falling into their candidate pool, or the company my friend works for with a 90% male senior staff, it seems pretty clear that the company is being driven by generalities rather than one-on-one respect and appreciation for individuals and, as a result, leaving a lot of talent on the table and sending an unintended, demotivating message to a lot of good employees. ### Thanks. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thanks/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:51:18.000Z Sorry about the absence from Evolving Excellence. Over the last few weeks I've been working through a vision issue that has now been corrected with some successful eye muscle surgery. In fact, yesterday was the first time I was able to drive. All is good, and I should be back to normal in a couple weeks. Two weeks ago I was in the pre-op room, waiting to be put under for a couple hours of surgery, and I had a brief chat with the young woman next to me. Turns out that she had been in Iraq and was having some *more* metal IED fragments removed from her eyes. She was the lucky one on that particular mission. So I'm in that room because I was complaining about double vision in my lower left quadrant that made it a little difficult to read. And she's having bomb fragments removed. Just a little humbling. That experience pretty much made this Veterans Day all the more real to me. Thank you. *A Veteran is someone, who at one point in their life, wrote a blank check payable to the USA for an amount up to, & including, their life.* ### Real Manufacturers Are From Mars Everyone Else is From Venus URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/real-manufacturers-are-from-mars-everyone-else-is-from-venus/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:52:15.000Z It seems more and more apparent that the real world of legitimate manufacturing is completely unknown and unappreciated by just about everyone outside of it. Terry Gau - chairman of Foxconn - says "*he did not believe President Obama could succeed in moving production lines back to the US because Americans have outsourced those jobs for too long. But he hoped Americans could learn how factories are operated so they can return home to set up facilities with automated equipment. Mr Gou said he was already in discussion with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about establishing an exchange programme*." Foxconn is going to teach American manufacturers how it's done - and MIT says thanks, we'll help you do it? Are you kidding me? There is no avoiding the fact that Foxconn is a manufacturing train wreck. They are currently unable to meet demand for the latest iPhone; and a few months ago they had a fist fight in the plant blow up into a full scale riot. The fight was between workers and quality inspectors over the impossibility of meeting quality standards. That sort of problem is manufacturing 101 stuff - the kind of thing even a passing concern for manufacturability in the design process precludes. Fix the design or fix the process, but only fools think disciplining workers is a solution. Terry Gau is a sweatshop operator, pure and simple. Apple zealots can argue otherwise all day long, but he exists only when the trinity of incredibly innovative product design, raw short term greed and wholesale ignorance of manufacturing converge - such as at Apple. Year after year stories of worker abuse - the stuff of Upton Sinclair and Charles Dickens novels - come from Foxconn, and year after year the Apple folks are shocked to hear such things go on, and year after year Foxconn promises to fix the problems. Foxconn knows manufacturing like the average straw boss at the Homestead steel mill did in 1892, and just as the Carnegie Steel boys dealt with problem by having Pinkerton guys shoot disgruntled workers, Terry Gau solves problems with an abusive security force. And this is the guy MIT wants to bring in to teach America how to manufacturing is done? Just to be clear about how much Terry Gau can teach us about automation, that has been a topic of interest to Foxconn for a year or less. Robotics and automated assembly are the solution they have pursued to uppity employees who wanted a modicum of tolerable working conditions and a little more than a couple hundred bucks a month. It has long been little more than a grand scale manual assembly operation thriving on dirt cheap labor. Just about every mid-level manufacturing engineer in the United States can tap dance around their knowledge of automation ... a fact apparently unknown to the folks at MIT. And just to be clear about Apple, knowing full well that the hard core of Apple enthusiasts will raise a cry of outrage at such an assertion, they have passed their peak and are on their inevitable way out. They were a one dimensional - one trick - pony, albeit it one heck of a trick. Long a decreasing player in the phone market, they have dropped below half of the pad market. While they won their patent suit with Samsung on their home turf in the California courts, they lost on the neutral court in Europe. Exposed for operating a global tax avoidance scheme, their loyalty to anyone or anything other than short term profit is evident. Not only are the people who make their products and the communities in which they operate of little or no concern, their own long term health is ignored. Turnabout is fair play, and Apple is seeing their fair-weather friends on Wall Street bail on them, with their stock price dropping by some 20% over the last few months. That Terry Gau suffers from the delusion that he has great manufacturing prowess is, perhaps, understandable; and that Wall Street had a love affair with Apple is also easy to understand. But Apple has never been anything more than the product of Steve Jobs' product genius and with his passing history will record them as little more than another spectacular meteor in an age of continually rising and falling contributors to incredible technical revolution. Foxconn will boom and thrive so long as the mainstream business press and the academic world chooses to see the exploitation of cheap labor as economic emergence of third world economies, rather than the replay of the shameful early era of the industrial revolution that enlightened countries have put long behind them. If MIT wants to learn the right way to manufacture things they don't need to go to China. There are plenty of far better teachers in their own Boston backyard. ### What Are You Measuring URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/what-are-you-measuring/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:52:46.000Z The economic theory of lean is universal - pretty much the same whether it is applied to the company, or to an individual or to the country. Resources - human resources in terms of hours and natural resources - that create value are good and ones that do not are bad. Lean is all about eliminating the ones that do not create value. One common, big problem is that we tend to measure work al the same - work is good - doing something is inherently better than doing nothing. In fact, the guy who spends half his day creating value and the other half surfing the net and playing games on Facebook is actually more productive than the guy who works like a dog every waking moment on non-value adding stuff. Ideally, of course, no one would be surfing the net or knocking him or herself out of non-value adding work, but in order to get there we need to rethink how we measure work. Case in point - how we measure the GDP. Let's say that, instead of the gradual, inevitable transition from brick and mortar retailing to e-tailing we could wave a magic wand and have half of our consumer buying take place online. I don't mean buying it from Walmart on line, but buying it directly from the manufacturer's web site. That would be a good thing - right? We would get all of that stuff without the cost of trucking large quantities to distribution centers; the cost of the DC's themselves; then trucking to stores; and all of the cost of the stores. We would save all the natural resources and fossil fuels that go into all of that trucking and all of those buildings. Stuff would be cheaper because we would not have to pay for all of those manhours that don't add value and natural resources that didn't go into the product. The only offset would be the much lower consumption of resources necessary for UPS or FedEx to bring the package to us. While all logic and common sense dictates that would be a big boost to national productivity and the environment - a very good thing indeed - it would be an economic catastrophe of the highest order in the eyes of many. According to a guy named Robert Yuskavage of the US Department of Commerce who wrote a paper with the eye-catching name of " " in 2006, "*The industries that provide these services - wholesale trade, retail trade and transportation and warehousing - account for about 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), 18% of total employment, and, in 2004, contributed nearly 20% to real GDP growth*." If half of retail buying were to switch to on line buying the GDP would drop by some 7-8%. To put that in perspective that GDP dropped by 5.1% in the recent recession. So much for GDP as an accurate measure of economic goodness. So much for the notion that the service economy is just as valuable as that portion of the economy that actually creates wealth - value. The truth is that the GDP has been a false measure - and grossly overstated measure - of the economy for a long, long time. Yuskavage asserts that, "*Retailers, for example, provide services that are values by consumers in addition to the merchandise, such as convenient hours and locations, a selection of different types of merchandise, speedy or efficient check-out and information about products*." That value proposition has to justify the customer paying $20-25 for a product that cost $10 to make. More and more, however, both manufacturers and customers are looking at Yuskavage's value proposition and deciding that there are no hours more convenient than the 24-7 of the internet, no location more convenient than the customer's own living room, no store selection as broad as the selection on line, no check out speedier and more efficient than on-line check out, and that the typical minimum wage store employee knows far less about the product than the information on the manufacturer's web site. All of this grand economic theory is one thing, but the same confusion between people working and people actually creating value takes place in spades at the company level. Warehouse people are measured on the basis of how much stuff they put on and take off of racks; accounting people are measured on the basis of how many documents or transactions they process; quality inspectors are measured on the basis of how much stuff they inspect ... and we tend to assume all is well with them as long as they are doing plenty of work even though the work they are doing shouldn't be done at all. At an individual level we have an increasing number of unemployed and under-employed young people with liberal arts degrees who were never told that the paycheck is tied to the value they create - and the value propositions in the philosophy, anthropology, poetry and Romance languages businesses are tough. Creating value is the essence of all economics, whether one is in Washington, the corner office of the business, or in one's own living room. And real economic growth comes only from eliminating things that don't add value for customers. That is what we need to measure - not just how hard we are working. ### Sowing the Seeds of Future Demise URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sowing-the-seeds-of-future-demise/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:53:13.000Z My advice to all of the younger readers is to thoroughly enjoy all of your vices while you can. Between job responsibilities, spouses, children, financial demands and the medical community you will find that you will be forced to leave them behind one by one until you reach the point of living but a shadow of your colorful youth. It is with nostalgia for my vice-laden youth that I am glad to have grown up in America before InBev existed - in a time when good beer was plentiful and cheap. AB InBev is the Brazilian led, Belgium based outfit that is systematically buying and trashing the leading global beer brands. An interesting article on BloombergBusinessweek describes the unfolding debacle: Profits up, cash flow strong, but sales shrinking. It is a step-by-step story of exactly how the short term focus on profits, financial and marketing driven, disregard for the product and customer value approach takes place. Beck's was once a highly regarded German beer with a small but devoted core of American customers. Same with Bass, a British beer. AB InBev bought them, started producing them in the USA, losing quality but at a lower cost, and sales are down. It is a clear example of how focus on being the low cost producer is not a strategy for success, but merely a race to the bottom. Selling Budweiser in the United States should be about as tough as selling sex on a troop ship, but AB InBev has demonstrated how to fail at it. The high quality hops growers in Germany used to get an annual visit from August Busch III, but those days are long gone: "*A former top AB InBev executive, who declined to be identified because he didn’t want to get in trouble with his old employer, tells a different story. He says the company saved about $55 million a year substituting cheaper hops in Budweiser and other U.S. beers for more expensive ones like Hallertauer Mittelfrüh. It is hard to say whether the average Bud drinker has noticed. But then, the average Bud drinker is not drinking as much beer*." InBev is doing some leanish sort of cost management. AB InBev CEO *"Brito was just as ruthless when it came to the perks to which Anheuser-Busch employees had grown accustomed. He cut the number of BlackBerrys in half. Executives who once traveled in corporate jets now flew commercial. He removed the interior walls at One Busch Place in St. Louis and turned the office into an open-plan space. Everyone would work under the same Spartan conditions that Brito embraced. (In New York, Brito shares a large table with his head of sales and his finance chief.) 'We always say the leaner the business, the more money we will have at the end of the year to share,' he said in a speech at Stanford in 2008\. 'I don’t have a company car. I don’t care. I can buy my own car. I don’t need the company to give me beer. I can buy my own beer.'* " It is a good idea to pick up pennies in the non-value adding areas like offices and cell phones. The problem is that Brito doesn't know the difference between expenses that add value for customers and those that don't. Costs are costs everywhere with equal enthusiasm in the minds of financially driven leaders who don't really understand and appreciate the products and customers. "*He laid off approximately 1,400 people, about 6 percent of the U.S. workforce. He sold $9.4 billion in assets, including Busch Gardens and SeaWorld. AB InBev also tried to save money on materials. It used smaller labels and thinner glass for its bottles. It tried weaker cardboard for its 12-packs and cases. The old Anheuser-Busch insisted on using whole grains of rice in its beer. AB InBev was fine with the broken kind*." The results are predictable: "*AB InBev’s CEO is a skilled financial engineer, but he has had trouble selling beer. The company’s shipments in the U.S. have declined 8 percent to 98 million barrels from 2008 to 2011, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights. Last year, Coors Light surpassed Budweiser to become America’s No. 2 beer*." Of course AB InBev's mismanagement opens doors for local and regional companies focused on the quality and value of their product; "The craft brewing industry grew 13% in 2011\. There haven't been this many U.S. breweries since before Prohibition". What InBev has done to beer is what so many companies have done in China in pursuit of a low cost strategy. Without a keen understanding of value and mama bear-like defense of it, broad brush pursuit of low cost inevitably leads to low value, which can only lead to lost sales, either in fewer units or lower prices. It is also a good example of the myth of mass markets and mass production. Mass thinking is based on one-size-fits all products and they rarely delight many customers. ### Lean and Technology URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-and-technology/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:53:56.000Z I was interviewed yesterday by Industry Week on the ever lively topic of lean thinking versus technology. ... it seems this subject keeps churning so I thought I'd try to clear it up a bit. First, let's be perfectly clear that IT is just about always non-value adding waste (not technology embedded in the product, but the information systems used to run the business). It is waste because it fails the basic test - when I am looking at two virtually identical items in Walmart am I willing to pay more for Product A than Product B because the maker of Product A has to cover the cost of better computers and slicker programs than the maker of Product B? Of course not. I am only willing to pay more if that technology translates into superior product value - better quality, utility or reliability. That said, IT has a role. Just because it is waste doesn't mean you don't need some of it to effectively run the business. It is important to recognize that just because something is necessary it does not follow that it adds value. CEO's, accountants and even lean consultants from time to time may be necessary but they do not add value for customers. The measure of them should be whether the money 'wasted' on them is enabling the real value adding efforts to perform more effectively. It is also important to keep in mind that technology is a tool - not a strategy. Like all tools, it can be used effectively ... or not; or used appropriately ... or not. ERP and other management systems are often lean whipping boys. That is probably unfair - they can have an important role in a lean enterpise. The problem is that far too often they are used to create and institutionalize waste, rather than eliminate it. Buyers, planners, schedulers and the like - the traditional MRP support infrastructure - add cost and slow things down. Systems that are designed around getting these people more information and further institutionalizing their place in the process are anti-lean. On the other hand, systems that enable cutting them out of the loop are very lean. Most ERP applications fail this basic test. Another problem with such comprehensive systems is their inflexibility. Continuous improvement means continuous change. Once put in, how easy or hard is it to make changes to the system? Usually the answer is that it is pretty hard, and IT and/or the software provider become bottlenecks to the continuous improvement effort. Of course, the most frequent problem with ERP systems is that they tend to formalize forecast driven push flow, rather than demand pull. These days just about every decent system can support pull, but the companies using them have rationalized their uniqueness and use the system to 'optimize' unnecessary and wasteful push processes. In fact, it is a very rare business that works best on forecast push, but far too many have rationalized that, because they are unlike Toyota and the basic card kanban method doesn't work for them, they must use a push approach. There are countless ways to deploy pull processes, and it is not the fault of IT or the software if management doesn't understand this, but IT and software are wasted as a result. Manufacturing technologies - robots, CNC machines and the whole range of factory automation devices - are similar. They may or may not support lean. This thing looks like a nice little robot and it goes for only $22,000\. Is it a lean tool? I have no idea. Like most automation the information describing it is fixated on how it can reduce labor costs. Anticipated labor savings are rarely realized from such investments (just ask GM who spent $30 billion under Roger Smith on a strategy to automate their way to Toyota and Honda labor levels under and came up short). Lean is about flow, so the critical questions about this robot - and all factory automation - are (1) how fast can it change from one task to another - how flexible is it?; and (2) what sort of quality tolerances can it hold relative to the specifications - the Cpk levels? If it can change on a dime and maintain very high quality levels it is likely to help the lean effort - if it can't then it won't. The technologies most powerful in aiding the lean effort are those used to shorten the product design processes - additive manufacturing and rapid prototyping tools, for instance - and the Internet. Like all technology, product development technologies are effectively used after value stream mapping and optimizing the design process, else they are likely to end up speeding up things that shouldn't be done in the first place. In the early days of Six Sigma's development the Motorola folks repeatedly drummed the principle that *'Automating a process without first optimizing it will only result in creating the ability to produce scrap at speeds you never before thought possible'*. The correlation in management information systems is that 'automating your business processes without first optimizing them will only result in wasting more money on non-value adding work than you ever thought possible'. The Internet is very rapidly being seen as the vehicle for companies to communicate and often do business directly with end customers, enabling whole chunks of the supply chain that add time and cost - but not value - to be cut out. Used in this manner, the Internet may be the most powerful lean technology of all. At the end of the day, there is nothing inherently 'non-lean' about technology. The lean versus technology issue strikes me quite similar to the gun control question. Guns and technology are not good or bad - they are inanimate objects. The goodness or badness attributed to them is a function of the intentions of the people using them. I think many lean proponents who come across as ardently anti-technology are a lot like the ardent gun control advocates - simply driven by the fact that stopping all of the folks who use the objects for the wrong purposes is virtually impossible so they try to solve the problem by eliminating the inanimate object those people use to do damage. ### 5 Questions - Meet Art Byrne URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/5-questions-meet-art-byrne/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:54:37.000Z It's been a while since we've had an edition of "5 Questions" but this is someone many of us already know and the rest of you should. Every lean person knows of the Wiremold lean turnaround story, and Art Byrne was driving it - as CEO. He has gone on to help with lean transformations at over 30 companies. Art's book, [*The Lean Turnaround*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071800670?ie=UTF8&tag=superfactorycom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0071800670&ref=kevinmeyer.com), was recently published and I highly recommend it. Many thoughts - and lessons - from one of the best examples of a lean turnaround as well as more, and more diverse, lean experience than most of us could hope to achieve. Now on to his answers to the 5 Questions. Meet Art Byrne. \------- 1) Who are you, what organization are you with, and what are your current lean-related activities? I am currently an Operating Partner at J W Childs Associates, a Boston based Private Equity Fund. Prior to that, I was the CEO of The Wiremold Company from 1991 to 2002\. Before that I was a Group Executive for The Danaher Corporation where one of my company Presidents and I were responsible for introducing Danaher to lean. I went to Danaher from The General Electric Company where I had been General Manager of two separate businesses. My current lean activities revolve around driving lean into all of the J W Childs operating companies and promoting my recently released book, *The Lean Turnaround*, from McGraw-Hill. 2) How, when, and why did you get introduced to lean and what fueled and fuels the passion? My first introduction to lean \[it was called just-in-time back then\] was in January of 1982 during my first general managers job at The General Electric Company. We implemented a simple kanban system that took my inventory from 40 days to 3 days. That was nice but the improvements in quality, productivity, customer service, freed up space and the positive response from the workforce had me hooked. I really learned the Toyota approach as a Group Executive at Danaher. We were fortunate to be the first, and for four years, only client of the Shingijutsu Company from Nagoya, Japan. The three founders all had worked directly for Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, for many years so they taught us how it was done the proper way. During my tenure at Wiremold we were able to quadruple in size, increase operating income by more than 13X and achieve an almost 2,500% increase in enterprise value in a little over 9 years. Getting this type of increase in enterprise value of course gets your attention and fuels the passion but for me the real driver is the ability to grow the skills and capabilities of all your people and give them a chance at personal wealth creation. At Wiremold, for example, the largest shareholder when we sold the Company was the employees through their participation in the 401K plan. As a result they shared in the biggest portion of the wealth that was created. 3) What is the most powerful aspect of lean? I think that lean is the biggest wealth creator I have ever seen. If you go back over time one thing has always been true; "Productivity = Wealth". This is true of both countries and companies. Using a lean strategy and the lean tools to remove waste and improve your value adding activities generates tremendous productivity and therefore wealth. This is not just wealth in the monetary sense but also the wealth that comes from the personal growth of all your associates. To me, this latter part is much more rewarding. 4) What is the most misunderstood or unrecognized aspect of lean? I think there a quite a few things that are misunderstood about lean. One of the most tragic is the fact that lean has become most commonly known as "lean manufacturing". This is a problem even for manufacturing companies as it allows them to think of lean as "some manufacturing thing" and thus just delegate it down to the V.P. of Operations. For non manufacturing companies, where the gains from lean are even larger, they just feel it doesn't apply to them at all so they never even try. To me however, the thing that is most misunderstood about lean is the fact that lean is a strategic thing and not just some manufacturing thing. To be successful you have to see lean as your underlying core strategy. Removing waste and improving your value adding activities, in order to deliver more value to your customers, is what lean is all about. It is in fact a time based growth strategy that is especially valuable in slow growth economies like the present on. Unfortunately very few people see this and try to adopt lean for some misguided reason like reducing headcount. 5) What is the biggest opportunity for lean in today's world? How can that be accomplished? This is a very broad question so there is no simple answer. I suppose that if we could remove the waste from every company and every government agency \[extremely hard to do in this latter case\] then we would create tremendous growth and wealth for everyone. If we got a little more narrow \[i.e. came down from the clouds\] then I think that the entire health care system in the US could greatly benefit from a lean transformation. I have done kaizens in hospitals and know first hand what a mess they are despite the fact that they have some very smart and dedicated employees. Unfortunately, our current administration just passed a law that will take health care costs up not down. A second target in my opinion would be the public school system. This would be more difficult due to the politics and unions that have made it such a mess in the first place but it could be done. ### Making Money From Philosophy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/making-money-from-philosophy/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:55:24.000Z **Michael McPhee**: *"Can you make money from philosophy?"* **Max Dugan:** *"Oh yeah ... if you have the right one!"* Hermann Simon, a German academic, author, consultant and buddy of the late Peter Drucker has something of an obsession with small to medium sized companies - especially German ones - that perform very, very well. His latest book Hidden Champions of the Twenty First Century: The Success Strategies of Unknown World Leaders focuses mostly on German companies that dominate or nearly dominate their industries gblobally. They are all medium sized, privately held companies that maintain very low profiles. What is most interesting about them is that they are successful, but not particularly well know for deploying lean tools - 5S, kanban, value stream mapping and the rest. Their strength, according to Simon, is their commitment to very lean philosophies (although Simon does not use the term lean and doesn't seem too interested in it). These companies pursue "*such common-sense strategies as focusing on core capabilities, establishing long-term relationships with customers, innovating continuously, rewarding employees for performance, and developing a global presence*." In other words, they have exactly the sort of values and strategies required for lean success. Whether they back that philosophy up with proven lean tactics to truly optimize things is another question, but for the most part the companies Simon identifies as "Champions" do quite well. It is interesting that Simon has identified some 2,700 companies as "Hidden Champions" - he says "*a hidden champion is of the top three in the world or is number one in its continent. Its turnover is less than five billion euros. In public, it is not known at all or only slightly*" - and 1,300 of them are German, while only 360 are American In the USA we seem to fixate on the big, publicly traded companies and pay rather short shrift to the smaller privately held ones, while Germany has a thriving manufacturing sector - and a big manufacturing export economy - driven largely by privately traded companies. "*In contrast to the low degree of familiarity, the hidden champions are highly significant for the overall economy: In recent years, more than 150 firms from their ranks became billion dollar companies in terms of sales ... and created more than a million new jobs in the last ten years*." I strongly suspect the difference is that, while Germany has a lot of companies that get the philosophy right, but don't do so well with the tools, the USA has an awful lot of companies that are the inverse - great with lean tools but using them in pursuit of the wrong philosophy. Rather than "*focusing on core capabilities*, establishing *long-term relationships with customers, innovating continuously, rewarding employees for performance, and developing a global presence"* too many American (and other western) companies focus on finance and numbers, have adversarial relationships with customers constantly haggling over prices and terms, are better at innovative accounting than innovative products and processes, and view employees as headcount. In light of the strength of German manufacturing and the fact that western non-German countries see much of manufacturing as something sent to China that ['isn't coming back'](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-not-coming-back/), it seems obvious that (1) having the right philosophy is a heck of a lot more important than having the right tools; and (2) a lot of American and other western companies need a serious philosophy lesson. ### It's Not Coming Back? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-not-coming-back/ Last updated: 2012-10-18T10:03:05.000Z **[by BILL WADDELL](http://www.bill-waddell.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)** ![Jobs and Obama](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e2017d3ccc200d970c-800wi "Jobs and Obama") China took American manufacturing through [currency manipulation](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2011/05/this-whole-currency-thing.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com), [exploitation of child labor](http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/1016/Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-admits-to-employing-underage-interns?ref=kevinmeyer.com), [blatant abuse of its citizen workers](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2010/06/the-fiddlers-tab-comes-due.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) and complete disregard for intellectual property laws ... facilitated by Wall Street's ravenous appetite for short term profits and woefully naive academic theorists. No one benefited more from it than [Steve Jobs](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2012/07/apples-average-traditional-supply-chain.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) ... and no one has been more blind to it as [Barack Obama](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2011/04/the-pecking-order.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com). Original: [http://www.idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/its-not-coming-back/](http://www.idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/its-not-coming-back/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) ### Mathematical Fiction URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/mathematical-fiction/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:55:53.000Z Normally I would agree with someone who observes that criticizing without offering an alternative is just cynicism and not very helpful. Such an observation was implied to my recent post on the absurdity of the unemployment figures: "*What alternate means of determining the actual employment figure would someone suggest?"* In fact, there are cases in which that which the mistake being criticized should simply be stopped - the fact that there is no alternative to suggest does not mean you should continue making that mistake. Let me explain: Suppose I am planning a surprise party for my brother who lives in Michigan. I am having the party at my house west of Chicago. It would be very, very helpful for me to know exactly what time he will arrive. I really, really want to know that number. The math is simple enough: Departure time + (miles driven / average miles per hour) = arrival time. It will be easy enough to know exactly when he leaves home and the number of miles is readily available with a great deal of precision. The problem is the average miles per hour. The fact that Chicago is squarely in the path makes that number unknowable. Depending on traffic, construction, accidents, weather and the presence of Chicago's finest it can take anywhere from 30-40 minutes to 2-3 hours. For that matter, there are all sorts of things that can impact his rate of travel before he even gets to Chicago as he travels through Michigan and Indiana. Now I can look at that reality and make one of two choices. I can accept the reality that there is no way of knowing the precise number and plan the event in a robust enough manner that it will succeed no matter when he arrives within a very wide range. Or I can simply decide that, because it would be very convenient to know the precise number and because I really would like to know an exact number, I can simply make one up and bet the success of the party on that number. Oh, it wouldn't be purely made up. I would base it on my experience having made the drive a number of times, do a lot of research and create a complicated model based on reams of data, and I would rationalize the number based on the time of day and day of the year and how I think those things might affect traffic, weather and construction. It would still be a guess, of course, but I could fool myself into believing that, because I thought it out and have a rationalization for it that it is accurate. By the way, it will also be a vehicle for me to blame the inevitable failure of the surprise party on something (or someone) else. How could I have known it would snow? That the tri-state expressway would be down to one lane? That an accident would take place? The problem is that, as a boss told me in very clear terms several years ago, having an explanation for failure - even a very good explanation - is not the same thing as success. Whether it is self-deception because decision making is easier if we have a precise number, or the allure of having a vehicle to put the blame elsewhere for bad decisions and subsequent failure, the latter course - pulling a rationalized number out of thin air and concocting a mathematical basis for it - is far too often the norm. It would be very, very convenient to know the precise, total cost to make or do something. It would make decision making easy to know the exact financially optimum quantity of something to make at a given time. Neither can be known. They are all wrapped up in costs that are, at best, indirectly related and costs that vary with time, rather than volume. How much of those costs has to do with any specific product depends on capacity being used, where the constraints are in the process and what else the business is doing. Those numbers are only derived when fictitious numbers are plugged in where reality is unknown. The fact that the ERP systems and pricing models would be really, really cool if the numbers were accurate doesn't make them so. Same is true for the politicians and economists. Employment figures and national manufacturing productivity are unknown and unknowable. The fact that it would really, really, really be helpful to know the employment and productivity rates doesn't make the wild-ass-guesses and rationalizations accurate. The 90% confidence level in the numbers should have the Six Sigma aficionados out there apoplectic. So if the numbers are no good how are we to make decisions? You do so using the numbers as, at best, directional indicators or as the boundaries within reality lies, but the decisions themselves come down to intelligence, wisdom, experience and values. You try to make decisions in a robust enough manner that the course you chart can tolerate some variation. The problem, of course, is that it means the decision maker is responsible for his or her decision. The alternative is to accept the inevitable failure resulting from making decisions based on well rationalized but known bad numbers, and relying on the numbers to provide that 'very good explanation' needed to shift the blame for the failure elsewhere. So to the question, "*What alternate means of determining the actual employment figure would someone suggest?",* or what better means of calculating standard costs or batch sizes can we suggest, I believe that is the wrong question to be asking. The correct question is how can decisions be better made without relying on inaccurate economic data, or inaccurate standard costs and batch size math? ### A Failure of Markets and Other Observations from Asia URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-failure-of-markets-and-other-observations-from-asia/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:56:39.000Z I’m currently winging my way back home after two weeks in Thailand and Laos. Sort of a last minute vacation for my wife and I to recenter and reconnect after a very difficult September that ultimately resulted in the unexpected passing of my mother in-law. I’ve been to Asia, including Thailand, many times, but this was a first for Laos. I’m very glad we got to see the remarkable city of Luang Prabang before it becomes overrun and changed by tourists – being called the #1 tourist destination in the world by *The New York Times* can cause that. Technology is sometimes far more visible in Asia than in the western world. Everyone, including tuk-tuk drivers working for a few bucks a day, are on cell phones. Even monks, including this one in a remote Laos village only accessible via the Mekong River. That village happens to be known for its whiskey distillery. Yes, good people with good monks. I’ll admit I am sort of proud of the \[entirely accidental\] composition of this photo. What really strikes me with each visit to Asia, especially the more remote areas, are the markets. These daily markets have stalls for everything, from clothes to hardware to raw meat. Refrigeration is obviously overrated and perhaps even a waste. But it’s not the market itself – that’s beautiful capitalism in action, the value of efficiently distributing goods to where they are needed in exchange for some profit – even in communist countries like the People’s Supposedly Democratic Republic of Laos. It’s that there are multiple stalls selling the exact same thing, in the exact same part of the market, that drives the business guy in me nuts. How does that work? What is the differentiator that causes someone to purchase from one stall vs. the identical one next to it… or any of the other 30 for that matter? For local foodstuffs there’s probably a trust and quality component. Perhaps one stall is known for having fewer flies in the cow parts. That makes sense. I bet someone could make a mint putting a cow parts stall next to a veggie stall so shoppers didn’t have to walk as far. But what about at the touristy nick nack side of things? The night markets of Luang Prabang, Chiang Mai, or even Bangkok? Stall after stall selling the exact same (and I mean EXACT) figurines, silk scarves, or paintings. A 200-stall market could truly be reduced to about five and you’d have the exact same selection. Is a stall near the edge of the market an advantage because it’s the first one a tourist sees? Or is one near the middle best as the tourist is thinking “boy I’ve seen fifty of this cheesy t-shirt – maybe I should buy one?” I don’t get it. Of course my wife and I don’t buy that kind of crap – or any crap for that matter – so perhaps we simply don’t understand. I know one potential differentiator is whether or not the person in the stall is sleeping. We saw that several times, and I’m guessing it has an impact on sales. Apparently when selling one rinky-dink potential Christmas tree ornament can create a day’s wages, pushing the sale isn’t a high priority. Observing how capitalism is thriving in supposedly communist countries is interesting. China is an easy example, and many argue that capitalism is now more vibrant in China than in the U.S.. I thought Laos would be different, but it’s not. Markets thrive (even when shopkeepers are asleep) and entrepreneurial folks are setting up new shops and services to get tourists to part with their dough. Even in the boonies there are stories. Such as the tiny Hmong village downriver from Luang Prabang. A collection of thatched one-room huts with dirt floors… each with a TV. TV? Power? The government didn’t bring power to the outlying villages. An entrepreneur came up with a way to pay for the infrastructure, deliver power to people with no money but with rice to barter, and make a profit. The “people’s” government frowns but tolerates it. Now those happy folks in one room huts get to learn about the unhappy Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in their mansions. I bet they're still happy after watching it, too. The people of both Thailand and Laos are remarkably knowledgeable about the political process in the U.S., and I had several interesting conversations with waiters, tuk-tuk drivers, tour guides, and $5/hour masseuses. Even a monk I sat next to on a park bench while patiently waiting for the wife to closely examine fifty shops selling the exact same thing. As a common theme they were wondering why Americans were allowing their government to dismantle the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen – just as they were opening the wealth-creating floodgates in their own economies. At the same time they were surprised that Americans were slowing and in some cases reversing trends toward social liberalization – again just as they were becoming more liberal themselves by accepting, embracing, and even relishing their differences. Yes in that regard Asia is a bit different than the Mideast. I couldn’t really argue – it’s the quandary that many of us in the sociopolitical center experience every day. And perhaps a reason why, once again, in this election I don’t think I can even hold my nose and vote for either major party candidate. On one hand we have a guy so obviously in over his head it’s mindboggling and scary what he’s doing to the global competitive ability of U.S.. You would have thought that the recent China threat to dump Japan’s bonds, effectively economic warfare, would have woken us up to the perils of going more into debt to a country like that. As an alternative we have a guy beholden to conservative social extremes that in my opinion cross the line into the realm of hate. Sharia law, American style? Well, maybe an extreme. Barely. One party wants the government involved in everything… except women’s bodies and bedroom behavior. The other wants government out of everything… except women’s bodies and bedroom behavior. Ridiculous hypocrisy on both sides. Ce la vie. Maybe the emerging economies of Asia are the place to be. Nah... we can still work it out. I hope. Although I did take a liking to pad thai and tom yum soup. If they only had good wine… ### Obesity Leads to Cost Disease URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/obesity-leads-to-cost-disease/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:57:08.000Z When the local school district is in financial trouble the routine message to the community is that the tax levy must be passed or they will be forced to discontinue the football team, the marching band, cancel the prom and the homecoming dance - the extracurriculars that are popular with both the students and the community. What you won't hear is a threat to eliminate the assistant superintendent job, or even the assistant superintendent's personal administrative assistant, or get rid of a few curriculum coordinators. In fact, it is a rare school district that spends more than 60% of its money in the classroom - on teachers, books, desks and the like. The popular extracurriculars are usually a minor contributor to the 40% in spending on activities that add little or no value to the education of kids - the non-value adding waste. More disingenuous is the threat to cut teacher pay, but that is the historical manufacturing outlook, isn't it? The problem isn't the bloated headquarters staff - it's the hourly pay of the people actually making stuff. But the 'cost problem' in education can't be solved by automation or outsourcing teaching to China. The same situation is true of health care. While lean principles are expanding rapidly in the health care arena, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of doctor's offices, clinics and hospitals are far from lean. We are told the high cost of health care revolves around the wages to pay doctors and nurses - not that it is to pay the enormous paper processing staff. Same thing with government and public services - very little lean thinking. Pass taxes or we will get rid of/cut the pay for cops and fire fighters, rather than pass the tax or we will have to get rid of paper pushers and bureaucrats. Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post writes a pretty good summary of the latest rationalization for throwing more money at services, rather than demand lean-driven management. In his desription of a book called "The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn't" Pearlstein describes the excuses offered up by an economist by the name of William Baumol for the high costs of education and health care. " *In the goods sector, new machinery and production techniques have made it possible to produce each bushel of wheat, car, computer and suit with many fewer hours of labor. Because of these huge gains in productivity, the inflation-adjusted price of goods falls, leading to increases in consumption and production. ... Meanwhile, it still takes as many teachers and nurses and police officers and accountants to provide the economy with services as it always did — that’s Baumol’s disease. Despite no gains in productivity, however, the pay of these service workers rises — after all, if it didn’t, over time all those service workers would be lured to the higher-paying goods sector*." Put another way, manufacturing folks can and often have been replaced by robots and the like so the labor efficiency gains have offset the rising cost of labor. You can't replace a teacher with automation, however, so the cost just has to go up - period. The increasing availability and quality of on line education belies that theory at the college level, anyway, and the Bill Gates backed Khan Academy make a pretty good case for computers at lower education levels. but let's assume it to be true for education in general. The US Department of Education spends some $70 billion a year, and has 5,000 or so employees - about $1,500 for every school age kid in America. Whether all or any of it is needed is completely unknown and completely unknowable for the simple reason that it is virtually all spent on a push basis, rather than demand pull. Case in point: My daughter taught in a lower middle class area high school in Phoenix for a number of years. All of the teachers were pulled out of their classrooms for two days of training on how to use tens of thousands of dollars of electronic white boards being 'given' to the school. No one at the school asked for either the training or the white boards. Neither were optional. They were the product of an effort conceived, funded and mandated by the DOE. At the same time the school was sending letters to the parents telling them they would have to provide pens, pencils and paper for the kids - the school district couldn't afford them. The teachers were pulling a demand for a few thousand dollars worth of pencils and paper - instead the bureaucrats pushed far more expensive 'improvement' of their own design. For that matter, as my daughter pointed out, the bureaucrats still think it is important to put computers into classrooms to prepare kids for the digital age; which leads to wondering if the non-value adding folks are even vaguely aware of the fact that it is a rare teenager in the USA that does not have a Facebook account, or would wonder how these 'digitally ignorant' kids access those accounts. Teachers in classrooms know that - staffers in far away capitals often don't. If the federal, state and local adminstrators responded to classroom pull, rather than projects they dream up on their own, we would soon find out just how many - or few - of them are needed. The services are in exactly the same boat as manufacturing, and in exactly the same need of lean thinking. A first grade teacher still needs the same twelve minutes to read Green Eggs and Ham, all right. But the parents of the kids hearing her read don't need to pay for another twelve minutes for people to plan, document, measure and train her on how to do it. ### Charting the Course Based on SWAGS and Ballpark Figures URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/charting-the-course-based-on-swags-and-ballpark-figures/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:57:41.000Z Last week the BLS announced that 873,000 jobs had been created, dropping unemployment to 7.8% ... or that maybe it had only created 114,000 jobs which would actually increase unemployment. The Obama and Romney camps went into overdrive spinning the numbers into all manner of interpretations - those which suited their purposes, of course. Pro-Romney Jack Welch was apoplectic ... tweeting conspiracy theories and criminal accusations. Nobel Prize winning Obama shill Paul Krugman, while acknowledging the fact that the job creation numbers are shaky, asserts that anyone who does not see them on the high side is "deranged". Given that the source of the numbers is the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and in light of the fun we had six years ago blowing up the BLS productivity numbers - seems they don't know the difference between offshore outsourcing and productivity - so they just call it all productivity - it seemed worth a look at these curious numbers. The monthly unemployment figure - the one that said 873,000 jobs had been created and unemployment dropped to 7.8% - the one Krugman thinks one must be deranged to challenge a la Welch - is based on the results of phone calls to one half of one percent of American households. (They call about 60,000 homes out of about 120 million - they extrapolate the answers they get to the other 99.5%) When they get someone to answer they ask if the folks over the age of 16 who live there are working. It is pretty much a straight up 'yes' or 'no' deal - working 50 hours a week as a machinist counts the same as spending 4 hours a week cutting the neighbor's grass. In fact, sitting at home sick, because the weather is bad, on strike, for personal reasons or even because you were laid off if you think you might get recalled counts as working. The bar is pretty low to count as being employed. A kid who lives on a farm with a father who makes him do chores counts as working. The other interesting point is that there is no relationship whatsoever between the official monthly unemployment number and the number of folks collecting unemployment compensation. In the other corner we have Jack Welch - Jack who doesn't need to actually know anything about the people working in an organization to know that 10% of them (based on numerical evaluations) are marginal workers who ought to go - not 9%, not 11% but exactly 10%. Welch really, really believes in numbers and his over-the -top reaction to suspect numbers from the BLS says a lot about what it must have been like working for him at GE. In his defense, given GE's reputation for book cooking under his reign he is probably pretty well qualified to spot fiction in the figures,and as one well familiar with Chicago and its politics, I can't say number juggling from Chicago folks is a wholly unreasonable possibility. Just the same, criminalizing bad data from the BLS is more likely criminalizing incompetence and I don't think Jack really wants to go there. At any rate, the low number - 114,000 new jobs - is the result of a survey of businesses, non-profits and government agencies. They basically send them a form asking how many folks are working and hope they send them back in. Surprisingly most of the organizations do send them back, but they do it in their own sweet time. As a result, this number typically gets revised each month for a couple of months until they 'finalize' it. According to the BLS, the error rate in this number is such that the real number has a 90% probability of being somewhere between 14,000 new jobs and 214,000 new jobs. The basis for this figure is pretty much the answer to the question, 'How many people did you give some money to?' Again, no difference between paying someone to work 4 hours a week or 50 - a job is a job. They acknowledge that, if you have two part time jobs, you count as two people working in this survey, while you would only count as one in the household survey. Another minor issue - if a business goes belly up, obviously there is no one there to send in the form so jobs lost to the tens of thousands of businesses that have failed recently are missed for the most part; and new businesses have better things to do than ring up the BLS and ask to be on the mailing list so they pretty much fall through the cracks, as well. To sum up what the BLS told us last week, unemployment might have gone down, or it might have gone up, there is about a 90% probability the number of jobs created was somewhere between 14,000 and 873,000, but the low end of that might chage in a couple of months, and there is a one in ten chance it was something different all together, and whatever the number was it might be people working full time but it might be a bunch kids working part time. And from this profound analysis we will elect a President, billions of dollars will change hands on stock markets, lionized economists and business leaders will reap headlines and the course of the greatest economy in the world will be charted. ### The Difference Between Leading and Wonking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-difference-between-leading-and-wonking/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T16:59:00.000Z There are lots of reasons why even the most liberal pundits are acknowledging Romney as the clear winner of last night's debate. The high point for me, however, was the exchange in which Romney explained the difference between leading and policy wonking to Obama. You can read the actual words spoken by the two of them here in the transcript, but to paraphrase, Obama attempted to attack Romney for the lack of specific details behind some of his plans. Romney replied that the details were not something he was going to dictate - just the principles. He cited reducing tax deductions as an example, saying that there were lots of ways to do it. One way might be to simply put a cap on them - keep all of the existing deductions in place but tell folks their total deductions could not exceed $25,000\. Another approach might be to go through the deductions line by line and keep some, while eliminating others. His point was that the method was not important so long as the fundamental principle of reducing the deductions was met. He cited the approach Reagan took when working with Tip O'Neill as an example. The implication to me was that, had Obama approached Congress and the American people with a set of objectives for health care overhaul, for instance, asserting that he would go along with just about anything Congress wanted so long as it met his critical objectives - no one dropped for pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps on coverage, access to insurance for everyone, etc...the President would have been more successful. Going to Congress with a comprehensive plan worked out in incredible detail and shoving it on Congress (and by definition, the American people) on a 'take it or leave it' basis resulted in confusion, dissention and a very strong possibility that it will be tossed out. This resonated so strongly with me because of the clear parallels with effective leadership of a lean transformation. Toyota's operational true north is nothing more than a set of guiding principles - one piece flow, zero defects, zero non-value adding costs, and 100% employee engagement. The specific actions to move the company closer to those objectives are left to managers, groups of employees and engineers. There is not a massive policy manual dictated from executives and staff wonks on high telling people exactly what they are supposed to do to meet those objectives. The best road map and the maximum buy-in comes from letting people closer to the ground work out the details. So long as the path they come up with effectively moves the group in the right direction there is little to be gained and quite a lot to lose by having the boss meddle with the details. Perhaps the best boss I ever worked for was a guy named Dean Ruwe at Emerson's Copeland Division. He often said that his job was to make sure the herd was headed north, which trail the herd followed was not important do long as it was headed in that direction. Whether you are an executive attempting to transform an entire company, a manager tasked with changing a department, an employee leading a kaizen event, or a consultant advising an organization if you go into it with a set of specific, detailed mandates ... you must follow steps 1,2,3; you must implement systems or procedures that follow this precise logic; you must do things exactly this way because that is what Toyota did ... you are very likely to fail. On the other hand, if you go into it with a clear objective, telling people that it is up to them to set the detailed path; letting them now that one option might be to follow Toyota's example, but the best path will be one of their own making; that everyone's opinions and ideas are needed but the final decisions should be weighted most heavily toward the ideas from the people closest to the work actually being changed; you are very apt to succeed. Every organization has its nay-sayers and opponents to change. They lie in the weeds waiting for the change agent to spell out the details so they can pounce with all of the flaws in the plan. In politics, the Washigton Post's Ezra Klein is their Republican basher in chief - never having heard a Republican proposal he cannot criticize. It is humorous reading his "Romney's Policy Vagueness Pays Off" acknowledging that Romney (1) won the debate, and (2) gave him no fodder. It is as if Romney said ' we need to drive from Chicago to Tucson and people have proposed going south through St Louis, onto Oklahoma, through a corner of Texas and in from the east; others have suggested going straight west to Denver, then south into New Mexico and in that way. I've looked at the map and both look workable to me; but even those routes can probably be improved on by people who have driven them before, and there may well be other options I haven't seen. I will support whatever the people making the trip want to do so long as it gets us there on time.' Do that and the Ezra Kleins in your organization are left to fume and fuss at your successful leadership, but powerless to stop you. ### Little of This, Little of That URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/little-of-this-little-of-that/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:00:25.000Z Lots of interesting stuff in the news and on the Net lately. **Change can be tough** From an Evolving Excellence friend, David Foster, over at Chicago Boyz and Photon Courier, we have Bob Newhart considering a novel idea: **Lean Government Gaining Traction** Good to see lean front and center in state and local government all over the place as we roar toward election day. The Seattle Times comments on an interesting exchange between Democrat and Republican candidates ... seems they agree that the big failing of the current governor, Christine Gregoire - a real lean leader - is that she hasn't been aggressive enough in pursuing lean. Over in New Hampshire, outgoing governor John Lynch highlighted considerable lean success under his **watch in a Lean Summit for New Hampshire.** **The Lean Start Up** I am often asked for advice for start up companies that want to be lean from the get-go. My typical response is that just about all companies are lean at the beginning - customer and cash driven - low overhead - everyone wearing multiple hats and working cross-functionally. The trick, I tell them, is to avoid becoming non-lean as they grow and start to think they need a lot of staff, computers and policy manuals. Seems that is not always true, however, as this article from the Christian Science Monitor points out ... not a mention of the term lean but great advice for a start up that wants to do it right. **The Rise and Fall of Polaroid** Always good stuff on Brain Pickings ... this tale of how Polaroid shot up like a bottlerocket, and subsequently dropped like a stone offers some interesting lessons for the innovation driven folks. **The Doc is Way Out There** Doc Hall is one of those guys who can see several horizons beyond those visible to us mere mortals. For those unfamiliar with him, Doc was an APICS guy who, long before the term 'lean' was coined to describe what Toyota was doing, saw it as a fundamental shift in thinking that was vital for the American manufacturing community to embrace if it were to survive. Failing to convince APICS to shake away from its MRP obsession, he led the breakaway that became AME - the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. One of the highlights - probably THE highlight - of the annual Lean Accounting Summit for me is getting to spend some time with Doc once a year. His current passion is driving a vision that is way beyond lean he calls 'Compression'. It is worth following ... safe bet that the world will eventually catch up with Doc's thinking and what seems mysterious today will soon become regarded as common sense. Click here to see what Doc is cooking up at the Compression Institute. **Never Over-Estimate Academic Thinking** While the politicians are rushing to embrace lean, much of academia is racing in reverse at break-neck speed. For a brief comedic interlude I offer the comments and observations of Professor Annavajhula J C Bose of Delhi's Shri Ram College of Commerce, who has come to the conclusion that lean is really just the systematic abuse of workers. The good professor might want to consider the possibility that India's whole economic gig is the systematic abuse of workers - offering itself up as a cheap labor hub on a grand scale - and that companies wanting to be truly lean rather than labor abusers aren't likely to be found in India in the first place. ### Just Observing, Sir. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/just-observing/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:01:00.000Z I'm a fairly simple and frugal guy, but there are three, maybe four, luxuries that I do indulge in. When I travel on business I just need a clean bed and I love Marriott's Courtyard chain. When I travel on vacation I want more - and that's why regular readers know I'm a Four Seasons junkie. If they have a hotel anywhere close to where I'm going, I'm there. That's because the "more" that I want while on vacation is actually less. I don't want to wonder if the hotel will be clean, if the bed will be comfy, if breakfast will be tasty, if the hotel will be in the right part of town, if the internet will be reliable, if I can get something to eat at 3am when recovering from jet lag, and especially if the room will be quiet. Four Seasons does this - everything is perfect, and perfectly consistent, every time. In years I have yet to have a single complaint. And yes, like with most top tier hotels, I could tell you stories that would amaze you, even if they don't necessarily add any intrinsic value. Such as being met by Four Seasons at the gate (INSIDE security) at the Hong Kong airport, whisked through a special immigration line while your fellow travellers are asking what rock band my wife and I must belong to, and out a side door to their limo so we're at the hotel before most people have cleared customs. Or arriving at their Singapore hotel, checking in in the room (like at most Four Seasons), going straight down to the bar and having the waiter greet you by name - literally 5 minutes after check in. At their Costa Rica resort last April a pool boy greeted me by name and told me how one of the medical products my company makes has helped his daughter. I learned the staff reviews Linked In profiles of guests while on the bus into work. Value? Maybe not. But still pretty cool. For that perfection I do pay more - sometimes double or even triple. But while on vacation it's worth it to me... to think less. There's compensating value to me. As a bonus I also almost always learn something about service - or even about lean - so I'm tempted to write off part of the bill as a business expense. Note to IRS auditors reading this: I've never actually done this. Finally to the real story of this post. I'm having a quiet breakfast this morning at the Four Seasons in Bangkok after arriving late the previous evening after a long day of traveling from the US. My table is at the side of the open atrium so I get to watch the staff in action. I've always been amazed by how the staff at their hotels - whether at the restaurants or elsewhere - will be at your side exactly the instant you need them, but are also never annoyingly intrusive. Now I know. Amidst the flurry of wait staff running around, I noticed that there was always at least one person just standing - and watching. Not always the same person, but there was always one. Just looking around the room at all the customers - and the rest of the staff. If a customer looked up and looked around indicating they needed something, instantly that wait person went over and another person took over the watching and looking. If a line started to form (ie, more than one person) at the front of the restaurant, the person would head over and help with the seating. And someone else would take over the watching. Someone was always standing, observing, and watching. So I looked up and to the side, and instantly a waiter was at my side. I asked what he was watching for, and his response? "Just observing, sir." Yes, "just" observing. That "just" has become one key to their exceptional customer service. I wanted to ask if process improvements were identified and acted on, but that's when the language barrier kicked in. Taiichi Ohno would be proud. Lean types know of the "Ohno circle" concept. Go to the gemba, and "just" stand and observe. 15, 30, 60 minutes - whatever it takes. In fact, he would tell people that if they haven't observed something that needed to be improved, they should go out and stand longer. How often do you, and your team, take the time to simply observe? How often do you go out to your shop floor and just stand and watch the process? When you rush around focused on firefighting and fixing things, you miss the nuance of the process. Or, in the case of Four Seasons, a tiny shift of a customer's eyes that indicate they might need something. Take some time to "just" observe. Better yet, make it part of the ongoing routine of you and your staff. ### Discussing the Topic URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/discussing-the-topic/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:01:35.000Z The other day [I showed a simple P&L for two businesses ](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/todays-discussion-topic/)\- one more profitable while the other provided greater value for customers - and posed the question, 'which was better managed?' EE readers never fail to get to the heart of critical issues and the comments that came in were, as expected, insightful and force all of us to think deeper. Billy's comment - that the second business was spending money on customers and thereby "*setting themselves up for long term stability*" was the fundamental lean response. As Prashant Navalkar commented, adding superior value for customers "*has to pay off in the long r*un". The rub, as Ed pointed out, is whether "*the customer agrees with the 'value-added' definition over time*." Joe Molesky commented that knowing how much was spent adding value and how much was spent on other things is more than can be said for any company he worked for - and I suspect more than can be said for most companies. If Billy and Prashant are correct, that creating superior value for customers is the key to long term sustainability and success; and Ed and Joe are correct, that most companies don't know how much of their resources are going to creating superior value, then the problem is apparent: Lean success is dependent on sales, marketing and accounting playing essential roles. Sales has to be the voice of the customer making sure everyone knows what is valuable to customers and what is not; and accounting has to help track that. As Jeff's comments indicate, defining value adding and non-value adding is not that straightforward. I have taken a number of companies through this exercise and know from such first hand experience that there are lots of gray areas where the classification is the product of company values and strategy, rather than from some universally accepted list. As Mike Bremer commented, numbers don't tell the whole story. He is absolutely correct and, as much as anything, that point was the objective of my post, and the underlying basis for my comment to Billy that "*99 guys out of a 100 on Wall Street would come to the wrong conclusion*." far too many business people make decisions based too heavily - often entirely - on the numbers. Because, as Ed and Joe pointed out, most companies don't know what spending improves the value proposition and what doesn't, the comparison of these two businesses would typically be limited to which is more profitable - period. As the entire discussion points out, how the company reduced costs and makes a higher profit has some profound implications. While the commenters did not agree that either #1 or #2 was better managed, the discussion demonstrated that simply measuring businesses by profit snapshots with an assumption that more is universally better (a la Wall Street) wrong conclusions are often drawn. As Danie pointed out, simply improving profits by reducing costs can send companies down a "slippery slope" if the costs being reduced are those that create value and drive prices. The bottom line on all of this is that success - lean success - is an integrated, company-wide endeavor. Company #2 is only better if their superior value proposition is (1) correct and (2) ultimately drives higher sales and profits. Lean accounting, by itself, is just another means of managing by the numbers and can never tell the whole story - but traditional accounting is even worse. Sales has to be part of the team if the rest of the business is going to focus on customer value. It takes all hands on deck to succeed and using a standard accounting P&L as the primary measuring stick won't get you there. ### Southeast Asian Sojourn: A Perfect Thailand and Laos Itinerary URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/southeast-asian-sojourn-a-perfect-thailand-and-laos-itinerary/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T17:40:44.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_4455.JPG) Our September 2012 journey through Thailand and Laos proved to be one of our most culturally enriching trips to date. This two-week adventure perfectly balanced the vibrant energy of Bangkok, the spiritual serenity of Luang Prabang, and the cultural richness of northern Thailand's ancient capital, Chiang Mai. For independent travelers seeking authentic experiences beyond the typical tourist trail, this itinerary offers the perfect introduction to mainland Southeast Asia. ## General Comments **Best Time to Visit**: September sits at the tail end of the rainy season, which means fewer crowds and lush, green landscapes, though occasional afternoon showers are expected. The weather was generally warm and humid, perfect for temple visits and river cruises. **Transportation**: We flew business class on United, which made the long journey much more comfortable. The internal flights on Lao Airlines were efficient, and the short hop from Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai provided stunning aerial views of the Mekong region. **Accommodation Philosophy**: We chose luxury properties that reflect local character rather than international chain hotels. Each property offered unique cultural immersion while maintaining the comfort standards we appreciate. **Cultural Considerations**: Both Thailand and Laos are deeply Buddhist countries with rich traditions. We found that showing respect for local customs - particularly when visiting temples - opened doors to more authentic experiences. ## Detailed Itinerary ### Days 1-4: Bangkok - Urban Energy Meets Ancient Culture **Hotel**: Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok Bangkok serves as the perfect introduction to Southeast Asia, blending ancient traditions with modern dynamism. The Four Seasons location provides easy access to both the Chao Phraya River and the city's cultural heart. **Must-See Attractions**: - **Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew**: Start early to beat crowds at this stunning complex housing the Emerald Buddha - **Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn)**: Climb the central spire for panoramic river views, especially beautiful at sunset - **Wat Pho**: Home to the massive Reclining Buddha and traditional Thai massage school - **Jim Thompson House**: Fascinating museum showcasing traditional Thai architecture and silk history - **Chatuchak Weekend Market**: If visiting on weekends, this massive market offers everything from antiques to street food **Unique Experiences**: - Private longtail boat tour of the floating markets and canal communities - Evening food tour through Chinatown's street stalls - Traditional Thai cooking class focusing on royal cuisine - Private after-hours visit to Wat Suthat for photography without crowds **Dining**: Bangkok's food scene ranges from street vendors to Michelin-starred restaurants. Don't miss traditional boat noodles, som tam (papaya salad), and mango sticky rice from local vendors. ### Days 5-8: Luang Prabang - UNESCO World Heritage Serenity **Hotel**: La Residence Phou Vao The flight to Luang Prabang reveals dramatic mountain landscapes before landing in this preserved colonial town where French influence blends seamlessly with Lao culture. **Spiritual Highlight - Alms Giving Ceremony**: The early morning alms giving ceremony (tak bat) was indeed a trip highlight. This ancient Buddhist tradition begins before dawn as saffron-robed monks walk silently through town collecting offerings. We participated respectfully with pre-purchased offerings from local vendors, maintaining the sacred silence that makes this ceremony so moving. **Essential Luang Prabang Experiences**: - **Mount Phousi**: Climb 328 steps for panoramic views over the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers - **Royal Palace Museum**: Explore the former royal residence now showcasing Lao culture and history - **Pak Ou Caves**: Boat excursion to limestone caves filled with thousands of Buddha statues - **Kuang Si Falls**: Stunning multi-tiered waterfalls with turquoise pools perfect for swimming - **Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre**: Understanding Laos' diverse ethnic groups **Unique Cultural Immersion**: - Private Mekong sunset cruise with traditional Lao music - Visit to nearby villages to observe traditional weaving and handicrafts - Cooking class focusing on Lao cuisine, including laab and sticky rice - Early morning visit to the local market with a chef guide **Evening Activities**: Luang Prabang's night market along Sisavangvong Road offers beautiful textiles, local crafts, and street food in a relaxed atmosphere. ### Days 9-12: Chiang Mai - Cultural Capital of Northern Thailand **Hotel**: 137 Pillars House Chiang Mai provides the perfect contrast to Bangkok's intensity, offering a more intimate exploration of Lanna Thai culture within the old walled city and surrounding mountains. **Temple Treasures**: - **Wat Phra Singh**: Houses the revered Phra Singh Buddha image - **Wat Chedi Luang**: Massive 15th-century chedi partially destroyed by earthquake - **Wat Phra That Doi Suthep**: Sacred mountain temple with golden chedi and city views - **Wat Chiang Man**: Chiang Mai's oldest temple with ancient Buddha images **Cultural Experiences**: - **Elephant Nature Park**: Ethical elephant sanctuary focused on rescue and rehabilitation - **Handicraft Villages**: Visit Bo Sang umbrella village and San Kamphaeng silk weavers - **Thai Massage at Women's Correctional Institution**: Unique experience supporting rehabilitation programs - **Private Lanna architecture walking tour** with local historian **Culinary Adventures**: - Chiang Mai cooking school focusing on Northern Thai specialties like khao soi - Evening food tour through local neighborhoods - Visit to Warorot Market for ingredients and local snacks **Day Trips from Chiang Mai**: - Mae Tang river rafting and hill tribe village visits - Doi Inthanon National Park (Thailand's highest peak) with waterfalls and bird watching - Traditional hill tribe trekking with overnight homestay option ## Practical Tips **Money**: ATMs are widely available in all three cities. US dollars are accepted in Laos but local currency is preferred for smaller purchases. **Language**: English is widely spoken in tourist areas. Learning basic Thai and Lao greetings opens doors to warmer interactions. **Dress Code**: Conservative dress required for temples - cover shoulders and knees. Light, breathable fabrics work best in the humid climate. **Health**: No special vaccinations required, but bringing anti-malaria medication for rural areas is wise. Drink bottled water and be cautious with street food initially. **Shopping**: Negotiate prices at markets but not in established shops. Beautiful textiles, handicrafts, and artwork make excellent souvenirs. ## What Worked Exceptionally Well The pacing of this itinerary proved ideal - four days allowed thorough exploration of each destination without feeling rushed. The progression from Bangkok's urban energy to Luang Prabang's tranquility to Chiang Mai's cultural depth created a perfect narrative arc. The choice of luxury hotels that reflect local character rather than international standardization enhanced our cultural immersion while maintaining comfort after long days of exploration. ## Minor Adjustments for Future Trips With more time, we would add a few days in rural northern Laos or extend the Chiang Mai portion to include more mountain regions. The brief flight time between destinations could accommodate slower overland travel for a different perspective on the changing landscapes. ## Final Thoughts This Thailand-Laos combination offers an ideal introduction to mainland Southeast Asia for travelers seeking cultural depth beyond beach destinations. The contrast between Thailand's more developed tourism infrastructure and Laos' preserved traditional way of life provides perspective on the region's diversity. From Bangkok's urban temples to Luang Prabang's morning alms ceremony to Chiang Mai's handicraft villages, each destination contributed unique insights into Buddhist culture, colonial history, and contemporary Southeast Asian life. The September timing proved excellent - fewer crowds, dramatic skies, and lush landscapes more than compensated for occasional afternoon showers. For couples seeking cultural immersion with comfortable accommodations, this itinerary strikes the perfect balance between adventure and refinement. ### Today's Discussion Topic URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/todays-discussion-topic/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:01:57.000Z Which of he following is the better managed business - the leadership of which is deserving of the greater reward? Discuss among yourselves ... ### Results... Not Personality URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/results-not-personality/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:02:29.000Z A couple of articles in The Wall Street Journal last week made me think a bit about how we should look for and evaluate results and experience when choosing a leader... not just personality. And no, I'm not thinking about our favorite community organizer from Chicago. The articles, interestingly enough, had to do with our mess of a health care system. Having just spent the last three weeks dealing with a very difficult family medical situation, the topic is close to my heart. The first is a great read on the impact of medical errors. As interesting as that is in itself, the few statements on how we tend to choose doctors is what stood out for me: *I've asked patients how they decided to come to the hospital where I was working (Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, D.C. General Hospital, Harvard and others). Among their answers: "Because you're close to home"; "You guys treated my dad when he died"; "I figured it must be good because you have a helicopter." You wouldn't believe the number of patients who have told me that the deciding factor for them was parking.* *A survey of New Yorkers found that approximately 60% look up a restaurant's "performance ratings" before going there. If you won't sit down for a meal before checking Zagat's or Yelp, why shouldn't you be able to do the same thing when your life is at stake?* You might be surprised at the different quality levels of doctors and hospitals - which we apparently select with no meaningful data. Just one example from the article: *In 1989, the first year that New York's hospitals were required to report heart-surgery death rates, the death rate by hospital ranged from 1% to 18%—a huge gap. Consumers were finally armed with useful data. They could ask: "Why have a coronary artery bypass graft operation at a place where you have a 1-in-6 chance of dying compared with a hospital with a 1-in-100 chance of dying?"* No kidding. The second article is an interview with Leslie Michelsen, who runs Private Health. His firm basically does very deep, and very expensive, data analysis on physicians, facilities, and treatments to provide the ultimate in healthcare for those that can afford it. *"People do not know how to choose doctors. It's one of the most important things you can do to promote your own health and that of your loved ones, and it's: 'My friend's cousin's relative went to Dr. Smith, and he was terrific.' Well, how do you know he's terrific?"* Once again, with some of the most important decisions we make, we resort to hearsay and personality, not results-driven analysis. Not that we're necessarily to blame - obtaining that data is difficult, which is why companies like Private Health exist. *So Mr. Michelson built a series of proprietary algorithms to distinguish "the few who are the very best" from "the many who are very good," based on "the factors that predict excellence." For example, the premier caregivers for metastatic cancer are usually academic researchers on the cutting edge, not general oncologists. The best orthopedic surgeons perform many procedures as they master the clinical learning curve, ideally for a single injury.* That's one solution - one that most of us don't have access to. The first article promotes greater transparency. Remember the difference in heart surgery death rates in NYC? *Nothing makes hospitals shape up more quickly than this kind of public reporting. Instantly, New York heart hospitals with high mortality rates scrambled to improve; death rates declined by 83% in six years. Management at these hospitals finally asked staff what they had to do to make care safer. At some hospitals, the surgeons said they needed anesthesiologists who specialized in heart surgery; at others, nurse practitioners were brought in. At one hospital, the staff reported that a particular surgeon simply wasn't fit to be operating. His mortality rate was so high that it was skewing the hospital's average. Administrators ordered him to stop doing heart surgery. Goodbye, Dr. Hodad.* Earlier in that article you learned that "Dr. Hodad" was what other professionals in that hospital called a particular surgeon that was exceedingly popular, a shortened version of "Dr. Hands of Death and Destruction." Popularity with patients didn't equate to quality. *His operating skills were hasty and slipshod, and his patients frequently suffered complications. This was a man who simply should not have been allowed to touch patients. But his bedside manner was impeccable (in fact, I try to emulate it to this day). He was charming. Celebrities requested him for operations. His patients worshiped him. When faced with excessive surgery time and extended hospitalizations, they just chalked up their misfortunes to fate.