All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
When I placed a mobile order at Starbucks recently, I was told up front that it would take 17 to 20 minutes to receive my drinks. That’s a long time to wait–for coffee (or two espresso-based drinks, I should say).…
Back in 2009, my friend and KaiNexus co-founder Dr. Greg Jacobson and his colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center published an article that still feels as fresh and relevant as ever: “Kaizen: A Method of Process Improvement in the Emergency…
Leadership isn’t about avoiding mistakes–it’s about responding to them with honesty and humility. This week, Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn offered a clear example. After quarterback Jayden Daniels suffered a dislocated elbow late in a blowout loss (read more),…
TL;DR: If Lean improvements put jobs at risk, people will stop improving. Organizations that commit to “no layoffs due to Lean” create trust, unlock ideas, and sustain better performance. When I worked with Johnson & Johnson’s ValuMetrix Services consulting group…
This edition of Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape highlights how Lean thinking continues to deliver real results when it’s treated as a management system, not a toolkit. From GE Aerospace’s measurable gains under Larry Culp, to Toyota’s application of flow…
tl;dr: Halloween might be about ghosts, zombies, and monsters — but those same creatures sometimes show up in our organizations all year long. They lurk in old processes, mindless routines, and fear-based management habits. Here’s how to spot the spooky…
Why do capable leaders spend their days firefighting instead of improving the system? In this episode, MIT professor Nelson Repenning explains how poorly designed work systems trap organizations in chaos–and how Lean thinking and Dynamic Work Design help leaders restore…
TL;DR: Emergency slide deployments happen far too often to be dismissed as “human error.” When a mistake repeats at scale, it’s a system design problem. This Delta incident shows why leaders must design processes that anticipate human fallibility–rather than blaming…
I recently gave a virtual keynote for a global manufacturing company that’s a customer of KaiNexus. Their leaders wanted to explore how to strengthen a culture of improvement — not just by preventing mistakes, but by learning from the ones…
In Lean circles, we talk a lot about leadership commitment. But it’s not every day that a CEO puts their hair on the line to show it. As we wrote about in Healthcare Kaizen, at IU Health Goshen Hospital, the…
In this special bonus episode, Mark Graban and C.J. Kaufman preview the ASQ Cincinnati-Dayton 2025 conference and explore why quality, leadership, and psychological safety are inseparable foundations for sustainable improvement. Listen: In this special bonus episode of Lean Blog Interviews,…
This edition of Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape emphasizes that real improvement depends more on mindset, leadership, and system design than on tools alone. From lessons on problem-solving behaviors and the persistent challenge of patient harm in healthcare to examples…