Lean Blog Interviews

Today's guest is Michael Ballé, an author of many novels about Lean management, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. He joins us for this episode from Paris (he shares many photos of "Paris moments" via his Twitter account @TheGembaCoach). Michael and his father, Freddy, have collaborated on these books and have learned about as directly from Toyota as anybody (Freddy was CEO of the French automotive supplier Sommer-Allibert and was coached by them). The three novels are: - The Gold Mine - The Lean Manager - Lead With Respect As we joke about in the podcast, I'm not a fiction reader, in general, so I don't care for business novels. But, many people do! I read Michael's non-fiction essays and articles, including: - "The Gemba Coach" column on Lean.org - His answers to questions on TheLeanEdge.org (where I'm also a contributor) Michael is a first-time podcast guest (which we were both shocked to discover), but I did host a four-part written Q&A with him back in 2009. For a link to this episode, refer