In this episode, host Calvin L. Williams continues the conversation on Lean Knowledge Management with Part 3: Scaling Continuous Improvement Coaching.

While many organizations view coaching as a reactive measure for poor performance, this episode explores why effective coaching is actually the secret sauce that separates average companies from the great ones. Calvin breaks down the "Hero Coach" problem—where only executives get coaches while the rest of the organization is left behind—and examines why traditional methods are economically impossible to scale.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Economics of Coaching: Why the current model is practically "social work" and why hiring an army of coaches isn't feasible.
• The Toyota Way: How Toyota embeds scientific thinking and coaching into leadership development, unlike the capital-focused growth models of many Western companies.
• Reframing the Mindset: Moving away from coaching as "punishment" toward coaching as a consistent tool for goal setting, motivation, and course correction.
• The 3 Paths to Scale:

Join us as we discuss how Company B (the AI-enabled organization) will eventually outperform Company A (the traditional organization) by ensuring every single employee has access to world-class coaching.

Tune in next week for Part 4, where we will discuss putting these systems on autopilot for decision-making.

Links & Resources:

• Sponsor: Impruver – Tools, tech, and training to empower the Continuous Improvement community.
• Website: impruver.com
• Improver University: impruver.com/university

"Let's get better every day."

We assume that if we document a best practice, people will follow it.

However, the reality is that context gets lost, employees change roles, and valuable insights are buried in "dark drawers".

Join Calvin L. Williams as he argues that the Lean movement is fundamentally a knowledge management movement.

This episode challenges the "batch and dump" method of training and sharing ideas.

Instead of relying on human memory or manual searches, Calvin advocates for leveraging AI to get "the right information to the right person at the right time"

Line up 20 people, put them through Green Belt training, and sit back and watch the culture transform, right? Wrong!

If you are applying the wasteful practices of overproduction to they way you deliver Lean training, you're telling people what to do while simultaneously showing them exactly what not to do.

Sitting a gang of people in Lean training for a week long Lean info-dump or untimely and irrelevant information is exactly the kind of thinking Lean exists to stop.

It's better to deliver the right training to the right person at the right time to empower them to make the right decision to advance a kaizen culture.

This part one of four episode of The Impruvers Podcast discusses on-demand training in the context of the broader topic of Lean Knowledge Management.

Check it out to learn more.

Lean is the undisputed king of business operating models. It promises operational excellence beyond your wildest dreams. However, many Lean initiatives fall apart.

It happens at the data collection step, then again at Tier meetings, then again at the follow-up and escalation stages, then again at the implementation and sustainment of improvements.

Issues at each stage in this process causes a loss of fidelity in the sequential process step. By the time you done holding this broken, manual system together, you have no time to make actual improvement to real value-stream processes.

This episode explains the trap many CI leaders find themselves struggling to escape. It also suggests a path to breaking free and unlocking operational excellence.

How do we go from kaizen warrior to kaizen culture? From soloist to symphony orchestrator?

Practically every company starts their CI journey with one consultant or Lean professional. This is the Impruver. The Impruver's challenge is to figure out what steps are needed to go from "What is Lean" to everybody, every day, everywhere.

This Lean pro usually doesn't have the authority to make Lean mandatory; however they are expected to drive more transformation that even the CEO is capable of doing.

How do we do this? Fortunately, there's a source of economic power that rivals that of the CEO's political power - its called efficiency.

This episode explores the challenges and opportunities for scaling Continuous Improvement by automating non-value added but necessary activities for accelerating the rate of improvement.

Lean was once the disruptive technology that it now fears. It wasn't digital technology, but a methodology, which is basically software before software was a thing.

At the same time, we wonder why CEOs haven't taken the level of interest in Lean as we would prefer. However, CEOs are very interested in technology. Why is this?

How can we, as CI pros, better position ourselves on the forefront of the digital revolution and peak more interest from executive leaders?

Find out in this next episode of the Impruver's Podcast.

Being Lean Six Sigma certified is probably not what it sounds like. In fact, holding this certification doesn't mean you have even a basic understanding of Lean.

Most LSS cert programs are Six Sigma training with a bit of Lean sprinkled on top.

While both are intended to improve processes, Lean is fundamentally different from Six Sigma in ways that do not translate - at all.

This podcast episode breaks down the difference between the two disciplines and describes what a more apt Lean Six Sigma Certification program would look like.

There is an enormous chasm between what AI can do for Lean and CI leaders, and what is actually being put to good use.

We see headlines all the time about new models being released and how AI is changing the world around us. As CI leaders, we can find ourselves caught up on the wrong side of disruption if we don't get ahead of the game.

This episode of The Impruvers Podcase shares 15 ways Lean and CI leaders should be using AI right now. Not in 2 years - but today!

The episode discusses the advantages of partnering with tech companies that play in the CI space to help prioritize features and functionality that you need right now.

Many of us don't realize how receptive tech innovators would be to this type of input. For a CI tech entrepreneur, this type of partnership would be invaluable on both sides.