All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Ontario is betting big on an untested hypothesis of reorganizing and consolidating healthcare operations and budgets predicting it will result in patients “seamlessly” moving through the health system. Time will tell, but the history has…
Back in 2013, I wrote a LinkedIn article (orread on Medium) about how the “Doctors: Best of 2013” list in a San Antonio magazine had a disclaimer that warned: “S.A. Doctors: Best of 2013 is the name of our publication,…
Joining me for Episode #334, all the way from Australia, is Barry McCarthy. Barry spent more than 15 years in leadership roles with Toyota in Australia and now works as an Associate with consulting firm Honsha. We were able to…
tl;dr: The Red Bead Experiment demonstrates how firing “low performers” based on arbitrary targets or rankings punishes people for system-driven variation, not individual effort. Bad metrics and poor leadership can create outcomes that look discriminatory, even when intent isn’t–highlighting why…
Recently, I blogged about how a Lean hospital would focus on reducing overwork on nurses and other staff: Another term that could be used is “overburden.” The Japanese word for this is “muri,” for what it’s worth. Many Lean practitioners…
It’s always a fun day of learning when I get a chance to teach and facilitate my day-long workshop that will teach you the core concepts from my book Measures of Success. Why take a workshop? Well, you’ll get a…
KaiNexus and I were happy to host an excellent webiner by Barry O’Reilly, the author of the book Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results. The webinar is on these themes: Why Great Leaders Must Unlearn to…
tl;dr: GE’s 1950s “Blue Books,” created by Peter Drucker for CEO Ralph Cordiner, promoted stewardship, shared responsibility to stakeholders, and mature leadership. These ideas contrast sharply with later, short-term, numbers-driven management–and raise the question of whether today’s GE still recognizes…
It’s a short blog post today due to too much time being consumed with travel delays and airline customer service incompetence the last two days. I should have built up a greater inventory of blog posts that were written in…
My guests for Episode #333 are Jean-Marc Legentil and Marc-Olivier Legentil, father-and-son Lean consultants from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They work together in the firm Bell-Nordic Consulting. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both of them on numerous trips to Montreal…
TL;DR: Pursuing zero harm isn’t about unrealistic goals or punishing people for failure. It’s a leadership choice that creates psychological safety, accelerates learning, and strengthens Lean systems. When organizations treat safety–physical, emotional, and professional–as a non-negotiable value, improvement capability follows…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Daily safety huddles are simple, inexpensive, and effective methods to raise and escalate patient safety risks. Start your safety huddles today with some tips from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I get asked all the…
