All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
2014 has been a busy and exciting year. I’ve been very blessed. I’ve worked with great people and have learned so much. I have still barely scratched the surface in sharing stories from my recent trip to Japan. I’ve been…
Today’s post is something I wrote for the KaiNexus blog that was posted yesterday: Anthony Bourdain on Continuous Improvement: Be “Less Awful Every Day” I loved this short clip of Bourdain being interviewed on the Charlie Rose program, talking about…
It’s a simple question: what’s up with so many men wearing ties in healthcare? Are you / they wearing them because you like to, want to, or have to? When I worked at a video game and computer software store…
Here’s the latest in our series of videos about Kaizen and a culture of continuous improvement at Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. Scroll down in this post for a survey that Joe Swartz and I are doing about a workshop…
It’s a bit of a modern management cliché to say, “Don’t bring problems! Bring me solutions!” I think what it’s meant to mean is, “Don’t just complain! Think about improving things!” Why “Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions” Backfires…
Call me old fashioned, but I figure any employee who works a full day deserves proper breaks, including a lunch break. This is true for nurses who work ten hour shifts. And, it’s especially true for the 65% of nurses…
After being at the Lean Startup Conference the last two years (giving this talk in 2012 and speaking last year on Kaizen), I’m not there this year, unfortunately. I’m also not at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement forum (why are there often two great…
This Bloomberg Businessweek article caught my eye: “How to Get More Respect From Your Boss With Less Work.” It’s a misleading headline, almost as if it was associated with the wrong article, somehow. But, it’s an interesting read anyway. Researchers…
I travel a lot and, thanks to my work, I’m pretty well attuned to the idea of not blaming individuals for systemic problems in an organization. Or, at least I try to be good about this. I’m human, so I…
The ideas, principles, and methods that we’d recognize as “Lean” aren’t exclusively of Japanese origin. Many of us, myself included, draw inspiration from Toyota, reading books about them and visiting their factories. For me, I’ve had a chance to visit…
I’m happy to be partnering up again with my friend and fellow contrarian rabble-rouser Jim Benson to do a full-day workshop on Lean for knowledge work settings. It’s going to be held in San Francisco on Thursday, January 29. Learn more…
This tweet and photo made me chuckle the other day… If it’s “your right” or “your left” as you’re going up or down the stairs, collisions are going to happen if everybody followed these instructions: In Japan, during our…
