Only management by science through constant experimentation to answer questions can produce sustainable improvements in value streams. (Toyota’s A3 is a wonderful management tool for putting science to work and I’ll have more to say about it in the next few months.)

Please understand: Lean tools are great. We all need to master and deploy them, and our efforts of the last 15 years to do so are not wasted. But just as a carpenter needs a vision of what to build in order to get the full benefit of a hammer, we need a clear vision of our organizational objectives and better management methods before we pick up our lean tools.