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.
Thanks everybody for reading my blog in 2013! I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to read and participate in the discussion and I h0pe you’ll continue visiting the site in 2014… in what will be my…
It was an amazing first day of the Lean Startup conference yesterday in San Francisco. Videos will be available online soon, but for now I can share some notes I took during the main stage sessions in this Google Doc…
Today and tomorrow, I’m attending the Lean Startup conference in San Francisco (the event produced by Eric Ries, the author of The Lean Startup). I’ll be learning a lot of ideas by attending presentations and networking, which will be applicable…
I’m very excited to announce that my Healthcare Kaizen series co-author, Joe Swartz, will be joining me to run a full-day public registration workshop in the Detroit area on January 22, 2014. Use the link below or code “leanblog” to…
Mark’s Note: Today brings another guest post from Joe Swartz, my co-author for our Healthcare Kaizen series of books. Read his previous posts here. I also did a podcast with him about his experiences at the Franciscan St. Francis…
Mark’s Note: Today’s guest post is by Joe Swartz, my co-author for the books Healthcare Kaizen and The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. Joe will be a regular contributor in the future and I also did a podcast with him…
Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award recipients, Mark Graban and Joe Swartz, present a webinar regarding their book. “Healthcare Kaizen.” Graban and Swartz will receive their award at the 26th International Shingo Conference in Sandusky, Ohio, from May 5-9, 2014.
Last month, Joe Swartz and I presented a webinar for the newly renamed Shingo Institute about our Healthcare Kaizen books. The Shingo Institute’s new logo is at left and you can watch a video about their new name and expanded…
It’s great to see CEOs blogging and sharing transparently on the web, sharing their views, stories, and opinions. Paul Levy was a real innovator in this regard (and still blogs about “Not Running a Hospital“). You can find a few…
They just started a year ago (better late than never?), but San Francisco General Hospital had its Lean efforts highlighted in the San Francisco Chronicle last week: “S.F. General following ‘Toyota Way’ to efficiency.” On the very same day, another…
Mark’s note: What follows is a guest post by Keivan Zokaei about the necessary and unsurprisingly overlap between Lean principles and environmental stewardship. I wrote about this dynamic in a 2010 blog post: “Lean Leads to Green, Which Supports Lean,”…
In some “Kaizen Kickoff” coaching that I’ve been doing recently, I’ve been spending time with managers and other leaders as they interact with nurses and other staff members with the goal of finding problems, opportunities for improvement, and ideas. One…