Mark Graban

I would call today a "Throwback Thursday," but it's Wednesday. Is "Wayback Wednesday" a thing? Anyway, it's Valentine's Day... what better reason to look back at some posts about love?

The chain Whole Foods is reportedly having inventory shortages and morale problems. It sounds like a real mess, but thankfully nobody is calling it Lean. Their "Order to Shelf" system reminds me of "Pull to Order" work that I was involved in at Dell about 20 years ago...

As I prepare to go back to Japan, I'm sharing some insights about the Japanese health system from the excellent book "The Healing of America," by T.R. Reid.

In some of the major Lean transformation stories (in manufacturing in healthcare) usually include stories about some percentage of managers, doctors, or employees who chose to leave the organization. This is often a badge of honor of sorts. Sometimes, those people get labeled as "concrete heads" (I term I think we shouldn't use, as I've blogged about). Is this really the right way to view things?

Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture." The WSJ says the "model is cracking." Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself).

Joining me again for episode #299 of the podcast is Joe Swartz, my friend and esteemed co-author for our books Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements and The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen: Leadership for a Continuously Learning and Improving Organization.

This Thursday, we'll be hosting a webinar presented by a former Toyota engineer, Jess Orr. She will be sharing lessons learned at Toyota about the A3 problem-solving methodology, referred to there as "Toyota Business Practices." In particular, Jess will be sharing a case study about using the A3 approach to improving communication.

Lean can be very fragile. History shows that Lean can fall apart even in an organization that is years into a "Lean journey" with strong CEO involvement. How is this possible? If often happens when a new CEO is brought in from the outside. In the case of the manufacturing company, Wiremold, it happened when they were acquired by a French company, Legrand. As an aside, the team that coined the term "Lean" almost used the term "fragile," as I blogged about here. Back in 2007, Bob Emiliani joined me for Episode #30 of the podcast. As we revisit the podcast and the new transcript I had made, what are the lessons for manufacturers or hospitals? What's the risk that's created when new leadership takes over?

Last week, I blogged about some employee complaints related to rotating day and night shifts at the Toyota San Antonio plant. In that post, I mentioned that employees who post on Glassdoor.com and other sites might not be a representative sample of the full employee population. With that in mind, what happens when we search the Glassdoor surveys of some well-known "Lean hospitals?" I posted a few of these employee comments on LinkedIn the other day (a short post that has received over 50,000 views and prompted a lot of discussion).

The official report is out in Hawaii after the traumatic accidental missile warning that was sent last month. An employee was fired. The leader accepted responsibility and resigned. Why are others being punished?

Thanks to my friend Sylvain for sending me this cartoon. It would have been more timely for me to share this before Christmas, but there's an opportunity for improvement. The cartoon series is called Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich. This particular cartoon appeared on December 13, 2017. Here's the top part... please click through to their website to see the entire cartoon and I'll talk about it here in this post, sharing links to other blog posts and videos on the topic.

Joining me again for Episode #298 is Billy R. Taylor, for Part 2 of a discussion we started in Episode #293. Last week, a friend texted me last week and said he couldn't wait for Part 2. He said he pulled off the road to take some notes when he listened to Part 1. So without further ado, here is Part 2. Here, we discuss "extreme ownership," why creating ownership is more important than forcing accountability, and important lessons he's learned along the way.