Kaizen is often misunderstood as small ideas or isolated improvement events. In practice, Kaizen is a daily, people-centered approach to learning and improving work—supported by leadership, good systems, and psychological safety. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and real-world examples of Kaizen in action, across healthcare and other industries, with a consistent focus on leadership behaviors, respect for people, and learning from problems rather than hiding them.
Today, Mark Graban and KaiNexus host Kevin Meyer in presenting a webinar about Lean and Zen. Also, we try to practice what we preach about Kaizen at KaiNexus, as we describe in a blog post and podcast episode.
Last week, I received a few questions from somebody at a hospital system and I thought I'd address one of them here: "Can you suggest any "quick wins" to get staff engaged in a Lean culture?"
This recent tweet of mine struck a nerve, apparently, based on the number of times it was liked and retweeted -- "Heard often: "We don't have time for improvement." Heard never: "We don't have time for fire fighting."
Can leaders get some improvement just by asking for it? Does improvement stall out if we don't have a method for doing so? What can "process behavior" charts show us in our work today?
I was at an organization recently where one of the relatively senior leaders kept using a curious phrase that made my ears perk up. The senior executives were continually being referred to as "the decision makers." Why can't everybody be a decision maker?
In today's post, I write about how Kaizen starts with you. I share some examples of "personal Kaizen," including the way I've streamlined my call scheduling process, for my benefit and for others.
Today is the start of the main days of the annual Society for Health Systems Conference. I think this is my 9th year attending out of the past 11 or so. Follow the action on Twitter using hashtag #SHS2017. Here are a few posts from the past conferences:
During the class, there was a case study discussion about a hospital that was trying to solve the problem of nurses not always scanning patient bar codes and medications 100% of the time. In the discussion, I was disappointed that an attendee fell back on saying...
This post looks back at a podcast that I did a few years ago with Joe Swartz, talking about how he helped introduce Kaizen at Franciscan St. Francis Health and how they’ve built that culture.
In this post, I describe an idea (or a suggestion?) that led to a Kaizen improvement through Catalysis (formerly known as the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value).
This post will point you to a few things you might be interested in: a free webinar this Thursday, some thoughts on Kaizen and "low-hanging fruit," and a summary of the book Practicing Lean.
Why did "The Rock" and his movie make me think about Lean? Are many individuals (or organization's) willing to put time into continuous improvement every day for 20 years? If so, the results and "after" picture seem astonishing, right?
