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

I have many experiences in healthcare that I haven't blogged about. I try not to write posts that say, "Hey, you won't believe what happened yesterday," for a number of reasons. But, sometimes, my memory gets jogged and a story comes back to me. That's what I'm sharing today as a Throwback Thursday.

Having a model like this helps prevent errors, such as jumping to implement Lean tools before the organization understands WHY change is necessary. You have to engage and enroll people in change, not just force things on them.I am convinced that the ExperienceChange simulations, either Lakeview or GlobalTech, are a great way to learn and practice.

http://leanblog.org/audio96

My two previous trips to Japan have been incredible experiences, both personally and professionally. I'm planning to go back in December with a tour group I'm helping organize with Kaizen Institute. When people go to Japan, I think they are expecting to see perfect Lean practices. But, no...

I was very saddened earlier to receive an email from an employee of a great leader, Dr. Michel Tétreault, informing me that he had passed away. Michel was, since 2005, the CEO of St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg.

And the idea of knowing why... again that's an old desire. It's not just a recent discovery of Simon Sinek and the outstanding book Start with Why (my friends at Gemba Academy have a podcast interview with him coming soon). Why are we doing something? Why are we starting this company? That's an old tale... are you breaking rocks or building a cathedral?

Visit http://www.leanblog.org/audio92 for more info on this post and http://www.leanblog.org/audio for information about how to subscribe through iTunes and other places.

Today, I discuss two articles: The first article is: "The NFL's Best Practice: No Wasted Time." "If You Can't Hire Urban Meyer, Can You Clone Him?"

http://leanblog.org/audio91

http://leanblog.org/audio90

It's far too common to see somebody with just a little bit of understanding about Lean do things that really shouldn't be described as Lean at all... in terms of the decisions they are making or the approaches they are taking.I saw an article about Lean in physician practices: "Lean Practice Management for Physicians." I cringed a bit when the author said:

"In lean management programs, there are levels of belts based upon the colors found in karate: white, yellow, green, black, and levels of black."

No. That's an example of "Lean As Mistakenly Explained."

I stumbled across an article from the Inc. magazine archives from 1987, so it's today's "Throwback Thursday."In 1987, I was starting high school and that was probably right about the time when my dad, an engineer for General Motors, was able to attend one of Deming's famed four-day seminars. Hearing about that was my first exposure to Deming or anything vaguely related to Lean thinking.

Mark Graban talks about the revised 3rd edition of "Lean Hospitals" and a new eBook project called "Practicing Lean."