Virginia Mason Medical Center, a world-renowned leader in the application of Lean principles in healthcare, has a new blog: Virginia Mason Blog. They name blogs the way I do, simple and direct :-) One of their first posts highlights a…
I don’t have any first hand experience with the country, but I have had many requests for the free first chapters of my books (Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen) from Saudi Arabia over the past few years. I’m certain there…
There’s a new TED conference video from April 2012 featuring Dr. Atul Gawande, author of amazing books including The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.” The core of the video will be familiar if you remember my blog post…
You might also have seen the first video animation that I did last week about the waste of getting new recycling bins. I've created a new video that shows what a "bad office 5S" scene might look like... something that's "L.A.M.E." not Lean.
I generally love the Apple Stores for their customer service and environment, as a primary Mac user for the past four years. You may have read stories about how executives from the Apple Store have been working with Stanford Hospital…
As my wife and I are in the process of moving to San Antonio, we’ve visited the local Central Market grocery store there during our house hunting trips. Behind the prepared foods counter is a visual management indicator for employees…
I’m in Las Vegas, speaking today to close the Lean Healthcare PowerDay event. There are many great speakers, including Dr. Richard Shannon, Dr. David Munch, and my good friend and fellow author, Naida Grunden. Click on their names to listen…
March 4 to 10 has been “Patient Safety Awareness Week” from the National Patient Safety Foundation. I’m certainly in favor of patient safety and have worked tirelessly, as have others, to try to improve patient safety from its abysmal starting…
One of my favorite newspaper writers is Ed Wallace of my local Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Wallace appears in the Sunday automotive section and usually writes about broader business issues beyond cars. His most recent column (“The Fall and Rise of…
I often get asked “what do you use to produce your podcasts?” So, while this might not be of interest to all, I thought I’d put it in a blog post that I could refer people to as a starting…
TL;DR: Salem Health leaders and frontline staff visited Japan to study Lean and Kaizen–and returned with a deeper understanding that transformation comes from respect for people, teamwork across titles, and leaders going to the front lines to learn. The trip…
When I recently interviewed Paul O’Neill and Dr. Richard Shannon about the amazing improvements in patient safety that had been made in the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative organizations, they each seemed a bit frustrated that these simple, yet effective, methods…
