I had a great conversation with a fellow healthcare lean thinker the other day. She shared my book, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction, with the CEO and some other executives at a hospital she works with.

After reading my book, the CEO made exactly the comment I’d want to hear after people read my book. I’m paraphrasing a bit, since this is second hand, but he said he now understood that Lean is not just a toolkit. He understood that Lean is a way of thinking and a management system.

Exactly! I’m glad that the message got across since that was a major goal of mine with the book. Lean is not a bunch of tools like 5S and kanban. Nor is Lean just a bunch of week-long events. Lean is a way of operating, thinking, and managing — each and every day. I hope more hospitals get the message. Thanks to those of you who are spreading the word!

Ironically, I got my first non-5 star review on amazon (4 stars)… the reviewer said basically that I did a good job covering tools, but not so much on principles and philosophy. Oh well. I disagree. If you’d like to post a review, please visit the amazon page for my book: Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.

Tagged as: Culture, Healthcare, Lean Hospitals