* So, finally, to my point. How many of us have a "Dr. Hodad" in our organization? A supposed leader that talks a good talk, is loved by many, but is simply ineffective? Why? Why does he still have a seat on the bus? How do we make it obvious that he should get off the bus? The first article talks about the power of visibility and transparency - recording results and making them public. Do you measure the results of your leaders? Do you make them public? Then what do you do when those results aren't what you expect - or need? Even when the leader is popular. Popularity and personality do not improve an organization. Results do. Yes, even if you're a community organizer from Chicago. Or a venture capital vulture from Michigan for that matter. ### It's All About People and Relationships URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-all-about-people-and-relationships/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:03:11.000Z The most disappointing aspect of Lean Accounting is the tendency of many managers to skim over the part of Simple Excellence that says decisions are based two thirds or more on common sense, core values, wisdom and experience, with numbers a minor consideration. The tendency is to simply replace the old accounting numbers with a new - Lean Accounting - set and continue along the path of trying to run the business by the numbers. Management by the numbers, no matter the source of the numbers, is a losing game. The cost of anything, the right lot size to produce, whether a new machine is a good investment, whether something is close enough to specifications, and how much of a raise or bonus to pay someone cannot be boiled down to a mathematical equation. The correct answer is different every time the decision is faced. The correct answer is always 'it depends'; and it comes down to smart people who know the values, strategy and objectives sorting through all of the available information and selecting the right bits of data upon which to base a decision. Perhaps most foolish of all is the idea that "Companies" can "Trade in Hunch Hiring for Computer Modeling". There is no skill in any business that cannot be trained into an employee - but teaching respect, core values and how to interact with others is almost impossible to teach someone who has not had those traits instilled in them from very early in life. "*Data show that creative types tend to stick around for the necessary six months. Inquisitive people often don't*." What??? People who ask a lot of questions don't stick around - so we should use computers to sort out and make sure we don't hire any such folks??? On what planet does that pass the common sense test? Seems to me that, if inquisitive folks don't stick around we shouldn't avoid hiring them - we should try to figure out why the answers to their questions lead them to decide to work somewhere else. You can't use a computer to sort out good people from bad. That's absurd on its face. "*Spending on so-called talent management software rose to $3.8 billion in 2011*." That strikes me as $3.8 billion of pure waste spent by managers trying to duck responsibility for the most important decisions they are tasked with making. Cultural fit is the most important element of a hiring decision - and that can't be programmed into a computer any more than it can be the basis for marriage decisions. There is a good reason why people date each other for two years or more before they get engaged - and still end up in divorce court almost half the time. There is a reason why eHarmony uses the computer to determine who you should date - then the personal interaction kicks in to decide whether to pursue the relationship further. It seems 'management' is the never-ending quest to have computers take the risk out of management decision making ... to find the extensive enough, comprehensive enough, sophisticated enough algorithm to have a computer do the tough work of making difficult decisions - or at least being able to blame the computer and the numbers for bad decisions. The most important decision management makes is hiring the right people. The product of those decisions is the culture of the organization. Success is the result of hiring the right people and putting them in place to make decisions - myriad small ongoing decisions. Turning the hiring decision over to a computer - especially a computer programmed to weed out the inquisitive ones - is a singularly dumb idea and a formula for disaster. There is no substitute for a good manager looking someone in the eye and taking the measure of that person, then betting the future of the business on the opinion formed as a result of that good, long look. ### Not Even the TSA Can Inspect In Quality - or Control URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/not-even-the-tsa-can-inspect-in-quality-or-control/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:04:56.000Z So there I am this afternoon, sitting with my wife on the last plane flight of the day, returning from a two week long trip to deal with a difficult situation with her family. Perhaps more on that at a later date, but for now let's just say Hospice is one incredible organization. Wearily I go to stuff the boarding passes back into my backpack when something jumps out at me. "Kitts" Uh, wait a minute. We're both Meyers, at least we have been for fourteen years. Why is her maiden name on her boarding pass? Momentary panic. I must have been so wrapped up in the issues on her side of the family that when I made the one-way return reservation yesterday I used her maiden name. At least that's what I surmised after reviewing the boarding passes from the previous two flights that showed the same incongruity. Then it hits me. The drivers license she uses as ID says Meyer, not Kitts. And that ID was used when we checked in at United, went through TSA, and then right before this final flight went through an unusual US Air gate check that also required ID. In fact, she went through TSA twice as she forgot to remove an item from her backpack that couldn't be carried on and went back out of security to go to the gift shop to mail it back to herself. A United ID check, two TSA ID checks, and a US Air ID check. Four checks, and not one of them noticed the glaring discrepancy in last names. Her first boarding pass even had the check marks next to the various things they check - flight, date, first name, and last name. So much time was spent looking for holograms, hidden lines, microprint, or whatever that the glaring problem was missed. At least by the TSA. I'll give the United and USAir agents a pass because, well, nevermind. Should I be relieved that my tired mistake didn't create havoc on our trip, or worried about security? Those of us in the manufacturing world, or at least the slightly evolved manufacturing world, know that inspected-in quality isn't real quality. Quality has to be built in. Once you get to the point that you need a final inspection it is too late, and if that is a human-based inspection it is basically meaningless. How often do you do a "re-inspection" before you realize you re-inspect for one thing and find another, and so on? Inspection, especially human-based inspection, simply isn't effective, even if you kid yourselves with AQL levels and other statistical nonsense. You still have the human factor. A factor that can overpower robots with creativity and improvement ideas, but still has the potential for incredible, erratic, variation in performance. The same concept applies to inspecting in control. As the TSA did today. Twice. ### Disruptive Management URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/disruptive-management/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:05:39.000Z There is an article on Financial Times called "Why Sony Did Not Invent the iPod". If you don't have a FT account don't worry about it - the article is not particularly important. It is like countless articles and books that have flowed from the professional management cult, citing a Harvard wizard by the name Clayton Christensen who reaps all sorts of awards for his managerial insights. It preaches a famiar theme - game changing, innovative products wreak haoc on industries and some companies do a lousy job of recognizing and dealing with it. Included in the article is the assertion, "*Narratives of industry evolution often represent fairy tales constructed by corporate financiers, or ambitious chief executives*." I would add to that, 'fairly tales constructed by business school professors and other gurus'. The idea that business folks rationalize the status quo when challenged with game changing products is valid enough, but it is just as valid - even more so perhaps - that corporate financiers, ambitious (and otherwise) chief executives - and especially management gurus in institutions that have built their reputations, careers and bank accounts on the status quo construct fairly tales to rationalize the status quo when confronted with a different management paradigm. How else are we to explain the Toyota versus General Motors domination swap? Over the years, General Motors management proffered explanations for their eroding market share and profits ranging from Toyota 'buying market share', the Japanese government underwriting Toyota, GM's hourly wage agreements, their structural costs and their legacy costs ... everything but the idea that Toyota was managing by a completely different set of principles. One by one all of those explanations were corrected, at no small expense to all of GM's stakeholders - employees, suppliers, customers, comunities and American taxpayers - yet GM is still the same struggling mess lurching from solution to solution it was twenty years ago. The gist of the FT article is a theory concerning the failure of many mergers and acquisitions intended to counter the industry disruption new products have created. It says, "*Established companies in an industry are naturally resistant to disruptive innovation, which threatens their existing capabilities and cannibalises their existing products. A collection of all the businesses which might be transformed by disruptive innovation might at first sight appear to be a means of assembling the capabilities needed to manage change. In practice, it is a means of gathering together everyone who has an incentive to resist change*." Take a look at this rogues gallery from the good professor's web site. What is it if not a "gathering together everyone who has an incentive to resist change"? What has this group done to challenge the long standing basic principles of management assumed to be irrefutable by their colleagues and decades of graduates from the schools paying their salaries? The answer is nothing. By and large, this group still believes that GM can put itself right with innovative products, and that its management methods and processes are just fine. The 'fairy tales' told by the professional management cult wholly ignore the fact that, while Toyota did a lot of good things in the course of running roughshod over General Motors cranking out disruptive, game changing, industry redefining products is not one of them. Get a load of the management disruptioin this video from a small company called Aluminum Trailers in an out of the way place in northern Indiana. ATC is doing to the small trailer industry what Toyota to the auto industry and, as the video shows, they are doing it by taking a fundamentally different approach to management. I can imagine what sort of intellectual fairly tales the professional management cult would construct to rationalize ATC. The professional management experts break the fundamental rule of lean - they miss Dr Deming's essential point. Failure is ascribed to personal failing, rather than flawed processes. If the company is doing poorly, the problem is the CEO and his lack of vision, charisma, leadership skills, knowledge of strategy, inability to comprehend financial ratios, ignorance of brand management essentials, etc..., etc..., etc... How such idiots came to be CEO's - an extraordinary occurrence - is never explained. Of course they are not idiots, they are very intelligent people, but they are executing incapable management processes. Of course innovative products can be very disruptive - the high tech world proves that routinely. Of course supply chain innovation can be extremely disruptive - just look at P&G founder about to respond to Dollar Shave Club, and Walmart grapple with Amazon. And of course the folks whose careers are vested in the old model often look foolish and go down hard. Management innovation is just as disruptive - more so than products because most companies can catch up if they are behind the product curve while clinging to a failed management model is often a death sentence. Those steeped in old management thinking sooner or later look just as foolish and go down just as hard, whether they are executives, financiers ... or award winning college professors. ### It's Summit Week! URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-summit-week/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:06:02.000Z It's Lean Accounting Summit week and it seems like a good time to share this video. It is actually a clip from a television interview I did with New Zealand national TV explaining lean and lean accounting. I hadn't seen it in a while until someone recently pointed out that it is the most viewed lean accounting clip on Youtube. I'm looking forward to seeing Kevin at the Summit along with a lot of other lean friends ... hope to see you there too ... ### Dog Economics URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dog-economics/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:06:19.000Z There are something on the order of 78 million dogs in the United States - almost 40% of US households are home to at least one dog. That's a lot of dogs. Let's say the average dog owner spends $25 a year on toys for the dog - probably a conservative number, but still a big one - almost $2 billion worth of canine paraphernalia. The problem is that a 'dog toy market' does not exist ... it is an economic/business grouping conjured up from whole cloth by egg-headed theorists. There are 150+ recognized breeds of dogs. They come in all sorts of different sizes and temperaments. Further, people own them for all sorts of different reasons - family pets, hunting, breeding, companionship, service animals ...you name it. And, of course they are different ages, have owners in different economic circumstances, and owners with different interests and priorities when it comes to their dog - for some the dog is the center of their life, for others it is just a dog, and most fall in between. While asserting that dog owners are 78 million niches of one is a stretch, there are thousands of permutations you can make on the variables to determine exactly what someone would describe as their ideal dog toy. Drinking the mass market Kool-Aid the wise business approach would be for a company to design a handful of products with 'mass appeal' and have them made in China to keep the cost down, ship them by the container to distribution centers scattered around the USA, then hang them on the hooks at some Megamart big box retailer. Only a few variations would be made because the whole system is designed that way - the Chinese manufacturer is geared up for the simplicity of mass production, shipping costs are lower when goods are sent by skid and container loads, and Megamart sells all sorts of stuff and will only allot a few hooks to dog toys. While the toys are not exactly what anyone wants, the price is fairly low and there isn't much choice for dog owners. So they sell. Around the edges there are small quantities of specialized dog toys sold at small pet shops, but the low volumes drive high prices and only the real dog fanatics buy them ... the 'niche producers' and 'niche sellers'. Niches are perceived by the mass producers and mass marketers as pesky, but insignificant. That's the way it is done. They teach it at Harvard, and everywhere else. The mass guys strive to get bigger - moving onto cat toys and dog food - related stuff where they can attain synergies and leverage their business model. The business is not run by dog people - it is run by business people who are masters at systems, financial ratios and brand management who study market data and develop marketing strategies designed to convince people that the use of their toys will make the dogs healthier, more loyal and lovable. But that world is changing. That niche producer isn't selling exclusively through the specialty retailer - the local pet store - any more. It is also selling on line. The big guy believes he has to be in China to keep the cost and price down, but that is based on math that assumes the $5 China cost will incur another $4 for shipping and overhead, then be marked up by $2 to make a profit when sold to Megamart, who will mark that $11 total up by another $5 and sell it for $16\. The 'niche' producer makes his toy for $8, tacks on another $4 for SGA and a profit, adds on $3 for UPS to ship the toy - selling it to the on line customer for $15\. The dog owner gets exactly what she wants for $15 instead of the generic mass produced and marketed toy for $16. This - or variations on it - is what is happening everywhere. It is why the business press is full of woeful stories about the big multi-nationals, but everywhere I go I hear about small manufacturers doing very well. It is why big guys can only survive, let alone thrive, by breaking their big business down into small focused chunks - value streams - to create a collection of niche companies within the company (although they will by and large fail by smothering them with 'one size fits all; corporate ERP. accounting, HR and other management systems). And it is why small guys can only grow by adding self-sustaining, autonomous, cross-functional chunks to address another niche. It is why most innovation is whistling past the graveyard - an attempt to keep mass-producing and mass-marketing alive by coming up with something so new that all of the niches will return to Megamart to get it ... but even when it works it is just a matter of very little time before all of the niche guys twist it, bend it and adapt it to their niche, with enough twisting and bending that the big guy's patent is irrelevant. In fact, it is why smart phones are a great innovation. iPhones and Droids are single platforms, but each owner conjures up their own screen and downloads their own apps so that, in the end, each phone is unique ... perfect for niches of one. It is why manufacturing cost - or even the total manufacturing company's cost - doesn't matter - let alone the labor portion of manufacturing cost. The customer ony cares about total supply chain cost. It is why lean and small lot production is an imperative. It is why accounting systems based on an assumption that there must always be a big pile of inventory to match expenses and sales to are irrelevant. And it is not just consumer products. It doesn't matter whether the market is dog toys, or electric motors or gas valves. Mass production and mass marketing are dead men walking. ### Happy Labor Day URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/happy-labor-day/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:07:38.000Z I thought I'd share this video from Brainpickings at the kickoff of the Labor Day weekend - seems appropriate to see where manufacturing has come from. It is from the Raleigh Bicycle company in England in 1945\. For those unfamiliar with Brainpickings, it is a very cool site full of all sorts of generally worthless, but fascinating information - a lot like me I suppose. Lots of impressions from the video ... from a lean perspective, of course, the amount of work in process inventoryand the size of the batches is striking ... from a production perspecctive, the labor intensity and the gains in productivity are even more striking. I like the fact that it demonstrates the importance of the bicycle industry in manufacturing evolution. They were making bikes for the mass market long before they were making cars. Henry Ford owes his assembly line and interchangeable parts, in large measure, to the modern machine tool era which arose from the late 1800's bicycle industry. After seeing this, you will understand why it was natural for aviation to spring from the Wright Brothers bicycle shop. Bike makers were very skilled manufacturers in 1903 - the year Orville and Wilbur flew (and incidentally the same year the Ford Motor Company was formed). When the Wright boys went to Kitty Hawk Model T's and the assembly lines that made them were not even a dream. Have a great holiday weekend! ### You Don't Set the Rules URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/you-dont-set-the-rules/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:07:57.000Z Kevin's post the other day reminded me of a lesson from a wise mentor a long time ago in my supply chain days (while I started in accounting and ended as an operations exec supply chain is what I did for a living for most of the time in between ... and it was in supply chain that I first learned lean). That is, payment terms, lead times and quality policies are not up to you - the end customer in the supply chain - the one that ultimately buys the product and uses it up - gets to call those shots. It works like this: The Acme company sells to an end buyer - a government agency. The government wants two week lead times and will pay in 45 days. The Beta company is a supplier to Acme. There is nothing to negotiate but the price. Beta must provide the same lead times and payment terms. If Acme demands one week lead times, they are trying to shift a disproportionate she of the inventory investment (and risk) to Beta. If Beta demands four week lead times, they are attempting to shift the investment and risk to Acme. Same is true with payment terms - Acme pays Beta in 45 days - period. Anything other than that is one company attempting to get the other to finance the supply chain. Every supply chain has its own rules. The rules when you sell into a retail supply chain are apt to be 3 days lead times, 60 day payment terms and anything gets returned far any reason - or no reason at all. If you want to sell components into that supply chain you need to play by those rules ...or go find another supply chain more to your liking. If you demand other terms, you are asking someone somewhere along the chain to make you investment for you - to take on your risk - and the fundamental principle of risk and return always prevails. You will pay for it sooner or later ... most often by someone willing to play by the rules. If you demand that your suppliers carry your risk, sooner or later your suppliers will penalize you for it ... or quit on you and compel you to buy from less capable suppliers who are desperate enough to put up with your abuse. Hardly anyone plays by these rules, of course. Walmart gets their money from customers almost immediately and uses it to finance their business for a month or more before its suppliers get paid. I run into machining, extruding and molding companies all the time who live three or four steps up the chain who tell me their lead time, payment and return 'policies', as if anyone three or four steps up the chain ever get to set such 'policies'. They set RMA policies as if any of their customers really care a whit about their suppliers' return rules. But sooner or later the rules prevail, and quite often such suppliers are replaced and they never even know why. In fact, the supply chain found someone willing to do business on its own terms. More often, customers that abuse the rules of the supply chain never know how many extremely capable suppliers never knock on their door because they are unwilling to take the abuse. Walmart especially comes to mind. They believe American suppliers can't compete with their offshore sources, wholly ignorant of the hundreds - probably thousands - of very, very good small and mid-sized American companies that never try to sell to Walmart because they wouldn't put up with Walmart's abuse if you put a gun to the CEO's head. You have to know the rules of the supply chain before you get into it, and you have to be ready to play by those rules. You can cheat for as long as someone has no choice but to put up with it, but it will bite you in the end. ### Payment Terms: A Leading Indicator of Partnership URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/payment-terms-a-leading-indicator-of-partnership/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:08:17.000Z Anyone that has been in business, especially running a business, for two or three decades has noticed patterns that aid their decisions. Nothing earth-shattering there - it's called experience. And if we're smart it's why we hire people with a couple decades of experience to run companies - or countries for that matter. Two such patterns have become ingrained in my psyche when I come across new customers. The predictive pattern has a nearly 100% correlation. What are they? 1. The partnership aspect of a relationship will be inversely proportional to the payment terms. 2. The maintenance level of a relationship will be inversely proportional to the requested automatic annual price reductions - targets or fixed. Net 30 terms are fairly reasonable and I use that as the "zero" point. It does take some time for a typical customer to receive incoming components, inspect them (yes, traditional, not optimal), and release payment. Waiting 30 days has minimal impact on my cash position and can be easily planned for and accommodated. If a customer offers to pay at less than 30 days I know I have a customer that sees value in our relationship, and believes our financial stability is important. I should qualify that - I don't mean less than 30 days terms with a discount. In those cases they're just trying to sneak in a price reduction. If receiving cash fifteen days early is worth 2 or 3%, then I've got other issues. Unfortunately companies that offer to pay full value at less than 30 days are a rarity. In most cases traditional supply chain and financial management promotes the concept that terms should be stretched. Far more often I receive requests for Net 45 or Net 60\. Last week I even received one from a Fortune 10 company for Net 120\. That company, previously known as a six sigma powerhouse, has recently been lauded for leveraging lean to move a bunch of appliance manufacturing back to the United States. Apparently the respect for people side of lean, which in my book includes suppliers, doesn't run deep in that company. Those requests for longer terms come in spurts, which I roughly correlate to when there are purchasing-related conferences. Luckily my company is in a strong position from competitive and technology perspectives, so I have some leverage of my own. Upon receipt of such a request for greater than Net 30 terms we send a letter from me indicating that we use our cash to improve processes, we look for partnerships and our real partners are actually shortening terms, and we feel it isn't in the spirit of partnership for a much larger company to effectively ask a small company for a loan. Terms will be Net 30, or else the order will not be accepted. That usually does the trick. In some cases, such as the Net 120 situation above, the larger company still tries the abusive approach. If they continue to push the issue I have a second letter that asks them if their desire for longer terms is an indicator of financial problems on their end, and perhaps we should be concerned enough about that to request cash in advance. I used to have a statement in the letter asking if the purchasing agent would accept a paycheck 60 or 90 (or 120?) days after the work period, but I know payment terms are generally directed to the poor purchasing agents from way on high. The kicker with those extended terms is that the customer is setting themselves up for ongoing financial tension. Just like paying your January mortgate payment in December will help taxes - it helps one time. If you don't do that for each of the following years, you reverse. Dell is discovering that with it's well-known inverse cash flow cycle - receiving cash from consumers prior to having to pay for parts for the products. A great cash generator during growth - but it reverses direction during contraction. In effect, a suckers bet. It can be a fun game, although I obviously do have to be careful to not get too comfortable with my competitive advantage. We're not, and we work on increasing our value to our customers every day. But the bottom line is that I can predict how a relationship will be developed by the terms that are requested and ultimately agreed to. If the customer offers to pay at less than 30 days with no discounts, it is going to be very valuable. If the company demands 45, 60, or even 120 day terms, it is going to be an increasingly difficult and adversarial relatiionship. Just because a potential customer is big doesn't mean it's a valuable customer. Just ask all the poor folks that salivated over selling to Walmart and learn a painful lesson. Volume does not automatically equate to success. A similar situation exists with the automatic price decreases that many customers demand. Usually they start off with around 5% per year, with no qualification or adjustment for uncontrollable changes in raw material prices, specification changes, and the like. Believe it or not, most suppliers swallow and accept such nonsense, again out of lust for the big company customer. Some will first negotiate to try to even the playing ground a bit - the ability to roll through raw material increases at least at cost, triggers to review pricing if specifications change, and the like. That helps a lot. But you know what really changes the game? Offering to target even greater cost reduction, if (and it's a hugely important "if") a defined project matrix is created that defines the projects and the very specific contributions by both parties. An attempt to create partnership. As soon as you document what the customer also has to bring to the price and cost reduction project, such as analysis of changes and performance from improved processes, the responsibility shifts. And we all know how frustrating it is to get customers to play a role in projects - and how they still demand the results that are impossible without their role. Document it, and define in supply agreements that price changes must be tied to specific projects, and those specific projects will define the roles of each party. If the customer demands x% price reductions per year, period, it's going to be adversarial. If the customer agrees to terms that specify projects and contributions, it can work out well. If the customer doesn't even talk price but instead talks quality and final customer value... jump on and hang on. So if you are a supplier, or a customer, think about the predictive value of payment terms and automatic price decreases. What is that saying about your relationship? Is it what you want? ### Be a Better Doer Than A Marketer URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/be-a-better-doer-than-a-marketer/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:08:40.000Z Business experts often advocate bad ideas ... some times appallingly bad ideas. When I read a marketing 'expert' by the name of Debbie Mayo-Smith waxing dreamily about the advice she received from another marketing expert to 'Be *a better marketer of what you do than a doer of what you do*" I realized I was reading a new low. It is hard to imagine worse advice. The reason lean is universally the best and only business strategy that can succeed is that it drives every aspect of the business to focus on creating more and more value for customers, and cut out everything possible that does not add customer value. There is no other way to go about running a business that can possibly be better. And the simple fact is that marketing is usually non-value adding waste. It typically does not make the product one iota better than the product would be without any marketing at all. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "*If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods*." He was absolutely correct. Good products sell themselves. Ms Mayo-Smith's advice - to be better at telling people how good your chairs, knives, crucibles or church organs are than you are at making them - is so absurd as to defy all common sense; yet many companies seem to see wisdom in those words. How else are we to explain companies that treat advertising and brand management as an 'investment' that should increase year to year in order to build the business, while manufacturing expenses are costs that should be relentlessly decreased? How else are we to explain marketing departments that operate off on their own, largely disconnected from the factory floor and the engineering spaces, creating web sites, literature, advertisements and the like intended to create the illusion that your products will make them richer, sexier or more popular, rather than creating information that will help customers make truly more informed decisions? How else are we to explain senior managers who spend more time in marketing meetings than on plant floors? And how else are we to explain the almost complete lack of involvement from the marketing function in lean transformations, as if it had nothing at all to do with their role? Within the sales and marketing universe there is widespread opposition to aligning the sales people and marketing people on the same teams, let alone aligning them with the value creation functions. They tend to be functionally a group apart - and far too often a group above - the rest of the business. There is certainly a role for marketing in a lean organization, but normally a much smaller one. The prism through which marketing should be evaluated is exactly the same one used by lean companies everywhere else in the business: Is this creating value for our customers? Is this use of resources helping customers to understand the product, use it better, and make the best choice among the various versions and types available? If so, then the expense may be well worth making. Or is this expense merely attempting to persuade customers to buy our stuff, even though it may not be the best choice for the customer? If this is the case, and it is perceived to be a necessary element of the business strategy, the company is in big trouble. If educating the customers as to the choices that serve them best will not result in a "*broad, hard-beaten road*" to the business, no amount of brand management and advertising can save it. ### Organization Structure Change Doesn't Solve Leadership Issues URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/organization-structure-changes-wont-change-organizations/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:10:10.000Z So how many of you are in the middle of an org change? I'm guessing about everyone, as it seems to be the common knee-jerk response to organizational issues. The topic came up last night as I was having a conversation with a couple friends of mine that I have a lot of respect for - and it hit a nerve. First off, I do want to say that there are many valid reasons for changing an organizational structure. My organization happens to be embarking on one now, with the purpose to eliminate arbitrary site- and silo-based structures to align around cross-site value creation processes. Keep that in mind as it will become one of my main points. A typical overly-simplified corporate organization looks something like the following: Of course would usually include functions like HR and such. But a CEO would typically have five or six reports. Yes, plus a bevy of admin assistants with questionable roles. Usually in such traditional organizations considerable friction exists between various functions, such as Sales and Development, or Operations and Development. The knee-jerk reaction is to then bridge the functions by adding a new layer, such as a COO. Voila! Problem solved, right? Of course not. Yes Ops and Dev are now aligned (if the COO has any leadership juice at all), but new problems are created. First off, what about the conflict between Ops or Dev and Sales? Or the frequent conflict that exists between Ops and the CFO/Finance? Still there. And probably heightened as concerns from the Dev group have to go through another layer before being addressed between the COO and CFO. But also think about this from a "respect for people" perspective. The heads of Ops and Dev no longer receive the mentoring of the CEO, they have been diminished in stature, and their voices and concerns have to go through another layer to be heard. If I was the head of Ops I'd be demotivated and my performance would suffer. I've become another cog in the wheel instead of a key member of the CEO's staff. If I was an engineer in the Dev group I'd feel similarly. Should I? Perhaps not, but I bet I would. It's time to take a look at the root cause of the underlying situation. Groups, and their chiefs, aren't communicating effectively. They aren't leading, and they aren't aligned. Changing the organizational structure will not change that one iota - it will just shift the problem around and probably create new problems. Years ago I was having similar issues in my company. Leaders weren't leading, they weren't talking, and they weren't aligned. So one very powerful thing we did was drag the entire extended executive leadership team through Patrick Lencioni's 5 Dysfunctions of a Team book and accompanying workbooks. It took a year, but we addressed absence of trust, misalignment, communication, and the like. Sometimes it was very difficult, like the exercise where each member of the leadership team stood up and listened while the others openly and candidly discussed their "areas for improvement." We nearly lost a couple team members that day. But in the end our leadership team learned how to openly and honestly communicate, and be aligned. We have recently found we need to work hard to sustain this improvement, otherwise we lapse into traditional silo politics. The second thing we did was by accident. We had to demolish one of our new buildings to make room for a new facility. During the two year construction period I moved most my leadership team into a triple-wide trailer. Uncomfortable, and the walls were paper thin. We had to learn to live together, and deal with the conversations we heard on the other side of the walls. But again, it helped us improve. The daily executive leadership team standup meeting, where we also videoconferenced in the leadership of our other sites, also helped. One side note on that last point: as we were designing our new facility we had a lot of debate about where the senior leadership team members should reside. Initially I favored an approach that is common in lean environments: the leadership team member is with his or her team. We've all heard the stories of company presidents that use a mobile office, sometimes even on the factory floor. And I once visited a company in Japan where the entire team sat at a [single conference table in the middle of a huge room](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-2-saishunken-cosmetics-customer-care-trumps-a-factory/) with 1,000 employees - and no walls. We decided to go against lean convention and locate the senior leadership team together, on the second floor. Horrors? Nope. One big reason is that we noticed that when a senior leadership team member spent too much time with his team, the supervisory and decision-making capability of junior leaders suffered. As much as we tried, it was just too easy to revert to the senior guy making the decisions. But more importantly we found that it was easier to focus the senior leadership team on forward, future strategy rather than the day-to-day mayhem. This does not mean that those senior team members don't spend a lot of time mentoring, teaching, and helping their teams. But the small change in physical location, and thereby focus and perspective, has been important. And our junior leaders have stepped up and added a lot of leadership bench strength to our company. So where did we end up? A flatter organization, similar to the following: In fact, this doesn't begin to describe it. In addition to key functions and value stream managers, I also have QA, Supply Chain, Facilities, Customer Care, and Marketing managers. A total of 14, believe it or not. And it works just fine and I do not feel overworked. And it really is a lot of fun - that's what happens when great leaders work together to do great things. There are some caveats. For an executive staff of 10 or even 14 to work, the team must be comprised of very capable leaders. Creating that competency takes a lot of work and a lot of training - not to mention the right kind of people. There must be a very high level of organizational focus and alignment. Daily, open, trusting communication is key. And it also requires an experienced CEO or President that is comfortable delegating, has a broad knowledge to enable that span of control, and can be a good mentor. Obviously as you flatten organizations you reach a point where the span of control and responsibility may be too wide to be effective. 14 works for me, 10 might be optimal for another, perhaps 20 for some CEO lucky enough to have an incredible leadership team. Simply changing the structure of an organization doesn't create excellence and effectiveness. You have to dig deep to improve the underlying leadership competence. As you do that the organizational structure takes on less and less meaning. One last note. As we embarked on our current change to improve our alignment to value creation processes, I came across a great article by Pete Abilla on "customer journey maps." Looking at the parts of your organization - and processes - from the perspective of the customer is interesting, and we're using the concept as an input to our changes. I recommend you take a look at it. My bottom line points: 1\. Align organizations around customer value creation processes. 2\. Respect the managers by providing training, mentoring, and feedback to improve their leadership skills. 3\. Respect the managers by allowing them to interact across a wide span, and be mentored by senior leaders. 4\. Respect others in the organization by reducing layers and barriers to communication. 5\. First look to solve conflict issues by improving leadership capability - not adding a new layer. In fact flattening might actually improve communication and lessen the issue. ### The Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Gang URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/after-you-know-it-all/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:10:31.000Z Harry Truman once said, "*The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all*." - a very wise observation. So what are we to make of manufacturing accounting people who know little about lean manufacturing, nothing about lean accounting, and little interest in learning about either of them? You might want to read this mundane accounting document, called Accounting Research Bulletin 43 issued by the Finacial Accounting Standards Board. If you drop down to Chapter 4, page 11 you can read a lot of language that sounds a lot like exactly the same stuff you probably heard in accounting 101 classes. It discusses "*the general principles appicable to the pricing of inventories of mercantile and manufacturing enterprises*." The basis for standard costs and all of the accounting practices preventing companies from shortening cycle times and becoming lean. It was issued in 1953 - but is actually just cleaning up some of the details in Accounting Research Bulletin 29 issued in 1947 - during the Truman administration. 1947 - the year Jackie Robinson made it to the big leagues; stamps cost 3 cents, drive in movies were invented and Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah made it into the top ten on the music charts. Inevitably, when August rolls around and the [Lean Accounting Summit](http://www.leanaccountingsummit.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) looms, I get emails and phone calls from frustrated manufacturing people who are desperate for a way to get their accountants on board with the lean effort. They hope that, somehow, I have a magic formula for getting through to people who have not lifted a finger to learn anything more about their chosen profession since the day they walked off of a college campus. I hate to disappoint, but I cannot begin to fathom such minds. It seems to me that everyone has a fundamental moral and ethical obligation to their employer to keep up with that which they are supposed to provide expertise; and at the very least degreed, intelligent people should have a trace of curiosity, but for so many in the accounting trade this is not the case. The accountants who block their employers from achieving success because of a conviction that they already know it all and have nothing to learn beyond that which they learned in school and can find codified in dusty, old tomes from the Truman addministration seem beyond salvation. One has to wonder why any of them are paid more than basic, entry level wages given that they can all be replaced overnight with another accountant who knows ARB 47 inside and out and has not contributed a single original thought to the business - they are available by the legions and more are being cranked out from colleges every day. After explaining, cajoling, berating, begging and pressuring for ten years I am out of ideas. Perhaps if everyone whistles Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah whenever the cost accountants come into the room they might get the message ...but probably not. Folks who think 1947 thinking is cutting edge probably think Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah is a pretty hip tune. Original: [http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/the-zip-a-dee-doo-dah-gang/](http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/the-zip-a-dee-doo-dah-gang/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) ### A Lot of Miscellany URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-lot-of-miscellany/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:11:07.000Z **Lean Accounting Summit Time** Getting close to LAS time. It is really the only serious gathering of folks pursuing the fundamental changes to your management processes needed to take lean to the next level - accounting and senior management centered, of course, but very valuable for anyone who is a part of the management team. If you have never attended one, you should. It cannot help but change how you see the business. Use my name in the promo code when you register - WADDELL - and get 10% off. Orlando - September 13-14\. Hope to see you there. **Tom Johnson's Reading List** "*He* \[Robert Kaplan\] *concluded that American business school research and teaching contributed almost nothing to the most significant development in the business world over the last half century - the quality revolution*." This from Confronting Managerialsim - How the Business Elite and their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance. With a quote like that you know it has to be a good book. It was written by Robert Locke and J.C. Spender. Locke, an academic mostly from The U of Hawaii with guest stints all over the place, also wrote Management From Hell - How Financial Investor Logic Hijacked Firm Governance (you gotta love a book with a title like that based on name alone). I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. Tom Johnson recommended them to me, writing, "*I now insist that all my MBA students read Confronting Managerialism. The other book, Management From Hell, is a shortened and more biting version of Confronting that is intended primarily for management audiences*." That said, if I could have only read one of them, I would pick "Confronting Managerialism". **Undercover Bosses for Good Reason** Fernando Aquirre was shown the door at Chiquita - the banana outfit- the third Undercover Boss star to get the heave ho. Lean folks have to wonder juts how out of touch does a CEO have to be to be able to work side by side with the rank and file and not be recognized. Given that these folks pay $200K for the privilege of being the star of the show (at least that is what the show approached one CEO I know with) I have to ask just how ravenous are their egos to even want to be on the show. Out of touch or egos out of control - either way it is a surprise that all of them haven't been fired by now. **Lean - Kiwi Style** A few weeks ago I wrote about some New Zealand companies having a great deal of success selling right into the USA's back yard. Here is a pretty cool video describing one of them - Oasis Engineering in Tauranga: **If Auto Can do it Why Not Everyone?** A pretty cool interactive graphic showing the evolution of the auto supply chain can be found ... **The customer may, in fact, be right** I thought everyone knew there are two cardinal rules in business: (1) The customer is always right; and (2) If the customer is ever wrong, refer back to rule #1\. Turns out this is innovative thinking in some circles, as the Wall Street Journal considers customer-centric business as something of a revolution. They write, "*It's why marketers still talk about customers as "targets" they can "acquire," "control," "manage" and "lock in," as if they were cattle. And it's why big business thinks that the best way to get personal with customers on the Internet is with "big data," gathered by placing tracking files in people's browsers and smartphone apps without their knowledge—so they can be stalked wherever they go, with their "experiences" on commercial websites "personalized" for them*." Sadly, the WSJ seems to be right - customer centered business may be something of a novelty. Good article! **Hope you all have a great weekend!** ### A Fire Truck When an Ambulance Would Suffice URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-fire-truck-when-an-ambulance-would-suffice/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:11:27.000Z An article in today's Wall Street Journal made me think a bit about organizational scope creep. *It takes twice as many firefighters to put out half as many fires as it did 30 years ago. Fewer fires because of better fire safety is one reason, but another is the dispatch of overqualified firefighters and their vehicles to things that aren't fires.* *In Orange County, Calif., only 2% of responses involve fires. In Massachusetts the figure is 5%—only because Massachusetts doesn't count emergencies that don't result in injury or property damage.* *The Orange County Grand Jury, an official watchdog agency, is the latest to plumb this phenomenon: "This transition from fire emergencies to medical emergencies has not generated major changes in the operation model. . . . Each emergency call generally results in both fire trucks and ambulances being dispatched to the site of the emergency regardless of the type of emergency."* *What would really make sense, of course, is properly manned fire trucks responding only to fires, leaving other emergencies to one- or two-person police or ambulance crews.* The article describes several similar situations, and provides a lot of fodder for those that believe government has become too large or that there's an alternative to raising taxes. But that's not my point and I won't go there. It's not just big cities. Here in my small central coast beach town, I regularly see ambulances go up the street to check on my plethora of retired elderly neighbors... followed by a couple of large fire engines. Of course the police blotter in this town is filled with such nepharious activities as "Mildred heard a noise but it ended up being her gate swinging in the wind." Or something mischievious happening at the local "medical" marijuana dispensary. The scope of the fire department has changed over the years, and now includes responding to medical emergencies. Perhaps that's entirely appropriate as firefighters have EMT training. But as noted above the operational model hasn't changed, so unnecessary equipment and personnel also respond, therefore the response cost has increased. We could identify innumerable other examples of this in government - safety nets that have become entitlements provided to 100 million citizens, intelligence strategies that have become "proactive" offensive missions (see! I covered both sides!), etc. All requiring more money - more taxes - to provide a skewed but now expected level of service. But my point is that the same happens in business. How many bandaids upon bandaids of "quality checks" or "signature approvals" get added because managers don't have the guts (ok, "no time") to attack the root cause of a problem or issue? How many non-value added admin groups expand and expand thanks to managers focusing on power instead of what's best for the organization? How many times does a senior manager have to get involved to make very small decisions because the folks that actually own and run the process aren't empowered - or trained - to make the decision. When do you use a fire truck when an ambulance would do just fine? ### Ford Gets It - Do You? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ford-gets-it-do-you/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:11:50.000Z Just to put things in perspective - after all it is easy to get tangled up in all of the short term ups and downs and spin regarding the auto business - I thought it might be helpful to look at where the auto companies are compared to 2007 - the last year before the recession hit. The story is fairly clear. GM and Chrysler were taken over by the government because they were mismanaged ... and nothing much has happened since then to indicate much of anything has changed. The so-called'niche' producers - Kia/Hyundai and the collection of cats and dogs in the 'Other grouping - VW, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Subaru, Mitsubishi, etc... - have collectively been growing. Ford, Honda and Nissan have generally held their own. Toyota has slipped a bit and the jury is still out on how much of that is due to tsunamis and bad PR, and how much is reflective of a loss of cultural mojo. The bigger story, however, is the fundamental change in the economic model the chart indicates. If 'economy of scale' means operating at full capacity, then it is alive and well. To the extent it is achieved by making one thing in staggering volumes, or it is achieved by carrying lots of inventory, it is as dead as Marley's ghost. There is no 'mass market' for anything - especially cars. Each person's definition of what constitutes the best value is unique. Every market is a collection of niches of one. The old model - the mass production model - is to make a one-size-fits-all product, keep the cost down through high volume, try to fool the public into thinking there are differences through superficial means - sheet metal and packaging - and push it with clever advertising and marketing. Through deception, discounts and a never ending price game, people are pushed into compromising their individual value proposition to buy something that is 'close enough' to what they want. The lean model is to achieve low cost by fully utilizing capacity - but to do so with many genuinely unique products. This doesn't affect the small producers so much. They have smaller plants and can fully utilize capacity with few products and still find enough people to buy them - the BMW's, Subarus and the like. But for the big guys, it means flexibility. This article indicates that Ford understands this basic principle. "*By 2015, Ford will be able to make 4.5 different vehicles per plant or 25% more derivatives on average compared with 3.6 vehicles in 2011*." The formula is pretty simple: create a relatively few basic platforms, create a large number of variations from each core platform (true variations rather then pure wallpaper), then create the manufacturing capability to quickly switch from one platform to aother and from one variation within the platform to another. Use standard processes and common components as much as possible to minimize the changeover task, then get very good at changing over that which must be changed - design for manufacturability means design for flexibility. [![SMED Influence](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e2017743f8c9bb970d-500wi "SMED Influence")](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e2017743f8c9bb970d-800wi?ref=kevinmeyer.com) The idea of making one thing in huge volumes to fully leverage capacity is the old Henry Ford - 'one color so long as it's black' approach. It is alive and well. In fact it is the under-pinning of the whole 'innovation craze' - if we can conjure up something really unique and cool it will appeal to a huge number of people and we can get away with Henry Ford style mass production - the Apple model. Making more than one thing through batch production and carrying a lot of inventory is the alternative for mass producers without whiz-bang products, who then must resort to discounts, rebates and massive investments in marketing to move the inventory - the GM and Chrysler model that has not changed just because the government bailed them out. The heart and soul of Toyota's success was SMED - flexibility - the ability to make lots of things in one factory without losing too much capacity in the process. Ford has maintained its position through tough times with some innovation, a lot of quality, and some marketing ... enough to get by. Now they understand what it takes to really succeed. ### Eat Mor Chikin URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/eat-mor-chikin/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:12:09.000Z This is not a post about gay marriage. It is a post about whether principles matter - they do. In my lean seminars when the subject turns to culture I have been using a slide with this graphic for years: The point is not that any particular religious beliefs should be imposed on the business in order to achieve a sound culture. It is that principles matter. The best companies are led by people with a clear sense of right and wrong that supersedes profit concerns - that profits must be realized in a way that is fair, honorable and fully respective of employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders and communities - all of the stakeholders in the business. The alternative is the 'Godfather approach' - you know - when Sonny got after Michael for making things personal when they were really just business. It is the idea that personal feelings and principles have no place in business ... that all that matters is profit. When a business is driven solely by the Godfather principle the slippery slope that begins with abandoning what the Cathy family believes about gay marriage in order to avoid losing sales to those who disagree cannot help but lead to abandoning loyalty to employees and the Chick-fil-A communities for the same narrow reasons. You can read an eloquent rationalization from the conventional business thinking community of why the Cathy's should keep their moral compass out of the business ... "*Leaders tend to perform best when everyone feels welcomed and valued*," says the Bloomberg Business Week author. I would suggest that, when a leader keeps the principles he professes to believe in church on Sunday or a synagogue on Saturday or wherever else he or she goes to connect with what drives the soul out of the business, no one is valued because nothing is valued but money. I happen to be a big supporter of Chick-fil-A and their principles driven business model, and I don't agree with much the Ben and Jerry's people believe in, but I have equal respect for Ben and Jerry's for the simple reason that they have a long track record of driving their business on clearly stated and firm principles. People know where they stand with these companies because their leaders make it clear that decisions are made in a manner relentlessly consistent with principles. People work for, sell to and buy from these companies because their principles align with those of the business. When the only principles driving the business are market share and profit, and decisions are made on the basis that anything advancing those goals is acceptable, people are little more than cannon fodder. Every truly lean company I have ever known is guided by a north star that reflects the values of its leaders, and those leaders profess the same values on Saturday and Sunday they do at work from Monday throuh Friday. They make a lot of money because people are inspired and driven in large part by those values. There are lots of companies without principles that lose an awful lot of money. ### Ideas... are Just Ideas URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ideas-are-just-ideas/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:13:01.000Z So the year is 2002\. A team of designers and engineers shows their executives *"a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick."* It was based off of another idea worked on a few years earlier - a "secretly developed alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen." Apple is amazing, right? Yes, but this was Nokia, seven years before Apple launched the iPhone. *"Oh my God," \[Nokia Chief Designer\] Mr. Frank Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. "We had it completely nailed."* I may have given Apple considerable grief over the last few weeks with regard to their supposed [manufacturing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/industryweek-apple-is-not-a-manufacturer/) and [supply chain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/apples-average-traditional-supply-chain/) prowess, but I will give the company kudos here. The company has incredible focus and they execute. And Nokia? *Consumers never saw either device. The gadgets were casualties of a corporate culture that lavished funds on research but squandered opportunities to bring the innovations it produced to market. Nokia is losing ground despite spending $40 billion on research and development over the past decade—nearly four times what Apple spent in the same period. And Nokia clearly saw where the industry it dominated was heading. But its research effort was fragmented by internal rivalries and disconnected from the operations that actually brought phones to market.* *Whereas RIM lacked the right product, Nokia actually developed the sorts of devices that consumers are gobbling up today. It just didn't bring them to market.* Well ideas alone do have a little inherent value. *Instead of producing hit devices or software, the binge of spending has left the company with at least two abandoned operating systems and a pile of patents that analysts now say are worth around $6 billion, the bulk of the value of the entire company.* So Nokia has about $6 billion, and Apple is sitting on $100 billion actually in the bank plus an incoming tide of high margin sales. Right there, my friends, is the value of focus and execution. Nokia had great ideas, great design, and even solid lean manufacturing initiatives. But they also had - and perhaps still have - a culture that focused efforts and funding on the front end of the product realization process and often changed direction on the back end. Apple had Steve Jobs, who for all his tyrannical faults set a direction, made quick decisions, stretched his teams (sometimes in a questionable manner), and drove incredible focus on the target: a superior product actually in the market. Ideas are just ideas. To be successful those ideas have to be turned into products - faster and better than anyone else. ### Dr Deming, I Feel Your Pain URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dr-deming-i-feel-your-pain/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:13:23.000Z I don't for a minute pretend to compare myself with the great Dr. W Edwards Deming; far from it; rather, like most lean practicianers I walk in his large footsteps. Nor do I really know that much about his personal history. The story is that his message largely fell on deaf ears at home in the USA so he spent his years in Japan where he was held in higher esteem and found a loyal following. It is that part of the Deming story that resonates with me as I enter my third week preaching and teaching lean in New Zealand. Over the last few weeks I have met with and come to know quite a bit about six companies that are well on their lean journeys. One of them makes a product based on a distinctly New Zealand natural resource. The other five make products that can be (and are) made in the United States, Europe, China ... just about everywhere. All five are solid and profitable - four of them largely because of their strong sales in the United States. Let's put that into perspective. The port at Auckland is 6,500 miles from the port at Long Beach - just a shade further than Shanghai is from Long Beach. The average working man in the New Zealand factory I visited makes about $15US an hour. So these manufacturers pay US-type wages, have China-type logistical disadvantages - and still grow their profits by selling into the United States winning head to head battles with both US and Chinese competitors. ... and they invite me to their country and their factories because they want to get even better. I am happy to be here and to help them. New Zealand is a great country, a staunch ally and as committed to freedom and human rights as anyone. There is nothing unpatriotic about helping them succeed; and these are great people to work with. But just the same, they only succeed because their American competitors are mismanaged; and I am a bit embarrassed and frustrated that manufacturers in my own country allow this to happen. As a rule, a lean Kiwi manufacturer provides six week lead times into the USA - a week to make the product and get it to the port, then four weeks on the water and a week overland to the destination. That is not a problem, for the most part, because their US competitors have comparable lead times - the difference is that the US company lead times is almost all manufacturing time. They beat their Chinese competitors by avoiding the race to the bottom and providing quality and reliability at US standards, rather than Chinese. They operate in a country with first world financial institutions, regulations, health and safety laws, environmental standards, intellectual property protection and the rest ... and have the cost structures that go along with all of that. I am here simply because their US competitors haven't called me - or apparently anyone else like me. I can envision their competition - offering excessive lead times (because that is just the way it has to be in their industry - lean doesn't apply to them because they aren't like Toyota) - and marginal quality (because there is a limit to how good quality can be before it is prohibitively expensive) - relentlessly beating on their direct labor (because it is the only way they can compete with China) - and griping long and loud about taxes, the government and everyone else. And all the while losing business to New Zealanders, of all the unlikely people. Finally, lest anyone think I have become brainwashed during my stay, I offered up a similar rant against the Kiwi's last week because one of my US clients makes good money selling its products into New Zealand, and it has no business doing so. The product it sells could and should be made here but for the mediocrity of its New Zealand competition. Excellence (and its opposite) know no global boundaries. ### Sorry IndustryWeek - Apple is not a "Manufacturer" and not "Best" URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/industryweek-apple-is-not-a-manufacturer/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:14:12.000Z Before I begin, let me be clear. I love Apple products, and I own a plethora of them. The design is incredible, they work like I want to work, and they improve my life. The computer-related frustration level since I switched from PC to Mac a few years ago has gone to zero, literally. With that said, I do have several issues with Apple - and I've detailed them as recently as [last week](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/apples-average-traditional-supply-chain/). Bottom line is that I take offense when people claim that the company does a great job with its supply chain. They execute a traditional supply chain pretty well - and just since it happens to be a huge volume of a desirable high tech product doesn't make it great. Like many people, I hold my nose when I buy Apple products - the worker treatment issues really bother me. So imagine my shock when I found that IndustryWeek named Apple to its "2012 IW 50 Best Manufacturers" list. Not only to the list - they are in the top position. And an accompanying article lauds their product design expertise while barely touching on "manufacturing." Where do I begin? How about with whether Apple should be called a "manufacturer" in the first place. Can someone show me a pay check for a production team member making Apple products that actually has "Apple" on the check... instead of something like "Foxconn?" With a couple of minor exceptions, no. Almost all assembly is outsourced. Call me old fashioned, but to me being a "manufacturer" means you actually assemble something - not find someone to do it for you. Now, ignoring the issue that they aren't really a manufacturer, consider the term "best." To be fair, IndustryWeek's criteria is: *IW compiles the list by ranking the IW 500 companies based on their financial performance in six key areas over a three-year period. This includes inventory turns, profit margin, asset turns, return on assets, return on equity, and revenue growth.* "Best" in the world of IndustryWeek means predominantly financial performance. So, yes, Apple makes big bucks and continues to grow rapidly. But it is exactly that type of financial myopia that has created the outsourcing madness over the past few decades. Chase "cheap" labor around the world and then create elaborate ways to support far-flung operations, supply them with raw materials, and bring container loads back to customers across thousands of miles of ocean. The financials look great - at least for a while - but is it the best long-term way to run a business? Apple executes a traditional supply chain, and a very high volume one, very well. But it is still just traditional. Not "best" in my world. Not by a long shot. "Best" to me means a manufacturer that recognizes that the value of people's brains is worth far more than the "cost" of their hands that assemble products. And as such they respect those people - by leveraging their brains, ensuring a safe environment, and paying them well. Such respect isn't happening when outsourced production workers are jumping off buildings and just token attention is being paid to worker treatment issues that have surfaced as recently as today. "Best" to me means a manufacturer that understands the value of shortening the supply chain and manufacturing as close to customers as possible. Not thousands of miles away. Similarly "best" is not having to shuttle hundreds of engineers from Cupertino to Shangahi, and having to spend tens of thousands of hours on multi-language conference calls at 2am, to maintain control over the far-flung supply chain. "Best" to me isn't bragging about how Apple's Foxconn partner can "wake a thousand Chinese engineers at 1am to fix a problem" as Steve Jobs did. It is performing solid manufacturability design and root cause analysis to ensure that magnitude of problems never exist in the first place. "Best" to me isn't the incredibly risky strategy of manufacturing virtually all of the products for a multi-billion dollar company within a small geographical area of an increasingly geopolitically unstable country. It is a manufacturing strategy that couples and leverages being close to customers with semi-redundant factories in multiple locations. "Best" to me isn't being content with being traditional. It is developing innovative methods - manufacturing methods in this case - to become increasingly competitive over the long term instead of just chasing labor costs and pounding on suppliers for lower prices. Ford and Toyota did it. Imagine what could happen if Apple invested a miniscule portion of its $100B in cash into real manufacturing excellence - not traditional supply chain management. Sorry IndustryWeek, Apple is not a manufacturer and they definitely aren't the best - at least when you look at more than just traditional financial criteria. But perhaps that kind of skewed perspective is what happens when a monthly magazine is called "IndustryWeek." (Hat tip to Mark Graban for reminding me of that.) ### Take Another Path URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/take-another-path/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:14:35.000Z Today I had the chance to visit St Patrick's Cathedral in Auckland - don't worry, I'm not about to preach religion, just drawing an analogy. It is a beautiful place and the Mass was great. In his sermon the priest gave what, on the surface sounded like a typical call for repentance-type talk. I, however, have a severely limited attention span and found my mind wandering from his talk to lean and Kevin's post the other day about sustaining 5S improvements. The priest talked about our need to stop - then change our path - after realizing we have sinned. He commented on how frequently people do wrong, soon realize they have done wrong and are genuinely remorseful for doing wrong, but then continue to live their life along the same path and inevitably commit the same sin all over again. The priest talked about not just feeling remorseful, but doing a self-examination about the path we are on and change the path in order to avoid committing the sin again. I thought, there you have it - he is right at the heart of the sustaining problem. What preachers call 'self-examination', lean folks call 'root cause analysis' - ask why five times and so forth. When the preachers call to get on another path, lean folks do that by changing the process. It strikes me that most people address the sustaining problem with character assassination rather than root cause analysis and process change. The explanation begins and ends with "5S didn't sustain because (Pick one: Operators, supervisors, managers, executives) don't (Pick one: understand lean, buy into lean, care, have a good attitude)". The wisdom of the priest I heard is that he avoided the easy explanation of character assassination, as well. A lot of preachers would tell the guy who comes home drunk and beats his wife, you are a no-good, rotten sinner and the solution is to become a good man. This guy basically said, I'm sure you're really sorry and not a bad guy, but it's not enough to just want to do better - you gotta stop coming home drunk, in fact you gotta change whatever it is that is causing you to be out drinking instead of at home with your family in the first place. So why does 5S not sustain? Only you know that - it is different at every company. Typical causes I have seen include ... Cultures that measure and put enormous pressure on the shop floor for labor efficiency and production volume - with no allowance or credit given for keeping things in order. 5S efforts that don't have any underlying purpose. 5S and all of the lean tools are improvement and problem solving devices. What problem were you trying to solve by pursuing 5S? People want and will readily use and sustain things that help them solve real problems. More often than not the 5S effort didn't really help anyone solve any problem they really have. More often than not, 5S is little more than monkey see-monkey do lean .... no real reason for doing it - just doing it because the lean book says 5S is good and someone said Toyota does it ... so we did it. How about an inherently unsustainable approach to 5S? 5S may well not have sustained because it just addressed the easy stuff - sweeping and sorting and yadda yadda yadda - but didn't cover all of the tough work that actually takes place in the work area ... maintaining the machine, changing it over, etc... or didn't really consider the quantities of material that flow in and out of the cell. The root cause of failure to sustain is usually a tough problem - acknowledging that the factory is driven by labor efficiency or raw volume; that out of control maintenance or changeover practices haven't been fixed, that the lean wizard guiding the company is advising easy solutions instead of harsh realities. Like that Kiwi preacher said this morning, you have to change the path you're on if you want to change the outcome. Path changing is rarely easy work to do. ### Sustaining, Leadership, and Why? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sustaining-leadership-and-why/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:14:54.000Z A good friend of mine recently sent me a photo of what his team found while cleaning one of their production areas: Yes, that's a certificate lauding completion of various 5S activities... except the last one: sustain. And from the mess in the background you can see what happened. Sustaining improvement - lean or otherwise - is difficult. How many of us are on a diet... again? Needing to clean the garage... again? In fact, sorting and straightening and all that is really the easy part. Doing it day after day is tough. Three sources of the difficulty come to mind. The first is the lack of a plan to sustain the improvement. How often will it be done? How will it be monitored? 5S is often sustained through audits and daily checklists, even after it becomes ingrained in expectation and even culture. But such plans are meaningless if there isn't also leadership commitment. Are managers and supervisors holding themselves and others accountable to the sustaining plan? What happens when the plan isn't followed? However ultimately there won't be leadership commitment if there isn't a solid understanding of why the improvement program is happening in the first place. I've seen innumerable organizations, including mine, go down the path of "we must do this or that program"... without understanding why. I even know of one organization that I won't identify (cough... mine... cough) that once long ago had a goal to implement two lean tools per year. We learned our lesson. What is the problem or opportunity, what is the desired future state, and what is the best tool or program to achieve that future state? To sustain an improvement program you need a solid plan. For that plan to be effective you need leadership commitment. For there to be leadership commitment there needs to be a solid reason and understanding of why the improvement is needed - and important - in the first place. The power of Why. ### Apple's Average Traditional Supply Chain URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/apples-average-traditional-supply-chain/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:15:12.000Z Something that annoys me to no end is when I read articles lauding Apple's supposedly amazingly fantastical supply chain. Really? How? Pray tell, Tim Cook. So Apple builds a bazillion iPads, iPhones, iMacs, and what not at a handful of factories in China operated by a third party that treats its employees so well that they have a habit of jumping off the roofs of their dormitories. To manage this process they send planeloads of engineers from Cupertino, and Steve Jobs once proclaimed that one reason they're in China is because there's no place else they could wake thousands of engineers at 1am and get them onto a line to solve a problem. Sounds like a very traditional supply chain to me, albeit one executed spectacularly well. But still traditional - outsource and chase "cheap" labor. I could tell you about a few toy companies that do that equally well. Come to think of it... Angry Birds and iPads... I may have finally found a kindred spirit - Steve Banker at Logistics Viewpoints. *Many supply chain professionals consider Apple’s supply chain to be the best in the world. I don’t. The reasoning appears to be that since Apple is one of the fastest growing and most profitable companies in the world, it must surely have one of the best supply chains too. This is a “halo effect” fallacy.* Steve goes on to explain how Apple executes a traditional supply chain very well - and leverages opportunities that other companies can't. *On the advantage side, demand management is easier. Apple doesn’t have to get the demand forecast for a new product right. As long as it underestimates demand for a hot new product, Apple will have loyal customers clamoring for the new devices and willing to wait. In fact, the projected backlog leads customers to line up for hours before stores open to buy a new product.* In other words, mismanaging demand, intentionally or not, actually helps Apple - and increases profit. Such a deal! Anyone else able to do that? *Because Apple has become so large, it has procurement advantages smaller rivals can’t match. Samsung lost $10 billion in market value when Apple placed a huge order for flash memory with Elpida, securing more than half of that company’s supply.* *Apple invests in capital equipment to make these special components (the company lends the production equipment to its manufacturing partner). At times this production machinery becomes Apple exclusive either because of exclusivity agreements or because Apple is so large that a backlog for the equipment becomes horrifically long.* Remember when Apple was gearing up the new MacBook with the solid aluminum case, and that tied up a large percentage of the global supply of new CNC machines? Steve Banker goes on to describe the ongoing labor issues at Apple's outsourcing partner Foxconn. We all know what's going on. And Steve also describes the supply chain risk of building the vast majority of products in a few factories just a few miles apart. In a country where wage inflation is starting to take its toll, social upheaval is increasing, and the government is beginning to scrutinize - and change - key business practices. And now a key component comes from across the strait, Taiwan. A traditional supply chain executed very well. Not innovative or fantastic by any means. If Apple had a truly innovative and fantastic supply chain they wouldn't have employees jumping off of buildings. For starters they'd do more than cursory monitoring of employee working conditions. They wouldn't need to wake thousands of engineers at 1am to fix a problem - those types of problems would have been caught and removed by design or (horrors!) inspection long before production was impacted. Factories would be close to customers, with a geographic risk mitigation strategy - maybe someday that rumor of a second factory in Brazil might actually become true. Plane loads of support engineers, let alone the presumably millions of minutes of conference calls across have the globe with associated translators and such, wouldn't be necessary. But probably what bothers me the most, and in my mind the number one indicator of an average supply chain at best, is the perceived need to chase low "cost" labor. To build a very high margin product, no less. What is really the labor content in an iPad? Why is that? I can tell you of many, increasingly many, companies that manufacture very successfully from high-cost North America - some even from my home state of California. High margin tech products to furniture and clothing. Somehow Apple can't figure out how to do that - let alone the value in doing that. Instead they live with "Designed in USA, Manufactured in China." And with an unnecessarily complex supply chain spanning the globe to build in a geopolitically risky location with employees jumping off roofs and products being shipped in large batches across oceans. Not to mention not understanding the difference - and lost opportunity - between "cost of labor" and "value of smart, experienced people." Apple has $100 billion in the bank - imagine the truly innovative supply chain that could be created by investing a tiny fraction of that. Come to think of it, "a traditional supply chain executed very well" may be too generous. ### My Favorite Founder URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/my-favorite-founder/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:15:36.000Z Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, Revolutionary War soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of our first Constitutional lawyers and the first Secretary of the Treasury. His 1791 Report on Manufactures made the case for the critical nature of manufacturing to the American economy. It met stiff resistance from the likes of Thomas Jefferson who believedagriculture alone would build the nation. Thankfully, Hamilton's thinking eventually won out and while he and Jefferson never got along, Jefferson became a manufacturing believer. A couple of passages from the report are more relevant today than ever: "*Not only the wealth; but the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of Subsistence habitation clothing and defence."* *"Hence the undertakers of a new manufacture have to contend not only with the natural disadvantages of a new undertaking, but with the gratuities and remunerations which other governments bestow. To be enabled to contend with success, it is evident, that the interference and aid of their own government are indispensable."* *"But though it were true, that the immediate and certain effect of regulations controuling the competition of foreign with domestic fabrics was an increase of price, it is universally true, that the contrary is the ultimate effect with every successful manufacture. When a domestic manufacture has attained to perfection, and has engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of* *Persons, it invariably becomes cheaper. Being free from the heavy charges, which attend the importation of foreign commodities, it can be afforded, and accordingly seldom or never fails to be sold Cheaper, in process of time, than was the foreign Article for which it is a substitute. The internal competition, which takes place, soon does away every thing like Monopoly, and by degrees* *reduces the price of the Article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the Capital employed. This accords with the reason of the thing and with experience."