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.
When I talk to people about the Kaizen approach to continuous improvement, with my consulting hat on or in my role with KaiNexus, I don’t find anybody who is resistant to the IDEA of continuous improvement. But, they have a…
Saturday at the Society for Health Systems conference, included an excellent keynote address from Roger Gerard, from the ThedaCare health system, co-author with Dr. John Toussaint of the book On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the…
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory” is widely attributed to W. Edwards Deming. In an update to this post, I reported that Clare Crawford-Mason, who worked closely with Deming, recalled the wording as “Survival is optional.…
I’ve been talking to a lot of healthcare organizations about Kaizen and continuous improvement. There are many organizations embracing the methods that Joe Swartz and I wrote about in Healthcare Kaizen. I think there’s some momentum building out there for…
My reader survey (with prizes) is still open through Friday. I recently stumbled across the movie Meet the Fockers on TV recently and was reminded of the “circle of trust” (Robert DeNiro, pictured at left, see video here). It’s…
Don’t forget my reader survey – share your feedback and have a chance at some great prizes. In November, I blogged about a panel at the Lab Quality Confab that included Dr. Richard Zarbo from Henry Ford Health System (see…
As he mentioned on his blog, John Toussaint has co-authored a piece that was published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings: “The Promise of Lean in Health Care” (PDF). John is excited that the article will be read by many physicians,…
I guess that, considering last year’s blog post, this Lean thinker couldn’t really root for Notre Dame and Coach Brian Kelly Monday night in the BCS National Championship Game. Just before kickoff, ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi asked Saban, “Coach, you love…
This week, I was able to drop by the annual Lab Quality Confab event since it was being held in here in San Antonio. There were some things I heard during a few presentations about Lean or change management, such…
As I started writing about yesterday in Part 1, I recently viewed a lost video of Steve Jobs being interviewed in 1995. See this CBS News story about the video or you can rent the video via (what else) Apple…
A few years ago, there was a lot of buzz about how a board should evaluate a potential job candidate by seeing how they treat waiters and other “lowly” employees in a restaurant (see “CEOs say how you treat a…
Today’s guest post is by Natalie Sayer, who was my guest for Podcast #145. Most of the literature I read about “respect for people” has an inference that it is uni-directional or bidirectional, tied to the organizational hierarchy. I…
