Lean Blog Audio: Practical Lean Thinking, Psychological Safety, and Continuous Improvement

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio314

In this era of Covid--19 vaccination, I'm still pretty much sidelined and not on site with any clients, although I did get to visit two mass vaccination sites (in addition to the one that vaccinated me).

I have tried really hard to be a cheerleader for continuous improvement and, in particular, for sharing continuous improvement ideas through the free VacciNexus platform and through other channels.

I believe, of course, in the power of many, many small improvements being driven by front line staff and their managers. That's the focus of my Healthcare Kaizen books. I also realize there's a time and a place for process re-design and for being innovative (thinking of it as step-change improvement.

In this post, I share and discuss improvements large and small.

https://www.leanblog.org/audio313

tl;dr summary: Lean isn't just efficiency... it's safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale. People often misunderstand that -- they don't know or they were taught the wrong things

I often have the opportunity to teach a group of experienced healthcare professionals, from a wide range of disciplines, about Lean. My session is part of a longer professional development program that's framed as "clinical outcomes and patient safety."

Lean has a lot to contribute to those outcomes, and you can see a collection of results here or here.

Since my last session had to be virtual, due to the pandemic, I took advantage of the opportunity to use some interactive tools from Mentimeter.com. This is something I'll continue doing even when I have the chance to teach in person, as people can vote or give input from their phones, anonymously, while sitting in class.

One question I asked the group was:

https://www.leanblog.org/audio312

In this post, I'm going to share some reflections from one of my workplaces, some things that occurred last week. I'm going to be vague, so forgive me for that. It feels right to be less specific in this case, or at least that's the cautious (and maybe respectful) thing to do.

When wearing one of my different "hats" with one of the organizations I work with, something went wrong. It wasn't something I did (or I would own up to that in specific ways). But the mistake affected me and the work I was doing.

When a preventable process problem occurs, the engineer in me finds it relatively easy to be logical and think through "what happened?" instead of "who messed up?" A few deep calming breaths help, as well.

http://www.leanblog.org/audio311

I'm not a Buffalo Bills fan (a.k.a. "The Bills Mafia"), but I did attend one game at what was then called Rich Stadium in 1998 when I was a grad school intern at Kodak.

Even without being a fan, I wish I could have written a headline for this post that said "Buffalo Bills Kaizen Their Way to a Super Bowl." Readers of this blog, of course, know that "Kaizen" is a Japanese word meaning "good change" and it's framed as an approach to engaging everybody in small improvements to the way they do their work.

So what does this have to do with football? Football is a workplace, even if it's college. I blogged about my alma mater, Northwestern University, using the word "Kaizen" (and the mindset) within their football program.

This article about the Bills isn't new, but I recently discovered it on Twitter:

From the article...

https://www.leanblog.org/audio310

During this "let's try to get people vaccinated" phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, almost every article that I've seen about the vaccine and its distribution mentions the need to not waste precious doses.

There are many opportunities for error with the different vaccines. If some of them aren't stored properly at the correct temperature, the vaccine degrades and gets wasted (or worse, gets injected and gives a false promise of effectiveness).

Good process design (lessons I learned as an engineer) means being proactive and thinking about what could go wrong -- and then designing the process in a way that prevents errors or mistakes. The ideal would be "error proofing" that makes it impossible to make a mistake.

Or, we could make it more apparent that a mistake has been made (for example, a temperature-sensitive label on a vaccine bottle that would let you know if it's been out of the correct storage temperature too long). A countermeasure like this might prevent the mistake of using expired vaccine.

But how can we prevent the storage problem (and the waste of the vaccine) to begin with?

I wasn't planning on blogging over the holidays, but this article caught my attention:

(See the full post at the link https://www.leanblog.org/audio310)

https://www.leanblog.org/audio309 

Subscribe now to "My Favorite Mistake"

http://www.leanblog.org/audio308

You might have heard of a "social media takeover" where a brand with a large following gives control of their social media feed to somebody who is promoting a cause or a social message.

One person I've followed on LinkedIn is Deondra Wardelle. She is a Lean practitioner (like me) and she's a Black woman (unlike me).

So, thinking back to the idea of a "social media takeover." I was inspired by Deondra, so I asked her to accept a "blog handover" as I'm calling it. My initial thought was to give a platform for her to write and talk about anything she wanted, to give more exposure to her voice.

http://www.leanblog.org/audio307

Today, I wanted to share an excellent article written by Dr. John Toussaint (of Catalysis) and Ken Segel (of Value Capture)...

http://www.leanblog.org/audio306

I'm excited to announce that our book Practicing Lean is now available as an audiobook through Audible.

As we did with the paperback and Kindle versions of the book, 100% of royalties will be donated to the Louise Batz Patient Safety Foundation (it's been almost $5000 so far).

You can buy or subscribe through Audible.

http://www.leanblog.org/audio305

It's possible that I could start traveling again for my healthcare consulting work next month... or maybe in July. My colleagues at Value Capture aren't sure yet how this will work out, but clients are sharing their current plans for starting to re-open -- to a new normal, not the old normal.

As I mentioned (if not buried) in a post last week, my wife and I relocated from Orlando to Los Angeles last week because she is starting a new job (we will still have our permanent home in Texas).

Anyway, as the consultants start to think about traveling again, I have compiled some thoughts from my own research and experience since I'm the only one who has flown or stayed in hotels over the past two months, due to the relocation.