Lean Blog Audio

it's great to see an 11 year old thinking like an engineer and an entrepreneur. He's the son of a Toyota "operational excellence" consultant. For those who try to unfortunately equate Lean to a "clean desk policy," the father's desk is a great argument against banning family photos and an illustration of why Lean isn't about putting tape around everything... --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

The Lean Enterprise Institute (a former employer of mine from 2009 to 2011) has announced a new CEO, the third in their history following founder James P. Womack and his successor, John Shook. Their press release: Lean Enterprise Institute Names Eric Buehrens New CEO The start of the release: "The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute, a global leader in lean thinking and practice, today announced the appointment of Eric Buehrens as its new CEO. The appointment took effect October 1, 2017. A proven lean thinker and leader, Buehrens led lean transformations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he served as COO and Interim CEO, and at Reliant Medical Group, a Massachusetts group medical practice, where he was COO." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Three or four months ago, in the midst of a discussion on LinkedIn about patient safety, somebody made reference to a 1966 cover story from the magazine "Look." Look was a very popular competitor to "Life" and the "Saturday Evening Post," so this was written for a very general public audience. The cover tease reads: "OUR HOSPITALS ARE KILLING US An alarming report on conditions in many American cities" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Free Webinar Today on #Lean Collaboration Across Companies and Industries I hope you'll join me today for a KaiNexus webinar that I'm hosting. The topic is near and dear to my heart (as well as to others at KaiNexus): collaboration, learning, sharing. Effective Collaboration Across Organizations and Industries Our presenters will be Teresa Hay McMahon, the Executive Director of the Iowa Lean Consortium and one of the ILC members, Stephanie Hill, Corporate Continuous Improvement Manager at Kreg Tool Company. Kreg is, coincidentally, a KaiNexus customer. It's at 1 PM ET, but if you can't attend it live or didn't see this post in time, you will be sent a link to a recording if you register. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Texas Hospital Saves Money Occasionally With Lean Six Sigma... But Can Do More, More Often? I saw this headline the other day about University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas: "UMC finds savings through waste" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

This Organization Chose Not to "Deploy #Lean" Because a Leader Thought it is Not Customer Focused? I posted an article on LinkedIn last week as a companion article and summary of my podcast with Dean Gruner, MD, the recently retired CEO of ThedaCare. That article: "A Retired Hospital CEO Shares the Employee Feedback That was 'A Bucket of Cold Water to the Face.'" There have been over 125 comments so far... but one has me scratching my head. It read: "I looked at deploying Lean within our PNO, and ultimately decided against it, in part for two reasons: because Lean is about doing the same thing, albeit better and it is not as much customer/outwardly focused as we need in healthcare." Lean is not customer/outwardly focused? I hope this isn't a widespread perception or belief out there. I hope I'm overreacting to something that's not really a problem... but I wrote the post anyway. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I've long been appreciative of the work that Toyota does, through their non-profit TSSC subsidiary, to help non-profits and community organizations improve. The latest example of that is some work done at Children's Health in my other backyard, in Dallas: "Children's Health Joins Forces with Toyota to Improve Patient Safety and Quality of Care" As it says in the release: "Through a collaboration with Toyota, Children's HealthSM, the leading pediatric health system in North Texas, announced today it has successfully reduced rates of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSIs) by 75 percent with patients in the gastroenterology unit." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

One challenge with teaching Lean is that there isn't aways a consistent definition that's used by everybody. Some of the definitions are really bad. Some of them are just different from others. Let's start with "different." Is a lack of standardization in definitions of Lean a problem? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I'm excited to announce that the audiobook version of our book Practicing Lean is complete! It's available for purchase via LeanPub.com and it might be available through other channels in the future. The audiobook is nearly seven hours of audio, which is the entire book, completely unabridged. As per the LeanPub.com approach, you can choose your own price. The suggested price is $24.97, but you can pay as little as $9.97 -- and you can pay as much as you want, considering ALL proceeds are being donated to the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation (about $2500 so far). Click here and choose the "Book + MP3 Audio Book" option, along with your price and you'll be able to download all of the MP3 files. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Let's start by stating the obvious: it sucks to wait 24 hours or more on a stretcher in an emergency department hallway waiting for a real hospital bed. It's sad and frustrating to have a couple of blog readers from Canada send me this story from Quebec: Quebec wants 24-hour cap for patients waiting on stretchers in ERs Barrette says there would be consequences for hospital staff, doctors who don't comply I think there's agreement that waiting 24 hours, 12 hours, or four hours for a bed after an admission is a problem. That's a problem worth working on. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

