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.
Joining me for Episode #351 of the podcast are my friends Joel Tosi and Dion Stewart, co-founders of the company Dojo & Co. They’re the authors of the new book (to be released on November 19) called Creating Your Dojo:…
My guest for episode #349 is John Dyer, president of his consulting firm, John Dyer & Associates, Inc., and author of the new book, The Façade of Excellence: Defining a New Normal of Leadership, which will be released on October 1,…
tl;dr summary: Fake Lean Six Sigma books were already crowding Amazon before generative AI made them cheaper to produce and harder to spot. The tell that still works is whether a real, findable author stands behind the book. Usually, my…
After the paperback launch of my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, many of you have asked, “What are you writing next?” No really, some of you have asked this. I’ve given this a lot of…
tl;dr: Even with professional editors, designers, and multiple reviews, defects still happen in books–and some inevitably escape to readers. This post uses Lean concepts like defects and escapes to reflect on humility, learning, and system improvement in self-publishing, reminding us…
So what's the new book and cover pictured here? This is the book being finished by my friend Chip Ponsford, III, DVM. Yes, DVM stands for Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.
"Lean Veterinary Practice Management: Higher Quality, Less Waste, Greater Staff Engagement and Continuous Improvement."
Today's episode (#313) of the podcast is a bit of a departure from the norm. Instead of interviewing a guest about their book or other work, I'm reading what's basically an audiobook-style excerpt of the first part of my new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.
I say "audiobook-style" because it's not professionally produced and my voice has been bad after being sick last week... but I thought this would be one way to share some of this material and promote the book. I won't be doing a full-blown audiobook because the book is so full of charts, I don't think it all translates well to the audiobook format. But, here I'm reading the foreword, the preface, the introduction, and part of Chapter 1.
I’m happy to announce that my latest book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, is completed! That means I was able to release it in the Amazon Kindle Store, which is probably the easiest way for most people…
Hi — I’m still not blogging much these days, as I try to focus on finishing my book Measures of Success. You can still buy the current “in-progress” book, which is about 85% complete. I’m still editing and tweaking the book,…
It's Monday morning in Nagoya, Japan as I write this. I'm still jet-lagged and up early, so here's a blog post after all...
Sunday, I had the chance to visit the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya. There's so much that I can blog about...I'll write more posts about my museum visit in the future.
In this post though, I share a little bit about some of the books that they sell - in English and Japanese...
As I've been writing about "process behavior charts" - a simple, yet effective method for charting and reacting to (or not overreacting to) metrics, it's made curious what some of the modern Toyota books say about metrics and performance measures.... or at least the first two in The Toyota Way series.
Art Byrne's latest book, The Lean Turnaround Action Guide, has a lot of great tips that he's trying to share, CEO to CEO. How many CEOs are reading this book and heeding his advice, in manufacturing or in healthcare?
