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

My two previous trips to Japan have been incredible experiences, both personally and professionally. I'm planning to go back in December with a tour group I'm helping organize with Kaizen Institute. When people go to Japan, I think they are expecting to see perfect Lean practices. But, no...

I was very saddened earlier to receive an email from an employee of a great leader, Dr. Michel Tétreault, informing me that he had passed away. Michel was, since 2005, the CEO of St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg.

And the idea of knowing why... again that's an old desire. It's not just a recent discovery of Simon Sinek and the outstanding book Start with Why (my friends at Gemba Academy have a podcast interview with him coming soon). Why are we doing something? Why are we starting this company? That's an old tale... are you breaking rocks or building a cathedral?

Visit http://www.leanblog.org/audio92 for more info on this post and http://www.leanblog.org/audio for information about how to subscribe through iTunes and other places.

Today, I discuss two articles: The first article is: "The NFL's Best Practice: No Wasted Time." "If You Can't Hire Urban Meyer, Can You Clone Him?" http://leanblog.org/audio91

http://leanblog.org/audio90 It's far too common to see somebody with just a little bit of understanding about Lean do things that really shouldn't be described as Lean at all... in terms of the decisions they are making or the approaches they are taking. I saw an article about Lean in physician practices: "Lean Practice Management for Physicians." I cringed a bit when the author said: "In lean man...

I stumbled across an article from the Inc. magazine archives from 1987, so it's today's "Throwback Thursday."In 1987, I was starting high school and that was probably right about the time when my dad, an engineer for General Motors, was able to attend one of Deming's famed four-day seminars. Hearing about that was my first exposure to Deming or anything vaguely related to Lean thinking.

Mark Graban talks about the revised 3rd edition of "Lean Hospitals" and a new eBook project called "Practicing Lean."

Stories like this have been in the news before, but this was circulating the past few days: "Why erratic schedules are one of the worst parts of low-wage work."The story refers to so-called "just-in-time" scheduling techniques that jerk employees around and disrupt lives. It happens to share a term, "JIT" with "Lean manufacturing" or just "Lean," but it's either a coincidence or it's a bastardizat...

http://leanblog.org/audio86 I saw this story when it originally appeared online as part of a local public radio station in California. It was now picked up nationally by NPR and a number of you emailed me about this Lean healthcare piece about UCLA Medical Center:Hospitals Turn To Toyota To Make Care Safer And Swifter It's a generally positive story about a large hospital system working to improve...

How do you MAKE time for continuous improvement? It's been a little while, but here's a new video about Kaizen and continuous improvement from our friends at Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. In this video, Hollynn Lobsiger, the manager of the endoscopy unit, talks about what Kaizen means to her and her team and she also shares some thoughts about how to make time for Kaizen. Everybod...

The Problem With Underreporting Problems, When Warnings Aren’t Heeded in Aerospace, When Warnings Aren’t Heeded in Aerospace, When Warnings or Concerns Aren’t Shared in Healthcare http://leanblog.org/audio84

Allen Iverson was a legendary NBA point guard and scorer who played from 1996 to 2011.In a 2002 news conference that still appears regularly on ESPN, Iverson responded to criticism that he missed practice (due to injury) and he somewhat indignantly asked (over and over) some variation of: "We're talking about practice?" Iverson wasn't complaining about having to practice, but more about the media'...

I guess this counts as a "Flashback Friday," as I was reminded of an old game show that I loved as a kid: Match Game. I was too young to fully appreciate the show, I guess, but I remember it fondly and love watching old reruns (you can find episodes on YouTube).Last week, I read this article: "A happy workforce is a productive one." You'll certainly get no argument from me on that! Well, I think "...

http://leanblog.org/audio81 Lean is not about banning bananas from people's desks or banning sweaters hanging on chairs. We should be solving problems that matter, for customers and employees, through Lean. We should be engaging people rather than throwing silly top-down mandates at them. I tend to get on a soapbox and rant about the "bad office 5S" examples... but I got an email this week that ma...

http://leanblog.org/audio80 Here's the Key to Visual Management:To me, the core of visual management is captured in this statement from Fujio Cho, now the honorary chairman of Toyota: "Know normal from abnormal... right now!" If the "visual" isn't helping accomplish that goal, it's probably not visual management. Visual management has two parts - the visual(something you see) and the management (t...

http://leanblog.org/audio79 I love the Texas-based grocery store chain "Central Market." It's like a local version of a Whole Foods, basically. One of their features is a sushi area that's run by a third-party company, Yummi Sushi. Posted prominently is a letter that outlines their stated approach to quality and safety. Click the photo for a larger view. Below, I'm going to basically transcribe th...

Here is my latest article for the LinkedIn“Influencers” series, written for a general audience that might not be as familiar with Lean: How These Credit Card Websites Illustrate Lean Mistake Proofing I hope you enjoy the article, even as a Lean thinker.

http://leanblog.org/audio77 I did a similar post in 2012, but here's a post where I share some recent NPR stories that I've heard recently (through the NPR One app, which I absolutely love).This is similar to my "A Lean Guy Reads..." series, my "Cleaning Out the Backlog" series, and the "Stuff I'm Reading" posts. Not All NICU Babies Should Get the Same Treatments Shrinking and Cutting Isn't the On...

http://leanblog.org/audio76 The Kaizen approach to continuous improvement is important to me, of course. The Japanese hospitals we've visited have a strong tradition of practicing Total Quality Management. Some are now embracing Kaizen as "daily continuous improvement" in addition to their six month long TQM projects. We're again organizing a Lean Healthcare Study Trip to Japan, which will take pl...

There's another approach that goes underappreciated, I think -- the "model line" or "model cell" approach. It has nothing to do with fashion models. I don't like the term "cell" because it might make people think of a prison or a gulag. Then again, the word "line" might make people think of "assembly line medicine" in a negative way. Maybe "model area" is a better term? I'll think about that as I...

http://leanblog.org/audio74 In this post, I'll be presenting a parody video of Keith Olbermann's "worst persons in the sports world" videos. I don't know how much overlap there is in people who read my blog and people who are fans of Olbermann. I've always been a big fan of Olbermann the sports guy... Olbermann the political commentator not so much. But, "the worst persons in the world" is a bit t...

I'm sure anybody who has done any work with Lean has heard these words said in one form or another, often prefaced with a "You don't understand..."We're different.

What did I learn about learning to eat sushi and incremental Kaizen (change for the better) during my 2014 Lean Healthcare Study Trip to Japan? Listen to find out... and learn more about our upcoming Japan trip at http://www.japanleantrip.com.

http://leanblog.org/audio71 Episode #403 of the public radio program "This American Life" originally aired in 2010, telling the story of the NUMMI plant that was a joint venture between GM and Toyota (it's now where they build Teslas). As a joint venture, that meant the closed-down GM Fremont plant was re-opened to be managed under the Toyota Production System. The This American Life story asks wh...