Jumpstart Your Lean Journey

The ide­al can­di­date is spon­sored by an employ­er who does­n’t have inter­nal pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment resources in the area of Lean read­i­ly avail­able. These employ­ers are look­ing to devel­op their peo­ple in the area of fun­da­men­tal Lean prac­tice and tools.

You should have a strong desire to learn proven con­tin­u­ous improve­ment meth­ods so that you can then improve busi­ness operations.

While the spe­cif­ic expec­ta­tions of var­i­ous employ­ers are unknown, this course aims to pro­vide you with the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing mean­ing­ful improve­ments in the work­place step by step through­out the course. Your orga­ni­za­tion reaps ben­e­fits right away rather than wait­ing until the course has been completed.

We are dif­fer­ent than the boot­camp type cours­es in that the learn­er in the Gem­ba Acad­e­my course learns from actu­al expe­ri­ence and receives coach­ing along the way. The boot­camp learn­er gets exposed to the­o­ry, then returns to the work­place and is chal­lenged to remem­ber what was said days or weeks in the past. Three issues with this: 1) adults learn by doing , 2) reten­tion rates from inten­sive study cours­es are typ­i­cal­ly very low, and 3) there is no coach­ing sup­port while apply­ing the con­cepts at work. All of these lead to poor prac­tice, frus­tra­tion, and ulti­mate­ly going back to the famil­iar way of think­ing and working.

Each mod­ule includes prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of the lean con­cepts pre­sent­ed. It is expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing in the participant’s work­place. The par­tic­i­pant iden­ti­fies a busi­ness need that can be addressed with the knowl­edge gained in order to build skill and expe­ri­ence. Real world improve­ments are made every step of the way through­out the course. The capa­bil­i­ty your orga­ni­za­tion is build­ing by par­tic­i­pat­ing in this course is con­tin­u­ous improve­ment: small, incre­men­tal improve­ments by every­one every day.

The course starts with you gain­ing a fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of Lean think­ing (sci­en­tif­ic think­ing cou­pled with coach­ing rou­tines) aimed at spe­cif­ic improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties one tool or con­cept at a time. This is done to build a strong foun­da­tion brick by brick. Every mod­ule includes an improve­ment project, or more accu­rate­ly described, the ini­ti­a­tion of a spe­cif­ic Lean prac­tice. The project at the end of the course is to chal­lenge the Lean Prac­ti­tion­er to scale Lean learn­ing and prac­tice with­in their orga­ni­za­tion using Gem­ba Acad­e­my as a pri­ma­ry learn­ing resource.

By the end of the course you will have had a year of guid­ed expe­ri­ence in Lean think­ing, the prac­tice of the var­i­ous tools list­ed in the course descrip­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, gain­ing buy-in from teams and man­agers, and mak­ing real improve­ments with­in your orga­ni­za­tion. With this expe­ri­ence, you’ll have the con­fi­dence to move on with your con­tin­u­ous improve­ment prac­tice and share your knowl­edge with oth­ers. You’ll bring to the orga­ni­za­tion an oper­a­tional per­spec­tive that oth­ers have yet to gain.

Green Belt or Black Belt might be a bet­ter choice, depend­ing on your needs. If sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of vari­a­tion with­in a process cou­pled with struc­tured prob­lem solv­ing is the desired skill set, we rec­om­mend the Black Belt cer­ti­fi­ca­tion course. The Black Belt pro­gram pro­vides the expe­ri­ence of a sin­gle project that will incor­po­rate some of the tools pre­sent­ed in the course. Green Belt removes much of the sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis piece and focus­es on struc­tured prob­lem solv­ing using data, again with a sin­gle project.

The Lean Prac­ti­tion­er course pro­vides a more com­pre­hen­sive expe­ri­ence with Lean think­ing and tools. Unlike the belt pro­grams, you’ll use, and become pro­fi­cient with each tool taught before mov­ing onto the next.

The intent is to pre­pare you for oper­a­tional trans­for­ma­tion rather than spe­cif­ic project com­ple­tion. It teach­es you to not only apply Lean, but also share Lean think­ing and scale con­tin­u­ous improve­ment through­out the organization.

The tra­di­tion­al class­room cours­es offered by com­mu­ni­ty col­leges and oth­er insti­tu­tions pro­vide some lim­it­ed coach­ing in the class­room envi­ron­ment. Stu­dents are chal­lenged to apply each of the tools in the work­place through­out the course in the same way we are doing here.

Two key dif­fer­ences are that the coach­ing typ­i­cal­ly occurs before or after class­room time, which can be once per month, and the coach­ing is very brief.

Gem­ba Acad­e­my’s coach­ing is on-demand to meet the imme­di­ate needs of the learn­er. It is also focused on devel­op­ing the indi­vid­ual par­tic­i­pant and pro­vides the depth of coach­ing the indi­vid­ual requires. We min­i­mize wait­ing in order to keep the learn­er’s momen­tum up. The learn­ing, doing, coach­ing, improv­ing mod­el has been proven in busi­ness, music, sports, and just about every oth­er area of skill development.

Work­ing in teams of two or three is pre­ferred and strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed, although par­tic­i­pants are free to work as indi­vid­u­als. Teams tend to work with greater momen­tum and cre­ativ­i­ty. Teams also tend to be more suc­cess­ful than indi­vid­u­als. This also pro­tects the orga­ni­za­tion from attri­tion because con­tin­u­ous improve­ment efforts aren’t depen­dent on any individual.

Team size would be lim­it­ed to three. Coor­di­nat­ing with more than three peo­ple increas­es com­plex­i­ty of sched­ul­ing and assign­ment com­ple­tion. Groups of four would be divid­ed into two teams of two.

The course is avail­able on demand in the same way we present the belt cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cours­es. We use the Gem­ba Acad­e­my Learn­ing Sys­tem to deliv­er the con­tent and mon­i­tor progress. Coach­ing ses­sions are con­duct­ed through video con­fer­enc­ing and screen sharing.