TL;DR: Lean only works when people feel safe to speak up. Toyota shows that psychological safety isn’t a “soft” concept–it’s created through consistent leadership behaviors that treat problems and mistakes as signals for learning, not reasons for blame. When I…
I recently had one of those conversations that leaves you feeling energized and full of fresh ideas. On the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement podcast, I sat down with our co-founder and CEO, Greg Jacobson, to chat about our journey into 2025,…
I’m excited to be presenting this webinar on February 12th at 1 pm ET as part of the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement webinar series: Mistake-Proofing in Action: Real-World Examples Across Industries The webinar description: “Are you looking for practical ways to…
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…
I’ve played around with ChatGPT before (including in a few blog posts), but the advancements in A.I. technologies are pretty breathtaking. I recently tried out the new “Notebook LM” tool from Google. I uploaded a PDF of my latest book,…
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…
Over the years, I’ve seen how often organizations respond to mistakes with blame, punishment, or superficial fixes–rather than learning and prevention. That’s why I collaborated with Karen Martin and TKMG Academy to create a mistake-proofing course focused not just on…
This is a Chat GPT / Dall-E generated image: It’s silly, right? I’ve never seen a sign like this in an operating room. And I’m not advocating for them. It’s not the right approach for quality and patient safety. If…
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: 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…
