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.
Our guest for episode #136 is Paul Akers, President of FastCap and author of the book 2 Second Lean. Here, we are talking about the new book and how small improvements that save two seconds in your daily work can…
Mark’s note: Today’s guest post by Bart Sellers is a timely contribution to follow up to yesterday’s post about the ThedaCare Business Performance System and the journal article about that great work. Bart has been a frequent commenter here on…
“Kaizen” is a Japanese word that means “change for the better” in the context of ongoing “continuous improvement.” The so-called “kaizen event,” a weeklong focused improvement effort is one type of kaizen, but it’s not the only type. A powerful…
I love employee ideas and continuous improvement, but I really dislike suggestion boxes. As I’ve said, they are well intended, but the whole suggestion box process is usually pretty ineffective. I see more and more articles about the failures of…
As I was cleaning out a pile of stuff in my office, I found an unread issue of Inc. magazine from June 2011. One of their “Best Small Company Workplaces” was Hopkins Printing in Columbus, Ohio: “Survival of the Smartest:…
My Healthcare Kaizen co-author Joe Swartz works in Indianapolis in the Franciscan St. Francis Health System. They use the term “kaizeneer” to describe those employees and staff members who initiate and participate in “kaizen,” or continuous improvement, activities. One of…
While doing research for my upcoming book on “Healthcare Kaizen,” I found two books that touched on kaizen-style continuous improvement in our everyday lives. One was a brief mention in a book from a TV personality (see my post An…
I saw this article the other day on BusinessInsider.com: “10 Predictions For How The Workplace Will Change In 2012.” Two of the predictions caught my eye: 3. “It’s about the people stupid.” 4. The suggestion box will be reborn. Other…
Episode #133 is hosted by Ron Pereira, from Gemba Academy, as he leads me through additional Q&A as a follow up to our recent webinar on my upcoming book Healthcare Kaizen and some of the concepts from the book on…
Thanks to the readers who sent this article my way and thanks to the authors for mentioning and citing my book, Lean Hospitals. The article “Finding a Balance between “Value Added” and Feeling Valued: Revising Models of Care, The human…
Yesterday, the MIT SDM program hosted a webinar by Dr. Jack Billi from University of Michigan. I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Billi a few times during my involvement in the Healthcare Value Network. He is an extremely…
Here is the fourth short, simple Kaizen education video from KaiNexus, a software startup where I am the Chief Improvement Officer.