* *"Neither will it follow, that an accumulation of debt is desireable, because a certain degree of it operates as capital. There may be a plethora in the political, as in the Natural body; There may be a state of things in which any such artificial capital is unnecessary. The debt too may be swelled to such a size, as that the greatest part of it may cease to be useful as a Capital, serving only to pamper the dissipation of idle and dissolute individuals: as that the sums required to pay the Interest upon it may become oppressive, and beyond the means, which a government can employ, consistently with its tranquility, to raise them, as that the resources of taxation, to face the debt, may have been strained too far to admit of extensions adequate to exigencies, which regard the public safety*." Any economic theory based on massive government debt, or the benefit of letting other countries buy our manufacturing with tarrif imbalances or currency manipulation hinges on an assumption that the proponent of the theory is smarter than Alexander Hamilton. What are the odds of that? Happy Independence Day! ### Let's Call the Whole Thing Off URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lets-call-the-whole-thing-off/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:17:22.000Z Justice Roberts cast the deciding vote making Obamacare the law of the land. His logic was largely that it is nothing more than a tax - a whopper of a tax - but just another tax. Dems are spinning like so many whirling dervishes to avoid the term 'tax'. Republicans are tarring and feathering Roberts as a traitor to his people. Let's make this whole thing simple. Let’s say you and your neighbor have identical incomes and live in houses with identical value. You are buying your house and paying on a mortgage with interest. Your neighbor is renting. With your identical incomes you both pay income taxes of $20,000\. However, to encourage home ownership and stimulate the construction industry you get to deduct your interest payments so you actually pay $18,000 in income taxes while he pays the full $20K. Now let’s say the government decides to reduce the tax rate for everyone, eliminate the deduction for mortgage interest, but charge an Obamacareesque penalty of X% of income to everyone who does not buy a house. The reasons for the penalty are the same – to encourage behavior that is deemed not in the best economic interests of the nation. As a result of replacing tax deductions for people who behave the way the government wants them to with a system penalizing those who don’t you and your neighbor pay an income tax of $18,000 because of the tax reduction, but he now pays a $2,000 penalty for not buying a house, so his total bill to the IRS is still $20K. Two different avenues to get to exactly the same place – encouraging behavior from the taxpayers the Congress has deemed to be for the greater good by making misbehavers pay more to the government. The following video explains the principle quite clearly: The politicians can call the extra two grand charged to the guy not behaving properly a tax, a penalty, a fee, a surcharge …..Democrats say to-may-toe, Republicans say to-mah-toe ….to the guy paying the government it makes no difference whatsoever. To pay for health care Obama basically had the same choices – Option #1 is to increase taxes but give a tax deduction for everyone who is paying for health insurance; or Option #2 to leave taxes alone and charge a penalty to those not paying for health insurance. Even though they have exactly the same impact on both taxpayers and government coffers one is described by the word “tax”and the other by the word “penalty”. Purely semantics, but Option #1 involves increasing taxes which is a politically disastrous thing to do. So doing the exact same thing without having to use the term ‘tax increase’ is much easier to sell, but that hardly changes the nature of the thing. All Justice Roberts did last week was acknowledge the obvious: whether you call them to-may-toes or to-mah-toes, taxes or penalties, they are the same thing. The Supreme Court has one job - to determine whether laws are in keeping with the Constitution. Congress has the Constitutional authority to levy taxes. A check written to the government mandated by law is a tax - no matter what word games are played, or which one of many ways to construct an equation with the same answer is selected. Why call the whole thing off? Every lean proponent should know the answer to that one. It is typical of most organizations - especially the government. It tries to fix a problem by manipulating the outcome rather than by dealing with the process - getting to the root cause of the problem that is causing the unacceptable outcome. The root of the problem is out-of-control health care costs. Obamacare does nothing to address that problem. The out-of-control costs are mostly massive non-value adding waste, and while there have been some encouraging inroads, the health care industry as a whole has not pursued lean principles. Health care gets fixed when health care gets lean - period. Layering more waste and bureaucracy on top of the current waste through a Byzantine set of government controls is a giant step away from lean principles. ### Lot's of Stuff Going On URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lots-going-on/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:18:31.000Z So much going on ... so little time to write about it ... **Good for People - Good for Business** Great article in the New Zealand Herald about the value of flexible work life. "*Findings show that the traditional model is most commonly adopted by businesses globally but is rigid, expensive, and less effective in meeting the needs of stakeholders compared to a more flexible or 'kinetic' approach - which focuses on the dynamic relationship between workers, managers and the office infrastructure*," says a guy from an outfit called Advanced Workplace Associates. You don't need their asessment tool or insights to realize the value of flexible work scheduling. Why is it that we insist on 40 hour work weeks for everyone, with everyone starting and stopping at the same time? **It's Gettin' Lean on Rocky Top** "*This weekend will see the arrival of over 90 international students to UT's campus in order to learn and practice the tenets of lean manufacturing*." You can read about it HERE. A four week program, kids in teams working with local companies as well as in the classroom, focus on "*creating more value for consumers while using fewer resources*." "*We're working to identify UT as a Lean manufacturing expert globally*," says Dr. Rupy Sawhney, department head of industrial and information engineering. Looks like Rupy's off to a great start. **How's the Service Economy Going So Far?** Not so good it seems if you work for Walmart. According to the LA Times, the good old boys from Bentonville (1) outsource warehouse and logistics work, (2) beat on the the contractors to reduce cost, which results in "*Allegations that labor contractors and subcontractors responsible for staffing the complex violated state wage and hour laws prompted an inspection by California labor regulators last fall. The state fined labor subcontractors Impact Logistics Inc. and Premier Warehousing Ventures more than $1 million for failing to maintain proper pay records and itemized pay statements for hundreds of temporary workers*." Not so good at Apple either, where you get cult membership in lieu of pay. You need to read the whole article, but I thought this line was a classic: "*Mr. Johnson made a videotaped appearance and referred to a wonderful surprise that managers were about to spring on everyone in the room. Free iPads for everyone was the expectation.“Then the lights went down, and we had a party in the store, with games and dancing,” Mr. Zarate said. “And we all got two tacos from a taco truck. That was our surprise. Two tacos*.” **"I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here."** Just as Captain Renault was shocked in Casablanca to learn that gambling was taking place at Rick's, I find myself in a similar state when I read that ... ... GM Looks to Cuts to Boost Stock Price. Same old GM - just under new management. Boosting the stock price, and doing so by whacking headcount and "*streamlined product development*". Cutting value adding work in order to keep Wall Street happy ... isn't that the philosophy that bankrupted them in the first place? ... Consumers are unwilling to pay extra for a picture of a toucan on their cereal box. Imagine that - Malt-O-Meal sells good stuff without all of the brand management hoopla - 87% less in advertising than the big guys - and is making a lot of money while the big guys languish. "*At MOM Brands, Neugent runs "a very lean organization," Shea said. "Its strength is on the manufacturing side, not the sales and marketing side*." ... Amazing as it seems, "*Facebook will pay $US10 million ($NZ 12.6 million) to settle a lawsuit from users who claimed their names, images and other information were improperly used in adver*tising." Seems as though [I heard it somewhere before](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-facebook-is-a-suckers-bet/), but the author of the article makes the shocking assertion, "*The company, which launched a massive public offering last month, is under growing scrutiny for its privacy policies. It is also under pressure from investors to find ways to monetise its social network with more than 900 million members*." ... and finally, shoe company Vibram USA owner Tony Post said, "*Candidly, you have to realise that intellectual property only gets you so far. At the end of the day it's really about your relationship with the consumer*." He had the stunning revalation that "*the company's failure to keep up with demand had given counterfeiters an opportunity to move into the market*." Fancy that - innovation without execution doesn't work so good. Have a great weekend! As for me, *Wish that I was on ol' Rocky Top* *Down in the Tennessee Hills* *Rocky Top you'll always be* *Home sweet home to me* *Good ol'Rocky Top* *Rocky Top Tennessee* ### The Management Myth URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-management-myth/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:19:03.000Z In The Puritan Gift the Hopper boys do a great job of explaining the origins of business schools and the increasingly obvious folly of the concept of the 'professional manager'. When the business schools were first conceived many doubted that a generic body of knowledge that could be called 'management' even existed, and if the better idea was to have business schools structured as a collection of industry-focused courses - instead of majoring in accounting, marketing, operations you would major in banking, railroads or retailing, for instance. The wrong side won. For over a hundred years the experts have been researching, refining and teaching as though there is one best way to manage - the ideal organizational structure, critical metrics, core financial statements, the best way to plan and execute the supply chain. What a colossal waste of brain cells pursuing something that is foolish to believe exists, or ever could exist. Organizing around functions with a hierarchical command and control structure has its origins in the military or in railroads, depending on who you listen to. You have to wonder by what absurd leap in logic anyone would conclude that an organization - or anything else for that matter - that works in those environments is appropriate for a metal working company with 150 employees all in one building. Why on earth would anyone think that an MRP system that might work for an auto maker - a handful of products each with thousands of components - is in any way shape or form the right thing to use when scheduling a consumer products factory with hundreds of SKU's each made up of a handful of components? Why should a machine intensive business care about labor efficiency, or a labor intensive business acre about OEE? What fool thinks monthly and quarterly financial statements are universally useful, no matter whether the company is making T shirts or battleships, or if it is selling insurance policies for that matter? The litany of monkey-see monkey-do pursuit of fads is nothing more than the mindless pursuit of non-existent management schemes ... some company deploys some unique idea and makes a lot of money ... therefore every company should implement that idea in precisely the same way and become equally successful. There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal describing flat organizations and "bossless" companies, such as WL Gore. Should your company do the same thing? Some variation might make sense, but doing something just because it works for WL Gore is just as inane as mindlessly clinging to a functional, hirrarchical organization because some business school professor demonstrated that it worked in the railroad industry a hundred years ago. Management is tough stuff and it is the key driver of success or failure. The best managed competitor wins. It is not something that can be taken verbatim from a book, a seminar or a business school class. It can't be cloned Deciding how to organize, plan and measure the business is what managers get paid the big bucks to do. The default management model is not the traditional business school approach - to be clung to until someone provides overwhelming evidence of the superiority of another approach. The default is, in fact, a blank sheet of paper, to be filled in by leaders and executives who really understand their business. ### Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Welders URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/dont-let-your-babies-grow-up-to-be-welders/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:19:51.000Z A few years ago in researching [Rebirth of American Industry](https://www.amazon.com/Rebirth-American-Industry-William-Waddell/dp/0971243638?ref=kevinmeyer.com) I read Alfred Sloan's books and articles in an attempt to understand how the management and employee relationships in this country got so screwed up. Two passages made it crystal clear. In one, Sloan asks and answers, "*What then is General Motors? Is it the 220,000 workers on the payrolls? For me, the essential ingredient - the heart if you please - of our organization is a group of not more than 10,000 workers whose skill in management, engineering and science as well as special crafts make possible the work in which all others are engaged*." In another, he wrote that the worker "*accepts the hazards of poor times - the business cycle*". In the first he makes it clear that it is not the working stiff creating the value, rather it is management. They are the elite group, the special folks. The second passage - the one about workers accepting the hazards of poor times - is absurd, and all the more so because he probably believed it. Where he got the idea that losing one's job is not as big a deal if you work on the factory floor as it would be if you were in management is an absolute mystery. Lyndon Johnson once said that, "*sometimes you just have to hunker down and take it like a jackass in a hail storm*." It is my observation that the average working guy 'accepts' the "hazards of poor times" a lot like a jackass 'accepts' that hail storm - he hunkers down and takes it because he has no choice - but that doesn't mean it's no big deal. So now we hear a lot about manufacturing suffering from a lack of skilled workers. Lots of reasons behind it, to be sure, but when "*Marinette Marine is struggling to persuade people to enter the skilled trades, including welding, pipefitting and electrical work,"* it seems that just maybe we are seeing proof of just how incredibly, arrogantly wrong Sloan's thinking was. "*The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Sunday that the company has reached out to nine schools, but only seven recent graduates have applied for the training program*." Fellow local manufacturing exec Mark Kaiser, president of Lindquist Machine opines, "*It's a tough row to hoe because the bigger issue is with the parents*." Perhaps that is because the parents have been on the receiving end of layoffs at Marinette Marine in 2010 or in 2008, and Lindquist Machine. The author of the Journal Sentinel article hits the nail right on the head: "*But many parents won't encourage their children to enter the skilled trades. They've seen manufacturers cut jobs and wreak havoc in the lives of people who depended on that work*." Mom and dad may have had to take it like so many jackasses in a hail storm, but they aren't going to see their kids make the same mistake. They are not about to let their children grow up to 'accept the business cycle' and be one of the Sloan's worthless 210,000. There are no reasons for the layoffs - just rationalizations that, in the end, fall back on Sloan's self-serving view of people. Why did Marinette Marine lay off those people? Because they didn't get a Navy contract soon enough. It's the Navy's fault - the devil made me do it, or so they would like to believe. No word of any management people being laid off, however, or of any machines being sold off or buildings put on the market. There are lots of costs at Marinette Marine, so why are the hourly production folks cut and not the rest of the costs? Simply because they can and it is very easy to do. I have a number of clients in similar boats. A history of layoffs driven by deep-seated belief in Sloan's view makes hiring difficult. All the platitudes in the world can't mask a basic belief that management is the heart of the business and production folks have to accept the risks of the business cycle. Culture change is usually a long, tough effort to restore credibility - to have anyone believe the production folks won't be the first expenses to be tossed overboard when the storm comes. I suspect Marinette Marine is going to have to go through a number of downturns and lose a bunch of Navy contracts without laying anyone off before the moms and dads in northern Wisconsin start encouraging their babies to be welders. ### Howard Schultz's Call to Action on American Manufacturing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/howard-schultzs-call-to-action-on-american-manufacturing/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:20:47.000Z Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is one of those guys you like, even if you sometimes you may not agree with him completely. A few months ago I saw him speak at the World Business Forum in New York City, [my notes here](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/notes-from-the-world-business-forum-2011/), where he expounded on the importance of authenticity in leadership and focusing on value from the perspective of the customer - concepts those of us in the lean world can related to. He has another passion: taking control of your destiny instead of waiting for others to do it for you. As *The New York Times* put it last week: *Mr. Schultz, disgusted with the political standoff in Washington over raising the debt ceiling, called on business leaders to stop making donations to politicians and start doing something themselves to address the country’s woes.* That's similar to what we've said over the years - [stop complaining](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop%5Fcomplainin/) and [start competing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop%5Fwhining%5Fan/). Schultz takes it a step further and calls on business leaders to help others compete - or just survive. Schultz's comments weren't just words. *Last month, Starbucks announced it would build a factory in Augusta, Ga., that would employ 140 people and make the company’s Via instant coffee and the ingredients for its popular Frappuccino drinks. About half of Starbucks’s new employment overall will come in the United States, the rest internationally.* *“We are on the hunt for other domestic opportunities for products we sell and other things we do,” said Howard D. Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks. “There has to be a sense of urgency about action, and since we’re not likely to find it in Washington between now and the election, it’s time for companies and businesses to step up and find a balance between profitability and responsibility.”* There is some operational logic behind the decision - it's not purely altruistic. *Chinese labor has become more expensive, and Starbucks and other companies are looking at their supply chains more holistically. A Chinese supplier is also likely to require an order in the hundreds of thousands, increasing the risk that Starbucks will get stuck with inventory. And then there is the difference in shipping costs.* Schultz's comments also resonated with a supplier to Starbucks. *American Mug and Stein Company, was on the verge of closing last fall. Then Ulrich Honighausen called. Mr. Honighausen, the owner of a tableware company, Hausenware, in Sonoma County, Calif., which supplies retailers like Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn and Fred Meyer with ceramics and glassware from producers all over the world, had a plan to revitalize American Mug and create jobs in an industry that had all but died. What if American Mug were to make mugs for Starbucks?* *He \[Mr. Honighausen\] found American Mug last fall after having heard an interview with Mr. Schultz. “It was a good kick in the pants for me,” Mr. Honighausen said. “I thought, ‘Let’s just do it.’ ” American Mug can deliver to Starbucks in four days, while Chinese suppliers may take three months.* And thus a few more jobs were saved, and a small amount of manufacturing competency retained - in a low technology and high labor content industry no less. If it makes sense for Starbucks and American Mug, imagine how it could be for a higher technology area. What can you do with your own supply chains? How can you directly, even in a small way, help revitalize domestic manufacturing? ### Begging for Lean Thinking URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/begging-for-lean-thinking/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:21:34.000Z I don't plan this stuff - it just happens, but this seems to be [airline lean week](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-smarter-accountants/). Any doubt about how badly the airlines need lean thinking has to be cleared up by this article from the Wall Street Journal about the airlines. "*Airlines began aggressively padding schedules in 2008 and 2009 so that even late flights technically arrive on time*." Scheduling a flight to take 2 hours and 15 minutes even though you know it will only take two hours sounds a whole lot like building two weeks of lead time into a manufacturing production schedule to increase the likelihood of shipping on time even though it really only takes a day to make something. Time and inventory are just two sides of the same coin - pouring more inventory into the factory to compensate for problems just adds to the overhead expense, degrades quality and makes the underlying problems nigh unto impossible to solve. Seems as if extending flight times is exactly the same thing - with exactly the same results: "*You can do all sorts of things to make up for poor performance," said Robert Isom, chief operating officer at US Airways, referring to padded schedules. "But you sacrifice efficiency, the passenger experience, the employee experience and pro*fits." Lean folks know well the water and rocks analogy in manufacturing: Inventory is the water in the stream, while the rocks are all of the problems creating excess costs, poor quality and missed deliveries. Old school thinking was to make sure there was always enough water to keep things flowing without having the rocks disrupt flow. MRP, in fact, was created specifically to be a tool to make sure there was always enough water to make problems appear to be invisible. Lean theory is that kanban should effectively continuously drop the water level until another rock is exposed, making is easier to identify and solve the problem, then drop the water level again until another rock is exposed. This is the essence - the meat - of continuous improvement. Don't lengthen lead times - keep shortening them. Seems as though the airlines have their own water and rocks: Instead of artificially lengthening flight times - increasing the amount of flights in process - to make the impact of all of the reasons flights are late invisible, the airlines should have been pursuing the lean continuous improvement approach. Shorten the scheduled time until something bites their on time performance - then kaizen that problem - fix the process - make that rock go away for good - then shorten flight times again until they get bit by the next biggest driver of missed on time flights. In fact, burying problems with inventory happens everywhere ... ... patients are scheduled in such a manner as to make sure there are always far more patients in the clinic than doctors to treat them - drive up the medical work in process levels to compensate for all of the reasons things don't happen on time. ... schedule kids to be in school for seven hours in order to give them four hours of instruction to compensate for all of the wasted time in the education process. The result is always the same - excess cost that does not create a lick of value for customers - delays and inability to deliver - lousy quality. And the solution is always the same - shorten times - solve the problem - reduce the cost - improve the quality. ### The Value of Smarter Accountants URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-smarter-accountants/ Last updated: 2012-06-13T16:53:15.000Z **[by BILL WADDELL](http://www.bill-waddell.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)** "*Think simple as my old master used to say - meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles*." - **Frank Lloyd Wright** Just about a year ago to the day I [extolled the virtues of In-N-Out Burger](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2009/06/the-in-n-out-of-lean.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com), and their success founded in simplicity and focus. Seems appropriate to re-enforce the point by extolling the same virtues - and same level of success - at Southwest Airlines. A [great article appeared in Slate](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/operations/2012/06/southwest%5Fairlines%5Fprofitability%5Fhow%5Fthe%5Fcompany%5Fuses%5Foperations%5Ftheory%5Fto%5Ffuel%5Fits%5Fsuccess%5F.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) the other day describing Southwest's keys to 39 successive years of profitability. *"How does Southwest do it? In part, by keeping operations simple. Simpler operations mean fewer things that can go awry and botch up the whole process."* It takes a particularly smart accountant - and a rare one - to realize (1) the truth in VP of Ground Ops Chris Wahlenmaier's statements: “*When you charge people to check bags they try to carry more on, sometimes more than can fit in the overhead bins. That results in more bags being checked at the gate, right before departure. And that wastes time*.”; and (2) *"... we only make money off our planes when they’re in the air."* One kind of airplane - most certainly sub-optimizes the unit cost of lots of individual flights - but it is more than offset by the benefits of standardization. "*We only need to train our mechanics on one type of airplane. We only need extra parts inventory for that one type of airplane. If we have to swap a plane out at the last minute for maintenance, the fleet is totally interchangeable—all our on-board crews and ground crews are already familiar with it. And there are no challenges in how and where we can park our planes on the ground, since they’re all the same shape and size*," says Wahlenmaier. That sort of holistic thinking - holistic accounting - is what really sets Southwest apart and drives their success. It is really very, very lean thinking. Wahlenmaier says they only make money when the planes are flying. True enough, but more important they are only creating value for customers when the planes are flying. Southwest's industry leading turnaround time translates into industry leading value adding ratios. All of that standardization is akin to SMED. Their set-up times - the time it takes to change over from one flight - one set of passengers, one set of luggage and often one crew - to another is industry leading. It is ironic that, on the same day the Slate article was written [United announced another increase](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2158411/United-Airlines-baggage-charge-Carrier-asks-100-second-checked-piece-luggage-international-flights.html?ito=feeds-newsxml&ref=kevinmeyer.com) in baggage fees. I'll bet the accountants at United who figured that one out didn't take into account the cost of delay and complexity. Airlines live and die - mostly die - with their equivalent of standard costing. They calculate cost per passenger, profit per passenger, profit per flight, and live mired in that detail. All of those figures depend on an assumption of accuracy of a lot of allocated overhead costs, and cause the companies to lose sight of those same overheads which really drive success a lot more than the direct costs. They cannot see, manage or optimize the whole as a result. The same thing is true at In-N-Out Burger. While the other fast food guys stare at margins for individual menu items - depending also on allocated overheads In-N-Out recognizes the huge driver complexity has on total cost, ability to control quality, and ultimately, on customer satisfaction. While United, [McDonalds et al](http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-06-08/industries/32112547%5F1%5Ffast-food-chains-biggest-percentage-decliner-brands?ref=kevinmeyer.com) think they make money per passenger, more and more they foul things up, incur huge costs and drive customers to the likes of Southwest and In-N-Out Burger where customers get what they want, fast and consitently. It takes a wise accountant to pay scant attention to unit costs and their silly allocations and convoluted assumptions and see the whole. Ford said, "*Profit is the inevitable conclusion of work well done*." Work is better done when people can do the work through simple, consistent processes, and the accountants who can figure that out are precious. Original: [http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/the-value-of-smarter-accountants/](http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/the-value-of-smarter-accountants/?ref=kevinmeyer.com) ### The Government Gets One Right URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-government-gets-one-right/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:22:09.000Z Twenty four years ago I took on my first kaizen event at a Copeland plant in North Carolina. We didn't know it was to be called a 'kaizen event' and had no way of knowing that we were using what would be called a 'value stream map'. We were just making it up as we went along using Shingo's original green book as a guide. The target of our efforts was a machining and sub-assembly process that fed a refrigeration compressor assembly line. By the time we finished we improved a lot of things, but I clearly recall the first and biggest opportunity was to fix the quality inspection process. There was no real quality problem - just a waste of a days inventory, lots of floor space and some material handling time due to holding up production until an inspector could get around to sampling some of the output. The lesson learned was that, not only is it impossible to inspect quality into a product, the mere act of inspecting can often undermine quality and drive an extraordinary amount of waste by serving as a bottleneck in the flow. The Obama administration has been a regulatory and waste inducing train wreck for American manufacturing. The history has been one of a gang that never passes up an opportunity to burden manufacturing with another regulation, and to do everything and anything it can to render CPR to the dysfunctional carcass of organized labor. That makes it all the more surprising - pleasanty shocking actually - to learn that the USDA plans to reduce its inspection of poultry lines, and enable the poultry companies to speed up the flow. "*Under the proposal, production lines would be allowed to move 25% faster, while the government would cut by as much as 75% the number of line inspectors eyeing chicken bodies for defects before the carcasses are packaged for consumption*." It is the same thing as my old Copeland experience. Inspecting is a huge drag on flow and cost with no realistic prospect of assuring quality. "*The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there are 1.2 million incidents of salmonella illness each year. Unlike other food-borne illnesses, the incidence of salmonella has risen 10% in recent years. When Consumer Reports tested 382 broiler chickens bought from grocery stores in 2009, 14% were found to contain salmonella*." The Who's Who roster of leftist wackos - Food and Water Watch, Food Integrity Campaign for the Government Accountability Project - opposing the change see this as proof of the need for more inspection. In fact, it is rock solid evidence of what people who understand quality well know: Inspection does not assure quality. Quality can only be assured by controlling it at the source. The whole episode is also proof of how little the bleaters about food quality really know about quality control. That's the problem with having passionate people with no idea of what they are doing being given access to lots of money. It doesn't end with ignorance of quality control, however. These folks rant about private sector apathy for consumer safety. I am as vocal a critic of publicly traded company mismanagement as you can find anywhere - but even the most short sighted CEO knows that poisoning customers is not good business. And they are painfully aware of the hord of bottom feeding lawyers just waiting to catch them peddling poison food. Just what the food companies are up against is evidenced by the position of the United Food and Commercial Worker's International Union. They want to keep the quality inspectors on the job in order to keep the lines slowed in the interest of worker safety. There is some curious logic. If safety is a real concern, I suggest they call OSHA, but to bog down production with quality inspectors for the sake of reducing carpal tunnel syndrome is just plain dumb. Make no mistake, I am not saying chicken is safe. I don't have a clue. All I know about the subject is that chicken and I have always got along just fine. What I am saying is that inspection doesn't make it better. It doesn't make anything better. It only adds cost. Quality can only come from controlling it at a well designed source. The USDA data proved the point. Good or bad, "*In testing its relaxed rules at 20 chicken slaughterhouses and five turkey plants, the USDA found little difference with conventional plants in the instances of salmonella and other pathogens*." ### Congratulations, David Hogg URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/congratulations-david-hogg/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:22:54.000Z I just learned that Dave Hogg, one of my oldest friends and mentors in the lean world, has received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal for his work in promoting lean manufacturing. A remarkable, and well-deserved, achievement for a remarkable person. I first met Dave in the mid-90s when I was struggling with trying to figure out how to turn around a large medical device manufacturing facility and I discovered The Association for Manufacturing Excellence - and lean. Through AME I almost immediately met Dave, and over the years he has instilled in me a passion for the human side of lean - the power of the oft-forgotten respect for people pillar. I've asked him to help train some of the organizations I've been fortunate enough to lead, and has always been available to offer advice. Dave is the person that encouraged me to start sharing my own lean experiences and knowledge, first through Superfactory and then through Lean CEO, Evolving Excellence, and more. Dave Hogg is well known for the lean consortium model he created and implemented at the High Performance Manufacturing Consortium, which in 1998 was described by MIT's Sloan Management Review as a "leveraged learning network." This model spawned dozens of other successful consortia in Canada and throughout the rest of the world. In 2011 he was inducted into AME's Hall of Fame. Congratulations Dave. ### Most Innovation is Actually Evolution URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/most-innovation-is-actually-evolution/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:23:19.000Z So much for Al Gore inventing the Internet. Check this out from 1934: ### It Still Comes Down to Value - and Character URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/it-still-comes-down-to-value-and-character/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:24:32.000Z In his piece yesterday on [A New Ball Game](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-new-ballgame/), Bill actually beat me to the punch a bit on the sordid story of American Apparel. I've been planning an update to my oversight of that company I [once lauded](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-visit-to-american-apparel/), and he's right - it's not exactly a good story anymore. That change is both a result of happenings at American Apparel and an evolution of how I look at organizations - and especially their leaders. The operational metrics aren't exactly stellar. Yes, as I had mentioned years ago, American Apparel does some great things. Everything is manufactured out of their facility in Los Angeles, where they happen to pay well above minimum wage and provide good medical and other benefits. Their supply chain is fast in that they can design a new garment and get it to market within a couple days without having to wait on a boat to cross the ocean. As Bill mentions, their inventory turns are a ridiculous 1.4 times a year. Not to make excuses, but there is one underlying reason that accounts for part - a small part - of that number. Whereas many apparel manufacturers will cut clothing out of large swatches and then throw the excess away, American Apparel keeps the scraps and eventually turns it into drawstrings and other accessories. Throwing away excess inventory can make your turns look better, but there is the offsetting cost. It's a balance. But not a balance to the tune of 1.4 turns. Most of that is because they are simply making clothing that isn't selling so the inventory is sitting at distribution centers and stores. A "fast" supply chain - or perhaps better termed a development chain - that can get a new style into stores fast isn't necessarily a good thing if that new style doesn't sell. That's value, from the perspective of the customer. If you don't create value, your business suffers - regardless of how fast you move. However a far bigger problem, and a major contributor to the losses and low turns, is management. A historical look at turns shows that in the past it was far higher, far faster, and then the bottom fell out. The reason? The production workforce dropped by nearly 25% in one year, not because of sales, but because of a poor decision to hire illegal immigrants - even if they then paid them very well. Long term contracts for raw materials then dumped raw inventory into a precarious production system that was already beginning to produce products that didn't sell well. I say precarious because their production operations were very good, and very lean in many respects, but they didn't understand why it worked. That's dangerous. And like a house of cards it started to fall apart. *The clothing company makes roughly $500 million in annual revenue. It's a rare occurrence to see a growing textile company these days in the U.S., a country that once dominated the garment business. But Charney thinks those days are coming back.* *"Labor costs in China, for example, are skyrocketing," he said. "Transportation costs are skyrocketing, and it's only going to get worse. ... So the people that have the most efficient manufacturing are going to win, so that's what we are practicing."* *But American Apparel has been losing money for three years, in part, because of production problems that arose after almost 2,000 workers had to be let go after a government investigation in 2009 found they were in the country illegally. Charney said things will turn around for his company by 2015.* Good luck with that - I don't have high confidence it will happen. Because there's yet another factor involved, and one that over the years I've learned is an even more powerful contributor to long-term success: the ethics and character of leadership. In my posts on the American Apparel from five or so years ago, I glossed over or was even somewhat amused at CEO Dov Charney's propensity to portray himself as a bit of a porn star, at least in his own mind. He had affairs, wild parties, used underaged girls in provocative advertising, and was and is part of several sexual harassment lawsuits. He flirted with the law, both in that regard and with the hiring of illegal immigrants. Maybe I'm just getting old - more of a fuddy duddy or perhaps just more mature - but character means something. Many try to divorce the personal activities of a leader from their professional accomplishments - see how many excused the proclivities of President Bill Clinton, Representative Andrew Weiner, and even the unbelievable excesses of Tyco's ex-CEO Dennis Kozlowski. I'm probably showing my age with that last one. But when you reach leadership positions, and I'd even argue that it's part and parcel of every individual regardless of leadership position, personal and professional character does matter - and they are intertwined. I wrote about this in [The Character of a Weiner](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-character-of-a-weiner/) right after Representative Weiner resigned. He both exposed himself and then lied about it. Many argued it shouldn't matter, I strongly believe it does, regardless of party affiliation. Dov Charney is the perfect example of why. His personal character shaped how he ran his organization. Slowly and perhaps innocently at first, then to a greater extent, and finally it severely damaged American Apparel. Shareholders can bail on the company, and they have. Aside from voting or creating such an uproar that they resign, citizens have a much harder time bailing on political leaders. The ethics and character of the leader influences the ethics and character of employees which drives how the organization operates. Whether it's Dov Charney or Dennis Kozlowski or Bill Clinton. Character matters. Value from the perspective of the customer matters. And they are related. ### A New Ballgame URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-new-ballgame/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:25:28.000Z I read an article the other day describing Macy's strategy to blur the lines between stores and distribution centers. They are keeping a couple of DC's, but looking to ship stuff customers ordered online more and more from store inventories. They currently ship a lot of the items customers go into the store and buy, but they are expanding it to ship online orders from stores. "*Today, about 150 Macy's stores are set up for shipping, and by the end of 2012, we expect that number to grow to 292 stores, on top of the inventories in four primary online fulfillment centers,*' \[chairman, president & CEO\] *Lundgren said. 'We also are beginning to use store-to-customer shipping to fill online orders*." Makes sense. According to an economist named Kleinman: "*The time to ship an item to a customer is shorter from the local retail location than from centralized hubs to a customer that may be half way around the country. Transportation is a larger chunk of fulfillment cost than the cost of real estate. What they are doing is minimizing the cost of transportation while maximizing the efficiency of their existing asset*." Kleinman isn't getting the entire picture, however. Let's bounce over to Kevin's old pals at American Apparel - the Made in the USA clothing people who are always in trouble for sexual harassment, immigration violations or both. For the record, let's make it clear that there is nothing lean about American Apparel. They are losing money and turned inventory at a ludicrous 1.4 times last year. Flow and time are foreign concepts to them. "*I've had ideas on Monday and had them hanging in a storefront on Friday in Manhattan*," their head of manufacturing said. May well be true, but the average couple of yards of fabric bought by American Apparel take almost 9 months to get to someone's closet. I could make a shirt in China and row it across the Pacific faster than these guys get shirts made and sold in the USA from their factory in LA. The real lesson is embedded in their accounting statements. Sales - $547 million; Cost of Goods - $252 million ... and still lost money. They lost it because they spent a big chunk of that COGS on all that inventory, but most of it because they wasted $210 million on the 'Cost of Sales' and another $105 million on Admin. The cost of sales is 100% pure non-value adding waste. The value of an American Apparel shirt is not enhanced by a single dime as a result of everything that happens once it is produced - but that is when the real spending at AA begins. This is the same phenomena we saw with Dollar Shave Club hammering down the price of razors by cutting out the retailers. It is why Amazon is making book stores a thing of the past, why video stores are disappearing, and why music stores are rapidly going the way of the T-Rex. We are seeing a powerful convergence here. The Internet is becoming more widely available and the graphics make it easier to check out what we can buy on line. Social media is replacing advertising as a warp speed word of mouth engine letting us know what stuff is good - and what isn't, making on line shopping less risky. Energy costs are high - and will probably stay high for a long time. The dismal economy is making us all much more value sensitive, and less willing and able to pay for all of the waste of retailers and massive DC's. It all adds up to the inevitable death of retailing as we know it; the doom of huge, central DC's; and the demise of traditional Madison Avenue thinking and big advertising budgets. The move by Macy's is an attempt to minimize the waste between factories and end users, as are all of the fumbling attempts at Walmart to figure out a way to merge on line buying with their money-pit massive retail store infrastructure, but not figuring [it out yet quite as well as Lowes](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-profit-centers-make-more-sense-in-business-school-than-in-reality/). Who knows how it will shake out but brick and mortar retailers everywhere are struggling with the fact that either they are adding value in their business, or they are doomed. And paying people minimum wage with no knowledge of the product, no service function, harsh return policies reflecting no responsibility for quality ... all to peddle something I can buy cheaper directly from the manufacturer on line is hardly a viable business plan. The accountants won't get it so long as they think segregating costs by meaningless distinctions like fixed and variable, direct and overhead, labor and material are important. They will only figure it out when they realize that the cost distinction that really matters is between value adding and non-value adding. Big money people and businesses vested in the way things have always been will fight it, but to no avail. The government won't see it. Getting the things we want and need without all of the people working in retail is a huge macro productivity boom, and retail jobs will be lost by the millions, while traditional measures of manufacturing productivity will not improve much. The economic data is all built around sectors - manufacturing, transportation, retailing - and changes in one that decimate another is not something their models can understand. The big innovation proponents don't see it - they envision innovation as new, whiz-bang technology stuff distributed and sold through the same old outrageously wasteful channels. The Food Network has a show called Invention Hunters, where a couple of guys look at new gadgets people have invented for the kitchen "*hoping to find the next million dollar idea*". I heard them tell one inventor they needed a manufacturing cost of about $6-7 in order to sell the product for $29.95\. Are you kidding me? We think an economic model that charges $3 of non-value adding waste for every $1 of value will sustain in the age of lean and the Internet? Old products sold through high value added channels will dwarf the economic impact of nano-technologies. Economists - even smart ones like Tyler Cowen - don't see it. He wrote "*Some of the major technological marvels of today’s world are not doing so much to create new jobs. They’ll bring big gains but without putting too many people back to work ...*" The Internet isn't a big job creator or even a big money maker (dot.com Roman candles notwithstanding). The Internet is the big productivity engine. Millions fewer in non-value adding, non-wealth creating retail jobs; and millions more in manufacturing working for lean companies that can make more customized products in small quantities and ship directly to customers. The real promise of lean is beginning to take form, and it is exciting to watch. It's looking more and more like the lean book historians will cite fifty years from now isn't about Toyota, but Seeing the Whole. The winners over the next ten years will be whoever sees it first. ### The Opportunity of the Gemba URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-opportunity-of-the-gemba/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:27:12.000Z An article on CNN this morning gave me some pause: Fareed Zakaria wondering whether Russia should move its capital from Moscow to Vladivostok - 4,000 miles east. There are several reasons, here are a couple: *Well, the person who proposed the idea, Sergei Karaganov of Moscow's Higher School of Economics, wrote in a state-run newspaper that a capital in the far east would make Russia part of what he calls "the rising world" — closer to dynamic Asian economies and further away from an aging Europe.* *Moscow has 78 billionaires — more than any other city in the world. Those billionaires, along with others in the rest of the country, account for 20% of Russia's GDP. Far higher than any country. That doesn't leave much of Russia's economy for businesses and the other 141 million people in the country.* In typical Zakaria style over 90% of the article has nothing to do with the premise suggested by the title, but those two tidbits are worthy of some thought. Fundamentally to shift the perspective of the country, to level certain key demographics, and to develop new opportunities. It's not the first time something like this has been tried. Turkey moved the capital from Istanbul to Ankara, India's capital moved from Calcutta to Delhi, and Brazil created the inland city of Brasilia - specifically to focus on the untapped opportunity of the area. Most seem to have had some success, although Brasilia is an interesting case. Our friend Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution wrote about it a year ago. From an opportunity standpoint it was a positive, from a physical layout and architectual standpoint it left some things to be desired. Corporations do the same - Halliburton moving from Houston to Dubai and Boeing moving from Seattle to Chicago, for example. Every now and then there are rumors of Microsoft moving from Seattle to Vancouver, Canada to free itself from tax, visa, and judicial issues in the U.S. In the article linked above, Phil Condit believes the Boeing move was a success in both expected and unexpected ways. One interesting tidbit, albeit a little outside what I'm discussing, is this: *One of the big surprises from the move, he said, was the cohesiveness of the Chicago business community, where Condit encountered CEOs frequently gathering to nail down civic goals ranging from landing new companies to building world-class parks.* *“I was surprised by how much that happened,” Condit said. “For whatever reason, Seattle does that way, way less. A meeting in which Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco, Boeing and Weyerhaeuser and a bunch of small businesses are all in the same place — rarely happens in Seattle,” he added. “It happened all the time in Chicago.”* Lean folks understand the concept of the gemba - where value is created. Generally that means the factory floor, and we encourage spending as much time as possible at the gemba to truly understand - and improve - the value creating process. We decry executives that never visit a factory and never dive into learning the root cause of problems - let alone lead by example to teach others how to correctly go about seeing and improving value at the gemba. At the medical device company I run we leverage the quick daily stand up meeting to accomplish some aspects of this. Shop floor and department level daily meetings roll up to an 8:20 standup by our executive staff, which is videoconferenced to include staff members at our other major facilities in southern California and northern Michigan. We have a set agenda of WOW moments, safety, visitors, key metrics, key projects, monitoring leader standard work, and issues that rolled in from other stand up meetings that day. Yes we do it in under ten minutes, and the level of communication, understanding, and sharing between facilities has improved dramatically. But where should executive staff - or the heads of governments for that matter - be located? The traditional gemba where value is being created every day? A potential new gemba where opportunity for new value exists but isn't being exploited or managed properly such as moving from Moscow to Vladivostok? Close to the customer? A central location to all facilities and customers as Boeing did? We wrestled with that issue in a much smaller way when we built our new northern California facility. Should the executive staff and value stream managers be spread out in each of their operations to provide immediate feedback, teaching, and understanding? Or should they be co-located - upstairs from the actual manufacturing floors due to the nature of the footprint we had - to improve communication to create a common long-term strategy? We actually agonized over it. I had visions of my president's office being a podium on wheels on the manufacturing floor. Remember [this example of a cosmetics company](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-2-saishunken-cosmetics-customer-care-trumps-a-factory/) from my lean tour of Japan a few years ago? The leaders were literally in the middle of the mayhem, completely connected to the value-creation process. But our organization had a couple other issues. Our value stream managers and executive staff were strong, and by being embedded with their operations they naturally made a lot of decisions. The leadership growth of next level supervisors and team leaders was being stunted by this. In addition, the executive staff was often sucked into a short-term mindset by focusing so much on the issues of the factory floors, and intra-executive communication was too infrequent and ineffective. During the building construction we were forced to move several people into a triple-wide trailer. We decided that should be our executive staff and value stream managers. Now co-located, still close to their operations, but far enough away that continual contact wasn't possible. At the same time our staff went through the exercises proposed by Patrick Lencioni's *The Five Dysfunctions of a Team*. Phenomenal book and if you take a year or so to take a team through each dysfunction - and really work on it - you'll be amazed at the results. By the end of the two or so years of construction we had a very cohesive executive team that worked better together and focused more on the long term, and a stronger leadership bench of team leaders, supervisors, and managers. So we decided to co-locate the executive team upstairs and not right on the shop floor, with the understanding and commitment that we would go to the gemba, and folks from the gemba would not have to come up to see us. We have been in the new building just a few weeks and so far it's working. And we're happy to be out of a no-frills triple-wide. So whether you decide to locate an executive team on the existing gemba, into a new potential opportunity gemba, or close to customers it really comes down to leadership. All sources of value, potential value, suppliers, or customers are important. All have innovation, customer, human, and operational processes that can be developed or improved. You just have to figure out what the problems and opportunities are, go directly to where those situations are and really dig into what is happening, and develop and execute a plan to create as much value, from the perspective of the customer, in the most efficient way possible. ### Management Improvement Carnival #168 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-168/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:28:33.000Z Evolving Excellence is pleased to once again host the Management Improvement Carnival. Blog posts of note from the last couple weeks include: - As noted in the last Carnival, several bloggers including [yours truly](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blaming-deming-lean-and-six-sigma-and-the-importance-of-why/) took an appropriately harsh look at an article in Harvard Business Review titled It's Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement. One of the best responses was by **Jon Miller of Gemba Panta Rei with a post titled How is PDCA Inimical to Innovation?** *"A few simple ways to successfully integrate continuous improvement to innovation are to lay bare our assumptions (visual management), seek out the voice of the customer (management by fact) and learn from experimentation (kaizen)."* - **Jamie Flinchbaugh has a thought-provoking post asking Are You Working on the Right Problems?** Probably not, especially if you're a manager. *"The manager’s problems are why those problems exist. The manager’s problems are why we can’t solve those problems faster."* - **John Hunter's post on Curious Cat titled Customers Are Often Irrational** hit home for me today as I was dealing with a doozy of a poster child. I'll spare you the details, but it could be a great case study on how to screw up a very profitable product line. As John noted, *"The problem is not in thinking the customers are being irrational for not buying what you are selling. The problem is in thinking the customers will behave rationally. Your theory should not expect rational behavior."* - We continue a rough focus on problem-solving with **Mark Graban's post on A Hard Habit to Break**. We're all busy, so the temptation to quickly jump into "solutions mode" is great - even if most of us know that's wrong. *"Immediately jumping into solutions brainstorming can really short circuit good problem solving. We can waste time going down rat holes, discussing ideas that don’t address the root cause and won’t really address the issue we’ve come together to discuss."* - Similar to jumping into solutions mode, **Matthew May reminds us in a short video that Doing Something Isn't Always Better than Doing Nothing**. Or as he says, quoting National Geographic journalist Boyd Matson, *"when the hippos charge, stand still.*" - In a post titled **Quality Improvement in Government? Tim McMahon** takes on a topic that befuddles many of us in the lean leadership world - there is so much opportunity for improvement and savings in government, it is known how to do it, but it doesn't happen. *"Most elected officials and government executives didn't join government to manage. Instead, they are driven by a deep desire to advance a cause, a policy issue or a political agenda."* - In **More Learning from an Elementary School, Matt Wrye** digs into some observations on learning made at his kids' school. As we transition into professional roles, especially in management, we tend to shift our focus onto execution. *"When do we lose that learning zone? When do we switch from learning being the most important to execution being the most important and forget all about learning?"* - And finally, I can't resist poking at the Facebook debacle by reminding people how prescient, ok at least for a couple weeks, my Evolving Excellence co-blogger **Bill Waddell was with** [**Why Facebook is a Sucker's Bet**](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-facebook-is-a-suckers-bet/). Bill and I may disagree on some issues - which livens up the blog just a tad (cough, [Steve Jobs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stretching-the-eulogical-boundaries/), cough) - but on this topic we're in complete agreement. Some of us learned a painful lesson with the dot-com bubble of 2000 - business value still all about real customers and real cash flow. Not "$1B for Instagram because it's cool." Until next time...! ### It's About Time URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/its-about-time/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:28:57.000Z In the manufacturing world most understand that excellence - lean - centers on cycle time. Manufacturers aren't necessarily all doing a good job with it, but they get it. Taiichi Ohno said, "*All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the non-value added wastes*." Many in the service world in their eager rush to embrace lean are making the same set of mistakes manufacturing has bumbled through - looking at only a convenient portion of the time line, rather than the whole thing, and merely pushing the waste up or downstream as a result; or defining waste by some traditional accounting measure rather than as the things that are delaying flow through the time line. Those mistakes, as bad as they are in manufacturing, are even worse in services where quite often the customer is actually in the time line, rather than sitting off to the side waiting for a manufactured product to come out of the process. You tend to see this a lot in health care where people are 'improving' a lot of stuff, but not necessarily the time line. The essence of lean health care is the four hours it takes from the time you limp into the emergency room with a broken ankle until you leave with a cast on your leg; during which you spent five minutes being diagnosed, two minutes on an x-ray machine, a minute for the x-ray to be read; and fifteen minutes having the cast applied with the remaining three hours and seventeen minutes wasted waiting, filling out forms, waiting, being wheeled around, waiting, being wheeled around some more and then waiting - all the while consuming very expensive space filled with very expensive, idle equipment, and wasting the time of some rather high priced hired help. Focus on cutting down the four hours - make customers (patients) much happier, and along the way save a lot of money by wasting a lot less space, technology and labor. All of this brings me to London, where wasting people's time is an art form. If you are one of these service business in which the customer is actually part and parcel to Ohno's time line, then your customers are your inventory. Having a lot of customers in process is waste - wasting their time and wasting your money. So what can be made of this: Years ago, very early in my lean education, I heard a very wise manufacturing executive dismiss a proposal to invest in warehouse automation with the observation that, if inventory is waste, then automating a warehouse is nothing more than a waste management system. Seems to me that spending a half million British pounds - almost 800 large - is the same thing. For that kind of money they could get a clown-car full of theory of constraints experts for a month to eliminate the need for the lines - 'queues' in Britspeak. The folks peddling the queue management stuff tell us "*The Tensator Group has installed more than 3,000 In-Queue Merchandising (IQM) systems - our solutions add value to any retail associated environment*." Add value for who? Certainly not the customers. Their systems will create "*extended shopping time*". Who, I wonder, is out looking for "*extended shopping time*"? Lest anyone be quick to point out that not everyone is a power shopper - that there are many among that other gender who actually enjoy shopping - I would suggest that enjoying shopping and enjoying standing in line are not the same thing. I'm not picking on the people at Tensator who make the waste management systems. I'm sure they are good people making good products and they are filling a need. No, I am picking a fight with their customers - the "*Retail, Airport & Transport, Health & Safety, Finance, Events & Hospitality, and Pubic Sector*" people who buy their products. Every one of them would be far better off obsessing with eliminating the need for standing in line than they would spending money on managing - even trying to profit - from it. The head games retailers play - putting the milk and bread on opposite ends of the store to make you walk from one end to the other in order to induce you to buy something other than what you are shopping for, laying the store out in a manner that forces people into walking miles to accomplish what could be accomplished in yards - is a fool's game. It is practically begging people to shop online, rather than in the store. The Tensator web site shows a simulation of steering people through lines and waiting areas in a bank. That bank might just as well send their customers links to Quicken Loans and Lending Tree - save the cost of the line management system - since their customers will end up at Quicken and Lending Tree anyway. No matter what the business, it's all about the time line. Ohno didn't add any caveats or exceptions. Contrary to Tensator's assertions, "*in queue experience*" and "*adding value*" are mutually exclusive. Tensator is who you call when the Goldratt Institute says they can't help you ... fat chance of that ever happening. ### Memorial Day - And a Jolt of Lean from Ulysses S. Grant URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/memorial-day-and-a-jolt-of-lean-from-ulysses-s-grant/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:29:20.000Z This Memorial Day we remember those who gave their lives in defense of our country, a sacrifice that should give pause to all the childish bickering going on in political circles these days. A hat tip to a lean recruiter friend of ours, Keith Syberg, for letting us know of the following passage from The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: *There never was a corps better organized than was the quartermaster’s corp with the Army of the Potomac in 1864\. With a wagon-train that would have extended from the Rapidan to Richmond, stretched along in single file and separated as the teams necessarily would be when moving, we could still carry only three days’ forage and about ten to twelve days’ rations, besides a supply of ammunition.* *To overcome all difficulties, the chief quartermaster, General Rufus Ingalls, had marked on each wagon the corps badge with the division color and the number of the brigade. At a glance, the particular brigade to which any wagon belonged could be told. The wagons were also marked to note the contents: if ammunition, whether for artillery or infantry; if forage, whether grain or hay; if rations, whether bread, pork, beans, rice, coffee or whatever it might be.* *Empty wagons were never allowed to follow the army or stay in camp. As soon as a wagon was empty, it would return to the base of supply for a load of precisely the same article that had been taken from it. Empty trains were obliged to leave the road free for loaded ones. Arriving near the army they would be parked in fields nearest to the brigades they belonged to. Issues, except of ammunition, were made at night in all cases.* The concept of a lean supply chain is apparently nothing new! Have a great, and relaxing, Memorial Day weekend. Don't forget what we're observing. ### It All Comes Down To Productivity URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/it-all-comes-down-to-productivity/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:30:05.000Z Mitt Romney last Fall: "*'Our productivity equals our income*." Barack Obama in response on Wednesday: "... *the notion was that somehow the reason people can't pay their bills is because they're not working hard enough. If they got more productive, suddenly their incomes would go up*." He went on to say, "*Those of us who've spent time in the real world know that the problem isn't that the American people aren't productive enough - you've been working harder than ever*." Romney is right when we slams Obama for blatant economic ignorance: "*I'm amazed he doesn't understand what productivity means*." He says, "*Gosh, this is quite a revelation if you have the president of the United States that doesn't understand the productivity is a measure of output per person in the nation as a whole*." It gets at the whole idea of value adding and non-value adding. A central debate between liberals and conservatives is the size of the government. In the USA one fourth of us work for the government, which means one fourth of us create no value. So if there are 300 million Americans, and 200 million of them are working adults, and 50 million of them work for the government creating no wealth (value) then the quality of American life equals the output of 150 million people divided by 300 million people sharing it. In this grossly over-simplified example there are two ways to increase overall productivity and the quality of life: Get the 150 million people to work harder and create more wealth for the 300 million; or keep the 150 million working at the same pace, cut the 50 million not adding value in the government to 25 million and have the rest add to the value adding bunch, then the 300 million enjoy the fruits of 175 million people's wealth creation. Lest anyone think this is just another anti-Obama, anti-liberal, anti-big government rant, please bear with me. Of course Obama is an economic idiot if he is surrounded by a bloated government full of bureaucrats, paper pushers, policy setters, regulation creators and auditors; but can't see how productivity can be elevated by any means other than leaving them intact and pounding the actual value creating folks to work harder. But it is hard to see how he is any more of an economic lightweight than Mitt Romney and the vaunted private sector executives who are supposed to be such greater authorities on the subject. Here is a photo of Staples corporate headquarters - the crown jewel of Romney's Bain Capital escapades. Just how many bureaucrats, paper pushers, policy setters, regulation creators and auditors do you suppose it takes to fill up a building like this one? And like the government, how much of their rule, regulation and policy output does little more than interfere with the value adding work the people on the front lines are doing? In fact, it strikes me as more than a coincidence that about 25% of working Americans are government employees - a 3:1 ratio. My experience in the manufacturing world is that a 3:1 direct to indirect ratio is about the norm. One out of every four not adding any value. It is also my experience that just about every private sector exec is tunnel visioned on productivity, yet he walks into an office building full of non-value ceating folks every morning, blindly assuming they are somehow necessary, and spends his day figuring out how to beat on, automate or outsource the value creators - Obama's "*they're not working hard enough*" mentality. Romney is right - greater productivity is the key and working smarter is the idea, rather than working harder. Working smarter means having a lot less people wasting their day doing work that does not create wealth and value. He ought to apply that same principle to himself and his old cronies in American corporate leadership. ### Some Stuff is Going On URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/some-stuff-is-going-on/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:31:12.000Z I've been collecting a variety of articles I found interesting with the intention to bloviate about them. Unfortunately time has flown by and I haven't gotten around to it yet. So to clear things out, here are a few quick words on all of them. First off, a couple days ago SpaceX launched the first private rocket intended to do something really useful like resupply the space station. Really an incredible achievement. But what made me think a bit was when I realized it has barely been 100 years since the Wright brothers achieved the first sustained heavier than air human flight. Now for those of us turning a bit grey, 100 years no longer seems like that long ago. In fact, I have memories from over 40 years ago... almost halfway. And that includes a memory of a commercial jet plane. Think about how long the interval was between a flight of a couple hundred yards to planes all over the place... just a couple decades to WWI. Then to jet power in the late 1940s to routine commercial aviation in the 1960s. The pace of technological development, aided by computers that can design things a bit faster than slide rules, continues to accelerate. The first private rocket achieved space travel this week. Does Virgin Galactic or the private mining of asteroids really seem that far-fetched anymore? Secondly, and not really based on an article, we had Facebook's disastrous IPO. What a cluster that has turned out to be, for many more reasons than just valuation insanity. [Bill wrote about it](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-facebook-is-a-suckers-bet/) \- actually predicted it - last week, and I completely agree. I was dismayed when many of my friends were excited about the IPO and bought shares. Now since they were individuals, they probably got in right after the mad rush when the price briefly hit 40 or so. Well there went 25% of that investment really fast, just a couple days later. Crazy I tell you. And any of us that lived through the first dot-com bomb of 2000 should have known better. Back then everyone was saying "it's a different business model - no longer based on real cash created by real profit." Funny - they are now saying the same about companies like Instagram. $1 billion dollars. No profit. Yep, that's going to end well. Not. History my friend. And basic business economics - not even the GAAP distorted view. There were some good stories, like 3M tackling its crazy supply chain. Would you believe that to make those great Command stick-on/removable wall hangers the process went through four different plants with over 1,300 miles of transportation? For about four pieces of the same color plastic, some foam, and a strip of double sided tape. Oh and a standard package. Now they are consolidating it into one factory. Oh the brilliance! Now to tackle 3M's 65,000 other products... But hats off to them for at least realizing that lengthy convoluted supply chains add to the total cost of the product - something a bunch of companies with factories in China still haven't figured out. But some have figured it out... including a Chinese company who is now outsourcing to the U.S. Yes, you read that right. A Chinese television manufacturer has set up a factory in Michigan to assemble TVs and sell them in the U.S. Labor is still a bit more costly - though less than you'd think - but there are supply chain and especially distribution advantages. So those of you still crazy enough to be traveling across the Pacific to set up factories in China to supply the U.S. market should wave at the Chinese coming over here to set up factories in the U.S. to supply the U.S. market. Uh oh... same market, about 10,000 fewer miles in the distribution chain... I wonder who will win. Ford is another good story. No bailout, no takeover of the company leading to plants being closed and jobs shed... oh wait, for a minute I thought we were talking about Bain. Nope, that's the federal government... and isn't the (ahem!) head of that organization now critizing a former Bain exec for taking over companies and closing plants and laying off people? Nevermind, my head is spinning with the hypocrisy. Anyway, our friends at Ford got their debt upgraded to investment grade this week, which meant they no longer have to secure the debt with things like their oval logo asset. Good job Ford! Regular readers know I'm particularly hung up on the value of humans - especially when compared to non-idea-generating robots and crazy complex software systems like ERP. Humans have the ability to understand context and nuance - and create ideas from disparate sets of data. Perhaps someday computers will be able to, but apparently not yet in the financial arena. One Wall Street guy, previously a "quant" or someone who promoted the ability of computers to crank out the quantitative analysis to execute stock trades, has decided that the human factor needs to be added back in. Now it's a little crazy how he's doing it - teams of people in India pouring over the data and adding their analysis to the computer models - but at least someone is recognizing the value of brains. Fleshy brains, not silicon. And finally, we'll touch on one of our favorite subjects: innovation. Or the lack thereof. Which is why this article discusses how the term has become so watered down that it is basically meaningless. As Scott Berkun says in the article, "what most people call innovation is really just a very good product." Exactomundo. Real innovation is something different, and it's rare. But you wouldn't guess that by how many times the term was used in annual reports filed with the SEC: over 33,000 times last year alone, a 64% increase over just a few years prior. Maybe Facebook should try some real innovation, rather than being a scoop gathering up personal info to sell to their customer: advertisers. And you thought you were Facebook's customer? Silly you. ### Why Facebook Is A Sucker's Bet URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-facebook-is-a-suckers-bet/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:32:22.000Z Valuing Facebook at $100 billion killed the company. While it could have continued to limp along as a privately held company, as a publicly traded company it has nowhere to go but down. That is a simple application of the Golden Rule ... not the one about doing unto others, but the one that says, 'Whoever has the gold makes the rules'. The reason people make the mistake of thinking Facebook is a good proposition is confusion over who their customer is. They think the Facebook user is the customer, and that innovation and improvement will be directed toward increasing Facebook user satisfaction. That is hardly the case. The customer in Facebook's business model - and in yours and in any other business - is whoever pays. In Facebook's case, that is the advertiser. The Facebook users are not their customers - they are Facebook's product. The Facebook business model is pretty much the same as television's and the news media. They offer up something for free to attract a crowd. They then sell access to the crowd to advertisers. The bigger the crowd, the more they can sell. Their measure of quality is not based on the content of the television programming, The accuracy of the news or anything else of value to their viewers or readers. The measure of quality is the size,demographic and spending power of the crowd they draw, and sell. If you are a Facebook user, you get access to Facebook content 'for free',and in return Facebook sells access to you through passive advertising, and even more so by selling access to your personal data to advertisers. That's the deal. the more of you and your information they sell, the more they make. You, as a Facebook user, will tolerate being sold and having your time and privacy invaded so long as access to Facebook content is worth it. When you reach the point that the intrusion on your life from being sold as Facebook's product is no longer worth access to the content (or more likely you find another way to access the same content with less intrusion) you drop out of Facebook and they have fewer products to sell. It is a pretty straightforward deal, really. So what can be expected from a publicly traded Facebook? Intense quarterly pressure to increase revenue - sell more advertising - grow the top line - with the only way to do that being to sell greater access to you, waste more of your time, intrude on your personal information more. And at the same time, reduce costs - which means spend less on enhancing the Facebook user experience. They may do a little or a lot of both and they may do it sooner, or they may do it later. But make no mistake, they have every pressure to push the scales away from making it a better proposition for the Facebook user, and absolutely no financial pressure to push the scales the other way. Privately held companies can invest in the product for the benefit of reasonable long term profits - but not publicly traded ones. So where it will end is very predictable. And the smart bet is, with a $100 billion book value - 100X earnings - the pressure to tilt the scales hard and fast will be intense. What makes it even worse for Facebook is that, unlike television or the media, they don't even control the content that draws the users they sell to advertisers. The users do. So every time a user says the scales have reached his or her personal equilibrium, they not only drop out of the pool of products Facebook has to sell, they take their personal information with them, degrading by a tiny bit the very thing that makes Faceook an OK proposition for users. Television and the news media can at least assure content that draws a pool of people to sell to advertisers by paying for it. Facebook can't - hence, they are screwed in the long term. I am quite sure the Facebook originators are well aware of this logical conundrum, which is why they chose to cash in quite a few of their chips while the cashing in was good. If you were one of the unfortunates who fell for the Facebook IPO, my advice is to cash out quick while the Facebook fever is raging. For the rest of us, sell Facebook short if you can, otherwise just sit back and watch to see who the suckers are holding the Facebook paper when the music stops. ### The Big Picture URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-big-picture/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:32:50.000Z Here's the way I see lean: This is pretty much the model I use when I am writing about companies or concepts for Evolving excellence, doing my company assessment work; or teaching at a conference , seminar or company presentation. Click on the graphic and it will get big enough to read better. You have to be hitting all three corners, or you might as well not do anything. It's not a cafeteria where you get to pick and choose what you want or what's easy. Most companies - I mean the overwhelming majority of companies - are doing something with the bottom part - the tools and techniques. Most are doing little or nothing with the management part. Most would like to do something about the culture and people part, but can't reconcile it with their ingrained management concepts ... that production people are a variable cost (which means they vary with volume, which means there is no avoiding the fact that when business is bad enough you just gotta lay 'em off) ... and that organizations are a semi-formal military sort of thing - they go from top to bottom and people on top give orders while people below them follow orders. Hardly anyone calls me for help to start a lean journey. They call me after they have been at it for a while and years of training mid-level and shop floor operations people in lean tools, and deploying them with 'CEO leadership' along with platitudes about culture and people haven't transformed the company into Toyota. The failure is easy to diagnose ... 999 out of 1,000 have not changed the management piece one iota. Same accounting, same basic metrics, same organizational structure, same ERP and quality systems, same conviction that 'top line' growth is always, inherently a good thing no matter what ... same results. A couple of pretty much universal facts (at least facts based on my 20+ years of experience): Culture can't change when the company still has management systems and measurements that say reducing headcount and labor costs is a good thing. Lean never helps when cost reduction is the primary objective. Demand pull is central to the tools piece, as well as the management piece. Nobody gets lean while hanging onto excuses about demand pull not being applicable to their business. Nobody gets lean who sets their prices based on standard costs; and nobody gets lean without sales and marketing being equally involved in the transformation process. Anyone who seems to be an exception to the above never sustains, making it pretty easy to appear to be a fortune teller when predicting their eventual demise. ### And Now a Few Words from Mike URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/and-now-a-few-words-from-mike/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:34:05.000Z It's college graduation season, so once again we get to listen to a bunch of commencement addresses by supposed dignitaries launching kids still recovering from their latest hangovers out into the real world. God help us. One of those guys was Michael Bloomberg. As a recovering partisan hack, now deeply independent yet stuck in the conundrum of being a fiscal conservative, a social liberal, and a fairly but not completely libertarian in today's increasingly polarized environment, I like Mike. I don't like all Mike, such as his desire to dictate what goes into my food when I dine in New York City, but unlike a lot of folks I don't have some narrow-minded litmus test. You have to be pragmatic, and compromising, to make progress. Imagine that. I've described [his leadership style](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/crosstraining-bloomberg-style/) before - glass-walled offices for visual management, rotating positions for cross-training even at executive levels, and the like. Those of you that know him know he's also fiercely independent, tells it like it is, and focuses on the human potential side of leadership. Mike's style found its way into the two commencement addresses he gave this past weekend. Sure there's the occasional political overtone, but try to ignore that (and I will too) as you think about his words from an organizational perspective. From his address to Franklin & Marshall: *Let me begin with independence – which is so fundamental to our identity as Americans. It’s the conviction behind our nation’s founding and the driving force behind its success. And yet, I look at Washington today and I see a serious challenge to our spirit of independence. It’s standard operating procedure when Democrats propose an idea, for Republicans to oppose it – and vice versa – just because it’s not their idea.* *Both groups believe passionately that they are right and the other is wrong – because neither group questions the assumptions underlying their own party’s positions. When you belong to a group – whether it’s a company, or a nonprofit, or a political party – you tend to accept their way of doing things.* *Be an independent thinker. Turn ideas on their head. Look at them from different perspectives. It may be lonely at times; it may make you unpopular at times; it may be dangerous to your career. But independence lies at the heart of innovation – and progress.* Forget government - I bet most of us could see that situation in basic office politics. Be independent and question underlying assumptions. [Why why why why why?](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blaming-deming-lean-and-six-sigma-and-the-importance-of-why/) What is really the best path forward or the best solution? What is really the problem? What is really the appropriate tool? *The thrills that really stay with you forever – I’m sure many of you know – are the ones you get from giving back to your community.* True. No real comment, it's self-evident, but I wanted to throw that in here. It's important. From his address to the University of North Carolina: *Don’t be afraid to shoot the long ball. Take the risk. Life is too short to spend your time avoiding failure. If I had worried about failure – or listened to those who do – I would never have started my company, and never run for mayor. I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t taken those risks. Not every risk will work out, but that’s ok. Failure is the world’s best teacher.* A bit cheesy, and probably some variation of this is in every commencement address, but a concept that most people forget as soon as they get suckered into their first salaried job. Just go for it! Before it's too late. I quit my first company after 5 years because I wanted to manufacture something more meaningful. I left an accelerating career at a Fortune-50 after 10 years to try something different. I did a startup or two. Now, in the best job of my life, I'm shifting gears again. Looking back, at any of those junctures I could have easily found myself living in a cardboard box. But it didn't work out that way - luckily - and I'm better for each of those decisions. *Never stop learning. Education is a lifetime journey. When you leave these walls, keep asking questions. Keep acquiring knowledge. Keep seeking truth.* As [I described](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-importance-of-the-knowledge-distillery/) just a week or two ago, I've found the best indicator of both personal and professional leadership success is an ability and propensity to seek out, consume, distill, implement, and teach new knowledge. Kinda makes you look at your succession plan (you have one, right?) a bit differently. *No party has a monopoly on truth, or God on its side. And I should know: I was a Democrat before I was a Republican before I became an independent – and I never changed my principles. I hope all of you will do that too. Think for yourself – and decide for yourself, even if it’s not popular, or if it runs counter to the party line. If everyone in Washington did that, our country would be a whole lot better off.* That independent thinking thing again. And principle-based leadership. *In the game of life, when the final buzzer sounds, the only stat you carry with you is the number of assists you made. So help other people put some points on the board. Or as Dickie V might say: don’t be slow to dish the rock.* And that service thing again, with a servant leadership twist. Help other people put some points on the board - great thought. *Now, I know you remembered every word of that, but just in case, here’s a summary of the seven, in no particular order: Teamwork is everything. Assist others. Risks are necessary. Hmmmm, the first three letters of those words are T-A-R – I wonder where this is going. Hustle, always. Elbows occasionally have to be used. Education is a lifelong journey. Love what you do. And if you put that list together, it of course spells Tar – heel.