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.
Mark’s Note: Today’s guest post is from a great friend of mine and this blog, Dean Bliss, of the Iowa Healthcare Collaborative. Check out my podcast with him. By Dean Bliss As someone who’s been doing Lean in healthcare for…
Former Wiremold CEO Art Byrne explains why Lean must be led directly by the CEO and treated as a core business strategy–not a set of tools. Drawing on his experience at GE, Danaher, and The Wiremold Company, Byrne shares how…
The list of stuff I’ve read and wanted to blog about has grown… that inventory becomes this post. Here are links to some varied articles I’ve read recently that might be of interest on a number of Lean related topics,…
Organizations that are most successful with Kaizen and continuous improvement don’t have fancier boards or better software — they have leaders who are more likely engaged with the right behaviors, more consistently. In my experience, I’ve put the same mechanics…
I didn’t have a post yesterday because it was the Labor Day holiday here in the U.S. While I’m not a “worker,” in the sense of an hourly employee or union worker anymore, I still enjoyed the day off with…
Ted Stiles is one of the handful of key recruiters I know in the world of Lean healthcare. Disclosure: I recently joined the advisory board for the firm Stiles & Associates, for which I receive a stipend. He was interviewed…
Joining me for episode #157 is Nick Sarillo, founder of Nick’s Pizza & Pub and author of the new book (out September 13) called A Slice of the Pie: How to Build a Big Little Business. I had a chance…
One thing I have enjoyed in the past few years is meeting and working with more people with direct experience working at Toyota (including here in San Antonio, my new home). There are always gems and brilliant nuggets that come…
Preventable medical mistakes remain one of the most serious challenges in healthcare, yet many hospitals still struggle with learning from medical errors and preventing them from happening again. From emergency departments to pathology labs, the same types of errors continue…
My guest for podcast #152 is Matt Stewart, and we are talking about his book The Walk-On: Inside Northwestern’s Rise From Cellar Dweller To Big Ten Champ. Matt and I are both graduates of Northwestern University. While he played football on…
My mom is a retired public school elementary teacher, so I’ve heard plenty of stories about bad management decisions within a school system and other craziness that runs the risk of crushing souls… but thankfully my mom (and so many…
Saw this in the most recent Fast Company: Is Your Manager A Creativity Killer? If the manager is something like a case study from the book The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t,…
