In further celebration of Nurses Week, it’s worth discussing this TIME article about the “Killer Burden on Nurses” under the Affordable Care Act. The point I’m raising and highlighting here is not meant to be political or partisan, but really…
I’ve really enjoyed reading the book The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality, which was published last year. I think this link will work… You can view my public Kindle notes and profile online. If you haven’t read Dr. Deming’s…
tl;dr: This post features a rare 1990 video of Steve Jobs describing continuous improvement in ways that closely echo Lean and Kaizen principles. He challenges “we’ve always done it this way,” stresses that people are smart and should own improvement,…
What Henry Ford wrote about hospitals in 1922 sounds surprisingly modern. He argued for reducing nurses’ wasted motion, designing around patients, standardizing rooms, challenging professional hierarchy, and treating every process as experimental. More than a century later, many of those…
Since the healthcare improvement work I do is apolitical and non-partisan, I’m generally not one to butt into the political affairs of Canada or other countries. But, when I hear complaints about Lean or when it’s being called a “scam”…
After some supporters of the Saskatchewan Lean healthcare efforts reached out to me, I’ve been trying to follow everything that’s being said and written – which is hard to do (just try a Google news search). There are many facets to…
It’s easy for an organization to say they are “doing Lean” or they have “started a Lean transformation.” They might hire a consultant or put out a press release. Maybe there’s an optimistic (but premature) news article about how the…
This week is National Patient Safety Awareness Week. See my thoughts on this from 2012. Every week should be National Patient Safety IMPROVEMENT Week, as the problem is that dire. But, it’s great to try to bring to light the…
Retired Navy F-14 pilot and airline captain Steve “Monty” Montague spends his non-flying days helping hospitals adopt the safety culture that made commercial aviation the safest way to travel. In this episode, we talk about why standardized work frees people…
In this 5-minute video from the 2012 Lean Startup Conference, I explore how Lean principles can improve hospital facility design. Using the fast-paced Ignite talk format (20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds), the presentation draws connections between Lean Design in…
Mark’s note: Christina Kach is our guest blogger today, with a post written on a flight back from visiting what’s considered to be one of America’s best Lean companies A big part of Lean practice teaches us to find the…
My guest for episode #193 is Mark Jaben, MD, talking about our brains, Lean, and change. Mark has been a guest blogger for me before and it’s great to talk to him today about his research and experiences. In our conversation,…