* Leadership, T-A-R-H-E-E-L style. I think UNC got the best of Mike this time. ### Blaming Deming, Lean, and Six Sigma and the Importance of "Why?" URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/blaming-deming-lean-and-six-sigma-and-the-importance-of-why/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:34:36.000Z There have been a couple articles in noteworthy rags over the last couple days that have raised my ire a bit - even if I eventually agreed with one of them. The first was by Adam Hartung in Forbes, describing the demise of Sony but in the process placing considerable blame on none other than Deming. After describing the woes of Sony, he begins his analysis: *So what went wrong for Sony?* *Firstly was the national obsession with industrial economics. W. Edward Deming in 1950s Japan institutionalized manufacturing quality and optimization. Using a combination of process improvements and arithmetic, Deming convinced Japanese leaders to focus, focus, focus on making things better, faster and cheaper. Taking advantage of Japanese post war dependence on foreign capital, and foreign markets, this U.S. citizen directed Japanese industry into an obsession with industrialization as practiced in the 1940s — and was credited for creating the rapid massive military equipment build-up that allowed the U.S. to defeat Japan.* *Unfortunately, this narrow obsession left Japanese business leaders, by and large, with little skill set for developing and implementing R&D, or innovation, in any other area.* You could say that is giving Deming far too much credit. The vast majority of companies used Deming's methods to improve quality - and not just in manufacturing - not as a complete corporate strategy. As one friend of mine said when I discussed this article with him, "Edward would chuckle if he heard that he actually reduced innovation." Of course some readers then jumped back to when in 2001 Drucker called Deming "obsolete." Which is again a complete misinterpreation and misunderstanding of Deming. Mr. Hartung goes on to describe the impact on Sony itself. *But after Mr. Morita Sony’s other leaders were trained, like American-minted MBAs, to implement Industrial strategies. Their minds put products, and new markets, second. First was a commitment to volume and production – regardless of the products or the technology. The fundamental belief was that if Sony had enough volume, and cut costs low enough, Sony would eventually succeed. Without any innovation.* *\[snip\]* *Mr. Stringer’s Industrial strategy was to be obsessive about costs. Where Mr. Morita’s meetings were 85% about innovation and market application, Mr. Stringer brought a “modern” MBA approach to the Sony business, where numbers – especially financial projections – came first. The leadership, and management, at Sony became a model of MBA training post-1960\. Focus on a narrow product set to increase volume, eschew costly development of new technologies in favor of seeking high-volume manufacturing of someone else’s technology, reduce product introductions in order to extend product life, tooling amortization and run lengths, and constantly look for new ways to cut costs. Be zealous about cost cutting, and reward it in meetings and with bonuses.* This is a failure of Sony, not a failure of Deming. Sony's leadership decided to listen to narrow-minded MBAs and focus purely on volume and cost. Hundreds of companies have successfully used Deming's methods to improve quality, cost, and value while also implementing successful innovation programs. Yesterday Ron Ashkenas published a piece in Harvard Business Review suggesting we need to "rethink continuous improvement." In light of having just recently read Hartung's piece on Deming, my hackles were raised anticipating another crazy demonizing of proven methods. Fortunately my initial instinct was wrong - well sort of. *Six Sigma, Kaizen, Lean, and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. While it may be heresy to say this, recent evidence from Japan and elsewhere suggests that it's time to question these methods.* He does continue to teeter on and even cross the line of calling those programs nefarious, but this is presumably to add credence to his valid point: *So should we abandon continuous improvement? Absolutely not! It has created tremendous value and still drives competitive advantage in many companies and industries. But perhaps it's time to nuance our approach in the following ways:* *\- Customize how and where continuous improvement is applied. \[snip\]* *\- Question whether processes should be improved, eliminated, or disrupted. \[snip\]* *\- Assess the impact on company culture. \[snip\]* And that's where he's right - the need to ask "why?" before blindly implementing "continuous improvement." But, as other bloggers have mentioned, similar to Hartung's claim on Deming's methods Ashkenas is wrong in his claim that continuous improvement hinders innovation. Jon Miller points this out: *I fail to see the "evidence" that continuous improvement has caused Japanese firms to fall behind or fail. The failure to launch game-changing innovative products was certainly a factor for the decline of Sony, for example, but if you talk to Sony people they will tell you not about a stifling culture of continuous improvement but the culture where senior engineers decisions were not be be questioned. Don't ask for evidence of why their brilliant idea will be a winner, in other words. This seems to be an instance of exactly a place where management by fact could have helped.* *Ashkenas names a few American companies who practiced six sigma and failed to be innovative, implying but once again without providing a causal link.* But back to the somewhat different point I want to make - the need to customize continuous improvement and really look deep. He gives an example that speaks to a particular lean vs. six sigma hotpoint of mine: *For example, a six sigma team in one global consumer products firm spent a great deal of time streamlining information flows between headquarters and the field sales force, but didn't question how the information was ultimately used. Once they did, they were able to eliminate much of the data and free up thousands of hours that were redeployed to customer-facing activities.* Six sigma is a fantastic set of improvement and optimization tools. Lean is both a philosophy and also includes a fantastic set of tools to improve value by eliminating waste and increasing the application of human potential. I personally believe that in most organizations lean needs to be established first in order to not have the problems mentioned above. And as regular readers know I'm also convinced that the "respect for people" human side of lean is more powerful than the rote tool side - and not understanding that is the reason most lean transformations fail. And to add some fuel to that fire, I also believe that the concoction known as "lean six sigma" is nonsense and even dangerous. However both lean and six sigma are phenomenally powerful - if used properly. And at the core of using them properly is to first ask "why?" What is the problem or opportunity, why is it important, what is the desired future state, and what is the most appropriate tool to leverage? I see many organizations just diving into the tools without asking why. I see many, admittedly including mine years ago before we woke up, having crazy programs like "we will implement two tools per year." Why? Just diving into the tools will create short term gains, but will almost always create long-term failure. Not asking that simple question is the difference between companies that successfully leverage Deming's methods, lean, and six sigma... and perhaps companies like Sony. ### Au Contraire, Kevin URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/au-contraire-kevin/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:36:27.000Z It's not often that I disagree with Kevin, and when I do it is usually over a detail and I let it pass - keep up a unified front and all that. But I have opted to take inspiration from Elwood P. Dowd who said, "*an element of conflict in any discussion's a very good thing. It means everybody is taking part and nobody is left out*." In his post The Online Education Tsunami Kevin challenged some of the observations made by David Brooks in his article of the same title. Kevin wrote, "*The top tier schools will presumably develop methods and technologies to enable real distance learning. That will turn the typical university experience on its head. The ability to think outside the traditional "degree" and "program" via the mass customization ability of the online world will be interesting. The lower tier will probably continue to be the lower end of the spectrum. And the middle? With top tier professors able to reach millions around the globe, it may become hard for middle tier schools to compete*." Brooks wrote, "*Online learning could extend the influence of U.S. universities around the world. India alone hopes to build tens of thousands of colleges over the next decade. Curricula from U.S. schools could permeate those institutions*." Both of them seem to view the future of education as basically the same structure - only with online courses. Same universities - top tier, bottom tier, and so forth - just a different medium. I suspect the folks at Blockbuster Video, Borders Books, and every mom and pop music and DVD outfit thought the same - right up until their particular tsunamis hit them. My epiphany moment on the subject actually came better than eight years ago. I was on the road (as usual), jet lagged (as usual) and awake at 2:00 AM for no good reason. Flipping through channels on the hotel TV I came across an English professor from Ohio State giving a lecture on the local community college public access station. I was 1,000 miles from Columbus and apparently the idea was that kids at the local cc were supposed to tape this lecture and watch it as part of the curriculum. He was good - very good. I ducked out of every English lecture I could back when I needed to listen to get a degree, so you can imagine how good it had to be to kep me listening at 2 in the morning when I had no such gun to my head. Then it occurred to me. Universities as we know them are doomed. They don't know it and they will certainly go down kicking and screaming, but they are as dead as Marley's ghost - as dead as Blockbuster and Borders. In his comment to Kevin's post, Tony pointed at the heart of the matter when he said he "*would put more value on a science or engineering degree from the University of Phoenix than a sociology degree from Harvard.*" In fact, there are 2,474 four year colleges and universities in the United States - most of them good at something, none of them good at everything. There are another 1,666 two year schools. How many English professors do you suppose that means? Fifteen, twenty thousand, at least, and most of them mediocre. Who needs any of them when we have this guy from Ohio State and the wherewithall for every kid to learn from him? In fact, why can't a kid learn science from some wizard at Cal, law from the best at Harvard, English from this guy from Ohio State? Where is the value proposition in a kid paying for some ivy covered birck and mortar joint, putting up with a load of mediocrity in order to pluck a sporadic gem or two? For that matter, why do we need to have the bricks and mortar at all? They made sense in the last century when lots of kids needed to learn from a few professors, and face to face was the only way to communicate. The reasons for their physical existence have disappeared in precisely the same manner the reason for physical CD's and DVD's; and physical books, magazines and newspapers disappeared. The physical stuff is what costs all the money and it does not add a whit of value to the information being transmitted. If everyone stayed at home and learned on line from an all-star team of professors, the quality of the education goes up radically while the cost goes down even more radically. Whether some body of grand poobahs wants to cobble together a collection of courses necessary for someone to confer a degree is really beside the point. No matter what the course load, it will be radically better and cheaper. Kevin decries the loss of the needed opportunity to "*reflect on the information, think about it, apply it, scramble it, etc*." "*A formal degree from an accredited institution does that*", he says. David Brooks asks, "*How are they going to blend online information with face-to-face discussion, tutoring, debate, coaching, writing and projects*?" I suggest all of that can be better done with a group of folks in your own neighborhood - probably done better. Defenders of the academic status quo seem to gloss over the preponderance of classes that are so gargantuan in size that no interaction takes place at all. They skip over the load of pure, 100 proof horse dung that many required classes consist of (on the massive heap of student loan debt my daughter owes are several hundred bucks for a mandatory course on the influence of communism on blacks in northern Alabama during the depression). Want some meaningful interaction? Better off forming a Ben Franklin style junto club and meeting in the local pub with people actually involved in the subject instead of a bunch of inexperienced college kids. Better discussion - and beer! Of course, there can't be more than a hundred ways to sit at home in your boxer shorts and electronically connect with like-interested souls - and even see each other's faces. Brooks asks, "*If a few star professors can lecture to millions, what happens to the rest of the faculty*?" I dunno ... Walmart is usually hiring, but the ex-profs will have to actually show up and do some work. Walmart doesn't have a tenure system. He worries about diminishing "*the face-to-face community that is the heart of the college experience*." If by the face to face community he means what are the kids going to do without a solidly entrenched partying network to keep their social calendars full, I wouldn't worry. They will find a way to fill the void. Whatever the social value of college, the current system costs a kid $85K for a four year degree - and that is at State U - plus living expenses; the average kid walks away with $25K in debt; and the taxpayers pick up another $25K on average. Stiff price to pay for non-value adding waste and the privelege of social interaction. ### The Value of a Zipper URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-value-of-a-zipper/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:37:28.000Z Great article in Slate of all places on YKK - you know, that zipper company you've never heard of. Maybe some of you have seen the initials on your zipper but I bet most haven't. I'll tell you why I was especially impressed, then we'll go through a bit more of the article. *A typical 14-inch “invisible” YKK nylon zipper (the kind that disappears behind fabric when you zip up the back of a dress) costs about 32 cents. For an apparel maker designing a garment that will cost $40-$65 to manufacture, and will retail for three times that much or more, it’s simply not worth it to skimp. “The last thing we want to do is go with a competitor to save eight or nine cents per zipper and then have those zippers pop,” says Steve Clima, Turk’s senior production manager. “The cost difference just isn’t enough given the overall margins.”* Now that's a zipper on some clothing, where a failure is a "wardrobe malfunction." I run a company that makes components for medical devices - long term implantable devices no less. Our $20 part must meet exacting standards otherwise a $30,000 device requiring a $100,000 surgery fails. Failure can cause death. So what is the value of that $20 part? And why do some of our customers spend a lot of \[wasted\] effort each year to try to get us to cough up a 5% price decrease? Should that be their focus? End of minor diatribe - it's been something that has always bothered me. It's also been interesting how different customers in the exact same market treat value radically differently. Some do everything they can to support us and consider us a partner, some try to gouge us and treat us as a "costly" component supplier. Guess which gets the best support and effort from us. Well, actually both types do. Sorta. Maybe our sales folks needs to start carrying a YKK zipper, and tell the story. So here's some more of the YKK story. First, there's a believe in the importance of just doing the right thing, for humanity and otherwise. *Yoshida also preached a management principle he termed “The Cycle of Goodness.” It holds that “no one prospers unless he renders benefit to others.” In practice, this boiled down to Yoshida striving to produce ever-higher quality with ever-lower costs. It seems intuitive, but it’s far from easy to do.* That focus on doing good and always improving creates value. *And in the end, the secret to YKK’s success is equally uncomplicated but equally impressive: YKK makes incredibly dependable zippers, ships them on time without fail, offers a wide range of colors, materials, and styles, and never gets badly undercut on price. The feeling in the apparel industry is that you can’t go wrong with YKK.* Dependability sometimes means retaining complete vertical control. *One by one, Yoshida brought basically every stage of the zipper making process in house: A 1998 Los Angeles Times story reported that YKK “smelts its own brass, concocts its own polyester, spins and twists its own thread, weaves and color-dyes cloth for its zipper tapes, forges and molds its scooped zipper teeth …” and on and on. YKK even makes the boxes it ships its zippers in. And of course it still manufactures its own zipper-manufacturing machines—which it carefully hides from the eyes of competitors. With every tiny detail handled under YKK’s roof, outside variables get eliminated and the company can assure consistent quality and speed of production.* Which of course has another benefit... *When the Japanese earthquake hit last year many supply chains were shredded, but YKK kept rolling along.* Lessons from the lowly... but valuable... zipper. ### The Online Education Tsunami URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-online-education-tsunami/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:37:56.000Z As one of the partners in [Gemba Academy](https://www.gembaacademy.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com), online education is something I'm a bit interested in. Of course the 230+ lean training videos we offer are more "training" than "education" - but I'll get to that topic in a bit. I'd like to think we're doing something right if over 1,000 companies are now using our products, and especially since one of those companies is none other than Toyota. Yes, really. Columnist David Brooks penned a piece over the weekend titled "Online Education: A Tsunami is Coming." It's interesting on a couple of different levels. First the legitimacy quotient for online ed has increased dramatically in the last few years, although maybe it's just my age but I still have a hard time seeing University of Phoenix on a resume. Yes I know it's actually pretty good, and I even happen to be related to the guy that developed their doctorate programs (yes, they have them), but still. As Brooks points out, top tier schools are getting into the market. Harvard, MIT, Yale, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford - you name it. I know USC is as well, as my wife is taking graduate level classes from that school via an incredibly slick online portal. Live classes, direct interaction, the ability to go into random groups. Pretty incredible. So how will other lower level schools compete? On price? That's hard to do when the likes of Harvard and MIT are offering their classes for free. The kicker? If you want that little piece of paper called a diploma you have to kick in for a big chunk 'o change plus actually do some things in person. Here we go again with a question many folks in our world, especially on the six sigma side of things, wrestle with. Diplomas, certifications, a rainbow of belts. Are they worth it? What do they mean? In the lean world, perhaps with the marginal exception of the AME/SME/Shingo version, certifications mean basically squat. There are no real standards, and even the definition of "lean" has many different flavors. I personally believe the "respect for people" aspects are far more important than the rote tools, yet how many so-called certifications measure proficiency in that area. Zip. Six sigma is considerably better, with a fairly-defined body of knowledge that is more scientific in nature, hence more measurable in its own right. And the belt requirements are also fairly standardized, although the execution and review can vary significantly. A GE black belt is worth a tad more than a black belt from the corner consultant. If I seen a lean certification on a resume I quietly laugh and it actually reduces my opinion of their lean competence, if I see a black belt on a resume I'm more impressed - but will then allow my lean vs. six sigma bias to take over some of the questioning in an interview. So what would happen if you saw "completed entire Harvard economics curriculum" on a resume, but not "BA, Economics, Harvard"? Ok, economics is a bad example - an econ degree from Harvard would disqualify folks in many of our books. How about "completed entire MIT chemical engineering curriculum" but not "BS, Chemical Engineering, MIT"? I'm guess you'd raise an eyebrow, and in my opinion you should. That's the difference between "education" and "training." As Brooks points out, online ed does pretty well at step 1 of the education process - the knowledge dump. But to really learn, to have a real education, you also need to reflect on the information, think about it, apply it, scramble it, etc. A formal degree from an accredited institution does that - and since the University of Phoenix is accredited I guess I have to lump it into that category. Simply saying you've completed a curriculum doesn't. But perhaps that's being a bit unfair, especially in the future. The top tier schools will presumably develop methods and technologies to enable real distance learning. That will turn the typical university experience on its head. The ability to think outside the traditional "degree" and "program" via the mass customization ability of the online world will be interesting. The lower tier will probably continue to be the lower end of the spectrum. And the middle? With top tier professors able to reach millions around the globe, it may become hard for middle tier schools to compete. At the same time the barrier to entry for the low end is minimal so competition for effective diploma mills - or "I completed some type of curriculum" mills - will be fierce in itself. "Completed MIT curriculum" may actually be worth more than "BA, No Name University." And it will be free. I'm guessing at the lower tiers we'll see a bit of a convergence between "education" and "training" as "education" becomes more "knowledge dump" and "training" actually adds some minimal learning methods. A good step up for many people in many countries. And the top tier will become global exporters of both knowledge and real learning - an opportunity for several U.S. universities - and the real degree, even if online, will still have value. ### Right In The Lean Wheelhouse URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/right-in-the-lean-wheelhouse/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:38:19.000Z There is an interesting (but not surprising) post at the Economist YouGov on the results of a poll describing the priorities Americans have governing their purchasing decisions. The essence of it is contained in this chart from their site: The conundrum most companies find themselves in is the conflict between price and quality - the two aspects of the buying decision at the top of the priority list. Under the misguided belief that low prices can only come from low costs and low costs can only come from cheaper labor, they run off to places like China, India and Vietnam. Only China, India and Vietnam are not exactly fountains of high quality. In fact, whatever else Motorola did when they conjured up Six Sigma, they proved that time and quality are hopelessly intertwined and the cycle times between creating defects in Asia and finding them in the USA or Europe months later makes excellent quality impossible. In the old days they could count on blunting the less-than-perfect quality of their products with a blizzard of brand management strategies, but as the poll shows, brand means little these days. Too little regard for the old Will Rogers adage, "*If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them."* The poll also shows that, while consumers have no problem buying stuff that came from elsewhere, they are not terribly impressed with the political correctness of the seller or the green-ness of the product. Lean companies understand that low prices are possible from the elimination of non-value adding waste - not cheap labor - and that high quality and low cost are not in conflict, but actually complementary. They also nail the importance of the third most important attribute - ease of purchasing - because they understand that logistics does not add value. They know that most of the money spent on promoting the brand is non-value, adding as well. All in all, a company that really gets lean will look at the results of the poll and see an encouraging re-affirmation of their strategy; while the P&G's and others of their ilk (as Kevin so accurately described) will look at it and think it proves they need to find a cheaper place, hire more quality inspectors and think up a different tack for their spinmasters in marketing in order to make their brands relevant again. ### Silly CEO, Pricing is for Customers URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/silly-ceo-pricing-is-for-customers/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:38:57.000Z Probably the biggest hurdle for ops guys when they transition into general management roles is learning about sales, marketing, and especially pricing. At first glance it doesn't appear to be scientific and it is filled with extraneous inputs - like emotion. Yuck. I know as a young engineer I used to roll my eyes at my friends in sales who traveled around to great places, entertained constantly, and were rewarded with lavish meetings in Hawaii. Actually "roll my eyes" was being polite. How hard of a job is that? One of my roommates back then was a marketing guy fresh out of MBA school whose job it was to scout out the location for the next annual sales meeting for our 500 sales reps. He spent the entire year traveling around being wined and dined and drooled over by the best resorts in Hawaii, Mexico, and the Carribbean. Yes, that's supposedly a "job." A decade later I started my own contract manufacturing company with a great operations infrastructure designed from the ground up with lean in mind. Incredibly simplified processes, people-oriented, agile beyond all get out. We could do anything, cheaper, faster, better. And we sat and waited for the sales. And waited, and waited. I guess "build it and they will come" isn't exactly a sales and marketing strategy. So my partners and I went out and began banging on the doors of potential customers. And banged and banged. Long story short, it took a long time before we learned the hard way about the science of marketing and the effort in sales. And, looking back on my early career, I decided those sales guys can have their expense accounts and lavish tropical meetings - the work really was hard. Between that experience and running my current medical device company I learned a lot, and especially learned how lean can factor into various functions. And one thing I learned was that price is a reflection of value, and value is determined by the customer. As much as we'd like to price products at "cost plus" it will simply fall prey to market dynamics, which are driven by customer perceptions of value. Apparently I, as well as pretty much every other lean leader, knows more than Proctor and Gamble CEO Robert McDonald understands. Yes, that preeminent marketing powerhouse of P&G no less. See he somehow thinks he can control prices in a competitive market. Really. In an investor conference call discussing P&G results, where did he place the blame for his company's poor relative performance? *P&G blamed weak developed markets and competitors' failure to follow its lead on price hikes.* Seriously. He expected to be able to raise prices and have his competitors simply follow suit. What happened? His competitors didn't raise prices, and they ate P&G's lunch. *P&G's sales rose 3%, which looked skimpy against an 8.5% rise for rival Unilever PLC and a 6.5% increase for Colgate-Palmolive Co.* Of course the analysts were none too happy, and if you've ever sat in on an investor conference call you'll know that serious analyst critique is a rarity on such calls. Not this time. *"Good quarter, guys" wasn't the message Procter & Gamble Co. Chief Executive Robert McDonald got when he dialed in to his company's earnings conference call Friday. Instead, he confronted an unusually angry barrage from Wall Street analysts over the latest in a string of weak results from the world's largest consumer products company. The analysts showed little restraint in venting their frustration after P&G lowered its profit outlook and said it would roll back recent attempts to raise prices in key markets.* Sure those analysts usually have a ridiculous short-term perspective, but in this case they were properly venting about a lack of basic competence. But there's more! And like a set of ginsu knives, it gets worse. Apparently Robert McDonald's P&G doesn't understand how pricing is both a reflection of customer value - but also influences the perception of value by the customer. *The consumer products giant cut prices aggressively in recent years in a world-wide battle for market share. More recently, it has tried to roll back some of those cuts as input prices have risen. Those moves cut into P&G's market share, which fell in 55% of the categories and countries where it competes.* Most of us have learned that the hard way. Apparently it has taken Mr. McDonald just a little longer than the rest of us. Prices are a reflection of value from the perspective of the customer. But if you cut prices beneath that value point, it also changes the perception of value. Two related things happen: the actual perceived value of your product goes down and/or the price associated with that value gets adjusted. Either way you lose. It becomes virtually impossible to later raise prices in the face of that changed perception of value. Companies fall into that trap all the time when they chase market share and the siren song of increased cash through volume instead of simply focusing on delivering increased value. Just ask GM. Winemakers have known that for generations - a lower price leads to a lowered perception of value which leads to a lower price. A huge company built on marketing is learning a lesson on value. A lesson many of us learned long ago. ### Lean In the Hands of the Forces of Evil URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-in-the-forces-of-evil/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:39:36.000Z In an interesting article from Bloomberg Businessweek, an investment outfit called Monomoy Capital Partners' kaizen hit team approach to obtaining "efficiency" in one of their investment portfolio companies is described in some detail. At first blush it reads like typical kaizen stuff with typical kaizen results - time from receipt of customer orders at Heat Transfer Products Group (HTPG) is cut from 13 minutes to 3 minutes. There is something unsettling about the whole thing, however, as you read about the process. A team of former Toyota employees leads the effort, going from one Monomoy company to another - experts in the techniques but folks who deliberately ignore the whole 'respect for people' pillar ... they understand very well that it has no application in the slash and burn world in which private equity bottom feeders like Monomy operate. Nowhere does the article mention anyone talking to any of the employees below the team leader level at HTPG to get their input. The kaizens are conducted by the Monomy hit team and managers from HTPG and other Monomoy companies. Even the Bloomberg Businessweek writer gets to make improvements, but not operators. The lack of participation from shop floor people is probably related to the fact that Monomoy's results seem to be aimed primarily at getting rid of people - a goal usually tough to get the production people to sign up for. "*In 2010, Monomoy cut 86 workers from HTPG’s payroll in Scottsboro*." The whole thing is rationalized by: "*It’s a bright picture, clouded somewhat by the 150 jobs lost in Arizona when Monomoy closed the Yuma plant. If you add Yuma into the head count, the net loss at HTPG is about 75 people. The partners at Monomoy are not saints, and people are expensive. But if you cut costs through head count alone—and not by improving operations—you have to just pray the economy goes your way. To survive, you cut people. To grow, you cut waste*." Interesting theory, but it misses the whole point of sustainability. It misses the reason Toyota built the lifetime employment idea into the system, but the Monomoy guys aren't trying to sustain anything. They are in it to make a quick buck, and if the whole thing goes to hell in a hand cart s few months down the road, that isn't their problem. "*As I walk with Stewart, I notice tape on the floor that reads 'Top brazing cart #1.' It does not contain anything that looks like it might be a brazing cart. I see oil and water on the floor, too. A cart labeled 'closing cart' is a mess. I point these out to Stewart. 'TPS is an ideal state,' he says. 'We’re trying to get from a B-minus, C to a B-plus. We don’t have to hold this long enough to get to Toyota quality to get significant value.' I ask him whether this should worry a potential buyer. HTPG CEO May—and Farrister, a team leader on the line—both seem dedicated to the system. Yet on the plant floor, I can already notice it beginning to slip in places. Investors “aren’t going to look at it like that,” says Stewart. 'They’re looking at financials. They’re looking at 12 months of value.'* " In other words, who cares if none of this sticks - whoever we sell this to is not going to be smart enough to realize we are selling them levels of performance that cannot be sustained - that we are selling them smoke and mirrors performance? Who cares are the people left holding the bag ... people like those at bankrupt Barjan - a Monomy companythey 'turned around' and sold only to have it go belly up less than two years later in a trail of lawsuits and layoffs ... and at Fortis Plastics, a company Monomy has 'improved' and liquidated. So what's the takeaway from all of this? For one, reinforcement of the need to involve and commit to people if you want improvement to sustain. This sort of top down lean aimed at headcount reduction doesn't work, and can't work for any organization in it for the long haul. And that just because someone used to work for Toyota and is steeped in their tools does not necessarily mean they are going to do things the way Toyota taught them to. ### Lean to the Extreme URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-to-the-extreme/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:40:18.000Z I have been quite remiss in not writing about Karl Wadensten in all my years of writing for Evolving Excellence. You can't truly be a center of the lean community with out talking about Karl. The problem is that, as wordy as I might be, I don't have the words to adequately describe Karl. That's Karl to the left. He runs a company called Vibco in Rhode Island that makes industrial vibrators. You can read about Karl and Vibco in this article from the Westerly Sun. It is all true and it paints a pretty positive and accurate picture of a great - but unique - lean leader and the extremely lean company he runs, but words failed the writers at the Sun, as well. Karl just can't be described. Video does a better job - pictures being worth a thousand words and so forth - so this from the Providence ABC affiliate is pretty good. Better yet is to watch and listen to Karl's Lean Nation radio and TV broadcasts .. you can find some of them here. Better yet, do a Google search for "lean nation" and you can find Karl in his passionate element with just about everyone and anyone who has anything to say about lean. In the end, the only way to understand Karl is to meet him face to face and feel the enthusiasm and passion. Just don't be surprised at anything he might say or do. He once moderated a townhall event in which folks could askKevin and me anything that wanted to about lean - and he stole the show. Leaving the 'industrial' part out of the description of his vibrator business, and weaving every possible vibration-related sexual inuendo into his straighfaced description of his business, Karl had most of the largely female audience rolling in the aisles in tears - and the rest storming out in shock before the event began. When Karl gets on a roll, his intensely loyal staff can only step back and roll their eyes. Karl is one of a kind. No one puts more energy and conviction into lean than Karl; and no one embodies lean leadership better than Karl. Be sure to read his page on lean when you bounce around the Vibco site. He is truly one of lean's crown jewels. ### Missing the Point on People URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/missing-the-point-on-people/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:40:56.000Z It started off well. I had high hopes. An article in the April 21st *The Economist* (wow... reading the future!) on manufacturing in the future. *BACK IN THE 1980s, when America’s carmakers feared they might be overwhelmed by Japanese competitors, many in Detroit had a vision of beating their rivals with “lights-out” manufacturing. The idea was that factories would become so highly automated that the lights could be turned off and the robots left to build cars on their own. It never happened. Japan’s advantage, it turned out, lay not in automation but in lean-production techniques, which are mostly people-based.* Yes! This is going to be great! Finally an article about the fallacious thinking that factories filled with robots are somehow more efficient than those filled with humans. We've been preaching for a long time how traditional accounting measures the "cost" of the pair of hands but doesn't assign a value to the creativity, experience, and ideas in the brain. Therefore crazy decisions are made, such as shedding thousands of workers in the U.S. to chase "cheaper" labor overseas... new folks with no experience. I saw this first hand when touring Toyota's factory in Kyushu, Japan. At the time at least it was their most efficient factory - and the only robots were in areas with safety issues, such as plating. I could also tell you about how there were virtually no computers on the shop floor, how a manual kanban was used for completely random mixed model production, etc. But you can [read all about it here](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/jke-day-1-toyota-kyushu/). That factory's efficiency and productivity came from improvement ideas, something only humans can create. Back to the article in *The Economist*. Unfortunately after making such a bold statement on people and robotics, the authors dives straight into the glories of robotics. *Many of the new production methods in this next revolution will require fewer people working on the factory floor. Thanks to smarter and more dexterous robots, some lights-out manufacturing is now possible.* Uh - didn't you just tell us that people were the key? Ok robots can help people - and perhaps I was being a bit unfair and mistakenly gave the perception that I was against all robots - I'm not. They have their place as aids and efficiency multipliers, and can be very valuable. Just don't expect them to deliver year-over-year 5% productivity improvements like people-filled factories can. Eventually we come right back around to where we started, bracketing the long robot worship. *As Toyota discovered with lean manufacturing, production-line workers, given the chance, can come up with plenty of good ideas to improve productivity.* Yes they can, given the chance. There's value in them there brains. ### Off In Their Own World URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/off-in-their-own-world/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:44:39.000Z There is no big surprise that a couple of academics would write an article in 2010 reporting that extensive research had led them to the conclusion that the automotive companies built excessive inventories in order to achieve short term profits - and that doing so created long term problems for the companies. Of course they were pointing out the very same things lean folks had been taking issue with for decades. They researched and published as original thinking the essence of the problem lean accounting had been addressing since the first Lean Accounting Summit in 2005. We have been hooting about this in Evolving Excellence on a regular basis. As far back as [2006](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/i%5Fthought%5Fyoud%5F/) we have written things like "*Full absorption and the Matching Principle undermine manufacturing excellence,*" [and](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ramblings%5Fon%5Fle/), " *we call inventory an asset and institutionalize full overhead absorption that enables us to be more profitable by overproducing and moving indirect expense to the balance sheet*." This issue was the central theme of [Rebirth of American Industry](https://www.amazon.com/Rebirth-American-Industry-William-Waddell/dp/0971243638?ref=kevinmeyer.com) written back in 2005\. This is not any great mystery - I mean, if a guy who stumbled through the University of Cincinnati on the *'a C gets a degree'* philosophy can figure it out how hard can it be? The academics have determined that, "*Excess production coupled with absorption costing allows the spreading of these fixed costs over a larger number of units and confers short-term performance benefits. Third, firms in this industry, especially the “Big Three” U.S. automakers, have a short-term-oriented incentive structure that focuses on improving short-term financial costs and margins*." No, the fact that the academic world is hopelessly out of touch with the real world is nothing new and hardly worth noting. It is what came next, after "*Drivers and Consequences of Short Term Production Decisions: Evidence From the Auto Industry*" was published in Contemporary Accounting Research in the Fall of 2010 that is remarkable. "*Alexander Bruggen, Ranjani Krishman, Karen Sedatole and Scott Jackson received the AAA's Greatest Potential Impact on Management Accounting Practices Award for 2012.* *The award, sponsored by the AICPA \[American Institute of CPS's\], the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Society of Management Accountants of Canada, recognizes academic papers that are considered to be most likely to have a significant impact on management accounting practice. It was created in 2009 to help support the next generation of management accounting researchers and underscore the importance of research to practice and the profession*." That's right - a virtual who's who of the management accounting profession thought this was groundbreaking new stuff. This is like the scientists and engineers at NASA giving an award to a couple of professors for proving that the earth revolves around the sun. But it gets worse. My good friend Jean Cunningham- the Guruess of Lean Accounting - included an article from CFO Magazine in her latest newsletter. The CFO's were so impressed with the news that the wheel had been reinvented they gave it two pages. "*It's no secret that in the years leading up to the Great Recession, the Big Three automakers were producing vehicles in excess of market demand, leading to large inventories on dealers lots across the country. Now, some researchers say they know why the automakers acted as they did, and they are warning other manufacturers to avoid the same temptation*. *By coupling excess production with absorption costing, managers at GM, Ford, and Chrysler were able to boost profits and meet short-term incentives, according to professors at Michigan State University and Maastricht University in the Netherlands."* This really demonstrates just how dysfunctional the accounting profession is, and just how destructive they are to the companies they are supposed to serve. Don't get me wrong - there are thousands of great accounting people embracing lean principles and working hard to figure out how to contribute more. But there are hundreds of thousands who are steeped in the insular, negative culture that is the hallmark of accounting. Rather than act as part of a team trying to accomplish great things, controllers and CFO's focus on *catching* people spending too much, making mistakes or stealing from the company. They treat their peers in other functions not as partners with a common goal, but as incompetent, uncaring or dishonest enemies of the company. A 'Not Invented Here' culture pervades the accounting profession because the only opinions they respect are those from other accountants. It's not that most of them disagree with lean and lean accounting - it is that most of them haven't invested even the least bit of time trying to learn anything about it. If they did not arise from the accounting profession, ideas, principles and strategies are of absolutely no concern to them. The company's problems are not their problems. Too often accountants believe their sole job is to do math by arcane rules - not to be involved in any way, shape or form in leading - and certainly not to accept any responsibility for the success or failure of the company. Their only role in outcomes is to figure out who to blame. And that is what leads them to look so foolish by seeing as brilliant that which has been a matter of common sense to everyone else in the organization for decades. ### When Your Customers Flee Complexity URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-your-customers-flee-complexity/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:45:13.000Z So it's that time of the year again, and I'm sitting down to write a nice big check to the IRS. For the most part I'm ok with that. Writing a check means that I haven't given the government an interest free loan and it means I made some decent money last year. I don't mind paying to enjoy the benefits of living here, paying a little more because I'm a little more successful, even paying for some programs and policies I disagree with - that's a consequence, and benefit, of democracy. Of course I do care a bit when my hard-earned tax dollars are paying for extravagant GSA parties, entertainment for the Secret Service, and $205,000 to move a $15 shrub. But I bet some will still have the gall to say taxes are too low and should be raised to cover \[growing\] "necessary" services. Or maybe I should put "services" in quotes? But that's not my point. And, perhaps surprisingly to some, neither is the subject of tax rates themselves and the like. No, this time it's tax complexity. And usually when I talk about tax complexity I mean the 40,000 pages of regulations that are such a social engineering patchwork that it allows loopholes and abuse, not to mention bazillions of hours to comply and enforce. Not this time. This time an article on Reuters showed me a different, and perhaps more disturbing angle of the problem. *On April 7, 2011, Peter Dunn raised his right hand before a U.S. consular officer in Toronto and swore that he understood the consequences of giving up his U.S. citizenship. Dunn, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen who has lived outside the United States since 1986, says he renounced because he felt American citizenship had become more of a liability than a privilege.* *Dunn, who blogs about expatriation, takes issue with being characterized as a tax evader. He says the taxes he pays in Canada are higher than what he would pay in the United States, and he says he had always complied with the IRS before renouncing. But, Dunn says, the IRS approach to enforcing compliance is misguided. "It's making life difficult for a lot of people," he says. "It's driving us away."* He's not dumping his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes - in fact he will be paying higher taxes. He's switching because of complexity and intrusion. He's not the only one. *Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's \[long story - read the article\] lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998\. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons.* That's similar to the huge numbers of folks that are fleeing California for Nevada and Texas, or New Jersey and New York for Florida. Wealth and income shift, and tax revenues go down. Funny how that happens - across state lines and increasingly between countries and continents. But again, in this story it's not because of high taxes, but because of complexity. *The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they're living abroad. The National Taxpayer Advocate's Office, part of the IRS, released a report in December that details the difficulties of filing taxes from overseas. It cites heavy paperwork, a lack of online filing options and a dearth of local and foreign-language resources.* And since it's not just about high taxes, those fleeing aren't just the rich. *During the last 25 years, a number of millionaires and billionaires have renounced their citizenship. Among them: Ted Arison, the late founder of Carnival Cruises, and Michael Dingman, a former Ford Motor Co. director. But those of more modest means renounce, too. They say leaving America is about more than money; it's about privacy and red tape.* What are some of the problems? Complexity, ongoing changes that create significant liability if not monitored, and intrusion. *As an American, Dunn had to file tax returns and report all of his bank accounts - even joint accounts and his Canadian retirement fund. If he didn't, he would be breaking U.S. law and could face penalties of up to $100,000 or 50 percent of his undeclared accounts, whichever is larger. Dunn says he was tired of tracking IRS policy changes. "Disclosing joint accounts I hold with my wife and anyone I ever want to do business with - that's just too much. My wife's account is none of their business."* And... *Marylouise Serrato, head of American Citizens Abroad, a nonprofit organization based in Geneva, says that many members feel scared about reporting requirements they did not know existed. "Americans abroad are terrified. We've had people pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. We've had people … pay huge amounts of back taxes," she says.* And... *Francisca N. Mordi, vice president and senior tax counsel at the American Bankers Association, says she has received a number of calls from Americans in Europe complaining about banks closing their accounts. "They're going to drop Americans like hot potatoes," Mordi says. "The foreign banks are upset enough about the regulations that they're saying they just won't keep American customers, and it's giving (Americans living abroad) a lot of sleepless nights."* And... *In Europe, American women say they feel pressure to renounce even from their husbands. "American women married to non-Americans are only just now finding out that they have to disclose years and years of income and accounts," says Lucy Stensland Laederich, a leader of the women's club who lives in Bordeaux, France. Genette Eysselinck, a friend of Laederich's, renounced early this year. Her husband, a European Union civil servant, saw no good reason to share his account information with the IRS, she says. And after considering all her options, Eysselinck decided that renouncing was the best path. "It created a lot of tensions around here," she says. "Divorce seemed a little extreme, so I asked myself, 'What am I gaining as an American?' And the cons outweighed the pros."* How sad is that? The cons outweighed the pros, of being an American no less. As a head of any organization, what would you think if you had customers that would pay real money to leave you because you were such a pain in the buttocks to deal with? Hopefully it would give you pause. Perhaps it should. ### The Importance of the Knowledge Distillery URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-importance-of-the-knowledge-distillery/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:45:38.000Z Over the last several years I've become fascinated with learning systems inside organizations. I've also found that the best leaders are generally those that voraciously seek out and consume knowledge, then distill, implement appropriate new concepts, and especially teach. In fact, an effective "knowledge distillery" is now the number one characteristic I look for in leaders. Far more important than direct experience in a field or function. The Wall Street Journal touches on this in a recent article on how our education system is failing to teach an ability to process new knowledge. A key component of creating knowledge is leveraging failure. *In most high-school and college classes, failure is penalized. But without trial and error, there is no innovation. "One of the most important things I have to teach my students is that when you fail, you are learning." Students gain lasting self-confidence not by being protected from failure but by learning that they can survive it.* Unfortunately the tendency of society, and schools, is to protect people from failure. Failure is seen as a negative instead of a potential positive. Grade inflation or no grades at all, games with no winners and losers, science experiments designed with a range of positive outcomes instead of the potential to simply blow up. Failure is important. Teaching kids to learn from failure even more so. Maybe you're simply not cut out to be a dodge ball athlete. Best if you learn that early. Modern society generally moves in the same direction. Instead of trying to just create equal opportunity, there is a tendency to want to create equal outcomes - to cushion or even eliminate the impact of difference, or even failure. It seems like nearly every successful executive, passionate community activist, brilliant scientist or whatever has some key hardship story in their past. Perhaps early on during their childhood or later in their professional career. Those difficulties - not necessarily failures in the traditional sense - can be powerful teaching moments. Many, many years ago I was involved with a startup company that didn't perform as expected (that's being generous). One of the best, and most important, experiences of my life - I learned about the criticality of sales and marketing, how cash flow is far more important than sales and even profits, and how people can be far more valuable than what you pay them. Those lessons have stuck with me, and have radically changed my career. Without that failure I would have been in a completely different place. Thankfully I wasn't protected from that failure. What types of functions do you have in your organization? Do you have someone that is specialized in materials science, or someone that has a materials science background but can leverage the thinking process to solve problems? There is a difference, and our schools may skew candidates toward one side. *The university system today demands and rewards specialization. Professors earn tenure based on research in narrow academic fields, and students are required to declare a major in a subject area. Though expertise is important, Google's director of talent, Judy Gilbert, told me that the most important thing educators can do to prepare students for work in companies like hers is to teach them that problems can never be understood or solved in the context of a single academic discipline.* A friend of mine, a guy who sometimes regretted getting his PhD in a narrow field, used to tell me how in his opinion the higher you went in advanced schooling, "you learn more and more about less and less." That's stuck with me. Yes knowing a lot is important to the progression of a field of knowledge, but it is also important to recognize that unless overtly challenged the prism through which knowledge is obtained and processed becomes narrower and narrower. It's not just a product of advanced knowledge, but sometimes a self-imposed perspective - a form of confirmation bias. How many folks in the U.S. only receive news via U.S. outlets such as CNN or Fox? How many politically-passionate folks, on the left and right, only read articles from journals and sources on their side of the spectrum? How many of us really seek out opinions contrary to ours, and then truly think about them as opposed to simply discarding as "whacko"? Steve Jobs (oh boy, here we go...) is considered by many to be a great innovator. Some believe that, some don't, but that's not my point. He considered the key to Apple's innovations to be "design at the nexus of technology and liberal arts." Thinking not just about neato keen technology - as most tech companies do - but a much wider perspective of the application of technology to solve problems. That requires people that can process a wide base of knowledge. To do that requires a passion for knowledge. To consume knowledge across a wide spectrum of topics. The recognition that knowledge comes not just from words, but from experiences. The ability to tie it all together. The passion to do something with it, directly or indirectly. So take another look at the folks in your organization, especially those in critical leadership roles or on the track for such positions. Are they just good in function or experience? Is that really enough to move forward and take your organization to new levels? Who among them read everything in sight, from a wide range of business and non-business topics, and can tie disparate concepts together into new ideas? How many distill a wide funnel of knowledge into important disruptors - that can become a competitive advantage? How many can effectively implement such ideas - and learn when they don't work out as planned? And finally, how many can teach others? Those will be your most important leaders. How do you leverage them? How do you create more of them? ### China Nearing the Boiling Point URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/china-nearing-the-boiling-point/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:46:23.000Z Things are starting to churn in China at a rate that should have American companies reaching into the files and pulling out the contingencies plans ... hopefully you have one to pull out. The Chinese city of Chongqing exploded in riots yesterday and things got pretty ugly. The photos came from http://www.molihua.org/2012/04/30\_11.html Hopefully the site (in Chinese) will keep up the good work, although the censors in the People's Republic are working overtime to keep all of this under the rug. The military was brought in to get things under control. Whether they did so or not remains to be seen. This is really the starting phase of the Chinese equivalent of our elections slated for September. Nothing democratic about it, however. The similarity is limited to the fact that a change in leadership is on tap and the party in power doesn't handle opposition well. The rioters were supporters of a guy named Bo Xilai. Bo is a populist sort of guy who advocates a return to Mao type thinking, even though his actions have actually been pretty capitalistic. The President - Wen Jiabao - and his ruling gang are the open powers behind the Chinese economy over the last few decades. The problem in China is one Kevin and I have been warning about for years. They take 'crony capitalism' to heights the Occupy Wall Streeters cannot begin to imagine. The ruling class in China has become staggeringly wealthy, while the working stiffs got, well, stiffed. At the same time, China's currency manipulation and Obamaesque stimulus efforts have spun inflation out of control,making an already tough life for the workers even tougher. For the last couple of years the Chinese leaders have been attempting to walk an impossibly fine line trying to raise pay for workers to keep them from pulling an Egypt/Libya style revolt without having manufacturing costs soar so fast that their export economy goes down the drain. They are failing on both counts. Bo's message (although he stands no chance of doing any better than the current regime) has been of the 'Power to the People' - 'Hope and Change' type. As hollow as it is, the message resonates with the workers - especially those in the west where the 'Chinese Miracle' hasn't been so miraculous. Hope and Mao sound better than the shafting the current model has given them. Wen did what the Chinese leaders do best when faced with opposition - fired Bo, trumped up charges against him and his wife, and are well on their way to having him mysteriously disappear all together. That is what set off the riots. There is a lot more to it, of course, including a lot of weird intrigue - a Brit buddy of Bo's named Neil Heywood died mysteriously in a Chongqing hotel not long ago, and Bo's right hand man ducked into the US consulate looking for asylum back in February, then came back out and was arrested. Regardless of all of this, between now and the establishment of a new government in September, the prospect of things heating up to the point that violence increases to the point of supply chain disruptions seems to be rapidly increasing. At the very least, the rate of cost increase is likely to increase. The whole sordid mess is described pretty well in this necessarily long-winded article from China Worker last month (before the ouster of Bo and before the riots ensued). Where it ends up, nobody knows, but the heat has most decidedly increased in China. As I said at the outset, if you are a retailer or a final assembler dependent on a China supply chain, you would do well to make sure you have a plan B in place. If you are further up the supply chain, making parts and doing work for the OEM's, you are facing a great opportunity - that is to be someone's plan B. Either way, you should take this very seriously - the world is starting to change. ### The Shame of "Great" CEOs URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-shame-of-great-ceos/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:47:51.000Z What a couple weeks here at Evolving Excellence. Discovering that [Amazon's worker abuse](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-worker-abuse-guess-where/) is on par with [Apple's](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beyond-just-words-what-apple-could-do/), and even [Bill's recent post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/let-history-be-the-judge/) on how we (mis)treated workers from the Barbados when they did the hard work of building the Panama Canal - but really paid them more than Apple pays the Chinese. I'm somewhat surprised that the AFL-CIO hasn't contacted us about being an official spokesman for labor. Perhaps they should. Companies that treat people that poorly deserve unions - and all the other consequences of unions that destroy productivity and agility. So here I am trying to work today when someone (cough, Bill George, cough) tweets an article from Forbes titled "Jeff Bezos' Top 10 Leadership Lessons." Really - Jeff Bezos of Amazon? Normally I like Bill George, and his concept of "true north" is very much aligned with lean. This time he's off base. Leadership lessons? So like a kid going to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time, I had to look. And it was filled with the usual stuff... obsess over customers, embrace change, be willing to fail... yadda yadda yadda. Anything about employees? Not really, unless you somehow read that into #6, "Our culture is intense." Yep, no kidding. "Intense" is one word for the worker abuse going on at Amazon's Campbellsville distribution center. I tweeted back to Mr. George that Bezos must have forgotten to include lesson #11: always keep ambulances outside of overheated distribution centers in case employees collapse. Otherwise you might need hearses. But it gets worse. As I'm reading that, I discover that Forbes had another recent article on Bezos, once again by George Anders. And this one had a premise that nearly made me toss my cookies. *He’s \[Bezos\] the number one CEO in America. The passing of Steve Jobs has left him, without question, as the corporate chief that others most want to meet, emulate and deify.* Geesh. So first we have Steve Jobs who presided over blantant worker abuse at Chinese factories that made his products. Yes I grant he was a genius in many ways. But also a guy lauded, indirectly via channeling Tim Cook perhaps, as having created the best supply chain in the world. Really? No - just a brilliantly executed traditional supply chain. The "best" would have figured out how to make products closer to customers without abusing people. A few bucks from the $100 billion Apple has stashed away could have done that. And now Jobs is supposedly replaced with Bezos? A guy who has employees, in the U.S. no less, that are saying "this is a brutal place to work." I'm guessing Jack Welch ([the turkey](https://www.leanblog.org/2006/10/is-jack-welch-turkey/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)) was also in this chain of "great CEOs." Someone who advocated whacking the bottom 5+% of the staff each year, among other brutality. So they are the corporate chiefs that "others most want to meet, emulate and deify." How pathetic. No wonder corporate America has been getting a black eye lately. With those kinds of "leaders" and people that worship them, a black eye should be the least of our worries. Where are the folks that truly understand what that oft-forgotten pillar of lean, respect for people, is all about? Where the leaders that truly believe that people are the greatest asset, and even though they may be represented as a "cost" on a P&L, there really is a huge offsetting value from their brains, ideas, creativity, and experience? They are out there, and I can name a few of them. But they are humble and focus on putting their people first to create great companies that deliver real value to customers. Which is perhaps why they won't get into Forbes. But unlike Welch and Jobs and Bezos they will get my respect. ### Let History be the Judge URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/let-history-be-the-judge/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:48:23.000Z I recently had a chance to watch an edition of American Experience on PBS on the building of the Panama Canal. While the show was largely complimentary of the amazing feats of engineering building the Canal represented, it noted that one of the more shameful aspects of it was the use of workers from the Caribbean - largely Barbados - to do much of the hard, unskilled work, paying them only ten cents an hour. According to the Inflation Calculator, ten cents an hour in 1905 equates to $2.39 an hour in today's terms. Then I read that our friends at FoxConn, in the wake of the unfavorable publicity they - along with their #1 client, Apple - have received, have announced a pay increase. "*In a statement released Friday, Taiwan-owned Foxconn says the pay of junior-level workers at its Shenzhen facilities has risen from 1,500 yuan (US$ 238) to 1,800 yuan (US$ 290) monthly, in an effort to “set a good example for the Chinese manufacturing industry.”* *Foxconn says that employees passing a technical exam can expect an even higher starting pay, at 2,200 yuan (US$ 350). “As a top manufacturing company in China, the basic salary of junior workers in all of Foxconn’s China factories is already far higher than the minimum wage set by all local governments,” the company says*." For a 160 hour month (and the typical Chinese worker thinks he has a part time job if the only works 160 hours) that means the worker passing the technical exam gets $2.18 an hour - twenty one cents less than the 'shameful' rate paid to Barbadans to build the Panama Canal. The junior workers fare worse, of course. They get about the same as the ladies who worked in the Triangle Shirwaist factory did before the fire and before they unionized. Another note of shameful labor practices in our history ... the Chinese workers brought in to build the transcontinental railroad were paid a starting wage $27 a month in 1868\. At a 160 hour work month (again, part time work compared to what those guys actually did) that equates to $2.73 an hour. So we have gone from shamefully exploiting Chinese workers to build the railroad at $2.73 an hour in 1868, to even more shamefully exploiting Bardadans in 1905 by paying them even less - $2.39 an hour, to the current day - where we brilliantly pursue the principles of Comparative Advantage and globalization - and pay less yet - $2.18 an hour. Those of you who work so hard to convince the manufacturing world that there is a better way than the global pursuit of cheap labor ought to document your work. Leave a trail of evidence for your great-great-grandchildren lest they think you were one of those who, in 2012, took shameful labor exploitation to a new low. ### One Dimensional Geniuses URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/one-dimensional-geniuses/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:49:04.000Z When I read the Amazon article cited in [Kevin's post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-worker-abuse-guess-where/) yesterday I was reminded of Henry Ford's 'Peace Ship' debacle. The disconnect between Ford's genius in automobiles and manufacturing and the sheer stupidity - the incredible naivety - of the Peace Ship venture is hard to reconcile. For those who don't know about it, the 'Peace Ship' was a silly venture Ford financed and played a part in to bring about an end to World War I. How little he knew about politics, international economics, and foreign history and cultures was embarrassing. The same can be said of Amazon. How the leadership of the company can be so brilliant at, well at being Amazon, and so incredibly ignorant of fundamental operations management is nearly impossible to understand. Just for the record, the 1920's style management they apparently deploy in Campbellsville is not an anomaly. NPR, the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune took them to task for the very same issues at their operation in the Lehigh Valley last Fall. Kevin pointed out the comparisons to Apple. The incongruence of technical genius and neanderthal operations management is certainly a characteristic of both companies. I have been troubled most, however, by Steve Jobs reply to Barack Obama's question about what it would take to bring Apple manufacturing back to the United States. Said Jobs quite bluntly, "*Those jobs aren't coming back*." Period. No room for error in his opinion. No possibility of anything other than his view being the right view. There is no questioning Job's technical genius, but the siege under which Apple manufacturing is under in China, the spiraling costs of Chinese manufacturing, and the increasing flow of manufacturers leaving China and returning to the United States indicates he was way out of his element and not nearly knowledgeable enough about manufacturing to have spoken to anyone - let alone the President of the United States - with such unjustified arrogance. I wonder what it is that leads people to assume demonstrated genius in one field makes them anything more than average in another. Whatever it is, it took hold of Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and apparently the folks running Amazon. You see it in entertainment superstars who make fools of themselves lecturing about the environment - think Ted Danson (on the strength of his fine arts degree) declaring in 1988 that the planet had only ten years of life left; and making a laughing stock of himself in the process. Or Robert Redford whose privileged Southern California youth and the year and a half studying art before he was kicked out of the University of Colorado led him to believe he is an expert on the complex historical, economic and social aspects of the native Americans, prepared to educate the rest of America. On a more common local scale, that same self-delusion strikes a whole lot of business leaders - folks who became CEO on the strength of a brilliant career in finance or marketing assuming that makes them beyond learning anything about manufacturing or engineering. The most important thing for anyone to know is what they don't know - to know when they are outside of their element - when the time comes to stop lecturing and start listening. It would seem, however, that the more successful one is in any area, the harder it is to acknowledge ignorance in other areas. And so we have Amazon and Apple - companies with brilliant products and innovative business models - running the sort of operations that formed grist for Charles Dickens and Upton Sinclair. How can that possibly be reconciled? ### More Worker Abuse - Guess Where... URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-worker-abuse-guess-where/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:49:33.000Z Take a look at the following quotes from an article on worker abuse. I've purposely redacted the company and location identifying information. *"As long as my body holds up, I will keep working. But the way it feels, I don't know how long that will be."* *... a warehouse safety worker... instructed him to tell emergency workers that his hip injury was not work-related, even though he says it was.* *... an investigation of... warehouse operations last year... also found indoor temperatures soared so high that... had ambulances parked outside to take workers to the hospital. \[Sorry - I just have to add "ARE YOU FRIGGIN' KIDDING ME??" to this one.\]* *... pressure to manage injuries so they would not have to be reported, such as attributing workplace injuries to pre-existing conditions or treating wounds in a way that did not trigger reports.* *A former warehouse safety official said in-house medical staff were asked to treat wounds, when possible, with bandages rather than refer workers to a doctor for stitches that could trigger reports. And warehouse officials tried to advise doctors on how to treat injured workers.* *"This was just a brutal place to work."* *"They would have meetings on how we could get rid of people who were hurt. It was horrible."* I could add several more, but I'll stop there. I'm betting most of you think I'm quoting from yet another report on Apple's Foxconn supplier in China, right? Or at least some other sweatshop operation deep in Asia or Latin America? Nope. It's Amazon, in Campbellsville, Kentucky. Last time I checked that's in the USA. How can we rant and rave against working conditions overseas when we allow the same here? Sure, there aren't suicide nets around the top of worker dormitories and 100 hour weeks probably don't happen. Still, the similarities are eerie, including that it's another high profile tech company. It's unacceptable. And we wonder why unions still exist - once again it's because of pathetic management that gives the rest of us a really bad name. The rest of us that understand that there's a valuable brain attached to the supposedly costly pair of hands, and that it makes great business sense to take very good care of that brain. One last quote from the article on the vicious cycle that begins once you start circling the drain of worker abuse: *But over time, said former workers at Campbellsville, production pressure from headquarters intensified amid constant turnover. "There would be phone conferences \[with Seattle\], and all this screaming, about production numbers. That was always the problem; the production numbers weren't high enough," said a former safety manager with oversight of the warehouse who spoke on condition of anonymity.* If you treat your "most valuable asset" (how much you want to bet that Amazon has that buried in a mission or vision statement somewhere...) like crap, they eventually leave, and you have to figure out how to make up the difference. Either by working the remaining poor souls harder or by finding even poorer souls willing to work in such a hell. Of course Evolving Excellence readers know a better way. Leverage the power of their brains to improve processes which will improve quality and efficiency - value. And take care of those valuable brains. ### Missing the Whole URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/missing-the-whole/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:50:34.000Z I don't suffer from the illusion - the delusion - that anyone at Walmart or Amazon spends much time mapping value streams or *"*[*looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash and ... reducing that time line by eliminating the non-value adding wastes*](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-and-good-are-not-synonyms/)*."* But the result is the same as if Amazon were - maybe just blind sows finding the inevitable acorn, but more likely a collective blinding flash of the obvious. Regardless, Walmart is finding that Amazon is starting to eat their figurative lunch. The real competition is not the other bricks and mortar guys - Target, Sears, Kmart - but the guys who sell the same stuff without bricks and mortar at all. We are a week shy of the six year anniversary of our pointing out the absurdity of the government productivity data that has served as the rationalization for looking the other way while American manufacturing slipped and slid steadily down the drain. While the 'experts' still struggle with the harsh reality of narrowly defined manufacturing productivity, they (and many, many others) are missing the dawning of a huge productivity boom that is only apparent to those who can, as Dan Jones and Jim Womack put it, "See the Whole". Whether it is the [Dollar Shave Club](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shaving-off-the-waste/), the demise of Borders and Blockbuster,the disappearance of record and CD stores, it is all the same - a huge boon to productivity. Same - often superior - customer value, but without busloads of material handlers, retail sales clerks, bosses to ride herd on the handlers and retail folks, and extend it further - people to build and take care of all of the brick and mortar shrines to non-value adding waste. The rapidly dawning productivity explosion is not happening so much among the value adding people within the narrow confines of factories, but in the broader supply chains - but you have to "see the whole" to notice it. To be sure, paper mills and CD facories are rapidly falling by the wayside, as well as packaging plants and people - but looming the sea change is much more in the service sector folks who pile cost onto factory output without increasing the value of it. For management this means putting down "Learning to See" and picking up "*Seeing the Whole*". You can optimize the factory all day long, but if an Amazon or Dollar Shave Club comes along and renders the entire supply chain in which the factory operates obsolete you will find you have been improving value streams to nowhere. On the positive side, it means fantastic opportunity for those wise enough to see logistics, marketing, retailing, warehousing and the rest for the non-value adding waste it is. If you are making and selling something for $5 while the final customer is paying $20 for it way down the chain, you need to get out of the rut of believing that whatever is so severely trashing the value propositon of your product is 'necessary' or somehow an inescapable reality in your business. If you don't, someone else will. ### 'Lean' and 'Good' are not synonyms URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-and-good-are-not-synonyms/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:50:52.000Z Lean is a subset of profit improvement. Everything about lean will enhance profits, but there are a lot of profit enhancing ideas and strategies that have nothing to do with lean. I just thought I would point that out for the benefit of all of the folks out there who want to put every good idea under the lean umbrella. In writing the blog one of my daily routines (beyond reading 40+ newspapers every morning) is to do a Google news search for 'lean'. You might want to give it a try. You will find that most of the results are not actually news reports, but press releases from companies and people trying to promote their 'lean-ness'. Among the legitimate news stories, you will find that many - probably most - of them fall under the cost reduction heading, but have nothing to do with lean. Taichi Ohno said, "*All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by eliminating the non-value adding wastes*." So the articles about increasing labor efficiencies, reducing the amount of excess material scrapped during production processes, minimizing carbon footprints and material going to landfills, and so much more have nothing to do with lean. They are probably good ideas. I don't mean to discourage them - in fact I stand foursquare in favor of many of them - but they are not lean driven, not does the successful application of such ideas make an organization lean. The problem seems to be taking the idea of "*non-value adding wastes*" out of context. In fact, any time you can reduce or eliminate a cost, and it does not detract from the value of the product you are selling, that cost was, by definition, a non-value adding waste. There is nothing new or lean about doing that. The history of work is one of ideas and technologies that eliminated non-value adding wastes, but the history of work is hardly one of continual evolution toward lean. The debates and often confusion among and between lean and Six Sigma advocates stems from the fact that they get at the same root. When I went to Motorola University in the early days of Six Sigma and long before multi-colored belts were involved, the originators of the concept endlessly pounded on the mantra "*The best quality producer is the shortest cycle time producer, and the shortest cycle time producer is always the best cost producer*". There is an awful lot done under the name of Six Sigma out of this context, as well. The problem this dumping everything that reduces costs into the lean bucket causes is that it sends the message that organizations can become lean without making the fundamental changes in thinking and culture required to follow the Taichi Ohno and original Six Sigma principle. As a result, they leave the fantastic benefits of becoming truly lean on the table. It is also problematic and quite confusing when so many purveyors of knowledge, be they consultants or academics, miss this fundamental point and preach lean or Six Sigma outiside the context of cycle time and flow. They seriously mislead those who look to them for guidance and wisdom. So how lean is your organization? Is inventory turning much faster? Is the time from beginning to end of core processes much shorter? Do your customers go from initiating contact with you to completion of that interaction much quicker? If the answer is no, then you are not particularly lean, no matter what you may have done to cut costs, reduce waste or improve the culture. ### Book Stuff URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/book-stuff/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:51:25.000Z A couple of comments and thoughts on a couple of books ... **Shingo versus Shingo** A few weeks ago I wrote a [piece contrasting Shingo's 'green books'](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/my-secret-weapon/)\-the original version translated by Shingo's son and the later version translated by Drew Dillon, both brought to western audiences thanks to the efforts of Norm Bodek. Shame on me for writing, "*Dillon made the original a lot more readable, but he also left a lot of fundamental points behind in the effort*." I implied that Drew Dillon was the source of the different translations - an assumption I had no basis for making. Both Norm Bodek and Drew Dillon wrote expressing rightful indignation. Said Norm, "*Dr. Dillion is a great scholar and should receive an apology*." Wrote Drew, "*I’m not quite sure what leads you to impugn my work so casually*." Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. In truth I have no idea why the two books ended up substantially different, and I do owe Dr. Dillon an apology. Messrs Bodek and Dillon speculated that the cause may have been different texts from Shingo, himself, or in final editing after Dillon's work went to the published, or a number of other possibilities. The cause will likely never be known, but it is probably not important to know why. It is important to know that Both Norm Bodek and Andrew Dillon have made enormous contributions to the lean body of knowledge and implying otherwise is not something I would ever want to do. **Adventures in Leanland** This is a great lean book - I mean a genuine 'must read' lean book - although I have had to rack my brain to figure out just why. Russell Watkins is a very well traveled lean guy, and a very, very good writer. The book he wrote is a sort of 'Shigeo Shingo meets a British Mark Twain' effort. There is no grand unifying theory, nothing that a well-versed lean student will find that is particularly new, just a wealth of stories and examples of lean application, covering the waterfront of countries, industries and lean facets, written in a very compelling manner. It is witty, clever, and illustrates the principles with extraordinary clarity. A consultant like me will find it a treasure trove of examples and anecdotes to use in teaching; a lean leader will find a wealth of ideas to teach the principles, and an executive can get an introduction to lean in a manner that puts it into practical terms, rather than the ethereal stuff most lean leadership books adopt. Mostly, it is just fun to read. **All Business is Local** \- *Why Place Matters More Than Ever in a Global, Virtual World* In most regards John Quelch and Katherine Jocz have written the sort of marketing book one can expect from a couple of Harvard types. Lots of traditional theory, tweaked to apply it to the global economy and an increasingly social media dependent world. There is not a single mention of lean in the book. That said, its central point - that all business is local - is a vital point for companies struggling to integrate their lean efforts with their sales and marketing strategy. They write, *"... Starbucks doesn't reach customers through five thousand stores, it reaches customers through one store five thousand times*." It is not possible for Pizza Hut to complete collectively with every pizza store out there. In fact, each Pizza Hut has to compete with the local pizza joints nearby. The fact that an individual Pizza Hut restaurant is part of a massive, global corportation really doesn't matter much. It comes down to the value, service and prices at each Pizza Hut restaurant compared to that at the local competitor. Flip that around ... the local pizza parlor owner doesn't have to compete with mega-giant YUM! Brands. They just have to have a better value proposition than the one YUM! Brands Pizza Hut nearby. Competing in one store five thousand times - with each store focused on its individual market is right up lean's alley. Competing with five thousand one-size-fits all stores is mass production, get it from China stuff. The authors don't tie their excellent message of the market comprising of a whole lot of local markets, each with its own value proposition, back to lean - but you very easily can. This strikes me as a great book for the lean operations person to have his or her marketing and senior management team read, and then build upon. Once they understand the importance of local, and begin to ask how to serve their customers one at a time rather than en masse, lean will make a lot more sense to them. ### Costa Rica's Guanacaste Province: Tropical Paradise and Wildlife Wonderland URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/costa-ricas-guanacaste-province-tropical-paradise-and-wildlife-wonderland/ Last updated: 2025-08-26T17:56:27.