Gemba Academy Podcast: Lean Six Sigma | Toyota Kata | Productivity | Leadership

Most organizations say they want high performers, yet quietly punish them for being too valuable to lose. Kabrina Ashley, a coach and behavioral science practitioner based in Nashville, makes the case that the real barriers to change, growth, and improvement are not strategic, they’re neurological. The conversation covers why good intentions still produce bad outcomes, and what leaders can do differently once they understand what is actually happening inside their employees’ heads.

In this episode you’ll learn:

How inertia shapes the way people respond to change (8:57)

What the high performers paradox costs organizations over time (10:57)

Why personality frameworks can mislead leaders who rely on them too heavily (14:51)

How asking better questions changes what people believe is possible (18:47)

Why most corporate training fails to produce lasting retention (22:57)

What running old code means and where it comes from (26:49)

How the habit loop connects to the rewards we give ourselves at work (30:56)

Why the quality of your questions determines the quality of your results (35:10)

“The quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions that you ask.” – Kabrina Ashley

Keep Learning

If the conversation about habit change, running old code, and why training rarely sticks resonated with you, the School of Leadership covers the human side of building organizations that actually improve.

Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership

Podcast Resources

Kabrina on LinkedIn

Kabrina’s Website

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What Do You Think?

When you look at your highest performers right now, are they growing toward their potential or quietly being held in place by how much you need them where they are?

Something fundamental has shifted in how people relate to work, and most leaders are still operating from a story that the workforce has already left behind. Jonathan David Lewis, president of brand strategy firm McKee Wallwork and author of The Rebuilders, makes the case that the old shared narrative of careers, retirement, and institutional trust has fractured. What comes next depends entirely on whether leaders choose to rebuild it.

In this episode you’ll learn:

What forgetting obvious things costs a leader over time (2:34)

Why Jonathan wrote a daily reader instead of a conventional leadership book (5:05)

How the shared story of work collapsed and what replaced it (8:14)

What TFS reveals about the current workforce’s relationship to the future (11:41)

Why counter-trends in the trades and faith communities signal a rebuilding moment (16:29)

How the shift from print-first to digital-first thinking is reshaping the workforce (19:30)

What inside-out leadership means when the burden gets heavy (24:41)

Whether optimism is a feeling or a daily choice (28:30)

Why the era of postmodernism is over and what younger generations are seeking instead (30:41)

“When you see the crack, look for the light that’s being let in.” – Jonathan David Lewis

Keep Learning

If Jonathan’s argument about inside-out leadership resonated, the School of Leadership offers a structured way to develop the character and practices that sustain that kind of work over time.

Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership

Podcast Resources

Jonathan on LinkedIn

McKee Wallwork

“The Rebuilders”

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What Do You Think?

In your organization, which part of the old story of work is your team still holding onto, and what would it look like to rebuild something more honest in its place?

Most organizations spend enormous energy developing leaders and almost none developing teammates. Stanford Associate Head Men’s Basketball Coach Eric Reveno has spent 30 years watching what actually determines whether a team wins or collapses, and his answer is not the coach. The conversation moves from college basketball to NIL compensation to Michael Jordan to what you should do first when you walk into a struggling team. The thread running through all of it is the same uncomfortable idea: the people in the room are more responsible for the culture than anyone standing at the front of it.

In this episode you’ll learn:

The quote that reframes what culture actually is (3:19)

Why leadership is overtaught and teammate behavior is undertaught (6:07)

What NIL is and why it changed the dynamics of building a team (13:52)

What showing up as a great teammate actually looks like day to day (18:35)

Whether a player like Michael Jordan was truly a good teammate (21:55)

Why talent alone does not produce connection on a team (27:24)

How to identify and address the real problems when a team is struggling (30:15)

Why every person’s ability to change their future depends on being a great teammate (33:49)

“Everyone’s true agency and true ability to change their future and create the world they want, it lies in their ability to be a great teammate.” – Eric Reveno

Keep Learning

If Eric’s point about teammate behavior being undertaught resonated, the School of Leadership is a direct next step for practitioners who want to build the kind of team culture he describes rather than just study it.

Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership

Podcast Resources

Eric on LinkedIn

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What Do You Think?

In your organization, who carries more responsibility for the team’s culture: the leader at the front of the room, or the teammates deciding what they will and will not tolerate?

Most leaders think their biggest risk is making the wrong call. Cornelia Choe argues the real danger comes earlier, when a leader stops questioning the mental map they’re using to make calls in the first place. In her book The Panoramic Leader, co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, Cornelia builds a case that continuous change has made the old leadership playbook obsolete. The world stopped being a predictable highway, and too many leaders are still staring at the rearview mirror.

In this episode you’ll learn:

What the quote “Achievement is all about me, but leadership is all about them” really means (3:33)

Why continuous change broke the old model of leadership (6:49)

How the GEM method helps leaders navigate constant change (9:52)

Why G must come before E in the GEM sequence (11:31)

How panoramic leadership builds on go-and-see (13:15)

What mapping your evolving perspective actually looks like in practice (17:44)

Why success is the most dangerous place to stop learning (23:25)

What optimistic fear is and why courage alone is not enough (26:25)

Three questions that pull leaders out of autopilot (29:40)

“One of the greatest dangers we can have is to stop mapping.” – Cornelia Choe

Keep Learning

If Cornelia’s point about seeing the system from multiple angles resonated, the School of Leadership can help you build the habits that turn that awareness into consistent practice.

Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership

Podcast Resources

Cornelia’s Website

Cornelia on LinkedIn

“The Panoramic Leader”

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What Do You Think?

When did you last seriously question whether the mental map guiding your decisions still reflects the reality around you?

A suppressor manufacturer in Utah started its lean transformation about a year ago. Twelve months later, inventory turns had doubled, changeover time dropped from 3.5 hours to 9 minutes, and a rollout planned for a year got compressed to three months. Slaytor Baldwin, Director of Operations at SilencerCo, joined Ron Pereira to walk through exactly how that happened, including the five years of failed starts that preceded it and what finally changed.

In this episode you’ll learn:

How a single cell pilot compressed a year-long rollout into three months (0:00)

What starting a career inside a lean company teaches you without knowing it (3:17)

Why measuring resource utilization instead of customer demand creates invisible dysfunction (6:04)

How one leadership change unlocked five years of stalled momentum (10:08)

What the first two moves of a real lean commitment look like in practice (12:46)

Why starting with your hardest product family creates conviction no training can replicate (14:51)

What happened to inventory turns when the entire factory went cellular (17:43)

Why lean is not an operations game and what that costs you when you treat it like one (19:59)

Why picking the right first project matters more than having the right toolkit (24:22)

How failure functions as data when you build a learning culture around it (28:43)

Why most transformation decisions are a two-way door and what changes when leaders believe that (29:17)

“Lean is not a template. It is a culture.” – Slaytor Baldwin

Keep Learning

If the shift from departmental batch production to cellular flow described in this episode has you thinking about your own factory layout, the School of Lean covers value stream design, SMED, and cellular manufacturing in depth.

Learn More About School of Lean at https://www.gembaacademy.com/school-of-lean

Podcast Resources

Slaytor on LinkedIn

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Stay current on new courses, podcast episodes, and continuous improvement resources. Sign up for the Gemba Academy newsletter at gembaacademy.com/news

What Do You Think?

When you look at your own organization, is the resistance to lean transformation coming from the shop floor or from the layer above it?