Genba Ikigai – The 16 Habits of Lean Leadership with Mark Forkun

Why do Lean transformations fail—and what separates genuine transformation from “Lean theatre”?

In this episode of Lean 911, Mark DeLuzio is joined by Mark Forkun, author of Genba Ikigai – Leading to Serve, for a practical discussion about Lean leadership, leadership habits, problem-solving, culture change, and sustainable business performance.

The conversation explores the 16 leadership habits of Genba Ikigai across four areas:

• Leading Self — understanding and managing your own behavior

• Leading the Tribe — creating trust, clarity, capability, and belonging

• Leading through Problem-Solving — developing people to confront facts and solve problems themselves

• Leading Culture Change — connecting leadership behavior with engagement, strategy deployment, learning, and continuous improvement

Mark and Mark explore practical leadership concepts including Hansei (reflection), Mendoumi (caring for and developing others), problem-solving coaching, and Yokoten (sharing best practices).

They also discuss how the ideas in Genba Ikigai can move from theory into everyday leadership practice through case studies, self-assessment, personal PDCA, AI-enabled Sensei coaching, workshops, and Genba coaching.

If you are a CEO, plant leader, operations leader, Lean practitioner, continuous-improvement professional, or transformation leader, this episode explores an important question:

Are you implementing Lean tools—or developing the leadership habits necessary to make Lean sustainable?

Topics include: