Lean Blog Audio

Today's post is an addendum from Saturday's post on the apparent death of a health system Lean program: "Why Would a New Healthcare CEO Kill a Lean Program?"If you read that post, there's an interesting comment from a Presence Health employee that doesn't shed too much more light on this: "From the standpoint of a current Presence Health Employee~ my opinion is that the RIEs failed because they were aggressively site specific. At a time when PresenceHealth is "Becoming One" I do not believe the RIEs took the entire ministry into consideration when planning events. Decisions and "experiments" where being made and conducted through a site specific lens, and this was often in contradiction to the spirit of the new organization." As I commented in response, I'm not sure why a goal of common processes or a health system that's actually a system would be a reason to stop with Lean. Unless hopefully they are really just re-booting the effort instead of killing it altogether. As I alluded to in the post Saturday,

Apparently, the Lean journey at Presence, regardless of what form it was taking in late 2015, has not survived a CEO transition at Presence Health. A new CEO, Michael Englehart, took over about six months ago (just after that Modern Healthcare story was published).Here is the latest Modern Healthcare piece by Sabriya Rice: “Presence Health rethinks its Lean initiative” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

http://leanblog.org/audio131 Back in December, I wrote about a method called "Motivational Interviewing" (MI), something I learned about from a social worker who was also at the Lean Startup Conference. It's funny how these worlds intersect sometimes.I saw parallels between people being addicted to food, drugs, or what have you (the reason the MI method was created) and people being addicted to old behaviors in the workplace (such as blaming others, not planning, or jumping in to be the hero). I recently ran across Ron Oslin, who is an internal Lean coach at CapitalOne. He has been using the MI method and has trademarked the phrase "addicted to the status quo." It's apt. I've chatted with Ron and will be doing a podcast with him soon. Here is a video webinar of Ron giving a great overview of Motivational Interviewing: --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

As Patient Safety Awareness Week continues, thanks to all of you who shared this PBS News Hour story with me via email or Twitter. If you ever see something you think might be of interest, please let me know.On March 9, this story aired on PBS: After tragic mistake, rural hospital transforms into model of success. http://leanblog.org/audio130 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

http://leanblog.org/audio129 I generally avoid politics here on the blog... In October, I broached the subject when I blogged about a company that uses Lean principles to make Donald Trump hats in New Jersey (and interviewed the owner of the company), but that was during a time when Trump seemed like a novelty or fringe candidate. It might be a "third rail" to even bring him up... but I'll limit my remarks to one particular context - his view of "leadership."As reported by FORTUNE and other publications, Trump said the following on March 3, when asked about his earlier comments about wanting the military to follow orders that violate international law and treaties: "I've always been a leader. I've never had any problem leading people. If I say do it,they're going to do it. That's what leadership is all about." No. Leadership is not about telling people what to do. What Trump calls "leadership" is an outdated strategy, the "command-and-control" model. That's a model that many call "Taylorist" -- a system wh

Last Friday morning, I partnered with Chip Ponsford, DVM, a doctor of veterinary medicine, to give an introductory Lean continuing education presentation at the annual conference of the Texas Veterinary Medical Association.Our talk was titled: "What Veterinarians Can (and Should) �Learn From Toyota." That was Chip's suggested title... him talking to the vets, not me as the engineer telling them this. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Dr. Gary Kaplan is the CEO of Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center, considered one of the world leaders in the adoption of Lean healthcare principles. He wrote the foreword for my book The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.He co-authored a recent editorial in the BMJ Quality&Safety journal:"Lean and the perfect patient experience" http://leanblog.org/audio127 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Each Saturday, I get an email newsletter from the UK-based site "Nursing Times." They cover issues that are somewhat universal in healthcare, including patient safety, healthcare culture, nursing shortages, budget cuts, and the like.Last week, this article, caught my eye: "Workplace principles revealed for NHS staff in Wales." http://leanblog.org/audio126 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

