Popular Posts
A Lean Management System That Doesn’t Depend on the Lean Team — Emily Swaney, OhioHealth Creating a Continuous Improvement System in Accounting: Nick Katko on PDCA, Culture, and Psychological Safety
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Mark Graban

Lean Leadership, Psychological Safety, and Continuous Improvement

Since 2005, LeanBlog.org has shared practical insights from real-world work in healthcare, manufacturing, and beyond.

Books Keynote Speaking Coaching / Advisory Podcasts
Books by Mark Graban on Lean, Leadership, and Learning (4)

Lean Blog Interviews Podcast

Lean Manufacturing in China: Opportunities and Challenges – Featuring Jim Womack

Lean Manufacturing in China: Opportunities and Challenges – Featuring Jim Womack

ByMark Graban December 4, 2006 2751
Update 12/17: Click here for part 2 of the Womack podcast. LeanBlog Podcast #12 brings us a special guest, James P. Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute, the author of many books, including the...

Enlightening Top Leadership on the Benefits of Lean: A Conversation with Lean Pioneer Norman Bodek – LeanBlog Podcast #11

ByMark Graban November 26, 2006 1727
Here is LeanBlog Podcast #11, once again with Norman Bodek of PCS Press and the author of many books, including Kaikaku: The Power and Magic of Lean. In this Podcast, we discuss a topic posed by a...

Driving Organizational Change with Lean Principles: Insights from Jamie Flinchbaugh – LeanBlog Podcast #10

ByMark Graban November 22, 2006 1704
Here is LeanBlog Podcast #10, again with Jamie Flinchbaugh, Founder of and Partner, co-author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean. In this Podcast, we respond to an audio question from blog...
Creating a Lean Culture That Lasts: A Conversation with David Mann

Creating a Lean Culture That Lasts: A Conversation with David Mann

ByMark Graban November 6, 2006 3483
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #9 is a discussion with David Mann, the author of the excellent book Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions. In this episode, we will talk about...

More Blog Posts

The Ironic Saga of the Broken “My Favorite Mistake” Coffee Mugs

The Ironic Saga of the Broken “My Favorite Mistake” Coffee Mugs

Mark GrabanByMark Graban June 23, 2023 2962
TL;DR: Broken coffee mugs turned into a practical lesson about learning from mistakes, system design, kindness, and why fixing root causes matters more than fixing symptoms. Here's a story I've meant...

A Workplace Culture Where “FAIL” Means First Attempt in Learning

Mark GrabanByMark Graban June 22, 2023 2560

Special Launch Price: $2.99 for the Kindle Version of “The Mistakes That Make Us” — And My Book Launch Planning Mistake

Mark GrabanByMark Graban June 20, 2023 1242

Shaunté Kinch on Solving Big Problems in Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Beyond

Mark GrabanByMark Graban June 19, 2023 1974

Patient Frustration: Why Did I Bother Checking In Online Then?

Mark GrabanByMark Graban June 19, 2023 1242

Webinars

karen martin ask the expert webinar kainexus

Ask Karen Martin Anything on Operational Excellence: A KaiNexus Webinar

March 5, 2026
Karen Martin is one of those people I've been lucky to know and learn from for a long time. She's...
1. Professor with glasses in front of EMS 20th anniversary logo and KaiNexus logo on blue background.

Unlock the Power of Leadership: A Preview of the Electrolux Manufacturing System (EMS) Webinar

December 4, 2025
KaiNexus recently hosted a webinar I was especially looking forward to: “Unlock the Power of...
Breaking Through Cultural Friction: Respect for People and Sustainable Performance

Breaking Through Cultural Friction: Respect for People and Sustainable Performance

June 9, 2025
When organizations struggle to sustain Lean transformation, people often look first at tools...
Driving a Culture of Patient Safety: Lessons for Healthcare and Beyond

Driving a Culture of Patient Safety: Lessons for Healthcare and Beyond

April 28, 2025
Recently, I had the pleasure of moderating a webinar titled “Driving a Culture of Transforming...
Why Lean Fails Without Psychological Safety

Why Lean Fails Without Psychological Safety

April 16, 2025
TL;DR: Lean tools don't fail because people resist change–they fail because people don't feel...
Preview: Driving a Culture of Accountability – Transforming Patient Safety with KaiNexus (Webinar, April 15)

