All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Thanks to Dodge Communications for interviewing me for their blog: “Improving healthcare–there’s no instant pudding.” I was, of course, citing the late great Dr. W. Edwards Deming and his “There is no instant pudding” admonition. Hospitals and health systems are…
TL;DR: GM’s “Speak Up for Safety” program targets the wrong problem. Employees spoke up about the ignition switch for more than a decade. Leaders didn’t listen. The problem at GM wasn’t that employees didn’t speak up. An engineer flagged the…
When we lament why Lean hasn’t been more widely embraced as a new management model in healthcare (or other industries, for that matter), it’s good to ask “why?” We can identify gaps and propose countermeasures that might help solve this…
In the Kaizen process, we ask everyone–regardless of role or title–to identify problems (or opportunities) in their daily work. They’re encouraged to write down an idea that might solve the problem–or at least move things in the right direction. What’s…
I get a lot of emails from regular readers or people who have just stumbled across my blog. I try to be as helpful as I can (although I’m not really a good connection for Lean healthcare jobs that people…
tl;dr: This post features a rare 1990 video of Steve Jobs describing continuous improvement in ways that closely echo Lean and Kaizen principles. He challenges “we’ve always done it this way,” stresses that people are smart and should own improvement,…
Following up my post about not blaming a bartender, here’s another look at learning to cast aside our old habit of blaming individuals… this time, baseball related. Modern organizations (in healthcare and business) tend to blame an individual when something…
Following up on yesterday’s post that talked about “the old GM” putting cost ahead of quality, I sometimes get flashbacks to my days working for General Motors. I once slammed a greasy connecting rod down on my manager’s desk at GM.…
As a former GM employee and a GM customer, I’m really fascinated by the reaction of the public, the media, and Congress to the recalls and scandal over ignition switch problems in some GM small cars from recent years. The…
I’m happy to be a participating author on “The Lean Edge” blog/site that’s hosted by Michael Ballé author of The Gold Mine and other books. Their most recent question has many responses and I’ll try to help organize them for you here. Question: As CEO…
Updated 4/2/14: Yes, this was an April Fool’s joke :-) Today, I’m really excited to share with you the 10 best Lean management secrets that I’ve compiled through my own experiences and from interviewing hundreds of Lean leaders in different industries.…
I found a picture (posted by Jamie Voster on LinkedIn) and I re-shared it through my account. Neither Jamie nor I know where the picture was taken or who took it (I wish I could do a better job of…
