This article from the WSJ caught my eye last week (might be behind their paywall):
The Best Bosses Are Humble Bosses
Organizations are making a push to hire and promote workers who lead effectively but don't seek the spotlight
In today's post, I share some thoughts and related reading...
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patient CMAJ summarizes how to improve the quality of healthcare in Canada. Nothing new here, which begs the question – what are we waiting for? Intermountain Health in Utah has a reputation for creating value for…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patient Canadian healthcare is where “pilot projects come to die”. There is a lack of a culture of innovation in Canadian health, partly due to its fragmented nature and reliance on academic and government echo-chambers to…
Why do people fear change? Why are adults afraid of talking about their fears? My guest today is eminently qualified to answer such questions and to provide advice that can help us. My guest for Episode #315 is Robert Maurer, Ph.D., author of the outstanding book Mastering Fear.
Bob was previously my guest for Episode #153, where we discussed one of his earlier books on Kaizen, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. By the way, earlier this year I noticed that his other book The Spirit of Kaizen was one of the few books by an American author that Toyota was selling at the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya (see photo below).
I hope you enjoy today's discussion on Mastering Fear. As the subtitle says, can we "harness emotion to achieve excellence in health, work, and relationships"?
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.
Tonight is the start of the NFL Draft, which almost gets as much coverage nowadays as a Presidential election.
Can you imagine if CNBC and other TV channels spent as much time focusing on which Lean Healthcare prospects would be "drafted" from our leading universities and medical schools?
Here is our exclusive and official Lean Blog mock draft, featuring picks from our Lean Healthcare draft expert, Mel Kaizen, Jr.
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)
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings recently about what might be happening at ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that’s been considered one of the best examples of "Lean healthcare" anywhere in the world for more than a decade. It seems that there is an evolution occurring in their approach to Lean.
I’ve received a formal statement from ThedaCare public relations, which you can find in this post, so I will stick to the facts that they have given me and other information that's publicly available online.
In some of the major Lean transformation stories (in manufacturing in healthcare) usually include stories about some percentage of managers, doctors, or employees who chose to leave the organization. This is often a badge of honor of sorts. Sometimes, those people get labeled as "concrete heads" (I term I think we shouldn't use, as I've blogged about).
Is this really the right way to view things?
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?
I do my best to practice what I preach. I'm not perfect, by any means, but I'm pretty good about practicing the "Kaizen" style of continuous improvement. In this post, I share three recent examples of my Kaizen efforts for LeanBlog.org, JapanLeanTrip.com, and LeanHospitalsBook.com.
My guests for Episode #295 are Sarah Steinberg of Atrius Health and Ted Toussaint, a healthcare innovation strategist, formerly of Atrius Health. Ted is also a faculty member for Catalysis.
Today, we're talking about some innovative work that they led at Atrius, using a variety of modern product development and innovation methods, including Lean, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and more to create a new "Care in Place" model for home-based patient care that helps reduce trips to a clinic or hospital. Their work was featured in this HBR article: "How Atrius Health Is Making the Shift from Volume to Value."