Here’s a funny ESPN commercial featuring PGA golfer Rickie Fowler. Fowler is pouring coffee, yet he makes some bad assumptions about which coffee is decaf and about the “milk” being bad (compounded by the joke that he’s supposedly color blind).…
Wednesday night’s game between the Cincinnati Reds and the San Francisco Giants had some batter’s box lines that would have been embarrassing on a Little League field (click here for better views and an article about this). My first thought…
Mistake-proofing vs. warning signs is not a close contest. Signs rely on people paying attention in the moment. Mistake-proofing removes the chance to fail in the first place. My friend Chad Walters has contributed guest posts to my blog (and…
Listen: My guest for episode #171 is Chad Walters, a friend and a Lean consultant. He is owner of Lean Blitz Consulting in Augusta, Georgia, a firm focused on continuous improvement for small businesses and sports organizations. I’m a big…
Hat tip to one of my favorite blogs, Uni-Watch.com, for pointing this out. In Sunday’s Texans / Patriots game, somebody on the Texans sideline apparently removed the red “challenge” flag from the back pocket of head coach Gary Kubiak. This…
I guess that, considering last year’s blog post, this Lean thinker couldn’t really root for Notre Dame and Coach Brian Kelly Monday night in the BCS National Championship Game. Just before kickoff, ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi asked Saban, “Coach, you love…
On Friday, I had a great opportunity to teach a class of healthcare professionals at the Master of Business Operational Excellence (MBOE) program at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. I saw some of their capstone project presentations and…
Some of you might not care about college football, but I’m always interested in a story about people gaming a system and what drives that behavior, whether that’s in healthcare (such as not reporting errors) or in sports. We can…
Principle #1 of the Toyota Way management system says: “Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.” The current situation with the Washington Nationals and star pitcher Stephen Strasburg creates the perfect…
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is a another guest post from Chad Walters. Chad and I share a strong interest in sports — me as a fan and Chad as somebody who is working to bring Lean thinking to sports franchises,…
My guest for podcast #152 is Matt Stewart, and we are talking about his book The Walk-On: Inside Northwestern’s Rise From Cellar Dweller To Big Ten Champ. Matt and I are both graduates of Northwestern University. While he played football on…
Paul Levy, the former CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is a long time friend of mine and this blog (read his ongoing blog here although he’s no longer “Running a Hospital”). I’ve been meaning to blog about…
