A New App to Download, Events to Attend, and a Book to Read
Today’s post is a few Friday odds and ends about a new thing I’ve been involved, events I’m attending, and a new book I’m anxious to read (after I’m done reading a favorite old one).
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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Re-visiting Chapter 2 of Out of the Crisis (Part 1)
Continuing my series on re-reading Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s book Out of the Crisis, I’m posting a series of tweets from the Chapter along with my thoughts and comments. At about 70 pages, it’s a long, dense chapter, including Deming’s…
Great Newsweek Cover Story on Why Layoffs Are Harmful
I had long given up on Newsweek as a source of news (hey, at least it’s published weekly unlike IndustryWeek). But this cover caught my eye at the airport on Friday, I had to buy it instead of waiting to…
Arbitrary Targets at DFW – What About Your Organization?
As I’ve been re-reading Dr. Deming’s Out of the Crisis, stuff like this jumps out at me more and more. I saw similar signs at Heathrow Airport last month bragging about the airport exceeding targets for customer service. This is,…
Everyone Deserves to do Quality Work – From Kitchen Nightmare to Career
A new season of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” show has started on Fox. This show is still my favorite “business” show on TV, as there are often many important lessons about management, quality, and leadership. The episode about the “Hot…
Creative Kludge from a Cop = Kaizen?
A site related to my favorite failblog.org is “There I Fixed It,” a creative collection of bad workarounds or clever fixes, depending on your perspective. This one, below, is a creative solution that a police officer came up with for…
John Toussaint Blog Posts & Interview
Today, I’m sharing a few links featuring the thoughts of John Toussaint, M.D., the CEO Emeritus of the ThedaCare health system in Wisconsin and current CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. John is a partner with the Lean…
The Role of Purpose and Your Role
What is your role at work? Your purpose? Those questions might make you really stop and think. I sat in yesterday on a class, taught by an ex-Toyota leader, that raised a number of thought-provoking questions about Lean and the…
An Article about Lean Design and Construction for Hospitals
In this article, “Go Lean in 2010: Reducing Waste in Construction,” there’s a nice description of the design process that Seattle Children’s Hospital uses to get staffed engaged in making sure new space is designed and built to support their…
Thinking and Adapting in the Context of Standardized Work
When I was in Sweden recently, we had a lot of good discussion about the Lean concept of “standardized work.” There was a lot of agreement from different presenters at the Lean laboratories conference, and from the hospital people we…
Dr. Atul Gawande and Checklists on “The Daily Show”
Here is a nice 5-minute introduction to the topic without too much mockery from Jon Stewart! Stewart even makes a Star Wars reference – an example of people with high responsibility following checklists to avoid mistakes:
Revisiting and Re-reading Dr. Deming’s “Out of the Crisis” – Chapter 1
For a number of reasons, I’ve decided to re-read my copy of one of the most influential books I’ve ever read: Out of the Crisis by the late, great Dr. W. Edwards Deming. In the light of Toyota’s recent quality…
