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 great presentation last year at the AME…
Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace…
tl;dr: Shingo renamed “foolproofing” to poka-yoke (mistake-proofing) after the old term made a worker cry. The lesson holds: blame doesn’t prevent defects, and respecting people is what makes zero defects possible. I’m currently working on a Mistake Proofing class for…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #497 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Tobias Gilk, the founder of Gilk Radiology Consulting (GRC). He is an architect by training, but has spent 20+…
tl;dr: The Boeing 737 MAX incident wasn’t caused by careless workers. It was the predictable result of weak systems, rushed production, poor mistake-proofing, and a culture that discourages speaking up. Blaming individuals prevents learning; fixing systems prevents recurrence. As we…
A nurse makes a medication error. A patient is harmed. The nurse already feels terrible — they went into healthcare to help people, and now the worst has happened. Then comes the organizational response. The investigation. The suspension. Maybe termination.…
TL;DR: The phrase “mistakes are proof you’re trying” is true in some settings and dangerously misleading in others. In innovation work — product development, marketing experiments, learning new skills — mistakes are often part of growth and should be expected,…
TL;DR: A true culture of learning doesn’t fear mistakes–it learns from them. Drawing inspiration from Toyota’s mindset, this post explores how psychological safety and problem-solving discipline are essential to preventing repeated errors and building continuous improvement into the DNA of…
This Snickers commercial always makes me chuckle, and I saw it again last night during an NFL playoff game: The punchline is that this stadium worker has meticulously painted, in the end zone, the word CHEFS instead of CHIEFS, as…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #490 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Quint Studer, the co-founder of HealthCare Plus Solutions Group and owner of the minor league baseball team, the Pensacola…
tl;dr: In this post, Mark categorizes mistakes into two main types: those that are preventable and those that spur innovation. He elucidates how recognizing the difference between these types can inform an organization’s approach to error management. By doing so,…
Here’s a short video that I made that talks through the chapters and main points of my new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. Update: The book is now a Shingo Publication Award…
