A Potpourri of Upcoming Lean Events

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In this post, I'm going to tell you about some upcoming Lean events I'm involved in – planning, producing, or participating.

  • Eric Ries “Lean Startups” Webinar for LEI
  • Shingo Prize Conference
  • Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit

I think these will all be high-quality public events, so please check them out.

Eric Ries “Lean Startups” Webinar for LEI

1910ST_qaries_DH_58144_Eric Ries 141639.tifEric Ries, of the Lean Startups methodology and the Startup Lessons Learned blog, will be doing a free webinar for the Lean Enterprise Institute on Wednesday April 28 at 2 PM eastern. Registration should open tomorrow – I will post a link when that's available or check back at www.lean.org, as it should be featured on the front page.

While Eric's entrepreneurial experience is in the web software space, he has some ideas that will be applicable for anyone working on innovation, even in traditional, larger company settings. The working title is “Lessons from Lean Startups” and we're hoping it will be a unique perspective for the LEI crowd.

Here is my earlier blog post about seeing Eric speak at MIT late last year. Here is a recent video discussion where Eric is interviewed by Robert Scoble (part 1 and part 2). Eric is also running a “Startups Lessons Learned” conference on April 23, both live in California and via multiple remote broadcast locations.

Shingo Prize Conference

The annual Shingo Prize Conference and awards will be held in Salt Lake City from May 17 to 21. I attended last year when I was awarded the Prize for Lean Hospitals and it was a really engaging event with many outstanding speakers (at left is a picture of me with Ritsuo Shingo and Bob Miller).

Keynote speakers this year include:

Other friends of the Lean Blog will be there, including Norman Bodek, Bruce Hamilton, Helen Zak, Naida Grunden, Cindy Jimmerson, and Gwendolyn Galsworth will be speaking, as well. I am working on getting a podcast interview with a very special Shingo-related guest, so stay tuned for an announcement about that.

I will be participating in a Lean Healthcare panel discussion and I”ll be giving a talk about Lean Hospitals on Thursday afternoon. I hope I'll see some of you there. Here is a brochure (PDF) of the event, which the Shingo people customized to make it look like I'm a main speaker (somewhat embarrassing): Shingo2010Graban

Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit

Registration is now open for the first Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, brought to you by Healthcare Value Leaders – the partnership between LEI and the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value.

The event will be held June 9 and 10 in Orlando, featuring talks, breakouts, and learning sessions featuring the best work from the members of the Healthcare Value Leaders Network. I will also be moderating a panel discussion of CEOs and senior leaders from Network member organizations. You can see the full agenda here.

We have a number of optional Pre-Summit Workshops lined up on June 7 and 8, including my two-day Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare workshop.

I also hope you might consider attending this event, I think we'll have some of the best and brightest in the Lean Healthcare world in attendance!

I'm off to VIBCO later this morning to participate in another healthcare “Learning to See” open house that's being run by Karl Wadensten. You can see the first two Q&A videos that were recorded at the last one in December, more videos to come. Click here for my YouTube Channel and then select Playlists and look for VIBCO.


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Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:

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Mark Graban
Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker, and podcaster with experience in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Just recently had the opportunity to meet with a Shingo Prize winner to help improve their Continuous Improvement and employee engagement process. I was amazed at how poorly their process was managed, but more amazed that the Shingo Prize folks didn’t pick up on that.

    In my humble opinion there are a lot of companies putting on good dog-and-pony shows and stearing attention away from their flaws.
    .-= George Rathbun ´s last blog ..Managing ideas that save lives – Can you afford not to do it effectively? =-.

  2. This is going back a number of years, but I blogged about how the Shingo Prize winners had stock prices that far outperformed the market. Lean tools practice doesn’t equate to business success. Look at the all of the prizes that Delphi won. Enough said about that era.

    https://www.leanblog.org/2006/03/shingo-investing-losing-bet/

    That said, Shingo has changed their model and approach to focus on overall business excellence, not just lean tools, it seems. I think they are moving in the right direction, whatever problems there were in the past.

    You can listen to Bob Miller of the Shingo Prize talk about this in our podcast: https://www.leanblog.org/59

  3. I read the post and I have to say you have some really good stuff in your blog.

    I think that the problem that I am consistently running into is that many companies spend tremendous amounts of effort cleaning-up for audits just in the attempt to get the Shingo prize, or ISO/AS/TS (or anything else) certified.

    I remember our first attempt at getting QS9000 certified at the Lear plant I worked at aver a decade ago: We spent months putting procedures and work instructions together, and assigning department coordinators. A tremendous effort… and yes we passed the pre-audit. The following year, when the full audit took place we spent a full month cleaning up everything that wasn’t systematically maintained during the past year… and we passed.

    This really comes down to a management issue, and I found that certain aspects of a business that are deemed not-critical, though required by the quality systems normally get that treatment… the yearly 5s.

    I find so many “lean” companies ignoring continuous improvement and giving it the yearly 5s that it begs the question… Are they really lean? After all the house of lean is built for the people; the entire structure surrounds people, and efficient management/acknowledgement of Kaizen is one of the key elements in ensuring organizations show respect for the individuals and can truly nurture the learning organization.

    The worst part of this is that many companies, in order to avoid interacting with all their workforce, form CI or 6sigma teams that go around telling people how to improve… this really shows ‘respect’. There are very few cases I have seen in my lifetime where CI has reached the level of engagement as it has at Toyota… but then again, half a century of doing it probably has a lot to do with Toyota’s success.
    .-= George Rathbun ´s last blog ..Managing ideas that save lives – Can you afford not to do it effectively? =-.

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