All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Most of us think of Kaizen as a workplace method. Robert Maurer applies it to therapy, health, and relationships — and the brain science he describes explains a lot about why change efforts fail at work, too. We talk about…
In conjunction with my publisher, Productivity Press (CRC Press), we’ve produced a short author video where I’m addressing some questions they wanted me to answer about our new book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements. The video:
In this month’s ASQ blog post, their CEO Paul Borawski writes a new post “The Intersection of Quality and Social Responsibility,” where he defines Social Responsibility succinctly as “Doing well by doing good.” One reason I have always been attracted…
I’ve probably seen the “Current Condition” portion of the fantastic “Toast Kaizen” DVD (from GBMP) more than a hundred times over the past seven years. At the end, when Bruce learns that his wife wants raisin toast (when he makes…
Common problem-solving mistakes include jumping to a solution, assuming a cause without checking it, and declaring success before studying the results. The MRI example below shows how even a problem statement can commit a team to an expensive answer before…
Interesting article here: “Case in Point: Avoiding martial-arts moves by ‘pulling the Andon cord‘” that was in the Washington Post, of all places. The piece, written by a duo of a professor and a consultant, attempts (I think) to make…
My guest for podcast #152 is Matt Stewart, and we are talking about his book The Walk-On: Inside Northwestern’s Rise From Cellar Dweller To Big Ten Champ. Matt and I are both graduates of Northwestern University. While he played football on…
I think this post is both urgent and important… Dr. Stephen Covey has passed away, at age 79. Read Tom Peters’ tribute to Dr. Covey here, which includes: One simply cannot pay tribute to Stephen Covey without saying at the…
In this post, I’d like to share a nice 7-minute video from St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh, showing the transition from an inefficient “par level” system (that often led to stock outs for nursing supplies) to a two-bin kanban system…
Thanks to the guys at Quality Digest… I was on their weekly video show “Quality Digest Live” last week, talking about “Healthcare Kaizen.” You can view the archived video here (click on the July 6 episode if that doesn’t play…
As a frequent flyer on American Airlines, I often have five or six itineraries booked at a time. Unfortunately, the poor design of the American Airlines website includes the risk that I might cancel the wrong itinerary and flight. The Lean principle of mistake proofing would go a long way... and I'm sure a simple bit of programming could easily alleviate this risk.
I was recently at a conference and the microphone struck me… it looks an awful lot like our KaiNexus logo (or I see our logo too much and my eyes are playing tricks on me). I mentioned this to our…
