Caring cultures are not “soft” extras in Lean–they are foundational. Caroline Greenlee and Chris Butterworth explain how psychological safety, respect for people, and wellbeing enable sustainable continuous improvement. Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guests for…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #514 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Hugh Alley, an author and consultant. He divides his time between coaching senior operational leaders in continuous improvement, training…
This week is National Nurses Week. Nurses are highly skilled and, too often, are underappreciated.
Lean should be one of the best things that ever happened to nurses. In a truly Lean environment, we wouldn't be understaffed. Nurses wouldn't get blamed and punished for systemic problems. Hospitals and the broader healthcare system would break down silos and barriers to care. And, nurses would be treated respectfully by everybody in the system at all times.
Instead of being a hospital to celebrate and thank nurses, I'm on some vacation time through next Tuesday. So, I'll leave some of my favorite blog posts and podcasts about nursing and Lean here in this post.
Management by Emoji might sound like the logical next step in modern leadership–or at least that’s what I’m announcing today, April 1st, as a bit of fun and satire inspired by the very real ways organizations misuse metrics and management…
I was prompted today to think about an excerpt from my book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement: “In many hospital settings, staffing levels are set by benchmarking data, rules of thumb, habit, or financial constraints. Ideally,…
tl;dr Lean should reduce hospital overwork and unsafe understaffing — not justify them. True Lean, as practiced at Toyota, treats overburden (muri) as a serious problem, prioritizes patient safety and staff well-being, and invests in understanding real work before setting…
Joining me for Episode #307 of the podcast is my friend Andre DeMerchant, the President of DeMerchant Healthcare Solutions Inc., based in Kitchener, Ontario. We first crossed paths when we had the chance to work together with an American healthcare client via our then-affiliation with Pascal Dennis and Lean Pathways.
In today's episode, we talk about Andre's history working for Toyota in Canada and what he learned there -- and why it's important that he learned about "how flow works" at Toyota. We chat about the terms "Lean" and "The Toyota Production System" and what those words mean to him. How does TPS "transcend culture and language," as well as industries?
We then shift to talking about healthcare and some of the common challenges, including "financial hardships," that are faced in many countries. Why are hospitals "poorly prepared for change" in many cases? Another main theme is "cost cutting" and why you can't cut your way to success.
I first blogged about this article back in 2009 and it’s still online: “Keen to Be Lean“ The sub headline talks about hospitals being “desperate to cut costs.” Has that changed? I wish the motivation was more often about hospitals…
I've written before about the subject of hospitals "flexing" nurses and employees. I've criticized flexing (or the practice of sending employees home early because patient census is low) and I've pointed out that it's not keeping with "Lean" principles to "save money" by sending people home early.
Dr. Gary Kaplan is the CEO of Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center, considered one of the world leaders in the adoption of Lean healthcare principles. He wrote the foreword for my book The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. He co-authored a recent…
I wrote a new piece for LinkedIn that I hope would be of interest to you even if you’re in healthcare. Why? It’s a story about what an organization does when you don’t have enough (or any) direct work for your front-line staff to do. Toyota would continue paying employees and would put them to...
If you follow the auto industry, you might have seen headlines this week about how Toyota is being forced to shut down production in its Japanese factories next week (see one article, via Bloomberg). If you’re a devotee of the Toyota Production…
