Lean Tech &
AI Journal

Who Thrives in the AI Workforce?

Anthropic and OpenAI are following SpaceX and moving toward massive IPOs in the coming months. Meanwhile, college graduates are booing commencement speakers who even mention AI. At the University of Arizona this spring, Eric Schmidt faced backlash for talking about AI and the future of work. A recent Gallup poll found that a third of Gen Z Americans describe their feelings toward AI as anger.¹ This May, viral videos of graduates booing AI-focused speeches became their own genre.

Prompt, Do, Check, Act: The New PDCA 

Every lean person knows PDCA. Plan, Do, Check, Act. It is one of the most familiar disciplines in our field.

The Strange New World of AI: My Second Brain Setup

This article went from concept to published webpage on an afternoon walk. I gave my AI assistant the task from my phone, walked, stopped once on a park bench to review the draft and approve it, and pushed it live. Concept to published page, on a walk. I was not texting with my head down in the middle of the street — mostly I was just walking and thinking while the AI handled the administrative and technical work of getting it online. For me at least that is the waste part I don’t enjoy. The actual thinking came from pieces I previously authored on my computer in various forms and two conversations I had audio recorded with colleagues. What follows is what the AI assembled, formatted, and published to my website — with my direction and editing. 

This is not science fiction. This is a random Tuesday afternoon in 2026. 

Four Moments from the 2026 Lean Summit that Stayed with Me

I hadn’t attended one of LEI’s lean conferences in over five years. The last one was right before the COVID outbreak shut everything down, and I was honestly curious about what I would find when I walked into the 2026 Lean Summit in Houston on March 11–13 this past week. Would the community feel the same? Would the conversations have moved forward? Would there be energy, or just nostalgia?

Management: Designing the System Where People and AI Work Together

Behavior: The Variable You Have to Build

Technology Is the Easy Piece of the Equation

Technology ✖️ Behavior ✖️ Management 🟰 Impact: Lessons from 30 Years of Lean for the Age of AI

The Five Levels of AI Collaboration: What I Learned from Building Lean Coaching Tools

Lean AI Webinar: A New Way to Learn, Practice, and Apply

Key takeaways from our webinar exploring the intersection of lean thinking and AI with Art Smalley and John Shook.