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/IMG_3692.JPG) Our March 2012 escape to Costa Rica's Guanacaste Province proved to be the perfect blend of luxury relaxation and authentic wildlife adventure. Based at the Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo, we spent eight blissful days exploring pristine beaches, encountering incredible wildlife, and discovering the natural wonders that make Costa Rica a world-class eco-tourism destination. For travelers seeking both comfort and authentic nature experiences, Guanacaste offers the ideal introduction to Costa Rica's legendary biodiversity. ## Why Guanacaste Province? Guanacaste, Costa Rica's northwestern province, offers the perfect combination of dry tropical climate, stunning Pacific coastline, and accessible wildlife viewing. The area around Liberia provides easy airport access while maintaining the authentic "Pura Vida" lifestyle that defines Costa Rican culture. March timing proved ideal - dry season weather with brilliant blue skies and calm seas. ## General Comments **Best Time to Visit**: March sits perfectly in Costa Rica's dry season (December-April), offering sunny days, minimal rainfall, and excellent wildlife viewing as animals congregate around water sources. **Base Location Strategy**: Staying at one luxury resort for the entire week allowed us to truly relax while taking day trips to explore the region's diverse attractions. This approach worked perfectly for balancing leisure with adventure. **Wildlife Expectations**: Costa Rica exceeded even our high expectations for wildlife encounters. The country's commitment to conservation creates incredible opportunities to observe animals in their natural habitats. **Transportation**: Renting a car proved essential for exploring beyond the resort. Costa Rica's roads in Guanacaste are generally good, and having flexibility to discover hidden beaches and towns enhanced our experience significantly. ## Detailed Itinerary ### Days 1-8: Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo Base **Hotel**: Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo The Four Seasons provided the perfect luxury base for our Guanacaste explorations, combining world-class amenities with easy access to the region's natural wonders. The resort's elevated position offers stunning Pacific views while maintaining harmony with the surrounding tropical dry forest. **Resort Highlights**: - **Infinity pools overlooking Culebra Bay**: Multiple levels of pools cascading toward the ocean - **Private beach access**: Secluded Virador Beach perfect for swimming and snorkeling - **Spa treatments with ocean views**: Relaxing massages using local ingredients - **Championship golf course**: Arnold Palmer-designed course integrated into the natural landscape - **Multiple restaurants**: From beachside casual to fine dining with local ingredients ## Regional Explorations ### Beach Hopping Adventures **Tamarindo**: This vibrant beach town about 45 minutes south became one of our favorite discoveries. Unlike many tourist beaches, Tamarindo maintains authentic Costa Rican character while offering excellent amenities. - **Surfing culture**: Watch world-class surfers tackle consistent Pacific swells - **Beachfront dining**: Fresh ceviche and cold Imperial beers with toes in the sand - **Estuary boat tours**: Spot crocodiles, iguanas, and tropical birds in the mangrove channels - **Sunset horseback riding**: Gallop along the beach as the sun sets over the Pacific **Playa Conchal**: This unique beach made entirely of crushed shells creates a stunning white sand paradise just 20 minutes from the resort. - **Snorkeling**: Crystal-clear waters perfect for underwater exploration - **Shell collecting**: The beach literally consists of millions of tiny shells - **Golf at Reserva Conchal**: Another championship course with ocean views **Playa Flamingo**: Known as the "White Sand Beach," this crescent-shaped bay offers some of the region's most beautiful scenery. - **Deep-sea fishing**: Charter boats for marlin, sailfish, and dorado - **Marina atmosphere**: Upscale dining and shopping at the marina complex - **Catamaran sunset cruises**: The perfect way to end a beach day ### Wildlife and Jungle Encounters **Manuel Antonio Day Trip** (extended day trip): Though a longer drive, Manuel Antonio National Park provided our most memorable wildlife experiences. - **Monkey encounters**: All four Costa Rican monkey species in their natural habitat - howler monkeys, white-faced capuchins, spider monkeys, and endangered squirrel monkeys - **Sloth sightings**: Both two-toed and three-toed sloths hanging in the canopy - **Beach and jungle combination**: Unique park where pristine beaches meet primary rainforest - **Guided nature walks**: Knowledgeable guides spotting animals we'd never notice alone **Local Wildlife Around the Resort**: Even without venturing far, the Four Seasons area provided incredible animal encounters: - **Howler monkey wake-up calls**: Their haunting calls at dawn became our daily alarm clock - **Iguanas sunbathing**: Large green iguanas basking on rocks and poolside areas - **Scarlet macaws**: Brilliant red parrots flying overhead in pairs - **White-faced capuchin visits**: Playful monkeys occasionally visiting the resort grounds **Monteverde Cloud Forest** (day trip): A longer excursion to this famous cloud forest reserve provided a completely different ecosystem experience. - **Canopy zip-lining**: Soaring through the misty forest canopy - **Quetzal spotting**: Searching for the legendary resplendent quetzal - **Hanging bridges**: Walking through the forest canopy on suspended walkways - **Coffee plantation tour**: Learning about Costa Rica's famous coffee culture ### Cultural Discoveries **Liberia Exploration**: The provincial capital offered authentic Costa Rican culture away from tourist areas. - **Central Park**: Watching daily life unfold in the town's social center - **Local markets**: Fresh tropical fruits and handmade crafts - **Colonial architecture**: Historic buildings reflecting the region's Spanish heritage - **Authentic sodas**: Family-run restaurants serving traditional casados **Guaitil Pottery Village**: A fascinating visit to this indigenous community preserving pre-Columbian pottery traditions. - **Traditional techniques**: Watching artisans create pottery using ancient methods - **Chorotega culture**: Learning about the indigenous heritage of Guanacaste - **Unique souvenirs**: Authentic pottery pieces made with local clay and natural pigments **Ranch Visits**: Guanacaste's cowboy culture provided insight into Costa Rica's agricultural heritage. - **Working cattle ranches**: Observing traditional livestock operations - **Horseback riding through pastures**: Exploring the countryside on horseback - **Traditional BBQ**: Authentic Costa Rican asado experiences ## Adventure Activities **Sport Fishing**: Costa Rica's Pacific waters offer world-class fishing opportunities. - **Half-day charters from Tamarindo**: Targeting roosterfish, snapper, and mahi-mahi - **Deep-sea excursions**: Seeking marlin and sailfish in blue waters - **Catch and release philosophy**: Supporting sustainable fishing practices **Nature Photography**: Guanacaste provided endless opportunities for wildlife photography. - **Golden hour beach shots**: Dramatic lighting on Pacific beaches - **Wildlife portraits**: Patient waiting rewarded with incredible animal photos - **Landscape photography**: Capturing the dramatic contrast between dry forest and ocean **Water Sports**: - **Kayaking in Tamarindo Estuary**: Paddling among mangroves and spotting wildlife - **Stand-up paddleboarding**: Exploring calm bays and coves - **Snorkeling at various beaches**: Discovering Costa Rica's marine life ## What Made This Trip Special **Perfect Balance**: The combination of luxury resort amenities and authentic nature experiences created our ideal vacation rhythm - adventure by day, relaxation by evening. **Wildlife Abundance**: Costa Rica's incredible biodiversity provided daily surprises, from monkeys playing outside our room to scarlet macaws flying overhead. **Cultural Authenticity**: Despite staying at a luxury resort, we experienced genuine Costa Rican culture through local markets, family restaurants, and community visits. **Natural Beauty**: The dramatic landscape of dry tropical forest meeting Pacific coastline created stunning scenery at every turn. ## Practical Tips **Packing**: Bring binoculars for wildlife viewing, waterproof camera protection, and both beach and hiking gear. The dry season means less rain gear needed. **Transportation**: Rental car essential for exploring beyond the resort. Roads are generally good, though some beach access roads can be rough. **Language**: Spanish helpful but not essential in tourist areas. Learning basic phrases enhances interactions with locals. **Currency**: US dollars widely accepted, though colones preferred for small local purchases. **Conservation**: Support eco-friendly tour operators and accommodations that contribute to Costa Rica's conservation efforts. ## Photography Tips **Wildlife**: Early morning and late afternoon provide the best lighting and animal activity. Patience rewarded with incredible shots. **Beaches**: Sunset photography along the Pacific coast offers spectacular golden hour opportunities. **Equipment**: Zoom lenses essential for wildlife photography, underwater camera for snorkeling adventures. ## Final Thoughts Costa Rica's Guanacaste Province delivered everything we hoped for in a tropical getaway - luxury accommodation, incredible wildlife encounters, pristine beaches, and authentic cultural experiences. The Four Seasons provided the perfect base for our explorations while ensuring complete relaxation between adventures. What sets Costa Rica apart is its genuine commitment to conservation and sustainable tourism. The wildlife encounters felt authentic because they were - these animals thrive in protected habitats that connect national parks and private reserves. From howler monkeys providing our daily wake-up calls to scarlet macaws flying overhead like living jewels, every day brought new natural wonders. The blend of adventure and relaxation proved ideal for our travel style. We could spend mornings zip-lining through cloud forests or spotting monkeys in national parks, then return to luxury resort amenities for afternoon relaxation by the pool or spa treatments overlooking the Pacific. For travelers seeking both comfort and authentic nature experiences, Guanacaste offers the perfect introduction to Costa Rica's legendary "Pura Vida" lifestyle. The region proves that luxury and eco-tourism can coexist beautifully, creating memorable experiences that connect us with nature while supporting conservation efforts that protect these incredible ecosystems for future generations. This trip reinforced our belief that the best travel experiences combine comfort with authenticity, luxury with adventure, and relaxation with discovery. Costa Rica's Guanacaste Province delivered on all counts, leaving us already planning our return to explore more of this remarkable country's natural treasures. ### Stress Solutions, Not Blame URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stress-solutions-not-blame/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:51:54.000Z Regular readers know that the "respect for people" pillar of lean is particularly important to me - in fact I consider it to be the most critical. My organization often hears me say that 90% of problems are the result of poor processes, not people, and 9% of the remaining are probably due to poor leadership. The FAA appears to agree. A [couple years ago](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-problems-is-a-good-thing/) I told you how the organization had created a nonpunitive reporting system for air traffic controllers to report incidents. That led to a dramatic change, which might initially be seen as a scary negative but as most of us immediately realize is a huge positive: *New numbers released by the Federal Aviation Administration show reports of air-traffic errors have nearly doubled in three years. The number of reported incidents in 2007 was 1040, and that number rose to 1887 in 2010, an 81 percent increase.* *This cultural change in safety reporting has produced a wealth of information to help the FAA identify potential risks in the system and take swift action to address them.* The FAA was apparently so impressed that they have now expanded the program to other functions. *Federal Aviation Administration officials announced that as part of a new "safety culture" at the agency, they would fully embrace nonpunitive reporting systems, in an effort to generate information that could expose bigger dangers.* *The FAA took a half-step in that direction in 2008, creating a nonpunitive reporting system for air traffic controllers. On Wednesday, the FAA said it was expanding the program to employees who maintain radar installations and other systems.* *"Make no mistake about it: We don't condone (errors)," said David Grizzle, the FAA's Chief Operating Officer. "However, we presume the good intent of our controllers and are more interested in the free flow of information than we are in punishing for errors."* The FAA's decision also points to a problem many organizations face as they improve - it's easy but very dangerous to rest on positive improvement. *In announcing the new reporting systems, the FAA cast itself as a victim of its success. FAA officials said they used to be able to measure risk by counting accidents. The fewer crashes, the better the agency was doing.* *But with the commercial aviation accident rate at historically low levels -- there has not been a fatal commercial crash in three years -- the agency needs to look at other data to identify risky behaviors and incidents, and to address them.* It's analogous to a common misperception. As a process becomes more stable, the tendency and desire is to measure less and move on to something else. But in reality the black swans, the long tail events that hide in broad statistical analysis, are the most disruptive and dangerous. Instead of measuring less frequently, you should measure more frequently to uncover and address the next layer of process variation. The FAA seems to understand that - and the importance of enabling and ensuring people are part of the data collection process. With rare exceptions the problems are in the processes, not the people. ### Missing the Whole Enchilada URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/missing-the-whole-2/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:52:44.000Z Next month I am participating in a Lean Sales & Marketing event in Indianapolis and, as I start the preparation process, I thought I might share a couple of points I plan to raise guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of a lot of folks. The first of them is the particularly inane practice of using third party manufacturer's reps. It is hard to imagine how anyone thinks outsourcing the link between a company and its customers is a good idea. When the objective is to maximize customer value, playing a circle game with customers to garble the message about what customers actually value - extending the communications chain between you and them - hardly seems like an effective approach. Having the link be someone who views optimizing your business as a part-time, short term goal make even less sense. And having that link compensated solely on volume - and not at all on value - is worst of all. Not much better is having your own sales force, but having all communications with the customers flow through them. The idea is to have direct communication between yourself and the customer at every level possible, your engineers to theirs, your receivables person with their payables person, the folks on your shipping dock with the people receiving your shipments. Having your sales person as a communications bottleneck is hardly conducive to engaging your whole company in the value creation effort. Flip it around and ask yourself, if all your suppliers know about you is what your buyer tell their sales person, what are the chances of anyone at their company coming up with an idea that is really going to improve you? All of this falls under the umbrella Lou Pritchett had in mind when he said, "*The primary job of sales is to represent the customer to the company, not the other way around*." Pritchett, for those unfamiliar with him, was a legendary sales leader at P&G during the heady days when they were cranking out high value, innovative stuff - a far cry from today's P&G that talks to customers rather than listens to them. Creating value for customers requires knowing what they place value on, and that isn't going to happen with a bunch of third party contractors, communications bottlenecks, or anyone who gets paid on commission. ### My Secret Weapon URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/my-secret-weapon/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:53:11.000Z Despite the stacks of books in my office, living room and bedroom, I am not a hoarder. I get books from every direction - some I buy, many are gifts, dozens are review requests, and I give the good ones away all the time. There are some I have bought half a dozen times - and given away as many times. One I have kept for almost 30 years, though, and will never part with is my copy of Shingo's original edition 'green book'. Those familiar with it might be asking, "30 years? Impossible since it wasn't published until 1989." That's not the green book I am talking about - the book I keep is the original green book - the one Norm Bodek cajoled the Japan Management Association to sell him a few copies of long ago. The one on the right is the 1989 version, translated by Andrew Dillon. The dog eared, beat up one on the left is mine, translated by God only knows who. Dillon made the original a lot more readable, but he also left a lot of fundamental points behind in the effort. In the original Shingo went to quite a bit of trouble to compare and contrast Toyota's production system [![Shingo Ford](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e20168e8893a31970c-320wi "Shingo Ford")](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e20168e8893a31970c-800wi?ref=kevinmeyer.com) with Henry Ford's ideas. Little, if any of this, found its way into later versions. He discusses "*Mr. Solensen's description of Ford System*", meaning Charles Sorensen, Ford's production leader. And he describes the Toyota Production System as a "*developed pattern of the Ford system*", stating that Toyota "*enlarged and progressed the Ford system*". Thanks to this book I was able to learn quite a bit about lean from the early Ford system while many other self-proclaimed experts were writing about lean as the opposite of mass production as developed by Ford. Shingo described exactly where they were identical, and what Toyota had "*enlarged and progressed*". I learned the over-arching supremacy of cycle time compression - "*perfect performance from shortening production period*" - in Shingo's translator's Janglish. That Shingo citing Frank Gilbreth - but not FW Taylor - was also telling. These nuggets were largely lost in the later editions. The original translation was wretched - I have jokingly described it as Shingo being cheap and hiring a nephew who had studied English for two years in high school. Actually, I have no idea who translated it, but their English skills were severely limited. It took me a few readings to get through, and comprehend, passages such as: "*Defects are 'originated at processing' and 'inspections are only to find the defects', so basic recognition must be necessary. Therefore, 'if a defect is found, 'information must be immediately transmitted to the processing and an amendment must be accepted at the processing method' so that defects would be reduced. "Faster the speed of the feed-back function is, faster the reduction in percent of defect is'. The abovementioned could be phrased as follows. Judgement inspection ... inspection to find defects. Informative inspection ... inspection to prevent defects. Unexpectedly, most plants consider that only judgement inspection (inspection for distinction of non-defective and defective products) is an inspection*." Nonetheless, Shingo's book not only gave me a wealth of information unavailable elsewhere, it gave me [![Shingo Process](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e201630294020d970d-320wi "Shingo Process")](http://superfactory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834521be169e201630294020d970d-800wi?ref=kevinmeyer.com) a leg up on everyone else. Taking what Shingo described as "*Analytical Chart of Process*" I was able to analyze processes years before the term 'Value Stream Mapping' was coined. So what's the takeaway on all of this - other than the fact that I have a lean resource few others do? I believe it is to accept little from the lean experts unquestioningly. We are all a product of the information made available to us, and few have comprehensive, first hand knowledge of Toyota's production system, its origins and the underlying principles. Who can say with certainty how Ohno or Shingo would have applied their ideas to your unique situation? In the end, everyone has to learn for themselves, which means challenging that which doesn't make sense, and continually asking questions and digging deeper. ### Shaving Off the Waste URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/shaving-off-the-waste/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:53:33.000Z No one needs any evidence to believe the shaving products business is completely out of control. Every time you shop for razor blades there is a new spin on them and absurdly higher prices. You can spend $17.79 plus the cost of the gas to get to the store for four replacement cartridges for a Gillette Fusion Pro-Glide Power yadda yadda yadda at Target - "New", of course, which amounts to almost four and a half bucks a cartridge ... ... or you can spend half that and have these guys deliver them to your house. Are they as good as the ones peddled by Gillette for almost $18 plus the gas to get to the store? Probably, in light of the facts in this court case. Gillette and Schick battled it out with a lot of lawyers involved over false advertising claims. By the time you are a couple pages into the court findings you realize neither one of them can back up much of anything they claim in their ads. By the time you are halfway through the findings you feel like you are eavesdropping on an argument between two little people over which is the tallest midget in the circus. The moral of the story is that advertising, sales and marketing (unless the sales person is an engineer doing consultative sales), packaging (except to the extent that it protects the product and identifies the contents), and innovation that is new but not more valuable in the eyes of customers is all waste. And, of course, the cost of lawyers to fight the competitors over who is infringing on each other's waste. How much of this non-value adding waste is built into products - well, in the case of razor blades, it would seem half of the cost to the customer is wholly without value. The Dollar Shave Club is doing the same thing the music, video and book download people did - cut out all of that wasteful bricks, mortar, packaging and handling that added no value to the product. The companies - like P&G and Energizer, the combatants in the absurd court case - are so steeped in the notion that the massive waste under the brand management umbrella is not only necessary but critical to success they are unlikely to ever see competitors like the Dollar Shave Club coming. Both P&G and Energizer, companies about which I have a fair amount of knowledge concerning their lean efforts, are great at scooping up the pennies on their shop floors wasted on poor quality, unnecessary material handling and labor inefficiencies. But they are blind to the buckets of dollars they waste as a result of their core business models. This narrow definition of lean - viewing it as a factory issue, rather than an enterprise issue - is way to common. Easy enough to assume it applies to everyone else, but not you, right up until some guy with a smart-assed YouTube video renders your entire sales and marketing organization obsolete, and your distribution channels unnecessary. ### One Size Never Fits All URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/one-size-never-fits-all/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:54:01.000Z It seems as though a potato chip company called Route 11 went from nothing to a decent little business largely by offering a variety of different types of chips (crisps for our friends who worry about God saving the Queen). And it would also seem that lot sizes and delivery frequency have an impact on their ability to make money by offering a lot of different varieties. So they reduced the number of types of chips they sell. And so we have an economist turned professor turned marketing expert sagely observing, "*Determining the best product assortment often involves balancing the financial gains of operating efficiency with the long-term value of the brand. Overly broad assortments can lead to direct and indirect costs that hurt overall profitability*. *For some brands, overly narrow assortments can undermine their value."* The professor is right about one thing - skinnying the product line undermines value. He is dead wrong - or at least has based his thinking on an assumption that is dead wrong - on the other half of his equation. He assumes that the costs of small lot sizes and more frequent deliveries are static - somehow chiseled on the flip side of the tablets Moses brought down from the Mount -the essence of economy of scale thinking. *"In Route 11’s case, packaging costs were lower for high-volume flavors relative to low-volume flavors because they could negotiate quantity discounts from the company that printed graphics on the bags. There were also less-quantifiable costs associated with so many flavors, but these costs certainly affected the bottom line. Producing fewer flavors would decrease the number of flavor-related changeovers the production line had to make. Each time the production process was stopped to change to another flavor, equipment had to be washed down thoroughly. Also, retailers that carried some of the slower-selling flavors had to allocate shelf space to them, which sometimes left too little space for the big* sellers." While all of that accounting logic may well be true enough, reduce the changeover time and devise a JIT delivery scheme and - poof! - bottom line impact goes up in smoke. On the other hand, accept the professor's logic - follow it to its logical conclusion and eventually end up with one type of potato chip that can be mass produced in staggering quantities and delivered in bulk ... and go head to head with every other mass producing one-chip-fits-all potato chip maker and ultimately fail. Unless, of course, you can 'innovate' and conjure up an entirely new type of potato chip that can be produced in staggering volumes that is better than the other guys' ... and then hope they don't 'innovate' something that puts you back at square one. The real root of the problem is that every market consists of a whole bunch of niches of one. No two people share a common opinion of the perfect potato chip - or the perfect anything else. The bulk items are perfect for no one - they are simply close enough for enough people to buy them, but virtually everyone is open to switching potato chips if one comes along that is closer to their view of perfection. Lean, with its small lot sizes and frequent deliveries, is the key to economically providing a broader range of products, leading to greater customer appeal, leading to more sales, leading to more profits. Economy of scale, mass production thinking is the path that inevitably leads to mediocrity, at best. It forces sales and marketing to push one-size-fits-all solutions onto a customer base where, in fact, one-size fits-no one. Price reductions (which means cost reductions which means China), promotions and coupons, clever advertising and the rest are the tools required to force fit hopefully 'close enough' products into markets comprised of niches of one. In most companies, sales and marketing are completely detached from lean thinking, and lean tools are deployed in a fruitless attempt to improve costs in a mass market, economy of scale business model. Too bad. The emerging frontier in lean is sales and marketing. The good folks at Route 11 ought to think about checking it out. Or they could follow the professor's logic and how they do against the likes of Frito-Lay selling one-chip-fits-all at Walmart. ### The Reshoring Story of GE Appliances URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-reshoring-story-of-ge-appliances/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:54:31.000Z Perhaps I'm just an optimist, but it's starting to seem like the discussion on manufacturing in America is changing. Just a year or two ago it was a struggle to find anyone - outside of manufacturing that is - that believed that the U.S. could be a manufacturing powerhouse again. Richard McCormack's *Manufacturing & Technology News* puts this on display in it's latest issue with a story and accompanying interviews on GE Appliances. Unfortunately most of what I will quote here requires a $495 subscription, but that could almost be worth the stories in this issue. *After decades of neglect, General Electric has a newfound love affair with its appliance manufacturing division. The 122-year-old company created by Thomas Edison has recommitted itself to developing and producing a new line of innovative products in America. It is re-invigorating its 900-acre Appliance Park located in Louisville with $1 billion of investment in a new generation of designers, engineers, workers and production systems. And for the first time, it is applying the lean methodology to all of its operations.* It's a pretty big deal, but perhaps even bigger is the realization - and example - that even the worst outsourcers can learn that total supply chain cost can trump supposed "cheap labor" savings. *When asked by Manufacturing and Technology News if the 80 percent drop-off of manufacturing workers was caused by robotics, automation and high levels of productivity, virtually every GE person who responded said the same thing: No. The loss was due to offshore outsourcing.* So what did they do? *In moving production back to the United States, GE decided that every aspect of the water heater needed to be redesigned through a team approach under a lean planning system that included GE’s sales division, designers, product and process engineers, accountants, executives and workers. It included the involvement of plumbers, retailers and customers. Anybody involved was allowed to suggest improvements. “What this shows is what can happen when we all sit down and work together,” said GE International Union of Electrical Workers President Jerry Carney.* *In the process, it made the unit more affordable, reducing the retail price from $1,599 for the product made in China to $1,199 to $1,299 for the unit manufactured in Louisville. The production line uses the common lean practice of a “pull” system based on demand. There are visual controls. Inventory is in plain sight. The factory is bright,* The article goes into considerable detail on those changes, including the fact that they can only claim "Produced in America," not "Made in America" because they could not find a domestic source for some key components required to achieve the domestic content rule. Sad, but perhaps that will change too. And you read that right - the factory is still unionized. In two accompanying articles Richard interviews both key company officials as well as the union chief. First from the company side of things. *Q: When you were considering moving production of the water heater from China to Louisville, were labor costs a major consideration?* *Rick Calvaruso \[Appliances Lean Leader\]: The cost of wages is only one factor. What you have to look at is total cost of the whole product. When you make a product far away from where consumers buy it, you have costs of shipping, duties, customs and you have to carry more inventory.* *Keith Burkhardt \[Marketing Manager\]: You can respond quicker if your factory is domestic. You have time on the water when you manufacture a product abroad. It takes time to respond to fluctuations in demand. We had a very successful promotion last fall where we sold more units than we expected to and as a result we were out of stock for a lot longer than we would have been had we had a domestic factory.* *Q: Do you think what you are doing can be replicated by other large OEMs that have outsourced so much of their production?* *Rich Calvaruso: We hired \[lean export\] John Shook \[chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute\] to coach us and I’ll just tell you what John said. He said that he normally doesn’t care whether or not a company does lean well. “But you guys are GE. You guys matter. What you are doing here is not only important for GE Appliances Louisville, Kentucky, it’s important for the whole country.” So some of us say, “Wow, that is pretty impressive.” But somebody has to show the way because we can do these things. This is a real. This is a real factory, with real people making real stuff.* *Steve Downer \[Product General Manager\]: There will be a lot of eyes on this place and we welcome it because these are really exciting times.* *Q: Do you think the United States will see a big insourcing trend?* *Steve Downer: I think it’s going to be case by case \[based on\] very thorough analysis. I would expect every company to evaluate why this is a good business.* *Rick Calvaruso: There are a lot of things being talked about outside of here. If you listen to what \[James\] Womack \[founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute\] says, the momentum starts to build back. The whole notion of going to the cheapest labor place isn’t always the best answer. You see continued inflation in China. It’s not as cheap as you think to put stuff on a boat and ship it half way across the world. Plus you have to have all the inventory and you have to hope six weeks or eight weeks before a customer wants to buy it that you bought the right stuff. The world changes fast. People may want something different and if you have to wait a long time, they’re going to buy something else.* And from IUE union president Jerry Carney: *Q: There is widespread perception that unions have killed American manufacturing because they have refused to budge. They got paid too much and stuck with their old work rules. One worker only does one thing. The union’s militancy in trying to protect jobs has meant they’ve lost them all.* *Carney: That’s all changed. We know we have to be globally competitive. We know we can’t just look at what’s happening right here. We have to look at other appliance manufacturers to make sure we are competitive with them, otherwise we will lose our jobs. If I keep a closed mind and keep my eye only on my union hall, then I’m not doing my workforce any good because these jobs will leave here in a heartbeat.* *Q: Why did it take GE so long to wake up to lean?* *Carney: I don’t know.* *Q: How about you as a union?* *Carney: Our union international president Jim Clark is a big promoter of lean. He comes out of the automotive industry. Years ago, he was watching all of these manufacturers closing down and said that if IUE didn’t embrace lean, we would be closed down as a whole. He was in Evansville, Ind., at Whirlpool represented by the IUE. They closed down last year. It was the same size facility as our refrigeration plant with the same number of employees. It closed and went to Mexico. Lean will help us bring jobs back.* *Q: Does the lean focus on eliminating waste mean eliminating jobs?* *Carney: It’s not always a person that is waste. Lean takes the waste out of a process, but if we have waste and we have two people able to do a job that three people can do, you pull that third person out and take $40,000 or $50,000 off that line. We become more competitive with Mexico or China. Our agreement with General Electric is if I can take one person off the line, we’re going to create another job for that person and it will help us bring back more work from overseas. There is no layoff.* No layoffs for lean improvement policies are common, but at a company like GE? Are pigs flying? And we've been telling you about the [Whirlpool nonsense for years](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool-evansville-dies-the-unnecessary-but-expected-death/). The main story and accompanying interviews are several pages long and also discuss the issues with skills and hiring, government regulations (from both sides), struggles at other GE facilities, and struggles with suppliers. I wish I could reprint more here, but that would be doing Richard a disservice for a great piece of reporting in Manufacturing & Technology News. As for GE - this is a good story. But GE doesn't exactly have the best reputation from a manufacturing in America standpoint, so the proof will be in the pudding. We'll be watching. ### Gettin' Geeky About It URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gettin-geeky-about-it/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:54:54.000Z I recently had the opportunity to help a client hire a new operations leader - and the job went to the person who was "geekiest" about manufacturing. An interesting qualification but a critical one. The company had a unique approach to interviewing and assessing the finalist candidates that included beginning the day with having the candidates take the first half hour to talk to the assembled senior management team about whatever the candidate wanted to tell them. The rest of the day followed more traditional lines - a series of interviews with various people who asked them more traditional questions. Most candidates devoted that half hour to what you would expect - a review of their resume and life history, expressions of commitment to their families, a lot of talk about their personal interests, and so forth. The person who got the job was a guy who tried to do the same but was constituionally incapable of sticking to his script. Time after time when his self-description touched on manufacturing he would stray down some manufacturing rabbit trail with a passion he could not control. Turns out that is exactly what the company wanted in their operations leader - someone for whom manufacturing was not just a career but a passion. It was their head of marketing who called it out. Her criticism of the first candidate of the series who came in for the interview was that he didn't get "all geeky about it". She wanted someone running the factory who sailed right over her head with his knowledge and enthusiasm. The good manufacturing consultants I know are that way. They do what they do because they love everything about manufacturing. I know I'm that way. The real motivator for me is that I get to go into a lot of factories and meet a lot of manufacturing people. Hanging around factories and talking about manufacturing is as good as it gets for me. My best boss was a real geek -not much in the way od social skills, naive and completely uninterested in office politics - obsessed with the operations and everything about them. Dean Ruwe from Copeland where I had my first real exposure to lean was a manufacturing geek - a bit more polished but just as obsessed with diving into every new idea and exploring every nuance of production. When I think about the companies I know that are really outstanding, every one of them has one or more people in positions of serious influence who would fit that marketing leader's criteria - they 'get all geeky about it' whenever they have the opportunity. Most companies have operations folks who are technically competent, solid resumes with good experience, but they do their jobs with professional detachment. The good ones are not capable of such detachment. They do what they do because they love it. Their spouses have accepted the fact that the geeks will come home at the end of the day and talk abut manufacturing. The geeks will leave trails of books and articles behind them at work and at home,and somehow manage to find like-minded geeks at parties, in airports and in just about any other social setting. The business world has fully accepted the inevitability of geeks in IT and accounting. It needs to do the same in manufacturing. Geeks are life-long learners, passionate explorers of ideas, Quixotic in their unreachable quest for technical perfection, and most energized when debating the arcane points of their trade with other geeks. As such, they transcend people with strong, but static, credentials. It is increasingly apparent to me that finding the geeks in the organization, hiring new ones, and promoting and supporting the geeks is a critical element of transforming the organization from being technically strong to being extraordinary. ### A Great Manufacturing Story URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-great-manufacturing-story/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:55:11.000Z If you love manufacturing, you gotta love this story - ### Sorry Apple, Not This Time URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/sorry-apple-not-this-time/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:56:23.000Z The rumors are that Apple will be announcing the new iPad 3 on March 7th. For the first time in a few years I won't be one of the drooling Apple groupies standing in line for hours - or days - to get the latest Jobsonian creation. I'm sure it will be great. The specs are incredible, and presumably just like other Apple devices it will continue to help many people work better. [Bill](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2011/10/stretching-the-eulogical-boundaries.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com)[ and I](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stretching-the-eulogical-boundaries/) may disagree on whether that's "innovation" but we agree on a [fundamental aspect](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beyond-just-words-what-apple-could-do/) of the company itself. And this time that will override my desire for their latest product. You reach a point where your moral compass overrides the desire for a great product. And that's where I am, and probably should have been sooner. Apple has known about the problems at its outsourced Chinese factories for years. It pays lip service to solving the problems by doing audits and and sending out press releases reiterating how they are supposedly concerned about worker safety. Again and again. And nothing really changes. Enough. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, it is time for something beyond just words, and with nearly $100 billion in the bank Apple could truly change the dynamic - if they wanted to. At a bare, relatively inexpensive, minimum they could have permanent observers in the factories. They could set deadlines and requirements for real change after which they would relocate manufacturing. They could invest a billion - pocket change to them - in innovating manufacturing to a level where the supposed "cost" of workers is no longer a concern. As if it ever was at their margins. But they didn't and they probably won't. To be fair, it's not just Apple. Not by a long shot. The same situation exists with almost every company that chases "cheap labor" around the world. Just by nature of the mindset and traditional financial analysis that considers workers a "cost" rather than an asset, the drive will be to get more from less which inevitably leads to the issues we now see in China and elsewhere. Nike, Victoria's Secret, toys for the London Olympics, fish from Indonesia, and just today Johnson Controls - again in China. Lean folks regularly talk about the importance of respect for people. Moral people talk about the importance of human dignity. It's time we live it, and really mean it. Some companies also claim to be lean and conveniently ignore that core component, and some companies that don't necessarily claim to be lean - like Apple - still tout that they are supposedly socially aware. And then they effectively condone the mistreatment of workers, year after year. It's time they shape up or ship out, and we let them know that we do consider it important. For me, Apple sitting on $100 billion and paying Tim Cook $189,000 per hour while not doing anything real about the problem in its factories is just too much. They just lost a $700 sale. I realize it's not even a drop in the bucket, but perhaps others will feel the same way. ### Indra You Ain't No Charlie Guth URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/indra-you-aint-no-charlie-guth/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:56:56.000Z Suppose you are in charge of Pepsi and things aren't going so good - sales stagnant, profits lagging. What do you do? The lady in charge these days, Indra Nooyi, is doing exactly what her resume drives her to do. With two MBA's (one from India and one from Yale), a career in marketing and consulting with Booz Allen, Indra knows one strategy and one strategy only - lay off 8,700 people and invest the savings in advertising. The people cuts will manifest themselves in the form of fewer facilities, consolidating and inevitably extending delivery chains and increasing inventory - but Yale doesn't know how to dollarize those things and it does know how to put dollar signs in front of headcount, so there you have it. Pepsi prices went up last year because the cost of corn syrup went up, and Indra hopes that won't be necessary again this year. Maybe Indra doesn't know who Charlie Guth is, or maybe she does and writes him off as an unsophisticated man from an unsophisticated time and doesn't see where there is much to learn from him. Too bad for Pepsi either way. Guth was not the inventor of Pepsi but the guy who bought the rights and built it into what it has become. In the earliest days - the mid-1930's - with sales and profits foundering, Guth took a tack that would shock Indra and her ilk. Soft drinks were sold in 6 ounce bottles in those days, but Charlie changed all that. He doubled the size of the bottle without changing the price - 12 ounces of Pepsi for the same price. Profits and sales boomed and Pepsi never looked back. Raise prices, reduce staff, extend supply chains, and invest in creating a greater illusion of value - Indra's approach - the polar opposite of the Guth approach - the proven approach that made Pepsi a soft drink powerhouse - give the customers twice as much value for their money. What makes Indra's strategy even less likely to succeed is that she is up against a Coke that is beginning to get it. The Pepsi investment in advertising is classical impression based thinking - create the impression that Pepsi is cool. Coke boss Muhtar Kent says, "*The day today is no longer a day where we create consumer impressions. The day today is one where we need to, every single day, create new consumer expressions – positive expressions, instead of impressions. What that means is networking. What that means is every day – if we’re successful – there will be positive consumer expressions – consumers are going to talk about our brands in the way we want them to talk about our brands. Because we’re every day learning from our consumers, and that’s really the single biggest innovation for us*" In short - don't waste time telling people how to think, but use social media to accelerate word of mouth from satisfied customers. Given the Pepsi twin towers can debacle - the 'impression' they created was one of pandering to Middle East sentiments to use the 9/11 tragedy to peddle more Pepsi to the Arab world, giving way to 'expressions' of outrage and widespread boycott when the cans were sold to American soldiers in Iraq - it seems Indra has a lot to learn from her competitor, as well. Let's hope the impressions Pepsi creates with the $500-600 million advertising spend creates a better impression than the past spending. Probably more threatening to Pepsi is that Muhtar Kent, when asked about pricing in light of the corn syrup cost increase, recently said, "*Pricing at Coke depends on what consumes will pay, not company costs*." There is nothing in Indra's track record to indicate she has the vaguest inkling of what Kent is talking about. Most telling, to me anyway, is the Pepsi strategy under Indra's leadership - specifically selling off YUM! Brands (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, etc...) and investing in liquid oatmeal and a range of 'healthy' products. Given the mediocre (at best) performance of those ideas, and the booming success of YUM! it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the strategy was based more on a theory of customer needs than the reality. Drinkable oatmeal may well be better for me, but what I want is a bucket of original recipe, a meat lover's pizza, and a couple of chalupa's. Indra seems to be quite out of touch with the people who actually buy her products. The lesson to take from all of this is that the missing element in Pepsi's strategy is value. Charlie Guth understood the way out of trouble was to improve the value proposition. Coke seems to have that idea down pat, as well. Until Pepsi figures it out, the 'cola wars' are going to be pretty one-sided. ### Why Idiots Should Not Have Access to Printing Presses URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-idiots-should-not-have-access-to-typewriters/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:57:42.000Z You can't really blame Baltimore Sun writer Julie Bykowicz for writing nonsense - after all she's a journalist and, by definition an expert at nothing except the high art of avoiding ending sentences with prepositions and the like. And you can't blame the San Francisco Chronicle for publishing her story - after all it was critical of Newt Gingrich and the knee-jerk lefties at the Chronicle are not capable of objective thinking. It is deep in their DNA to agree with anything critical of a guy like Gingrich. But Bloomberg-Business Week? They have no excuse. Ms. Bykowicz wrote a piece for B-BW titled "Gingrich Names-Drops Business Idea Touted by Super-PAC Supporter". The business idea Gingrich is so insidiously touring? Lean Six Sigma. Wrote Julie with all the keen insight of sea slug: "*Gingrich has uttered the term “Lean Six Sigma” at least 28 times since August in campaign appearances, debates and media interviews, a review of transcripts and news accounts shows. At the same time, Mike George, the investor who has written six books on Lean Six Sigma, paid for mailings, handouts and automated phone calls backing Gingrich in the Iowa caucuses and South Carolina primary last month.* *George’s financial support comes through a political action committee, Strong America Now, which he created and solely funds. The dynamic illustrates a new way for wealthy individuals to leverage the high visibility of a presidential election as a public-relations tool for a specific company, product or message*." Did Julie call any of you, me, Jim Womack, Norman Bodek, even the local community college professor to ask the first thing about lean or Six Sigma? Of course not, or she would have learned that (1) Mike George is not the originator of the idea and (2) is probably so far down the list of consultants and authors who might benefit from a national commitment to the idea as to be irrelevant. Instead, she talked to a crank from Public Citizen - a Washington outfit dedicated to the proposition that, if business does something - anything - it must be evil. Said the Public Citizen expert on lean Six Sigma, "*This goes beyond the concern about coordination, and smack dab into the concern of having a mutually profitable business relationship between a super-PAC and a presidential candidate. There's Gingrich out there selling Mike George's book while Mike George helps to promote Gingrich's candidacy. That's kind of amazing*." What is amazing is that Gingrich is promoting an idea aimed at rooting waste out of government and heightening the value of government efforts for the benefit of its customers - us - and Julie, the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg-Business Week, Washington liberal think tanks, and just about every left leaning blogger on the Internet line up against the idea without bothering to learn the first thing about it. The fact that the Army, Navy and the Air Force are all pursuing lean, Six Sigma and the blend of the two - and are paying someone other than Mike George to help them - is a fact that a cursory Google search would uncover. But that effort would make too much sense and, even worse, would kill an opportunity for Julie to peddle a hot story and for those who publish her work, to demonize Gingrich. ### Necessary and Valuable are not the same URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/necessary-and-valuable-are-not-the-same/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:58:12.000Z Heather Peters is not someone you have likely heard of - unless you are a lawyer, that is, or Honda. In that case, you have not only heard of her but are probably either furious with her, or scared to death of her. Honda, it seems, sold a couple hundred thousand hybrid Civics billed to get 50mpg. Turns out they only got 30\. In traditional fashion, the bottom feeders of the legal profession jumped in, a class action law suit was filed, Honda negotiated a deal, the car onwers got a hundred bucks and a gift certificate toward their next Honda, and the lawyers pocketed millions in legal fees. Only Heather didn't go along with the deal. In California small claims court, the rules are no claims over $10K and no lawyrs allowed. Heather, being a California resident, said no thanks to the hundred bucks and filed a claim in small claims court. The 'no lawyers allowed' rule meant Honda had to send someone from management to defend the case. The facts being on Heather's side, she won a shade under the $10K max, and lawyers got zip. She launched a web site to help everyone get the same deal, and the class action lawyers are facing the pathetic reality that, for years they have been getting rich while adding next to no value for their clients, and the jig may very well be up. They are facing the brutal reality that they may well go the way of the horse and Blockbuster Video store. In like fashion, the Super Bowl garnered some 115 million viewers, and peddled ads for $3.5 million a pop to reach them - about 3 cents a look. The folks at Old Milwaukee, after pounding a few of their own products to get the creative juices flowing I imagine, opted out of the $3.5 million national spot and sprung for $1,500 to run a local spot during the big game in North Platte, Nebraska - the second smallest market in the nation. They then followed it up with a social network blitz and to date have had better than 150K looks - about 1 cent per view, and it is getting more YouTube action than all of the big time ads. Seems as though better than 99% of the $3.5 million ad price wasn't adding much value. These kinds of things are happening all the time, where long standing assumptions about the way things simply are and have to be are being stood on their ear. In my seminars I typically grab any two identical items I can find - water bottles, coffee cups, pens ... and hold them up and ask people if they would pay more for one than the other because the provider of one of them had to ship it from 2,000 miles further away than the provider of the other one; if they would pay more for one than the other if it had a higher inventory carrying cost, or had to cover the cost of a larger IT department. Of course the answer is no. None of those things make the product any more valuable to the customer. The attendees, however, quite often come back by telling me that those things are *necessary* \- logistics, administration, IT, quality control are costs that are *necessary* \- no avoiding them - so they are an essential element of creating the product, and therefore are an element of the value of the product. They are an essential element right up until someone comes along and figures out how to provide the product without them. Lawyers were *necessary* to right a coprorate wrong - right up until Heather came along; and Super Bowl ads were the purview of the mega advertisers, and the associate cost structure was *necessary*, until the folks at Old Mil had an idea. Rationalizing costs that do not add value in the eyes of customers as *necessary* and unavoidable is just so much whistling past the graveyard - a graveyard full of buggy makers and Blockbuster Video store owners, with holes being dug as we speak for lawyers and ad execs, and there is apt to be plenty of room in that graveyard for you if you believe that '*necessary*' and '*valuable*' mean the same thing. ### The Independence of the French URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/french-independence/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T17:58:34.000Z A recent Wall Street Journal article on French parenting methods has been rattling around in my noggin for a week so I've got to do something about it to free up some aging neurons. Yes it is bizarre, especially since I shouldn't relate - my "kids" are named "spontaneity" and "early retirement." Because of that I'm smart enough not to wade into a French vs U.S. parenting style debate - I know every situation is unique, every kid is unique, and it is far harder than I can imagine. But so be it, there were a couple interesting points in the article that could be applied to lean leadership. At least obliquely, so please bear with me. The primary gist of the article is that French kids are far better behaved than U.S. kids. *Bean \[author's U.S. kid\] would take a brief interest in the food, but within a few minutes she was spilling salt shakers and tearing apart sugar packets. Then she demanded to be sprung from her high chair so she could dash around the restaurant and bolt dangerously toward the docks. Our strategy was to finish the meal quickly.* *I started noticing that the French families around us didn't look like they were sharing our mealtime agony. Weirdly, they looked like they were on vacation. French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There was no shrieking or whining. And there was no debris around their tables.* *Though by that time I'd lived in France for a few years, I couldn't explain this. And once I started thinking about French parenting, I realized it wasn't just mealtime that was different. I suddenly had lots of questions. Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French playgrounds, I'd never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn't my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn't their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?* So why is that? The author proposed two points that were of interest to me. The first is independence. *When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.* *The French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.* This explains something that has bugged me for years - the concept of "boredom." All kinds of people around me seem to get bored, regardless of whether they are highly-educated or not, industrious or not, surrounded by friends and family or not. Turn off the TV for five minutes and they go nuts. I don't get it - I can't remember the last time I was bored. Put me in a room with white walls and I can entertain myself with my thoughts and ideas for days. Hmmm... maybe those should be padded white walls? *In a 2004 study on the parenting beliefs of college-educated mothers in the U.S. and France, the American moms said that encouraging one's child to play alone was of average importance. But the French moms said it was very important.* But I grew up in Peru in the middle of a military dictatorship - kids didn't really venture out much. There were only three TV stations, in Spanish. We had to learn how to entertain ourselves. Perhaps this is a vital skill? And this is where the first concept of self-sufficiency ties in with the second: education vs. discipline. *The French, I found, seem to have a whole different framework for raising kids. When I asked French parents how they disciplined their children, it took them a few beats just to understand what I meant. "Ah, you mean how do we educate them?" they asked. "Discipline," I soon realized, is a narrow, seldom-used notion that deals with punishment. Whereas "educating" (which has nothing to do with school) is something they imagined themselves to be doing all the time.* *One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat.* I don't want to imply that organizations and leaders and people are like parents and kids, but there is perhaps a lesson. Discipline or education? When you go on your gemba walks are you looking for issues to resolve, perhaps by edict, or are you looking to mentor and coach and educate? Are you grooming a set of managers dependent on you for leadership and decisions, or are you creating a new crop of independent thinking and decisionmaking leaders? ### A Few Observations URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/by-bill-waddell-a-few-observations/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:07:34.000Z **A curious observation on the Apple article** Kevin covered the New York Times Apple article quite well, so I won't repeat. I had to point out, however, the curious incongruity between the Dow Corning exec who said they had to make the glass in China, rather than in their plant in Kentucky because " *We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas*." Makes sense. Somehow that logic has eluded the Chinaphiles at Apple who can't seem to hang a $$$ on the 35 days and, as a result, pay to have that same glass shipped by slow boat back to the USA embedded in their products. Also, I appreciate Kevin making the disclaimer that he owns the whole Apple line-up. Good idea for us to disclose any personal interest we have in the companies we mention in EE, so I will do the same: I own nothing made by Apple. The thought of sending a nickel earned from my work with lean companies to those guys - even a single iTunes download - is abhorrent to me. **The Outsider, not Insider Trading is Killing Us** The President forcefully asserted his expectation that Congress pass a bill banning insider trading among the distinguished gentlemen and gentlewomen leading us, and that honored group was only too happy to join him on such lofty moral ground. We might want to be more concerned about what they are doing right out in the open light of day. For the last few decades Congress - with rare but total bipartisan support - has passed a stream of bills fueling the housing boom, most notably their near unanimous support for Fannie and Freedy to keep the boom well energized. They have also been all for deregulating the financial sector, providing tax breaks to oil companies and investing taxpayer money in fostering innovation. At the same time they went along with an endless stream of regulations and trade agreements crushing manufacturing with an unbearable burden, going along with the theory that it was a thing of the past - better done in China. Perhaps it is nothing - you can be the judge of that - but this is the wealthiest Congress in history, and where they put the almost $2 billion they have to invest in recent years: A coincidence that they put 93% of their money into the economic activities in which they have a personal stake, and sit idly by while the sectors in which they have no stake go to hell in a hand cart? The 'All other' includes a hefty chunk of oil & gas, and computer/Internet. You might want to spend a little time bouncing around OpenSecrets.org, the source of this data. It is always good to know who bought and paid for your representaives in Washington. By the way, what group is Barrack Obama's leading financial backer? Unions? Environmentalists? Not even close. The correct answer is Wall Street. **Another Great Article (and not just because they quoted me, although I may be biased)** Inc Magazine published a piece by Eric Markowitz about the benefits of re-shoring manufacturing, citing a interesting apparel company called American Giant. Their gig: "*At American Giant, we eliminate all the unnecessary layers of traditional selling and marketing: big advertising budgets, fancy retail stores, expensive wholesale partners. That leaves us room to bring American Made craftsmanship to you at a great value, made here. So what’s the downside? We ask you to tolerate purchasing on our website before actually putting your hands on the garment. That’s why we offer free shipping both ways. If you are not 100% satisfied, send your product back and we’ll refund the total price*." In the article, "Exposing the Myths about American Manufacturing", American Giant suggests that it is a matter of time before cloting goes the way of books, videos and music and becomes primarily an Internet based market without the waste and cost of the middle men. They cite Zara ([a company we have mentioned often](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/gotta-get-their-heads-out-of-the-buckets/)) as a model for the direction retailing is going, and take it a step further. **Gotta love Margaret Thatcher** It is often difficult to find something new to write about in Evolving Excellence. The insanity of the Wall Street driven multi-nationals and thei off-shore foibles, success stories among many small and mid-sized domestic manufacturers, nonsense from government that would be humorous if it were not so destructive to so many hard working people ... how many different wasy can we comment on the same things. And then I came across a great quote from the iron lady: "*Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story*." ### It Takes the Patience of Saints URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/it-takes-the-patience-of-saints/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:08:00.000Z If ever a man deserves sainthood it is John Vicklund of Impact Washington - the MEP out there. By way of background, the governor - Christine Gregoire - has gone all in on lean. She has reduced the number of government agencies and departments, has everyone engaged in value stream mapping and has made lean mandatory for the whole state government. So far, so good - in fact, so far, great. Someone came up with the idea that an executive order from the governor was not good enough. All of leadership should stand in support, hence House Bill 2138 Maximizing the Use of Lean Strategies in State Government. A hearing was held a couple of weeks back so the august members of the Washington State Legislature could investigate the matter before deciding whether to support it. If you have a little better than a half hour and need some comic/tragic relief you can view the hearing. Settle in for a clown parade the Ringling Brothers would envy. First up, John explains lean in layman's terms to the committee, citing a value stream mapping exercise that had recently been conducted including state employees from several agencies aimed at rooting out all of the redundancy and needless waste and delay facing small businesses when they have to deal with the state. Then the comedy begins. First up is a career political hack by the name of Gary Alexander. Concerning all of the waste, redundancy and delay facing small business, he says, "*we have been knowing this for three decades, so why do we need a new process?*" I would have come unglued and said something like, "*Precisely* *because you do-nothing, pin-headed morons have known about it for three decades and have done jack squat about it*." John, however, after pausing for a moment clearly trying to figure out how to formulate a non-offensive response to such an inane question, goes on to do just that. How he maintained his composure in the face of such idiocy I cannot possibly imagine. Next out of the chute is a lawyer named Arthur West from some outfit called the Northwest Poverty Law Center. After qualifying himself with the acknowledgment that he knows nothing about lean, and has not bothered to take the time to learn the first thing about lean, he launches into a tirade about the ineffectiveness of it, declaring that improvement can only come from slashing headcount. He ends with the proclamation that lean is the purview of condo-living, brie eating, chardonnay sipping consultants who do nothing but toss buzz words about. For Crissakes, Kevin is a brie-eating chardonnay sipper, but I am a midwestern wings and beer guy. Brie and chardonnay are left coast things - not lean things. I even had to look up how to spell chardonnay to write this post. The real issue is why this guy was allowed to speak at all. In any other forum in which you begin by announcing that you know absolutely nothing about the topic at hand and haven't spent a minute trying to learn, you are promptly told to shut up and quit wasting everyone's time. Not here, of course, where we see democracy in action. It doesn't end there, however. Another blowhard named representative Overstreet weighs in with the observation that lean may well work in the private sector because the profit motive creates an incentive to improve, but for the life of him he can't see why anyone in state government should want to improve. Through it all, long after I would have reached the limits of my professional vocabulary and arrived at the point at which I could not respond to any of these guys without dropping an f-bomb, John maintains his composure, although it is painful to watch him struggle to do so. One sane voice on the panel, Representative Miloscia who is the sponsor of the bill, tries in vain to put in a plug for some funding for leadership training for the various state agency department heads, but his peers will have none of it. No doubt every nickel they could sweep up in the state treasury has been invested in pork and stuffed into every barrel they can find - none left for leadership training. To John's great relief, the cavalry finally arrives in the form of Wendy Korthuis-Smith from the governor's office who politely informs the 'idiots on parade' that they really don't need their money. The governor has gone begging, hat in hand, and lean outfits around the state such as Boeing and the Seattle Children's Hospital have volunteered experts to do the training. The governor just thought it would be nice if the the state employees could see that the representatives stood with the governor for the long haul in supporting the cultural change lean represents. With that, the reps decided that, so long as no one was spending any money they guessed lean was OK by them. And with that rousing support they all went home ... for a well deserved brie and chardonnay refreshment break after another tough day dealing with the affairs of state no doubt. ### Lean Chickens 1 Fat Lions 0 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/lean-chickens-1-fat-lions-0/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:08:27.000Z So .... Golden Bear Ltd gets the contract to produce the official mascot for the 2012 British Olymic Team, and decides labor costs - excuse me, labour costs - are way too high in England to make them there. So they make them in China and, as a result of 26p per hour Chinese labor is able to sell this thing for $20 (12.99 pounds). Meanwhile, West Paw Design in Montana makes something called a Spring Chicken - 2" bigger and filled with recycled material (instead of God knows what Golden Bear's Chinese friends put in the Lion), pays something like $15 an hour and sells it for $14\. West Paw is a profitable, rapidly growing, enterprise. Maybe the difference is that British accountants are mostly a serious, professional bunch who would not be caught dead working without a suit and tie, and just maybe those ties are choking the flow of oxygen to their brains, while the last West Paw accountant I saw was wearing blue jeans and a sweat shirt to work. Maybe the problem is that Golden Bear has to factor the cost of their "*Hong Kong office which, co-ordinates production and oversees quality in the manufacture of product*.", while West Paw "*coordinates production and oversees quality*" through kanbans and hiring the best people Bozeman has to offer. Or maybe the problem is that I have never seen Golden Bear - or any other British company for that matter - at the Lean Accounting Summit while West Paw sent a small army last year. West Paw seems to have 'labour' in a bit better perspective. In all seriousness, there is no excuse for a manufacturer in England, the USA or anywhere else, making critical decisions based on traditional accounting. ### Beyond Just Words - What Apple Could Do URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/beyond-just-words-what-apple-could-do/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:09:20.000Z The New York Times created a deserved furor last week with their article describing how the U.S. supposedly can't compete with China on manufacturing - specifically the manufacturing of Apple products. As our fellow blogger Mark Graban points out in an excellent summary of that article, we shouldn't want to compete in that manner. The stories of worker abuse and managerial tyranny are appalling. Time magazine, in typical Time "hey please read us too" fashion, jumped on the bandwagon with an article on the human price of success. And Apple CEO Tim Cook tried to deflect the PR carnage with a long email describing all that Apple supposedly does. Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge fan of Apple... products. I [made the leap](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/today-i-left-th/) from PC to Mac a few years ago and haven't looked back. I also own an iPhone and iPad, a 27" Thunderbolt display, use iTunes - the whole kit and kaboodle. Those that haven't used Apple products for more than a few hours simply don't understand - the bloomin' stuff just works - and works like I want it to work - every time all the time. That has value, and is why I happily pay more for Apple products. Just this past weekend I watched a friend spend nearly an hour trying to get his Android phone to do what he wanted it to do. Wow. Really? There's a reason why less than 1% of Apple users leave Apple. I've heard several people call Tim Cook the world's greatest supply chain executive. Sorry, I've never bought that. Tim Cook executed a traditional "chase cheap labor" supply chain strategy in a great way. But in my book that's not excellence - that's being the shining star of lemmings - the golden sheep if you will. The China factory isn't necessarily a bad thing - one valid reason to have a factory overseas is to be closer to your customers, and there are a lot of potential customers in that part of the world. But as nearly a singular factory serving the whole world? With employees that are abused? Sorry, no dice. Apple, and Tim Cook, has done some good things. They do audit their supplier's factories more than most companies. They are taking some strong workers rights positions in their industry. They are opening their kimono and exposing more of their dirty laundry. Apple has $96 billion in the bank - think of what they could do. More than just words and policy statements and such. They could significantly increase the wages of their employees in China - even if they doubled their wages Apple would still have record profits. But that could actually cause more harm than good. Many workers simply want to earn enough to eventually go back to their home town or help their remote families. Some social destabilization dynamics need to be understood. However consider this, Mr. Cook: How about immediately hiring and sending an Apple observer into every plant, perhaps every line in every plant, full time. That way Foxconn wouldn't be able to shift workers from one line to another to hide abuses before audits occurred. How much would that cost? A million or two a year? Put Foxconn on notice that this is not acceptable, with milestones that could transfer manufacturing elsewhere. Difficult? Sure. Ethical business often is. How about publicly saying (words...) that chasing low cost labor is not a long-term "manufacturing" option and then back it up by sinking a billion or two into developing truly innovative manufacturing methods and systems. Imagine what could happen if the same level of design prowess that was applied to product design was applied to manufacturing design. Perhaps Apple could become the next Toyota - instead of just another cheap labor chaser lemming. I could go on - and I'm sure there are lots of other ideas out there. The bottom line is that thanks to its success - built on the backs of abused workers - Apple has the unique opportunity to change a global dynamic. But that will take more than just words. As my friend Shrikant Kalegaonkar tweeted this morning, the world is changing. Voice of the customer now extends beyond products, and now includes the process for making the product. As an Apple customer - and also a shareholder - I care about Apple's financial performance. I want it to do well so it can return value to me in terms of new products and direct shareholder gains. I don't have a problem with wealth being created and distributed commensurate with individual effectiveness. But I also have a conscience, and increasingly I hate battling my conscience when using my Apple products. I bet many Apple customers are feeling the same way. That's dangerous for any company, and especially one like Apple which claims to embrace people. So imagine. Imagine what would happen if Apple took the high road, then backed up the words with serious, solid, perhaps expensive action. Action that would change a global dynamic, showing that it is possible to be very profitable, very global, and very human-centered. $96 billion gives Apple the ability to do something truly incredible. In addition to the actual improvement of the global condition, I bet a lot of folks would be impressed with the company - and would be inclined to buy its products. ### Uh - But What About the Product? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/uh-but-what-about-the-product/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:09:41.000Z That old retail icon, JC Penney, is undergoing a transformation thanks to Apple. Apple? Yep - JCP's new CEO is one of the guys responsible for creating the Apple Store. Anyone that has been in one knows it is a bit of a different experience. Where else can you pick up a $2000 piece of equipment at the back of the store and walk all the way out without a receipt - because it was emailed to you - with no one batting an eye? Where else can you sit for a couple hours playing with the equipment with no one trying to give you the hard sell? Apple believes that if you help people to use and like the technology, the technology will sell itself. So now that concept is coming to JC Penney. *The first significant change will be embracing a new pricing strategy, consisting of "fair and square" pricing. It includes three types: everyday, regular prices; monthlong values; and best prices, on the first and third Fridays of every month. To determine new prices across its product range, Mr. Johnson said that the retailer looked at what it was charging and what customers most often paid after numerous discounts. He found that only one in 500 items sold at full price, while 72% of revenue was derived from selling products at 50% off or more.* Ok, perpetual sales are sort of useless. Sounds good. *The strategy will trim JC Penney's promotions to 12 a year from 590\. "Steve \[Jobs\] would have called this insanity," Mr. Johnson said of the sheer volume of promotions. "At some point you, as a brand, just look desperate. JC Penney spent over $1 billion, and the customer didn't even pay attention."* Funny, I have always thought of JC Penney as something of a "desperate" brand - never quite understanding what they stood for. *Working with PMH, JC Penney created a personality and color palette for each month that will be carried throughout marketing, in-store displays and even external lighting on stores. By focusing on one month at a time, Mr. Francis said, JC Penney can highlight important consumer events, such as Valentine's Day, Super Bowl or the Academy Awards.* Ok, ok... I get it. New logo, new store colors, streamlined promotions. All good... except... What about the product? Advertising does not create value, a new logo does not create value. If your product is valuable in the eyes of the customer, it will sell. Advertising may mask true value to a customer, but just for a short while. Apple has a great store experience... but there are great products inside. So, Mr. Johnson, is all the glitz to just sell the same old stuff? ### Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tumbling-down-the-slippery-slope/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:10:03.000Z The task of the die hard Toyota defenders just got tougher. The company just sold out sixty plus years of being able to assure job security at a level no one else could. To save one tenth of one percent of their global payroll they sent the message to all 317,000 of their employees that their long-standing pledge to keep them on the job no matter how tough things got was no longer part of the culture. Toyota has announced the layoff of 350 employees at their Altona Australia plant. For this paltry savings they sold out a vital part of their culture. The hand of Fujio Cho is at work here. The leader of the gang of outsiders who have spent the last ten years 'Americanizing' Toyota with disastrous results thus far, Cho has pursued growth for growth's sake and is deeply imbued with the sort of thinking one can get at the likes of Wharton business school. As I have pointed out in the past, Toyota's abandonment of their culture in no way detracts from the credibility of lean thinking. It is way past that. If Toyota were to be wildly successful in their pursuit of imitating GM and less like their heritage, that would repudiate lean, but the odds of that happening are almost nil. ### Why Mitt is the Anti-Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-mitt-is-the-anti-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:10:46.000Z My disdain for Mitt Romney was [made clear a few months ago ](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/looting-factories-for-fun-and-profit/)\- I was bashing Mitt before Mitt-bashing was cool. I am compelled to do it again if for no reason other than the fact that his supporters have the unmitigated gall to sneer at anyone who opposes him as anti-capitalism. There is no one on the planet more committed to capitalism and free enterprise than me, unless it is the legions of lean proponents who follow Evolving Excellence. Creating value for shareholders by creating the maximum value for customers, and fully engaging the rest of the stakeholders - employees, suppliers and communities - is capitalism and free enterprise at its finest. What Romney and Bain did all too often was the sort of thing that has a lot of Americans looking at the Occupy Wall Street crowd and thinking, 'they are a bunch of economically clueless, off the wall nut jobs, but that doesn't mean they don't have a point'. You see, even the most scorned robber barons in our history - guys like Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller - created wealth by creating value. The criticism of them is that they kept it all for themselves, sending labor into a probably well deserved conniption fit. But there is no questioning the fact that they left oceans of oil, miles of railroads and mountains of steel behind making the country as a whole much better off for their efforts. Romney, however, merits all of the criticism these guys deserve with none of the redeeming qualities. In fact, many of his ventures destroyed value. The robber barons began with a legitimate, value creating business proposition, then found every legal way (and some not so legal ways) to exploit that business to their maximum personal benefit. Romney and Bain began more often than not by finding value others had created, then finding every legal way to grab it for their own, often destroying it in the process. Case in point: GS Steel. Romney and Bain put $8 million into the company along with a big chunk of bank loans - enough to take control. They promptly paid themselves a $36 million dollar dividend out of money they had the company borrow against its assets. Now playing with house money, they plowed $16 million back in before they saw it was a goner, crushed under the weight of the loans Bain had it take out, and let it go bankrupt. Their net profit on the deal - $12 million ... and I almost forgot, they paid themselves another $4.5 million in 'consulting fees' from the money they had the company borrow. So Bain walked away with $16.5 million and GS Steel went belly up. Every other stakeholder got screwed. 750 employees unemployed. Suppliers and lenders up the creek, communities devastated, and the steel from GS Steel was to be had no more. And the icing on the cake, while Mitt was sending his share of the $16.5 million to the Cayman Islands, the US taxpayers - you and me - got stuck with the tab for GS' $44 million in unfunded pensions. If you are reading this, odds are you work for someone who actually creates a product or provides a service of legitimate value. For the Romney supporters to suggest that not your company's owner, but Mitt, is the job creator and paragon of capitalism is beyond absurd. It is an insult to all of the people who have risked their fortunes and careers on the prospect that they had an idea for a product of value, and stood ready to reap the gains if they were right, and suffer the loss if they were wrong. Romney and Bain too often created nothing and risked nothing. Instead they took advantage of companies that had value - earned from long hard work - but were either so desperate or so naive they got into bed with the likes of Bain. To be sure, at some level Bain hoped the company succeeded, much the same as the pawn shop owners, payday lenders and buy-here-pay-here used car guys hope the loan works out for their customer. In the end, however, it doesn't really matter. Bain and these guys come out ahead no matter what and the fact that most of their business deals end up in disaster for the other party has little or no bearing on their profits. Like the afore-mentioned 'capitalists' Romney did nothing illegal, but just because the loan sharks are legal doesn't mean you want your kids to be one of them, and you certainly don't want one of these legal leeches in the White House. Oh, to be fair and honest, Romney's claims to have created lots of jobs are true. The bulk of the jobs he created are barely above minimum wage retail jobs at the Sports Authority, Staples and Dominos, while the jobs he destroyed were manufacturing jobs that were taking people to the middle class, but technically he did create jobs. Of course, in light of the fact that the shelves at Staples and Sports Authority are sagging with goods from China he probably created a half dozen jobs in the People's Republic for evey one minimum wage job he created here, but, again, he did create jobs. Obama with all of his convoluted wealth redistribution schemes, passion for bringing back the glory days of the AFL-CIO, and his tunnel vision on creating economically unsustainable alternative environmental boondoggles is killing the manufacturing economy the slow way. Romney and his bottom feeding buddies in the investment banking world will kill it off quickly. Not sure there is much difference in the end. In the meantime, I think I will take a harder look at Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Both are a bit on the nutty side, but neither leaves the trail of slime behind them Romney does. ### Advice for Women URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/advice-for-women/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:11:09.000Z Gender discrimination comes in a lot of forms, and with all of the hundreds of companies I have visited and the thousands I have researched I expect I have seen them all. There is the overt 1950's neanderthal style like the manufacturing guy who explained to me just a few months ago that set up reduction was not practical in his plant. His reasoning: most of the machine operators were women and set ups were men's work - too physical, dirty and mechanically difficult for the female body and mind to handle. That kind is easy to spot and arises from sheer stupidity, and is pretty easy to overcome. Any woman who cannot intellectually match wits and succeed against such an idiot is probably doomed to failure any way. Equally blatant and grounded in a comparable level of ignorance are the business advice articles such as the one in Bloomberg/Business Week of a few days ago providing tips and pointers when you find yourself in Las Vegas for business and "*need to network and give the impression that you’re a high-roller to your more hedonistic colleagues and boss*." It includes advice for women who find themselves in a strip club with such "*hedonistic colleagues*" and the boss. One helpful tip: "*If you don't mind getting a lap dance, it will endear you to your male colleagues .