The Lean transformation failure rate might be the longest-running meme in our field. You have seen the claim on LinkedIn, in keynotes, and in consulting decks: 70 percent of Lean transformations fail. Sometimes it is 90 percent. Nobody ever has…
In March 2007, Jim Womack told me about his biggest disappointment. The Machine That Changed the World had been out for more than sixteen years, sold around a million copies, and was about to be reissued with an updated subtitle:…
TL;DR: Lean doesn’t fail because people resist change. It struggles when organizations ask for participation without earning belief. Don Ephlin saw this decades ago: behavior changes when people believe, not when they’re told to obey. That distinction still explains why…
TL;DR: Jim Womack explains how the term “Lean” was coined to describe creating more value with less waste–and how it became misunderstood as cost cutting. Nearly 40 years later, the real purpose of Lean remains respect for people and continuous…
TL;DR: Larry Culp’s AME keynote shows that Lean leadership at GE is about how leaders think, learn, and respond to problems–not tools. Katie Anderson and Mark Graban discuss psychological safety, gemba, learning from mistakes, and building culture through daily leadership…
Today is a throwback to a throwback, in a way. Five years ago, I blogged about how the term "Lean Production" was 25 years old...
Yesterday, Isaac Mitchell and I asked a group of Society for Health Systems Conference attendees what they wanted to talk about with peers and colleagues in the room. Here’s that list and how the discussion was structured…
I get asked a lot, “How do you know if a hospital is truly ‘Lean?'” Nobody is ever perfect or “fully Lean,” but you could ask, “How do you know if somebody is on a legitimate Lean transformation journey?” If you could only ask one question...
As I've worked with hospital and healthcare people over the past ten years, one personal benefit to me has been exposure to new ideas and new influences. I've been exposed to ideas from the social sciences, ideas that have been thought provoking and helpful...
A collection of creative videos was recently brought to my attention and I’d like to share them here. They are created by Dr. Mark Harrison (@leanpsychiatry), a psychiatrist for an NHS Trust. He created the videos by taking photos of…
People often say Lean is pretty simple (or that it’s just “common sense“). Yeah, some of the concepts are simple… but sometimes deceptively so. Or, we find that it’s easier to describe Lean (as a management system, a set of…
Listen My guest for episode #209 is George Friesen, Business Practice Leader for Lean Transformations in the Workforce Solutions Group at St. Louis Community College. In this episode, we talk about his early experiences at the GM/Toyota NUMMI plant, why candor and trust…
