Today’s podcast is different than my usual interview format. I still plan on continuing the podcast format and series, but I also wanted to try something new. I’m starting a “Lean Blog Audio” podcast, which is basically an “audio book” type…
I had planned on chilling out over the holidays by reading some books that aren’t related to Lean, Kaizen, etc. Novels are not normally my thing and I started reading How Doctors Think, which had been on my Kindle to-read list…
Happy New Year! Let’s talk about Lean. Let’s talk about Kaizen and continuous improvement and how to get better in 2015. You’re possibly thinking, “Hey, Mark, chill… watch some football… relax… it’s a holiday.” But, you’re reading this, so you…
David Mann explains why creating a Lean culture depends on leader behavior and management systems–not tools or compliance–and how leader standard work helps sustain improvement. He shares practical guidance for executives on using Gemba walks to learn, teach, and reinforce…
Thanks to everybody for reading my blog in 2014! As always, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to read and participate in the discussion and I hope you’ll continue visiting the site in 2015… the tenth anniversary…
Here’s the latest in our series of videos about Kaizen and a culture of continuous improvement at Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. Scroll down in this post for a survey that Joe Swartz and I are doing about a workshop…
After being at the Lean Startup Conference the last two years (giving this talk in 2012 and speaking last year on Kaizen), I’m not there this year, unfortunately. I’m also not at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement forum (why are there often two great…
On Friday, LinkedIn published a piece I wrote for their series of articles on the theme of “The Road Not Taken.” LinkedIn asked people to write about the “Plan B” that they may have wished they had pursued. This was difficult…
People often say Lean is pretty simple (or that it’s just “common sense“). Yeah, some of the concepts are simple… but sometimes deceptively so. Or, we find that it’s easier to describe Lean (as a management system, a set of…
I was recently interviewed by one of the reporters who put together this web article in Canada: “From the factory floor to the emergency department: Hospitals explore Lean method” The article highlights Lean success stories and it also raises some…
I often get asked, “How did you get into healthcare?” I was working on a chapter for a Lean healthcare compilation book that’s being published in Holland and I wrote the following material that wasn’t the right fit for that…
I’m an avid book buyer, book reader, and published book author. Amazon is one of my favorite places to shop, not just for books. I first bought a book from Amazon back in 1997, right before I went to MIT. There…