Effective problem solving is not about quick decisions, templates, or expert opinions—it’s about shared understanding, scientific thinking, and learning at the system level. These posts explore how leaders and teams approach real problems in complex environments, from executive decision-making to daily improvement work.
Drawing on Lean thinking, Toyota practices, healthcare, manufacturing, and knowledge work, this archive emphasizes problem-solving as a leadership capability: asking better questions, testing assumptions, and building systems that make problems visible instead of hidden.
Happy New Year! Let’s talk about Lean. Let’s talk about Kaizen and continuous improvement and how to get better in 2015. You’re possibly thinking, “Hey, Mark, chill… watch some football… relax… it’s a holiday.” But, you’re reading this, so you…
It’s a bit of a modern management cliché to say, “Don’t bring problems! Bring me solutions!” I think what it’s meant to mean is, “Don’t just complain! Think about improving things!” Why “Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions” Backfires…
A few weeks back, I posted the first new video from my Healthcare Kaizen co-author‘s health system: “Endoscopy Nurses are “Kaizen Crazy” at Franciscan St. Francis Health!” Today’s post includes the second video and, as I add new ones, you can…
Four years ago, I parodied the style of GEICO commercial that they were running at the time with a “did you know that Steve Martin’s character from The Jerk was bad at 5S?” The other day, I was thinking about…
Mark’s note: Today’s post is a guest post by my friend and colleague Isaac Mitchell. We’ve crossed paths at conferences, including the annual Society for Health Systems conference, where he shared some of their great work on Kaizen that’s being…
Last week, I published my first cartoon collaboration with a skilled artist (and medical assistant), Carrie Schurman. You might call that cartoon “Strategy Dog-ployment.” None of us expect this to be a weekly thing, but sometimes you strike when inspiration hits.…
What happens when a mistake is made in your organization? How do you react when an error occurs? A lab specimen gets mislabeled. The wrong product is shipped to the wrong customer. A patient is injected with the wrong medication.…
We all know the beaver is “the engineer of the animal kingdom.” That’s why MIT has a beaver as a mascot… It’s an engineer who likes to build things and is generally nocturnal, an apt description of MIT students. A…
California week on the blog continues after yesterday’s post about Lean at San Francisco General Hospital. Today, I’m flying to Los Angeles to attend the 5th annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. I will be, as usual, moderating the CEO panel…
In the Kaizen process, we ask everyone–regardless of role or title–to identify problems (or opportunities) in their daily work. They’re encouraged to write down an idea that might solve the problem–or at least move things in the right direction. What’s…
It’s been fun attending the annual Lean Transformation Summit (produced by LEI). Today is Day 2. I took some notes from Day 1 and Tom Ehrenfeld has been “live blogging” it a bit on the LEI site. Tom also took…
We’ve all seen it. We’ve probably all done it. What’s that? Jumping to solutions. I hope this illustration I created gives you a bit of pause… not just to laugh at others, but to reflect on this personally.