Gemba means “the real place”—where work actually happens, problems become visible, and leadership behavior matters most. These posts explore what going to the gemba really means beyond symbolic walk-throughs, dashboards, or status updates.
Drawing from Lean, Toyota practices, healthcare, manufacturing, and knowledge work, this archive focuses on gemba as a leadership practice: listening more than talking, asking better questions, building trust, and creating the conditions for daily improvement rather than fear or performance theater.
Thanks to Patrick Vlaskovits, a guest in my Podcast episode #99, for posting a photo of a Southwest Airlines magazine blurb about Steve Blank, author of the outstanding book The Four Steps to the Epiphany on “customer development” for Lean…
In the news yesterday, a General Motors recall over what could be just one isolated steering wheel problem in an Ohio-built Chevrolet (don’t call it Chevy) Cruze. Most news stories, like this one, about the recall just mention that one…
Recently, a group of leaders from the third cohort in the Healthcare Value Leaders Network visited Mercy Medical Center in Mason City, Iowa for one of our “gemba visits” that are conducted three times a year in each cohort. These…
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,…
A few weeks back, I attended the Society for Health Systems (SHS) Conference in Orlando, where I chaired the Patient Flow track. There were a lot of great speakers and I have a lot of notes and ideas to share.…
A few weeks ago, I saw a horrific story about a retail pharmacy error in the article “Pharmacy Mistakenly Gives Pregnant Woman Abortion Pill.” Mareena Silva was mistakenly given the wrong drug by her Safeway pharmacy, which means she might…
I had the most amazing morning a few weeks ago when I was in Cincinnati for the TechSolve lean healthcare event. Thanks to a friend of my sister’s, I was able to spend a few hours at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital…
This might seem like a random topic, but what the heck, it’s a Friday. I arrived in Orlando yesterday for the Society for Health Systems and HIMSS conferences and I picked up a rental gar from the garage. It’s a…
I really enjoyed having the chance to be in Cincinnati yesterday to participate in a Lean Healthcare workshop put on by TechSolve, a non-profit consultancy that teaches process improvement methodologies, including Lean, across multiple industries. We had well over 100…
I got a question via Twitter yesterday from somebody who asked how to help production operators make the case to supervisors that their kaizen ideas should be implemented. My response was that the supervisors are the ones you need to…
Following up my notes from Day 1, I’m sharing my notes from the second full day I attended on Wednesday, December 8 2010. Here, in the last day of the IHI National Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare, I saw…
Lean thinkers see the waste in healthcare when they are at the hospital “gemba“. I think this is true whether you are a Lean person who is new to healthcare or if you’re a long-time hospital person who has learned…
