Wlei - Lean Enterprise Institute's Podcast

Josh Howell and Mark Reich, LEI President and Chief Engineer Strategy, respectively, speak with Scott Heydon, former VP of Global Strategy at Starbucks, McKinsey & Co. consultant, and a Senior Lean Coach with LEI since 2014. They discuss Scott’s efforts to transform Starbucks with lean thinking, learning lean methods and new ways of problem-solving along the way, and how he’s taken that knowledge to other organizations.     Scott says at Starbucks he evolved his own problem-solving from that of a top-down, MBA-style focused on financials and strategic analysis to include a recognition of problems from the bottom up and a need to develop the capability of others to incrementally improve and problem-solve at the local level to “get better every day.” His work at Starbucks included a four-store lean experiment, which involved then Starbucks colleague Josh and was eventually expanded across the coffeehouse chain. The effort was revised midcourse, says Scott, as his programmatic approach shifted to a better un