Jeff Liker, Twenty Years Later: The Ideas That Keep Showing Up

Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond · May 27, 2026 · 21m

Jeff Liker was guest number three on this podcast back in August 2006. He has been back seven times since, which makes him one of the most frequent guests in the show's history.

For this episode, I pulled clips from across those eight conversations, going back almost twenty years. What stood out on the relisten was how much hasn't changed. The lean tools are better known now. There are more books, more case studies, more conferences. The deeper thing Jeff was naming in 2006 - that companies want the words without the work - is the same thing he is still saying in 2026.

These aren't his…