As I’ve been working on my upcoming second book, Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Improvements, I’ve had “kaizen” (or continuous improvement) on the brain even more than usual. One distinction between kaizen ideas and a traditional “suggestion system” is…
Listen: Today’s episode is a discussion with Mrinalini Gadkari, a Senior Lecturer at the Fisher College of Business. Today, we’re talking about the new Master of Business Operational Excellence (MBOE) for Healthcare Program starting this fall. We’ll talk about how…
Produced in partnership with the Healthcare Value Network, episode #119 is a discussion with Dean Gruner, MD, the president & CEO of ThedaCare. Here, we talk about Strategy Deployment as a Lean management system and how it fits into their ongoing management and improvement efforts in their health system.
TL;DR: W. Edwards Deming taught that organizations don’t need to motivate people–they need to stop demotivating them. Practices like rankings, merit pay, numerical targets without methods, and competition between people crush intrinsic motivation, dignity, and joy in learning over time.…
As Mark Graban stated in a recent post, “People fear or assume that a factory is…mindless, monotonous, repetitive…” These sentiments may come from observation of one aspect of lean and manufacturing: rules and related rewards. There is the common (mis-)perception…
TL;DR: Samuel Culbert argues that performance reviews are subjective, political, and harmful to results. Instead of judging people once a year, leaders should coach continuously and take responsibility for system performance. Episode #117 is a conversation with Prof. Samuel A.…
Jim Womack explains why real gemba walks–not management strolls–are essential for lean leadership, and why healthcare leaders must change behavior to improve systems and outcomes. In Episode #116 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, Mark Graban talks with Jim Womack,…
Dan Pink joins me to discuss his book Drive and the science behind what actually motivates people — ideas deeply aligned with Lean thinking and Deming. We explore why “if-then” rewards backfire for complex work, the dysfunctions of incentive schemes…
I had an amazing conversation on Saturday with Paul Akers (pictured at left), the founder and president of FastCap, a company in Washington, a former Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat, and the host of “The American Innovator” radio…
When I read John Seddon’s book Freedom from Command & Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service, I was a fan. I thought, “Here is someone from the Dr. Deming lineage who has a good message about what’s wrong with traditional…
This is a new experiment, the “Lean Blog Week in Review.” Let me know what you think. Ideally, I would do these each week, as a recap for those who are behind on the blog or as a way to…
I nearly drove off the road when I heard this NPR story yesterday: “Allowance Economics: Candy, Taxes And Potty Training.” Please take a listen or a read. In the piece, an Australia economics professor who is “an expert in incentives”…