Books shape how we think about leadership, improvement, and learning—but only if we reflect on them and apply their lessons thoughtfully. This archive includes blog posts and podcast episodes about Lean, healthcare, leadership, mistakes, psychological safety, and continuous improvement, including reflections on my own books and conversations with authors whose work has influenced how organizations build better systems and cultures.
For episode #99 of the podcast, I’m talking with the authors of the book The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany. My guests are Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits. Both are…
You might know of and already be a fan of Pascal Dennis (read more about him and listen to my recent podcast with him here). He has a new book out (The Remedy) and his firm, Lean Pathways, has published…
Episode #97 is a discussion with Bob Sutton, a Stanford University Professor of Management Science and Engineering and the best-selling author of The No A-hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. Other books by Bob include The…
Our guest for Episode #96 is Pascal Dennis of Lean Pathways, Inc. Pascal is a faculty member with the Lean Enterprise Institute and he’s the author of the books: Lean Production Simplified, Andy & Me: Crisis And Transformation On The…
Mark’s note: Today’s guest post comes to us from Ireland and a lean consultant and author named Andy Brophy. He has a new book called Innovative Lean, for which he interviewed me and some client team members from Children’s Medical…
I’m very interested in the interface between healthcare architecture, space design, and processes. I’ve seen so many cases where poor design (often done without the input of nurses, medical technologists, and other front-line staff) leads to systemic inefficiency. Classic bad…
One of the people I’ve been fortunate to meet in the last year is Dave deBronkart, aka “e-Patient Dave.” I saw e-PD present at the HIMSS conference this year and we were able to spend some time together during some…
Video #11 features Norman Bodek talking about some of the ideas in his most recent book, How to do Kaizen: A new path to innovation – Empowering everyone to be a problem solver. Late in the podcast, Norman asks and…
We had an amazing first day at the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit here in Orlando. We have 260 Lean healthcare leaders, including about 30 physicians, from 7 countries represented and there’s a lot of sharing, learning, and inspiration occurring.…
ThedaCare, the health system in Wisconsin, often gets a lot of attention for the Lean improvements in their four hospitals, but they are also doing some excellent work in redesigning primary and specialty care, as well (as highlighted in this…
Episode #92 brings a returning guest, the always entertaining and thought-provoking Mike Micklewright. He is the author of a batch of two new books: Out of Another @#&*% Crisis! Motivation through Humiliation and Lean ISO 9001: Adding Spark to your…
Hat tip to the WSJ for their review of the new book Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters. Dr. Deming criticized the annual performance review decades ago and…
