Lean Blog Audio

Blog post page Below is some material that I wrote, but didn't use, in my book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. Maybe it was a mistake to cut it. But the material wasn't really related to my podcast. It was based on some interactions with some Veterans Administration Health Care leaders after giving a talk on learning from mistakes last November. What is culture? Some say it's simply how we do things in this organization. The late Edgar Schein, a famed MIT professor, wrote that we can observe and describe culture through artifacts, espoused values, and assumptions. One example of an artifact is a small card given to me by a U.S. Veterans Health Administration site leader who is building a culture of learning from mistakes.   On one side, the card said the holder was “free to fail.” The card framed a “FAIL” as the: “First Attempt In Learning.” An Artifact from a Veteran's Administration Healthcare Site --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.s

Blog post with photos and more I was saddened to learn today that Masaaki Imai passed away, as announced this week by the organization he founded, KAIZEN Institute. He was 92. Mr. Imai was well known for his books, including KAIZEN, his follow up Gemba Kaizen, and his latest, Strategic KAIZEN™ (published in 2021). He traveled the world teaching people about continuous improvement. I'd like to first express my deepest condolences to Mr. Imai's family, friends, and colleagues. I had the fantastic opportunity to meet Mr. Imai a few times -- once in Seattle when he was visiting and speaking at a healthcare organization, and twice during Japan study tours organized by Kaizen Institute. Thank you for your contributions to the world, Mr. Imai! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Read the blog post and get links My new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, is still only in a draft state before final proofreading (actually, the proofreading is taking place now). Trying to get some proof copies printed by Amazon sure does open up the possibility of mistakenly hitting "Publish Your Paperback Book" instead of "Save as Draft." --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post link The following material was found on the “cutting room floor” for my upcoming book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. And I've supplemented it with some new material to flesh it out into a post. Come to the live book cover reveal event tomorrow (Tuesday, May 2) if you can! I've asked more than 215 people the same question (releasing 208 episodes to date): “What's your favorite mistake?“ You might wonder why I seem to be so obsessed with this question. It's not because I love embarrassing people or because I want to gloat about the mistakes of others. I ask this question to learn and improve myself as a person and leader.  The book and the podcast series are meant to be reminders that we shouldn't mock people for their mistakes. We shouldn't be too hard on ourselves, even if that's easier said than done. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Link to the blog post at Value Capture's website As we explore concepts like psychological safety and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) in this blog post series, I’d like to kick things off with a look at some serious problem statements that we must address. I’m thankful for the organizations, including Value Capture clients, who aim to close these performance gaps in systematic and sustained ways. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Episode page and blog post If you're interested in my upcoming book (available June XX, date TBD), The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, the Kindle edition is available to be pre-ordered now through Amazon! The date is set as June 27th, but it will likely be available sooner. Amazon (and their KDP platform) make it easier to pull a date forward… and they punish you for pushing a date back. The book will also be available at the same time in paperback and hardcover formats. I'm going to work on an audiobook version over the summer. Amazon also makes it more difficult for me to make a paperback or hardcover book available for pre-order. But again, I think it will be on sale early- to mid-June. You can also enter this contest to win a free signed copy of the paperback edition. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post for this episode Here's another reader question, this one received from The Netherlands, a country I have loved visiting over the past eight years (see my blog posts about the country and Lean healthcare efforts there). Here is the question, in part: Your work has been an inspiration here, so I started to research the origin and dissemination of lean in healthcare in the USA. Your first book, can be considered a standard work in this field and won a number of awards. But what I couldn't found in my search, was your motivation to write it. Can you please answer that for me: what triggers made you decide to start practicing lean in healthcare? In a nutshell, here's the answer... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post for the episode I'm happy to announce that I've finished the manuscript for my upcoming book (a real one, not an April Fool's Joke). The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation It's taken about a year from saying, “I'm going to write a book based on the My Favorite Mistake podcast” to completing the book writing. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post including a link to buy the book Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of the paperback release of my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. Long story short, I'm running a limited-time sale to celebrate. Looking back to the release, I took an odd approach, perhaps, in that the eBook and Kindle version were available first, in August 2018, I think. I wanted to test my hypothesis about people being willing to buy the book. Once I saw eBook sales start coming in (and getting positive feedback), I made the investment in getting the paperback book created (a professional page design and layout process). By the way, the phrase “self-publishing” is a misnomer. My company is the publisher, but I didn't do it myself! For my next book, The Mistakes That Make Us, my company will be the publisher again, but the plan is to launch Kindle and paperback versions together at the same time. Probably this summer. But I need to finish the manuscript first! I'm almost there. That's m

