Search Results for thedacare

Jeff Hunter on Patient-Centered Strategy and Building Learning Systems in Healthcare

Joining me today for Episode #312 of the podcast is Jeff Hunter, author of the excellent book "Patient-Centered Strategy: A Learning System for Better Care."

Jeff was with the ThedaCare in Wisconsin, where he was Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing for the health system. After retiring from ThedaCare, he has been a faculty member for Catalysis and has started his own consulting firm, Jeff Hunter Strategy.

In today's podcast, we discuss a number of topics, including how a good strategy is a necessary input for a "strategy deployment" management process, some of the problems with traditional approaches to strategic planning, and why an iterative PDSA approach works better than static plans.

Respect for People and Continuous Improvement in Healthcare: Lessons from Lean

I was recently asked to do a recorded video presentation for a medical conference in Turkey. I spoke about the dual pillars of "The Toyota Way":

Respect for People
Continuous Improvement
The video is about 20 minutes, split about half and half on each of those interrelated topics. I'm coming to you from a hotel room, somewhat tired after a day of consulting.

(Slides PDF and transcript also included)

Overreact Less, Improve More: Leadership Lessons from Statistics and Psychology

Happy and sad emoji faces on a fluctuating line graph.

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.

The WSJ Gets Japan Wrong: Why Lean Isn’t “The Japanese Model”

Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture."

The WSJ says the "model is cracking."

Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself).

Lean Can Be Very Fragile, Especially With Executive Changes

Lean can be very fragile. History shows that Lean can fall apart even in an organization that is years into a "Lean journey" with strong CEO involvement.

How is this possible? If often happens when a new CEO is brought in from the outside. In the case of the manufacturing company, Wiremold, it happened when they were acquired by a French company, Legrand.

As an aside, the team that coined the term "Lean" almost used the term "fragile," as I blogged about here.

Back in 2007, Bob Emiliani joined me for Episode #30 of the podcast. As we revisit the podcast and the new transcript I had made, what are the lessons for manufacturers or hospitals?

What's the risk that's created when new leadership takes over?

Archived List of Podcast Episodes

Previous Episodes (Full List): Click to visually browse episodes For easy access to any Podcast, use the forwarding URL: leanblog.org/X where X is the episode number. This text list is from the old version of the podcast’s main blog page.…

#Lean Learning Opportunities: Webinars, Workshops, Conferences, and Online Courses

In this post, I share links and information about two upcoming free webinars that I'm hosting this month, some 2018 workshops I'm doing again on better managing metrics, next year's Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, and some online education about "Healthcare Kaizen" that I have opened up for public registration. Please check out all of the links, resources, and information...

Dean Gruner on ACOs, Healthcare Reform, and the Future of Cost and Quality

Joining me again for Episode #288 is Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that has long been considered a worldwide leader in the practice of Lean in healthcare.

Recently, in Episode #286, Dean shared his reflections on his work and ThedaCare's "Lean journey." Today, the topic is Accountable Care Organizations and other bigger-picture healthcare reform topics.

Dean was also previously my guest in Episodes 119 and 144.

I'm including a full transcript along with a three-page PDF summary, as I've been doing recently.

This Organization Chose Not to “Deploy Lean” Because a Leader Thought it is Not Customer Focused?

I posted an article on LinkedIn last week as a companion article and summary of my podcast with Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare.

That article:

"A Retired Hospital CEO Shares the Employee Feedback That was 'A Bucket of Cold Water to the Face.'"

There have been over 125 comments so far... but one has me scratching my head.

It read:

"I looked at deploying Lean within our PNO, and ultimately decided against it, in part for two reasons:

because Lean is about doing the same thing, albeit better and
it is not as much customer/outwardly focused as we need in healthcare."
Lean is not customer/outwardly focused? I hope this isn't a widespread perception or belief out there. I hope I'm overreacting to something that's not really a problem... but I wrote the post anyway.

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