KaiNexus and I were happy to host an excellent webiner by Barry O’Reilly, the author of the book Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results. The webinar is on these themes: Why Great Leaders Must Unlearn to…
TL;DR: Pursuing zero harm isn’t about unrealistic goals or punishing people for failure. It’s a leadership choice that creates psychological safety, accelerates learning, and strengthens Lean systems. When organizations treat safety–physical, emotional, and professional–as a non-negotiable value, improvement capability follows…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Daily safety huddles are simple, inexpensive, and effective methods to raise and escalate patient safety risks. Start your safety huddles today with some tips from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I get asked all the…
Jason Burt shares what it was really like to be coached directly by Toyota during Herman Miller’s early TPS journey. In this episode, we explore how Toyota develops people first, why results follow culture, and what many Lean transformations get…
tl;dr: Human error is inevitable–even for experienced professionals. Forgetting socks on a work trip is harmless, but similar mistakes in healthcare or organizations can cause real harm. The lesson isn’t to “be more careful,” but to design better systems that…
In this interview, UMass Memorial Health CEO Dr. Eric Dickson shares how Lean thinking, leadership behaviors, and frontline-driven Kaizen helped build a culture of “Everyday Innovators” across a complex healthcare system. My guest today for Episode #331 is Eric W.…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Why do we have to wake up patients to take vital signs every 4 hours if they are stable? Why does a patient need daily labs if there results have been stable for days? Because…
tl;dr Lean should reduce hospital overwork and unsafe understaffing — not justify them. True Lean, as practiced at Toyota, treats overburden (muri) as a serious problem, prioritizes patient safety and staff well-being, and invests in understanding real work before setting…
Thanks to Catalysis for asking me to write a guest blog post… yesterday, they published this: Being Open to Learning and Using Process Behavior Charts Means Unlearning Something Else My post starts: “Why don’t people adopt best practices? I get…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Too often, patient involvement in design and research is tokenist or “tick-box”, and requires burdensome processes for participation. To truly design around the patient, research needs to be person-centered. Large healthcare systems continue to consolidate and…
tl;dr: Toyota’s long-term success comes from treating Lean as a people development system, not a toolbox. By prioritizing learning, coaching, and growth over short-term results, Toyota builds stronger capabilities–and better outcomes–over time. When most organizations talk about Lean, they start…
tl;dr: Value isn’t universal. Different customers–and the same customer at different times–define value differently. Lean works best when organizations offer flexible options instead of forcing everyone into the same bundle of value. It’s said in the Lean methodology that “value…