TL;DR: NUMMI proved in the 1980s what healthcare is still learning today: you can’t punish your way to safety. Real improvement comes from mutual trust, system thinking, and leaders who respond to problems with curiosity–not blame. When we talk about…
TL;DR: NUMMI’s success was not driven by Lean tools alone, but by leadership behaviors that treated people as partners in quality and improvement. When you open the NUMMI Management Practices: Executive Summary–that thin, yellow-covered 1987 report preserved in the Don…
TL;DR: In 1987, GM accurately documented why NUMMI worked–and it wasn’t tools, techniques, or discipline. This internal report reveals a management system built on trust, learning, and problem-solving, and exposes how hard it is to act on insight when it…
Executive Summary for Leaders Continuous Improvement–often called Kaizen–is not a program, a department, or a suggestion box. It is the daily practice that makes Lean real. At its core, Kaizen means improving systems by engaging the people who do the…
TL;DR: I learned SQDC the hard way at GM–first under cost- and throughput-obsessed leadership, then from a NUMMI-trained plant manager who showed me why safety and quality must come first if you want performance (and cost) to truly improve. Two…
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…
I don’t think I ever shared this article that I co-authored and had published in 2014… so it’s time for another “Throwback Thursday.” I’ll share a summary of it here in this post. I think this still applies here in…
As we mark Independence Day today, the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from England, I’m sharing a “throwback” post that I published on July 4th some years ago. The Declaration of Independence was a bold step toward a…
For decades, the suggestion box promised employee engagement and continuous improvement–but mostly delivered silence. In Lean organizations, Kaizen replaced the suggestion box with visible, collaborative systems that turn ideas into action. This throwback looks at why the suggestion box failed–and…
tl;dr: In the blog post, we delve into MLB’s ongoing struggle with slow and lengthy games, analyzing recent rule changes aimed at reducing game time. Special focus is given to the newly enforced pitch clock for the 2023 season, its…
It’s been a while since I’ve done a “Throwback Thursday” post, but I saw some news stories late last year that reminded me of something I blogged about originally back in 2006. Back in 2006, the NBA tried switching from…
I haven’t done a “Throwback Thursday” post in a while, but I’m going to do something similar here on a Monday. Exactly ten years ago today, l shared a post where I talked about leaving my employment with the Lean…