Preview: Driving a Culture of Accountability – Transforming Patient Safety with KaiNexus (Webinar, April 15)

April 8, 2025
One of the most powerful elements of continuous improvement is the ability to learn from each other...
My Upcoming Webinar on Mistake-Proofing Across Industries

My Upcoming Webinar on Mistake-Proofing Across Industries

February 3, 2025
I'm excited to be presenting this webinar on February 12th at 1 pm ET as part of the KaiNexus...
Top 5 Takeaways from my KaiNexus Webinar: Psychological Safety as a Precondition for Continuous Improvement

Top 5 Takeaways from my KaiNexus Webinar: Psychological Safety as a Precondition for Continuous Improvement

January 8, 2025
TL;DR: Psychological safety isn't optional for continuous improvement. This KaiNexus webinar...
Creating Leader Standard Work (LSW) Across a Distributed Business Model — Webinar Preview

Creating Leader Standard Work (LSW) Across a Distributed Business Model — Webinar Preview

November 7, 2024
I'm happy to be hosting and moderating this webinar that will be presented by Brent Loescher, a...
Embedding Change Management into your Continuous Improvement Initiatives – Webinar Preview

Embedding Change Management into your Continuous Improvement Initiatives – Webinar Preview

September 25, 2024
I'm happy to be hosting and moderating this webinar that will be presented by Melissa Sherman, a...
View Our “Ask Us Anything” Event on Psychological Safety and Lean

View Our “Ask Us Anything” Event on Psychological Safety and Lean

August 20, 2024
Psychological safety is often described as “feeling safe to speak up.” In Lean...
From Strategy to Execution: Webinar with Karen Friedenberg

From Strategy to Execution: Webinar with Karen Friedenberg

July 17, 2024
Are you looking to transform your business strategy into actionable results? Join us for our...

