This week’s Operational Excellence Mixtape tackles the challenge of sustaining improvement amidst turbulence and change fatigue. We explore why values must act as your “North Star” when markets shift, methods for building quality systems that fight entropy (with examples from…
tl;dr: Headlines comparing two years of measles cases can be misleading. Looking at the full CDC time series with Process Behavior Charts shows that not every increase is meaningful. From 2000-2013, U.S. measles cases fluctuated as noise within a stable…
This edition of Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape explores strategy, flow, and culture in environments where improvement is harder than it looks. From how organizations can “play to win” without direct competition, to learning through cardboard simulations in healthcare design,…
TL;DR: Lean doesn’t fail because of the tools–it fails when leaders keep command-and-control habits. Without respect for people, psychological safety, and leaders who change their own behavior first, Lean becomes just another short-lived program that employees rightly distrust. How Often…
TL;DR: A zero-injury bonus may look like a safety incentive, but it usually distorts behavior. Lean and Deming teach us that punishing bad numbers doesn’t improve systems–it drives problems underground. A friend of mine–with deep experience in Lean and the…
Learning from mistakes is not optional in healthcare–it’s essential for patient safety, staff engagement, and long-term performance. For years, I’ve written and spoken about how Lean leadership and Kaizen cultures treat mistakes not as failures to hide, but as signals…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #501 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Marcia Daszko, a speaker, workshop facilitator, and consultant. For more than 25 years, she has passionately been speaking, consulting,…
Being “right” is often the wrong strategy for change. Sustainable Lean change happens when leaders shift from telling people what to do to engaging them through questions, empathy, and motivation–using approaches like motivational interviewing to help people choose change rather…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #488 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is D. Lynn Kelley, Ph.D. She is the author, with John Shook (who has been a guest here many times),…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #482 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Gemma Jones. Gemma is an Improvement Coach, Trainer, and Visual Facilitator, based in the UK and working globally. Gemma…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #481 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is George Saiz. As a coach, writer, and speaker, George Saiz actively promotes enterprise excellence through a people-centric culture to…
TL;DR: Workarounds are not a sign of employee resistance. They are signals that standardized work or supporting systems make the “right way” harder than an alternative. I’ve spent years using a single photo in presentations to make a simple Lean…