Mistake-proofing shows up in everyday life more often than we realize–and a recent trip to the gas station reminded me why it matters. Chapter 4 of my book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation…
My guest for Episode #462 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Professor John Grout, the former dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. He was recently a guest on “My Favorite Mistake” — Episode 186, so I…
This week’s episode of the My Favorite Mistake podcast has a guest and a conversation that will be very directly relevant to you as a Lean practitioner. I hope you’ll check it out: Within the next month, John is also…
Mistake proofing is one of the most practical–and most misunderstood–ideas in Lean thinking. It’s often treated as a tool or device, but at its core, mistake proofing reflects a leadership mindset: systems should be designed to anticipate human error, not…
TL;DR: Medication and vaccine errors don’t happen because people are careless–they happen when systems make mistakes possible. This post looks at COVID vaccination examples to show why mistake-proofing, good process design, and psychological safety are essential to preventing harm in…
It’s a short blog post today due to too much time being consumed with travel delays and airline customer service incompetence the last two days. I should have built up a greater inventory of blog posts that were written in…
In recent years, I've written two blog posts about the sad scenarios where the wrong building was demolished by a crew. In these scenarios, it's easy to blame "bad crew" instead of looking at systemic causes of such an error. Having a better process is always more effective than admonishing people to "be more careful." What did I see recently that caught my attention in terms of trying to prevent demolition errors?
TL;DR: Lean isn’t about “idiot-proofing” work–it’s about respecting people. True Lean focuses on improving systems (through mistake-proofing and better design), not blaming or deceiving workers. When leaders treat people as capable professionals and fix processes instead of people, quality, learning,…
Gwendolyn Galsworth is a leading thinker and author on Lean and various aspects of "visuality." One thing she talks about in the workplace is "information deficits."
Here is my latest article for the LinkedIn “Influencers” series, written for a general audience that might not be as familiar with Lean: How These Credit Card Websites Illustrate Lean Mistake Proofing I hope you enjoy the article, even as…
Regardless of whether you think the NSA leaks that Edward Snowden admitted to make him a hero or a traitor, it begs the question: How is the National SECURITY Agency so bad at securing its own information? They’re better at…
Here in New Orleans, there was a problem with the city water today and there’s a 24-hour “boil water” order in effect through tomorrow morning. We could play a good game of the 5 Whys: Why can’t we drink the…
