A hat tip goes to Brian Buck for sharing this quote via email recently. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was a pithy and wise man. I didn't remember this quote, but it is attributed to him. It's very appropriate for the type of work we do...
As I've worked with hospital and healthcare people over the past ten years, one personal benefit to me has been exposure to new ideas and new influences. I've been exposed to ideas from the social sciences, ideas that have been thought provoking and helpful...
A few months back, I announced a new collaborative eBook project called Practicing Lean... Chapter 4 in the book was contributed by Michael Lombard, a previous contributor to this blog. This past week, I also added a chapter contributed by Paul Akers, author of the books 2 Second Lean and Lean Health...
Today, I'm announcing a new podcast series called the Toyota Kata Podcast, or "KataCast" for short. As the Toyota Kata book and methodology have become more popular, I've been surprised that I haven't been asked "why don't you blog more about Toyota Kata?" [...]
As I mentioned on Monday, I’m working on a 3rd revised edition of my book Lean Hospitals. Traditional book publishing is a funny (and sometimes frustrating) value stream, in a lot of ways. There are many batches and many queues along…
It’s been a little while, but here’s a new video about Kaizen and continuous improvement from our friends at Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. See all of the videos in the link here or via my YouTube playlist. In this…
Today’s post is a throwback to an essay that I originally wrote for the excellent book Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future, where it appears in an appendix with some other contributed essays. You can listen to…
The One Thing Lean Six Sigma Gets Wrong About Lean? Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by Erwin van der Koogh, who is based in Australia. The thoughts and opinions here are his, though I agree with enough of them to…
My friend Pete Abilla has started a nice series of “Lean Leadership Interviews” on his site, shmula.com. I enjoyed his most recent interview with Jeff Liker. I agree with Pete and Jeff in the assertion (shared by Mike Rother) that…
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’m happy to be a participating author on “The Lean Edge” blog/site that’s hosted by Michael Ballé author of The Gold Mine and other books. Their most recent question has many responses and I’ll try to help organize them for you here. Question: As CEO…
tl;dr: Push vs. pull in healthcare gets debated more than it needs to be. What actually matters is flow — the right care, in the right place, at the right time. Better flow means less waste, fewer delays, and better…
