The Lean Blog Interviews Podcast explores leadership, systems, and continuous improvement through thoughtful conversations with practitioners, executives, authors, and researchers. These episodes go beyond tools to examine how organizations really improve—through better leadership behaviors, respect for people, learning from mistakes, and sound management systems. This archive brings together podcast episodes focused on Lean, healthcare, Toyota, Deming, psychological safety, and what it actually takes to sustain improvement over time.
Listen Normally, my podcast is all about my guests. This episode has me being interviewed by the hosts at Healthcare Tech Talk, a new podcast for Healthcare IS professionals. This originally appeared as episode #23 of their series. Thanks to…
Listen My guests today are Darrell Damron and Hollie Jensen and we’re talking about Lean in Washington state government. Darrell and Hollie are both state employees, serving in the role of Enterprise Lean Consultant within a team called “Results Washington.”…
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…
Joining me for episode #208 is Michael Bremer, author of the recently released book How to Do a Gemba Walk. Michael is president of The Cumberland Group, a business improvement consulting firm based in Illinois. In today’s episode, Michael talks about…
Chris Jerry, founder of the Emily Jerry Foundation, continues his conversation on why patient safety demands system change — not blame — and why he chose to publicly forgive the pharmacist convicted in his daughter’s death. Listen to the Episode…
My guest for episode #206 is Ed Pound, co-author of the book Factory Physics for Managers: How Leaders Improve Performance in a Post-Lean Six Sigma World that was released in April. It is, of course, a new version of the original Factory…
Listen: Episode #205 is a conversation with Joe Schnur, VP Business Development at Intelligent M, a company that “designs data-driven hand hygiene compliance improvement solutions for hospitals that dramatically reduce healthcare-acquired infections and their associated costs.” Joe and I share a…
Joining me today for Episode #204 is Paul Plsek, and we’re talking about his excellent book (a Shingo Research Award recipient this year) titled Accelerating Health Care Transformation with Lean and Innovation: The Virginia Mason Experience. Virginia Mason, of course,…
Listen My guest for Episode #203 (and for Part 2 of our discussion in episode #207) is Chris Jerry, founder of The Emily Jerry Foundation. The foundation was created in the aftermath of the tragic death of his daughter, Emily – a preventable…
My guest today for Episode 202 is Patrick Graupp, co-author of the excellent book Getting to Standard Work in Health Care: Using TWI to Create a Foundation for Quality Care, co-authored with Martha Purrier from Virginia Mason Medical Center. If…
This episode shares how Mary Greeley Medical Center used a focused, time-bound Lean “WorkOut” to improve patient care while achieving validated cost savings of about $800,000. The conversation highlights how structured improvement, supported by KaiNexus, helped spark a culture of…
My guest for episode 200 is Paul Spiegelman, author of the book Patients Come Second: Leading Change by Changing the Way You Lead. Today, we’re talking about his book and its provocative title – what do you mean patients don’t…