All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Joining me today for episode #357 is Michael Conroy, M.D., the Chief Medical Officer of Sutter Medical Group in northern California. Mike was previously the Medical Director of the Lean Promotion Office for the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and he…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients It’s been more than 10 years since Atul Gawande wrote The Checklist Manifesto, showing the world that a simple 2-minute checklist prior to surgery resulted in fewer deaths. Adoption is “pretty spotty”, and in…
Today, I’m sharing a question from a reader who started their career at Toyota and now works at another company. See previous posts with reader questions. The reader has given me permission to share this — to get your input…
I was honored to be asked to participate in a supplement that was published by the journal The International Journal for Quality in Healthcare. The supplement is a collection of articles about the use of Lean or Lean Six Sigma…
TL;DR: Year-over-year charts look analytical, but they often hide routine variation and invite overreaction. Process Behavior Charts make real improvement–and real risk–visible without guesswork. The main subject of my book Measures of Success is “Process Behavior Charts” (see more in…
In Episode 12 of Lean Whiskey, Mark Graban is back and he’s joined by a friend from the Lean healthcare world, Ryan McCormack. Jamie will be with Mark for our next episode. You might know Ryan as the creator of…
TL;DR: In healthcare huddles, how leaders ask about patient safety can either invite honest discussion or make speaking up feel risky. Open-ended, system-focused questions–combined with consistent follow-through–are essential for building psychological safety and preventing harm. I think that working to…
TL;DR: Psychological safety is a shared belief that you can raise concerns, admit mistakes, ask questions, or offer ideas without fear of blame or humiliation. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, whose 1999 research first established the concept, defines it…
TL;DR: Two Japanese hospitals improved patient safety by combining Toyota-style problem-solving with psychological safety. By making it safe for staff to report problems and near misses, leaders uncovered more issues, learned faster, and reduced harm–turning safety into part of daily…
tl;dr: When doctors and nurses are afraid to speak up about safety risks, problems stay hidden and patients are harmed. Real cases from the UK show how fear, retaliation, and leadership behavior undermine patient safety, while true improvement requires psychological…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Sometimes you just need to get a team together and improve. Here’s a good example of use of A3 thinking to improve opioid prescribing in outpatient rheumatology. Reducing harm requires the conditions to speak up, raise…
So, an engineer, an architect, and a nurse walk into a hospital… no, that’s not a setup for the punchline to a joke. Today, in episode #355 of the podcast, I’m sharing three short conversations with three people who have…