*..", and "... *chat up the strippers. They may well appreciate the female companionship. To thank them for their time, either purchase them a drink or buy a man in your party a lap dance*." My advice to the woman who finds herself in Las Vegas with colleagues and a boss who require such networking and are impressed by the impression that you are a "high roller" would be to tell the louts to stick their job where the sun doesn't shine and find yourself a new job with decent normal colleagues and bosses. And then cancel your subscription to Bloomberg/Business Week at once, of course. I think the worst kind of gender assault, however, is the more insidious kind - the kind that comes in sheep's clothing. It creeps up on women, treats them as 'sisters in bond' and leaves them lesser for it in the long term. It is the kind in seemingly supportive articles such as this one: "5 Reasons Why Women Are Good Leaders". The article, and many like it, is built entirely on the premise "*Women’s skills are different than men’s*." If that is true then there is absolutely no reason why women deserve equal consideration for jobs. If that's true then there are some jobs better suited to 'women's skills' and other jobs better suited to men's skills - it's 1950 all over again. In fact, lucky for all, that premise is absurd. I have worked with plenty of female managers who embody the points in the article ... but there is no shortage of examples of the polar opposite. Carol Bartz who slashed and burned Yahoo to oblivion, and just today Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft who is laying off 1,600 people in their relentless downsizing effort come to mind as women who set the notion that "*Female leaders are more concerned with helping everyone feel like a necessary part of the team*" on its ear. No one ever accused Margaret "Iron Panties" Thatcher of "*leading with empathy*". I have long believed, (and drilled into every one of my kid's heads) the principle that anyone who begins a sentence with "women are ...", or "black folks are ... ', or any other broad class of people are ... is about to say something very stupid or outright dishonest unless the subject is biology. There are no universal character attributes - just individuals, each with their unique set of talents and shortcomings, each to be taken on their own individual merits. The person who asserts that someone is better than others, or just different from others, because of thier gender - or their race or ethnicity - is just as demeaning and just as intellectually dishonest as the person who says someone is worse than the rest because of gender or race. Respect for people means respect for people individually - one on one - as they are, with all of their unique human capabilities, values and flaws, and anything else strikes me as extremely disrepectful. ### Milliken, the Anti-Kodak URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/milliken-the-anti-kodak/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:11:53.000Z The last couple weeks have brought the story of yet another icon of business, Kodak, collapsing and filing for bankruptcy. Yes, failure a key component of capitalism, and when you try to skew things so they feel better you get some crazy outcomes... like $250,000 Chevy Volts. But failure doesn't have to happen. And that's the story we also read about last week - the story of a successful textile company, no less - and in the United States. Milliken. *Milliken & Co. of Spartanburg, S.C., arguably should have been crushed by global competition, just like Kodak. Its roots are in the textile industry, a labor-intensive business that long ago decamped for lower wages abroad, leaving abandoned mills throughout the Southeast.* *And yet a visit to Milliken's vast campus finds the company thriving. "All of Milliken's traditional textile competitors are gone," says John Fly, a top executive who just wrapped up 45 years at the company. "They're out of business. And Milliken is having the best economic performance it's ever had. It's clear we did something different."* So what did they do? Well at first they joined the folks that [whine and complain](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/still-waiting-on-the-whambulance/) about how all the external forces... regulations, taxes, and the like... are crushing them. *What Milliken did was first try to hold back the flood of cheap imports—a strategy that chewed up management time and ultimately failed.* But then, unlike many of their brethren and unfortunately most manufacturers for that matter, they took a good hard look at their business. *Milliken diversified rapidly out of traditional textiles and moved deeper into niche products that built off its knowledge of textiles and specialty chemicals. And it bore down on scientific research and manufacturing innovation.* *Today, Milliken makes the fabric that reinforces duct tape, the additives that make refrigerator food containers clear and children's art markers washable, the products that make mattresses fire resistant, countertops antimicrobial, windmills lighter, and combat gear protective.* *Along the way it has amassed thousands of patents, focusing on specialty fabrics and chemicals, floor coverings and performance products. Milliken boasts that we come in contact with its many products almost 50 times a day.* "They were different because of their willingness to change," says Bill Fischer, co-author of "The Idea Hunter" and an expert on innovation. "And they moved fast." Not too shabby. And that last statement by Mr. Fischer is critical. A willingness to change. Not ask for handouts, not ask for bailouts, not spend millions lobbying for less regulation and the like. And then they did it fast. *While Milliken doesn't disclose its financial data, Mr. Fly says revenue and profit have been rising steadily. Mr. Salley says the company is also debt free, has double-digit returns on invested capital, and has increased in value more than 30% since 2007 alone.* Yes, a textile company. In the United States. So tell me again why your business is in trouble? And in which direction are you pointing the finger? ### Hoshin and the Fading of Occupy Wall Street URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/hoshin-and-the-fading-of-occupy-wall-street/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:13:26.000Z Over the weekend I was chatting with a couple friends on different sides of the world and the subject of Occupy Wall Street came up. I'm not exactly sure how, but our common response was along the lines of "wow - I had almost forgotten about them." That prompted me to dive into various internet news feeds, from all sides of the spectrum, and it turns out that many are feeling the same way. In many ways it's too bad. Many of us are smack in the center of the political spectrum, socially liberal yet fiscally conservative, wondering how the crop of guys on the right can both claim to be for small government yet still wanting to dictate what happens in our bedrooms and bodies, wondering how the left can both be for jobs yet presiding over the greatest increase in job-busting regulation the country has ever seen. The top 1% does control a larger amount of wealth - and power - than ever... but also pays a higher percentage of total tax revenue than ever. Folks on the other end are hurting - but by over-borrowing we've raised our standard of living faster than it should have been raised, and therefore claim hardship and request handouts to stay at that inflated level. The system is broken from many angles. The fixes will be painful - even more so if we continue to kick the can down the road. So OWS was interesting for many of us to watch. Also an interesting experiment with a new method of groupthink and groupaction. Unfortunately that has also created the downfall of the "organization." Somehow it seemed to morph from using occupation tactics to make a statement, to being about occupation itself. And that turned off a lot of folks, especially many local small business owners who happen to be in the 99%. It turned violent, including the blurb (finally something!) on tonight's news of a Occupy Oakland protester threatening police with half a stick of dynamite. The majority of people, including in the 99%, still respect the law, respect the rights of property owners, and don't like violence. And it got cold. Donations have fallen from tens of thousands of bucks per day to under a hundred right before Christmas. But the real reason is the lack of clear principles, and especially clear goals and tactics supporting those goals. The Occupy sympathizers, such as Marianne Schnall, try to claim this is a positive. *One of the criticisms of the Occupy movement here in the U.S. has been that there is no clear cut agenda. But that is what makes the movement so dynamic and exciting - it is decentralized, still evolving, and incorporates many different important causes that need addressing.* Sorry, that doesn't answer the criticism. Dynamic and exciting doesn't create success - ask any number of dot-coms when they become dot-bombs a decade ago. It turns out a bunch of the original Occupy Wall Street folks are debating the same thing - what happened to their numbers and is it due to the intentional decentralization? Welcome to reality. I said the same thing when the OWS guys had to set up sanitation, protection, and even a bank when the numbers in Zuccotti grew. So I spent some time exploring the "About" section of the OWS website. There's a Principles of Solidarity page that lists eight items ranging from "engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy" to "endeavor to practice and support wide application of open source." Huh? There's a very direct correlation and analogy between "open source" and "free trade" but I bet those guys wouldn't be happy with it. There are other documents detailing "Autonomy" and such. Clear? Not exactly. Think of the worst vision and mission statements you've read - paragraphs and paragraphs of redundant, superficial words. This leads to problems such as Occupy Portland calling for a national day of action to shut down corporations and Occupy Oakland trying to shut down ports. Guess who work for corporations and ports. Yep, the 99%. Hence the rather shrill if not almost violent comments on those potential actions. It's not pretty, and it's highly destructive to the Occupy movement. Don't get me wrong. I'm not wishing for the demise of OWS. Really. I believe that growth and improvement come from healthy debate between differing opinions - and that's been lost as the left moves more left and the right moves more right. OWS was - perhaps still is - something different. Similarly the Tea Party could be as well, if it doesn't continue to be hijacked. OWS could use a nice dose of hoshin - perhaps after accepting the reality that there needs to be some basic layer of organization and leadership. Hoshin begins with an input of a small number of very defined principles. Transparent, participatory democracy? Perhaps -although that's still a bit vague. Open source? Not so much. Then there needs to be a long-term strategy and plan. What does the vision of the future look like? Translate that into three-year breakthrough objectives and those objectives to annual goals. A small number of them so there is focus, ownership, and coherence. Defined so that what success looks like is obvious and understood. I, and most if not all of the employees of my company, can tell you what our principles, strategies, and annual goals are - we don't need to look on a wall or in a binder. Setting goals isn't enough - you have to execute, monitor the execution, and take defined corrective action when things go off track. Finally you need to regularly review progress, do some hansei reflection, and use that as an input to begin the planning and execution cycle again. Being decentralized and leaderless is idealistic. But idealism by itself doesn't create change. There needs to be a clear, concise, actionable message and purpose that adds value - supported by principles and driving goals. Exciting and dynamic organizations come into being every day - and also die every day. ### Command by Buzzword URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/command-by-buzzword/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:13:49.000Z What does an Ivy League trained Commander in Chief with his Ivy Leaue trained staff mean when they describe their strategy with the words "lean", "agile", flexible" and reliant on "innovation"? Of course, those buzzwords mean only one thing to an Ivy Leaguer: headcount reduction. ### A Momentous Anniversary URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-momentous-anniversary/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:14:23.000Z For lots of reasons Henry Ford has been written off as a not-too-bright, mean-spirited guy whose only claim to greatness is the assembly line, and even that is quite often trashed as demeaning to workers and the heart of an out-dated 'mass production' concept. Make no mistake, Ford gave his critics plenty of ammunition, but the simple fact remains: Taichi Ohno, one of the core architects of the Toyota Production System, wrote: "*We see that automation and the work-flow system invented and developed by Ford and his collaborators was never intended to cause workers to work harder and harder, to feel driven by their machines and alienated from their work ... Ford's successors, however, did not make production flow as Ford intended*." And he wrote: "*I, for one, am in awe of Ford's greatness. I think that if the American king of cars were still alive, he would be headed in the same direction as Toyota*." Ninety eight years ago today, on January 5, 1914, Ford announced the $5 day. Four days prior to that, on New Years Day, Ford met with his key reports and they played with numbers. Wages in the plant ranged from 26 to 54 cents per hour, or an average of about $3.10 a day. The $5 per day rate that came out of that meeting and was approved by the directors on January 5 was not a flat rate, but the new average, with almost all employees receiving proportionate increases. The $5 average was about twice the average rate for manufacturing work in Detroit at the time. Why Ford did it is complicated, but one thing is certain - it was not done to combat high employee turnover resulting from the grueling nature of assembly line work. That is a latter day myth and pure hogwash. the company had implemented sweeping reforms in just about every aspect of employee relations and the pay system earlier in 1913 - including an across-the-board 13% pay increase just three months before the $5 day announcement,and employee turnover had dropped from around 48% to about 6%. There was no turnover problem to address, especially one that would justify doubling the payroll. The impetus seems to have come from four sources. First is the little known but hugely significant experience of Ford's assembly plant director in Manchester, England, Percival Perry. He had recently doubled the wages of his employees to a rate he calculated as a basic 'living wage' - a rate at which people could live a decent life, rather than the least wage possible. Perry realized a substantial improvement in production and quality as a result. Second, John Lee, Ford's first real HR manager was urging him to do the same thing based on the conviction that if people did not have to worry about financial pressures at home they would be much more productive. Third, Ford's wife Clara read all of the mail Henry received from employees and, more important, from many of their wives. She put a great deal of pressure on Ford to make the work he was doing more meaningful and to be more driven by "social justice". Finally, there was Ford himself. In 1913 the company had paid $11.2 million in dividends out of an after-tax profit of $27 million. The suppliers were enormously profitable. Car prices had been reduced for the 5th year in a row and a Model T could be had for $500\. All of the stakeholders were benefiting, except the employees. That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back in his thinking and the $5 day was hatched. After the near doubling of pay, total Ford payroll costs - not just direct labor - were 11% of sales in 1914\. The $5 day clearly meant a lot more to the employees who received it than it did to the company that paid it. Profits in 1914 went up to $33 million, dividends increased to $12.2 million, and the price of the car dropped again - to $440. It seems fitting to give the thinking behind the $5 day some serious thought, to consider the results, and to see how our thinking stacks up against Ford's. There is a reason Ohno and Toyota were so impressed by Ford. Given their track records, the snubs of Ford on the part of 'serious' business professionals on Wall Street and the great minds of academia should be taken as all the more reason to take him and the $5 day seriously. ### "Privilege should lead to responsibility" URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/privilege-should-lead-to-responsibility/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:15:05.000Z I am an unabashed Michigan State fan which makes me an unabashed Kirk Cousins fan. Their big win over Georgia on Monday was fun to watch, but every Spartan football fan is sad to see Cousins, their record setting quarterback finish his career. Cousin is not only Michigan State's all time passing leader and the three time captain of the school's best team of all time over his four year career, he is the recipient of Lowe's CLASS Award: "*The award, chosen by a nationwide vote of FBS coaches, media and fans, is given annually to the most outstanding senior student-athlete in the FBS. To be eligible for the award, a student-athlete must have notable achievements in four areas of excellence: community, classroom, character and competition*." At the Big Ten preseason luncheon this remarkable young man was asked to represent the players of the conference and speak to the coaches and media on their behalf. The speech he gave showed a level of humility and wisdom far beyond his years. It gets to the essence of leadership and carries a powerful message for everyone who sees him or herself as a success. Cousins does not see his success as validation of his superiority over lesser athletes, but a privilege. He says in part, "*It's here in this place of privilege where perhaps danger lies. I have been taught that human nature is such that the place of privilege most often and most naturally leads to a sense of entitlement - the notion that I deserve to be treated as special because I am privileged. The truth is, privelege should never lead to entitlement. I have been raised to believe that privilege should lead to responsibility - in fact, to greater responsibility. The Bible says in Luke 12:48, 'From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from everyone who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.'* " When I reflect on the companies I have come to know that have succeeded over the long haul, they have virtually all been led by people who embody Cousins' message of privilege and the responsibility that comes with it. The less successful seem to be led by people who give themselves a disproportionate share of the credit - '**I** deserve to be the boss and **I** am entitled to more money and better perks because **I** worked harder, **I** am smarter, I made better decisions along the way, **I**, **I**, **I** ..." It seems to me that Cousins has hit the principle of Respect for People that is so fundamental to a true lean transformation squarely on the head. In looking at a company that strives to be lean, or claims to be lean, we have only to look at its leaders and ask whether they behave in a manner that reflects their position as a validation of their superiority leading to entitlement, or a privilege that leads to greater responsibility to all of the stakeholders. When challenged to justify outrageous compensation levels, far too many executives offer up the entitlement argument. Far too many political leaders see their office as entitling them to special treatment. They would all do well - we would all do well - to listen and take to heart the powerful message Kirk Cousins sent. **[Here is the extraordinary speech: ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp15N9BbYgY&ref=kevinmeyer.com)** ### Where's the Value in Sting? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wheres-the-value-in-sting/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:15:57.000Z When Bill makes a point it usually makes the rest of us a bit hypersensitive to similar situations. And so it was with his [two](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welcome-to-the-funhouse/) [posts](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-antithesis-of-lean/) on the silliness of advertising. Ford spending $3.9 billion on advertising, more than they spent on direct labor? And since ROI on advertising is difficult to quantify it gets a pass while every penny of direct labor or direct manufacturing "cost" is scrutinized. Crazy. So now we're all on the lookout for analogous examples of value justification screwiness, and this morning's Wall Street Journal smacked us in the face with one. *The big-name rock concert is an annual rite at otherwise geeky tech conferences. Oracle has featured Elton John and Billy Joel in past years. SAP has booked Bon Jovi and Eric Clapton. Microsoft Corp. hired Dave Matthews last year.* Seriously? And guess how much these gigs cost. *Producers and planners say a top band costs a company $500,000 to $1.5 million, before production costs. "It's like a barometer of their health," says Steve Einzig, CEO of BookingEntertainment.com, which brokers private shows by famous acts. "If they don't bring in acts as big as the year before it might hint that they're having trouble."* Now sure, these aren't manufacturing companies, but that doesn't really matter. They are still in the business of creating value for their customers. Supposedly. It gets even better... sometimes they can't even get those bands to mention their brand. *Rockers help fire up customers, but tech companies would really like their hired musicians to lavish a little praise on their brand names, too. Sometimes it works: On one blurry YouTube clip making the rounds, pop star Christina Aguilera bellows "Mi-cro-soft!" at an event for the company's top salespeople.* *But most stars decline to plug their tech benefactors and bands usually insist on control over how visible a corporate logo can be—the smaller the better—and how the event is described on a company's website, planners say.* Fire up customers? Oh you mean the relative handful of folks that actually go to these customer conferences? Let's not pretend that the money spent on these bands actually benefits more than a fraction of the customer base... unlesss the company is really in it deep. Paying the piper for bands, over-the-top trade show booths, glitzy advertising - it's really the same thing. A rebate or discount from the price to the true value of the product. If the value is there, customers will pay. If it's not, and you insist on pricing the product higher, then you need to throw money at customers to make up the difference. Informing customers of the value of your product is real selling. Bribing them isn't. ### Platypus Leadership URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/platypus-leadership/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T18:16:13.000Z A wise person, lost in anonymity to the ages, described the platypus as a duck designed by a committee. It is exactly the sort of useless thing a committee would come up with. Committees can be counted on for two things - delay and compromise. GM demonstrated this point quite ably. While its chairmen and CEO's over the decades made financial decisions with authority everything related to products and processes was decided through the ponderous bureaucracy of its Automotive Strategy Board, and a blizzard of lesser committees - no big surprise that decisions were made slowly, cultural transformation was non-existent and every innovative suggestion was thoroughly watered down before taking effect, if it ever came out of the committees to take effect at all. Committees are also effective tools for ducking responsibility and accountability. If the decision can be made by a committee, then no one is individually to blame for failure. That is just what committees do, and they are no substitute for clear vision and decisive leadership. Committees are a way of life in government and academia, and neither is much of a model for aggressive action. A lean transformation cannot be driven by a 'steering committee' or any other kind of committee. It has to be driven by senior leaders who know exactly where they want to take the organization. ### The Antithesis of Lean URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-antithesis-of-lean/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:50:57.000Z In the interest of protecting client confidentiality I won't name the town. Recently, however, I was out west in a beautiful spot in the Rocky Mountains working with a company doing extraordinary things in its commitment to lean. Like a few of my other clients they are making money doing what is supposed to be impossible - manufacturing low-tech consumer products and not only selling them in big quantities in the USA, but exporting them. By coincidence I happened to be staying in the same hotel as a film crew. Thirty four people - count 'em - thirty four of them - were there to spend four days filming 2012 Toyotas driving in the snow. They were not actually filming a commercial mind you - just creating fim footage for an advertising agency that would sit on the shelf in case either Toyota or its dealers wanted to make a commercial that included Toyotas driving in snow. Most of the 34 were flown in from Los Angeles for the task. A few weeks ago [I wrote a piece](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welcome-to-the-funhouse/) that pointed out the fact that Ford spent $3.9 billion on advertising in 2010- a billion more than they did on value adding direct labor. They are right in there with the rest of the auto industry and well behind the spending levels at major league advertisers like P&G - $11 billion plus. Now I am sure there is a lot to the advertising game I don't know, but I do know that 34 manufacturing people working 4 full days would create a pretty impressive pile of valuable stuff and I have to wonder exactly what the value is of the product of these folks work. They are basically creating inventory that may never be used. More important, I know that 34 manufacturing people would be micro-measured and there would be relentless pressure to challenge whether what they are doing is needed at all and, if so, to see how it could be done with 33 people. I have to wonder exactly where is the value in this - and in advertising in general? It seems to me that advertising spending is driven more by conventional wisdom than by the relentless pursuit of data and the continual cost/benefit focus on the operating side of the business. This was at least a $25,000 venture by the time they were finished and what executive would spend $25,000 on a manufacturing investment without demanding precise justification, cash flow and ROI analysis and a comparison to alternatives? Perhaps I am the odd person out there, but I do not buy cars or beer, book airline flights or do much of anything else based on advertising. (Oh I know that the ad folks would say that I actually do based on some subliminal impact - sounding a lot like the global warming folks who say that blizzards are also proof of global warming - the old, no matter what happens I'm right argument). I TiVo through all the ads I can and hit the delete button on virtually every ad that pops into my email inbox. If the occasional ad sparks my curiosity and I try something I certainly do not decide whether to buy it again based on advertising once I have personal experience with the product. So I have to question just how a company - the fact that the company in question is Toyota notwithstanding - claim to be lean and focused on customer value and send 34 people into a resort town to take film of cars in snow that create no value at all for its customers? ### Holiday Hansei and the Power of Why and How URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/holiday-hansei-and-the-power-of-why-and-how/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:52:06.000Z It's that time of the year again when many mortals look back on the year and basically say "crap I should have been able to do more." The end of the year holiday, Christmas or otherwise depending on your particular faith, but eventually New Year's to most. I've become sensitive to such retrospection and resulting future planning occuring at the end of the year ever since I heard Steve Player at a Lean Accounting Summit long ago ask what is so special about December 31st magically becoming January 1st. Good question. Based on that aha moment my company eliminated traditional budgeting. Eventually I noticed that the arbitrary nature of the end of the year applied to many aspects of business - and life - including the desire to create a step change via usually unattainable New Year's resolutions. So here we are yet again at the end of year holiday period. My wife and I always travel at this time to escape and rejuvenate. Last year we were in Phuket, Thailand. This year we're in Kauai. We didn't wake up Christmas morning to snow shoveling and presents under trees. We woke up to... Yep, that's right. Coffee made by someone else. And a halfway decent view. And warmth. But as much as I have become sensitive to the silliness of the changing of the year, to the extent that I try to use academic year calendars to mask it, I do take advantage of this time to ponder the past and consider the future. Hansei, by any other name. This year was no different. Each year for the past twenty or so I've had a simple annual goal: visit two new countries and do something "different." In the past that "different" goal has led me to learn how to scuba dive, ski in Europe, learn html programming, publish a book - you name it. This year it was to run a marathon, [which I did](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/back-but-not-quite-rested/) in June. I learned a couple things from that experience: I sometimes need group support and a meaningful reason to keep me on track. I also learned that training for a marathon doesn't necessarily mean you'll lose weight. Realizing I could finally eat a whole pizza and not gain weight pretty much counterbalanced that notion. And yes, once again I did visit two new countries. In 2012, an arbitrary time period by the way, I'm thinking I'll try to learn Mandarin as something different. However in my ruminations over the course of the year, and especially over the past month and most especially on this trip, I've come to realize the power of two words, both questions: "why?" and "how?" Those two questions are beginning to radically change my life, professionally and personally. Many of us are already aware of how "why?" can play an important role in root cause analysis. But I've also found that it is a key question when looking at projects, tools, and lean initiatives. Fellow leanie Mark Graban and I had a discussion recently on the subject, specifically in response to one of Mark's readers asking why his lean programs weren't being supported. My first response was to guess that the company had simply thrown together a bunch of tools... some 5S, some value stream mapping, a dash of kaizen or TPM, and ended up with nothing more than tools and a Japanese language lesson. No solid meaning and culture. I've seen it many times. The first thing you need to do is ask "why?" Why is that tool important? What is the problem, what is the desired future state? Then and only then figure out what is the most important tool. But that same question applies everywhere. Folks like me who are never lacking for ideas and could basically be thrown in a plain white room and not get bored, often have a problem with too many projects. So why do we want to take on that new project? Why is it more important than the other projects that are also competing for our time? Or work processes, even individual. Why can't I answer that email right now? Why is this meeting important? Why do I need a personal assistant? Why is cooking a chore? That single question of "why" becomes a great simplifier and discriminator of projects, tasks, and even ideas themselves. It helps define relative importance, works to dig deeper into rationale, and uncover hidden issues. By asking why, and giving yourself an honest response, I've found you can free up all kinds of valuable time. Now on to "how?" I hadn't thought too much about this until reading one of Jamie Flinchbaugh's posts a year or more ago where he discussed why "how?" was very important as part of the hoshin planning process. Bingo! I immediately understood why (!) certain projects weren't being completed - we didn't spend enough time on "how." How will it compete for resources, how will it be staffed, etc. Once again that same question can apply to personal projects and life. How will I achieve this year's "different" goal? So now, as I'm using the results of this hansei to recalibrate and plan for the future, those two questions are front and center. Why is a project important? Why must I still keep doing this activity? How will I stop? How will I achieve this goal? Why is it necessary? Why can't I make progress on writing this book? I've found conventional wisdom gets challenged at every turn. It could be an interesting few months, with some potentially radical changes. Stay tuned. So think about that as you look forward, even if you are making those resolutions. Why? How? ### 2011 Annual Management Blog Review URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/2011-annual-management-blog-review/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:52:26.000Z Once again I'm honored to be part of John Hunter's Curious Cat Annual Management Blog Review. Check out the link for a variety of other management blog reviews. The four blogs I selected to review provide a wide range of lean and leadership thinking that generally ranges a bit outside of the traditional - and regular readers know that's a sweet spot I love to play in. First off we have **Jamie Flinchbaugh** who writes at a blog of the same name. I feel a connection to many of his posts as we have both started and run our own manufacturing and service companies. Yes you really do get a different perspective when you have to sign the checks - and those checks draw from your own funds. Waste truly becomes evil, if not outright deadly. - In Four Myths About the Principle of "Respect for People" Jamie tackles a passion of mine, the oft-forgotten second pillar of lean. Conflict can be respectful, being nice may not be respectful, only giving positive feedback is not respectful, empowerment can be dangerous. A very good read. - Most of us have always thought that effective lean transformations should be driven from the top - the very top. But in The CEO Can't Champion Everything Jamie provides a different perspective. In the right circumstances and environment, a lean effort may be best led from lower down the totem pole. - Jamie confronts another common perception in The Fine Line Between Micro-Management and Surfacing Problems. Micro-management is evil, right? Well... not necessarily. The devil truly is in the details, and without diving into details you might not uncover problems. The difference between micro-management and an effective problem identification system is how management responds to the transparency. David Kasprzak writes at **My Flexible Pencil**, and the name immediately tells you that he sometimes approaches leadership from a bit of a different perspective. - In Management Excellence: The Joker he wonders if The Joker in the Dark Night might be the perfect manager. Really. From stating clear objectives to leading with action instead of just words... - In October David wrote about The Management Lessons of Angry Birds. How did he know that only a few months prior I had spent an entire 13 hour flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco launching those damn birds at crazy structures? To preserve even a tiny amount of productivity I removed that app a couple days later. He comes up with such gems as "efficiency isn't always rewarded" and "not every resource can be applied the same way, to the same problem, every time." I get it. Scary. - Finally last month I once again learned something new from this blog: a concept called ROWE - Results Only Work Environment. As David points out, there are several similarities between ROWE and lean - and as Mark Graban points out in the comments, process and matter as much as results. I've come to know Dan Markovitz quite well over the past few years and really enjoy the human work improvement focus of his **TimeBack Management** blog. Actually his tips that helped me vastly improve my productivity, including achieving Inbox:0, let me enjoy life again. His new book on these concepts, A Factory of One, was just published. - In Mise-en-place, 5S, and why tape outlines on the desk are stupid Dan gets at something that I find critical: understand the "why" before launching into a tool - even a tool as fundamental as 5S. What is the problem? Why? Then and only then find the right tool to improve the situation. - Once again the oft-forgotten second pillar of lean, respect for people, is the subject of Dan's post on Go See, Ask Why, Show Respect. Managers typically have a problem leaving their offices to visit the gemba. Even if they go for a visit, they feel the need to solve problems and provide solutions - instead of ensuring the right questions are being asked. Challenging and teaching is one way to show respect. - And one more time on respecting - and motivating - employees is a great analysis of responsibility and authority in Stop Demotivating Your Employees. What type of leader are you? What types of leaders are you creating in your organization? Do you delegate authority as well as responsibility? Finally we have **Matthew May** at his blog of the same name. Several years ago, while juggling way too many projects and jobs and family challenges, I began exploring the connections between zen and lean - and how those concepts can be applied to both personal and professional leadership. I developed some great habits but they didn't fit together - until I read Matt's The Shibumi Strategy in late 2010\. Incredible book, and one I've shared with many people - including my entire staff. Matt focuses on leveraging simplicity - in design, work, and leadership. - In Innovation's Most Important Question Matt gives us a few real-world examples to support the point that there's always the potential for "better." That's the source of innovation, pure and simple. What can be better? - Solving Healthcare Through Subtraction and Simplicity is exactly what the title suggests - a different angle on the healthcare issue. An intriguing question - why do sick people and healthy people go to the same place? Lessons for many organizations. - The opportunity of 5S to simplify processes and work is the focus of 5 Ways to K.I.S.S., coincidentally with assistance from Dan Markovitz. Great minds think alike. So there you have it - four of my favorite blogs in 2011\. Take some time to poke around at them, and I bet you'll learn as much as I did. ### Why Profit Centers Work Better On Paper Than In Reality URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-profit-centers-make-more-sense-in-business-school-than-in-reality/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:53:30.000Z I went online with walmart.com Friday evening – bought a barbecue grill for my son in California to be picked up at Anaheim Walmart. Got an order confirmation, and $160 hold was put on my debit card. Woke up Saturday morning to an email from Walmart telling me the grill was unavailable at the Anaheim store – order was canceled – the hold would drop off of my debit card within 5-10 days depending on my bank policy. Suggested I try another Walmart nearby. Thought I can only stand so many $160 holds so this time I would check to be sure grill is in stock before I ordered again. Found five more Walmarts near Anaheim – all had the same grill in stock. In fact, the Anaheim store showed it in stock. Not trusting the computer, I called Anaheim Walmart. Delightful lady offered to check – confirmed they have four of the grill I ordered in stock. Called walmart.com – asked why my order was canceled due to non-availability when, in fact, they have four at the store. Young lady named Alberta explained to me that walmart.com is a separate company from the store, and store inventory is not the same as walmart.com inventory. “*Really?*” I asked. “*So you are not part of the Walmart Corporation in Bentonville, Arkansas?*” “*Yes we are*,” she answered. “*Then the* *Walmart store in Anaheim is not part of the Walmart Corporation?*” “*Well, yes*,” she said, “*It is*.” “*Which part of this deal is not a part of Walmart?*” I asked, “*And if Walmart Corp owns four grills in Anaheim, and Walmart Corp confirmed that I paid for a grill in Anaheim, why did Walmart Corp cancel my order and tell me there are no grills available for me in Anaheim?*” “*We are all Walmart*,” she replied. “*It’s just that walmart.com is a different department, and the stores decide whether they want to make any of their inventory available for walmart.com or whether they want to keep it for themselves. They might charge a higher price in the store than we do.*” “*So Walmart Corp makes promises then each Walmart Corp store manager gets to decide whether he feels like keeping those promises?*” “*Walmart didn’t make a promise to you*,” she answered clearly not liking where the conversation was going. “*Sure you did, Alberta. You promised me a grill when you sent me a confirmation and reached into my bank account and put a $160 hold on it*.” “*No,*” Alberta said, “*That’s just the way our computer is set up*.” “It *sounds like whoever set up the computer set it up for an auction,*” I said. “*You should have told me that I wasn’t buying a grill – that I was actually bidding on one, and some Walmart guy in Anaheim had the right to reject my bid and take a better offer if he could get one*.” “*Would you like to talk to my supervisor?*” Alberta asked. “*Does he know anything you don’t know?*” “*No, but he can explain it to you better*,” she said. I then essentially repeated the conversation with a guy named Michael. The conversation was beginning to bore me until, in closing, Michael said, “*Your satisfaction is my highest priority*.” “*C’mon, Michael. I’m sure you are supposed to say that but we both know that’s not true*,” I said, “If *it were you would sell me the grill I paid for*.” “*I can’t do that*,” said Michael, “*But how else can I satisfy you?*” “*What do you have in mind, Michael? I don’t want or need anything from Walmart other than the grill I bought and paid for. I am not poor but I can’t afford to keep buying grills at Walmart stores around Los Angeles until I find one that has a manager who feels like giving up some of his inventory to make a sale*. *I could be out a thousand bucks in a big hurry without ever actually getting a grill. Can you do anything about that?*” “*You could call the store first*,” Michael suggested, “*and be sure they will sell one before you place the order*.” “*Are you listening to yourself, Michael*? *Seems like Walmart.com ought to call the stores first to see if one is willing to deliver the stuff before you try to sell it*,” I said. “*You sound like a good guy. Doesn’t is bother you to make promises all day with absolutely no ability to keep your promises? If anyone else ran a business that took money from people online, knowing they had no control over whether the customers ever got what was promised they would probably go to jail. I would think it would bother you to be the front man for what strikes me as basically a criminal enterprise*.” With that, Michael chose to end the call, politely apologizing for not being able to help. I then called the Anaheim store and asked to talk to the manager. A young lady put me on hold, then returned and told me the manager was "*busy with something important*". She offered to take a message. I asked how she knew what the manager was doing was more important than what I wanted to talk to her about. She said, "*I don't know but she said to take a message*." "*Ask her to call me and explain the organizational structure at Walmart and how the accounting system works*," I said. "*What?"* the young lady asked. "*On second thought, just ask her if she is in cahoots with a guy named Michael in a criminal enterprise*." "*What?"* the young lady asked again. I was trying to formulate an even better message when my wife pulled the phone from my hands and said to me, “*Will you leave those poor people alone*!” To the young lady in Anaheim she said, “*Thank you for your time*,” and hung up, so we will never know if the store manager and Michael are aiding and abetting each other in a larcenous conspiracy. My wife then told me she had found a better grill for the same money at Lowes in Anaheim and directed me in no uncertain terms to leave Walmart alone and buy it. I did as I was told, of course. The grill was picked up the same day by my son. ### Rounding Up Again URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rounding-up-again/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:55:50.000Z **Software Advice** A guy named Derek Singleton over at Software Advice interviewed me the other day for a piece he wrote about the state of manufacturing software, and what it takes to support lean. I don't agree with everything he wrote, but he put together a thought provoking piece. You might want to give it a read. YOU CAN FIND IT HERE **Once Upon A Car** I just finished reading "Once Upon A Car" by Bill Vlasic - a fascinating insight into the last years inside GM, Ford and Chrysler before the bankruptcies. The story of GM was one of an executive group in an insular culture of of self-importance, denial of reality, and an obsession with finance and labor negotiations. If the realities of how cars were made, how they create value, or why Toyota was beating them with a superior value proposition ever crossed the executive groups minds they never showed it. Management decisions made by bureaucratic committees, an irrelevant board and a complete lack of leadership prevailed at GM. Chrysler was dead before it all began - Daimler knew it and unloaded it on investment bankers, clueless and uninterested in manufacturing, while the unloading was good. Fiat wanted it as a pipeline into the US market, and was smart enough to wait until they could get it in bankruptcy for a song ... and Bob Nardelli of GE and Home Depot fame was out of touch with both products and production and in way over his head from the start. Only Ford had real leadership in the form of Alan Mullaly. He largely ignored the deal making and financial machinations, and radically changed the Ford culture with a tunnel vision on products, core principles and the architecture of the supply chain. In short, he was the only leader in Detroit who put the highest priority on how the company actually made cars and made money, while the rest fiddled with deals and finance. No wonder Ford came out the big winner. I highly recommend the book. Vlasic is a great writer, the book is rich in details, and it is an easy, intriguing read. **The Miracle Unraveling** I haven't written much about China lately because its all been said. [Two years ago I wrote](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-great-lean-race/), "*Add it all up and China's days as a low labor country are rapidly winding down. This should come as no big surprise. As I have often written, no country can build a long range economy on the principle of low labor costs*." [One year ago I wrote](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-fiddlers-tab-comes-due/), "*The house of cards that is the 'Chinese miracle', so widely admired by American and European academics and financiers is collapsing all around*." And [earlier this year I wrote](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-president-of-china-is-here-hu-cares/), "*China is left with an economy built on an increasingly fed-up labor force that has been misused and abused, inflation that is on the verge of spinning out of control, rising costs (Chinese products are up 5-10% just in the last six months and will go up further and faster in the next six), and a customer base that is leaving in droves*." The week has been cluttered with news as the media has finally realized what has been obvious for years. Manufacturing is in a tailspin in China ... and is never coming back. More about it here. Strikes and labor unrest are rampant. A Chinese town is in outright revolt. In an LA Times article, "*Now one of China’s most senior leaders has acknowledged that the souring global economy has the government on edge. According to an official New China News Agency report published Saturday, China's top security chief warned provincial officials to brace for unrest if financial conditions continue to deteriorate. Zhou Yongkang, a member of China’s nine-person Politburo Standing Committee, said the country should focus on developing better social management -– a euphemism for control aimed at stamping out opposition and unrest*." Whether manufacturing comes back to the United States and Europe depends entirely on western manufacturers - if they learned their lessons and changed their ways they can have it all back; if they think all their problems are the fault of the government and unions and believe they can operate as they did before the China debacle then Mexico and southeast Asia will be the big winners from China's implosion. **Not Enough Skilled Workers?** The latest popular excuse from far too many manufacturers is a shortage of skilled workers (Never mind that many of those doing the complaining laid off machinists, welders, pipefitters and electricians by the busload over the last few years, and dismantled their apprentice programs). They might want to give some thought to how the United States almost instantly turned some 1.6 million housewives into the machinists, welders, pipefitters and electricians who cranked out ships, planes, tanks and weapons in quantities staggering enough to overwhelm Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The TWI (Training Within Industry) Summit is coming up in the Spring. TWI was a vital element in Toyota's success and it represents the opportunity to make the skilled labor shortage disappear almost over night. The TWI Institute has its tentacles into just about every corner of the US. It should be on speed dial for every manufacturer. *Only eight shopping days until Christmas - have at it - the Chinese need all the help you can give them!* ### Welcome to the Funhouse URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/welcome-to-the-funhouse/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:56:08.000Z Right from the get-go I want to make it clear that it is not my purpose to bash Ford. I am citing their numbers due solely to laziness. As the only American car company that has not undergone bankruptcy and re-invention, it is a lot easier to get apples to apples data from Ford than the others and I am always in favor of the easy way. In 2010, Ford paid hourly (UAW) labor in the USA the whopping total of $2.9 billion. Any way you look at it, that is a lot of money. They sold a total of 1,936,000 cars and trucks, so it cranks out to a hair under $1,500 per vehicle for hourly labor. Let's put that into perspective, shall we? With North American sales of $64.4 billion, hourly labor comes out to 4.5% of sales. Back in 2000, the number was $1,666 per car. So all of the slashing and burning, laying off and re-negotiating resulted in 1% per year in labor cost reductions - going from about 7% of sales down to the 4.5% figure - that's it. Another interesting tidbit is that Ford spent $3.9 billion on advertising in 2010 - 6% of sales and 34% more than the hourly labor piece. I have yet to read where the auto industry is outsourcing their TV ads from Hollywood to Bollywood, or telling Congress and the film industry unions that the future of the American auto industry hinges on their willingness to cut wages and pensions. This is where the funhouse effect comes in. The funhouse mirrors make skinny folks look fat and fat folks skinny, short ones tall and tall ones short. Their purpose is to provide entertainment by distorting reality. Someone needs to tell accounting and the management profession it is time to come home from the carnival - they have had their fun seeing value adding labor as a huge deal, and waste as trivial. Time to deal with reality. Some people seem to like wandering through the funhouse so much they simply will not come out. Case in point: Skip Vallee who runs a convenience store chain in the northeast. The prospect of increasing the minimum wage has him concerned since that is what he pays most of his employees. If he has to start paying them all of $8.46 he is going to cut their hours and have them kick in for medical bennies. I can't wait to get to Vermont to be served by the kind of folks who would tolerate Skip. Apparently the funhouse view of labor cost being everything weighs heavier on him than the common sense principle that 'you get what you pay for'. Same thinking from the management of the Triple Play Cafe in Ohio. If they have to start paying people the ungodly sum of $7.70 an hour, not only are employee hours going to be cut, they are going to stop washing the windows at the Cafe to cover the crushing burden of the payroll. There's some high level management thinking for you. If you read all the way to the end of the article, Spencer Williams from West Paw Design started out with the funhouse view of his business but quickly figured out that reality was being warped. "*Initially, he paid some plant workers the lowest wages possible. But when he later decided to give out raises that exceeded the minimum required, he says he gained a more loyal work force. Today his lowest-paid staffers earn $11 an hour. The minimum hourly wage that employers must pay in Montana will rise 30 cents to $7.65 next month. 'Our turnover dramatically reduced and the engagement level from our employees rose,' he says*." I know Spencer, and I know that West Paw is well along the lean journey under his leadership. He is a smart guy - smart enough to make a good product, put together a good team, and make good money - and smart enough to let common sense prevail over funhouse accounting. That cannot be said for the owners of businesses who conclude that cutting the hours of folks making minimum wage is a good idea - especially convenience stores and restaurants where the folks having their already minimal wages reduced are the ones dealing face to face with customers. I can imagine what the "*engagement level*" of those employees must be -and how much worse it will get after these funhouse managers get through with them. Only in the carnival world of of two headed chickens and funhouse mirrors does hiring people so unqualified or desperate they will work for the least amount of money allowed by law, then treating them like crap make good business sense. ### A Dose of Common Sense Goes A Long Way URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-dose-of-common-sense-goes-a-long-way/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:56:27.000Z The good ol' folks down in Georgia have a way of nailing things right on the head. This from Alan Barfoot with the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Center. Thanks Alan ..... A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can't be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don't get mad and buy another product instead. Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution - on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line. A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. "That's some money well spent!" - he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report. It turns out; the number of defects picked up by the scales was zero after three weeks of production use. It should've been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He filed an inquiry against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good. Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. "Oh, that," says one of the workers - 'one of the guys put it there cause he was tired of walking over... "every time the bell rang"'. ### Go Innovate Somewhere Else URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/go-innovate-somewhere-else/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:57:48.000Z I rail against the incompetence of the big publicly traded companies as loudly as anyone, however, I have to scratch my head at the notion that small, mom and pop owned businesses are inherently superior, or somehow critical to our continued existence. Some small businesses offer a better value proposition than the big guys - many don't. It seems to me that, sooner or later, big or small, the business offering the most for the money prevails and the rest fall by the wayside. So along comes Amazon with 'Price Check' and I have a very hard time understanding just how it can be anything but good. Price Check basically enables a shopper to instantly compare the price someone is asking for something with the price Amazon and their third party sellers are asking. That knowledge, apparently, will be the end of local retailing as we know it. It seems to me that, if mom and pop's business model depends on making sure their customers don't know they can find a better deal elsewhere, mom and pop are pretty much doomed. There is nothing too shocking about two-faced politicians, but it strikes me as hoot-worthy to read Senator Olympia Snowe describe 'Price Check' as "*an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities*." Just a few weeks ago she was touting the Small Business Innovation Research Program, waxing about how innovation creates jobs. Apparently the size of the company doing the innovating has a lot to do with it. Little guys who innovate should get government funding, while big guys who innovate should feel the full wrath of the U.S. Senate ... figure that one out. In the foreword to a book called 'Saving Energy Growing Jobs' the good Senator wrote, " *The key to helping business thrive and nurturing a healthy environment is innovation, which has been the bedrock of this nation's growth since its inception*." Innovation at Amazon is somehow exempt from that lofty principal it would seem. The objections of the 'Main Street Retailers' seem to follow two lines. First they claim Amazon is using them as the showroom for folks who will waste their time looking at stuff, then run home and make the purchase on line. Seems just as likely to me that people will use the web as the research lab to check stuff out, then run out to the local store to buy what they want. As fast as on line shopping is growing, in [store purchasing still dominates](https://www.dailyregister.com/newsnow/x1374759181/POLL-RESULTS-I-shop-in-person-at-the-stores?ref=kevinmeyer.com). The real gripe has nothing to do with Price Check and that is the [exemption on line purchases have from sales tax](https://standwithmainstreet.com/blog?ref=kevinmeyer.com) \- and the local retailers see Amazon as the greatest ogre in that battle. Maybe Amazon customers ought to pay sales tax and maybe not. Interestingly (and inconsistently) enough Senator Snowe co-sponsored the [Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act of 2007 ](https://www.ontheissues.org/Economic/Olympia%5FSnowe%5FTechnology.htm?ref=kevinmeyer.com)before she declared Amazon to be so abusive of Main Street mom and pop retailing. Rather than whine about Amazon and urge higher sales taxes on their competitors (and as a result, their customers), mom and pop might want to learn from Ron and Steve Fusek. Ron runs [Fusek's True Value Hardware ](https://www.fusekstruevalue.com/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)\- as mom and pop as it gets. His boy Steve runs spinoff [Ron's Home and Hardware ](https://www.ronshomeandhardware.com/aboutus.asp?ref=kevinmeyer.com)\- an Amazon seller. Turns out the Fusek boys don't too much care if you want to use the store as a showroom and buy on line, or if you want to do the research on line and buy in the showroom. Want to avoid the sales tax by ordering on line? OK by them. Don't mind paying it and want to avoid shipping costs and get it yourself? OK by them as well. In fact, the Fuseks will sell you hardware any way you want to buy it. Opposition to Amazon's 'Price Check' is ridiculous. No one can make a case for keeping customers in the dark. The more information buyers have the better for all concerned - all concerned except for sellers offering a lousy deal. The honorable Senator, it would seem, is foursquare in favor of innovation and against Internet sales taxes, unless it threatens a bunch of 'stuck in the past' retailers in Maine, then she is a born-again Main Street advocate. The mom and pop retailers - as well as the mom and pop manufacturers, restaurants, farmers and service providers - who want to preserve lousy value propositions through legislation and PR campaigns to tug on heart strings will sooner or later fail. It is usually an indictment of lousy prices, service, quality and convenience when people would rather do business on line or with big bureacratic national chains than them. They are whistling past the graveyard if they think people would rather pay shipping costs and wait days to get things for the sole purpose of saving a few percent on sales tax. The good mom and pop's needn't worry about Price Check - it will merely confirm that they are the right place to make the purchase. ### Inventory Idiocy URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/inventory-idiocy/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:58:27.000Z The end of the year draws nigh and ten or eleven months of ignoring supply chains in general, and inventory in particular is coming home to roost in executive offices around the world. Avon Products is out of cash due in large part to out of control inventories - borrowing money to pay dividends, but that's what you get when you appoint a CEO based on where she went to school and who she is connected to, rather than based on what she knows - and is in even deeper trouble due to a thoroughly muddled ERP implementation. Research In Motion (RIM - the Blackberry guys) is writing off $485 million of excess inventory - the kind of thing that happens when your business model is based on Buck Rogers technology and absurdly long lead times - bet wrong on the technology and lose big - real big. Stein Mart screwed up its inventory system and, as a result, reported that - oops - we didn't lose $.3 million - we lost $1.8 million. Of course there are the GM's of the world who screw up the supply chain on purpose. The aforementioned got in trouble as a result of ignorance but GM trashes their supply chain routinely to scam their investors. They are up to inventory levels last seen in the days immediately before its IPO. With 105 days of truck inventory shoved down their dealers throats, look for glowing headlines after the first of the year crowing of banner sales. (Other tell-tale clues: they are in a below the radar layoff of engineers - value adding folks - and pouring money into advertising) Whenever they have the need for better numbers the Wall Street manipulators and financial wizards running GM use the supply chain as their magic button to goose the top and bottom lines. That is ignorance of a different sort - or perhaps apathy. They either don't know or don't care what inventory bloat does to their cost structure and ability to control quality. Most companies do not foul up inventory on such a grand scale as these - but foul it up many do. I once had a CEO tell me he didn't have time to take a deep dive into the details of how his company's supply chain processes worked. He seemed to have plenty of time to dive very deeply into the accounting system in mind-numbing detail, however. Apparently counting the excess inventory accurately struck him as a more important use of his time than learning how to prevent it. It seems to happen every year and this one is no exception. Execs who have little concern for much other than sales and finance ten months out of the year go into the panic mode at year end when cash flow is foundering, line of credit payments loom, excess and obsolete inventories must be accounted for and the day of reckoning with Wall Street, the bank and the board approaches. They know complex financial formulas by heart, but not the basics of the relationships between lot sizes, lead times and variation in demand on inventory levels. They know how to manipulate short term profits by maniputating inventory, but not how to improve long term profits by compressing cycle times. They can parrot Harvard/McKinsey philosophies about global supply chain strategy, but cannot tell you a single thing a buyer or planner actually does in the course of the work day. After almost twenty years in this business I have come to accept that supply chain is only a major concern near the end of the year when too many managers call in help to lock the barn door in a rush months after the horse is gone. After the first of the year they will manage the supply chain by edict - issuing mandates for inventory reductions with neither thought nor knowledge of the conflict inherent in those mandates with their policies of getting 'China prices' and achieving purchase price reduction goals. If they have a supply chain strategy at all it will largely consist of a software investment. Outside expert help will be needed for lean accounting, lean sales and marketing and lean manufacturing but leaning up the supply chain will be of little importance until this time next year ... and so it goes. ### Results-Based Policies and Procedures URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/results-based-policies-and-procedures/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:58:48.000Z Don't worry folks, although the article I reference here is on regulation, my point is aimed at corporate policies and procedures as in this case they generally have the same problem. Let's see if I can tip-toe around the central theme of the article so I can make that point. Organizational policies and procedures, and regulations, in the U.S. generally start from a perspective that every little nuance must be specified. *Government oversight of day care seems like a good idea—you wouldn't want children cooped up in an airless basement—but this proposal went far beyond basic health and safety.* *The new rules would dictate exactly how to do just about everything: how many block sets ("at least two (2) ... with a minimum of ten (10) blocks per set"), where the children can play with the blocks (on "a flat building surface" that is "not in the main traffic area") and when caregivers must wash their hands (before "eating food," "after wiping a child's nose," etc.).* *This is the way regulation works in America: Regulators try to imagine every possible mistake and then dictate a solution. The complexity is astounding.* And we all know the behaviors that are thereby created. The folks being regulated... or "managed"... by such procedures then set out to identify the most narrow possible opening in the wall of excruciating detail, and then pry that opening apart to create a new opportunity. Then armies of lawyers... err... executives... jump into the fray to determine and litigate whether that opening was legit, and if it was, then the regulators... err... managers... then add another few thousand words to close the latest loophole. *Under a recent federal directive, the number of health-care reimbursement categories will soon increase from 18,000 to 140,000, including 21 separate categories for "spacecraft accidents" and 12 for bee stings. There are over 140 million words of binding federal statutes and regulations, and states and municipalities add several billion more.* We see it in the financial industry, we see it at a different level inside our own organizations. Take a look at your company policies and even assembly and operating procedures and work instructions. Yep, you know what I mean. *Regulation is deliberately designed to avoid human discretion—to create a regulatory code that is self-executing. By making rules as precise as possible, we hope to avoid bad judgment. The unfortunate side effect has been to preclude good judgment. Modern regulation doesn't just control undesirable practices—it indiscriminately controls all the work of regulated entities.* *Taking responsibility is basically illegal in the modern regulatory state. A teacher can't maintain order in the classroom without filling out forms and facing a potential legal hearing. Judges sit on their hands, letting people sue for almost anything. An inspector feels that he has no choice but to shut down an unauthorized neighborhood lemonade stand—a rule is a rule.* As a side note, how many of you still throw new hires into a small windowless room with a five foot stack of documentation to read, and then after a day of speed reading consider the poor soul to be "trained"? There is another way. Instead of regulations... procedures... that attempt to identify and control every option, how about results-based regulations and procedures that attempt to describe the desired outcome? Could this even be analogous to push- vs pull-based procedures? *In place of today's regulatory micromanagement, what we need is results-based regulation, with simpler rules tied to the outcomes they produce. What would such a regulatory system look like? In the first place, it would be radically simpler. Most bureaucratic detail could be scrapped, and law would become understandable again. The focus would shift from complicated rules to desired results: clean air, safe food, honest business.* Are any of you lean folks experienced in the results-based focus of TWI starting to get a twinge of understanding? Ya, me too - that's what prompted me to write this. How about a couple examples, the first from our friends across the pond that already use this method. *In Britain, financial institutions have to answer to such principles as "A firm must conduct its business with integrity" and "treat \[customers\] fairly." Applying those principles to Wall Street would provide ample authority for regulators to stop the next bubble without smothering credit transactions under thousands of pages of new rules.* I can already see some people getting squeamish about definitions. You've been living in a world of over-specification for too long. Change your perspective. Ok, I'll admit it shakes me a bit as well - how do you prevent abuse from the regulated as well as the regulator... the team member as well as the manager? The article continues with several suggestions along those lines, but the bottom line remains the same: Specify what the desired result looks like, not every aspect that could contribute to the result. Then provide boundaries and specifics only on key contributors in the process - the "key points" in TWI parlance. Promote understanding of the process and result, not the creation of mindless automatons following a narrow, winding process path. Again, many similarities to TWI, which my company has found to be one the most powerful drivers of lean transformation and even a foundation for kaizen. ### A House Divided Cannot Stand URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-house-divided-cannot-stand/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T20:59:20.000Z In most companies sales and manufacturing are two distinct and separate - often opposing - entities. The sales folks are physically, intellectually, organizationally and every other way set on one side and tasked with increasing sales - growing the top line - by any means at their disposal. Their efforts fall under the umbrella of marketing and brand management, and while some of it is legitimate, most of it is smoke and mirror based. P&G is the universally acclaimed master of this particular art. On the other side is manufacturing, tasked with reducing costs by any means at their disposal. Lean manufacturing is viewed as one of those means, and seen as an alternative to good old fashioned pounding on direct labor and suppliers, or as an alternative to outsourcing. Lean proponents compete with the proponents of those methods - usually senior managers who come from the headcount and supplier pounding school of thought and accountants who run numbers that make outsourcing - especially offshore outsourcing - look good. Senior management sits in between the two camps, putting pressure on each side independently to do better at their assigned task, and often acting as the arbitrator of disputes as the sales and manufacturing camps bicker. Manufacturing demands better forecasting, sales has to have lower costs, and both spend a lot of time making the case for senior management to support their particular strategy and want more than their fair share of scarce investment money. In some cases, where the top dog came from the operations side, manufacturing gets the edge in the disputes and lean initiatives are supported, but in most cases these days, the big guy came from sales or finance and the brand management or outsourcing proponents win the day. Accounting sits at the right hand of the executives, serving the role of impartial official scorekeeper. They are neither for nor against anything - and therefore unaccountable for anything. They merely measure the results and determine winners and losers and when there is failure it in no way reflects on them. It is from the leaders of such enterprises that articles such as the one we have cited previously are written, in which lean is viewed as a cost cutting 'program' that more often than not comes up short. As simply a manufacturing cost cutting program - an alternative to people bashing and outsourcing - those techniques are usually more effective than lean at reaching a quick 5% cost reduction threshhold that the article cites as the measure of success for such efforts. Occasionally a company achieves the 5% cost reduction through lean - or better - but fails on the sales side of the business. They are the Whirlpools and Delphis - winners of prizes and the subject of glowing articles - but not winners at the bottom line. And then there are the few who understand and deploy lean as in integrated enterprise wide strategy aimed at neither the top line nor cost reduction, but at the bottom line ... *"Compared to our direct competitors, we are the only company that really grew over the last seven or eight years,' reports Alexander Wiegand, CEO of WIKA Alexander Wiegand SE…. WIKA has made the financial connection that some lean adopters have found elusive. 'Since 2002 we have improved our EBIT margin every year by about 1 percent,' says Wiegand. Given the company’s high percentage of sales in the U.S., that margin improvement is even more impressive when you consider the devaluation of the U.S. dollar that occurred over that time period. 'That’s the bottom line,' says Wiegand. 'It’s not all coming from lean, of course, but more than half of that improvement is the result of our lean activity.'"* **and ...** *"From 2007 to 2008 the division’s sales grew by 29 percent. During this period of dramatic growth, lean manufacturing efforts freed up space and other resources, allowing CIRCOR to not only meet the increased demand, but consolidate facilities. \[Chairman and CEO Bill\] Higgins also credits customer recognition of lean driven performance improvements for helping the company win new contracts. From 2004 through 2008, CIRCOR’s average on-time delivery climbed from 77 percent to 87 percent. During this same period, revenues increased at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent, and earnings per share grew by 56 percent per year."* **and ...** *"One of the goals that Alstom’s managers set was to grow the business by 20 percent over a three-year period while keeping the number of employees constant. 'We’ve just had our internal review and we’re certainly on target, so we’re pretty chuffed,' reports \[Roy\] Sullivan. 'With the old way of working we'd probably have been looking at 1,200 people, instead of where we are, which is at around 900\. So we’re going in the right direction.'”* If the CEO thinks that operations should simply use lean, headcount pressure and outsourcing to keep costs under control as it follows sales along whatever curve sales' brand management strategy does to the top line, I highly recommend China or Mexico as a better course of action than lean. If the top guy wants to grow the business by 20%, however, with a radically lower cost structure, it seems lean is the proven method to do so. Another alternative would be the academic/Wall Street strategy of waiting, hoping and praying for engineering to come up with a game changing, black swan, whiz bang innovation. The choice is up to him. ### Conflicted Toyota URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/conflicted-toyota/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:00:33.000Z Toyota took the fundamentals of lean from the likes of Ford and Deming and others decades ago, crafted it into TPS in the 60s and 70s which enabled the company to dominate global auto manufacturing, then rapid expansion led Toyota to forget the basics in the early part of this decade, leading to the quality and customer service debacles last year. So the story goes. Over the past few months we've told you how Toyota appears to be [going back to their core values](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyotas-inexcusable-failure/), but then there are the occasional stories about Toyota following the likes of GM in [bashing suppliers](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-follows-the-detroit-three/). What gives? Today's WSJ provides a clue - a description of the internal conflict at Toyota. One one hand they are battling rising costs in Japan, not the least of which are currency issues coupled with lower demand. *Faced with overcapacity, weak demand and an exchange rate for the yen that makes Japanese-made cars and trucks more expensive around the world, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. are moving more manufacturing overseas, to plants closer to international customers. But Toyota President Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company founder, has long spoken of the company's social responsibility to protect Japanese jobs, as well as a longstanding commitment to annually build at least three million cars in Japan, half for export.* *Company executives now acknowledge their allegiance to domestic production is being tested by a strong yen and softening sales in the U.S., still the company's largest market. Even Mr. Toyoda appears torn between fidelity to Japan and profits.* Sounds familiar - but actually laudable that social responsibility is part of a large company's philosophy. Well at least more than the lip service we hear from most. Toyota is looking at moving more production out of Japan - but closer to their customers. Note that although I often rant against moving production overseas, moving closer to customers is generally ok. But now the article gets interesting - and describes the efforts Toyota is making to become more efficient in high-cost Japan. That's the Toyota the lean world has come to love. *Mr. Niimi and other top executives made the case in interviews for streamlining Toyota's domestic production lines, as opposed to uprooting them. They view Japanese manufacturing skills, known as "monozukuri," as an infallible weapon and expect to fully utilize idle capacity once demand recovers.* *Until then, said executives, the company would redefine its economies of scale: shrink production without raising costs.* *"High speed and high volume output may no longer be such a good fit for us," said Mr. Niimi, who has a degree in aeronautical engineering. "We need to retool for production with simpler, slimmer and more compact equipment."* Yes, while most companies still believe that to increase efficiency you must use larger and larger machines to process larger and larger batches, Toyota does the opposite. Bill has written about the fallacy of traditional views of economies of scale [many](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/look-out-walmart-here-comes-tesco/) [times](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/tesco/). Toyota is going back to the basics. *Starting in the 1960s, Toyota rewrote the book on lean manufacturing with innovative techniques like just-in-time inventory and renowned quality control. Designed to wring out efficiencies, the methods known as the Toyota Way were widely praised and emulated in Japan and overseas.* Some examples. *At the new plant, half-built Corolla compacts and subcompact Yaris sit side by side, rather than bumper to bumper, shrinking the assembly line by 35% and requiring fewer steps by workers. Instead of car chassis dangling from overhead conveyor belts, they are perched on raised platforms—cheaper by half and allowing for dropped ceilings that reduce cooling costs 40%.* *One idea en route: carts powered by inexpensive electric bike motors to ferry heavy parts—saving worker backaches, time and more costly machinery.* *Company executives say their Japanese workers are uniquely skilled at innovation. Mr. Niimi came up with a way to hasten the installation of tires onto car wheel hubs by rounding off the edges of the hub center, making it conical instead of cylindrical.* *It is Mr. Niimi's job to make Toyota plants more efficient. One of his first successful targets was engine production. At the Shimoyama engine plant in Toyota City, he cut average production line capacity in half, to 100,000 engines—without raising the cost per unit. His new goal: 50,000.* Of course the analysts aren't happy. In their world the only way to make money is to chase cheap labor. *Analysts say the company must do more. "Expansion of overseas parts procurement, relocation of domestic plants abroad, a cut in the number of domestic models, and other genuine reforms to the earnings structure will be needed for profits to improve over the medium to long term," said J.P. Morgan analyst Kohei Takahashi.* Sure thing, Kohei. But Toyota is once again trying (albeit struggling) to look very, very long term. *"We will be tremendously competitive once the yen comes back to a more balanced level as a result of our production technology innovation," said Mr. Niimi, who sports a mustache grown while working in the U.S.* And Toyota itself is a bit conflicted. *The strategy has drawn hints of internal dissent. In an unusual break with corporate decorum, Toyota's outspoken CFO, Satoshi Ozawa, criticized an over-reliance on domestic production at a news conference in May and questioned whether the company could remain profitable at current exchange rates.* Is the change for real? Time will tell. But perhaps the old Toyota is back. ### Happy Thanksgiving - Don't Forget the Miracles Around Us! URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/happy-thanksgiving-dont-forget-the-miracles-around-us/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:03:30.000Z Here in the U.S. it's Thanksgiving, a day when we try to reflect on our world and give thanks for what we have. Even in the face of a world in turmoil, a global economy on the edge - again, a dysfunctional government (especially twelve of them...) and incredulously some who want to turn another big chunk of our economy over to it, we sometimes need to realize how fortunate we are. Having grown up in Peru and recently returned from India, I'm pretty aware that I have a very comfortable life, especially by the standards of the rest of the world. I don't have to wonder where the next meal is coming from, whether I'll disappear for criticizing authority, or whether I'll be able to get necessary health care. Perhaps more to the perspective of the Evolving Excellence audience I am thankful for the incredible staff I have at the real job and the folks I interact with in the lean world. I've learned so much from all of you - and learning is what fills my life. Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a video, which is embedded below. Yes it's very funny, but stop and think about the underlying message. Think about the miracles around us that we now take for granted... even after only ten seconds of realizing one exists. It's truly an incredible world. Be mindful and aware - and thankful we get to experience it. ### Wrapping Up A Short Week URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/wrapping-up-a-short-week/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:05:11.000Z A couple of interesting stories to touch on before we wrap up the short Thanksgiving week: Kevin[ pointed out the absurdity ](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/assembly-mag-thinks-whirlpool-is-lean-really/)of Whirlpool being proclaimed 'lean' by Assembly Magazine. Their Mr Sprovieri acknowledges that "*The economics, the wisdom and even the ethics of Whirlpool’s decision to move some production from the United States to Mexico are certainly debatable*," and he asks, "*Are lean and outsourcing separate issues*?" He takes Kevin to task for not acknowledging the facts. His evidence of Whirlpool's 'leanness' is their winning a Shingo Prize. My dear Mr Spieri, first let's be clear that the first time we all had a good hoot at Whirlpool's self-proclaimed lean wizard status was [my post in 2006](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool%5Fsealy/), in which I pointed out that Whirlpool was closing a factory while having committees study lean. Kevin was merely rehashing a fact that is pretty well established. One of us or the other hauls out Whirlpool every year or so just for the comic value of listening to their inane proclamations of lean prowess. Assembly Magazine seems to be about the last ones to figure them out. But facts you want? How about this one: Lean is fundamentally about flow. Whirlpool's rate of flow went from a mediocre 7.8 inventory turns in 2009 to a downright pathetic 6.6 last year. This year is not in the books yet, but Whirlpool's CEO is bracing Wall Street for even worse flow. Inventory doesn't turn at Whirlpool because their flow is a non-issue. Instead, their 'assets' meander from China in slow boats and ooze through their factories like so much primordial sludge. How about this fact: Respect for people and commitment to them is fundamental to lean. The blathering of Whirlpool's Chielf Innovation Officer notwithstanding, Whirlpool did not only close its Evansville plant, it closed factories in Newton, Iowa; Searcy, Arkansas; Herrin, Illinois; La Vergne, Tenn; and Oxford, Miss; and they are warming up to lower the boom on Fort Smith, Arkansas. Just for laughs, it is interesting to point out that while Whirlpool was busy closing the Evansville plant, their Mr Egerton was putting on seminars in Shanghai on how to buy more stuff in China. I suggest the average Whirlpool employee would appreciate involving them in a paycheck a whole lot more than involving them in Whirlpool's innovation strategy. So let's recap, Mr Spieri: Laying off employees by the bus load, shutting down entire towns in the process in pursuit of cheap labor, extending supply chains by 8,000 miles and months of cycle time, and you are offended that Kevin thinks they are not lean? As for the Shingo Prize, you ought to check the records. You will find that Delphi won better than a dozen of them ... right before they went bankrupt. The Shingo Prize measures how lean a company looks - not how lean they are. And as for your question, are lean and outsourcing seperate issues ... if you have to ask then you don't really understand lean. **The Gang of Six** The political pundits were stunned that the goofy 'Gang of Six' was unable to find a way to cut 3% from the federal deficit. The most inept manufacturing manager on the planet can cut 3% when pushed to do so, but not these clowns. But no one should have been surprised. A quick check of the resumes of this gang shows an average age of 63, which leaves about 45 years of grown-up experience. The average of the gang mebers shows 20 years of elected office. Before that, they average 12 years of civil service and other government related work (mostly lobbying). So 32 years ago before they began gorging themselves on the public trough, what did they do? 10 years of hanging around academia either teaching or attending. In total, they average 3 years of honest work over a 45 year adult life. Is it any wonder that these folks cannot acomplish that which is routinely done by the average American adult? **There is Good News** Times are tough and the St Vincent DePaul Society's annual Thanksgiving food handout program in Cincinnat's west end was getting overwhelmed. It took 8 hours to pass out the food, and mistakes were common. "*Part of the problem is that most of the food is donated to the pantry in the day or so before the distribution, leaving no time to pre-pack baskets with donated stuffing mix, fresh potatoes, canned vegetables and fruit. 