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.
As I occasionally do, I’ve written blog post for KaiNexus: For the Want of a System Better Than a Sticky Note, a Car Sale Was Lost I hope you’ll enjoy the post… not just me complaining about a car dealer…
One thing I enjoy is the opportunity to basically be a “value adding” worker in a process. The work is pretty repetitive (but, again, it’s a very enjoyable environment) and it lets me think like an industrial engineer or a “Lean thinker” when I’m not talking with...
I've written a lot about suggestion boxes, and usually in the context of how they don't work well. Many aspects of traditional suggestion box systems sound great, but don't work in practice. What doesn't work: Boxes not being opened very often, being reviewed by a committee or executives...
The BBC radio program “The Science Hour” recently aired a program with a segment where an unexpected person (Dr. Kevin Fong) to an unexpected place (UCLA Harbor Medical Center) to look into “Lean.” You might remember UCLA Harbor from my…
Thanks to Arena Simulation Software for asking me to write this article for their regular customer newsletter: “Testing Lean Changes, Small or Large“ The article is freely available to any reader: Two short excerpts from the article: “Lean is about teams…
I don't get the whole Pokémon thing. But how does the wildly popular Pokémon Go game make me thing of Lean and Kaizen - leaders need to get out of their offices, go out and search for improvement opportunities! Gotta catch 'em all! ...
Continuing from Part 1 of my post about my first day of my first China trip, I’d like to share more about the Lean healthcare conference and presentations that took place. In the next presentation from a Chinese hospital, the…
Previously on LinkedIn, I've written about Kaizen in a wine bar and the need for restaurants to not blame employees for problems. Yesterday, I published my 50th post for their Influencers program: This Restaurant Server Sadly Explains a Widespread Management Problem...
Gwendolyn Galsworth is a leading thinker and author on Lean and various aspects of "visuality." One thing she talks about in the workplace is "information deficits."
I've written before about the subject of hospitals "flexing" nurses and employees. I've criticized flexing (or the practice of sending employees home early because patient census is low) and I've pointed out that it's not keeping with "Lean" principles to "save money" by sending people home early.
After the previous CEO of JC Penney, Ron Johnson, was fired (see my post “Lack of PDSA made JCP CEO SOL?“), it seems that new CEO Marvin Ellison might be taking a different approach. See this article from FORTUNE: “The CEO…
As a guy who started his career in manufacturing before moving to healthcare in 2005, I don’t get many opportunities to visit the “Gemba” at a factory very often anymore. I get to occasionally visit a Toyota plant (in the…
