Today, I’m sharing a question from a reader who started their career at Toyota and now works at another company. See previous posts with reader questions. The reader has given me permission to share this — to get your input…
In Episode 12 of Lean Whiskey, Mark Graban is back and he’s joined by a friend from the Lean healthcare world, Ryan McCormack. Jamie will be with Mark for our next episode. You might know Ryan as the creator of…
TL;DR: In healthcare huddles, how leaders ask about patient safety can either invite honest discussion or make speaking up feel risky. Open-ended, system-focused questions–combined with consistent follow-through–are essential for building psychological safety and preventing harm. I think that working to…
What does Amy Edmondson mean by psychological safety? People can raise a concern, ask for help, disagree, or admit a mistake without expecting humiliation or punishment for speaking up. That matters when a team needs to discover problems and learn…
TL;DR: Two Japanese hospitals improved patient safety by combining Toyota-style problem-solving with psychological safety. By making it safe for staff to report problems and near misses, leaders uncovered more issues, learned faster, and reduced harm–turning safety into part of daily…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Sometimes you just need to get a team together and improve. Here’s a good example of use of A3 thinking to improve opioid prescribing in outpatient rheumatology. Reducing harm requires the conditions to speak up, raise…
The other day, I stumbled across an old article that I remember, as it was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2004. The WSJ normally has a paywall, but this article is old enough that it’s free to the…
In Episode 11 of Lean Whiskey, Mark Graban gets a rest, and Jamie Flinchbaugh co-hosts along with long-time friend and colleague Susan Pleasant, who was first a client and later a partner. Susan brings 30 years of operations experience, and…
Joining me for episode #354 of the podcast is Kim Hollon, the CEO and President of Signature Healthcare, based in Brockton, Massachusetts. I first met Kim about a decade ago and, as we discover during the podcast discussion, one of…
Before Christmas, I was thinking again about upgrading my iPhone 8 Plus to the newer iPhone 11 Pro, as I wrote about here: A few days before Christmas, I decided to take the plunge. In the spirit of “Kaizen,” I…
In Episode 10 of Lean Whiskey, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh do their best to work through technology issues, as the Grinch clearly didn’t want us to record. We apologize if this affected the final product just a little bit,…
If you’ve ever drawn or reviewed a Value Stream Map, you’ve probably used the familiar “factory” icon to represent a customer or supplier. It’s a curious symbol — especially in healthcare or service settings — and many Lean practitioners eventually…
