For Oregon Football, Leadership Doesn’t Mean Yelling and Screaming The stereotype of a football coach is sort of like the stereotype of an Army drill sergeant — lots of yelling and screaming and getting “in your face” when a mistake…
I saw this headline the other day: “U.S. Soldiers Get Just Four Hours of Ebola Training“ The phrase “just four hours” implies that it wasn’t enough. How do we know? Maybe four hours of training, done properly, is all that’s…
TL;DR: Long VA wait times weren’t the result of “bad apples.” They were the predictable outcome of bad management systems that used unrealistic targets, bonuses, and fear-based accountability–creating incentives to game the numbers instead of improving care. Look at the…
Today is Memorial Day, a U.S. holiday. It’s a day to honor those who have given their lives in military service. Lately, the news has had many reminders about our need to provide better care to our living veterans through…
Every once in a while, I have too many browser windows open and it slows my computer down. That’s when I dump a bunch of links in a post that clears out the Lean Blog backlog. Dan Markovitz had a…
Today is Veterans Day in the U.S. and it’s also Remembrance Day in Canada, the UK, and the Commonwealth countries. The poppy pin is worn as a symbol of Remembrance Day (as I wore, at left, last week while in…
Listen: Episode #134 is a different topic than usual. Instead of strictly talking Lean, today’s discussion is about broader issues of healthcare quality and the United States military. Joining me are Daniel Sullivan, President and General Manager of the The…
The “Strong America Now” initiative has proposed there are opportunities to save $500 BILLION a year from our U.S. federal government budget by using Lean and Six Sigma methods (I interviewed Mike George, the founder of the campaign here in…
I know about 35% of you are reading from outside of the United States, but it is a national holiday here today, Memorial Day. It is a day to remember those who gave their lives in service to their country…
I was at the annual HIMSS Conference yesterday, as a guest of the software company FormFast, giving short 10-minute talks about Lean Healthcare to audiences at their booth. It’s fair to say that it’s 10x harder to give a succinct…
CNN Programs – Anchors/Reporters – Sanjay Gupta I had a very full, interesting week – giving a well-received talk about Lean Healthcare at the Ontario Hospital Association convention, spending a day with a hospital east of Toronto, and hearing some…
Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine: There was a fascinating article in a recent WIRED Magazine about Cold War nuclear response and defense systems. This one sidebar struck me as a classic workaround, if the story can be believed. When:…
