Dilbert Challenges the Root Cause Problem Solving of His Boss

Last Friday's Dilbert touched on the important topic of problem solving and root cause analysis.

Stand up meetings, or huddles, are a great practice and they are pretty common in the Lean methodology. I saw a really impressive daily stand up meeting last week at a Texas hospital (more about that to come in a future blog post). The CEO was leading a daily review of the system's “strategy deployment” metrics and improvement activities with the senior leadership team. Really inspiring leadership… and it's part of a long-term, broad Lean transformation effort. It's the complete opposite of Dilbert Land.

That said, stand-up meetings alone won't make you Lean, so Dilbert is right to question his boss. Although his company doesn't seem like the kind of place where you can talk back or challenge things, nobody ever gets fired for that…

It's such a striking contrast between a great Lean organization and Dilbert Land…

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Mark Graban

Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker who has worked in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. He is author of the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, as well as The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. His most recent book is the anthology Practicing Lean that benefits the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation, where Mark is a board member. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus. His latest book has been released as an "in-progress" book, titled Measures of Success.