Tag: Lean Hospitals

TL;DR: I turned my Lean Hospitals book into an interactive coaching tool leaders can use during real work -- exploring whether improvement knowledge can...

TL;DR: If Lean improvements put jobs at risk, people will stop improving. Organizations that commit to "no layoffs due to Lean" create trust, unlock...

Fear and futility are two of the biggest barriers to continuous improvement. When people are afraid to speak up--or believe nothing will change--problems stay...

tl;dr: Seventeen years after Lean Hospitals, the core lessons still hold: Lean healthcare isn't about tools--it's about systems thinking, respect for people, psychological safety,...

Learning from mistakes is not optional in healthcare--it's essential for patient safety, staff engagement, and long-term performance. For years, I've written and spoken about...

This is from the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals. I've copied and pasted from the book with no additional edits, although I'll bold...

I do my best to practice what I preach. I'm not perfect, by any means, but I'm pretty good about practicing the "Kaizen" style of continuous improvement. In this post, I share three recent examples of my Kaizen efforts for LeanBlog.org, JapanLeanTrip.com, and LeanHospitalsBook.com.

I posted an article on LinkedIn last week as a companion article and summary of my podcast with Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare. That article: "A Retired Hospital CEO Shares the Employee Feedback That was 'A Bucket of Cold Water to the Face.'" There have been over 125 comments so far... but one has me scratching my head. It read: "I looked at deploying Lean within our PNO, and ultimately decided against it, in part for two reasons: because Lean is about doing the same thing, albeit better and it is not as much customer/outwardly focused as we need in healthcare." Lean is not customer/outwardly focused? I hope this isn't a widespread perception or belief out there. I hope I'm overreacting to something that's not really a problem... but I wrote the post anyway.

It's time for another new, revised edition of my book! The 4th edition is the fastest new edition yet, since the world is changing quickly and increasingly uncertain. Hospitals need to react now! Do something! Cut costs! Reduce costs! Slash costs!

Thanks to my friends at the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value for putting together this video with me, filmed at the last Lean Healthcare...

I'm going to be away from the blog (and Twitter) through July 13, but here are some blog posts from Julys of years past. 2015: See...

Thanks to those of you who pre-ordered the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals. Click below to read a free preview from the book, the start...