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What 21,050 Clinicians Told Us About Fear and Futility
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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

Podcast #313 – Audiobook Excerpt From “Measures of Success”

Podcast #313 – Audiobook Excerpt From “Measures of Success”

ByMark Graban August 7, 2018 1407
Today's episode (#313) of the podcast is a bit of a departure from the norm. Instead of interviewing a guest about their book or other work, I'm reading what's basically an audiobook-style excerpt of...
Jeff Hunter on Patient-Centered Strategy and Building Learning Systems in Healthcare

Jeff Hunter on Patient-Centered Strategy and Building Learning Systems in Healthcare

ByMark Graban July 31, 2018 1835
Joining me today for Episode #312 of the podcast is Jeff Hunter, author of the excellent book "Patient-Centered Strategy: A Learning System for Better Care." Jeff was with the ThedaCare in...
Jess Orr on Lean Leadership, Toyota Lessons, and Saving 200 Jobs

Jess Orr on Lean Leadership, Toyota Lessons, and Saving 200 Jobs

ByMark Graban July 24, 2018 2766
My guest for Episode 311 is Jess Orr, a continuous improvement practitioner at WestRock, a large paper and packaging company, where she helps plants foster a culture of continuous improvement and...
Podcast #310 – Steve Shortell, The Impact of #Lean on Healthcare Quality

Podcast #310 – Steve Shortell, The Impact of #Lean on Healthcare Quality

ByMark Graban July 11, 2018 1821
Joining me again for Episode 310 is Stephen M. Shortell Ph.D., MPH, MBA. He is Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professorship, HPM and is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University...

More Blog Posts

Lean Coffee Talk #2 (Lean Whiskey #52): Australia, New Coke, Boeing, and the Future of Manufacturing in America

Lean Coffee Talk #2 (Lean Whiskey #52): Australia, New Coke, Boeing, and the Future of Manufacturing in America

Mark GrabanByMark Graban May 2, 2025 7904
Listen: In Season 2, Episode 2, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh begin with Mark sharing about his Australia and New Zealand workshop tour with the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. Even...

From Chaos to Clarity: How a Health System CEO Used Process Behavior Charts to Shift the Culture

Mark GrabanByMark Graban April 29, 2025 2547

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

Mark GrabanByMark Graban April 28, 2025 1898

Lean Isn’t Just About Cost: Stop Sabotaging Your Own Lean Efforts

Mark GrabanByMark Graban April 24, 2025 2219

40 Years of New Coke: What Coca-Cola’s Biggest Mistake Still Teaches Leaders

Mark GrabanByMark Graban April 23, 2025 7892

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

Lean Blog Week in Review #4 – September 26, 2010

ByMark Graban September 25, 2010 Comment (0) 1510
Here is the latest in my “Week in Review” series for the week ending 9/26/10, featuring...

Some Cool Video Technology for Standardized Work & Error Proofing

ByMark Graban September 22, 2010 Comments (9) 1360
I recently ran across a Michigan startup company called OPS Solutions that has some interesting...

Lean Blog Week in Review #2 – September 12, 2010

ByMark Graban September 11, 2010 Comment (0) 1891
Here's my second attempt at the Lean Blog Week in Review video. Thanks to those who gave feedback...

