TED is a global community. It welcomes people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. TED believes passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately the world. Through the website, they are building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers and innovators.

Most professionals have found TED to be a wealth of spirit, knowledge and thought. Here is a collection of TED Talks videos that will inspire and provoke!

Ten Thought Provoking TED Talks You Must See

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Elon Musk has always been innovator and a creator. As a child, he daydreamed in an almost trance-like manner and coded his own video games. He always found resourceful ways to make money, and after he graduated from college, he opted for entrepreneurship rather than wait for an internet company to take notice of him. Numerous passions inspired Musk, and today he manages companies and projects that specialize in electric and self-driving cars, private space exploration and Mars colonization, solar energy, and artificial intelligence.

Let there be no mistake¦Elon Musk is a driving force. He is an innovator, a dreamer and a person that refuses to accept failure for anything except another chance to succeed. As an example, during the Q1 2016 earnings call, Musk said he is hell-bent on making Tesla the best manufacturer in the world. That’s not just cheap talk, because Elon Musk seems to really back up his claims. The tale is told that Musk has a sleeping bag in the Gigafactory and it is said that his office is at the end of the production line. His biggest impact is likely coming from his focus on Lean thinking and manufacturing. The design for manufacturing concept is applied to the cars from the beginning of the design process. Musk applies Lean thinking and manufacturing like a religion.

But in typical Elon Musk fashion, he takes things one step further. He also applies Lean thinking and principles to his sales division. There are no third party dealerships with Tesla. When you buy, you buy directly from Tesla.

Elon Musk and Tesla have presold $15 billion worth of cars based only on a concept! This is something no other car manufacturer has ever accomplished. It’s easy to say Elon Musk is as much of a hype-man as he is an entrepreneur. The application of Lean thinking and manufacturing surely have been one of the keys to the great success of Musk.

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Elon Musk is an innovator, a thinker and a problem solver. He is the founder, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX and a co-founder and CEO of Tesla. He is also the co-chairman of OpenAI, founder and CEO of Neuralink, co-founder and chairman of SolarCity, co-founder of Zip2, and founder of X.com, which merged with Confinity and took the name PayPal. Musk has an estimated net worth of $16.1 billion, making him the 80th wealthiest person in the world.

Musk has stated that the goals of SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the risk of human extinction. His vision is to do this by making life multi-planetary by establishing a human colony on Mars.

Tesla Motors is a company dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars. Five years after its formation, in 2008 the company unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery. With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with Toyota, Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million. Additional successes include the Model S, the company’s first electric sedan. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, the Model S was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine. In April 2017, it was announced that Tesla had surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker.

Watch this TED Talk and spend some time with Elon Musk.

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It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.

• Leon C. Megginson

The modern global economy is fast and dynamic. It is in a constant state of change. The greatest challenge facing leaders and their organizations today is to be able to quickly respond to market change. They must be the catalyst of organizational change that will guide their businesses to market leadership. An organization that is agile and resilient will be equipped to experience sustained success. Sustainable innovation and growth involves solutions to problems that reflect a commitment to economically, environmentally, and socially sound business practices.

In this TED Talk, organizational change expert Jim Hemerling of BCG inspires leaders with smart ways to deal with dynamic change in today’s global business climate.

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Mark Graban is an internationally recognized leader in Lean healthcare and continuous improvement. His motivation is to apply Lean and Toyota Production System principles to improve quality of care and patient safety, to improve the customer-patient experience, to help the development of medical professionals and employees, and to help build strong organizations for the long term.

Lean management principles have been used effectively in manufacturing companies for decades. Those same principles can also be successfully applied to the delivery of healthcare. Lean  healthcare begins with driving out waste so that all work adds value and serves the customer-patient needs. Identifying value added and non-value added steps in every process is the beginning of the journey toward success.

Although Lean healthcare differs in many ways from manufacturing, there are also surprising similarities. Whether building a car or providing healthcare for a customer-patient, workers must rely on multiple, complex processes to accomplish their tasks and provide value to the customer or patient. Waste of money, time, supplies, or good will always decreases value.

Check out this educational video from Mark Graban.

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Reading: The Secret Sauce of Success

Have you ever thought about what one habit ultra-successful people have in common? Sure you have! We look up to highly successful people as mentors and guides to the path of our own success. Everyone looks at them and studies their habits to learn the secret sauce’ of just exactly what creates their success.

Well, here is the answer: Every highly successful person will tell you their one secret to success ¦ they read. A lot!

Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success. He pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it. Buffett takes this habit to the extremeŠ ” Šhe reads between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80 percent of each day to reading.

