TL;DR Twenty years later, Jeffrey Liker’s message still applies: Lean fails when it’s treated as a set of tools instead of a leadership system. Toyota’s results come from developing people, creating stability, and fostering psychological safety–not from dashboards or templates.…
Recently, I re-shared a LinkedIn post by Maryam Najafi PhD, a clinical scientist from Germany. I re-posted it and that drove even more visibility (over 100,000 views) and more discussion. You might need to click through to LinkedIn to see…
Lesa Nichols worked closely with Hajime Oba at Toyota’s Supplier Support Center (TSSC) and later became a production manager at Toyota’s powertrain plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. In this episode, she shares lessons from Mr. Oba on overburden, learning from mistakes,…
Here is a story that was sent to me by a blog reader, who needs to remain anonymous. I know the blog reader fairly well and believe what’s written here to be true. The blog reader is a career-long Lean…
General Jim Mattis has been making the rounds to talk about his new book that is out today: Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. “Learning to Lead” sounds like it could be the title of a book about Lean management.…
My guest for Episode #286 is Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that has long been considered a worldwide leader in the practice of Lean in healthcare. See this article about his retirement, where he says "I've gotten more than I've given."
Dean was previously my guest in Episodes 119 and 144 and I'm thrilled that he took time out of his retirement to talk with me about his lessons learned as he looks back on how ThedaCare's Lean journey has evolved, including some things he would consider to be missteps and challenges that they used as a springboard to get even better.
I will also be releasing a separate episode where Dean talks about their experiences with Accountable Care Organizations (our topic from #144) and other "big picture" healthcare issues of the day.
I'm including a full transcript along with a three-page PDF summary, as I've been doing recently.
TL;DR: Lean isn’t about “idiot-proofing” work–it’s about respecting people. True Lean focuses on improving systems (through mistake-proofing and better design), not blaming or deceiving workers. When leaders treat people as capable professionals and fix processes instead of people, quality, learning,…
I’m always happy to hear current-day Toyota leaders (like Jamie Bonini) or recent Toyota leaders (like Gary Convis) share perspectives on leadership. It’s not that Toyota’s perfect, but we’re hearing about Lean concepts “straight from the source,” in a way.…
There's a triangle diagram on the TSSC webpage that describes an "integrated system" that consists of: technical methods, managerial methods, philosophy.
All of this is "focused on people development," Jamie told me for the book.
The model starts with people and human development in the middle, as "people are the most valuable resource," says Bonini.
Today’s post is a throwback to an essay that I originally wrote for the excellent book Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future, where it appears in an appendix with some other contributed essays. You can listen to…
It’s been just about 18 years since I was leaving GM to start the master’s program at MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing program (now called Leaders for Global Operations). Here’s a 1992 interview that describes the origins of the program. It…
Back in 2007, I had my first opportunity to travel to England, a country I really love visiting. I had the chance to attend the “First Global Lean Healthcare Summit” that was produced by Dan Jones and the Lean Enterprise…
