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A Lean Management System That Doesn’t Depend on the Lean Team — Emily Swaney, OhioHealth 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

Baldrige, Lean, and Healthcare Quality: Karen Kiel-Rosser of Mary Greeley Medical Center

Baldrige, Lean, and Healthcare Quality: Karen Kiel-Rosser of Mary Greeley Medical Center

ByMark Graban March 16, 2015 2099
My guest for episode #218 is Karen Kiel-Rosser, Vice President/Quality Improvement Officer at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Iowa. You might remember Karen from a recent post where she told a great...
Alan Robinson on Idea-Driven Organizations, Kaizen, and the Pitfalls of Suggestion Boxes

Alan Robinson on Idea-Driven Organizations, Kaizen, and the Pitfalls of Suggestion Boxes

ByMark Graban March 2, 2015 4001
Our guest today is Alan G. Robinson, PhD, an award-winning author, educator, researcher and consultant. He has co-authored six books, including Modern Approaches to Manufacturing Improvement: The...
Dan Jones on Lean Beyond Manufacturing: Public Sector, Healthcare, and Agile Connections

Dan Jones on Lean Beyond Manufacturing: Public Sector, Healthcare, and Agile Connections

ByMark Graban February 20, 2015 2293
Returning to the podcast after his first appearance in Episode #188 is Daniel T. Jones, founder and chairman of the UK-based Lean Enterprise Academy. You can find him on Twitter now as...
Podcast #215 – John Ervin, Lean & Patient Safety in the Operating Room

Podcast #215 – John Ervin, Lean & Patient Safety in the Operating Room

ByMark Graban February 12, 2015 1681
Listen Today's guest is my friend John Ervin and we were able to sit down together here in San Antonio to record this episode. John has about 20 years of healthcare leadership experience, including in...

More Blog Posts

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: August 9, 2024

Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: August 9, 2024

Ryan McCormackByRyan McCormack August 9, 2024 5511
Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts...

Flow Engineering in Action: Insights from Authors Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis

Mark GrabanByMark Graban August 7, 2024 5555
fans watching the olympics on TV waving US and Canadian flags

Why Two (or Four) Data Points Aren’t a Trend: Olympic TV Viewership Explained

Mark GrabanByMark Graban July 31, 2024 3777

Looking for Feedback on the Portuguese (Brazil) Version of The Mistakes That Make Us

Mark GrabanByMark Graban July 31, 2024 1858
Image showing two signs on a centrifuge. The left sign is handwritten and reads "DO NOT CHANGE SPIN TIME. Should be 6 Min." The right sign is printed and reads "Centrifuges now need to be set for 6 MINUTES. Why? This is the required time for plasma tubes. Please do not set the timer back to 10 minutes or any other time." The right sign provides context and reasoning for the instruction, while the left sign is a direct command without explanation.

From Commands to Collaboration: Lessons in Respectful and Effective Workplace Signage

Mark GrabanByMark Graban July 29, 2024 2813

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

Video — Lean in the UK National Health Service

ByMark Graban June 22, 2007 Comment (0) 732
The positive ER post of the day…. here's a nice video of a news story from the UK. The...

Improving the ER on "ER"

ByMark Graban June 4, 2007 Comment (1) 812
YouTube – Improving the ER on ER I don't always watch the NBC show ER, but this portion caught...

Video: A (Definitely) Crazy (Allegedly) Chinese Press Operation

ByMark Graban May 31, 2007 Comments (4) 803
I don't know the original source of this and I can't vouch for its authenticity, but I can only...

Mark Graban on YouTube

Toyota has been replacing its famous andon cord with buttons. I visited Toyota's plant in Durban, South Africa, to see how the andon system works there and why they made the switch. Toyota started the change at a plant in Toyota City in 2013. The Durban plant switched about a year ago, and they gave me two reasons. First, there are now two buttons. Yellow calls for help, and red stops the line right away for something like a safety issue. Second, with 90 to 100 andon activations a day in one area, reaching overhead that often was becoming an ergonomics risk. The hardware changed, but the response didn't. When a team member pressed the button, the team leader was there within seconds. Read more on LeanBlog.org: The Toyota Andon System in South Africa: Two Buttons Instead of a Cord https://www.leanblog.org/2026/09/toyota-andon-system-south-africa/ Why Toyota Is Eliminating the Andon Cord (2014) https://www.leanblog.org/2014/08/toyota-eliminating-andon-cord/ Follow for a new Lean short every week. #Andon #Toyota #ToyotaProductionSystem #Lean #LeanManufacturing #ContinuousImprovement #Kaizen #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #Manufacturing #Shorts
Why Toyota Is Replacing the Andon Cord with Buttons
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
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