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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.

Shohei Ohtani and the Harada Method: How It Works

Shohei Ohtani standing on third base

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

Podcast #318 – Marcus Hammarberg, How Lean & Kanban Saved an Indonesian Hospital

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.

Operational Excellence Mixtape: September 14, 2018

Healthcare – Creating Value for Patient The legendary quality leader W. Edwards Deming is widely known for his thoughts on statistics and systems.  However, Deming believed that psychology was of crucial importance when improving organizational performance.  The Institute for Improvement in Healthcare shares…

Confused (or Confusing) #Lean Healthcare Job Postings

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.

How Toyota Uses TQM to Teach Quality to Japanese Hospital Doctors

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.

How Process Behavior Charts Explain Baseball Home Run Outliers

Swinging a baseball bat at dusk against a stadium background with a Lean Blog logo.

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:

TQM at Toyota and the Influence on Lean – Past and Present, Japan and U.S.

Toyota's TQM Activities for organizational vitality and continuous improvement in lean management.

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:

Podcast #317 – Patricia Morrill, “The Perils of Uncoordinated Care”

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?

When Being Right Is the Wrong Strategy for Change

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.

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