All Posts on Lean Blog

Healthcare - Creating Value for Patients Healthcare innovation is prone to continuous pilots of improvements that are already proven and a half-hearted embrace of meaningful change. Sachin Jain, CEO of…
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When we have really sticky, complicated problems (like the widespread healthcare patient safety and quality problems), I think it's interesting to think about problems in the following terms... for a particular problem, which is true? …
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My guest for Episode #343 of the podcast is Amanda Mewborn, an executive director of project management for Piedmont Health. I've known Amanda through the Society for Health Systems and she's one of the very small number of people I…
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I got a message from a reader of my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. The questions were: "I entered data from Press Ganey patient satisfaction responses (12-month running totals) and since the numbers…
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I attended the IHI National Forum a few times, in 2010 and 2011, I think. I recently stumbled across a few photos from my archives that I'll share here. I always love it when conference posters show "control charts" instead of a…
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My workshop based on my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More are a lot of fun. They are a great way to learn and practice methods related to "Process Behavior Charts." We play the "red bead experiment" and…
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I was invited to be a guest on a Detroit radio talk show that's hosted by Dr. Paul Reeves, a show called "Dr. Paul's Family Talk." Dr. Paul is an educator (and a drummer, like me!) and he asked some really good questions about my books,…
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Originally posted a few years ago, I'm reposting this for the holiday here in the U.S.
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Healthcare - Creating Value for Patients Compelling people with evidence or demanding compliance does very little to drive adoption of new practices - handing out articles, making posters and Powerpoint presentations to…
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Mark and Jamie Jamie Flinchbaugh and I got a great response to the first episode of our new "Lean Whiskey" podcast. We've had a great time with this and I'm happy that anybody is willing to listen :-) We've done our second episode,…
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My guest for Episode #342 of the podcast is Adam Ward, the author of Lean Design in Healthcare: A Journey to Improve Quality and Process of Care. Adam is an innovation process expert and independent advisor. He spent the first 12…
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Our last KaiNexus webinar took a deep dive into problem solving -- you can check out the recording on the KaiNexus website or through YouTube. The next webinar, being held on June 5, will take a step back to look at things from a…
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Over the past year, I've heard about the "OKRs" methodology that is used in tech companies like Google. OKRs stands for Objectives & Key Results. The approach (along with examples and case studies) are laid out in the book by…
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I always enjoy the KaiNexus User Conference (now called KaiNexicon starting this year) and they ask me to give a talk each year. Last year, I gave a talk called "When Being Right is the Wrong Strategy for Change" and KaiNexus recently…
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If you missed yesterday's blog post and podcast with Dr. Rob Hackett from Australia, please check it out. After meeting Rob and corresponding over the past few weeks about various patient safety issues, one topic that keeps coming up is…
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My guest for Episode #341 of the podcast is Dr. Rob Hackett, an anaesthesiologist in Sydney, Australia. Rob has become known around the world for his role in what's now called the "Theatre Cap Challenge" -- a method for improving…
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Be honest, would you have seen the intentional typo in the post title if I hadn't put it on quotation marks? It's still not easy to see, is it? Proofreading is difficult and it's impossible for even the skilled, dedicated proofreading…
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