I’m certainly no physicist, but I think there’s a worthy analogy between the decay of radioisotopes and lean behavior within an organization.

According to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ webpage on Radiation Emergency Medical Management:
• “Radioactive half-life is the time required for a quantity of a radioisotope to decay by half.
• If the half-life of an isotope is relatively short, e.g., a few hours, most of the radioactivity will be gone in a few days.
• If the half-life of an isotope is relatively long, e.g., 80 years, it will take a long time for significant decay to occur.”

Figure 1: Decay rate/half-life of radioisotopes

So, enough about isotopes. What about lean “culturetopes?”

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