Mark Graban on YouTube

Strategy deployment -- hoshin kanri -- is supposed to work like a game of catch. Goals flow down from leadership, ideas and feedback flow back up from the people doing the work, and both sides adjust. The ball goes back and forth. A lot of organizations are playing dodgeball instead. The ball only goes one direction, it's thrown hard, and the people on the receiving end are just trying not to get hit. The cost isn't the meeting time you save by skipping the conversation. It's the year you lose executing against metrics that don't match the work. In this short, I share what happened when a hospital cascaded a patient falls target to a labor and delivery unit whose patients don't fall -- and the dashboard that would have looked perfect while the real risks went unmeasured. More on Lean leadership, psychological safety, and continuous improvement at LeanBlog.org. #StrategyDeployment #HoshinKanri #Lean #LeanLeadership #ContinuousImprovement #Leadership #CatchBall #OperationalExcellence #Kaizen #ProcessImprovement
Catch Ball or Dodgeball? How Goals Really Flow in Lean Management
Eric Dingler paused a weekly numbers meeting with his wife for six weeks. It became a year, and a cash-flow gap grew into debt he kept to himself. Eric, author of Hire to Grow, was running two businesses remotely while his family traveled full time through 20 countries. Without the weekly check-in, losing a client led to a short draw on a line of credit, then another, then one that never got repaid. Embarrassed, he held off telling his wife until he could also show her a way out. Meanwhile he launched a string of new offers that confused clients and his email list. He explains what was driving that silence, what changed after he told her, and how the same pattern shows up when owners hold on to work they should be handing off. What you'll learn: 🔵 Why pausing a routine accountability meeting can remove the check that catches both bad ideas and bad numbers 🔵 How a small line-of-credit draw snowballed when no one else was looking at the numbers 🔵 Eric's "significance, acceptance, and security" explanation for why people hide mistakes, even from someone who has never given them a reason to fear the reaction 🔵 Why testing ideas with bullets before cannonballs broke down once he started launching out of panic 🔵 The difference between training a team and developing one, and how that let Eric go 10 days in the Amazon without checking in 🔵 The 10/10/80 approach to using the hours a first hire frees up 🔵 Why Eric has committed that no one on his team will lose their job to AI 🔵 The first step for an owner who suspects they're the bottleneck: an honest time audit Chapters (approximate): 00:00 Meet Eric Dingler 02:05 The paused weekly meeting 06:05 Panic launches vs. small tests 10:34 Significance, acceptance, and security 14:38 Training vs. developing your team 19:35 Hiring before you feel ready 23:25 AI and a people-first team 34:48 Healthcare as a digital nomad 38:36 First step: an honest time audit Eric Dingler is a business coach and the owner of In Transit Studios, a digital marketing agency. He helps small business owners build teams that can run without them in the day-to-day. Hire to Grow: Make Your Next Hire Pay for Themself in 30 Days: https://link.amazon/B0cccpPQF (affiliate link) Website: https://ericdingler.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericdingler/ Episode page, show notes, and full transcript: https://markgraban.com/mistake368 Subscribe to My Favorite Mistake for more conversations with leaders about the mistakes that changed how they work. #MyFavoriteMistake #Leadership #SmallBusiness #Hiring #Delegation #PsychologicalSafety #DigitalNomad
The Accountability Meeting He Stopped Having | Eric Dingler
An ICU nurse was asked to run a hospital laboratory she knew nothing about, right as consultants arrived to cut costs. Four months in, she was sure saying yes had been a mistake. Stephanie Mitchell explains what changed her mind, and what she learned about leading people whose work you could never do yourself. 🔵 Why leading experts starts with admitting you are not one 🔵 What separates real cost reduction from an across-the-board 10 percent cut 🔵 Why a written no-layoff commitment was a condition of the consulting contract 🔵 How faster lab turnaround times helped the hospital avoid building an ER expansion 🔵 The five separate checks that stop one human error from reaching a patient 🔵 What David Mann meant by embracing a mistake instead of looking away from it 🔵 Why the people who never ask questions were the ones she worried about Chapters (approximate, pending verification against the published video): 00:00 Meeting again 20 years later 01:43 The favorite mistake: saying yes to the lab 05:01 Leading people who know more than you 09:48 Cutting costs the right way 13:54 The no-layoff promise 16:52 Turnaround times and the ER expansion they skipped 21:15 Convincing a skeptical CEO 24:35 Building the lean team 28:34 Five checks in the blood bank 33:18 Embracing the mistake Stephanie Mitchell, RN, BSN, MBA, retired as Director of Lean Process Improvement and Laboratory Services at Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, Illinois, where she led the laboratory for 20 years. Full episode page: https://markgraban.com/mistake367 Host Mark Graban is a consultant, speaker, and the author of The Mistakes That Make Us. Subscribe for new episodes of My Favorite Mistake every week. #MyFavoriteMistake #Leadership #Healthcare #Lean #ContinuousImprovement #PsychologicalSafety
They Asked a Nurse to Run the Hospital Lab | Stephanie Mitchell
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