EPISODE · Jun 10, 2026 · 1H 2M
Psychological Safety and Autonomy in a Lean Culture with Gary Peterson
from Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond · host Mark Graban
My guest for episode 546 is Gary Peterson, who recently retired from O.C. Tanner after helping lead the continuous improvement work that earned the company the Shingo Prize in 1999. Gary is an AME Hall of Fame inductee, and he now serves as an executive in residence at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, working with their Master of Business Operational Excellence (MBOE) program. Gary started this work almost 40 years ago, before the word Lean was in common use. A change in how O.C. Tanner went to market shrank order sizes from thousands down to one or two, and a factory built for big batches started bleeding cost and quality. Gary stepped into a role called facilitator of change. He pulled departments apart, built one-piece flow, and asked frontline people to solve problems in a culture that had taught them it wasn't safe to speak up. We spend a good part of the conversation on psychological safety and autonomy, and why Gary thinks neither one does much without the other. He also tells what he calls the hardest story in his repertoire. An employee stopped him on a stairwell to tell him his system wasn't working. She was right. He talked circles around her until she cried. What he did next, and what two people did a few hours later, became a turning point for him and for the company. Topics we get into: Why a real business problem made the change easier to sustain than a "we read a book" mandate Leading change from the middle without support from the top Cutting a 1,800-person workforce roughly in half through attrition, with no layoffs, while raising the bar on what it meant to work there Momentum, entropy, and the 30 to 40 systems that quietly stopped during COVID Building succession so the culture didn't depend on Gary's energy alone Sincere, specific, timely praise, and why he coached frontline teams differently than VPs Link to the episode and full transcript. What would it take for you to tell a room full of people that you don't know what you're doing?
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What this episode covers
Gary Peterson recently retired from O.C. Tanner, where he helped lead the continuous improvement work that earned the company the Shingo Prize in 1999. In this episode we talk about psychological safety and autonomy, and why Gary believes neither one accomplishes much on its own. Gary also shares the hardest story he tells. An employee was right that a system was failing, and he argued her down until she cried. His apology, delivered in front of her whole department, changed something. A few hours later, two people knocked on his door with an idea they wanted to try. We also get into leading change from the middle, halving a workforce through attrition without layoffs, and why Gary says discipline, not tools, is the hardest part of Lean.
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Psychological Safety and Autonomy in a Lean Culture with Gary Peterson
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