As a frequent flyer on American Airlines, I often have five or six itineraries booked at a time. Unfortunately, the poor design of the American Airlines website includes the risk that I might cancel the wrong itinerary and flight. The Lean principle of mistake proofing would go a long way... and I'm sure a simple bit of programming could easily alleviate this risk.
Inc. Magazine didn’t have the question mark in the headline, but I think it should be there. Much as the WSJ often just gets it way wrong about Lean, Inc. follows up it’s earlier butchering of “The Lean Startup” methodology…
Many leaders in healthcare (including John Toussaint, Paul Levy, and others) are working to eliminate the “name, blame, and shame” culture that often exists in hospitals. This push (in my mind) started with W. Edwards Deming, who taught that 94%…
I’m happy to announce that our new book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements is now available for immediate download in the Amazon Kindle format at a price of ($47.96, about $10 less than the paperback). With…
Saw this in the most recent Fast Company: Is Your Manager A Creativity Killer? If the manager is something like a case study from the book The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t,…
It’s an exciting week, as copies of our new book Healthcare Kaizen are shipping from the publisher (@BrianBuck told me he received shipping notification that his pre-ordered copy should arrive today). Amazon.com now shows books as “In Stock” (“17 left…
Here are some notes and key points from Day 1 of the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. There are over 500 people here from North America and around the world (including a group, again, of about 40 from different hospitals and…
Virginia Mason Medical Center, a world-renowned leader in the application of Lean principles in healthcare, has a new blog: Virginia Mason Blog. They name blogs the way I do, simple and direct :-) One of their first posts highlights a…
Mark’s note: While I am busy in “moving land” this week, Christina Kach was kind enough to write a review of a book that was sent to me – Adventures in Leanland by Russell Watkins (a free copy was provided…
TL;DR: In Lean problem solving, the hardest habit to break is jumping to solutions too early. Effective PDCA and A3 thinking require discipline in problem definition, understanding the current state, and resisting blame-driven shortcuts. Organizations that slow down to define…
As a very frequent flyer on American Airlines, I’ve learned not to expect much from the company and its employees in terms of customer satisfaction (yet alone anything that would unexpectedly delight a customer). It seems like a company culture…
Here are links to some more articles I’ve read recently that might be of interest related to Lean, systems, and improvement. The “good news” stories are the last two, of course… AIM: False STEMI activations lead to costs, inappropriate cath…
