“The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen” Coming Soon – Preview a PDF of Chapter 1 Now

6
0

Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen Draft Cover

Joe Swartz and I are building upon our well-received (and Shingo Research Award winning) book  Healthcare Kaizen  with a new special edition aimed at busy senior leaders. The book is available for pre-order now at Amazon.com:  The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen: Leadership for a Continuously Learning and Improving Organization.

The full  Healthcare Kaizen book is over 400 pages. Because of all of the full-color photos, the publisher used a thick glossy paper.. which means the book weighs in at roughly three pounds… the voice of the customer (or at least some customers) said that's too heavy…

We've had readers, say an internal Lean consultant or process improvement director at a hospital, say that the book is great, but it's too much (and, again, too heavy) to give to a CEO or senior leader to read on a flight.

Joe and I gave that a lot of thought and our publisher agreed with us that we could do a special edition (technically a new book) and keep  Healthcare Kaizen on the market, of course.

Starting with that customer need, I benchmarked two popular healthcare books, namely Dr. John Toussaint's two excellent books  On the Mend and  Potent Medicine. Those books are smaller and lighter (even as hardcover books). Based on the smaller page size and number of pages, we used that as the vision for  The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.

We worked backward to prioritize the content that would be most useful to time-crunched senior leaders. We included some material from  Healthcare Kaizen, re-wrote some material to be aimed at senior leaders, AND wrote some new material especially for them, including Chapter 1 material on “why Kaizen?” and more about the ROI of a Kaizen program (which includes more than just financial results). We've also left out some of the “how to” detail, while focusing more on the role of leaders in creating a culture of continuous improvement.  The Executive Guide also has just a handful of real Kaizen examples, compared to over 100 in the larger book.

You can download a free PDF file that includes:

Click here to register to receive the PDF immediately via email.

Some tables that show comparisons of the two books… we hope the difference between the two books is clear as this is something we want to be careful about in our marketing. We hope that  The Executive Guide, being a less expensive book (currently $22 at Amazon) will help introduce new audiences to the power of the Kaizen improvement methodology. We can imagine a healthcare organization buying many copies of  The Executive Guide and then having one (or a handful) of the  larger  Healthcare Kaizen book with all of its examples to be shared and passed around.

 Chapter Healthcare Kaizen  Chapter The Executive Guide
Front Material Norm Bodek & Masaaki Imai Gary Kaplan, MD & Masaaki Imai
1 Kaizen & CI 1 The Need for Kaizen
2 Roots of Kaizen 2 What is Kaizen
3 Types of Kaizen 3 Types of Kaizen
4 Kaizen Culture 4 Kaizen Culture
5 Quick & Easy Kaizen 5 Daily Kaizen Methods
6 Idea Boards
7 Sharing Kaizen
8 Art of Kaizen 6 Role of Senior Leaders
9 Role of Leaders 7 Role of Other Leaders
10 Org-Wide Kaizen 8 Org-Wide Kaizen
11 Lean Methods for Kaizen
12 Kaizen at Home
13 Conclusion 9 Conclusion

 

Healthcare Kaizen The Executive Guide
Format 8.5×11 paperback ~6×9 paperback
Paper Glossy Plain
Color Full-color B&W
Figures ~200 ~15
Kaizen Examples 100 8
Pages 400 200
Target Audience All healthcare (trying to appeal to front-line and managers to a large extent) C-level & BoardSenior LeadersVPsDirectors
Cost $59.95 $29.95

The description of the book from Amazon:

Some healthcare organizations have learned about daily kaizen, but they struggle to move from platitudes to practical action.  The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen  is an introduction to kaizen principles and an overview of the leadership behaviors and mindsets required to create a kaizen culture or a culture of continuous improvement. It is specifically written for senior leaders and managers who need to understand the power of this useful Lean methodology. These are the executives and senior-level managers who need to inspire and motivate their organization–leadership which is critical in sustaining improvement and moving their organization into the future.

The book contains a new introduction by Gary Kaplan, MD, the CEO of Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.

The Executive Guide  to Healthcare Kaizen  is a companion book to  Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements. Healthcare Kaizen  is a longer, more complete “how to” guide that includes over 200 full color images, including over 100 real kaizen examples from various health systems around the world.

Curious to hear your thoughts and feedback…


What do you think? Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Or please share the post with your thoughts on LinkedIn – and follow me or connect with me there.

Did you like this post? Make sure you don't miss a post or podcast — Subscribe to get notified about posts via email daily or weekly.


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

Get New Posts Sent To You

Select list(s):
Previous articleKaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson on Continuous Improvement
Next articleSome Recent Podcast Interviews
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.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.