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A Lean Healthcare Job Interview Process: Thoughts and Reflections

Mark's Note: I asked my firiend Sam Selay to write a blog post on this topic after some private discussions that we had. He agreed and shared this post. I've talked to many others who have run into similar roadblocks and frustrations when trying, with the best of intentions, to bring their Lean skills and experience into healthcare.

Sam was one of the contributing authors to the anthology "Practicing Lean," which is now available through Apple iBooks, in addition to Amazon (Kindle and paperback), and Leanpub (eBook and audiobook). Here is his post:

In June, I was informed by my employer that the company had decided to go in a new direction. They said they would now build lean into their processes and enable process owners to be responsible for all continuous improvement functions. To date, I don’t know many organizations that have been able to successfully embed lean into everyone’s work and sustain it.

Skip Steward & Brandon Brown on TWI, Toyota Kata, and Building the Baptist Management System

Today I have two guests joining me for Episode #314 of the podcast. They are Skip Steward, the Chief Improvement Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care in Tennessee and Brandon Brown, the owner and "Master Kata Coach" of his firm, Continuous Coaching Commitment, LLC.

In this episode, we discuss their use of methods such as "Training Within Industry" and "Toyota Kata" in the important work of healthcare improvement. Skip and Brandon both have backgrounds in manufacturing, but they have been able to translate Lean skills and mindsets into healthcare. We'll also talk about their dynamic as consultant / client and how the roles of "coach" and "learner" are often very situational and how we can be both at different times.

Jess Orr on Lean Leadership, Toyota Lessons, and Saving 200 Jobs

My guest for Episode 311 is Jess Orr, a continuous improvement practitioner at WestRock, a large paper and packaging company, where she helps plants foster a culture of continuous improvement and employee engagement.

\Her experience includes working directly for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky. She is particularly passionate about sharing best practices across industries, which motivated her to found Yokoten Learning.

In today's episode, we talk about her path from Six Sigma Black Belt to a Lean-thinking engineer at Toyota. How did she progress from solving problems herself to developing others? We'll talk about a blog post that she wrote for this blog earlier this year, Lean and ROI, leadership and culture, and much more. What is it like working outside of Toyota again? I hope you enjoy the discussion.

How Lean Leaders Mistake Random Variation for Improvement

Here is a chart from a team in San Antonio, where I teach a class on Lean for quality and patient safety twice a year. This team was basically using the “A3” improvement methodology to look at a problem that really impacted patients. My understanding is that a contaminated blood culture bottle leads to false positive results that indicate that a patient has a bloodstream infection when they really don't.

“ER wait times down, but only slightly” or ER wait times are virtually the same?

This article was sent by a friend and blog reader from Winnipeg the other day:

"ER wait times down, but only slightly"
Oh good, the waiting times are down. But what does "only slightly" mean? Have ER wait times gone down in a meaningful way? Or are they just comparing two data points? Is this "down" a matter a signal or is it just noise in the system?

These are the types of questions that can be answered by methods in my new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.

Why Unchanging Metrics Can Be a Warning Sign

1. Nurse in green scrubs drawing blood from a patient's arm with a syringe.

Today's post is some material that I wrote for my book Measures of Success but cut due to length. I've modified the material a bit to hopefully be fine as a standalone post.

There's a somewhat humorous, if not scary, story from a book (This is Going to Hurt) written by a former "junior doctor" in the British National Health Services (NHS) -- the equivalent of a "resident" in the American medical education system.

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Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: October 23, 2026