Other top business leaders and entrepreneurs who make reading a major part of their daily lifestyle:

¢ Bill Gates reads about 50 books per year, which breaks down to 1 per week
¢ Mark Cuban reads more than 3 hours every day
¢ Elon Musk is an avid reader, and when asked how he learned to build rockets, he said, I read books.
¢ Mark Zuckerberg resolved to read a book every 2 weeks throughout 2015
¢ Oprah Winfrey selects one of her favorite books every month for her Book Club members to read and discuss

A study of 1,200 wealthy people found that they all have reading as a pastime in common.

Successful people don’t just read anything. They are highly selective about what they read, opting to be educated over being entertained.

They believe that books are a gateway to learning and knowledge.

In fact, there is a notable difference between the reading habits of the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy. Successful people tend to choose educational books and publications over novels, tabloids, and magazines. And in particular, they obsess over biographies and autobiographies of other successful people for guidance and inspiration.

Start Reading Books Written By Paul Akers

Paul Akers is an entrepreneur and leader in creative and innovative business practices. As the founder and president of FastCap, a product development company specializing in woodworking tools and hardware for the professional builder. His intense curiosity on how things could be improved paved the way for him to become a prolific innovator. Today, Paul holds many US and international patents, and his company launches approximately 20-30 innovative products per year.

Paul’s core passion is helping people discover their full potential, and showing others how to implement Lean in their business and personal life. His passion for Lean has taken him around the world to over 65 countries to work and speak. He has devoted his life to teaching Lean concepts with passion and excitement. You can learn more about Paul on his website at PaulAkers.net

The following 3 books are a great way to get your reading discipline off to a great start! His 3 books below are easy to read, motivational, entertaining, and filled with practical examples.

The best part is that they are FREE from his website, if you want an electronic or audio version!!

   2 Second Lean

Can you make an improvement at work that saves 2 seconds from your day? Everyone can do that! That’s what makes “2 second lean” so much fun, and it engages everyone in the company in making improvements.

“There are plenty of workshops, executive manuals and textbooks on the market. I wanted to write a book that would make Lean accessible to everyone, from homemaker to executive. This is a real life journey that examines the astounding results Lean thinking can produce!”

Get the PDF, Kindle, or audio file here.

   Lean Health Book

Are you looking to get in shape, or live a healthier lifestyle? Paul will help you re-think your relationship with food and exercise, using the concepts of lean and waste. The results speak for themselves, as Paul has transformed his own life over the past couple years.

“Lean thinking can make a difference in your health if you think of it as a car. Do you think of your body as a Ferrari and treat it like a powerful and well designed machine? Or, do you treat your body like an old jalopy, lacking in power, efficiency and just getting down the road? Not surprisingly, most people find their machines low on the necessary fuel, oil and maintenance required by the machine to achieve the highest performance possible. Learn to take care of your body just like a high-performance Ferrari.”

Get the PDF, Kindle, or audio file here.

  Lean Travel

Does traveling cause you stress and headaches? For most people, it can cause just as much stress as what your vacation is trying to relieve. Paul is an avid traveler, and shares his advice and tips for making travel easy and efficient. Again, he ties everything back to lean concepts and the 8 forms of waste.

“Travel is one of the most inspiring and educational experiences we can have. For most, the true experience of global travel is elusive. For the ones who do experience travel, most miss out on the pure joy and enlightenment travel brings us. In this book, we learn to understand and experience travel the way it was intended, through the simplicity of Lean thinking.”

Get the PDF, Kindle, or audio file here.

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Automation is the use of various control systems for operating equipment; this includes machinery, processes in factories, boilers and heat treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering and stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications and vehicles with minimal or reduced human intervention. The biggest benefit of automation is that it saves labor; however, it is also used to save energy and materials and to improve quality, accuracy and precision. Will automation replace human labor?

The Surprising Balance Between Automation and Human Labor

Despite a century of creating machines doing our work for us, the proportion of adults in the US with a job has consistently gone up for the past 125 years. We need to understand why human labor has not become redundant and our skills obsolete. Economist David Autor addresses the question of why there are still so many jobs and comes up with a surprising, hopeful answer.

Watch this enlightening TED Talk:

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Everyone is searching for the magical formula or ‘guru’ to help them find perfection in their personal lives. Type in “self-help” in your browser, hit search and pages of results will fill your screen. There are endless amounts of solutions to every possible behavior known to man and a guru behind every one of those concepts. It can be mind-numbing trying to find a technique that works for you. As with most challenges in life, some of the most effective practices are the simplest. Take some time and watch this inspiring video on how Kaizen can be applied to your personal life.

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Applying Lean to Education

Lean methodologies are a tried and proven concept in many areas from manufacturing, to the military. It makes sense that people would try applying them in many different contexts, and, as it turns out, there is actually a lot one can do when this line of thinking is applied to education.

