We want organizations to be adaptive, flexible, self-renewing, resilient, learning, intelligent — attributes found only in living systems. The tensio… - Jeffrey K. Liker

We have to change the culture from one in which people simply do their own job in their own function to make their own numbers look good (a vertical focus) to one in which people are focused horizontally on the customer and on improving value streams that deliver value across functions.

One Toyota executive stated the sentiment well, “Team members are the only appreciating asset we have. Everything else starts depreciating from the moment we buy it.

It is comforting to believe that if we could only implement the right cells and other lean tools to eliminate waste in the process, we could let it rip and get great results forever . . . or at least for a long time. But processes do not work that way.