My reaction to Bob Emiliani’s post:
Interesting read and thanks for the credit!
I think the foundation of Lean was unstable from the beginning because it was build on misunderstanding Toyota’s success.
I think that your article addresses more the marketing of Lean, trying to sell it to “celebrity CEO’s”. The marketing’s foundation was crippled as well because it was build on a misunderstanding of senior leadership in our societies. You wrote extensively about that.
To rebuild the foundation of Lean we need to deepen our understanding of Toyota. The Toyota Way 2001 would be a great starting point.
Thinking about your wording:
Cooperation (vs. competition): sounds good to me. I think Toyota calls this Teamwork
Ideas (vs. continuous improvement): not sure about this one. I kind of like continuous improvement. Maybe we should adapt the Japanese version of TW2001. It reads “Wisdom & Continuous Improvement”
Flow (vs. cost reduction). Goes back to Ohno’s river system. I read this like: focus on the process and the outcome will follow. Process thinking is at the root!
Society (vs. productivity): In TW2001 the first keyword is Challenge. Challenge is explained with the word Dreams. There are many video’s made by Toyota about dreams. See the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest. In one of them Masanao Tomozoe says “It is always surprising to see children’s dreams drawn as pictures. They communicate such useful sincerity and they carry a wish to make someone truly happy.” If you wish to make someone truly happy you are on your way to focus on society.
Contentment (vs. wealth creation). If you focus on “making someone truly happy”; on “being rewarded with a smile” contentment will follow.
Also see this article.