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.
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Too often, patient involvement in design and research is tokenist or “tick-box”, and requires burdensome processes for participation. To truly design around the patient, research needs to be person-centered. Large healthcare systems continue to consolidate and…
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is written by Ken Segel, the managing director of Value Capture, LLC. This is the first of what I hope will be many contributions from the Value Capture team. In the spirit of transparency, I should…
My guests for Episode #328 are Bette Gardner and Jeff Heil, of the company Breakthrough Learning. Bette is the creator of a fantastic simulation called “Friday Night at the ER” — which I’ve blogged about. When we recorded the webinar,…
Last week, Herb Kelleher passed away. He was the legendary founder, CEO, and Chairman of Southwest Airlines. Southwest posted a nice tribute photo of him on the front of their website and also put up a special website HonoringHerb.org. Kelleher…
Hi All – here’s a collection of the most read Mixtape links from 2018. I compiled the links with the greatest number of viewers and then organized them into some themes. Enjoy! Setting goals and developing effective and actionable KPIs is a…
Mark’s Note: I’ve known Ryan McCormack for many years now, thanks to his previous work in Lean healthcare and his attendance at Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit events. He’s been sending out an excellent curated email on Operational Excellence. You can…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Healthcare is the world’s largest cottage industry, as evidenced by the enormous variation in practice. Healthcare practitioners may finally be ready to acknowledge that reducing variation is important to improving patient safety and outcomes according…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Hospitals have been collecting patient complaint data for decades, but leveraging the data for improvement has remained elusive. Some new publications show how using a big data approach for patient complaint data can help identify…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients The benefits of Electronic healthcare records are a polarizing topic with healthcare providers. Standardization and electronic workflows have their upsides, but many are developed to optimize billing and payments, and are not designed with…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patient A lot can be done to optimize flow in hospitals without investing in additional staff and infrastructure by using an operations research approach. Here’s an example from Ottawa. Patient interviews can be uncomfortable, and it…
Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD was named CEO of the Cleveland Clinic just over a year ago, replacing long-time CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD.
As I've blogged about (and podcasted about), I've been impressed with the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model and their approach to continuous improvement, problem solving, and Lean management.
Dr. Mihaljevic has written a blog post about the power of "tiered huddles"...
This article from the WSJ caught my eye last week (might be behind their paywall):
The Best Bosses Are Humble Bosses
Organizations are making a push to hire and promote workers who lead effectively but don't seek the spotlight
In today's post, I share some thoughts and related reading...