Blog post   This article caught my eye today, and it's a change of pace to think about and write about mistakes other than my own (and I made more today — but healthcare mistakes are more important). Penn Medicine hospital cited over wrong-site surgery It's a mistake to perform surgery on the wrong leg. Not an “unintended mistake” (which is redundant). All mistakes are unintentional. Intentional harm could be called sabotage or assault.... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Read the post for this episode Following up on my blog post about GE CEO Larry Culp's AME keynote speech, I wanted to share some of the discussion from his "fireside chat, absent the fire" (as Larry called it) with Katie Anderson (as we discussed in our podcast episode). --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post It was a real treat to hear Larry Culp, the CEO of General Electric and CEO of GE Aerospace, speak at the AME 2022 annual conference in Dallas. He recently reached the four-year mark of his tenure as GE's first-ever outsider CEO (read the 4-year update that Larry posted on LinkedIn). Below are some highlights and quotes from his 15-minute remarks, along with some of my commentary and thoughts. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post  A culture of learning makes the difference, not "low inventory" Last year, I wrote a post that criticized those, including the Wall St Journal, who claimed that Toyota was "abandoning" the Toyota Production System or that strategically adding some inventory meant they were moving away from "Just in Time" approaches: Toyota leaders, including my friend Jamie Bonini, were quoted in this new article by HBS professor Willy Shih in HBR: What Really Makes Toyota's Production System Resilient Did TPS hurt Toyota during the pandemic? NO --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post - https://leanblog.org/audio321 Elon Musk tweeted this yesterday: "Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn't." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post: http://www.leanblog.org/audio320 Contact me to talk about psychological safety - measure, learn, improve “Simply put, we cannot get to zero harm without psychological safety.” I wrote that as part of this page on the Value Capture website: Psychological Safety and its Essential Link to Continuous Improvement I've come to understand that psychological safety is a precondition for “implementing #Lean” or however you might say. Toyota seems to strive for (if not have) a relatively high level of psychological safety. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Episode #319 -- read the blog post that contains video of the webinar A contractor unplugged my WiFi router. Or was there more to it than that? Instead of blaming somebody else, what mistakes did I make that led to the Q&A section of my webinar being knocked offline? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio318 The Wall Street Journal has an epic track record when it comes to always getting it wrong when they write about Lean or the Toyota Production System. They always focus on just the “just in time” pillar, ignoring “jidoka” (built in quality) as the other pillar (per Toyota). They ignore many other aspects of TPS, like the culture and the management style. See some of that track record, including recent pandemic supply chain articles. You're normally better off reading about Lean from the source. But, they did better in this recent article about General Electric and CEO Larry Culp (who knows Lean very well from his time as CEO of Danaher): Larry Culp Rewired GE. Then He Unwound It. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio317 Oh, how I enjoyed this article a month ago when it was sent to me. It's from 2003, but it was new to me: Why dolphins are deep thinkers --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio316 I received a question from a healthcare leader who had read about the “idea card” format and method that Joe Swartz and I shared in our Healthcare Kaizen books. I read your post about the Idea Card. Amazing! Have a follow up question. What does Kaizen suggest about how to incentivize people to submit ideas? She's asking about the “Kaizen” style and approach to continuous improvement. I'll share some of my reply along with some relevant excerpts from the book. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio315 I'm really excited to be hosting and moderating this webinar next week, the second in our new Value Capture Webinar series. The title is "Applications of Lean Leadership Methods in Home-Based Care." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support