Mark Graban
Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker, and podcaster with experience in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups.
Mark's latest book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, a recipient of the Shingo Publication Award.
He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean, previous Shingo recipients.
Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.
She Tried to Build Her Own Lean Coaching AI. Then She...
I had a long conversation last week with one of the first subscribers to the Lean Hospitals Coach. She's a senior continuous improvement coach...
Hospitals Still Miss Half of Patient Harm Events — And the...
A new report from the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), released in July 2025, found that hospitals failed to capture 49 percent of...
The One Thing ChatGPT Does That Most Leaders Won’t
If you've used ChatGPT, you've seen the small text at the bottom of the screen:
"ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info."
I noticed it...
Kaizen: The Improvement System Most Organizations Talk About but Struggle to...
TL;DR: Kaizen means "change for the better." Everyone improves their own work, one small change at a time, using the scientific method. It's not...
How to Evaluate AI Tools for Healthcare Improvement: A Lean Thinker’s...
AI tools are showing up everywhere in healthcare -- for clinical decision support, operational analytics, and now for learning and coaching around improvement methodologies....
Stop Reacting to Red Light Metrics: Why ‘Two Reds in a...
tl;dr: The "two consecutive reds" rule persists because reacting feels like leadership -- but it generates wasted investigations, false success stories, and eroded trust....
Ask Karen Martin Anything: A KaiNexus Webinar on March 11
Karen Martin is one of those people I've been lucky to know and learn from for a long time. She's been a guest on...
Watch the Lean Hospitals Coach in Action — Live, Unscripted, With...
Here's something I've learned over many years of consulting: giving people advice they haven't asked for is a reliable way to get ignored, no...
Leadership Overreaction: The Hidden Cause of Organizational Failure
Tl;DR: Leaders unintentionally create fear by overreacting to variation, waste, and mistakes. That fear quietly kills improvement. This post connects the threads across my...
Healthcare in 2026: Still Faxing, Already Talking About AI
TL;DR: Three stories from a single day highlight a familiar pattern in healthcare technology: a pharmacy text message with the wrong hours that nobody...
Why a Lean Coach Asks Questions Instead of Giving Answers
TL;DR: Generic AI gives you a confident list of best practices. A Lean AI coach asks questions first, helps you understand your specific situation,...
Why I Built My Own AI Instead of Telling You to...
People keep asking me a reasonable question:
"Why not just use ChatGPT?"
After all, ChatGPT "knows" a lot about Lean. You can ask it about...
