TL;DR: In healthcare huddles, how leaders ask about patient safety can either invite honest discussion or make speaking up feel risky. Open-ended, system-focused questions–combined with consistent follow-through–are essential for building psychological safety and preventing harm. I think that working to…
The other day, I stumbled across an old article that I remember, as it was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2004. The WSJ normally has a paywall, but this article is old enough that it’s free to the…
Before Christmas, I was thinking again about upgrading my iPhone 8 Plus to the newer iPhone 11 Pro, as I wrote about here: A few days before Christmas, I decided to take the plunge. In the spirit of “Kaizen,” I…
It’s a bit of a Throwback Thursday… in October of 2017, I wrote this post about my, ahem, “resistance to change” when it came to the new iPhone X: Two years later, I’m now considering upgrading to an iPhone 11…
W. Edwards Deming’s ideas about systems thinking, measurement, psychology, and leadership remain highly relevant for healthcare improvement today, even decades after they were first articulated. Why Deming Still Matters in Healthcare Today Healthcare leaders continue to struggle with quality improvement…
General Jim Mattis has been making the rounds to talk about his new book that is out today: Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. “Learning to Lead” sounds like it could be the title of a book about Lean management.…
Here is an article that caught my eye recently, from HBR: “How One Health System Overcame Resistance to a Surgical Checklist“ Seeing the word “resistance” always makes me wonder if the health system in the article was blaming surgeons (or…
I’ve been battling some sort of bronchitis or respiratory infection for about five days now…. blah. Lots of coughing and my voice is shot. Good thing I’m traveling or speaking this week. And, I’m glad not to be in a…
What do you hope to change in 2019? If your New Year’s resolutions have already gotten off track, don’t feel bad. Various studies estimate that 80 to 90 percent of resolutions fail. We can get our resolutions back on track…
Thanks to Catalysis for asking me to write a guest blog post… yesterday, they published this: Being Open to Learning and Using Process Behavior Charts Means Unlearning Something Else My post starts: “Why don’t people adopt best practices? I get…
It was a busy year for me in the podcast realm. I produced 33 “Lean Blog Podcast” episodes of interviews about the various aspects of Lean. Click here to view them all (to listen, really… but each page has show…
If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know that the practice of "Motivational Interviewing" has been a big interest of mine for a few years. Although this method comes from the clinical practice of addiction counseling, there are many applications in the workplace.
This week on the Lean Enterprise Institute's "The Lean Post" site, former Toyota leader Ron Oslin is asked about Motivational Interviewing and how leaders might be "addicted to the status quo" (a phrase Ron has trademarked).
