Mark Graban

Back on the podcast for the fifth time is my friend David Meier, a Lean / TPS consultant who is a former Toyota leader at their plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. He's gotten into what's, perhaps, the most Kentucky of industries... distilling bourbon (and more). I'll have two more podcast episodes where David and I talk about bourbon, whiskey, and continuous improvement for almost 90 minutes total there. Those episodes are coming soon. Today is a shorter episode, where we catch up and hear more about what David has been doing since his last podcast appearance in 2010 when we talked about the challenges Toyota was facing then. In this episode, David drops a lot of knowledge and wisdom in a very short time -- thoughts on problem solving and how Lean thinking isn't easy for anybody, even if you're Japanese.

My guest for Episode #306 is Mark D. Valenti, the manager of training, education, and workflow integration for the Enhanced Community Care Management (ECCM) at Highmark Health. In this episode, Mark and I talk about the use of "Motivational Interviewing" methods and mindsets in the ECCM program and how "everyday closer to better" is part of their mantra.

When surgeons have no better options than complaining about process problems on LinkedIn, are their leaders and organizations really properly supporting them? In this post, we'll explore questions of blame, accountability, and engaging people in process improvement... being of better service to them.

As you might know, I have always enjoyed baseball and like blogging about ideas and statistics that come from the sport. I loved this recent article from The Wall Street Journal and there are parallels to Lean and being an effective change agent: "The Data Wonk Who Became a Coach"

I was recently asked to do a recorded video presentation for a medical conference in Turkey. I spoke about the dual pillars of "The Toyota Way": Respect for People Continuous Improvement The video is about 20 minutes, split about half and half on each of those interrelated topics. I'm coming to you from a hotel room, somewhat tired after a day of consulting. (Slides PDF and transcript also included)

My first job out of college was as an Industrial Engineer at the General Motors Livonia Engine Plant. Blogging didn't exist then (I didn't even have email or internet access at work) or I might have started my writing career then. Oh, the stories. I've shared some of them on this blog over time. I've blogged about papers from the Don Ephlin files, a former UAW national leader. I have my own small collection of documents and artifacts from my days at GM that I thought to keep in a folder. I still have that folder today. A few of these memos tell the story of a quality and productivity death spiral that eventually led to our plant manager being replaced. And, by "replaced," I don't mean fired or given an early retirement. He was, at least in title, PROMOTED to a role at GM Powertrain headquarters. Thankfully, the new plant manager, Larry Spiegel, was one of the original "NUMMI commandos" and he made a huge difference to the plant and to me, personally.

After I kicked off the Lean Six Sigma World Conference this week, I had the fantastic opportunity to hear the now-legendary Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger...

Thanks to Eric Ries and the organizers for Lean Startup Week for allowing me to share video of my 15-minute talk from last year's event. One reason for sharing this today is to celebrate yesterday's initial release of the in-progress version of my book Measures of Success. If you buy the book now, you'll get a PDF of the first three chapters, or about 40% of the book's expected content.

Today, I’m giving a keynote talk at the Lean & Six Sigma World Conference being held in Las Vegas. I don’t normally attend or speak at “Lean Sigma” events, but I had an opportunity to give a new talk that touches on two of my favorite themes in recent years – the need to apply statistics and psychology to our “Lean Management” practices or Six Sigma or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh1WhHcsNz8 A talk given by Mark Graban at Lean Startup Week 2017. Visit this blog post to learn more: https://www.leanblog.org/2018/04/video-my-lean-startup-week-talk-distinguishing-signal-from-noise-in-metrics/  

As a senior advisor to KaiNexus and somebody who has been a member of the team since 2011, it's been amazing to see how...

Are minor league games taking longer? Well, yes and no, depending on the league. My next book, Measures of Success, is about the use of this Process Behavior Chart methodology in the workplace, as applied to our performance measures.  This post explores some data, how asking for more data can be more helpful, and how to use charts to evaluate a metric over time.