'Some people would get two or three boxes of stuffing, for example, and others wouldn't get any,' pantry coordinator Mike Voegele says. Some food ended up being handled two or three times before it ever got to people who needed it.*" Lucky for them a guy named Kevin Thornberry was one of their volunteers - and Kevin works for Toyota's TPS Support Center across the river in Kentucky. The Toyota folks came in and overhauled the process. Delivery time cut in half and errors gone. Turns out that Toyota has done the same for the St. Bernard Project rebuilding homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Community Kitchen & Food Pantry in Harlem. I wouldn't be surprised if a few former Whirlpool employees from nearby Evansville are in line for the food handouts. If so, it will be the first time they have seen what lean is really all about. **Have a very happy Thanksgiving!** ### Still Waiting on the Whambulance... URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/still-waiting-on-the-whambulance/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:06:09.000Z Here I naively thought perhaps we had moved on. Over the past several months we've had story after story of companies realizing the folly of following the the lemmings to supposedly cheaper overseas locales and coming home. And over the past several years we've told you story after story of companies in all kinds of industries being globally competitive and successful manufacturing from North America. Furniture, apparel, even toys - companies are succeeding from U.S. plants by focusing on improvement and creating customer value. But leave it to Industry Week to jolt me back to reality, to how far we still have to go. Another article on all the horrible hurdles and barriers American manufacturers face. The usual stuff. *The single most significant drag on manufacturing competitiveness is the United States' high corporate tax rate -- an average federal-state statutory rate of 40% that has not changed in decades. On a trade-weighted basis, the U.S. rate is 8.6 percentage points higher than its nine largest trading partners. This represents the single most important piece of the total structural cost burden on U.S. manufacturers.* And as usual it doesn't take into account how the U.S. tax system, more than that of any other industrialized nation, has loopholes and offsets galore. Right GE? However I do agree that the U.S. system is also far more confiscatory of overseas profits that the others, and that does need to change. And simplification would remove incredible cost. The article goes on in similar fashion with regards to regulatory, legal, health care, employee benefits, and other costs. Same old thing. Bottom line? *While manufacturers face a host of challenges, the data demonstrate that domestically imposed costs -- by commission or omission of government -- further undermine our ability to compete by adding at least 20% to the cost of making stuff in this country.* Yes 20% is a big number and I'm not denying it needs to be improved. If it's all valid in the first place, as I noted above. Four years ago I suggested that companies should [stop whining and start competing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stop%5Fwhining%5Fan/). A bunch apparently took me up on the challenge as they are succeeding. Some more have just recently come to the realization that cheap overseas facilities aren't as cheap - or risk free - as they thought and are coming back home. Some have realized that if they focus on internal inefficiencies as well as the potential for value creation from the customer's perspective, even a 20% differential isn't that high of a hurdle. And some are destined to just whine and complain some more. We'll check back in another four years and see how they're doing. Any wagers? ### Culture Adrift URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/culture-adrift/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:06:31.000Z Loyalty, forgiveness, a team focus ... these are all admirable traits of organizational culture ...to a point. When loyalty morphs into blindness, forgiveness becomes rationalization, and the team focus becomes an insular culture, however, disaster is inevitable, and it happens when organizations are driven - and succeed - by a 'Management by Objectives' rather than a 'Management by Means' mentality. It doesn't take too deep a look into the colossal failures at Penn State and the Catholic Church to see this in action ... or to see it in action in a much less spectacular fashion in organizations of lesser prominence. Make no mistake that the 'Win' part of "win with honor' was the over-arching objective at Penn State, and the "with honor" part was more a wish than a principle. As [Sports Illustrated's recent article ](https://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/magazine/11/16/penn.st/index.html?&sct=cf%5Ft11%5Fa7&ref=kevinmeyer.com)on the Penn State debacle points out, PSU was tied for fourth place among top 25 teams for the number of players with arrest records going into last year. But it is also easy to see all of the good things Paterno did and believe that he really wanted to win with honor. Likewise, the Catholic Church has long measured itself by its numbers - how many Catholics there were and how many attended mass routinely. Why they were Catholics and what they believed was secondary. The Church hoped they were good Catholics - really wanted them to be - but this was secondary to the bottom line. The 2,000 year history of the Church is littered with examples of compromising principles for the sake of size ... and power. That Church leadership believed they were also 'winning with honor' is unquestionable - they were simply blind to the reality that the 'with honor' part was routinely rationalized away in pursuit of winning. In such a culture leadership finds it easy to protect its own. 'We are Penn State' and we win with honor - and all of those examples where we have not been so honorable are anomalies that people just don't understand - and because we are inherently good and successful we have to protect our good and successful people from outsiders who simply don't understand how good and successful we are and will attempt to destroy us. The bad acts of one of our members should not be allowed to serve as ammunition for outsiders to undermine the greater good we serve. Likewise, the Catholic Church - the Church Jesus himself charged Peter to build - believed within its insular leadership that it served such a greater good that the horrible misdeeds by a few priests, although bad, cannot be allowed to derail their success. Fortunately, in most organizations the bad acts of one of its leaders do not rise to the despicable level of Penn State and the Church, but the same dynamic is at play far too often. In one company (whose bottom line was very good) I advised it was plain to all - except the senior executives - that one of its executives was abusive and divisive, wreaking havoc on organization, demotivating and driving away some of their very best people. The CEO told me that (1) I was wrong and simply didn't understand the contribution the exec was making, (2) the sources of my information were lying to me, and (3) it was beyond my charter so I should keep my nose out of it. Within three months, two key operations mangers had quit and their biggest customer dropped them, directly attributing their decisions to the exec in question. Why the blind support of a destructive person whose mean nature was so easy for anyone outside the leadership team to see? While this is far from the norm, it is not that unusual either. I am intimately familiar with another company - a very profitable one - that protected, rationalized and ultimately paid a severe price for blind support of an exec who was stealing from the company - a fact patently obvious to virtually every employee outside of the senior leadership ranks. The common thread is a rationalization of the end justifying the means - common enough among us individually but especially destructive when it creeps into the leadership culture and too common when the end results appear to be good. Management by Means - focusing on *how things get done* and *how people lead* \- provides the right focus, assures that the 'with honor' goal supersedes the 'win' goal, and most often results in winning. At the very least, it assures that organizational problems are resolved by organizations instead of grand juries. (*By way of full disclosure, I am both a life-long practicing Catholic and a huge Big Ten football fan. The failings of both the Church and Penn State have not been easy to observe*) ### Think About It URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/think-about-it/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:07:03.000Z I came across a great quote the other day attributed to Fulton Sheen. he said, "*The time one has for anything depends on how much we value it. Thinking determines the use of time; time does not rule over thinking*." The old Arch-Bishop was talking about theological matters, of course, but his principle is pretty much universal. Kevin and I pound on companies to the point that it begins to sound like a broken record. They are struggling to compete, so they lay people off. Then they move to China. Then they buy a monstrous ERP system to keep track of the inventory they have scattered all over the globe oozing at a snail's pace through absurdly long supply chains. Then they file for bankruptcy, get broken up, or otherwise end up in bigger trouble then they were at the start. It is very, very predictable. I recall [once writing rather cynically ](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/you-gotta-be-original/)(imagine that!) about a company that pursued basically this layoff/China/ERP strategy, suggesting that I could have developed the strategy they adopted for $20 and mailed it to them on a post card ... blacks belts, layoffs, China, etc... There was nothing to it that was not straight from the same formula every other big company seemed to be following. While I disagree with his focus - too much product and too little process - I have to give Steve Jobs credit for original thinking. Too many -most, it seems - leaders seem to be either far too busy or far too risk averse to put an original thought into the business. But whether it is perceived lack of time or fear of coming up with the wrong thoughts, the good Bishop was right. Not taking the time to learn and think directly reflects the value many leaders place on such activities. They do not see creative thinking on their part as an important element of their job. They are masters of other people's thoughts, and see their role as one of executing that plagiarised thinking. Leaders know the thoughts of others that were drilled into them in school, and lessons learned from watching others as they progressed through the ranks. Then when they reach the top, learning and thinking slam to a halt and they run the company with absolute conviction in what they have learned from others. If original thinking is needed, they hire a consultant - but most often a very predictable, reliable consultant like McKinsey who can be counted on to copy and paste the latest consensus elite business school thinking. The notion of setting aside time to learn more for themselves, think deeply and broadly, and devise a creative direction for the business never crosses their minds. I have come to believe that one of the reasons many privately held companies pursue and embrace strategies and modes of operating that successfully buck the high labor cost, over-regulation, excessive taxes and other constraints that 'force' big companies to layoff, off-shore and outsource is the Hernando Cortes effect. Cortes is the conquistador who arrived at Vera Cruz Mexico in July of 1519 with 11 ships and 700 or so guys with the goal of confiscating the wealth of the million plus member Aztec empire. Upon his arrival he promptly destroyed his ships. By that act, he took the easy solution off the table. Knowing he was facing a tall order - 700 men versus a million - he wanted to force himself and his men to devise creative solutions to the problems they were certain to face. The obvious solution to their challenges - retreat - was not permitted to be one of their solutions. When the privately held company - or even the big ones like Toyota and SC Johnson - have publicly committed to no layoff policies and committed to their communities they are doing largely the same thing. The leaders are forcing themselves and their staffs to devise creative solutions to the problems that will inevitably arise. The easy solutions - the cut and paste layoff, off-shore, outsource solutions - are not among their options, so they have to stretch their brains, be creative, learn about alternative ideas. I don't know that the leaders of privately held businesses are any smarter than the leaders of the mostly mediocre and very predictable big businesses, but I suspect they spend a lot more time thinking. ### When Customers Want Lemons, Sell Lemonade URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/when-customers-want-lemons-sell-lemonade/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:07:36.000Z Admittedly I do not have the moral authority to comment on the hair business. The honest answer when I am filling out a form that includes a box that says 'Hair' is 'Yes, but just barely'. The story in the Arizona Republic about a hair salon called Mane Attraction is not about hair, however, so much as it is about business and customers so I am not on quite as shaky ground in writing about it. It seems, when the economy is tough, people have a tendency to stretch the time between hair cuts. Instead of going to Mane Attractions every four weeks, people tried to save money by getting their hair cut or colored every six to eight weeks. Faced with such a decline in business on the order of 33-50%, most businesses would take one or more of a couple of predictable actions. They might discount prices in order to get people to come in more often - a coupon that expires in 30 days, for instance, might create an incentive to not wait so long. They might launch some sort of a scary ad campaign in an effort to convince people that their appearance would drop to levels that would take a toll on their careers and love life if they got too shaggy. Failing those strategies they would lay off staff by a corresponding percentage. Not Kendall Ong and his wife, however. Instead of the typical responses that are aimed at convincing customers to do something other than what they have decided to do, or turning a declining market into employee problems, the Ongs went in the opposite direction. He started giving customers lessons in how to make their hair cut or coloring job last longer. He had his staff start tilting their recommendations to coloring and styling techniques that would hold out better for longer times. In short, when he saw that customers wanted to go longer between hair jobs he gave them the best products and services he could to accomplish that goal. There are a couple of great lessons here: First is the obvious one. "*People are more cautious with their money, and while they continue to spend, they expect more value. Give them what they expect, and stay in business*." There's that value thing again - it's not about price or the 'top line' - it is all about value. What does this have to do with lean? It gets right to the heart of it. Lean is about eliminating waste - anything that does not add value to customers. It is about providing the best value proposition, which does not mean being the cheapest and it certainly does not mean manipulating customers to behave in a way that works best for you. The second lesson is one that the Ong's were not quite so honest about. "*Cutting and coloring hair has nothing to do with reading a P&L*," said Ong. "*Styling hair and running a business are totally different*." I suspect Mr. Ong knows exactly what the relationship between cutting and coloring hair and his P&L is. It seems to me that he realized it was not just the size of his customer spend that was shrinking - it was the overall size of the market. He strikes me as being wise enough to realize that continued success could only come from grabbing a bigger piece of the market - and a bigger share of the market could only come from providing better value proposition. It is a fundamental truth, and he is one of those rare people astute enough to know it. ### Assembly Mag Thinks Whirlpool is Lean. Really. URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/assembly-mag-thinks-whirlpool-is-lean-really/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:08:01.000Z I really have no words. Well, you know that's impossible. But Austin Weber's article on Assembly Magazine's website that glorified the supposed lean accomplishments at Whirlpool nearly made me sick. I won't quote any of the article except suffice it to say it included lots of talk about tools. Not people. The oft-forgotten second pillar of lean, respect for people. Forgotten by Whirlpool. Forgotten by Assembly Magazine. We've followed the disaster at Whirlpool for several years. Back in August of 2006 we told you about their plans to lay off hundreds at their Evansville plant, while saying that "the company will continue to have committees explore lean manufacturing or efficiency practices." Sorry, that's not real lean. As that post predicted, those committees didn't exactly do much good as in December of that same year [we told you](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/understanding%5Fl/) how they were adding a couple thousand people at their Clyde, Mason, and Amana facilities while losing a thousand at Fort Smith thanks to chasing lower labor costs to Ramos Arizpe in Mexico. Trading tens of thousands of years of experience for newbies and the associated huge training costs and quality curve... oh and a buck or two per hour in labor "cost." Sorry, that's not real lean. A year or two later we [updated the story](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/rockwood-gets-w/), comparing Whirlpool to a company that does understand the value of brains - Rockwood. September of 2009 then brought the news that Whirlpool's Evansville factory was finally being closed for good - an [expected but unnecessary death](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool-evansville-dies-the-unnecessary-but-expected-death/). In March of 2010 we were [a little amused](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/whirlpool-yes-whirlpool-looks-for-lean/) to learn that Whirlpool was now looking for trained lean folks... at a facility just a few miles from a facility they had closed... which had been filled with trained lean folks. Seriously. I can't make this stuff up. Sorry, that's not real lean. Bryan Zeigler at the Lean is Good blog quoted Evolving Excellence in its own analysis of Whirlpool last year, but then added a comment that hits the nail on the head. *Yes, Mr. Colburn \[Whirlpool VP\] is giving the Evansville plant accolades but at the same time each employee has to deal with the slow agonizing pain of slowly seeing their factory move piece by piece.* Yep, as if that knucklehead version of lean stands even a tiny chance of being successful. Real lean companies understand that success results from harnessing the creative ideas of experienced people that are treated with respect. They understand that the value of the brains far outweighs the cost of the pair of hands - and that the value of brains is real but not captured on traditional financial statements. Real lean companies understand that far more cost can be removed - and value created - through improvement ideas rather than chasing low cost labor. Especially when that silly chase results in shedding thousands of years of experience and paying large amounts to retrain and absorb initial quality issues. Sorry Austin, Whirlpool is about as far from an example of real lean as you can get. Do your homework next time please. This is why lean gets a bum rap. ### Control or Chaos? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/control-or-chaos/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:08:43.000Z One of the first things you notice upon landing in India, especially Mumbai, is the traffic. Rules? What rules? Every conceivable type of vehicle combined with people and bikes and even cows, all jostling for another inch. A visual is always better than words, so watch the first few seconds of this video and you'll understand. India's concept of rules is interesting. On one hand they love bureaucracy and rules - the list we received for our trade show booth spelled out every possible contingency under the sun, plus the associated fines and penalties for not following them. On the other hand... well there are no traffic rules. This isn't the first time I've encountered such chaotic traffic. Italy was [very similar](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thoughts%5Fon%5Fone/). And just as with India it was a little eye-opening. It looks like mayhem and out of control, but traffic moves. Slowly, but nearly continuously, and perhaps analogously to the tortoise and the hare you almost seem to get to your destination faster than you would with traffic light after traffic light. After the Italy experience I discovered there's actually a [science behind](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the%5Fspeed%5Fof%5Fch/) what I observed. Rules, and even the visual indicators we love in the lean world, can sometimes remove the brain from the process. In India, and Italy, drivers and pedestrians are exceptionally aware of their surroundings. I was amazed how cab drivers in India could cut in and out of traffic seemingly having complete 360 degree peripheral vision. I was also surprised by how in over 12 days in India we saw exactly zero accidents - and we saw one within an hour of returning to the U.S. But we also saw an ambulance, sirens blaring, stuck in the same slow Mumbai traffic with no one making an effort to give way. Can rules and visual signals, or at least some excess level of them, actually turn off the thinking and awareness process? Where is the line between the minimum level of rules and signals necessary for orderly society - and too many that effectively constrain the potential agility power of chaos? What is the impact on lean, such as visual controls, standard work, and 5S? ### Time for Another Roundup URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/time-for-another-roundup/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:09:44.000Z Before I head out for another week on the road I need to share a few of the more interesting tidbits that have popped into the news lately ... **The Arabs are Starting to Figure it Out** All of the hubbub in recent years about alternative energy sources is not good at all for the Middle East. Their economy was basically non-existent for ten thousand years - then oil came along and made them filthy rich - and if oil goes away, they are pretty much back to the stone ages. It will take the world a long time to be over its oil addiction, and it will take the folks in the Middle East a long time to spend all of their money, but the handwriting is pretty much on the wall. But don't count them out just yet. Hasan Malek, a big mover and shaker in the Muslim Brotherhood (an outfit whose methods and motives are a bit shaky to say the least) says, "*We want to turn Egypt from a consumer market into a manufacturing market*." he is not talking about peddling cheap labor either. He talks about the need to raise manufacturing standards, and says, "*We are thinking of developmental investments that include proper professional training of the labor force to create manufacturing industries and reduce the reliance on imports*." He is not the only one who sees manufacturing as critical to the Middle East economy. A Saudi guy by the name of Khalaf Al-Harbi pointed out the Israel was not about to dry up and blow away - calling it an "*inescapable fact*" - because Israel "*went on \[to develop\] manufacturing, industry, and invention. The \[average\] income there is double \[the average income\] in the neighboring Arab countries*." In a conversation with Jim Womack at the Lean Accounting Summit, he described a mutual acquaintance of ours as a "*philosophical genius but a practical idiot*". He could have been talking about John Stossel, who repeats the failed blathering that has all but destroyed western economies. Wouldn't that be a historical irony to have the Middle east dominate the west not through oil or terrorism, but by having the common sense to appreciate the critical nature of manufacturing? **The Lean Train Keeps Rolling** Thank goodness guys like John Stossel are largely ignored in Holstein, Iowa. I can imagine how far down their pointy noses the academic and economic elite have to look to see an outfit like VT Industries based in an Iowa town named after a sort of cow, but VT is rolling along making doors in an economy that is not doing much construction. How is VT succeeding? "*Not only do we have a manufacturing complex in Holstein, we also have eight other facilities spread strategically across the United States and Canada. Regardless of our growth, though, our philosophy remains the same: treat every customer as if they were your only customer. That means delivering the finest products possible, supported by the ultimate in customer service*." Says VT VP Jason Farver, "*Using Kaizen events is one tool we utilize in every plant, but driving the improvement process at all levels of the organization makes for the most sustained improvements. Standard Work has been a key focus at VT for the past two to three years, which is enhancing our training and consistency across shifts and operations*." Stories like VT's are actually becoming pretty common in manufacturing, and almost as common in health care. Tucson's Northwest Medical Center - a very big hospital - pledges 30 minute max wait to see a doctor. Kimberly Chimene says the multi-million dollar expansion of their ER facility isn't the driver of getting wait times down to 21 minutes. "*We redid a lot of our processes*," she says, "*It is very much a collaberative effort to enhance our service and working with ER staff, physicians and out nursing group*." ***Theeeeey're Mediocre!*** Seems Kellogg canned 1,500 folks in 2009 under the auspices of a simple minded program called K-Lean, which has nothing to do with lean and everything to do with the sort of 'management by headcount reduction' that people with no idea how their company actually creates value are wont to do these days. Two years later, costs are up, profits are down and, worst of all, quality is so bad even Girl Scout cookies are at risk. It is in no way the fault of the people at the Augusta plant - I have met some folks there and they know exactly how to run a world class, high quality factory. The problem is 100% at the top. CEO John Bryant said he has to hire people back and make some big investments in manufacturing and the supply chain. In an overwhelming burst of the obvious he said, "*We were chasing aggressive productivity goals. We thought we were making sustainable cost reductions but they were not*." Some investment guy named David Kolpak said, *"I thought this was a company that consistently managed its business for the long term, but apparently they have made decisions for the short term that are coming back to haunt them. Boy, who has a handle on the operations of this company*?" Well, David, perhaps you ought to actually read the annual reports and apply a bit of common sense. Isn't that what you get paid to do? In the 2009 report. It says right there on page 43, "*In 2009, 2008 and 2007, the company made performance share awards to a limited number of senior executive-level employees, which entitles these employees to receive a specified number of shares of the Company's common stock on the vesting date, provided cumulative three-year targets are achieved. The cumulative three-year targets involved cost savings for the 2009 grant, operating profit for the 2008 grant and cash flow for the 2007 grant*." Think, now David. Kellogg stock was at about $40 bucks when they announced the big layoff. Your pals on Wall Street loved it and the stock ended the year at better than $50\. The guys you assumed were in it for the long haul had stock options based on "*cost savings in 2009*" - nothing in the equation about making good Girl Scout cookies in 2011\. They did quite well by the scheme. The "*cost savings for the 2009 grant*" were achieved and Mr Bryant raked in better than $2 million as a result. Where exactly in that arrangement did you see anything to lead you to be surprised that Kellogg did stuff that made the numbers look great in 2009, but trashed the long term? This is why privately held companies with an inherently longer term view find true lean easier to pursue than the big guys. **Why Policy Manuals are Dumb Ideas** It is a fundamental truth that dumb people will work for less money than smart people. Big companies love to hire people who will work for less money, so they tend to get more than their fair share of dumb people. Government also gets a lot of small thinkers just because big thinkers tend to not want to work for the government. The solution? Policies. By creating rules for everything the big companies and government think they can prevent dumb people from makng dumb decisions. It is a strategy that rarely works. Case in point: Safeway in Honolulu. The Leszczynski's (whose only crime in my book is a seriously inadequate vowel count) went shopping in the Safeway store a few weeks back with their 2 year old daughter. 30 week pregnant Mrs. L was hungry, so they grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the Safeway deli and ate them while they shopped. They kept the wrappers so they could scan the bar codes when they paid for the rest of their groceries, but forgot to do so. For this high crime, they were detained in the Safeway office for shoplifting, then ultimately handed over to the Honolulu police, who decide to haul the L's down to the pokie and book 'em. With mom and dad on their way to the stir, two year old Zofia is parentless, so off to Child Services she goes. Despite the fact that mom and dad are released after a few hours, Child Services is so bureaucratic and buried in useless processes it takes them 18 hours to process Zofia in and out of the system, all the while Mr and Mrs L are beside themselves with worry. Safeway's Susan Houghton said "*management followed routine shoplifting procedure*". "*A Honolulu police spokeswoman said it was routine procedure to call Child Welfare Services if a child is present when both parents are arrested*." I assume it is also a matter of Honolulu policy to arrest people for a $10 "*mommy-brain moment*", as Mrs L described it, if the Safeway manager tells them to. Mrs L says she has not given suing Safeway any thought. Do it Mrs L. PT Barnum made it clear that you have a moral obligation to take money from fools before they do something with it to hurt themselves. The moral of the story for the rest of us is to hire people with intelligence, pay them what they are worth, then tear up the policy manuals and let the employees make intelligent decisions with a modicum of common sense. ### This Town Needs A Panera URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/this-town-needs-a-panera/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:10:58.000Z If ever a town needed a Penera Bread it's Galva, Illinois. They don't need it for the food, mind you. I'm sure the Garden of Eat In restaurant and Gus' Taco House keep the 2,600 or so resident of Galva fed in fine style. Rather, it is for the example of what a business leader can be. In that area, Galva is in short supply and Penera Bread - their founder Ron Shaich more specifically - is re-writing the book. In a recent HBR post, Shaich wrote about the "*notion of a conscious and long-term approach to value creation — when put into proper application — serves long-term shareholders extraordinarily well and has the capacity to favorably reshape the public’s perception of corporate America. It is built on the fundamental premise that every business has a deeper purpose than merely short-term profit maximization and, more importantly, a responsibility to all of its stakeholders (customers, employees, vendors, investors, community). With such a model, profit is merely the byproduct of delivering something that serves society and a broad range of stakeholders*." Shaich does more than talk, however. Penera expects to feed a million people this year in three 'pay what you can afford' restaurants. They started them up because Shaich thinks Panera has the unique ability to leverage their scale and food business know-how "*to affect positive — heck, lasting — change in the communities in which it served*." Shaich says, "*We have to spend less time figuring out how to extract economic value from our stakeholders and more time creating what is valuable to them. Doing so is what ultimately creates long term value*." Galva needs Shaich and Penera because, without it the folks there might come to believe that All Feed Processing and Packaging represents what business leadership is like. If that happens, the whole town may join an Occupy Galva movement, leaving no one to help Gus at his taco joint. I am fully in support of efforts to drastically reduce government regulation, but having Tim Anderson, CEO of All Feeds, out in front of the crusade sets the effort back by decades. All Feeds seems to feel quite victimized by OSHA - so victimized as to have an OSHA page on their web site with the American flag upside down. As the father of an airborne soldier with two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, anyone who puts the flag he risked his life to defend upside down for any reason is a jerk in my book, but these guys are particularly galling. All Feeds is unhappy with the series of fines OSHA has levied against them - a half million bucks in 2009, another $167K in 2010, and $758,000 this year. Prior to the 2010 fines, "*All-Feed Processing and Packaging had been inspected by OSHA nine times since 2000, resulting in a significant enforcement action on four occasions. The nine inspections led to citations for 42 serious, 15 willful, five repeat and 10 other-than-serious violations*." Feeling quite the victim of OSHA harassment, a few months ago All Feed refused to let OSHA inspectors do their job and it took a court order and $500 a day in fines to force them to do so. So what makes me so sure Anderson and All Feed are not the victims of harassing government over-reach? Well, in levying the half million dollar fine in 2009, Nick Walters - the OSHA guy - said, "*We've seen stark evidence of the tragedy that can occur when uncontrolled dust ignites*." Sure enough, three months later the All Feeds plant exploded. Said Tim Anderson, "*Ultimately, it was still set off by a dust explosion*." - just like the OSHA guy warned. Said injured employee Dustin Williams, "*I had just got to the door when the explosion knocked me on my butt and I just slid across the parking lot*." The employees were laid off - twenty of them still are. Twenty familes without work is tough medicine in a town the size of Galva. (This in spite of Anderson's touching assertion that his "*heart is heavy for our employees. We really consider them our primary reason for being here*.") Penera Bread just reported earnings - sales up, profits up, business growing. That profit, as Ron Shaich said, is merely the byproduct of delivering something that serves society and a broad range of stakeholders. I have no idea if All Feed made any money, but they made at least a million and a half less because of their opting to run the place in a manner that left employees, their families and the community up the creek. It's 32 miles from All Feed to the nearest Panera Bread location in Moline. The management team might want to start holding their meetings there. They just might learn something about leadership, business and the value of their stakeholders - not to mention how to avoid millions of dollars in fines and legal costs. ### You Oughta Read This One URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/you-oughta-read-this-one/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:11:45.000Z Anyone who has been following manufacturing and the economy will love this article from the Onion. ## Remains Of Ancient Race Of Job Creators Found In Rust Belt October 31, 2011 | [ISSUE 47•44](https://www.theonion.com/issue/4744/?ref=kevinmeyer.com "The Onion: Issue 4744") WASHINGTON—A team of leading archaeologists announced Monday they had uncovered the remains of an ancient job-creating race that, at the peak of its civilization, may have provided occupations for hundreds of thousands of humans in the American Northeast and Midwest. read the rest of the article here ### Another Waste of Transportation? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/another-waste-of-transportation/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:12:04.000Z I just returned from two weeks in India punctuated by the culture shock of going straight to Singapore. Lots to see and think about, and others are right when they say that India will really change you - in many ways. It will take some time to digest what I saw and experienced, but eventually I'll share my thoughts with all of you, like it or not. In the meantime I thought I'd start with something a little less serious - but hopefully still thought-provoking. Out here in California wine country - and in Texas and innumerable more rural states for that matter - well, heck just about everywhere in the U.S. - the truck is considered the vehicle de regueur. Even in these days of green thinking, high gas prices, and downsizing you still see hoards of huge empty pickups, vans, and SUVs all over the road. When you ask why you usually hear something along the lines of "you never know when I'll need to haul something" or "it's more safe." Some of us have gotten past such mental blocks and have downsized - in my wife's case from an SUV to a hot little Volvo C30 And yes, some do legitimately need to haul stuff, or kids, on a regular basis. I'm not knocking them. Of course value means different things to different people. For some the value of a quiet ride with lots of space is important. For others there may actually be some strange value in showing off unnecessary wealth. Or value in a lot of extra, perhaps unnecessary, steel around the most valuable parts of their lives. But seeing the opposite in India made me wonder about this particular waste of transportation - or waste of unnecessary transportation capacity. How much are we spending on "just in case" not to mention even when you do need it it is hauled in a very inefficient manner? Do you need to a big truck to haul a basket of eggs? What is the true cost - to you, your family, your fellow drivers on crammed motorways, to society? So here are a series of photos. Obviously this is the other extreme and I'm not promoting going that far. But think about it next time you crawl into your big vehicle and then wonder why the traffic is jammed thanks to so many people transporting air. Let's start with one that truly disturbed me - a mother nursing her baby on the back of a moped going 60 kph without holding on. If you've seen the chaos of Indian traffic you'll know why I was triply concerned. This type of thing is not unusual - here's an entire family of four on a moped. Note the adults wear the helmets. How about if you need to move a few inner tubes? Or a few gifts, perhaps to a bachelorette party? Or a couple doors? Just get a buddy and your moped, and then make sure you use your cell phone to ask for directions while navigating traffic. I bet this guy fits more into his school "motortrikepool" than you can fit in your Ford Excursion! Some milk to take to market? Or eggs... Or maybe you have just a tad too much for the moped option. But sometimes maybe even your wife get's a little ticked off that she has to ride on the moped instead of an enclosed vehicle - and of course when the wife's not happy... So there you have it. Yes a little strange, perhaps a little funny. But think about it next time we're crammed on the highways in big, wasteful, vehicles transporting nothing but cooled air. Who's really advanced for this day and age? Hmm... ### Products versus Processes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/products-versus-processes/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:12:16.000Z Every product has its life cycle, most of them not too terribly long. It seems to be a human reality that not too many people are good at taking a clean sheet of paper - a completely empty space - and conjuring up something entirely new; but once someone has done that, it is easy for others to see what has been conjured up and improve on it. So Chrysler creates the concept of the mini van and has a few years in the sun, but soon enough every other car maker takes the initial idea and makes mini vans that are better or cheaper. On the other hand, processes to continuously improve existing products, and processes to produce them have no practical limits. They also are much harder for competitors to discern and imitate. The whole world knows what product is being sold, but who knows what is happening in the bowels of the factories and engineering offices to make them? For years - decades, in fact - this basic reality was Toyota's key to success. I can't recall a single time when the auto world or the consumers were wowed by one of Toyota's new products. Their products were never bad, of course. They were stylish enough and had enough new features so as to be competitive, but there were never screaming headlines from the car shows marveling at the breakthrough in car styling from Toyota. What they did was made a steady stream of cars that were 6's or 7's on the design scale and ran them through processes that were virtually 10's on the cost, quality and delivery scale. A Toyota may not have turned many heads when it passed by, but the price was right, and the quality and reliability were off the charts. The business press and the politicians don't understand this because they don't don't know much about the processes it takes to make things. They know companies primarily as a set of products. The one with the coolest, most exciting products seems to them to be the best company. Wall Street probably doesn't understand either, but more important, it doesn't care. A fantastic new product can have a bottle rocket effect on profits even if it is produced via lousy processes, and Wall Street loves bottle rockets. During Chrysler's brief mini van run, profits soared and stock prices rose dramatically. The profits and stock prices soon returned to their dismal levels once the innovative product run was over because profits are a function of processes in the long haul - but no one on Wall Street cares about the long haul. The pharmaceutical companies are another great example. They are all about innovative new drugs, and use patent protection to shield them from the consequences of lousy manufacturing processes. As a result, they lose the long term value from their products to generic manufacturers who thrive on good processes, and the big pharmas live and die (more often dying lately) with their product innovation. This basic principle is at the heart of my criticism of Apple a few weeks back that generated the first out pouring of genuine hate mail I have received since I began writing on Evolving Excellence over six years ago. They were written by people who were passionate fans of Apple products, but not too well tuned into the so-so (at best) manufacturing and supply chain processes Apple has in place to deliver them. The Apple business model has been all about innovative products, but mediocre processes and, as a result is a business model that has been a series of spectacular bottle rockets but is not sustainable. It comes a no big surprise to me that Samsung just passed Apple in smart phone sales. Before long someone will surpass them in pad sales - it is inevitable. It is also why I give such short shrift to the economists and politicians who are all in on the innovation band wagon. By and large, they mean innovative products, not innovative processes, so they are urging an unsustainable business and economic model. Of course, the best of all worlds is to do both - great products *and* great processes - but if a company is going to focus on one, making a line up of good products through great, innovative processes is the way to go, rather than to keep searching for the great product while paying little attention to processes. It is very much a 'tortoise and the hare' deal - slow and steady wins the race every time - even though there are times during the race when the hare might look fantastic. ### India's Golden Triangle and Singapore: From Ancient Wonders to Modern Marvels URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/indias-golden-triangle-and-singapore-from-ancient-wonders-to-modern-marvels/ Last updated: 2025-09-03T11:36:47.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/9a/c39a9c8a-1d82-46be-8e4f-ed7e6cd347f4/content/images/2025/08/jaipur-palace-lake.JPG) Our October 2011 journey through India's Golden Triangle and Singapore created an unforgettable contrast between ancient civilizations and cutting-edge modernity. This two-week adventure combined business obligations with extraordinary cultural discovery, taking us from Mumbai's bustling energy through Rajasthan's royal heritage to the Taj Mahal's timeless beauty, concluding in Singapore's sophisticated efficiency. For travelers ready to embrace India's magnificent chaos alongside Asia's most refined city-state, this itinerary delivers transformative experiences that challenge expectations and create lasting memories. ## Why This Combination? India and Singapore represent two dramatically different faces of modern Asia - India with its layered history, spiritual depth, and sensory intensity, Singapore with its multicultural harmony, urban sophistication, and seamless efficiency. The contrast proved illuminating, each destination enhancing appreciation for the other's unique character. ## The Epic Journey The logistics alone made this memorable - 25.5 hours of total flight time including the world's second-longest nonstop flight (LAX-Singapore on Singapore Airlines). Flying business class proved essential for such distances, and Singapore Airlines' service excellence set expectations for the entire trip. ## General Comments **Timing:** October offered ideal weather in both destinations - India's post-monsoon clarity and Singapore's manageable humidity. The 12.5-hour time difference required significant adjustment but allowed us to maximize each destination. **Cultural Preparation:** No amount of research fully prepares you for India's intensity, but embracing the experience with curiosity rather than resistance proved key to enjoyment. **Luxury vs. Authenticity:** We chose heritage properties and luxury hotels that enhanced rather than insulated us from local culture, creating comfort zones between immersive cultural experiences. **Health Considerations:** Standard travel precautions proved sufficient - no special vaccinations required, though bottled water and careful food choices remained important. ## Detailed Itinerary ### Days 1-4: Mumbai - Gateway to India **Hotel:** Grand Hyatt Mumbai Mumbai provided our introduction to India's energy and complexity. This cosmopolitan metropolis combines Bollywood glamour, colonial architecture, and modern business dynamism with traditional markets and street life. **Business and Leisure Balance:** I attended the MedTec India show during our first two days, giving my wife the opportunity to explore Mumbai with our guide while I focused on business obligations. This arrangement worked perfectly, allowing us both to maximize our time - she could dive deep into cultural experiences during the day while I handled meetings, and then we explored together during our remaining days in the city. **Mumbai Highlights:** - **Gateway of India:** The iconic archway overlooking Mumbai Harbor, built to commemorate King George V's visit - **Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus:** UNESCO World Heritage railway station showcasing Victorian Gothic architecture - **Marine Drive:** The "Queen's Necklace" waterfront promenade perfect for evening strolls - **Dhobi Ghat:** The world's largest outdoor laundry, a fascinating glimpse into Mumbai's working life - **Elephanta Caves:** Ancient rock-cut temples on Elephanta Island, accessible by ferry - **Dabbawalas:** Mumbai's legendary meal delivery system that operates with 99.9999% accuracy, moving over 200,000 lunchboxes daily from homes to offices across the city. Watching this incredible supply chain in action - from color-coded containers to bicycle deliveries - demonstrated organizational efficiency that would impress any business school. - **Towers of Silence:** These Parsi burial grounds on Malabar Hill showcase the unique Zoroastrian practice of sky burial, where bodies are left for vultures rather than buried or cremated, reflecting the religion's commitment to not polluting earth, fire, or water. - **Dharavi Slum:** Often called Asia's largest slum, Dharavi surprised us as a thriving entrepreneurial center where recycling industries, pottery works, and leather production create an estimated $1 billion annual economy. The contrast between poverty and ingenuity challenged preconceptions about urban development. - **Antilia:** One of the world's most expensive private residences, this 27-story vertical palace belonging to billionaire Mukesh Ambani sits almost adjacent to Dharavi, creating a stark visual representation of Mumbai's incredible wealth disparity. **Cultural Immersion:** - **Crawford Market:** Vibrant fruit and spice market offering sensory overload in the best way - **Colaba Causeway:** Shopping street mixing local handicrafts with contemporary fashion - **Local train experience:** Brief rides on Mumbai's legendary suburban railway system - **Street food exploration:** Sampling vada pav, bhel puri, and other Mumbai specialties with guidance ### Days 5-7: Rajasthan Heritage - Chomu and Jaipur **Hotels:** Chomu Palace Hotel, Jai Mahal Palace **Transportation:** Flight from Mumbai to Jaipur (1.5 hours) The transition from Mumbai to Rajasthan revealed India's incredible diversity - from cosmopolitan modernity to timeless rural traditions within a short flight. **Chomu Palace Experience:** This 300-year-old fortified palace hotel offered our first taste of Rajasthani hospitality and heritage architecture. The property's integration with local village life created authentic cultural encounters. **Village Exploration:** - **Traditional tribal villages:** Witnessing centuries-old lifestyles unchanged by modern times - **Jeep safaris:** Exploring rural Rajasthan where traditional customs still govern daily life - **Local handicrafts:** Observing artisans practicing ancient techniques passed down through generations - **Village walks:** Interacting with locals maintaining traditional agricultural and pastoral lifestyles **Jaipur - The Pink City:** Jaipur's rose-colored buildings and planned city layout created by Maharaja Jai Singh II provided stunning examples of Indian urban design. **Jaipur's Architectural Wonders:** - **Amber Fort:** The hilltop fortress-palace reached by decorated elephant rides through ancient gates - **Hawa Mahal:** The Palace of the Winds with 593 intricately carved windows designed for royal women to observe street life - **City Palace:** Living palace complex blending Rajasthani and Mughal architecture, still home to Jaipur's royal family - **Jantar Mantar:** UNESCO World Heritage astronomical observatory with massive stone instruments for celestial calculations **Shopping and Crafts:** Jaipur's position as a crafts center provided incredible shopping opportunities: - **Block printing:** Observing the complete process from carving blocks to printing textiles - **Jewelry workshops:** Watching skilled artisans create kundan and enamel jewelry - **Gem cutting:** Seeing precious stones transformed into intricate animal sculptures - **Textile tailoring:** Custom clothing created in traditional and contemporary styles ### Days 8-10: Agra - Monument to Love **Hotel:** Oberoi Amarvilas **Transportation:** Drive from Jaipur to Agra (240 km, approximately 4-5 hours) The Oberoi Amarvilas offered an experience unmatched anywhere in the world - every room with unobstructed Taj Mahal views. Waking up to see the monument's changing moods throughout the day elevated luxury travel to new heights. **Taj Mahal - Sunrise and Sunset:** No photographs prepare you for the Taj Mahal's actual impact. The monument's perfection, the story of Shah Jahan's love for Mumtaz Mahal, and the changing light effects create an emotional experience transcending typical sightseeing. **Sunrise Visit:** The early morning light gradually illuminating the white marble while mist rises from the Yamuna River created magical moments shared with remarkably few other visitors. **Agra Fort:** This massive red sandstone fortress complex showcased Mughal architectural synthesis of Indian and Central Asian styles. The fort's courtyards, mosques, and private chambers told the story of the empire's rise and the emperor's imprisonment within sight of his wife's tomb. **Fatehpur Sikri Day Trip:** This perfectly preserved abandoned Mughal capital demonstrated the empire at its height. The city's religious and secular buildings remained exactly as left when water shortages forced its abandonment. ### Days 11-13: Delhi - Capital Contrasts **Hotel:** Palace Heights Hotel **Transportation:** Drive from Agra to Delhi (200 km, approximately 3-4 hours) Delhi's dual personality - ancient Old Delhi and planned New Delhi - provided fitting conclusions to our Indian journey, though the experience was significantly impacted by the incredible smog that blanketed the city during our visit, creating an almost apocalyptic atmosphere that made breathing difficult and reduced visibility dramatically. **New Delhi:** - **Humayun's Tomb:** Precursor to the Taj Mahal showcasing early Mughal garden tomb architecture - **Qutab Minar:** The 72-meter victory tower representing Islamic architecture's arrival in India - **India Gate:** War memorial anchoring Lutyens' Delhi with its grand imperial boulevards - **Government buildings:** The impressive Secretariat and President's House demonstrating British Raj architecture **Old Delhi:** - **Red Fort:** Shah Jahan's palace complex with intricate inlaid royal chambers - **Jama Masjid:** One of India's largest mosques offering panoramic Old Delhi views (when the smog permitted) - **Chandni Chowk:** The moonlight square market providing sensory immersion in medieval Delhi - **Raj Ghat:** Peaceful memorial to Mahatma Gandhi overlooking the Yamuna River **Rickshaw Adventure:** The cycle rickshaw ride through Old Delhi's narrow lanes created unforgettable encounters with street vendors, spice merchants, and everyday Delhi life. The experience combined adventure with cultural immersion in ways impossible from a car, though the heavy air pollution made the open-air journey more challenging than expected. **Home Visit Experience:** Dining with a Delhi family provided intimate insights into Indian hospitality, home cooking, and family dynamics. This authentic cultural exchange offered perspectives no restaurant or hotel could provide. ### Days 14-16: Singapore - Asian Efficiency Perfected **Hotel:** Four Seasons Hotel Singapore **Transportation:** Flight from Delhi to Singapore (5.5 hours) The transition from India's intensity to Singapore's order provided dramatic contrast while maintaining cultural richness through the city-state's multicultural character. The clean air was immediately noticeable after Delhi's heavy smog. **Singapore Highlights:** - **Gardens by the Bay:** Futuristic garden design showcasing Singapore's environmental innovation - **Marina Bay Sands:** Iconic infinity pool and skypark offering stunning city views - **Raffles Hotel:** Colonial elegance preserved in the heart of modern Singapore - **Singapore Botanic Gardens:** UNESCO World Heritage tropical garden paradise - **Merlion Park:** The city's symbol overlooking Marina Bay's architectural marvels **Cultural Districts:** - **Chinatown:** Traditional shophouses preserving Chinese heritage amid modern development - **Little India:** Vibrant Tamil culture creating a mini-India within Singapore - **Arab Street:** Historic Muslim quarter centered around the stunning Sultan Mosque - **Clarke Quay:** Historic riverside district transformed into dining and entertainment hub **Culinary Paradise:** Singapore's hawker culture provided incredible dining diversity: - **Maxwell Food Centre:** Local favorites like Hainanese chicken rice and laksa - **Newton Food Centre:** Famous for chili crab and other Singaporean specialties - **Michelin-starred street food:** Sampling world-renowned hawker stall dishes - **High-end dining:** Restaurants showcasing Singapore's emergence as a culinary capital **Modern Marvels:** - **Singapore Flyer:** Giant observation wheel providing panoramic island views - **Sentosa Island:** Resort destination showcasing Singapore's leisure development - **Orchard Road:** World-class shopping street rivaling any global retail district - **Architecture tours:** Admiring Singapore's innovative urban planning and sustainable building design ## Cultural Contrasts and Insights **India's Complexity:** India challenged preconceptions at every turn. The country's ability to blend ancient traditions with modern aspirations, spiritual depth with material ambition, and individual warmth with collective energy created daily revelations. The extreme wealth disparities visible everywhere - from Antilia towering over Dharavi to the dabbawalas' incredible efficiency amidst urban chaos - illustrated India's complex relationship with development and tradition. **Singapore's Harmony:** Singapore demonstrated how diverse cultures could coexist and thrive within carefully planned urban environments. The city-state's success in balancing tradition with innovation provided a model for multicultural societies. **Travel Perspectives:** Moving between these dramatically different environments enhanced appreciation for both. India's embrace of beautiful chaos made Singapore's efficiency more remarkable, while Singapore's multicultural sophistication provided context for understanding India's diversity. ## Practical Insights **Health and Safety:** Both destinations proved far safer and more manageable than stereotypes suggest. Standard precautions and common sense sufficed, though Delhi's air pollution was a genuine health concern requiring masks and limited outdoor exposure. **Transportation:** India's domestic flights connected destinations efficiently, though ground transportation required patience. The drives between cities offered wonderful opportunities to see rural India, though road conditions and traffic made journey times unpredictable. Singapore's public transport system exemplified urban planning excellence. **Accommodation:** Luxury hotels in India often occupy heritage properties, adding cultural value to comfort. Singapore's hotels compete on international standards while maintaining local character. **Shopping:** India offered incredible handicrafts and textiles at exceptional values. Singapore provided duty-free luxury goods and cutting-edge electronics in pristine retail environments. **Language:** English usage in both countries made communication straightforward, though local languages enriched cultural interactions. ## What Made This Trip Extraordinary **Timing:** October provided ideal weather in both destinations while avoiding peak tourist seasons. **Contrast:** The dramatic differences between destinations created appreciation for diversity within Asian cultures. **Depth:** Spending adequate time in each location allowed genuine cultural immersion rather than superficial tourism. **Balance:** Mixing business obligations with leisure travel created natural pacing between intensive cultural experiences. **Logistics:** Singapore Airlines' excellent service and the strategic Singapore stopover made the complex routing manageable. ## Reflections on Cultural Immersion India demanded complete presence and open-mindedness. The country's intensity - sensory, emotional, and intellectual - challenged comfortable assumptions about travel, culture, and daily life. Every interaction provided learning opportunities, from village encounters in Rajasthan to family dinners in Delhi. The incredible systems like the dabbawala network demonstrated how traditional methods could achieve efficiency that modern technology struggles to match. Singapore demonstrated how thoughtful urban planning and multicultural policies could create harmonious prosperity. The city-state's success in preserving cultural traditions while embracing innovation offered models for global urban development. ## Final Thoughts This journey proved transformative in ways typical vacations cannot achieve. India's ancient wisdom and contemporary energy combined with Singapore's multicultural sophistication created profound insights into Asian civilizations' complexity and potential. The Golden Triangle's architectural monuments - from Rajasthan's palaces to the Taj Mahal's perfection to Delhi's layered history - demonstrated human creativity's highest achievements. These wonders gained additional meaning through interactions with contemporary Indians maintaining cultural traditions while building modern futures, whether through the entrepreneurial spirit of Dharavi's residents or the precision of Mumbai's dabbawalas. Singapore's seamless blend of efficiency and diversity showed how different cultures could strengthen rather than threaten each other. The city-state's success in creating prosperity while preserving heritage provided hope for globalization's positive potential. For travelers ready to embrace challenge alongside comfort, this combination delivers experiences that expand worldviews and create lasting appreciation for cultural diversity. The journey reminded us that luxury travel achieves its highest purpose when comfort enables deeper cultural engagement rather than isolation from local realities. Both destinations exceeded expectations while delivering completely different rewards - India through its spiritual depth and human complexity, Singapore through its demonstration of multicultural harmony and urban excellence. Together, they created a journey that satisfied desires for both adventure and sophistication, ancient wisdom and contemporary innovation. This trip reinforced our belief that the best travel experiences challenge assumptions while providing comfort, combine luxury with authenticity, and create memories that influence perspectives long after returning home. India and Singapore delivered on all these measures, leaving us already planning future explorations of Asia's infinite diversity. ### Leadership Lessons from Ganesha URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/leadership-lessons-from-ganesha/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:12:37.000Z As regular readers know, I'm currently traveling in India for a couple weeks. Some business, some pleasure. Today I'm in Jaipur, the pink city of Rajasthan, and this morning we visited the Amber Fort high on a hill overlooking the city. Yes, we even rode elephants to to the top. A painting on one wall of the fort, coupled with the explanation from our guide, made me stop and think. This is Ganesha, Hindu "elephant-god" and Lord of Beginnings and Wisdom. The symbolism behind Ganesha is interesting: Think about that. Listen more. Talk less. Peacefully digest all good and bad in life. Actually our guide, a Hindu, described it as "digest all information and make an informed decision." I guess some things are still subject to interpretation. Think big. Concentrate. High efficiency and adaptability. Keep desires under control. In the painting Ganesha is also floating, and our guide said this is to stay above the petty and political. Think about it from a leadership perspective. Ganesha may be on to something. ### Cuckoos in the Cloud URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/cuckoos-in-the-cloud/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:12:57.000Z *Just a quick note to let our loyal readers know that both of your humble Evolving Excellence writers will be traveling over the next couple weeks - I'll be in India and Bill will be in Europe. So apologies in advance if you don't get your fix of lean red meat each morning.* A recent article by Ian Batey at Capgemini Consulting used the clever term "cloud cuckoos" to describe those fools that believe the latest software will lead to manufacturing nirvana. Far be it for me to criticize anyone from a top consulting firm, especially when they purport to know something about lean manufacturing, so this time I'll just say Ian got it, uh, mostly right. He makes the great point that there's no software magic bullet. *Whenever I get into a discussion about lean and technology, the conversation inevitably turns to the latest, greatest technological magic bullet. In the good old days it was ‘3rd Generation Languages (3GL)' and ‘Open Systems’. These were closely followed by ‘ubiquitous connection’ and ‘the internet’, through to all sorts of wild and wonderful ideas during the dot com bubble. The frustrating thing about technology is that it is very hard to distinguish the core of ‘truth’ from the outrageous hype and hyperbole that usually accompanies any new capability.* But then he accepts supposed advantage of the current state. *Some longer standing applications of these concepts are well proven, such as a major electronics manufacturer sharing its production schedules with its global contract manufacturers as well as collaborative forecasting with tier one customers via an Advanced Planning and Scheduling system's web capability.* Now any of us in the real lean world could probably poke innumerable holes in any such APS system - probably first by witnessing the armies of expediters busily trying to feed the machine enough data, and updated data, to make the algorithms almost work. He sideswipes how clever manual solutions, aided by limited technology, can obsolete that forecasting nonsense. *At a more prosaic lean level, I know of one consumer products company that runs a 2 bin kanban system using a web cam to observe a square in a remote client premises.* Beautiful. I wonder if that company came across a certain Evolving Excellence post from over five ago that [proposed just such a system](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forget%5Fsap%5Frun%5F/) \- instead of feeding the algorithmic monster. ### Toyota Follows the Detroit Three URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/toyota-follows-the-detroit-three/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:13:18.000Z A hallmark characteristic of GM, Ford, and Chrysler was and for the most part still is their propensity to try to bash suppliers into submission on pricing. Forget partnering with suppliers, the primary tactic was to threaten in order to obtain the lowest short-term price. This inevitably led to a reduction in quality and overall supplier performance. In contrast there was Toyota which had a reputation of working with suppliers to obtain mutual benefit. "Had" is perhaps the operative word. For it seems even Toyota is succumbing to competitive pressure and is changing... and not for the good. From SupplierBusiness: *Toyota to suppliers – reduce prices or face being replaced. Toyota’s stark message to its supply base is a sign that relations between suppliers and OEMs are becoming increasingly strained. In a sign of the increasingly adversarial relationships currently being seen between OEMs and suppliers, Toyota is reportedly now telling parts suppliers in Japan to drastically reduce prices or face being replaced by overseas rivals.* *The conditions reportedly came at an August meeting in Nagoya between Toyota and members of its 219 strong ‘Kyoho-kai’ of domestic suppliers, a group that includes Denso and Aisin Seiki.* Times they are a'changing. Unfortunately. Toyota's rapid growth led to a leadership that is not fully steeped in the Toyota culture. This is what created the missteps during the recent quality crisis - a focus on shifting blame and fighting evidence which harmed their reputation. Many of us had thought they had learned a lesson and had gone back to their roots to focus once more on creating value for the customer and quality. Perhaps not. *Toyota has close ties with its Japanese suppliers and has traditionally been loath to threaten them with such action. The company shares cost savings with suppliers, guarantees business and holds stakes in the biggest members of its parts-makers group. The rapid expansion of its supply base overseas is seen as being partly responsible for the quality issues that have affected the company’s reputation in recent years.* *Toyota has also suggested that Japan-based suppliers should procure more of their parts from overseas as one way to reduce their prices, according to reports from the discussions. The company has asked some parts-makers to cut prices by as much as half, according to one report.* Bashing suppliers on pricing and encourage outsourcing and chasing low cost labor. Watch out, Toyota. Remember your core values and principles. ### Poster Boys For Lean Accounting & Strategic Pricing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/poster-boys-for-lean-accounting-strategic-pricing/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:13:52.000Z The Post Office cost structure is pretty much all fixed. Buildings, labor, trucks with steering wheels on the wrong side, fuel, and maintaining bulletin boards with many of my friends and family members pictures on them costs the same thing whether they bring me 1 piece of mail, or 20\. In fact, the cost doesn't change on a day when they bring me nothing at all. When someone says the cost of a first class letter is X, while the cost of a piece of junk mail is Y, the only way they could have arrived at those numbers is to have made a bunch of allocations. The actual cost of delivering a letter is pretty close to $NADA. The cost of opening up all of those post office doors and firing up all those trucks, however, is astronomical. They get to the cost of each type of item by going through some undoubtedly very clever arithmetic that ends up telling them x.xxx% of funny truck expense is assigned to letters and y.yyy% is assigned to magazines. Just because someone conjured up a slick equation, and has some pretzel logic to justify the math doesn't make it so, however. The cost of the truck does not in any way shape or form depend on what sort of stuff it is being used to deliver on any given day. It is simply the cost of the truck and trying to make it into the cost of anything else leads nowhere other than to bad decision making. So here we have Senator John McCain introducing the Postal Reform Act of 2011, stating, "*Additionally, there are certain types of mail upon which the Postal Service routinely loses money. This bill would require that the vendors responsible for this mail be responsible for covering their costs. In Fiscal Year 2010, the Postal Service lost nearly $1.7 billion on these type of ‘underwater’ postal products that failed to cover their costs. For example, the Periodicals class of mail, which includes newspapers and magazines, has not covered its costs for 14 consecutive years, generating total losses of $4.3 billion over that period*." The reason the post office lost $8.4 billion last year is not because their prices were too low on some products. It is because they have a huge installed capacity (and the associated fixed costs) that was grossly under-utilized. The solution is greater volume. No matter what the price charged for the volume, since the direct cost is zip, any revenue they get for the additional volume will help to cover the fixed costs. That being the case, the key to increasing volumes is not to raise prices - it is to lower them. That is Price Volume/ Price Elasticity / Economics 101 / Basic common sense. Periodicals did not, with all due respect to the senator, lose money. Their direct cost is nothing. What he is saying is that they were priced at something less than enough to cover the allocation, in light of the actual volume. The Senator should stick to what we pay him for - that is to look damn good for a man of his age, shake hands, kiss babies, and make pointless speeches in the well of the Senate - and leave things like pricing and strategic marketing to people who know what they are doing. The idea that some products are profitable and others are not is a foible limited not to the Post Office. A whole lot of businesses unhampered by federal law make the same foolish mistake. Allocating costs leads to silly conclusions like believing delivering magazines is unprofitable, which leads to price increases, which leads to lower volumes, which leads to allocating the same fixed costs over smaller volumes, which leads to cost increases, which leads to further price increases ... you get the picture. Cost allocating is sending the Post Office down the drain - and a whole lot of our money with it. Pricing has nothing to do with cost. It is set by the market as a function of the value created relative to the value proposition of the competition. It is destructive thinking to believe that COST + PROFIT = PRICE. Toyota told us a long time ago that PRICE - PROFIT = COST. There is a huge difference. So long as the government institutionalizes the wrong formula, the Post Office is doomed. Private enterprise, however, has no such excuse. ### Stretching the Eulogical Boundaries URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/stretching-the-eulogical-boundaries/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:15:59.000Z Bill's [post on Steve Jobs](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-tough-obituary-to-write/) earlier today drew quite a bit of response - from both sides. Lots of supporting comments on the post itself, lots of emails presumably to both of us saying, to put it politely, the opposite. A few wondered why I even "allow" Bill to post such stuff. I do have a partial difference of opinion with Bill on Steve Jobs; more on that later. First I wanted to clarify a couple of things for those of you who thought it was inappropriate or that I should exercise some additional editorial control. Those of you that know me well know that I thrive on being challenged, mentally, philosophically, and otherwise. I like my job because I have a staff and peer group, and an industry, that challenges me every day. I purposely read newspapers and online material from the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum from me - which in my case exists on both sides - because it challenges my thinking and mental models. I ran a marathon this year to prove to myself I could - and next year I might just be wacky enough to try this. For over 20 years I've had an annual goal to visit two new countries and try something completely different - and I've done it every year. And I'm better because of it, at least in my own mind. When I first met Bill many years ago he challenged my thinking. And he still does - with every post and every conversation. Sometimes I may not agree with or like what he says, but it sets those neurons a firing. And that's good. As you [recently read](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thou-shalt-not-question/) in one of my posts, I believe that questioning conventional thinking, the status quo, even "settled science" is necessary to improve. Anyone that doubts that should read the story of today's Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. Bill, unlike many consultants and so-called "thought leaders," has lived in the real world - running real manufacturing operations in real companies around the world. We read a lot of mumbo jumbo from people who have never had to implement - and live with - the theoretical crap that spews out of their heads. Bill, and I, have been in the trenches. There are a few people in life that get the emotions boiling and the juices flowing. Bill Waddell can be one of them; another is Pamela Anderson, with apologies to my loving wife. (Yes I've waited years to put Bill and Pamela together in a sentence.) Maybe I should add [Paul](http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2010/06/the-elite-idiots.html?ref=kevinmeyer.com) [Krugman](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-mysterious-machinations-of-paul-krugman/) to the list, and now that we're talking about idiots let's add [the gal at Starbucks](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/i%5Fwant%5Fto%5Fgive%5F/) who refused my money a few years ago. Yes I do read Krugman's articles to challenge my thinking, although I then usually laugh and roll my eyes. Sometimes I do that to Bill's posts. The point is that you learn from being challenged, and Bill does that to us a few times a week. If you don't like it, tough noogies. I do, and I know a few thousand others that similarly like the challenge. I wish I could find some dude that truly believed MRP or China was the answer to all production ills to really broaden the challenge, but I haven't been able to find one brave enough to join us. Now on to Steve Jobs. There is one part of Steve, a very big part, where I completely agree with Bill. Steve and Apple did not exhibit manufacturing excellence - they executed a very traditional "chase low cost labor" supply chain excellently. That's fairly easy to do if you have the profit margins to fund planeloads of engineers to go to China every week to oversee hoards of underpaid people and to beg them to not jump off of factory buildings. But it was still a very traditional supply chain and "manufacturing" operation. I wonder what would have happened if the incredible design innovation that Apple, and by proxy Steve, exhibits had been equally applied to manufacturing and the supply chain. Doing the unconventional, finding the best path. Would Toyota and TPS be a distant memory and we'd be benchmarking Apple and APS? Only dreams at this point. Now some of you are now saying "innovation?" Like the guy who made the comment about "it's just a transister" or Bill's statement that it's just a computer or just a pair of earbuds. Innovation doesn't have to be a "thing." In fact it usually isn't. In Apple's case the innovation was and is how those things interact with and add value to humans. I'll illustrate this with a handful of stories about my direct and slightly indirect interaction with Apple. Let's begin with Steve Jobs himself. Steve by all accounts isn't exactly a nice person - if you consider "nice" to be calm and tender in demeanor. If you read some history on Bell, Edison, and Franklin you'll discover those luminaries of invention weren't either. In fact they were basically tyrants. So maybe Jobs does belong as part of that group. But perhaps Jobs is also a tyrant along the lines of our lean buddy Shigeo Shingo - known for his outbursts and rage. Of course the lean community excuses such supposedly "disrespectful to people" attitude as "teaching" and "not accepting anything less than perception." What a perfect segue into my first story. A friend of mine worked at Apple until very recently when he left to move overseas to follow his woman. A couple years ago he told me the story of when he stepped into an elevator at Apple HQ and before he could turn around in walked Steve Jobs. They went up a couple floors - in his words the longest elevator ride of his life. Steve asked him what project he worked on, my friend told him, and Steve proceeded to yell and scream at the status of the project. My friend felt flattened for days... until it dawned on him that he wasn't being personally criticized, but the project was. And it wasn't really a criticism, but a challenge to do it better, to find a better way. And several weeks later, in typical Steve Jobs micromanagement style, he received a followup call and was able to discuss the better way he had discovered. My very first experience with an Apple was with the Apple II in high school - yep that dates me. Unlike the TRS-80 that also existed in our brand new computer lab, the Apple didn't require finetuning the volume control on a tape recording to load programs at 300 bits per second. (not kb, not MB...). And I soon learned to draw a square on the screen! Woo hoo... but it just worked. A few years later, while on co-op making chocolate bars and boullion cubes at Nestle in Connecticut, I got to play on an Apple Lisa. One of the first graphical interfaces, with a funny mouse thing. Sure beats typing DOS commands. A computer that began to think like me. Visually. Xerox PARC technology applied to the real world. A little over three years ago, March 2nd, 2008 to be precise, I [dumped my almost-new Dell laptop for a Mac](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/today-i-left-th/). I had had it with the excruciating PC experience. I was dreading connecting the new Mac to the printer hanging off my wireless network as for other reasons I had a rather complex setup. Helping a PC navigate through two routers with different passwords to find the HP printer usually took hours... then after a few weeks the PC would strangely lose it's way. I turned on the Mac, went to printers, and it immediately said "would you like to connect to the HP Photosmart on your network?" Uh... yes, thanks. It just worked. And it still does. Here's another one: I have a 90 year old neighbor lady who switched from a PC to a Mac two years ago. Really. She's a wicked smart gal who has sailed the world and worked for presidents and generals, but her PC drove her nuts. So one day she called up the Ride On bus and had it take her to the Apple store fifteen miles away, and came home with a Mac. And to this day she still takes the bus down there once a week for a class on some subject or another. In fact, just last night she was telling me how she learned how to make calendars and cards. And she made a point of telling me how the folks at the Apple store never push her to buy anything, they just want to help her learn how to use the technology. Enabling the technology to work - creating value for the customer. Not pushing the sale. I have one more, then I'll stop. My company has some very unique materials processing technologies. One day Apple came across us and asked for a meeting. After the usual NDA exchange we discussed how some of these technologies could be used. One in particular excited them, but we explained that using it on a scale required by Apple would require procuring more processing machines than existed in the world at that time. They didn't care. Their group identifies technologies that could add value - defined in terms of user experience. Then and only then would they figure out how to make it commercially viable. This "backwards" thinking is why we have MacBooks that are individually machined out of solid aluminum - which also required procuring 30% of the world's CNC machine output one year - which would seem unreasonable if not impossible to most companies. Not to Apple. That impossibility and unreasonableness creates value which creates high margins. Apple didn't invent the computer, or the mouse, or the graphical interface... or the portable music device or even tablet computer. Those really are just "things." But they did reinvent how they worked with people. As Chris Taylor at CNN puts it, Steve Jobs saved technology from itself. Real innovation isn't a thing. It's a thing that adds value, that changes our lives. There's a reason why Apple folks stand in line to get the latest products - because they know those products will change how they operate. The iPod isn't just a portable music player. It is a device that allows for easy recall and genre categorization of vast amounts of music. That was then coupled with iTunes to disrupt the traditional music business - and let people experience a far wider variety of music - with thousands of additional artists getting a chance to be heard. The iPhone isn't just a phone. It lets you hold your music with a phone thereby eliminating a device, then it seamlessly links contacts, a nice browser, eventually a camera and HD movie recorder - thereby eliminating even more devices. Who buys a standalone pocket camera these days? But the real beauty, again, is the seamless integration. The Mac isn't just a computer. It's a computer that thinks and operates like humans do. A 90 year old lady can get one and be up and running - and adding value - in ten minutes. All the programs work perfectly together, the computer just springs to life when opened. It does what you want, period. Sure if you want complete customization over every little nuance you won't get it - but then again you probably aren't really a human at that point. The iPad isn't just a tablet. It's a mobile information platform. I now get all of my magazines and newspapers on the iPad because the experience is so much better - so much easier. My books are on it because I can bookmark, make notes, even translate - without scribbling. I just downloaded a travel guide for my upcoming trip, and unlike a paper book this guide now knows where I am to bring up relevant material, can help me find my way, and create a multimedia learning experience. I saw a demo of an iPad in a university classroom that combined the textbook, notepad, professor's PowerPoint, and audio recorder. Anyone still want to invest in backpacks for students? And then there's Angry Birds... It's not the thing. It's how the thing works, how it interacts with us and other things, and how it adds value. That's the innovation. And that's what Steve Jobs did, and Apple does, better than anyone else. That's what anyone who has used an Apple product for more than fifteen minute experiences. And that's why around the corner from my hotel last weekend, at the Apple Store in Palo Alto, there was the following scene. They, like I, experienced Steve Jobs and Apple. And the experience changed our lives. Thanks Steve. RIP. (PS: Tim Cook, can you PLEASE turn a few of your guys loose to create a real, innovative, supply chain too?) ### A Tough Obituary to Write URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-tough-obituary-to-write/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:16:37.000Z I once heard Bob Chapman of Barry-Wehmiller say that when the time comes to write our obituaries few will care how profitable we were or how much money we made. The central theme will be how we used the opportunities our careers have given us to have an impact on people. The wisdom of Bob's remarks seem evident in the world's attempts to write Steve Job's eulogy. Comparisons of Jobs to the likes of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford would be laughable if they weren't made with such sincerity - and thus indicative of appalling ignorance. Putting buds in the ears of America's young folks, making a better cell phone - although not as good as an Android according to market share data - or cross breeding phones and laptops to create pads pale in comparison to the likes of light bulbs and automobiles. They changed the entire world, and did so in a manner that had a deep, positive impact on the fundamentals of people's daily lives. The valid comparison is one between Steve Jobs and Jack Welch. Jobs was, in fact, the embodiment of Welch's driving principle that the only measure that really matters is shareholder value - all other stakeholders be damned - the polar opposite of Bob Chapman's tenet. Fox News' David Asman writes, "*From design, to sales, to customer support, Apple's business model was as close to perfection as any company could ever get*." I sincerely doubt that many people who actually participated in that model would agree. 