All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
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?
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patient Canadian healthcare is where “pilot projects come to die”. There is a lack of a culture of innovation in Canadian health, partly due to its fragmented nature and reliance on academic and government echo-chambers to…
I'm at the fourth annual KaiNexus User Conference in exciting Austin, Texas. We have customers here from many industries, which corresponds with the growth of KaiNexus and the way we've been pulled into other customers outside of our initial home in healthcare.
In this post, I talk about a workshop I did yesterday and a talk I'm giving today.
oday's episode is the second time that friend and podcast guest Jamie Flinchbaugh has turned the tables by playing host to interview me about my new book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, which has recently been the #1 best selling book in Amazon's Total Quality Management category.
Jamie is very knowledgeable on these topics, so he was a great person to interview me and to have more of a conversation about choosing the right metrics and then managing them the right way. I hope you enjoy the conversation and future podcasts will return to the usual format where I interview guests and try to let them do most of the talking.
I presented a 30-minute webinar on Monday, August 27 at 1 pm EDT. This one was hosted by Lean Frontiers as part of their summer webinar series.
Here's a blog post written by three physicians:
Can the auto industry improve spinal fusion surgery?
It's interesting that they so closely associate Lean with the auto industry when, at this point, Lean is used in virtually every industry and setting. That's why I used the word "Lean" in the title of my blog post here.
They are also authors of a journal article titled "Application of Lean Principles to Neurosurgical Procedures: The Case of Lumbar Spinal Fusion Surgery, a Literature Review and Pilot Series," published in Operative Neurosurgery.
In my post, I comment on their work...
Here are a few items and thoughts related to "Process Behavior Charts" and my book Measures of Success.
I'll share some charts related to sales of my book about charts and management.
I'll also share an updated article of mine and two podcasts that had me on to talk about the book.
Today, I'm sharing a video and an update about this event that I'm helping organize in Texas, September 26 and 27, 2018:
Symposium on Learning Organizations: Agile, Lean, Deming, and More
Why do people fear change? Why are adults afraid of talking about their fears? My guest today is eminently qualified to answer such questions and to provide advice that can help us. My guest for Episode #315 is Robert Maurer, Ph.D., author of the outstanding book Mastering Fear.
Bob was previously my guest for Episode #153, where we discussed one of his earlier books on Kaizen, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. By the way, earlier this year I noticed that his other book The Spirit of Kaizen was one of the few books by an American author that Toyota was selling at the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya (see photo below).
I hope you enjoy today's discussion on Mastering Fear. As the subtitle says, can we "harness emotion to achieve excellence in health, work, and relationships"?