http://leanblog.org/audio125 The Spurs have had great players, but there's a culture of teamwork and unselfishness. The Spurs (after learning their lesson with Dennis Rodman) have learned to draft and sign players who FIT into their culture and system.Here's a recent interview with head coach Gregg Popovich: "Gregg Popovich broke down what he looks for in players, and it was an inspiring life lesson" "For us, it's easy. We're looking for character, but what the hell does that mean? We're looking for people -- and I've said it many times -- [who] have gotten over themselves, and you can tell that pretty quickly. You can talk to somebody for four or five minutes, and you can tell if it's about them, or if they understand that they're just a piece of the puzzle. So we look for that. A sense of humor is a huge thing with us. You've got to be able to laugh. You've got to be able to take a dig, give a dig -- that sort of thing." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

http://leanblog.org/audio124 I made a few tweaks to the content of the 3rd edition's "first pages" based on some input from Jamie Bonini, vice president of the TSSC group within Toyota. They are the ones that did the great work with UCLA Harbor Medical Center and others, as highlighted in "The Toyota Effect" videos and earlier work with the NYC Food Bank.Jamie talked with me and contributed a number of thoughts and ideas about the Toyota Production System and what we might describe elsewhere as "Lean Culture." There's a triangle diagram on the TSSC webpage that describes an "integrated system" that consists of: technical methods managerial methods philosophy --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

This article posted anonymously on AllNurses.com has over one million views in the month since it first appeared:"Hospitals Firing Seasoned Nurses: Nurses FIGHT Back!" It's an "Open Letter to Hospital Administrators." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Engaging Staff in Improvement is Actually the Toyota Way, TooHere, I blogged about an article I read in Modern Healthcare that said, basically, Toyota isn't innovative and maybe therefore healthcare should look to Google as a management system and model of staff engagement and continuous improvement. WHAT? Toyota doesn't engage staff in continuous improvement? That's, frankly, ignorant and it's a great example of L.A.M.E. -- Lean As Misguidedly Explained. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I wrote a new piece for LinkedIn that I hope would be of interest to you even if you’re in healthcare. Why? It’s a story about what an organization does when you don’t have enough (or any) direct work for your front-line staff to do. Toyota would continue paying employees and would put them to... --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I get asked a lot, "How do you know if a hospital is truly 'Lean?'"Nobody is ever perfect or "fully Lean," but you could ask, "How do you know if somebody is on a legitimate Lean transformation journey?" http://leanblog.org/audio120 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Last year, Joe Swartz and I hosted a workshop at his organization, Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. We called it“Kaizen Live!” and it was designed as an opportunity to see a culture of continuous improvement – what does it look like? What do people say?We lay this out in our Healthcare Kaizen books... http://leanblog.org/audio119 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Alternate title:“Lean is an Integrated System. Of Course Just Implementing Pieces Leads to Failure.” Throughout the 10 years that I’ve been involved with Lean healthcare efforts, I’ve heard multiple stories of organizations that ended their formal Lean initiatives. They do so, as I’ve been told, because they need to cut costs... http://leanblog.org/audio118 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

At KaiNexus, we've been fortunate to have a good relationship with Professor Ethan Burris, from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. He has done a lot of research and publishing around employee engagement and idea systems, as I've mentioned here on the blog before: "Is Fear the Only Reason Employees Don't Speak Up?"Burris has a new article on the Harvard Business Review website: "Employee Suggestion Schemes Don't Have to Be Exercises in Futility" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

In the article posted today, Pamela Hartzband, M.D., and Jerome Groopman, M.D. (the later the author of the popular book How Doctors Think), rant about all sorts of things… some of which have nothing to do with Lean... http://leanblog.org/audio116 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

http://leanblog.org/audio115 A hat tip goes to Brian Buck for sharing this quote via email recently. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was a pithy and wise man. I didn't remember this quote, but it is attributed to him. It's very appropriate for the type of work we do. I shared it last Saturday in my "Key Tweets" post, but it's worth discussing here in a separate post, I think. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I had a bit of a new year's resolution about being positive and not fretting about organizations that don't "get it" when it comes to Lean. But, resolutions are meant to be broken, I guess.It's very frustrating when I hear people in healthcare complain that their hospital or health system has equated Lean with cost savings -- only focusing on cost reduction or primarily focusing on it. Hospitals that say to their staff that Lean is just about cutting costs (or demonstrate that) willfail to engage their most important asset -- their employees. http://leanblog.org/audio114 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support