Live Event Series

Problem Solving & Improvement Systems

Join us for a multi-part series to explore the problem-solving systems and tools we use at Kaas. We are fortunate to be featuring our good friend and mentor, Mark Rosenthal, who helped edit Mike Rother’s book, The Toyota Kata Practice Guide.

In this free series, you can expect to gain a better understanding about:

• Why even bother?
• The tools and systems we use to solve our problems.
• How our improvement systems interact with our daily management system.
• How we leverage our habits and routines in an attempt to keep us disciplined.

This Zoom series is for anyone struggling to keep anything from your sock drawer organized to making improvements across a large organization.

Episode 1

Why Problem Solving & Improvement Systems?

Wednesday, March 24th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm PST

Join our team and special guest, Mark Rosenthal, as we kick off our series with a basic overview of problem-solving and the systems we employ to keep us from backsliding. The hour will include an overview, small group discussions on problem-solving in your world, reflections with Mark, and the chance to grill us on our past failures and successes.

Episode 2

Kaizen

Wednesday, April 14th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm PST

Join our team and special guest, Mark Rosenthal, as we discuss all things Kaizen, which is our internal framework for doing improvement activities at home or in our silos. The hour will include an overview of Kaizen (which means “change that is good”), a small group exercise, how and when we use Kaizen, deep thoughts with Mark, and a chance to ask the hard questions.

Episode 3

Toyota Kata – Introduction

Wednesday, April 28th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm PST

Join our team and special guest, Mark Rosenthal, as Mark takes a swig of diet Mountain Dew and takes center stage in the first of 3 episodes on Toyota Kata. The Kaas team has embraced this framework for company-wide improvement activities across silos which are too complex for our Kaizen system. The hour will include answering “what is Toyota Kata?”, a small group exercise, how Kata has started to align our problem solving to a common goal, and your chance to stump an expert with all your hard questions.

Episode 4

Toyota Kata – How-to

Wednesday, May 12th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm PST

In this live event, Mark Rosenthal and our team get tactical as we dive into how we use the Toyota Kata framework. The hour will include the basics of Kata and examples, deployment, reflection with the Kaas team on our struggles and successes so far, and of course, Q&A.

Episode 5

Toyota Kata – Coaching Cycles

Wednesday, May 26th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm PST

In this live event, you will get to see Toyota Kata in action as we perform a few coaching cycles with Mark Rosenthal as the second coach. It is a rare chance to see our team squirm as Mark’s loving but brutally honest feedback is sure to offer plenty of opportunities to learn. The hour will include a quick overview, 2-3 coaching cycles, our experience with using Kata, reflections with Mark, and Q&A.