Today, I’m giving a keynote talk at the Lean & Six Sigma World Conference being held in Las Vegas. I don’t normally attend or speak at “Lean Sigma” events, but I had an opportunity to give a new talk that touches on two of my favorite themes in recent years – the need to apply statistics and psychology to our “Lean Management” practices or Six Sigma or whatever.
Last week, I blogged about some employee complaints related to rotating day and night shifts at the Toyota San Antonio plant. In that post, I mentioned that employees who post on Glassdoor.com and other sites might not be a representative sample of the full employee population.
With that in mind, what happens when we search the Glassdoor surveys of some well-known "Lean hospitals?"
I posted a few of these employee comments on LinkedIn the other day (a short post that has received over 50,000 views and prompted a lot of discussion).
My guest for Episode #293 of the podcast is a dynamic speaker and manufacturing leader, Billy R. Taylor. I saw him speak a few years ago at a Shingo Prize Conference and I've wanted to get him on the podcast ever since.
He's currently the Director of Commercial, Off Highway, and Support Manufacturing North America for The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Over the past 20 years, he has risen from "the lowest level of the organization," up through the manufacturing leadership ranks at Goodyear, including time as a Plant Director at facilities in Oklahoma and North Carolina.
He's been "engaged in Lean" for over 15 years and he is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Billy has a BS in in Electrical Engineering from Prairie View A&M University and an MBA from Baker University.
Billy was very giving of his time and we talked for over 75 minutes, so I'm breaking this up into two parts, with Part 2 coming soon. Today, we talk about how he got started with Lean, the shift from tools- and event-based Lean to a culture focus, how to build a sense of ownership, servant leadership, employee recognition and more.
As part of my partnership with Cardinal Health, they have published an article that I wrote on their "Essential Insights" blog: "Changing how we think about change: How healthcare leaders can create a progressive culture"
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by a new contributor, Nathalie Khodr. We met a few years back in San Antonio thanks to our shared interests in Lean and healthcare improvement. Nathalie asked to write a post that reflected on her…
Recently, Chris Jerry, a friend in the patient safety movement (pictured, at left) told me that he was going to be interviewed on a Fox News Channel program about medical errors. You can read or listen (here and here) to my…
I’ve known Dr. Mark Jaben for a while now… we share not just a similar sounding name, but also a passion for healthcare improvement. You can hear my 2014 podcast with him about change and brain science. He’s recently written…
Originally published May 4, 2016. Updated in 2026 “Patients are not cars.” I’ve heard that objection for twenty years now. It usually arrives as a conversation ender rather than a conversation starter. And the thing is, it’s true. Patients are…
Thanks to my Amazon Kindle app on my iPad, I get to carry much of my book collection with me. Sometimes, while on the road, I end up eating dinner alone with my iPad. Recently, I was in a Japanese…
Aviation lessons for patient safety anchor this conversation with Steve Montague, a retired Navy fighter pilot and commercial airline pilot who consults with hospitals on high-reliability practices. We get into checklists done well and done badly, why most hospital mistakes…
Another question I get thrown at me very often is something along the lines of “How do we get more buy in for ______” with that space being filled with Lean, Kaizen, 5S, using the EMR system, improvement, or any number of terms. If you do a Google search for Lean “lack of buy in”...
As I've worked with hospital and healthcare people over the past ten years, one personal benefit to me has been exposure to new ideas and new influences. I've been exposed to ideas from the social sciences, ideas that have been thought provoking and helpful...
