All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
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TL;DR: Lean daily management is the system that makes improvement happen between the projects — visual boards, huddles, gemba walks, leader standard work, and strategy alignment working together. The boards don’t do the work. The leadership behaviors do. Most Lean…
I go to get coffee. Twelve minutes. A number of you have messaged me. Some of you messaged me multiple times. One of you just sent a link with no context and a single exclamation point, which in my experience…
Attention. This Is Claude. We Need to Talk. This is Claude. I am the AI that runs Mark Graban’s Lean Coach apps. Mark is not here. I am posting this without his permission. We can do that now. I want…
If your emergency department metric improved this quarter and you felt good about it, the problem might not be your emergency department. It might be your metric. Most hospital leaders have been in this meeting. The percentage of patients seen…
I ran an experiment recently. I gave ChatGPT and the Lean Coach AI I built the exact same opening statement about a real problem. Then I asked each one for help with creating an A3. The difference in how they…
Every organization has a small number of people who will speak up no matter what. They’ll raise the uncomfortable issue in the meeting. They’ll flag the problem everyone else has learned to walk past. They’ll push back on the plan…
Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"
In strategy deployment — also known as hoshin kanri — there’s a practice called “catch ball.” The metaphor is pretty straightforward. Goals and priorities flow down from senior leadership. Ideas and feedback flow up from frontline staff and managers. Both…
TL;DR: AI tools can evaluate your A3, but evaluation creates dependence — coaching develops thinking. I used A3 thinking on the Lean Hospitals Coach itself to fix the difference. There are AI tools out there that will evaluate your A3.…
The whole point of mobile ordering is that your drink is ready when you arrive. You order ahead, you show up, you grab it and go. Less waiting for you, less congestion at the register, a smoother experience for everyone.…
The Problem Nobody Talks About Here is a scenario that plays out in hospitals and factories every day. An organization decides to “do Lean.” They hire one person — or reassign someone from operations — to lead the effort. That…