Lean Blog Audio: Practical Lean Thinking, Psychological Safety, and Continuous Improvement

Last week, I received a few questions from somebody at a hospital system and I thought I'd address one of them here: "Can you suggest any "quick wins" to get staff engaged in a Lean culture?"

I posted this on LinkedIn earlier today and am re-posting as a blog post to get your thoughts... and then, as I writing this, the news about the man being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight went viral. Full title: "The United Flight 3411 Mess, Holding Individuals Accountable vs. Fixing the System [Updates]"

As part of my partnership with Cardinal Health, they have published an article that I wrote on their "Essential Insights" blog: "Changing how we think about change: How healthcare leaders can create a progressive culture"

Can physician-led surgical centers provide lower out-of-pocket prices for patients, along with lower infection rates, and higher compensation for the surgeons? One surgical center in Oklahoma says so...

Six Sigma and Lean Sigma has "belts." Some people in Lean call themselves a "sensei." Is that really appropriate? The term is supposed to be situational... it's a term of respect one chooses to use for another person...

In this post, I look at the impact (or lack thereof) of targets, rankings, and incentives, when it comes to safe driving or PCI (angioplasty) procedures in a hospital cath lab. Are we improving? How do we know? How do we improve?

It's time for another new, revised edition of my book! It was originally published in 2008 as Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction.

A few of you sent me this article... and you were correct to think I would be interested:"Inside Alabama's Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs The South's manufacturing renaissance comes with a heavy price."

It's been 10 years since I first wrote about my awkward acronym L.A.M.E. Is it helpful to distinguish between true Lean principles and "Lean As Misguidedly Explained?" Will we see more L.A.M.E. talk and behaviors in the future?

Today, I'm happy to share a link to a white paper that I co-authored for Catalysis (formerly the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value).The paper is titled: "Lean for Doctors." Appropriately, the co-authors are two physician leaders you might very well know: Dr. John Toussaint (founder of Catalysis) and Dr. Jack Billi (from the University of Michigan).

Today's Post in&t;50 words: Lean thinkers don't blame individuals who in a bad system, whether that's a presenter at Oscars, a kicker in a football game, or a healthcare professional in a hospital.

In today's post, I write about how Kaizen starts with you. I share some examples of "personal Kaizen," including the way I've streamlined my call scheduling process, for my benefit and for others. http://leanblog.org/audio186

While I'm writing here about Northwestern men's basketball learning from Duke (without copying everything), the same ideas apply if you're Ford learning from Toyota or a hospital learning from ThedaCare. http://www.leanblog.org/audio185

Thanks to GoLeanSixSigma.com for asking me some questions for a discussion that they've posted on their website.

Today's Post in&t;50 Words: I get worked up about labeling a troubled surgical department as "a factory," but there are far more important issues of patient safety and hospital culture to be discussed related to a Seattle Times investigative piece. http://www.leanblog.org/audio183

Art Byrne's latest book, The Lean Turnaround Action Guide, has a lot of great tips that he's trying to share, CEO to CEO. How many CEOs are reading this book and heeding his advice, in manufacturing or in healthcare?

Registration is now open for our "Kaizen Live!" event, where you can visit Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis to see what a "culture of continuous improvement" is like in a way that will help you in creating the same for your organization.

Today's Post in&t;50 Words: I continue sharing documents from the Don Ephlin library archive. What did Ford and the UAW learn when they visited Japan in 1981? Many of the things that made Japanese industry successful are the same things that make organizations successful with Lean today, including in healthcare. http://www.leanblog.org/audio180

Today's post points to my guest blog post for the W. Edwards Deming Institute: Reflections on Dr. Deming's Hospital Notes - What Has Changed Since 1990? Why do the same problems that Dr. Deming experienced as a patient 30 years ago still happen so often today? http://www.leanblog.org/audio179

This post in&t;50 words: Are there parallels between medicine and organizations when we look at the tension between heroism and the sometimes boring work of preventing problems and improving things? I comment on an article... http://www.leanblog.org/audio178

Lean sometimes gets, I think, an unfair rap that it's only a method for incremental improvement. See this article, from the NEJM website, for example: "Limits of Lean -- Transformative Care Redesign Must Go Beyond Typical Lean-Based Improvements." http://www.leanblog.org/audio177

http://www.leanblog.org/audio176 I saw this article a few days ago in one of the larger healthcare industry trade publications:How One Woman Saved IU Health $54 Million The headline is misleading, as addressed in the opening sentence / sub-headline of the story (via HealthLeaders): "With a little help from about 10,000 of her friends and colleagues, the head of Indiana University Health's office o...

When I talk to organizations about Kaizen, or continuous improvement, there's far too much self-defeating talk, where people say things like:"We're not going to try this Kaizen process because our culture isn't ready yet." That's not only self-defeating, it's self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't work on continuous improvement, you'll never have a culture of continuous improvement. http://www.lea...

Yesterday, the W. Edwards Deming Institute published the second in my series of three posts for them: "The Failure of "The Livonia Philosophy" at my GM Plant." Read more... http://www.leanblog.org/audio174

In my travels, I often meet people or visit organizations that say something like:"We're doing Lean... we just call it Process Improvement." They have a "Process Improvement" (PI) department, or they call it "Continuous Process Improvement" (CPI). They have people in roles like "Process Improvement Facilitators." While process improvement is great, in using a term like that,there's perhaps a risk...