Happy spring! Here’s a story about “Toast Kaizen” that I’ve never told.

In 1998, as general manager at a medium-size manufacturing company, I created the original toast video for my management team. I was trying to get them out of their offices to “go see” not only the factory floor but their own departments. Managers needed this direct observation to understand our continuous improvement process.

The short video was effective at prodding executives to step out of their offices and observe firsthand what they’d previously constructed from biases and assumptions. One manager, for example, who assumed that month-end “hockey stick” shipments were the result of production “dogging it” during the early weeks of the month, was astonished to discover that the end-of-month push was a result of pulling future orders in to meet sales bogeys. One visit to the floor opened his eyes and resulted in a policy change that leveled shipments. A really big deal.

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