Higher education can benefit from the proper introduction of lean practices, and its important for more institutions to grasp this concept as quickly as possible. Were entering an age when education is quickly falling behind technology in many aspects, and the sooner we address this, the more productive our future generations can be.

Adapting lean to the context of education

Its important to take on a whole new approach to thinking if lean is to be applied to higher education. Thats because of the intricate requirements of most educational systems compared to, say, a production plant. The fact that the government is directly involved in the operation of those institutions only serves to add complexity of the whole situation. Like most service organizations, making the processes visible is an important first step.

The speed at which the school can process students requests is a common area that can be addressed with lean methodologies, and these administrative benefits can often propagate to other areas of the school very easily. Other areas for opportunity include: admissions process, student advising scheduling/effectiveness, individual course sign ups and cancellations, cafeteria scheduling, degree program progress and tracking, student services availability, and tuition payments.

What other areas have you experienced inefficiency in education?

There have been some concerns about the possibility of overworking teachers and professors (referred to as muri or overburden) when lean methodologies are applied to education. As classroom sizes grow, pay cuts become more prevalent, and higher expectations are placed on test scores, this overburdening of teachers can lead to teacher shortages, turnovers, transfers or loss of talent into other professions. While its true that some lean concepts can help address this waste, its also important to remember that lean practices have to be applied selectively, and with careful consideration of their context.

A modern outlook

Indeed, were seeing many new ideas in lean methodologies, especially when it comes to higher education. There have been some exciting developments on that front, although the concepts are still seeing relatively little application in education overall, so its hard to tell how much faster we can expect them to evolve.

Another point worth considering is that lean can be difficult to apply to an institution thats already been in operation for a while, especially if it has some deep-rooted beliefs about the way it should be run. This, again, is particularly problematic in the context of government institutions, but its a problem that can be seen in private ones as well.

Lean Education Expertise

One of the pioneers of lean in education is Bob Emiliani, who runs a website called LeanProfessor.com. Not only does he promote the idea of teaching lean in the classroom, but applying lean to the continual improvement of course development/delivery, and processes that provide services to the students (admissions, course sign up, etc).

He promotes 5 key areas for educators to consider, in order to increase student satisfaction and provide good quality training.

1. Attitude
2. Teaching
3. Delivery
4. Assessment
5. Follow-Up

You can download his latest Lean Teaching Visual Control handout from his website, which provides the results of a survey he conducted with former students, to identify what teachers did to provide excellent teaching in these 5 key areas.

The handout provides the top 3 and bottom 3 techniques rated by students (the customer).

• Top 3: Small weekly assignments, practical problem-solving, and individual projects.
• Bottom 3: Pop quizzes, team projects, and in-class tests.

We previously featured an interview with Bob back in Oct 2014 about real and fake lean leadership.

Many higher education organizations are now offering Lean and Six Sigma training and certification, to better prepare students for employers that value those skills. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology offers Six Sigma training, but the real value is the student-led projects on campus, working on problems that directly impact them. They have conducted multiple projects focused on recycling, such as improving recycling rates at academic buildings and reducing food waste in the cafeteria.

Lean beyond administration

Last but not least, teaching institutions applying lean to their operations should consider how they can affect a larger portion of their teaching staff and the teaching process as a whole, instead of focusing on the administrative layer of the school/university. Basically, are the administrators leading the teachers using lean principles and concepts (coaching and mentoring), or are they using traditional management methods (telling them what to do)?

This is still a major problem in some places trying to apply lean. The important thing is that lean continues to see adoption in as many institutions as possible (both in the administration and in the classroom), so that more minds can work on evolving its ideas, and pushing the whole concept forward.

Teachers should be open in expressing their concerns about this as well. Its not rare that the teaching staff of the school would just accept the new situation without voicing any concerns about it, and this can lead to a cascading effect ,where everyone continues to be disappointed by the way things are evolving. Using proper change management techniques is essential to making improvements in education. In fact, obtaining feedback from teachers, and using that to improve the way the school operates, is an excellent place for an improvement program to get started.

Considering that communication is one of the main points of impact addressed by lean, an institution that applies these ideas properly should see continuous improvement instead of continuing to run into the same problems.

Conclusion

Lean can be a major boost to the productivity of any education organization that applies it properly, regardless of the size of the school or number of students. The important thing is that the main concepts behind lean are applied to all levels of the education, from students to teachers to administration, parent organizations, and support staff (janitorial, cafeteria, maintenance, etc). The goal should be to allow all employees to provide their input on ways to make the education better for the students.

Its also important for the education organization to strive for continuous improvement, and to constantly look for new developments in the area of lean methodologies, especially how it’s applied specifically within education.

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Following the summary table, you can view a 7:36 HD Video that explains a little more detail about each quality guru and their influence on Six Sigma.

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