Leadership isn’t about titles, charisma, or quick decisions—it’s about creating systems where people can do their best work and continuously improve. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on leadership through a Lean lens, drawing on ideas from Deming, Toyota, healthcare, and real-world management practice. The common theme: leaders shape culture, influence behavior, and own the systems that produce results—for better or worse.
My guest for Episode #362 is Adam Lawrence, managing partner with Process Improvement Partners LLC. He’s an industrial engineer who had a long career working with TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean at Thomasvile Furniture and other Armstrong World Industries companies.…
TL;DR: When staff invent workarounds to cope with shortages or failures, the real problem isn’t their behavior–it’s the system leaders allowed to fail. This blog post is a collaboration with a Lean healthcare consulting friend of mine, who heard another…
TL;DR: In a crisis, what leaders do matters more than what they say–and inconsistency at the top quietly undermines trust, safety, and compliance. I believe that leaders need to lead by example. This was true in my “Lean manufacturing” days…
Today, I’m sharing a preview (in podcast and transcript form) of a webinar that Steve Kane, from Gemba Academy, will presenting on April 8th as part of the KaiNexus webinar series. Coaching Strategies for Leaders It’s free and I hope…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Running controlled experiments for evaluating interventions in healthcare is usually infeasible – the presentation of patients can be random and most factors are impossible to control. However, experimenters can benefit from the quasi-random assignment…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Developing a culture of patient safety requires the ability to raise risks without fear of reprisal. This post from leanblog.org about a nurse who failed to report a critical incident for fear of being immediately…
Here is a story that was sent to me by a blog reader, who needs to remain anonymous. I know the blog reader fairly well and believe what’s written here to be true. The blog reader is a career-long Lean…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients “We have a good people in a bad system”. Here’s an excellent interview with Dr. Marty Makary, author of “The Price We Pay”, on how to address the challenges of the US Healthcare system. Who knows…
Process behavior charts offer a way to move beyond emojis, colors, and single data points by showing whether a metric is actually changing or merely fluctuating. This post explores why many common visual scorecards unintentionally drive overreaction — and how…
Joining me today for episode #357 is Michael Conroy, M.D., the Chief Medical Officer of Sutter Medical Group in northern California. Mike was previously the Medical Director of the Lean Promotion Office for the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and he…
TL;DR: In healthcare huddles, how leaders ask about patient safety can either invite honest discussion or make speaking up feel risky. Open-ended, system-focused questions–combined with consistent follow-through–are essential for building psychological safety and preventing harm. I think that working to…
TL;DR: Two Japanese hospitals improved patient safety by combining Toyota-style problem-solving with psychological safety. By making it safe for staff to report problems and near misses, leaders uncovered more issues, learned faster, and reduced harm–turning safety into part of daily…
