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)

Podcast #179 – Judy Worth & Tom Shuker, Perfecting Patient Journeys, Lean Value Streams in Healthcare

ByMark Graban July 9, 2013 1595

My guests for Podcast #179 are my friends Judy Worth and Tom Shuker, two of the co-authors of the book Perfecting Patient Journeys, which was published earlier this year by the Lean Enterprise...

Podcast #178 – Drew Greenblatt, President of Marlin Wire on Lean and Competing Against Cheap Chinese Imports

ByMark Graban June 24, 2013 1890

Listen Joining me for Podcast #178 is Drew Greenblatt, President and Owner of Marlin Steel Wire Products, a manufacturing company based in Baltimore. I was really impressed with Drew's keynote talk at...

Podcast #177 – Bob Emiliani, Nobody Is Exempt From Improvement, Lean Leadership

ByMark Graban June 10, 2013 1431

Listen My guest for Podcast #177 is a returning guest, Bob Emiliani. In this episode, we're talking about one of his latest eBooks: Nobody Is Exempt From Improvement. Check out our previous podcasts...

Norman Bodek on the Harada Method and the Spirit of Self-Reliance

ByMark Graban May 30, 2013 6139

Joining me once again for episode #176 is my mentor and good friend Norman Bodek, who has been a guest many times here. Today, we are talking about his latest book, The Harada Method: The Spirit of...

Webinar Preview: Enterprise Excellence is Inclusive Excellence with William Harvey

ByMark Graban May 15, 2024 2020

I'm really excited to host and moderate the latest webinar in the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinar series, which will be presented by my friend Dr. William Harvey. REGISTER I saw William give a...

LinkedIn Poll on Barriers to Speaking Up: Fear and Futility

ByMark Graban May 14, 2024 2381

Why “See, Solve, Share” Needs a Missing Step Before Solve

ByMark Graban May 9, 2024 2285

Japan Study Trips: A Voyage of Leadership Discovery with Katie Anderson

ByMark Graban May 8, 2024 3659

Uncovering Root Causes: Beyond the Conference Room – The Lean Approach to Problem Solving

ByMark Graban May 6, 2024 1959

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...

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

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

April 28, 2025

Recently, I had the pleasure of moderating a webinar titled “Driving a Culture of Transforming...

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)

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

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

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

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

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

August 20, 2024

Psychological safety is often described as “feeling safe to speak up.” In Lean...

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...

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Mark Graban on YouTube

CPA Tyler McBroom had a call booked to discuss partnering with Tony Robbins. It was set for 10:30 PM, so he asked to reschedule. Then came three years of silence.

Tyler, CEO of TRM CPA and author of Cash Flow and Grow, explains what that request taught him about how opportunity works and why he kept following up anyway. He also talks about whether his four-person firm was ready for what it wanted. Later in the conversation, he shares how changing when the firm got paid nearly eliminated its accounts receivable. He also describes how a remote team built a culture that ranked number one among small employers on America’s Best Workplaces.

What you’ll learn:

🔵 Why adapting to a rare opportunity’s terms can matter more than protecting your schedule
🔵 How monthly follow-ups that showed real progress kept Tyler on the partner’s radar
🔵 Why a delayed opportunity can arrive when you’re finally able to absorb it
🔵 How charging up front, without raising prices, cut accounts receivable to a week or two of sales
🔵 Why a big price increase loses fewer clients than most owners fear
🔵 The “grin test” for deductions, and the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion
🔵 How a daily huddle keeps a remote team from feeling like a set of islands

Chapters:

00:00 Meet Tyler McBroom, CPA and author
01:10 The meeting he rescheduled with Tony Robbins' team
05:14 Three years of follow-up
06:20 The callback and the partnership offer
08:12 Why the wait built the capacity to grow
09:26 Tax avoidance vs. tax evasion
13:00 Changing when you get paid, not what you charge
20:09 Nine months of social media with zero clients
26:29 Bad tax advice and the grin test
35:16 Building a best place to work

About Tyler McBroom: Tyler McBroom, CPA, MBA, is the CEO of TRM CPA, which helps business owners legally keep more of their profits, and the author of Cash Flow and Grow.

Episode page: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake371

The Tony Robbins Meeting He Rescheduled | Tyler McBroom

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

Continuous Improvement in Accounting with Nick Katko | Lean Blog Interviews