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.
This isn’t a story about my frustration with a State of Texas office… it’s mainly a story about a failed “kaizen”-style improvement attempt that a good-natured state employee would have liked to have made – but yeah, it would have…
I hope you’ll join me and a lot of Lean friends at the 2012 Northeast Shingo Prize Conference, to be held in Worcester, MA September 25 and 26. I’m honored to be part of a great program (PDF), with keynote…
In the “Lean Startup” parlance, our startup KaiNexus is not going into an existing market – we are working to develop a new market (for improvement management software). We have competitors – but they tend to be Excel, SharePoint, and…
Most of us think of Kaizen as a workplace method. Robert Maurer applies it to therapy, health, and relationships — and the brain science he describes explains a lot about why change efforts fail at work, too. We talk about…
I’ve probably seen the “Current Condition” portion of the fantastic “Toast Kaizen” DVD (from GBMP) more than a hundred times over the past seven years. At the end, when Bruce learns that his wife wants raisin toast (when he makes…
Thanks to the guys at Quality Digest… I was on their weekly video show “Quality Digest Live” last week, talking about “Healthcare Kaizen.” You can view the archived video here (click on the July 6 episode if that doesn’t play…
I was recently at a conference and the microphone struck me… it looks an awful lot like our KaiNexus logo (or I see our logo too much and my eyes are playing tricks on me). I mentioned this to our…
My mom is a retired public school elementary teacher, so I’ve heard plenty of stories about bad management decisions within a school system and other craziness that runs the risk of crushing souls… but thankfully my mom (and so many…
It might only be free (brief registration required) for a limited time, but there’s a great video of Dr. Kaplan (with his slides) talking about Lean and the challenges facing healthcare (content no longer available for free). In his introductory…
Saw this in the most recent Fast Company: Is Your Manager A Creativity Killer? If the manager is something like a case study from the book The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t,…
Last week, I found and read an article, “Whatever happened to the company suggestion box?,” that makes some really great points about the problems with the ole’ box as a way to facilitate continuous improvement. This is a favorite topic…
Last week, my dad pointed out this grammar quiz on the Wall Street Journal website (as part of the article “This Embarrasses You and I*: Grammar Gaffes Invade the Office in an Age of Informal Email, Texting and Twitter.” We…
