Lean Baby Names?
Our friend and sometimes blogger Bill Hanover posted a comment a few days ago about the arrival of a baby boy – congrats. He joked about “Lean” names, so I’ll share a few suggestions (and feel free to submit some):…
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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
"It’s Okay To Be The Boss"
I wrote about the “Ask Me Why” button last week and here’s another one I’ve meant to write about for a while. My wife was given this button at a work event where somebody talked about leadership. The simple button…
Looking for Muda in Hospitals
Institute for Healthcare Improvement Article This article from the IHI talks about the need to find “muda” (waste) in hospitals. They say: “In the health care arena, not a patient among us — or nurse, receptionist, surgeon, physical therapist, attendant…
5 Whys Survey Full Free-Form Responses
Following up again on the “5 Whys” survey, I’m still planning on going through and categorizing the analyzing the full responses, but I wanted to go ahead and release the full text of the responses. Download the PDF here. Example…
Delegation is Not "Buck Passing"
The article isn’t online, you’ll have to join the club lucky enough (ahem) to fly American Airlines to read the gem of an article from American Way magazine titled “Pass the Buck to Make a Buck.” The main point is…
"An Organizational Accident"
‘Chicago Way’ is no way to run mass-transit system It’s something I’ve written about before, about how the media and the public tend to blame individuals, or at least we want a scapegoat. Who screwed up? Whose fault? This has…
Reader Question on VSM
Here’s a question from Gerry, a blog reader: Once you do a 2 or 3 day Value Stream Mapping event, would you do another event on the same process to refine it even more? One of our CI / Lean…
Innovation and Lean
Together We Innovate The WSJ has a Saturday report section on business and innovation, including the article I’ve linked to here (which can also be found here for free). Lean and a focus on process and standardized work is sometimes…
A Good Quote (from 1882!)
I’m prepping for a presentation I’m giving next week on Lean leadership styles and I ran across tihs great quote that John Shook shared at his presentation at the Global Lean Healthcare Summit earlier this year. I wanted to share…
Lean and Media Companies?
I received an email from Norway, asking a question I couldn’t answer, so I’m turning it to the blog readers: [ I work for a] European media group based in Norway . We have around 8.500 employees and operations in…
Dare to Wear this Button?
I’ve written before about the “Ask Me” campaign that runs in many hospitals, usually in context of “ask me if I’ve washed my hands.” One hospital runs a slight variation of the buttons and a sign campaign that encourages patients,…
Bad Systems: TSA at DFW Terminal A
I’m going to try to tie this into Lean, or so I think. I had the most mind-numbing experience at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (my home airport, Terminal A, near gate A35, last Monday night (Labor Day). As I…
