tl;dr: High-profile “never events” aren’t caused by careless clinicians–and they aren’t prevented by warning signs. Signs that tell people to “be careful” substitute reminders for real system design, error-proofing, and a culture that makes it easy to do the right…
TL;DR: A non-standard calendar layout caused me to book the wrong tour date. When the same mistake happens repeatedly to different people, it’s not a personal failure–it’s a system design problem. Standardizing calendars and using mistake-proofing (poka-yoke) reduces errors far…
TL;DR: Early baseball teams experimented with position-specific uniforms, quickly learned it created confusion, and abandoned the idea. It’s a classic example of Plan-Do-Study-Adjust–small tests, fast learning, and no stubborn attachment to a bad idea. As someone who grew up as…
TL;DR: Lean is about designing systems that make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. When software like Excel allows irreversible mistakes with a single misclick–and no meaningful confirmation or undo–it violates basic…
tl;dr: Checklists don’t prevent mistakes unless people actually use them, and they work best in cultures where it’s safe to speak up. A missed step in a webinar setup shows how Andon-style intervention–someone noticing a problem and saying something–can quickly…
The “Miracle on the Hudson” was 10 years ago today. Read my blog post about hearing Sully speak at an event last year. I got my first (and only) iPad in early 2014. I use many Apple products, but I’m…
I had a great time and learned so much as a guest of Honsha and their Executive Development Mission trip to Japan in October. The formal site visits to factories and companies were great, but a lot of the learning…
I really don't enjoy the type of "Throwback Thursday" posts that are triggered by something in the news that reminds me of something that I've blogged about in the past.
Sometimes, it seems people are doomed to keep repeating the same preventable errors instead of learning from others, improving systems, and mistake proofing things in life. In this post, we look back at repeated errors in pathology, building demolition, and emergency alert systems...
Facebook reminded me the other day of a funny thing I found in a hotel four years ago. It still made me chuckle, so I shared it on LinkedIn... and here are some other past blog posts about hotels, Lean, and waste:
Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.
Why do people fear change? Why are adults afraid of talking about their fears? My guest today is eminently qualified to answer such questions and to provide advice that can help us. My guest for Episode #315 is Robert Maurer, Ph.D., author of the outstanding book Mastering Fear.
Bob was previously my guest for Episode #153, where we discussed one of his earlier books on Kaizen, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. By the way, earlier this year I noticed that his other book The Spirit of Kaizen was one of the few books by an American author that Toyota was selling at the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya (see photo below).
I hope you enjoy today's discussion on Mastering Fear. As the subtitle says, can we "harness emotion to achieve excellence in health, work, and relationships"?
Today, I'm giving a talk at the International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT) conference in Toronto. I was invited by the company Quotient to participate in a panel presentation and discussion with some laboratory professionals from the U.S. and the U.K.
The others are presenting examples of how they have improved flow, productivity, and quality in blood collection and hospital blood bank settings. Lean often gets portrayed as just being about efficiency or flow, when Toyota's definition of the Toyota Production System talks about how flow and quality go hand in hand.
I was specifically asked to give a short talk titled, "What Do Cars Have to Do With Healthcare? How to Adopt and Adapt Lessons From Manufacturing."