90% of Apple's employees could care less about his passing. I am not talking about the 35,000 or so in the US, but the hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers who make Apple products. (Although given Jobs' reputation for dominance and micro-management I suspect there are a few in the US who echo Harold Washington's observation of Mayor Daly's passing, "*I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone*".) In order to avoid showing employees the basic respect of a decent wage and a safe work environment, Jobs determined that shareholder value was enhanced by arranging to have them work for a Taiwanese outfit that specializes in avoiding respect for humanity on a grand scale. The fact that the people who make Jobs' products cannot, in their wildest dreams, hope to own one puts him in stark contrast with Edison and Ford. The notion that Apple's philanthropy is its product is ludicrous to the people making them. The folks who make Apple products might just as well make parts for the space station for all the product mean to them. The products are no more attainable to them than a stint in the space station, and if Apple were to go under they will switch over to making something else equally irrelevant to their lives, with equally little affinity for their customer's CEO. Apple's biggest supplier - Samsung - has been torn between their need to keep their biggest customer in place and their need to protect their intellectual property. In other words, they know they should sue Apple to put a stop to Apple's abuses, but are afraid of the consequences of winning that battle, but losing a war. While Apple has a hard core of devoted customers, most who buy their products are unhappy with their relentless philosophy of forcing customers into the Apple product line to the exclusion of all others. Their deliberate lack of compatibility with the rest of the electronic world is perceived by most as a necessary evil - a blatant attempt to manipulate the customer and squeeze all they can from him - but one many tolerate in order to take advantage of Apple's admirable product features. Hardly indicative of a focus on customer value. Imagine Henry Ford opening up a string of gas stations with a patented fuel, then making sure all his cars - and only his cars - would run on that fuel, and charging premium prices for it ... or Thomas Edison making light bulbs - but they would only screw into lamps and light fixtures made to his own patent - so if you wanted light you had to buy high priced lamps only from him. As mentioned, Apple and Jobs are notorious for their lack of philanthropy. As many have correctly pointed out, they pay their taxes and have no obligation to anyone beyond that. In this era of globalization they are legally free to set up shop in the communities with the lowest level of societal contribution required. They are well within their legal rights to avoid compliance with American environmental standards by having their products made in the environmental cesspool of China. When the Pope wrote, "*Business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference*," it is quite clear that Steve Jobs would have none of it, as was his right. In his scheme of things, the shareholders reigned supreme and he lived his life in a manner that rejected Bob Chapman's philosophy lock, stock and barrel. So let it be said, Steve Jobs made a good cell phone and maximized shareholder value. As eulogies go, it is pretty thin, but it's about all there is. Wall Street will miss him. ### Notes from the World Business Forum 2011 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/notes-from-the-world-business-forum-2011/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:18:29.000Z Last week our entire executive team went out to New York City to attend the World Business Forum. There were nearly 4,000 attendees from 55 countries, plus live streaming video to several universities around the world. It was a phenomenal experience listening to 21 great speakers on some wildly different perspectives and topics. That variety, and obviously the ideas and concepts, led to some pretty interesting discussions over dinner. Similar to when several members of my team went to the Lean Accounting Summit in 2007, having the team together to experience the same event can lead to rapid change and commitment to new ideas. Highly recommended. A few common themes emerged: - Accepting and even promoting failure drives improvement. I [recently blogged](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thank-you-for-being-a-failure/) about this. - We need to ask many questions, and the right questions, and find ways to break out of mental models and frameworks that prevent us from even knowing what the right questions are. - The world is becoming highly interconnected and increasingly decentralized and distributed, which is changing leadership, management, corporate, and public functions. - The increasing availability and flow of information requires a higher level of authenticity and transparency in leadership. - Defining personal and organizational principles and values is critical to achieve focus and alignment. Here are some notes from the speakers: **Bill George** – Past CEO of Medtronic and now a professor at Harvard Business School. - A singular focus on shareholder value has destroyed many potentially great companies. - Focus on understanding, promoting, and living core principles. - Most leaders start to move from “we” to “I” as power and ego kicks in. Move back to “we” by keeping a focus on your own key principles. - Just as you develop a strategy for your company and organization, develop a formal development strategy for yourself. - I only truly began to lead when I stopped trying so hard to lead – that let me connect with my people. **Malcolm Gladwell** – Author of best-selling books such as *The Tipping Point*, *Blink*, and *Outliers*. - Risk taking is at the core of effective leadership. - There are two types of risk: operational and social. - Kids and Wall Street bankers take operational risk without understanding the related social risk. - Understanding and taking big social risks is critical – but you must first understand. - An elite education decreases the appetite for and understanding of social risk. - If poverty or a difficult upbringing creates great risk-taking leaders, then why do they then want the best for their kids? Are they ignoring their own lessons? - There’s a case to be made for the selective impoverishment of adults. - It is a fact that societies with fewer advantages will compensate in some way. **Tal Ben-Shahar** – Expert and professor on “positive psychology” and author of *Happier*. - Resilience, optimism, understanding true north principles, and asking the right questions create success. - Focus on the positive instead of just the negative. Ask what works instead of just what doesn’t. What has gone right instead of just what has gone wrong. Equally important lessons. - Leaders telling the stories of their development create intimacy within their teams. - A key driver of intrapreneurship in a company is to give permission to fail, and then guidance and mentoring on how to fail and learn from the experience. - Great leaders are able to see that seed that, if watered and shed light on, will flourish. **Howard Schultz** – CEO of Starbucks and social activitist. - Every company must create an authentic value proposition for their customer. - We are a hyperconnected world – traditional marketing and PR has been disrupted. - New media networks, such as social networks, should be used to develop trust and sharing, not selling. If you focus on selling through those networks you will not succeed. - Values and authenticity are becoming more important than price and service. Relationships matter. - Create value for your people and community first, before shareholders. **Gary Burnison** – CEO of executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. - People are no longer motivated by pay and recognition, but want to know “why do I matter?” - Real leaders don’t run companies, they coach people to run companies. **Angela Ahrendts** – CEO of the fastest-growing women’s fashion company, Burberry. - Social media is creating a new interactive world culture. The large-scale impact is being felt first in B2C areas such as fashion, but will soon impact B2B2C potentially by reducing the value of the intermediate B. - Social media has already taken down politicians and even governments. It can easily take down companies. Don’t underestimate the downside of a poor social media strategy and monitoring. - Use social media to add social value – that then creates brand value and only then sales. - Presentation critique: reading notes off an iPad does NOT create an effective presentation, regardless of how interesting the material is. Sorry Angela. Watch Seth Godin. Over and over. **Benjamin Zander** – Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and author of *The Art of Possibility*. I’ve seen him present before at the AME Conference and once again he was phenomenal. Check him out on YouTube. - The conductor doesn't make a sound, rather inspires others to be empowered. - What assumptions am I making that I don’t know I’m making? Force yourself into different perspectives. - You cannot learn anything unless you make mistakes. - Do you really know when you’re outside the box, or still in it? Challenge fundamental mental models and frameworks. - My job is to awaken the possibility in other people. - “Rule #6”: Don’t take yourself too seriously. There are no other rules. - For most people success is measured in wealth and fame and power. For me, success is measured by how many shining eyes are around me. **Marina Gorbis** – Executive Director of The Institute for the Future and program manager for the Global Ethnographic Network. - The world – and organizations – have been transitioning from centralized organizations to decentralized and now to distributed. This encompases management, infrastructure, etc. - Economies of scale in organizations and infrastructure are false. Distributed, networked smaller systems can be more efficient. Example – smaller, even neighborhood-sized power generation can be more efficient by eliminating large-scale power transportation systems and better matching demand with generation. The same exists for social systems. - The most resilient organism? Bacteria. There are more bacteria on a human than human cells. Are humans really just a transportation mechanism for bacteria? Challenge your perspective. - Socialstructing (new book): creating large scale value from micro-contributions from distributed networks, such as social networks. Think Yelp, Genomera, etc. - Will networked community organizing replace management? **Anthony Townsend** – Research Director at the Institute for the Future, focusing on the impact of new technologies on cities and public institutions. - Social networks can create “smart cities” and be far more efficient that government. Example: Paris’ government measures urban ozone at six locations. Two students with no funding created a sensor linked to a social application and GPS that could be mounted on bicycle handlebars. It measured a hundred thousand additional locations in two weeks. Same accuracy and more data at 0.001% of the cost of the government system. **Michael Liebreich** – Managing Director of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, providing information and research on energy technology and markets to investors and policy-makers. - The perception is that wind energy costs more than coal. The reality is that both are close to 6.5 cents/kwh. The key difference is in the cost of storage and level loading. - There are already three markets where unsubsidized solar is less expensive than conventional sources: Hawaii, Italy, Turkey. Estimate about 30 more in the next five years as solar cost decreases and direct/indirect conventional costs go up. However high volume storage is still a problem. - However the required investment for solar or wind energy to replace current imported oil is far greater than the investment in coal and oil/gas to make those sources non-polluting. Since the US has centuries of supply of both even to provide 100% domestic supply, which is really the better investment of limited financial resources? From what perspective or paradigm? **Bill Clinton** – The 42nd President. - We can’t reverse the growing interdependence in the world. Interdependence can be both positive and negative. - We are competing on a global scale with other countries that are doing the same. Our tax and regulatory policies must reflect that. There is nothing that we make that couldn’t be made elsewhere if we make it too difficult to do business with the U.S. or inside the U.S. - Trade barriers – financial, regulatory, or otherwise - are extremely dangerous at this tipping point. **Patrick Lencioni** – Best-selling author of *The Five Dysfunctions of a Team*, which has radically transformed my own executive team. If you haven’t I highly recommend you take your team through the book (and workbooks) over the course of a year. It takes time – and serious commitment - to do it effectively. - Teamwork is not a virtue, it’s a choice. - Vulnerability-based trust creates a bond within teams. - We need to have productive conflict, not people that choose their battles or calculate political costs. - People must be able and willing to engage in passionate conflict in order to achieve commitment. - Disagreement is the pursuit of truth. - Peer accountability is far more powerful than leader-driven accountability. - The two key characteristics of effective team members: humble and hungry. **Seth Godin** – One of the most innovative thinkers in modern marketing, author of many books including *The Purple Cow*. Along with Ben Zander he had one of the two best presentation styles, especially how he used presentation media. - The asset of the future is permission. Deliver personal, anticipated, relevant messages. - The new economy is about finding products for your customers, not customers for your products. - Henry Ford was the most important person of the 20th century because didn’t just invent interchangeable parts but interchangeable people. Hmmm… - Competence is no longer scarce, it is a commodity. So what differentiates you and your product offering? - If failure is not an option then neither is success. The guy that invented the ship also invented the shipwreck. - Your job is a platform to make mistakes and thereby do something that matters. **Tamara Erickson** – Author of *What’s Next, Generation X?* and a researcher at the London Business School investigating generational influences on multicultural management. - The majority of personality and mental models are formed between the ages of 11 and 14. - External events and environment during those ages- news, wars, people, technology, social norms – create the differences between generations. - Over 70% of people who grew up in the 70s report a high degree of independence from their parents, but 80% of people who grew up between 1995 and 2002 report a high degree of dependence. This may be a result of parental support during the 2001 attacks, and appears to explain why many of those kids are returning home to live – more than financial factors. - Managing across generations can be very difficult if those differences are not recognized. - Generational attributes are different between different countries and cultures. Adding that third dimension adds exponential complexity to effective management. **Claudio Fernandez-Araoz** – With executive search firm EgonZehnder International, researcher at Harvard, author of *Great People Decisions.* - People decisions (hiring, firing, etc) are the most important determinators of success at the executive level. - Genetics plays the top role in early education and career success, then choice of jobs and personal development during the intermediate career, then people decisions at the executive stage. - A typical interview is really a conversation between two liars. - The top predictor of executive success is not IQ or experience, but emotional intelligence. Yet what do most people evaluate when interviewing potential executives? **Jack Welch** – Former CEO of GE. - Employees know who the turkeys are in leadership positions. [Funny he should mention turkeys](https://www.leanblog.org/2006/10/is-jack-welch-turkey/?ref=kevinmeyer.com)… - Authenticity counts more today than ever because people have more access to information (ie the truth), are more enlightened, can more easily collaborate, and secrets no longer create power. - US manufacturing output (in dollars) is higher than ever even after outsourcing – but we have become far more productive therefore fewer jobs are required. - “Extra” people cost far more than we think. It’s not just the direct cost of those people, but the cost of the extra decisions they make, the extra management they require, and what they do when trying to justify their jobs. This is especially true in organizations than cannot scale rapidly (up or down), such as government. - There is not an unemployment problem for good people – only for unmotivated, unpassionate, second-stringers. - I learned the most from my worst failures – such as literally blowing up my first factory to acquiring Kidder-Peabody without understanding the impact of culture. - We need to invest to enlarge the pie, not just transfer wealth from the wealthy to the less wealthy. That’s not teaching them how to fish. - Bill Clinton did one helluva job and even I commend him. George H.W. Bush was the most honorable president we’ve had in decades. Barack Obama is destroying the competitive position of the U.S. just as other countries become strong competitors – a recipe for disaster. **Gary Hamel** – Professor of International Management at the London Business School, best-selling author of *Leading the Revolution*, *Competing for the Future*, and *The Future of Management*. - Power is shifting from institutions to individuals. - Consider the words executives typically use to communicate to employees: value, quality, etc. New employees prefer an emotional response – can we use words like joy, truth, wisdom? Steve Jobs did this very well. - Reclaim the noble in your organization. - Management is the least efficient and has the lowest ROI of any activity in an organization. - There is a “management tax” on organizations for overhead, risk aversion, friction, bias, and tyranny. - As decisions get bigger and are therefore made at higher levels, there is less and less oversight. There is more oversight on a $1,000 shop floor expenditure than on a $20M decision made by the CEO himself. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? - Management is not good with change – inertia. - Today’s earnings are becoming a poorer and poorer predictor of future earnings. - Some companies like HP must be benchmarking leadership against countries like Libya and Afghanistan. - In your company does anyone notice if a first-line employee innovates? - Rethink and then drive core principles. - Management 2.0: radical trust and transparency, disaggregation, natural hierarchies (WL Gore with no job titles and no org structure), variety, employees decide who leads them, internal markets, communities of passion, self-determination and autonomy, openness. - The world is becoming more turbulent faster than companies are becoming more adaptable. **Robert Rubin** and **Martin Feldstein** – Rubin was U.S. Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Feldstein is Professor of Economics at Harvard. The two did a combined interview. - The economy will get worse before it gets better, even if the upcoming numbers look better. (Feldstein) - The economy will continue a very slow recovery but with tremendous uncertainty. (Rubin) - Fiscal policy, or the lack thereof, is having a tremendous impact on business confidence, which is preventing business spending. (Rubin) - The Obama FICA tax reduction has now created the direct link between Social Security and the deficit that was theoretical before but is now indisputable. (Feldstein) - The difference in politics today is that the extremes of both sides are refusing to compromise – ie the left refuses to discuss cuts to entitlements and the right refuses to consider a tax increase even if it is offset by spending decreases or closing loopholes. (Feldstein and Rubin agreed) - In the past Reagan and Tip O’Neil, and Clinton and Trent Lott, came together from opposite sides to create significant policy changes that were compromises. - The CPI and poverty level calculations are no longer valid because neither captures value created within new technology frameworks – such as designers working at home on iPads. This is creating significant distortions in financial and social policy, not to mention perception. (Feldstein and Rubin agreed) - Tax and regulatory policy must reflect our interconnected globalized world. Corporate taxes can be lowered and be revenue neutral if loopholes are closed. As popular as it is, the “Buffett Rule” is not valid – dividend income has already been taxed at the corporate level. The solution may be a combination of vastly simplified income (personal/corporate) and a consumption tax – surprisingly Herman Cain is the only candidate from either side to really grasp this. (Feldstein and Rubin agree, believe it or not). **Bruno Ferrari** \- Secretary of the Economy, Mexico, interviewed by Daniel Doctoroff, President of Bloomberg LP. - Mexico buys more from the U.S. than China and Japan together. - Every dollar of export from Mexico includes 50 cents of content sourced from the U.S. **Daniel Lamarre** – CEO of Cirque du Soleil. This concluded with a performance by the Cirque! - Use your imagination to step outside of paradigms and frameworks. - Then execute, execute, execute with practice, practice, practice. - Leadership should leverage the power of emotion and the senses. ### Kevin's Turn URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/kevins-turn/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:19:03.000Z Bob Emiliani runs a weekly ad on Mark Graban's Lean Blog to promote his great series of lean leadership books, each one a parody of someone in the lean world. A couple month's ago [Bill was the subject](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/bill-and-his-groupies/). This week it's Kevin: 200 isn't far off. Nice job Bob! ### This Week's Roundup - October 2011 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/this-weeks-roundup/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:20:35.000Z **Welcome to the Top of the Curve** In 2009 I wrote a piece called "[Pop Goes China](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-great-lean-race/)", pointing out that Chinese costs were heading in the wrong direction, asserting the obvious: "*this means Mexico will get another shot at the brass ring*". The mainstream, a mere 31 months later, figured out the same thing. Interesting - but not earth shattering - article in the Wall Street Journal this morning, called "Otis Shifts Work Closer to Home" citing Otis Elevator's reshoring production as an example. It includes such juicy wisdom as "*More startling: Otis says the move will save it money. What's happening at Otis is part of a broader shift in the way manufacturers tally costs*." In another couple of years they may well report the breaking news that Harry Moser has launched the Reshoring Initiative. In the mean time, someone ought to write an article about Mexico's Golden Opportunity. **They Can Learn, Part II** Reuters reports that a "New Study Downplays Effects of Lean Manufacturing". They report a study that indicates few companies report substantial bottom line results from their lean efforts - same as Cliff Ransom said and we have been [writing about for over five years](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/pogo%5Fwas%5Ftalkin/). They further point out that lean is about more than cost cutting. [Well, all right then](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/why-lean-is-not-a-cost-reduction-strategy/). I guess we need to start thinking about things like changing cultures and growing the business. **The Root of the Problem** I had a chance to visit DC earlier this week and finally found the source of our national fiscal calamity - an ATM machine in the Senate. Apparently each senator has a card and a PIN that allows them to use this device to take money from our bank accounts any time they feel like it. If you click on the picture you can get a good look at it - maybe some of the techies out there can figure out a way we can disable this thing. **Lean, Yes ... but Gaunt?** I wrote a piece a few years ago on Estonia Pianos and their outstanding value proposition. A German writer decided to rehash the story and call it her own, and she called a while back to interview me, and the article ran in Deutsch Welle. She quoted me with, "*Estonia pianos are cheaper than Steinways (and) more expensive than Chinese-made – they succeed because they are better value for the price than either,' says Bill Waddell, a lean manufacturing consultant in Sterling, Illinois*." Plagiarism is pretty common in the writing game, but when a web site called Piano Lessons runs it though an online translator and calls me a "*gaunt manufacturing consultant*", it has gone too far. I can hardly lay claim to much of a physique - but gaunt? I have to draw the line somewhere. ### A Bit of Wizardry URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-bit-of-wizardry/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:21:04.000Z Bob Emiliani is one of those guys who enjoys well-deserved lean wizard status. He is an experienced lean practicianer, an author, a professor and most of all a thinker. He wrote a great piece in his most recent newsletter, and has agreed to share it with Evolving Excellence. Here ya' go: **Virginia Mason Visits Wiremold by Bob Emiliani** On 5 November 2001, a group of more than 25 executives, physicians, and department managers from Virginia Mason Medical Center made the long trip from Seattle, Washington, to West Hartford, Connecticut, to take a tour of The Wiremold Company. Dr. Gary Kaplan, Chairman and CEO of VMMC, had come to see Lean management as the future of healthcare. The trip to Wiremold would help cement that view. At that same time, I was leading a research project to write a book about The Wiremold Company’s Lean transformation from 1991-2001\. VMMCs visit to Wiremold coincided with the data-gathering phase of what later become the book, *Better Thinking, Better Results*. As part of the research project, I had all of the conference room presentations videotaped. The resulting 6 hours of recordings, plus over 800 pages of transcribed interviews, became the basis for the detailed description of Wiremold’s Lean transformation contained in the book. Since next month is the 10th anniversary of that visit, I decided recently to watch the videos again. I had not seen them since early 2002, and I can tell you that I was very impressed with what I saw – from both the Wiremold executives and the VMMC team. Arthur Byrne, the president and CEO of Wiremold, welcomed any visitor to Wiremold as long as their CEO was present. For this visit, the CEO, Gary Kaplan, was more than just present. He was an active participant, eager to learn new things, and – very importantly – ready to put into practice what he had learned. The day consisted of factory tours and conference room meetings in which Art Byrne, Orest (Orry) Fiume (vice president finance and administration), Kevin Fahey (vice president of human resources), and others gave presentations. The presentations were highly interactive, with lots of good questions from the VMMC team. Wiremold executives deep knowledge of the nuances and details of Lean leadership and Lean management reflect a level of engagement in thinking about and actually doing Lean that is rare among executives. The videos reveal an engaged VMMC healthcare team that had no hang-ups about visiting an old factory to learn about Lean management. They made the jump from shop floor and office processes to medical procedures and healthcare administration, crossing a chasm that so many others in healthcare and elsewhere could not. In the videos, the Wiremold executives do a wonderful job of translating Lean management from manufacturing to healthcare, and in doing so show how Lean can be applied to any organization in any industry. I have two key takeaways from the videos that I would like to share with you. They are: - The Wiremold senior management team’s determination to immerse themselves in daily Lean thinking and practice – for more than a decade – and willingness to share and help others; to teach others and to learn from others. These are typical characteristics of highly effective Lean leaders. - The VMMC team members, CEO on down, were willing and eager to learn new things. They recognized that they were not educated or trained for Lean at any point in their careers. And yet they did not suffer from the typical “I’m the doctor, so don’t tell me what to do” or “It won’t work here because we’re a hospital” mentality. VMMC, a healthcare organization with over 5,000 employees, has been a pioneer in the application of Lean in healthcare and quite successful in its Lean transformation efforts since 2001\. Gary Kaplan remains the CEO to this day, and stability in that position is surely one very important reason why VMMC has had its success. (Disclosure: I was hired by VMMC to conduct Lean leadership training for the senior management team in 2009). You can read about their Lean transformation in a new book. The videos are a wonderful part of the history of Lean management in healthcare. I have posted over four hours of video, un-edited, to educate and to disseminate and preserve this important part of Lean history. You can view these historic videos of Art Byrne, Orry Fiume, and Kevin Fahey here. Study them closely and take lots of notes. I hope you enjoy and appreciate the videos. ### Give Back... More? URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/give-back-more/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:21:30.000Z At the risk of creating another firestorm from the paranoid lemmings who blindly [equate asking a question with being in denial](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thou-shalt-not-question/), I came across another article that those of us with wider, thinking minds might consider. Thankfully on a different subject. We hear a lot these days that those with more - or too much in the opinion of some - should "give back." Of course they are thinking purely in financial terms without understanding the larger picture. And I should add that there are many circumstances where my opinion does not align with the premise of the article. More on that later. The relation to lean and manufacturing? The dramatic improvement in productivity. Well, sort of. Maybe I'm simply interested in the subject. Andy Kessler has a great column diving into how many people, and companies, have already given back - before they've been asked to give back more. Read it, then reconsider the so-called evil of wealth. *Wilson Greatbatch, 92, died this week a wealthy man. Investing $2,000 of his own money way back in 1958 and tending a garden to feed his family, Greatbatch invented the pacemaker. He licensed it to Medtronic, a company now valued at $36 billion that sells and continues to improve pacemakers and defibrillators. Greatbatch did his part to improve society, create wealth and increase, quite literally, our standard of living. But apparently that's not enough.* I'm directly involved in the pacemaker and overall medical device manufacturing industry, so Mr. Greatbatch creates a bit of a personal connection. *Steve Jobs gets taken to task for his lack of visible charitable giving—"no hospital wing or an academic building with his name on it," wrote the New York Times's Andrew Ross Sorkin recently. Never mind how much more productive and wealthy we all are because of Apple. Jeez. The old "I already gave at the office" has never rung truer.* *Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin have saved all of us hundreds of billions of hours of research and driving around, far more value than their $20 billion each in wealth. They can give to whatever alternate energy project they want and it won't match the wealth they have already created for me and you.* Of course some would argue that those nouveau rich dudes that created Angry Birds pretty much destroyed that Google-inspired productivity gain. I'm convinced that game is a drug, which is why I went cold turkey and took it off the iPad. Yes these guys are ridiculously wealthy. Far more than they could ever spend. Sure flyng around on private 767s looks a bit austentatious. But look what they gave us. Shouldn't that be rewarded? *I'm all for charity. I give, but those who collect it and spend it need to appreciate both where the money comes from in the first place and that they can never match the power of free enterprise to improve lives. Never.* *Sorry, but the egg comes first. The welfare state doesn't exist without productive businesses and workers to pay for it. Yes, we need bridge builders, park rangers and even a few postal workers, but our economic policies need to encourage wealth-creating productive industries, not crush them with the burden of an unproductive state.* Bingo. I know several very wealthy people. They put everything on the line, sometimes multiple times intersperced with incredible failures, to create their wealth. They gave up decades of even comfortable living to take a wild chance on creating something new. That's why I don't begrudge them their wealth in the slightest. Instead I admire their perseverance and guts. This is also where I beg to differ a bit from the article. There are those that created incredible products that have enriched our lives... and thereby driven more dollars into the tax coffers to spend on programs that enrich lives in different ways. But perhaps along the lines of the creators of Angry Birds, although that's a bit unfair, there are those that have become enriched without creating. The offspring of wealth-creators who simply rest on their wealth without creating. The CEOs that destroy rather than build... sometimes over and over again... and still get hefty severance packages. Those financial middlemen who siphon off capital in exchange for... I'm not sure what. We could come up with a decent list of those less scrupulous types. Two groups. One deserves the wealth, the other, quite frankly, doesn't. One adds value, the other simply sucks potential value-creating capital out of society. So how do we change the discussion from "give back more... and more..." to "let's reward improvement and creation"? Wealth itself is not evil - but it can be. Just as we chastise those that simply live off of entitlements and handouts, we should find fault with those that don't leverage capital resources for social good. And just as we should applaud and reward success with worthy endeavors instead of asking them to "give back more," we should support and promote those at the other end of the wealth spectrum that are trying to improve themselves and others in their own way. It's not as simple as just saying "give back more" or "we've given enough." ### Management Improvement Carnival #144 URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/management-improvement-carnival-144/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:22:19.000Z Evolving Excellence is proud to host this edition of the Management Improvement Carnival. You can find past carnivals at the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. In this roundup of interesting blog posts over the past couple weeks: - Being Resourceful is a Matter of Curiosity - David Kasprzak compares the apparent problem-solving creativity of our ancesters to the current generation and concludes that the key ingredients still exist - curiosity and persistence. - Snowflakes, Structural Collapse, and the Simplification of Lean - Jon Miller warns us against the natural desire to simplify systems and processes, such as lean. - The Real Lesson of Moneyball - Wally Bock tells us how even the most innovative competitive advantage is still temporary, and we must leverage human knowledge and creativity on an ongoing basis to stay in front. - Inspiration Doesn't Come from a Box of Cocoa Puffs - Dan Markovitz takes on those silly stories of the ridiculous perks at companies like Google. Knowledge workers are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose - not free cafeterias and yoga classes. - Call Firefighting and Band-Aids What They Are, But Do Them in a Structured Way - Jamie Flinchbaugh acknowledges that those terms have a negative stigma, but tells us how they also have their place - if performed correctly. - The Conversations You Are Not Having Are Killing Your Business - Art Petty describes ten key conversations or difficult decisions most organizations never get the guts to confront. - The Last Step to 5 Whys - The So What Test - Ron Pereira helps us effectively perform a validation on the root cause identified by the classic 5 Whys RCA process by having us go backwards, up the chain. Interesting and powerful. - "Lack of Time" for Kaizen is a Problem Statement, not an Excuse - Mark Graban digs into the unfortunately common perception that there is not enough time to create change. The lack of time, for kaizen and other worthwhile activities, is a problem in itself... that needs to be changed. - The Need to Improve Management While Building Organizations Fit for Human Beings - John Hunter comments on a video by Gary Hamel, arguing that innovative management systems that promote knowledge have been around for a long time, we just fail to execute them. - [The Elusive Value Thing](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-elusive-value-thing/) \- Bill Waddell once again wades into the morass of "what is value?" in an organization. Strict definitions, especially from the customer's perspective, can be disconcerting. ### Boxes URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/boxes/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:22:31.000Z In most companies, people are hired by Human Resources according to criteria and policies set by HR and senior management - education requirements, background checks, aptitude tests, etc... Once hired, they are paid according to a scale set by HR and senior management, and are given raises - or not - according to those policies. Machines and tooling are bought - or not - according to capital investment policies - hurdle rates, rate of return, etc... set by finance and senior managers. Materials are procured by Purchasing folks from suppliers they selected according to supplier selection criteria of management's design. Production is scheduled by Supply Chain people working from sales plans and forecasts, processed through software acquired at the direction and under policiess set by senior management. The product specifications are established by product engineering, and audited by quality control personnel. So .... production managers and supervisors have virtually no authority or control over people, machines, materials, schedules and specifications. Our management processes tend to have a hefty element of control - to assure that decisions about production are made by those whose job is to 'support' production, instead of by those responsible for production. Management processes tend to keep production people in a pretty small box. It is rather silly, don't you think, for senior leadership to think a corporate lean transformation is going to take place on the shop floor alone - entirely within that little box. Seems more logical to assume the dimensions of the box are going to have to change considerably if leadership wants shop floor results to change in any big way. It also seems we wouldn't be so desperate for 'out of the box thinking' if we didn't put the people actually creating value in such small boxes to begin with. ### Numbers versus Information URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/numbers-versus-information/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:22:44.000Z I had breakfast with a team of folks from one of the big enterprise software outfits while I was at the Lean Accounting Summit - they got to pick my brain on how to better incorporate lean into their ERP offering, and I got a free plate of bacon and eggs. I got the better end of the bargain. While the prospects of them making the fundamental changes needed to really understand and support lean are slim, I have to give them credit for wanting to talk to me. They specifically looked me up at the Summit because of the reputation both Kevin and I have earned for being frequent and vocal critics of ERP, in fact, asked me point blank why lean advocates are so down on information technology. My answer - it is not information or technology lean folks rail against - it is numbers. Far too often the two are assumed to be the same. In fact, lean is all about information. Having lots of it, widely disseminated, is necessary for success and to the degree technology helps accomplish this, so much the better. The problem with most information systems is that, rather than empower people on the shop floor to make better decisions, they are used to empower executives, accountants, buyers and schedulers to make decisions far away from the scene of the action. They do so by attempting to boil the reality of the factory down to numbers, and thereby creating a theoretical picture of things. These managers and technicians then make critical decisions based on the theory of the factory, rather than the reality. Not all numbers are bad or wrong. The customer ordered 26\. The machine produced 31\. Those are facts and make for important information. It is the derived information to substitute for the lack of facts that create the problem. Standards, budgets, forecasts, ratios, averages, and everything coming from the realm of statistics are dangerous, and describe theory instead of reality. An old boss of mine had a plaque on his desk that said, "*There are few things in life more tragic than to see your beautiful theories murdered by a gang of brutal facts*." It was quite true, but the overwhelming majority of poor decisions are rooted in having made them based on such theoretical information. Bad management is too often rooted in holding people at the point of the action accountable for the gap between reality and the theory. Things didn't happen the way the forecasts, standards and averages implied they would - and it is the shop floor's fault. There is nothing wrong with blasting the accurate, known facts far and wide throughout the organization. That is good, common sense management. It is plugging in calculated or derived numbers where facts do not exist, or assuming the few hard facts paint the whole picture that is wrong. This, of course, is why lean companies focus on making decisions at the gemba and empowering people closest to events. No computer and no arithmetic are good enough to define reality for people removed from the action, and attempts to overcome this basic principle, or management operating under the illusion of knowing reality from some remote location, lead to nothing but trouble. ### Thank You for Being a Failure URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thank-you-for-being-a-failure/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:23:05.000Z Yesterday Sue Shellenbarger penned one of the best articles I've ever seen in The Wall Street Journal, and that's saying a lot. Those of us in the lean world - hey even the more people-oriented business world in general - know that failure can be a positive when it is a learning experience. The hidden value of people, again. Sue takes this to a whole new level. *Amid worries that we are becoming less innovative, some companies are rewarding employees for their mistakes or questionable risks. The tactic is rooted in research showing that innovations are often accompanied by a high rate of failure.* *"Failure, and how companies deal with failure, is a very big part of innovation," says Judy Estrin of Menlo Park, Calif., a founder of seven high-tech companies and author of a book on innovation. Failures caused by sloppiness or laziness are bad. But "if employees try something that was worth trying and fail, and if they are open about it, and if they learn from that failure, that is a good thing."* Don't just accept failure, or even encourage the appropriate risk-taking that can create failure, but actually reward it? Yes, if it was worth trying and if it created a learning experience. *Grey's Mr. Myhren recently started handing out the "Heroic Failure" award because he was worried that fast growth at the agency, a unit of WPP's Grey Group in New York, was making employees "a little more conservative, maybe a little slower," he says. Creator of E\*Trade's talking-baby ads, Grey New York has more than doubled to 900 employees since 2008.* I'm sure we've all been there at some point in our careers - the dynamic organization matures and slows down. What better way to get that youthful energy back than to screw it up? Ok, you know what I mean. *Many people succeed at producing innovations because they churn out a very large number of ideas, both good and bad, says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis. "The most successful people tend to be those with the most failures," says Dr. Simonton, author of more than 500 studies and articles and 12 books on creativity and innovation.* *Extracting lessons from foul-ups is the focal point of Michael Alter's "Best New Mistake" awards at SurePayroll, a payroll-services company in Glenview, Ill. Only people who are trying to do a good job, make a mistake and learn from it are eligible for the $400 annual cash award.* It's not as easy as just creating a reward. The culture has to embrace the positive aspects of failure. *However, all innovative companies tend to be alike in certain ways, Ms. Estrin says. They encourage coworkers to trust each other, comment on each other's work and take criticism in stride. Also, managers encourage intelligent risk-taking, tolerate failure and insist that employees share information openly.* The article provides some examples of real-life failures, potentially career-ending failures, that resulted in learning and were rewarded. Think used kitty litter and getting nasty calls from the tax guys. Yep, bad. And innovation will come. So is your organization getting a bit sluggish? Perhaps it's time to fail a bit more, learn from it, and celebrate. ### The Bookless Bookstore URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-bookless-bookstore/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:23:28.000Z Many years ago Bill and I authored the *Evolving Excellence* book which was basically a collection of some our favorite early blog posts. To simplify the process we used a new self-publishing print-on-demand outfit called iUniverse, which counted Barnes & Noble as a primary investor. Back then that was a new technology and sort of obscure, and although the book turned out well we did give up some ancillary services typical provided by traditional publishers, like marketing. Today self-publishing and especially print-on-demand has become widespread, and companies like iUniverse have evolved to provide the full spectrum of services from editing to broad marketing. At the same time I'm being told more and more stories of how traditional publishers are disappointing their authors, particularly in terms of marketing. Perhaps the Espresso, a self-contained print-on-demand machine inside bookstores that creates a book in minutes, will hasten the change. Demand-based production in units of one is about as close to lean manufacturing as one can get. *As bookstores disappear across America, some small operators are pursuing a novel survival strategy: The bookless bookshelf. Their vision was aided Thursday by HarperCollins Publishers Inc. which said it would make about 5,000 current paperbacks available to bookstores through On Demand Books LLC's Espresso Book Machine. The desk-sized device can custom print a book in just a few minutes. That means even if a physical copy is not in stock, it's still available almost immediately.* *"What I'd like to see is all the major publishers make their titles available so that we can capture the sales that we're currently losing by not having books available," said Chris Morrow, co-owner of the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt., which installed an Espresso Book Machine in January 2008 and prints about 100 books a week.* *HarperCollins estimates 25% to 80% of its trade paperback titles aren't available in bookstores because of space considerations.* Of course there's a cost involved, right? Nope. *Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins, said that the paperbacks printed by Espresso will list for the same price as the traditional paperback version.* Sounds great... except for one small factor: the rapid shift from reading physical to electronic books. Last year Amazon reported that for the first time it sold more e-books than physical books. I know it's rare for me to order a physical book these days - basically the only ones I read are the numerous review copies I receive. Everything else is read either on my iPad or Kindle. *One leading publisher who asked not to be identified said his company is unlikely to make more titles available, in part because they are concerned that bookstores with the machines might then order fewer titles. Machines, this person said, don't help market books.* Perhaps in the traditional way. But the machine also prevents the usual 25%+ of books that are simply thrown away when bookstores hold too much stock. Waste that is built into price and therefore detracts from value. ### Simmons to Simmons to California URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/simmons-to-simmons-to-california/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:24:09.000Z It took a few minutes to dissect this positive tidbit of news yesterday: Simmons opening a new furniture upholstery facility in the U.S. - and not just in the U.S. but in California no less. Probably about the most business-unfriendly location around, and I should know since I operate a couple businesses here. Long-time readers will recall when Bill [took Simmons to task](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-single-greatest-obstacle-to-manufacturing-excellence/) \- or actually the revolving door of flippers sucking cash out of a once proud company. Really a sad story. But it's not the same company. You see the Simmons that Bill referred to has licensed upholstery manufacturing to this Simmons - really "United/Simmons Upholstery" which is really United Furniture Industries. It has its own convoluted history of bankruptcies and mergers, which is usually the case with companies that can't give a straight answer to "what's your name?" But at least it seems to have some manufacturing sense - even if it includes California. *Full-line upholstery source United/Simmons Upholstery, headquartered here, has secured a 505,192-square-foot manufacturing and warehousing facility in Victorville, Calif., and says it will use the site to better serve its rapidly growing base of West Coast customers.* *The strategic move will also enable United/Simmons to create new jobs. According to the company, plans call for it to immediately hire 100 additional employees for this site and grow that number to approximately 400 employees within the next 36 to 48 months.* Yep, trying to get closer to its customers. Good call. Even if those customers are in a state with ridiculous business regulations, fees, and taxes. *"UFI has a history of making every effort possible to procure goods and services in the local communities where we have a manufacturing presence," Cottam added.* Buying local to further support the local economies. Another good call. *While acknowledging the ongoing challenges presented by the economy, George said that by investing in new items throughout its category lineup, United continues to equip its dealers for success. "According to our dealers, consumer reaction to our products continues to be very strong and we believe that the best way to support our dealers' ongoing success is by continuing to bring fresh looks and compelling values to the market," he said.* A focus on value from the perspective of the customer. Good again. Perhaps there is hope for U.S. manufacturing - even with consumer furniture. ### The Elusive Value Thing URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-elusive-value-thing/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:25:07.000Z Yesterday's [post on breaking non-value adding costs out](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/changing-the-discussion/) on the P&L drew a couple of the questions and opinions that can be expected when the issue is raised around the conference table in any organization. Evolving Excellence readers being the high class folks they are, the issues were raised in a much less contentious manner than you can expect, but the nature of the challenges they raised are about the same. Steve H has some concerns about classifying quality control costs as non-value added. Dietmar thinks purchasing is value adding. Prashant is afraid classifying training as non-value adding will subject it to cost cutting, which is presumably a bad thing. George questions classifying material handling as non-value adding as waste since it has to be done - somehow the stuff has to move from one place to another. All of this gets at the fundmental challenge an organization faces when deciding to embark on the lean journey. The basic definition of lean is the elimination of waste - and waste is anything that does not add value in the eyes (and the pocketbook) of the customer. Knowing what is waste is pretty important - else how can the organization get rid of it? If one person assumes the cost of quality inspection is pure waste, while another sees it as adding value the result is not good. The norm is for folks to advocate kaizen exercises aimed at eliminating the waste of other folks' processes, but rarely urging elimination of the waste in their own back yard. I suppose there is a certain logic to classifying quality inspection as valuable when you look at it as a necessary task to get dismal quality under control. Customers won't pay much for genuinely shoddy quality and I suppose they will pay more if it is improved by weeding out the bulk of the bad stuff. The better lens, however, is to compare product A that sells for $10 with excellent quality achieved by capable processes, poka yoke and absolute control at the source, with product B having comparable quality selling for $11 to cover the cost of inspection. The customer is not going to pay the extra $1 for product B when it can get the same quality without the inspection expense. That said, the product specifications for many items sold to military and aerospace customers include documented inspection results. Effective quality inspection is clearly part of the value proposition as defined by the customer. This demonstrates that there is no one size fits all definistion of waste. The toughest nuts to crack in deriving a consensus on value-adding versus non-value-adding are items such as training - Prashant's very legitimate concern. In fact, management spends a lot of money on things such as training that customers will not pay for - at least they won't pay for it directly. Again back to product A or $10 and B for $11\. All else being equal (and all else is *never* equal in the real world), am I willing to pay an extra dollar in order to cover the cost of training the employees who made product B? Of course not. I am only willing to pay extra if the product has superior value - better quality, more precise utility, superior reliability. The dollar spent on training has to translate into a dollar of reduced waste, a dollar of greater product vale, or some combination of the two. If it doesn't, management should cut the training expense. There are lots of management controlled, non-value adding expenses that fall into the same category as training. Support staff, computers and software, company picnics and most meetings. Customers won't pay for any of this stuff; and the only justification for it is the belief that it will translate into a dollar for dollar reduction in other waste or an enhancement of product value. Calling it value adding rather than waste, however, is a dangerous practice because you are assuming it always results in offsetting benefits - not a particularly accurate or honest assumption in my experience. Classifying an expense as value adding because (1) it is perceived as a necessary cost of the operation, (2) management has decided it is good for the business in the long term, or (3) some government regulation dictates that it must be incurred even though that expense is for an activity customers won't pay for is a serious mistake. It is the same as recalibrating my bathroom scale so it shows I only weigh 200 instead if 235 because I can't control my metabolism and I can't get out of the family eating binges we call the holidays. Lying to myself is not going to help me lose weight, even if the reasons for my excess weight are tough to avoid. I can't tell you what adds value to your customers and what doesn't. Only you can do that based on your individual products and customers. It requires objectivity and honesty, and to make it even tougher, the definitions may be different within your organization for the various value streams and the channels they serve. Just having the discussion, however, is a great (and necessary) first step. Nothing but good can come from opening up this particular can of worms. ### Changing the Discussion URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/changing-the-discussion/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:25:38.000Z Spending last week at the Lean Accounting Summit probably made me a bit over-sensitive to the subject, but coming across a story about the Department of Justice spending 16 bucks apiece for muffins and a dollar an ounce for coffee got me thinking about this whole value adding - non value adding thing. I thought I would offer up a pretty simple way to quickly change the nature of the financial discussions within an organization. Step one is to have the management team sit down with the chart of expense accounts and argue about which of them add value in the eyes of the customers, and which don't. This is quite often a contentious exercise, as people resist the notion that their work - often their whole department - does not add value. The acid test is whether customers will pay more for the product if you perform the task in question better, or do more of it. Non-value adding work can be dumped into one of three categories: pure waste (stuff like defects, material handling and bureaucratic nonsense), regulatory waste (the cost of complying with OSHA, EPA, EEOC, ISO paperwork and the like) and management controlled waste (lean training and lean consultants, staff salaries, computers, office furniture, etc...). The management controlled waste is the sort of thing customers won't pay for directly, but you do because management thinks it will be more than offset by reductions in other waste, or will enhance the value adding efforts by more than it costs. Step two is to change the format of the P&L statement. No need for anyone to get traumatized over this. The P&L can be generated in both the old and new formats - it's not an either/or situation. Instead of this: Reshuffle the numbers and have the P&L look like this: Same numbers - just looking at them different. In the first one - the traditional P&L - when management doesn't like the profit number, they look to material and labor costs as the opportunities to improve. In the second version, it is hard to ignore the $530K - 21% 0f the money - spent on things customers will not pay you for. No big change in accounting, not asking management or anyone else to change anything or make any commitments - just looking at the numbers from a different angle - and it never fails to change the discussion. For too many managers who don't spend enough time at the gemba and are unable to see waste in reality, putting the waste on a piece of paper with a $ in front of it makes it very easy to see. You will be surprised at how quickly terms like 'value adding' and 'non-value adding' become part of the company language, and at how quickly management becomes focused on eliminating waste. ... and it works for manufacturers, healthcare organizations, retailers .... even government agencies like the Department of Justice. ### Thou Shalt Not Question URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/thou-shalt-not-question/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:26:24.000Z The climate change world is in a bit of a tizzy this week over the resignation of Dr. Ivar Giaever, a nobel laureate physicist currently teaching at my alma mater, from the American Physical Society. What is his beef? Being told, by a scientific society no less, that questioning is no longer acceptable. I thought that's what science is all about. *Well, Mr. Vice President \[Al Gore\], meet Ivar Giaever, a 1973 physics Nobel Laureate who resigned last week from the American Physical Society in protest over the group's insistence that evidence of man-made global warming is "incontrovertible."* *In an email to the society, Mr. Giaever—who works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—wrote that "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from \~288.0 to \~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me . . . that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period."* *Mr. Giaever was an American Physical Society fellow, an honor bestowed on "only half of one percent" of the members, according to a spokesman.* Pretty smart guy. He's not the only one. *He follows in the footsteps of University of California at Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis, a former APS fellow who resigned in 2010, calling global warming "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."* *Other dissenters include Stanford University physicist and Nobelist Robert B. Laughlin, deceased green revolution icon and Nobelist Norman Borlaug, Princeton physicist William Happer and World Federation of Scientists President Antonino Zichichi. Our point is not that all of these men agree on climate change, much less mankind's contribution to it, only that to one degree or another they maintain an open mind about warming or what to do about it.* That last statement is the critical part. Whether or not climate change, especially human-triggered climate change, is a reality is not the point. Regardless of whether it is or not most of us probably agree that it is good policy to do what we can to lessen the environmental impact of human activity. *One of the least savory traits of climate-change advocates is how they've tried to bully anyone who keeps an open mind. This is true of many political projects, but it is or ought to be anathema to the scientific method.* The point is that we should never stop questioning - or try to prevent questioning - even when a large majority of very smart people believe a concept should be considered fact. Examples? - The Earth is flat. - The Earth is at the center of the universe. - You must have an MRP system to adequately manage manufacturing operations. - U.S. companies cannot compete with low labor cost countries like China. In most cases the opinion of a group of smart people probably is fact. Luckily in some cases there were some strong-willed individuals, equally ostracized, who continued to question presumed fact. Never stop questioning. ### A 5S Checklist URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-5s-checklist/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:27:03.000Z Over the years I have been known to badmouth typical approaches to 5S as a glorified housekeeping exercise - getting lean without doing any of the hard stuff. In [this post](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/the-5s-illusion/) I called it 'lean-lite', and in this one I called it 'Spring [cleaning](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/more-thad-newth-for-thteve-jobth-and-fokthconn/)'. in an effort to be more positive and helpful, and less cynical (anyone taking bets on how long this new leaf is going to stay turned over?), I want to offer up my alternative. This is the 5S checklist I have been using for some time. It has to be adapted and modified for each unique manufacturing situation - you should do whatever tweaking you think necessary before using it too - but here it is. Download 5S Checklist. ### Culture versus Org Charts URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/culture-versus-org-charts/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:27:21.000Z Two companies I have worked closely with recently have a common thread: Both are very good, very lean manufacturers making very good money; and neither has any respect for organizational charts and chains of command. One of the companies is pretty big and there is an org chart ... somewhere. Someone in HR is tasked with maintaining it and he sends out emails every now and then asking people to review the chart and send him updates. No one answers the emails so the chart is usually close but wrong. The other company is fairly small - and only about fifteen years old. They just never got around to drawing one up. Creating and growing the business, and now making and shipping lots of stuff, have kept them too busy to ever sit down and formalize the organization. Formalizing org charts isn't important to either company because no one seems to think the chain of command is important. Who works for who seems to have little bearing on who should talk to who when problems and opportunities arise, and it doesn't seem to have much impact on who makes decisions. People talk to whoever they think has information they need, or is in charge of an area that is needed to support whatever it is that has to be done. The polar opposite is the military, where chain of command is virtually a religion. The theory is that a clearly defined chain of command and immediate, unquestioned obedience to orders is a vital necessity for wartime success. There is a fair amount of evidence that American war time success actually results from a culture willingness on the part of soldiers to improvise (another word for violating orders and thumbing their noses at the chain of command). At any rate, the rigid adherence to the organizational chart as the framework for all communications and decision making, while it may be important in battle situations, is the root of off-the-charts bureaucracy and away from the battlefield. WL Gore describes their utter disregard for organizational structures and chains of command with this: "*There are no traditional organizational charts, no chains of command, nor predetermined channels of communication. Instead, we communicate directly with each other and are accountable to fellow members of our multi-disciplined teams. We encourage hands-on innovation, involving those closest to a project in decision making. Teams organize around opportunities and leaders emerge*." Explanations for the need for clearly defined chains of command spelled out on organizational charts revole around words like 'accountability', 'control' and 'authority'. Strong lean cultures revolve around words like 'empowerment', 'respect' and 'cross-functionality'. They seem to be describing vastly different ways of getting things done. Toyota is spending a lot of time worrying about this issue these days. I recently heard someone from their strategic planning group rattling on about self-reliance, a term they use rather fluidly to describe the need for decisions to be made on the fly at the right level, and the right level is not something that can be pre-determined or has a one-size-fits-all definition. The moral to all of this is that org charts are unimportant, and are often substitutes for a weak culture. Lots of relationships between people, all of them having respect for each other's knowledge, and little regard for egos inflated by formal authority are keys to success. ### Forms and More Forms URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/forms-and-more-forms/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:27:35.000Z It's been a busy week - both Bill and I presented at the Lean Accounting Summit. Believe it or not it's the one time a year when we spend a few minutes comparing notes, plans, and who is threatening to sue us for some of our blog posts. Some good laughs all around. An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday told us about something most of us have long felt - we are spending more time on paperwork. Useless? Perhaps. But more on that in a minute. *The effort needed to comply with federal bureaucracy now has a number. According to new government estimates released this week, Americans spent 8.8 billion hours filling out government forms in fiscal 2010.* *The good news? That's lower than the 9.8 billion hours logged the previous year. The bad news? The drop is mostly due to a change in how federal agencies estimate how long it takes to complete their paperwork.* *In all, the paperwork burden has increased by around 19% over the past decade, up from 7.4 billion hours in fiscal 2000, the White House Office of Management and Budget said.* It's not really an issue of political party - but government in general. Both sides are responsible. *Between 2002 and 2005, federal agencies reported significant increases in paperwork demands. Republicans controlled Congress and the White House for almost all that period. In 2005, laws including the Bush administration's Medicare prescription-drug overhaul, created what is now estimated to be an extra 250 million paperwork hours.* *At the same time, the biggest single-year jump in the past decade came in 2010, when individuals and businesses spent an extra 352 million hours responding to paperwork requests from agencies prompted by new statutory requirements. Last year, employers needed almost 70 million additional hours to claim a new credit for hiring more workers, and restaurants spent 14.5 million hours to display calorie counts for their menus, according to figures submitted to OMB by the departments of the Treasury and Health and Human Services. In fact, the Treasury was the source of most of the paperwork burden in 2010, hitting 6.4 billion hours, or 73%.* Unbelievable. The article points out that if you value an hour at $20, which is far below what most organizations value an hour after adding burden for employer-side taxes, benefits, and support infrastructure like the building they work in, then the cost is $171 billion. That's the cost to fill out the forms. But here's my real question: what is done with the forms? Is everything on a form really necessary? There is a cost to store them, and almost hopefully there's a cost to actually analyze and do something with the data. Or do they just sit in a file cabinet or computer memory somewhere? What is the point of a form if it is not used? $171 billion to fill them out... how many billion to scan and store them... and perhaps, just perhaps, analyze and do something with the data? And we wonder where we can find some money to cut out of the budget. And don't smirk too much - take a look around you at your own organizations. I bet you're doing the same thing to your employees. ### 10 Years Ago Today - on September 11th URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-11th/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:28:04.000Z Yesterday I told you how ten years ago on [September 10th](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-10th/) was one of the most difficult - and transformative - days of my life. Yes, the day before September 11th - what a week that was. And I vividly remember driving into work the next day, trying to figure out how I was going to respond to the press, and to the friends and coworkers I had just laid off the day before, when I heard the news from New York. 9/11 transformed all of us. The world changed. Perhaps in different ways, perhaps in ways we don't like. Perhaps in ways it had to change. In the days and years afterwards I remember the range of emotions, but I especially remember the range and latitude of discussions. The anger that many felt, the remorse of others, how some people created wild conspiracy theories, how some became more focused on assigning blame to the President or religions oror past actions no matter how obtuse or irrelevant in thinking. But a concept that has stuck with me because it applies to organizational leadership in addition to geopolitical politics is how to deal with negative influences. In politics we had Al Qaeda as the disruptive or negative influence on our modernizing world. The response to that influence ranged from those who believed in full all-out military action to eliminate the scourge to those who believed talking could resolve all differences. Nuke 'em or sing kumbaya. Both extremes don't work. In organizations we also have negative influences. People who stand in the way of progress, overtly or behind the scenes. Those that disagree, oppose out of ignorance, or openly subvert new ideas. And we have managers whose reponse ranges from immediately firing them and anyone remotely associated with them to those who simply put up with them - and hope that someday, somehow, they'll change their ways. Again, both extremes don't work. The temptation by many is to immediately cut off the gangrenous limb. That often seems very leaderly and action-oriented. But sometimes there really is an underlying process problem or misunderstanding. Perhaps the person doesn't understand the "why" behind a new program or understand how he's affecting the group. Clarifying the situation and expectations can change the behavior. But not always. The lazy way out is to do nothing, to talk forever, to put up with and tolerate the behavior and hope it eventually goes away. Diplomacy and never-ending ineffective sanctions to go back to the geopolitical analogy. If it's a true cancer it grows and spreads, and prevents and even discourages growth by others. The reality is that the truth and answer, as with most situations, is in the middle. Don't take immediate action to remove the person - or nefarious organization or even country. First try to understand their perspective and issues and see if a common understanding can be developed. But this can't go on forever as it will damage the common good and forward progress. At some point a difficult decision needs to be made that change will not occur and the person - or organization - must be removed. It's not fun, sometimes it doesn't even seem humane. But it must be done. Understanding and operating in that middle ground, standing firm against the two extremes, but knowing when action must finally be taken and taking it, is leadership. ### 10 Years Ago Today - on September 10th URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/10-years-ago-today-on-september-10th/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:27:51.000Z Today, 9/10, is a very memorable day to me. Ten years ago today I had to lay off over 150 brilliant people, including myself. You see, not quite a year earlier I decided to leave a long career in medical device manufacturing to try the telecom world. I found an opportunity to run a hypergrowth operation that developed and manufactured laser photonics test equipment - basically the equipment tested the laser drivers that sat at both ends of long-haul fiber optic communications equipment. The operation was struggling under an 18 month backlog with a manufacturing capability grown organically over the prior two years. Loads of opportunity. Over the next ten months the operation was transformed. Not just from my knowledge and experience, not just the experience of consultants I had the latitude to bring in to help us out, but the brilliance and passion and creativity of the initial fifty or sixty people we had and the hundred plus we added over the course of the year. A couple of very talented HR folks helped us find and relocate the best from around the country. The fact that we were (and I still am) in one of the best places in the U.S. to live didn't hurt. Production capacity went from $1M a month to $5M in a month in the same floorspace. Quality, especially first pass yield, became near perfect. The backlog was dried up and on-time delivery made customers confident in orders they placed with us. Our technology remained leading edge. Lean methods had created an incredible transformation. Then, like the rest of telecom in 2001, demand dried up - almost overnight. Suddenly the industry realized that fiber optic capacity was overbuilt. In March we had our first order cancellation - we considered it a blip. In July we had a very minor work slowdown - while still recruiting for open positions. In late August we finally came to the realization that this was a serious, long-term situation. That's when the battles with the corporate headquarters taught us a lesson about lean - and traditional business. It didn't matter that our technology remained superior. It didn't matter that labor was a tiny fraction of our cost. And it didn't matter that our manufacturing operation was orders of magnitude more efficient than the ones at other locations, especially at corporate headquarters a few hundred miles south. Traditional business thinking said that manufacturing had to contract, that regardless of where cash was actually spent labor was the easiest cost to cut, that manufacturing had to be "controlled" and remote locations were difficult to control. I was told to shut down the operation. We tried to do it right. We kept everyone, everyone, informed as decisions were being made. There were no surprises. My leadership team fought hard, but unfortunately it wasn't enough - but it was recognized by our folks. We were respectful and compassionate. The corporate office offered many folks a transfer down to corporate office - and only two people took the offer. Both with less than a year of experience. Our product line, still in demand, was destined to die. 9/10/01 came, and it was tough. It was painful but it was not a surprise. Then the next day, while driving into work and worried about dealing with the repercussions of the prior day, I heard the first news of 9/11\. And the events of the past day were put into perspective. I learned a lot of lessons on that 9/10\. I learned a real lesson in how traditional accounting counts the pennies of labor costs but creativity, experience, and knowledge are no where to be found as an offsetting value on the P&L or balance sheet. I learned how corporate decisions can be made on politics and perception as opposed to a real analysis of product lines, customers, manufacturing capability, and technology. I learned how to not overlook the smallest blip in order pattterns - and any data for that matter. And more than anything I learned how harnessing the passion of people can create incredible transformation. In addition to the lessons, this incident let me start and later sell a contract manufacturing business, build a consulting business, and become president of a medical device company. I've been lucky enough to hire back some of the talented people I laid off. Many others also used their new knowledge and experience to create success at other organizations. 9/10/01 was one of the toughest days of my life. And a day that transformed my future - in a positive way. ### A Few Thoughts on China, Consistency, and Standardization URL: https://www.kevinmeyer.com/a-few-thoughts-on-china-consistency-and-standardization/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T21:28:21.000Z I just returned from my annual trip to visit some customers and attend a trade show in Shanghai, China. Always an interesting experience and I personally love Asia, although I prefer the respectful humility of the Japanese and the constant happiness of the Thai and Cambodians. The latter always seem to be full of joy even though an entire generation of men was wiped out only a few years ago – and we think we have problems. My thoughts on China change with each trip – perhaps just as the country is changing rapidly. You can’t help but wonder about the true meaning of communism when you get off the plane and are hit with a barrage of ads on the jet way for various luxury items. Today’s state-sanctioned Shanghai Daily even had a feature article discussing how many Chinese were on the list of the wealthiest in the world. Unlike in the U.S. the article, and by extension the government, praised their success. Go figure. On [my last trip I was amazed](https://www.kevinmeyer.com/ruminating-on-the-future-of-china/) with the accelerating improvements in this potentially monster economy. I visited medical device companies that had technology on par with the best in the U.S. and who were investing in their future growth by creating 10,000-student engineering universities of their own. I noticed how discussions with trade show attendees had changed from “here’s a sample of a product from our competitor in America – can you back-engineer and build me a million” to “here’s exactly how we’d like to improve on our competitor’s product”. Society had become, for better or worse, very westernized with teenagers wearing the latest fashions to a Starbucks on every block. This time I’m not as optimistic. I talked to a lot of customers as well as several expats running the local operations for foreign companies. Times are changing, and not necessarily for the better. Wage inflation is accelerating, restrictions on foreign control of local outsourced manufacturing operations are increasing faster than the ability of local Chinese to manage such complex operations, and the disparity between the upper and lower class is growing. Basic services are becoming very strained by growth, and one expat living in Shanghai told me that healthcare quality had significantly declined just in the past year – to the point that she now goes to Hong Kong or back to the U.S. for even basic care. Technology does not create great service – knowledge and experience using the technology does. The human factor, once again. I fear significant social upheaval in China’s future, and the impact that will have on the world. Local governments have monstrous infrastructure loans that are becoming a problem. In the past they would seize property by eminent domain, sell it to companies to develop into infrastructure, and use the funds to seize more property. Lots of homes and businesses seized with as little as 90 days notice, which is why a primary consideration for multinational companies building factories is to develop in an area where seizure isn't likely - i.e. not on a straight (potential rail) line between two cities. The problem is that the amount of property that can be seized has dried up, thereby drying up the ability of local governments to repay loans. Oops. But what has really struck me on this trip is the lack of consistency and adherence to standards. It is pervasive and makes me wonder if this is the goal, and then the hurdle, of great civilizations. How’s that for a deep thought? I don’t necessarily mean regulation-enforced standards, but simply an inherent desire to do things right, the same way, and an inner knowledge that consistency is efficient and practical. It is also an awareness that something is wrong and needs to be changed. A few examples to illustrate what I mean, beginning with the very basic. In our hotel, a five star by local standards, light bulbs are inconsistent in the same type and application. Overhead lighting cans may have incandescent, compact fluorescent, etc. At the breakfast bar the coffee is in a different location each morning. Sometimes there’s low fat milk, sometimes not. Trivial? Perhaps – it didn’t strike me as all that unusual or systemic until I came across or heard about the following other examples. An expat I talked to who is running the local operations for a large U.S. multinational told me of her frustration mentoring her Chinese leadership team – and why she believes it will be a long time before the company entrusts the operations to them without an expat chief. One example she gave was how on her gemba walks she noticed trash on the floor, every day. Her management team simply doesn’t see it, let alone take action to improve it. She then connects it to understanding the financial statements and data required to run the operations – if they can’t see trash on the floor, can they see the minor and what may appear on the surface to be trivial, but still potentially important, issues in metrics and data? Let alone do something to correct it? Recognizing, digging into, asking why, then improving is a fundamental requirement for solid autonomous leadership. In her opinion it’s not there yet. A third and final example, one that will scare most people flying in and out of Shanghai’s Pudong airport. A different expat was telling me about the amount of news that really is censored, especially including safety issues. The world witnessed some of this recently with the derailment of a high-speed train in China and how it was initially covered up to the point even having train cars buried before an investigation could take place. According to a good friend of hers, a commercial pilot, the actions of planes around Pudong are scarily similar to the cars and buses on local streets – effectively a free for all. Instead of the highly-ordered sequencing, positioning, and following commands of traffic controllers that you see at U.S. and European airports, in China commands are often ignored. Just last week a Qatar jet had declared a fuel emergency and was given a direct approach into Pudong. Still, on final approach, two local airliners dove in in front of the Qatar jet to land sooner. Disaster was narrowly averted. Perhaps this is why United turns off Channel 9 when landing in China? Understanding the value of consistency and standards, regulation-enforced but more importantly an inner knowledge and understanding of the value of consistency and adhering to standards, appears to be a key to an efficient society. Similar to that, understanding that standards can and should be changed and improved upon with appropriate review is also key. Otherwise stagnation occurs. I see the U.S. as having a high level of standards and consistency, but struggling with creating the ability to improve and move forward. Creating and adhering to standards and standardization are both a critical goal, and a critical hurdle. For both societies and organizations. _Includes the latest 500 public posts. Use `/sitemap.xml` for the complete archive of public content._