Mark Graban

Today, I'll be appearing live as a guest on the live internet show "Quality Digest Live." You can watch live at 2 PM ET / 11 AM PT on Friday... QualityDigest.com also recently published a review of my book Measures of Success and we'll be discussing the book and more on the show. I also recently discovered this short podcast episode / review about my book, from the "Improve Something Today" podcast by Brian Kerr...

Thanks to my friend Katie Anderson for writing a blog post about my latest book Measures of Success. Visit the post and you'll see a link that goes to a book giveaway contest, where I am giving away (with Katie's help, of course), three copies of the eBook (the paperback book is coming later this year).

Today's post is the transcript of a discussion that I recently recorded with Jeff Hunter, the author of the book Patient-Centered Strategy: A Learning System for Better Care. Jeff is presenting a free webinar that KaiNexus and I are hosting on September 24: Putting Strategy Back in Strategy Deployment Below, you can listen to our chat where Jeff introduces himself and some of the concepts that he'll be presenting about. The transcript follows the audio player.

You might remember my blog post from May about the Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese player for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (that's not a very "lean" team name, is it"). I suggested that Norman Bodek contact baseball or sports writers at publications like ESPN or The Wall Street Journal. The Journal wrote about Ohtani and Harada last week: How Shohei Ohtani Visualized His Baseball Success The Japanese two-way sensation turned to a personal-growth technique called the Harada Method to help him achieve his goals

Joining me from Sweden for Episode 318 of the podcast is Marcus Hammarberg, author of the fascinating book Salvation: The Bungsu Story: How Lean and Kanban saved a small hospital in Indonesia. Twice. And can help you reshape work in your company. Marcus is a software developer, consultant, lean/agile coach, speaker, and author. He ended up with an opportunity to work with a hospital in Indonesia and he tells that compelling story in the book. How did a huge hole in the roof help trigger a change in culture and results? You'll hear about that and more in this episode. I hope you enjoy it and find it inspirational, as I did.

When an organization is barely into their "Lean journey" (or whatever they might call it), one challenge is that the leaders (or HR) don't really know what they want or need in candidates for positions in process improvement, operational excellence, or whatever they call it. I've made two posts on LinkedIn recently about two job posts that had me scratching my head.

Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.

If you're not a baseball fan, I apologize for a second baseball-themed post this week. Baseball has a lot of historical time-series data to work with and analyze. If you're not interested in "Process Behavior Charts" or similar methods, I guess I will apologize for this post again too. Next, I'll be apologizing for apologizing. But, I am at Dr. Wheeler's four-day workshop on "Understanding Statistical Process Control" as I blogged about on Monday. It's great to learn from Dr. Wheeler in person and I'll be sharing reflections on the class in a later post (and I'm posting a few things on LinkedIn along the way). In Chapter 1 of Understanding Variation, Dr. Wheeler points out how charts or graphs are far superior to tables or lists of numbers. He uses a baseball example:

I recently saw this headline: Baseball on pace for lowest batting average since 1972 Just because it's the lowest average in 48 years... it doesn't mean that this year's MLB-wide batting average is low in a way that's statistically meaningful.

I'm very excited to be leaving for Japan for another study trip in just over a month. This will be my second trip this year, this time with Honsha, after previous (and hopefully future) trips organized by Kaizen Institute. Even though the previous tours have been focused on Toyota, as well as Lean and Kaizen in various organizations, one common thread is Total Quality Management, or TQM. In many Japanese organizations, TQM has been a solid foundation of practice for two or three decades, where it tended to be a fad here in the U.S., as I've blogged about:

Some colleagues recently sent me a Harvard Business Review article that has a fairly accusatory title, although many readers might think it applies to other managers: Most Managers Don't Know How to Coach People. But They Can Learn. It's a common dynamic for people to overstate their own abilities. When it comes to "coaching" in the workplace:

My guest for Episode #317 of the podcast is Patricia Morrill, a speaker, trainer, consultant, researcher, and author of the book The Perils of Un-Coordinated Healthcare: A Strategic Approach toward Eliminating Preventable Harm. With 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, she has focused on blending operational efficiencies with healing environments. Patricia has successfully integrated Lean and Project Management methodologies with organizational strategic goals to build roadmaps for execution. Check out her website and her blog. In today's episode, we discuss her personal story about her mother's death that came as the result of a preventable medical error. What can be done to prevent medical errors, harm, and death?