Tag: Medium

tl;dr: Year-to-year changes in Oscars TV ratings are usually just noise, not meaningful signals. Blaming or praising the host (or lack of one) based...

tl;dr Lean should reduce hospital overwork and unsafe understaffing -- not justify them. True Lean, as practiced at Toyota, treats overburden (muri) as a...

The "Miracle on the Hudson" was 10 years ago today. Read my blog post about hearing Sully speak at an event last year. I got...

tl;dr: Toyota's long-term success comes from treating Lean as a people development system, not a toolbox. By prioritizing learning, coaching, and growth over short-term...

The other day, I saw a post on Twitter that included a few photos related to what's often called Lean Daily Management practices in a hospital. The spirit of my post is not meant to come across as "they're doing it wrong" but more in the spirit of "they're doing a lot of great things, but it would be better if..." If Lean Daily Management is supposed to be, at its core, about identifying opportunities for improvement, I'd hope they wouldn't be offended by my recommendations, but I also don't want to link to the Twitter post or call them out by name. I will pass along private feedback through a channel I have. But, I'm writing a post because what I see here is VERY common in different organizations (not just healthcare).

In some of the major Lean transformation stories (in manufacturing in healthcare) usually include stories about some percentage of managers, doctors, or employees who chose to leave the organization. This is often a badge of honor of sorts. Sometimes, those people get labeled as "concrete heads" (I term I think we shouldn't use, as I've blogged about). Is this really the right way to view things?

In today's post, I pose a question: Should the major Lean conferences adopt or adapt a practice that's now common at tech events, including Agile and Lean Startup events: a "Code of Conduct" for participants and attendees. Is this a countermeasure to a problem that doesn't exist in the Lean community? Or, is it still good to proactively encourage people to speak up to conference organizers if they are subject to bad behavior during the event? In this post, I get feedback and thoughts from the Lean Enterprise Institute, AME, Catalysis, Lean Frontiers, and the Shingo Institute.

TL;DR: Leaders lose sleep because they react to every up and down in their metrics. Most fluctuations are just noise. Process Behavior Charts help...

I do a lot of work across the U.S., but I've also been very fortunate to work with hospitals, clinics, and health systems around...

Today's post is something that I wrote for a broader LinkedIn audience, but might have meaning and significance to my Lean readers: "What Bad Managers,...

The price paid for most management consulting work is based on either a daily rate or some variation of a flat-rate fee based on...

Don't threaten people with this quote... One of the more popular email-signature quotes I still see--especially among Lean practitioners--is this supposed gem from Dr. W....