The Second Way enables the fast and constant flow of feedback from right to left at all stages of our value stream. It requires that we amplify feedback to prevent problems from happening again, or enable faster detection and recovery.

The first logical problem in chain-link situations is to identify the bottlenecks, and Marco did that—quality, sales’ technical competence, and cost. The second, and greatest, problem is that incremental change may not pay off and may even make things worse.

To sense if the experiments are moving you in the right direction, you first need to be able to “see” and measure your current system of work. You need to know your starting points. Here I refer again to Dan Terhorst-North’s “visualize, stabilize, optimize.” You first need to be able to visualize steps in a value stream from left to right. You need

In effectively run organizations, the functional leader is responsible for “who” and “how”—providing trained people who are competent in their profession to be used in sequentialized flows. The flow owner (e.g., project leader, program leader, value stream leader) is responsible for the “what” and “when” of how those people are deployed to achieve