Joining me today for Episode #330 of the podcast is Christoph Roser, a professor of production management at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences in Germany. He has decades of experience with Lean manufacturing including time with Toyota in Japan,…
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…
I had a great time and learned so much as a guest of Honsha and their Executive Development Mission trip to Japan in October. The formal site visits to factories and companies were great, but a lot of the learning…
Skip Steward, the Chief Improvement Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care in Tennessee, was a guest on Episode #314 of the podcast talking about TWI and Toyota Kata in healthcare (he was joined by Brandon Brown).
Today, I've asked Skip to come back and chat 1x1, in Episode #320, about his experience with Don Wheeler, learning from W. Edwards Deming, and more. I hope you enjoy his reflections, our discussions about healthcare, and connections to my book Measures of Success (Skip undoubtedly has a book in him too).
Why do people fear change? Why are adults afraid of talking about their fears? My guest today is eminently qualified to answer such questions and to provide advice that can help us. My guest for Episode #315 is Robert Maurer, Ph.D., author of the outstanding book Mastering Fear.
Bob was previously my guest for Episode #153, where we discussed one of his earlier books on Kaizen, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. By the way, earlier this year I noticed that his other book The Spirit of Kaizen was one of the few books by an American author that Toyota was selling at the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya (see photo below).
I hope you enjoy today's discussion on Mastering Fear. As the subtitle says, can we "harness emotion to achieve excellence in health, work, and relationships"?
When surgeons have no better options than complaining about process problems on LinkedIn, are their leaders and organizations really properly supporting them? In this post, we'll explore questions of blame, accountability, and engaging people in process improvement... being of better service to them.
Last week, a nurse manager downloaded the free first chapter of my book Lean Hospitals and wrote this message in the contact form:
"Interested to see how the disconnect between management and the staff supervised can be helped. Too many managers refuse to help those they supervise. A growing number have never done the work that they are in charge of getting done. Patients and residents feel it, not healthy. Poor PR. It does get back to the consumer. Difficult to fix at that point."
In my experience working with many hospitals, her comments resonate with me. Identifying problems like these doesn't mean Lean provides easy solutions for organizational transformation.
Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture."
The WSJ says the "model is cracking."
Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself).
Lean can be very fragile. History shows that Lean can fall apart even in an organization that is years into a "Lean journey" with strong CEO involvement.
How is this possible? If often happens when a new CEO is brought in from the outside. In the case of the manufacturing company, Wiremold, it happened when they were acquired by a French company, Legrand.
As an aside, the team that coined the term "Lean" almost used the term "fragile," as I blogged about here.
Back in 2007, Bob Emiliani joined me for Episode #30 of the podcast. As we revisit the podcast and the new transcript I had made, what are the lessons for manufacturers or hospitals?
What's the risk that's created when new leadership takes over?
For today's Throwback Thursday, I'd like to look back at some blog posts about the trips I took to Japan in 2012 and 2014 to study Lean healthcare and Kaizen with healthcare practitioners from around the world.
I'm again partnering with Kaizen Institute to plan and help lead a trip that will be held in the last week of February, as I wrote about here...
Joining me again for episode 290 is a three-time guest, Eric Ries. When we first talked, in episode 115 six years ago, his New York Times bestselling book The Lean Startup was being published. In 2012, we discussed the impact of Toyota's Taiichi Ohno on his work, in episode 142. This time, we're talking about his new book, The Startup Way.
Today, I’m looking back at at podcast from two years ago, sharing this written summary that hopefully better reaches an audience that doesn’t listen to podcasts. I love The Good Jobs Strategy book and approach and I hope you’re inspired by it,…