This is an elaboration on something I originally posted on LinkedIn. I saw somebody touting an approach that would guarantee "maximum efficiency for your management gemba walks." Ah, the efficiency trap. Is efficiency really the goal here? Efficiency is usually defined as outputs divided by inputs. Visiting more departments more quickly would increase "efficiency." Shouldn't the goal there be "maximum effectiveness?" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Any rare event creates a number of challenges when it comes to manufacturing and supply chains. We're seeing a pretty historic "spike" in demand for products like the inexpensive glasses that allow one to safety view the eclipse (our friends in the totality zone can look at the totally-eclipsed sun safely, but that's the only time). You could call it "supply chain challenges" or a "lack of planning on my part," but I cannot find eclipse glasses anywhere. There are MANY articles online about this widespread problem -- it's been impossible to buy "eclipse glasses" anywhere. Why is this? What could have been done? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Highlights of "Boss Level Podcast" - Gen. Stan McChrystal and the Book "Team of Teams" I've read most of retired General Stanley McChrystal's excellent book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (I start a lot of books and finish a few). Amazon reminds me that I bought the book just over two years ago. I meant to blog about it and never got around to it (I have a lot of ideas about posts and write a few). McChrystal, in connecting his lessons learned from helping reshape the military and, in particular, the special forces, to the business world ends up talking a lot about issues and history near and dear to those of us working with Lean as a methodology. I'll come back to my thoughts on the book later, but I was thrilled to stumble across a podcast called "Boss Level Podcast," which is hosted by Sami Honkonen from Finland. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Today at 3 PM, I'm doing a webinar at the invitation of the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council, as part of their "Quality Café" series. Thanks for the invitation! It's open to the public and it's titled: "Standardize What Makes Sense... Then Engage Everybody in Improving What You Standardized" I hope you can join us... --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I enjoy "gemba visits" (of sorts) to wineries and vacations often focus on this walking, tasting, and learning. I usually read the wine column that's in the Wall St. Journal each Saturday, and this one stood out to me: "Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Sommelier?" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Back in 2012, I blogged twice about aspects of Dr. Donald M. Berwick's 1989 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Continuous Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care.” The full text is only available to subscribers. As I posted on LinkedIn, another aspect of this article caught my eye when I was reviewing it the other day in advance of my talk at the Studer Group "What's Right in Healthcare" conference next week. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I'm excited to be attending the annual Lean Coaching Summit today through Thursday in Austin. If you're there, please say hi! Today, I've registered to take a class on a topic that I've taken an interest in over the past few years: "Motivational Interviewing," or MI for short. I'm hoping to learn more about coaching people through their stages of "change talk," as related to Lean and organizational change... and that's what today's post is about. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

There are Dr. W. Edwards Deming quotes that get thrown around... one that sounds incredibly "pro-data" and others that say data and measures are not the only thing... which is it? How do you reconcile that? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

An article from this week in 2010... Today's New York Times has an outstanding article about Lean Healthcare and what Seattle Children's Hospital calls C.P.I. or Continuous Performance Improvement. The article: "Factory Efficiency Comes to the Hospital" I wish the headline had also addressed quality, waiting time, and staff engagement, but the article body does, at least. The article highlights Seattle Children's Hospital, as well as others, including members of the Healthcare Value Network (Park Nicollet, Akron Children's, and Paul Levy's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), and Virginia Mason Medical Center. Yours truly is quoted in the article, as well. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

A few of you sent me this sad article from the Wall St. Journal:  "'People Are Dying Here': Federal Hospitals Fail Tribes."  I feel like I've some variation of this article and exposé many times over. Sometimes, it's some form of government medicine (active duty military medicine, the VA, or another country) or it's a similar sad story from the private healthcare sector (be it non-profit or for-profit). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support