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.
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Sometimes you just need to get a team together and improve. Here’s a good example of use of A3 thinking to improve opioid prescribing in outpatient rheumatology. Reducing harm requires the conditions to speak up, raise…
TL;DR: Kaizen isn’t automatic in Japan. Even there, a culture of continuous improvement only takes hold when leaders deliberately choose it, model it, and engage employees every day. Geography doesn’t create Kaizen–leadership does. While in Japan recently, I shared a…
Hi, you’re invited to view the recording of a webinar that I presented next week — Wednesday, December 11 at 1 pm ET, as part of the ongoing KaiNexus webinar series: “The Power of Alignment and Intrinsic Motivation in Continuous…
Continuous Improvement at UMass Memorial Health UMass Memorial Health has built a lasting culture of continuous improvement by encouraging thousands of small, frontline-generated ideas, not just large projects. Under CEO Eric Dickson’s leadership, teams prioritize ideas with the biggest impact…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients “Imagine walking into a restaurant and being seated. Sometime after your meal, you receive the check and find an additional charge that was not indicated on the menu or previously mentioned by your waiter.…
Many of you have asked if I’m at the AME Conference this week in Chicago. I am not, as I had a previous invitation to speak at the Swiss Lean Conference today. My theme was Kaizen — engaging everybody, everywhere,…
A Toyota team applied the Toyota Production System in a Brazilian hospital to improve emergency care, reduce wasted motion, shorten waits, and make work easier for staff–showing TPS can improve healthcare systems, not just factories. When I was in Brazil…
Here’s an article from Bloomberg BusinessWeek: GE’s Larry Culp Faces Ultimate CEO Test in Trying to Save a Once-Great Company Very early on, the article mentions Culp’s advocacy for “Toyota-style lean manufacturing.” Or is he pushing “Danaher-style lean manufacturing” and…
Last week was our fifth annual KaiNexus User Conference (or “KaiNexicon” as we now call it). One of our keynote speakers was Jess Orr, a former Toyota engineer who shared perspectives on what it was like to now lead continuous…
tl;dr: We often label small changes as “Just Do Its,” but that can skip over useful thinking. Even the simplest Kaizen can follow a quick PDSA cycle–Plan, Do, Study, Adjust–to ensure we’re learning and improving, not just acting. Maybe it’s…
TL;DR: The wedge metaphor, often used to represent standardized work in Lean, can send the wrong message. Instead of assuming people will backslide without enforcement, we should focus on engaging them in meaningful improvements they want to sustain. Maybe it’s…
I want to give credit to my friend and colleague Tony Milian for the idea that prompted this blog post. Tony and I used to work together in a Lean healthcare consulting group that was part of Johnson & Johnson…
