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![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](https://www.leanblog.org/wp-content/plugins/feeds-for-youtube/img/placeholder.png)
