Keep the Lean Vocabulary in Your Pocket: Three Conversations from August's Lean Coffee
A cook once told Ravi David he must have sold a lot of food, because he was out of dishes. Ravi brought that line to our August Lean Coffee, and it turned out to be the morning in miniature. The signal was already sitting there in the kitchen, and nobody needed a word like "flow" to see it.
Eight of us were on the call by the end. Nine topics went on the board, one merged away before voting, and three made the hour: lean in small restaurants, Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, and a software group drowning in work in process. The thread running through all three we didn't plan. It was restraint. How much of the vocabulary do you say out loud, and how much do you keep in your own head?
Restaurant lean, without saying "lean"
I put the first topic on the board for a friend who just retired from owning Pizza Huts and wants to help small restaurants. Colin Murphy named the awkward part: mom-and-pops stand to gain plenty, and they are the hardest group to convince while they are fighting to open. Randy Schwalbe went old school, named the seven flows and picked four to work (information, product, supply, movement), then added the qualifier that mattered. "The seven flows is something that would be in the head of the lean person who's helping facilitate this. He doesn't have to actually say it out loud to everybody else."
My worry ran the other direction. How do you talk about flow without scaring a cook who just wants to make a good meal? Dave Nave suggested starting somewhere less abstract: find out what customer satisfaction actually means in that house, then follow people around and ask how the work happens. Dana Miller pointed out that in food service, common sense often finds a decent flow on its own.
That conversation went somewhere. There is now a draft workshop design on the table, a two-hour open intro followed by three three-hour sessions, built so that most of the time in the room is hands rather than slides and the homework happens during shifts instead of after them. It is a draft, not a schedule. If you run a restaurant, or you coach people who do, I would rather hear your objections now than after we book a room.
Deming, not installed on top
Dana brought Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, a highfalutin name, she said, for something fairly simple: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge, and understanding what intrinsically motivates people. She uses it to see above the operating model into the business model.
Dave, who says it took him ten years just to begin to understand it, resisted turning it into a deliverable. "It's not really something that you can install on top of something." When Ravi asked where respect for people fits, Dave said it is fundamental, then offered the line that stuck with several of us: "I think his entire philosophy is how to create a humane system of management." Ravi added what he repeats six or seven times at the end of his own courses: lean is not a set of tools, it is a way of thinking. Josh shared a crosswalk he is building between frameworks and asked for feedback rather than agreement. That crosswalk has not landed in my inbox yet, and the offer to circulate it still stands.
Three weeks later Dana was in a hundred-year-old dairy barn in San Luis Obispo with twenty-six other people, working the same question at the scale of a whole state. A good share of what the California Improvement Summit found came back to the layer she was pointing at in August: not the tools, but how the work gets managed and who understands why.
150 projects and a leadership problem
Josh works with software engineering teams at a large tech company where, by his estimate, roughly 150 projects are in flight and nobody knows the real number. His plan starts with intake and a prioritization rubric, then makes the portfolio visible enough to deliver some sticker shock.
The group's advice mostly ignored the method. Randy warned against conflating takt time with project management, and offered a precedence network with a project buffer instead. Ravi recalled Tony Rizzo's Bead Game from his Boeing days, which shows how running many projects at once makes everything take longer. Dave said executives learn this through simulation, and that it has to be fun. Olga Zhuravel gave the sharpest test of the morning: ask the leader you are trying to win over to rate the problem zero to ten, and below a six, don't solve it. "If your objective is to win over the leadership, you solve their problems." Josh already leads without the vocabulary: "I don't come at them with a bunch of jargon, or lean, or diagrams."
What we are taking away
Three unrelated topics, one shared instinct. The framework earns its keep in the practitioner's head, and what the customer or the executive gets is a problem solved in their own language. We might be wrong about how far that generalizes. It may just be what experienced people do when nobody is selling anything.
What's on the board Wednesday
Two topics drew votes in August and never got reached, so they carry: Colin's question about kanban and stock, and Dave's on champions and improving management at the same time. Both are still live, and both are better with an argument.
The next Lean Coffee is Wednesday, September 9, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, online and free. The structured part runs forty-five minutes, with optional conversation after, and the agenda gets built in the first fifteen minutes by whoever shows up. Bring a topic or bring none. If you want a head start, put one on the Lean Coffee Table board.
Details and free registration: https://www.purpose-ccl.org/lean-coffee
Join Zoom directly: https://calpoly.zoom.us/j/215381714 (meeting ID 215 381 714)
Propose a topic: https://www.leancoffeetable.com/TaskBoard/View/e31944a6-dd0c-4d48-bd57-599bb7a72cd1?guest=true
One note: I am traveling until October 20 and slow on email. If you want a reply from me, a text will beat a message in my inbox.
Knowledge Map
Process Keywords: seven flows, value definition, gemba observation, work-in-process limits, intake and triage, weighted shortest job first, prioritization rubric, precedence network, project buffer, portfolio visualization, cycle time, pull systems
Context Keywords: small business owners who can't afford jargon, evenings as restaurants' prime time, tool-first lean programs that stall, leadership fixated on one late project, many projects started and few finished, engineers switch-tasking across ten projects, communities of practice that never start, frameworks installed rather than understood
Application Triggers: If your audience has no lean background, then keep the framework in your head and name only the problem they already feel. If leadership rates your problem below a six out of ten, then solve one of theirs first. If nobody knows how many projects are in flight, then make the portfolio visible before optimizing any single project. If a philosophy arrives as a toolkit, then ask what question the tool was invented to answer. If you want executives to think differently, then run a simulation and make it fun.
Related Continuous-Improvement Themes: respect for people as a system property, humane systems of management, theory of constraints and flow in knowledge work, principles over practices, community-of-practice formation, learning by simulation
This post was developed from the recording, chat, and Lean Coffee Table notes of the August 12, 2026 Central Coast Lean virtual Lean Coffee, and synthesized with Claude AI assistance. It represents ongoing work by Central Coast Lean. The quotes are from the recording. If I have put words in your mouth, tell me and I will fix it.
Eric O. Olsen, PhD | Director, Central Coast Lean | eric.o@centralcoastlean.org | www.purpose-ccl.org
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