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.
In this month’s “ASQ Influential Voices” series, ASQ President Paul Borawski asked, “How Do You “Sell” Quality?,” particularly to senior execs and CEOs. Paul asks how we convince senior leaders that quality is essential to long term performance. Through my…
Since the webinar I’m doing later today for Gemba Academy (Using SPC to Make Better Management Decisions) allows me to cite the late great Dr. W. Edwards Deming when talking about variation in systems, I thought I’d share this silly…
March 4 to 10 has been “Patient Safety Awareness Week” from the National Patient Safety Foundation. I’m certainly in favor of patient safety and have worked tirelessly, as have others, to try to improve patient safety from its abysmal starting…
It was a very pleasant surprise that ASQ chose Ari Weizweig, a founder and CEO of Zingerman’s Deli (and other businesses) in Ann Arbor, to be the opening keynote speaker at the recent ASQ Lean & Six Sigma Conference in…
Last Thursday’s Journal had a story titled “How to Be a Better Boss? Spend Time on the Front Lines.” The article talks about senior leaders going to see work being done at the front lines. Does this have to be…
Regular readers know I started my career at General Motors from 1995 to 1997. After graduate school at MIT, I took a job at Dell, Inc. in 1999. At the time, Dell was at the peak of its reputation in…
Our guest for episode #136 is Paul Akers, President of FastCap and author of the book 2 Second Lean. Here, we are talking about the new book and how small improvements that save two seconds in your daily work can…
Mark’s note: Today’s guest post by Bart Sellers is a timely contribution to follow up to yesterday’s post about the ThedaCare Business Performance System and the journal article about that great work. Bart has been a frequent commenter here on…
One of the most powerful thoughts in the book On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry (by John Toussaint MD and Roger Gerard PhD) is the quote; “the ultimate arrogance is to change the way…
As I wrote about after his death, I am appreciative of the products and services that Steve Jobs brought to the world. That said, some of his behavior, as reported in the biography written by Walter Isaacson (the simply titled…
The more I visit different hospitals, the more I tend to roll my eyes at the different signs that aim to remind staff and/or visitors to follow proper hand hygiene practices. These signs are often part of an arms race…
Becker’s Hospital Review published a piece about the first 10 years of Lean at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center: 10 Years Later: Virginia Mason Production System Still Going Strong. The article highlights some of the reasons for the longevity of…
