A Kaizen Quote from Seth Godin
As I did on Wednesday, I’m posting a quote that we collected for our upcoming book “Healthcare Kaizen,” but this time it’s a quote from Seth Godin that we couldn’t really work into the text (or haven’t done so yet).…
Month September 2011
Why Does this Hospital CEO Have to Go Undercover? Or Does He?
Update: I edited the post title to add “Or Does He?” See the CEO’s comment below, suggesting that the TV report gave the wrong impression and that he wasn’t really “undercover” in a sneaky way like the CBS TV show.…
A Kaizen Quote from Taiichi Ohno
As I’m working hard this week to finish, with my co-author Joe Swartz, the manuscript for our upcoming book “Healthcare Kaizen,” I’m not taking much time to blog. But here is the longer version of a quote we are sharing…
Release Day for “The Lean Startup” by @EricRies, Stories of Batching
Congrats to Eric Ries as his book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses officially goes on sale today. I will post a formal review once I have read the entire book (disclosure:…
Articles about Industrial Engineers Impacting Healthcare
The long history of Industrial Engineers helping in healthcare goes back 100 years to one of the “fathers of Industrial Engineering,” Frank Gilbreth — and his wife, Lillian! It was Gilbreth who noticed that surgeons spent more time searching for…
Guest Post: Bin Laden Lost
A guest post from Steven J. Spear on this solemn day. You can also read it here. Friends, Ten years ago, I watched on television as a plane- stolen from the city in which I live-slammed into buildings in the…
Band-Aiding the Process – Literally
Unfortunately, healthcare professionals often aren’t given the tools they need to do their jobs properly. People are forced into workarounds and corner cutting, or they are forced into wasting time by running around to find equipment — or working equipment.…
Coaching vs. Berating: Lessons from Football for Better Leadership
tl;dr: When a leader yells, people learn fear–not lessons. True coaching means helping others learn from mistakes instead of punishing them. Whether on the football field or in the workplace, the best leaders build confidence, not compliance. I was happy…
Do Happier People Work Harder? I Think So
Thanks to Andrew Bishop for posting a link to this article the other day. The New York Times had an article on Sunday titled, “Do Happier People Work Harder?” I think the answer, clearly, is yes. The outlook from a…
KaiNexus Education Video #1 – Getting Started with Kaizen
We’ve created and released our first in our series of short, simple Kaizen education videos from KaiNexus, a startup where I am the Chief Improvement Officer. We are embedding these videos into our web-based software platform to provide short tips and hints…
Mark Graban Interviewed on the “IT Knowledge Exchange”
Sorry to be self referential again, but I was interviewed for a website called the IT Knowledge Exchange. The interview appears in three parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3…
How Often Do You Hear “How Can I Help You?” From Your Manager?
I was going through some old notes I’ve taken when visiting different hospitals and I came up with this quote from a healthcare professional: “I’ve never worked in a place where managers asked ‘how can I help you?’” The good…
