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.
Today is one of those days where I think, "Forget what I have to say, read this...."
This being a LinkedIn post written by James Hereford, the CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minnesota.
"How huddles help us lead"
I think the "us" says a lot, instead of a headline about "How huddles help ME lead."
For a long time, I've been an advocate for the parallels between Lean and an approach called "Just Culture." See previous blog posts on this topic. Here's a good overview of Just Culture, which says, in part:
"A just culture recognizes that individual practitioners should not be held accountable for system failings over which they have no control. A just culture also recognizes that many individual or active errors represent predictable interactions between human operators and the system in which they work.
However, in contrast to a culture that touts no blame as its governing principle, a just culture does not tolerate conscious disregard of clear risks to patients or gross misconduct, such as falsifying a record, performing professional duties while intoxicated, etc."
I'm often reminded of three challenging questions that are asked by Paul O'Neill, former CEO of Alcoa and former US Treasury Secretary.
I've mentioned the questions before, in this blog post about Eric Ries and an employee's bill of rights. See more blog posts and my podcast with Mr. O'Neill.
Sadly, I'm reminded of the questions when I'm around people who cannot answer "yes" to them in healthcare workplaces. This is a widespread problem.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been quoted as saying he will "school Toyota on Lean manufacturing."
OK, let's take inspiration and lessons from the apparent Tesla Way management system. What would happen if hospitals and other organizations tried emulating Tesla instead of Toyota? What are the methods and mindsets? The behaviors and principles? What's the management approach and culture?
Recently, I blogged about a quality catastrophe that I lived through at GM just over 20 years ago, at the now-closed GM Livonia Engine Plant.
Bluntly, the quality problems were caused by poor management and the side effects of their decisions. Even though they constantly blamed workers, management directly interfered with workers and engineers being able to do the right thing for quality.
Here is Part 2 of that story... the first quality "spill" took place in April 1996. As I wrote about last time, Angry high-horse memos were sent out by management. Workers were told to have pride and to pay closer attention to quality (as if those had been the problems).
When surgeons have no better options than complaining about process problems on LinkedIn, are their leaders and organizations really properly supporting them? In this post, we'll explore questions of blame, accountability, and engaging people in process improvement... being of better service to them.
As you might know, I have always enjoyed baseball and like blogging about ideas and statistics that come from the sport.
I loved this recent article from The Wall Street Journal and there are parallels to Lean and being an effective change agent:
"The Data Wonk Who Became a Coach"
My first job out of college was as an Industrial Engineer at the General Motors Livonia Engine Plant. Blogging didn't exist then (I didn't even have email or internet access at work) or I might have started my writing career then. Oh, the stories. I've shared some of them on this blog over time.
I've blogged about papers from the Don Ephlin files, a former UAW national leader. I have my own small collection of documents and artifacts from my days at GM that I thought to keep in a folder. I still have that folder today.
A few of these memos tell the story of a quality and productivity death spiral that eventually led to our plant manager being replaced. And, by "replaced," I don't mean fired or given an early retirement. He was, at least in title, PROMOTED to a role at GM Powertrain headquarters. Thankfully, the new plant manager, Larry Spiegel, was one of the original "NUMMI commandos" and he made a huge difference to the plant and to me, personally.
TL;DR: Captain “Sully” Sullenberger’s leadership lessons from Flight 1549 highlight that safety depends on humility, trust, teamwork, and learning from mistakes–not heroics or checklists alone. High-risk industries like aviation improve safety by focusing on systems, psychological safety, and fact-based decisions.…
Mark's Note: Today's post is by Kay Kendall, CEO & Principal of BaldrigeCoach. You might remember her from episode #277 of my podcast. She's the co-author of Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way: How World-Class Leaders Align Their Organizations to Deliver Exceptional Results. Kay sent this out recently via her email newsletter and I asked her if I could share it here.
Joining me for Episode #303 is Craig Deao, a senior leader with Studer Group.
Today, we're talking about his book The E-Factor: How Engaged Patients, Clinicians, Leaders, and Employees Will Transform Healthcare. We'll talk about the differences between satisfaction and engagement, how to tell if people are engaged in their work, and how to engage various stakeholders, including employees, clinicians, and executives. We'll also talk about how Studer Group became a recipient of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in 2010.
Measures matter. The proper analysis of data and performance metrics allow us to separate good changes from bad, progress from stagnation. The methods in my book, Measures of Success, help us determine if our performance is getting better, getting worse, or essentially remains unchanged. Having the right set of balanced scorecard metrics is important. But the role of leaders is important, too. How do leaders interpret measures? How do they respond to changes in metrics? How do they know if a change is worth reacting to?