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.
Recently, I wrote about an on-site event that I helped the Iowa Lean Consortium and Mary Greeley Medical Center (MGMC) organize… here is my first post about the morning of that event, if you missed it: Celebrating & Sharing Continuous Improvement…
We’ve been having a great time at the KaiNexus User Conference. Check out key moments and tweets at the hashtag #KaiNexusUC16 on Twitter. To kick off the event, we shared a video that features KaiNexus team members sharing what we…
Snapping a historic 108-year drought, a small hospital, Chicago Community Use Bariatric Health Services (CUBS), implemented their first employee-driven improvement idea Wednesday night, breaking a long curse.
This week is our 2nd annual KaiNexus User Conference, in Austin… with customers and those who are about to become customers joining us for 1.5 or 2.5 days of sharing, learning, and fun. If Austin’s expression is “Keep Austin Weird,”…
I really enjoyed spending the last two days at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa the last two days. On Tuesday, there was event planned by MGMC and the Iowa Lean Consortium based on the “Kaizen Live!” site visits that…
This article from the Toronto Star caught my eye the other day: Cyclist says his pool noodle makes Toronto streets safer for him There was a law passed in Ontario requiring drivers leave one meter of space between them and…
TL;DR: Archival GM and NUMMI documents reveal how deeply Toyota embedded kaizen, problem-solving, and respect for people into daily work–principles that contrasted sharply with old GM management practices and still offer timely lessons for Lean leadership today. These firsthand materials…
When I was in England on vacation recently, I saw this column in the Financial Times: Listen to your employees and so increase their productivity And the author, Sarah O’Connor, makes a great point in the sub headline – that…
I watched the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" for a second time. The film focuses mainly on Jiro Ono, a now 90-year old sushi chef in Tokyo who has received the rare and coveted Michelin 3-star rating for his restaurant. The film reminds me of Lean thinking, especially the drive for Kaizen, or continuous improvement.
I was fortunate to take a nearly two-week vacation recently, a trip that included a week in France. My wife and I had a chance to, I guess, do a number of “gemba visits” at some wineries in the Burgundy,…
tl;dr: Suntory’s acquisition of Jim Beam highlights a classic Kaizen culture clash–where well-intended continuous improvement meets pride, identity, and tradition. The lesson for Lean leaders: improvement starts with shared purpose, psychological safety, and respect, not with telling people what to…
You might remember the hubbub (a kerfuffle?) over the NEJM opinion piece written by Dr. Jerome Groopman and Dr. Pamela Hartzband. See my first post about their article. There are more links at the bottom of this post Now, the “Perspective”…