Videos

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Mark Graban on YouTube

I built an AI coach this year, and almost all of the work went into teaching it not to answer questions. Early on, someone would type a real problem -- our lab turnaround times are terrible, we tried 5S and it didn’t stick -- and it would immediately deliver a confident, well-organized lecture. Good content. Useless as coaching. It didn’t know what they’d tried or what their constraints were. It just pattern-matched to a topic and started teaching. The coaching prompt is now around five thousand words, and most of it is some version of: don’t answer yet, ask what’s going on. That number has stuck with me as a measure of how strong the pull toward answering is -- and not just for software. The second lesson surprised me more. I built a direct-answer mode alongside the Socratic one, assuming the coaching mode was the real one. I was wrong. Sometimes a person needs a definition or a worked example, and making them earn it with six questions isn’t coaching. It’s a performance of coaching. You can try it at https://leancoach.ai -- I’m still tuning it. More on Lean leadership, psychological safety, and continuous improvement at LeanBlog.org. #Coaching #Leadership #Lean #AI #ContinuousImprovement #LeadershipDevelopment #ArtificialIntelligence #OperationalExcellence #Mentoring #ProcessImprovement
I Spent Months Teaching an AI Coach Not to Answer
Nick Katko returns to Lean Blog Interviews to talk about his new book, Creating a Continuous Improvement System in Accounting. Nick is president and owner of BMA, a CPA, and author of The Lean CFO and Practicing Lean Accounting. Accounting teams see problems every day. As Nick puts it, they fix them, but they don’t necessarily solve them. We talk about why that happens, what a continuous improvement system looks like inside an accounting department, and why culture and psychological safety have to come before improvement events. Topics include: 🔵 Why many accounting leaders misunderstand continuous improvement, especially when it gets done to them 🔵 An accounts payable team that cut invoice defects from about 43% to 15% by starting with data 🔵 The three components of the system: simple PDCA problem solving, daily lean management, and improvement events 🔵 Why small improvements beat the next big thing (blockchain then, AI now) 🔵 Time, not ability, as the main reason problems don’t get solved 🔵 What happened when the one person who spoke up about month-end close was fired 🔵 Why psychological safety shifts when a leader walks into the room 🔵 A daily problem-solving huddle that ended finger-pointing between accounting and purchasing 🔵 Measuring a faster close in person-hours, not just days 🔵 Independent publishing, and the book covers drawn by Nick’s grandchildren Chapters: 00:00 Intro and Nick’s background 01:31 Where the book came from: coaching two accounting teams in Ohio 03:19 More than a book: checklists, assessments, and training slides on Nick’s website 04:16 Why accounting teams fix problems instead of solving them 06:03 Accounts payable example: data first, then improvement events 08:03 The three parts of a continuous improvement system in accounting 11:41 Big initiatives vs. small improvements 14:07 The real reason problems don’t get solved: time 17:19 When one person is the process: psychological safety in small teams 18:44 The person who spoke up and was fired 21:22 Psychological safety is situational 26:24 Creating the culture first, and a leader self-assessment 29:31 Fear and futility: why people stay quiet 33:12 Accounting vs. purchasing: a daily problem-solving huddle 35:34 A healthcare parallel: the ED, the lab, and crooked labels 39:37 Walking away from a top-down engagement 41:46 What a faster close is really worth 45:00 Independent publishing and the grandchildren’s book covers 50:51 Closing Nick’s book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HCRDNBJM Supplemental materials: [VERIFY: URL on Nick’s website] Nick’s previous appearance, Episode 492: [VERIFY: link] About Mark Graban: Mark is an author, speaker, consultant, and Senior Advisor to KaiNexus. His books include Lean Hospitals, Healthcare Kaizen, Measures of Success, and The Mistakes That Make Us. His next book is The Silence Tax: How Lean Leaders Drive Out Fear and Futility. He hosts the Lean Blog Interviews and My Favorite Mistake podcasts and writes at https://www.leanblog.org Subscribe for more conversations on Lean, leadership, psychological safety, and continuous improvement. #LeanAccounting #ContinuousImprovement #PsychologicalSafety #LeanThinking #Accounting #CFO #PDCA #Kaizen #LeanLeadership #RespectForPeople #LeanCFO #MonthEndClose
Continuous Improvement in Accounting with Nick Katko | Lean Blog Interviews
Grant Harris teaches leaders to fix the process, not the people. Then he created the friction he helps clients remove, and it cost him a deal. A cold inbound lead landed in his LinkedIn inbox with the budget approved, the association’s president on board, and a fee close to what he hoped for. Instead of accepting the offer, he proposed a leadership session and extras before and after the talk they had asked for. The planner had to go back with new questions, review another proposal, and reopen a budget that was already approved. He was not selected, and he says rightfully so. He kept the relationship, skipped the question “why not me,” and ran a debrief instead. Grant sees the same pattern inside organizations: a capable person gets labeled rigid, aloof, or disengaged when the cause is a broken handoff, a deadline that shifted, or a project that never had a charter. What you’ll learn: 🔵 Why an extra the buyer never asked for reads as friction, not generosity 🔵 How Grant debriefs a lost deal without asking “why not me” 🔵 Accurate accountability: when it is fair to hold one person accountable, and when the same failure across different people points at the process 🔵 The question that replaces “Sally messed up”: what part of the process made this outcome possible? 🔵 Where process friction hides: talent decisions, feedback loops, and communication norms 🔵 Why retraining rarely fixes a process problem, and what a restorative response looks like instead 🔵 How a late autism diagnosis shaped the way Grant sees capable people who get mislabeled at work Chapters: 00:00 Meet Grant Harris 01:01 The speaking lead that became friction 06:14 The debrief after not being selected 14:20 Fix your process, not your people 16:56 Late autism diagnosis, mislabeled at work 22:06 Accurate accountability 27:43 Ask a question, not a statement 32:09 Wrong medication: start with the fact 34:30 Restorative, not punitive 40:51 Grant’s free friction signal check About Grant Harris: Grant Harris, MBA, CDE, is the founder and president of GTH Consulting and a speaker and consultant on what he calls human-centered performance: fixing workplace friction before capable people get misread as performance problems. He is a Certified Diversity Executive, a corporate board member, and a three-time published autistic author. He has worked with organizations including The Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and ASICS. Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantharris555/ GTH Consulting: https://linktr.ee/GTH_Consulting Free friction signal check: send Grant a LinkedIn message with the word “Scorecard” Show notes, full transcript, and links: https://markgraban.com/mistake370 Subscribe for more episodes of My Favorite Mistake with host Mark Graban. #MyFavoriteMistake #Leadership #ProcessImprovement #PsychologicalSafety #Accountability #Neurodiversity #LearningFromMistakes
The “Value Add” That Cost Him the Deal | Grant Harris
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