Six Sigma Ranch and Winery
Six Sigma – People I might not be able to blog much the next few days, so I’ll pose this fun question. Has anyone heard of the Six Sigma winery, founded by a former GE executive? What would a “Lean…
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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes
Article – New York Times Here’s a really interesting article that talks about our attitudes about mistakes. In the Toyota mindset, mistakes are something to learn from (and to prevent from reoccurring), an idea that can be traced all the…
Win or Lose, You Win, If…
Wall Street’s cushy exile – November 26, 2007… if you’re a top executive. Same thing is proving true in the investment banking world, even after the mortgage mess. The grand strategic decision to not verify borrowers’ incomes, for one, has…
The Sun Devil Suggestion System
My wife is an Arizona State alumna, so we’re watching the annual Arizona St / Arizona rivalry football game (well, I’m watching it, she just cares if ASU wins… sort of). The sideline announcer just told a quick story about…
Demand for Lean Talent Matches Six Sigma
Six Sigma and Lean Talent Demand: Finally Reaching Parity A press release says that demand for Lean skills and experience has risen: Based on its third annual sampling of Internet job postings, The Avery Point Group found that Six Sigma…
Follow Ups to BIDMC
If you’ve been following any of the posts about healthcare, here are a few interesting follow ups. Following up on this post about Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, CEO Paul Levy posted many interesting employee responses to his email…
The New Style CEO?
C.E.O. Evolution Phase 3 – New York Times In this quote: Mr. [X] “is disarmingly unpretentious,” he added. “…he towers over other C.E.O.’s when it comes to putting in people stronger than himself or his ability to talk about setbacks.”…
The Need for Clean Hospitals
Our Unsanitary Hospitals – WSJ.com That’s “Clean”, not a typo of “Lean.” Good column in the WSJ today by Betsy McCaughey, head of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths organization (link). She asks why restaurants and meat packing plants get…
Gary Convis on Lean Leadership
Role of Management in a Lean Manufacturing Environment If you want to learn about the Toyota style of leading people, one of the best sources is Gary Convis. Here is a link to a column written directly by him. For…
My At-Home Medical Mistake: Taking the Wrong Version of Day / Night Cold Medication
I’m a bit mad at myself for inflicting some preventable human error on myself last night. It’s OK, I didn’t harm myself, but let me tell the story. I’ve been battling what’s either severe allergies or a mild cold for…
"FEMA Does Not Reward Innovation"
AP News | The Columbia Daily Tribune How’s this for government bureaucracy? People got creative in trying to save money to restock the New Orleans aquarium by chartering a boat to go catch fish instead of buying them. The catch?…
Toyota’s All-Out Drive To Stay Toyota
Business Week Article I have a number of “Toyota is struggling” articles in the backlog to work through. Maybe I’ll dump the rest of those later in a single post. This was a good article from BusinessWeek (actually a weekly…
