As a kid, I always enjoyed writing and, at one point, dreamed of being a baseball beat writer, like the father of one my best friends from elementary school who got to travel and cover the Detroit Tigers. I was…
After a week of serious topics and sometimes pointed discussion, let’s end with a funny sign… well wait, there’s a serious story behind this sign too. This is a sign from a New Zealand hospital, sent via email by a…
Listen: My guest for Podcast #125 is Mike George, the founder of Strong America Now, a “nonprofit organization dedicated to mobilizing and educating citizens to support only those Presidential candidates who commit to eliminating the deficit with no new taxes.”…
As I’ve worked with different hospitals and different leaders, I’ve sometimes wondered if there’s been a study on the differences in results between hospitals that have a physician CEO vs. those that have a non-physician CEO. Which hospitals have better…
One of the variations of my acronym L.A.M.E. is “Lean As Misguidedly Explained,” and I recently ran across two fresh instances of this (and, for once, neither is from the Wall Street Journal!). One example is a news writer who…
This blog post contains a real job posting, found online. Let’s make this a reader participation challenge. I see maybe three things “wrong” or at least questionable about this posting. What say you? I’ll let the readers chime in before…
Here’s a nice video that popped up on YouTube from the Toronto-area University Health Network system, with healthcare professionals talking about how Lean has led to a better work environment, a new culture, and an increased capacity to care for…
It’s nowhere near as important as yesterday’s topic of employee and patient safety, but my last two days of using the new Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” operating system made me think of some classic change management challenges that might…
What happens when a Fortune 500 CEO brings a long-term mindset and a bold commitment to safety into healthcare? In this conversation with Paul O’Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and CEO of Alcoa, we explore how leadership, transparency, and aiming…
Come back Thursday, July 21 for my new Podcast with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, where we talk about his work to improve patient safety in healthcare (see an earlier blog post here as a preview). I wish I…
One reason I love applying Lean thinking in new arenas as my career progresses is that each shift in industry leads to new challenges and new experiences, which forces you to challenge your thinking… and each change in Lean direction…
Back in the manufacturing world, the distinction between “push” and “pull” is often much more obvious than it is in healthcare. Push production occurs when products are built based on the forecast were something other than actual customer needs. In…