Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by a colleague from The Netherlands, Erwin Haas. Erwin is a leader in a Dutch consulting firm, NextChange, a formal partner of KaiNexus. I am the chief improvement officer at KaiNexus. By Erwin Haas A…
Eiji Toyoda, a key figure in the growth and expansion of Toyota and the Toyota Production System practices has passed away this week, just past his 100th birthday. His death has received fairly prominent coverage in the business press, including:…
Joe Swartz and I are building upon our well-received (and Shingo Research Award winning) book Healthcare Kaizen with a new special edition aimed at busy senior leaders. The book is available for pre-order now at Amazon.com: The Executive Guide to…
There’s a great piece, currently available for free on the HBR website, about continuous improvement: The Culture to Cultivate The author, George Halvorson, is the recently retired CEO of Kaiser Permanente and it’s really helpful that he is writing about…
My co-author Joe Swartz and I are happy to announce that our book Healthcare Kaizen was named a recipient of the prestigious Shingo Professional Publication and Research Award. The award will be formally presented to the co-authors in early 2014…
I’ve been going back through my notes and pictures from my first trip to Japan in November… my goal is to blog about something or share a picture on a weekly basis. Read more about my guides, Kaizen Institute. We visited…
Mark’s note — today’s guest post is by my friend Karen Martin, my guest for Podcast #151 where we talked about her latest book The Outstanding Organization: Generate Business Results by Eliminating Chaos and Building the Foundation for Everyday Excellence. Karen…
Thanks to my friend Matt May (check out his new book The Laws of Subtraction) for hosting “5 Questions” about my latest book Healthcare Kaizen. Matt asked some great questions and I hope you enjoy the discussion. Healthcare Kaizen: 5…
Mark’s note: Today’s guest post is from a friend of mine from The Netherlands. I had a chance to visit Marc and his hospital back in 2009 and I’ve seen Marc and colleagues the last three years at the Lean…
I first blogged about the possibility in March – doing a weeklong study trip to Japan with Lean Healthcare professionals, in partnership with Kaizen Institute. The dates are set for November 11 to 17 and we have people signed up…
TL;DR: Long before Lean and Kaizen became common language in healthcare, Don Berwick argued in a 1989 New England Journal of Medicine article that improvement requires leaders to stop blaming “bad apples” and start fixing systems. His message–replace fear with…
In this month’s ASQ blog post, their CEO Paul Borawski writes a new post “The Intersection of Quality and Social Responsibility,” where he defines Social Responsibility succinctly as “Doing well by doing good.” One reason I have always been attracted…
