Carnival of Lean Leadership #4

Welcome to the fourth Carnival of Lean Leadership.  There's a lot of material to cover this time, so we'll get right to it...

The highlight of the past week has been the "blogfest" on project kaizen by "The Gang of Seven", which includes our own Bill Waddell.  Over 30 blog posts on the subject, and therefore a lot of reading... and re-reading and re-reading to truly capture all the great ideas.  Special thanks to Hal Macomber at Reforming Project Management for organizing this activity.  The posts from The Gang of Seven:

• Bill Waddell at EvolvingExcellence: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4
• Hal Macomber at Reforming Project Management: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6
• Chuck Frey at Innovation Tools: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5
• Joe Ely at Learning About Lean: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6
• Jon Miller at Gemba Panta Rei: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4
• Mark Graban at Lean Manufacturing Blog: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4
• Norm Bodek at Kaikaku: post 1, post 2

Along the way they found a couple honorary members of the Gang of Seven:

• Kathleen Fasanella at Fashion-Incubator: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5
• Eric at Grim Reader: post 1, post 2

Hal is apparently creating a summary of the posts, so keep an eye on his blog, Reforming Project Management.

Now on to some notable posts at other lean-oriented blogs:

• At Evolving Excellence we've discussed the six revolutions that will affect the future of business, and we've continued to push the point that the decline in the U.S. auto industry is a result of poor leadership, not market conditions.
• Fashion-Incubator is a blog we've just come across, with a fascinating perspective on a type of manufacturing many of us aren't often exposed to.  Kathleen talks about several garment industry issues that pertain to lean, such as direction cards and pattern numbers.
• Gemba Panta Rei has a hilarious article on the "Kaizen Cops in Kenya".
• Got Boondoggle has great posts on extending genchi gembutsu beyond the plant walls and putting creativity before capital. 
• The Lean Manufacturing Blog talks about lean consumption and transportation and asks where's the innovation in closing plants.
• Learning About Lean has an article on how to make a plant hum.
• iSixSigma blogs about six sigma at Amazon and also at Target.

Some notable posts in management excellence blogs include:

• Project, Process, and Business Improvement tells us why it's cheaper to train people.
• Make It Great talks about genius.
• NAM's Manufacturer's Blog has a post on the Innovation Summit.
• Management Craft has a great article on how not to let benchmarking influence creativity.
• Slow Leadership tell us about the importance of benign neglect.
• High Performance Business tells us about the pitfalls we'll run into when creating high performing businesses.
• Curious Cat has a couple of good blogs on innovate or avoid risk and data-based decision-making.
• Business Pundit analyzes Google's ten golden rules for business success.
• Business2 has a post on the virtual economy, where Chinese gamers are being paid to play video games.
• Business & Technology Reinvention has a list of 20 bright business ideas.
• The Common Sense Guy has some great tips on how to manage email.
• And last but definitely not least (sorry... went in reverse order this week!), Be Excellent describes the differences between customer and business excellence.

That's it for this edition.  Let me know if I'm missing any important blogs!