By Ed Wong
11 December 2020.

Steve Mitchell introduced us to Norman after having travelled to the USA to do a course with him and also going to Japan to take part in one of his legendary Lean Study Tours.

Known as the “Godfather of Lean”, Norman Bodek was an educator, consultant and a publisher of more than 250 books. 

We were very lucky to have him talk at LAST Conference Melbourne 2017. He also did versions of this talk for Canberra and Brisbane, but he particularly brought the house down with this version in Melbourne. 

In his book, A Miraculous Life, he mentions us specifically:

I gave a workshop to a conference in Melbourne, Australia, over Zoom…I probably gave the best speech of my life, for I received many letters of praise.
Bodek, Norman. A Miraculous Life: An Unending Search for Freedom . 

We have just uploaded a recording of this talk on the Free Member Library of the Clubhouse (a short clip is at the top of this...

It's quite early in the process, so we don't know what form a collaboration with Norman will take yet…but we want to give you an insight on what we have been talking to Norman about with regard to his digital library. We are really excited about the prospect of helping him to share some of this valuable knowledge with people. Please let us know by using the form below, whether you are interested in future news about the Bodek Digital Library.

The video is 2:25mins and he talks about the trove of documents that he scanned before his recent move from the US to Japan. As he mentions, this includes information from the likes of Dr. Shigeo Shingo, Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, Taiichi Ohno and more.

Important: please check your email inbox, as we will send you a confirmation with a link that you must click to receive further info.

If you don't know Norman, take a quick look at my previous post, and here's some other biographical info about him…

In 1979, after...

Are you familiar with a phrase that refers to someone with someone with so much knowledge, it's likely that they have forgotten more than you currently know? Well, Norman Bodek is the embodiment of this.

In 2017, Steve Mitchell introduced us to Norman and we asked him to open LAST Conference in Melbourne as one of a double-header of opening speakers. The other being Dr Peter Senge. Some highlights of that session can be seen above.

In case you don't know his story, he is responsible for bringing some of the great Japanese management books to the English speaking world by having translated and then published dozens of their books, including the works of Taiichi Ohno and Dr. Shigeo Shingo, famed figures in the Toyota Production System story. He also taught a "Best of Japanese management" course at Portland State University. Norman created the Shingo Prize with Dr. Vern Beuhler at Utah State University, as well as being inducted Industry Week magazine's Manufacturing Hall of...

Arash Arabi has been doing an interview series with some people with something to say, including members of the LAST Clubhouse, Dan Prager and Alidad Hamidi.

Last week, he asked me to give him an update on the LAST Clubhouse. The interview is embedded above. For a more in-depth look into the thinking behind the Clubhouse, see my previous blog post.

PS - Don't forget that there's a great innovation workshop coming up from Fred Etiemble and Pete Cohen, this Friday. It's included in the cost of LAST Clubhouse Full Participant membership or an affordable one-off fee for everyone else.

Also, one for the devs with legacy code expert, Scott Ford joining us from Richmond, Virginia on 3 Sept for a free talk, Software Remodelling: Resisting the Rewrite Temptation.

Details on the Coming Up page.

This is a repost of the email that went out about The Clubhouse.

We thought that we would draw your attention to some of the recordings of sessions that we've had at LAST Conferences over the years since the first one in 2012.

Above - Jason Yip presents on the Agile Fluency Model at LAST conference 2014

Above - Project Forecasting: The 3 Blind Mice - Adrian Fittolani (LAST Conference 2015)

Above: The Good, Bad & Ugly: what we've learned in 10 years of scaling agile - panel discussion at LAST Conf MEL 2019

We have also been recording the talks that have been part of LAST Anywhere in the past three months. You can also find them on the Youtube channel.

This blog post explains what I think the next stage of LAST is shaping up to look like. We are creating something that is going to be called LAST Clubhouse.

I am going to start off with a story about a man who likes ducks…Simon Wardley.

In about 2009, I went to a conference in London that was called The Future of Web Apps. Amongst the more frivolous Web 2.0 subject matter like social networking for dogs and cats, was a talk from Simon Wardley. His talk was a diamond in the rough that covered the commoditization of technologies; how to identify when to build something from scratch, as opposed to using something that someone else has already built, for example.

The talk really stuck with me. I introduced myself to him afterwards and have followed him on Twitter ever since, interested in what followed. What Simon has developed is something that is known as Wardley Mapping.

Above: In 2019, Simon and I coincided at the Lean Agile Scotland conference. I re-introduced myself, and...