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

http://leanblog.org/audio47

One of the many things I admire about W. Edwards Deming is how hard he worked into his 90s. He must have had "pride and joy" in his own work.I learned from this IndustryWeek piece that Dr. Deming was teaching seminars up until two weeks before his death at age 93.

IndustryWeek was kind enough to share Dr. Deming's last interview, originally published in January 1994, on their website in three parts....

Chris Van Gorder, CEO of Scripps Health in California, wrote this article in HBR back in January: "A No-Layoffs Policy Can Work, Even in an Unpredictable Economy."

Forgive me for being a bit of an Industrial Engineering geek here in this post. After all, my bachelor's degree is in Industrial Engineering, even though I sometimes get called "a healthcare guy" after focusing on healthcare for just about ten years now.One of the things we learned about in our IE organizational psychology class was something called "the Hawthorne Effect."

In the past few months, I can recall maybe three different occasions where somebody referred to the Hawthorne Effect in a positive light, as in:

"We'll have to see if the data improves, maybe we'll get the Hawthorne Effect."

People have meant this in a positive light in the context of the flow of the conversations. I remember somebody almost bragging that the improvement in an area was due to the Hawthorne Effect.

I cringed... that's not really anything to hope for.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming advised against relying on slogans and posters as a way of trying to improve quality.Point 10 of his famed 14 points said:

Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the systemand thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

http://leanblog.org/audio43

You might know my friend Karl Wadensten, the president of VIBCO, a small manufacturer in Rhode Island. I've interviewed him for episode #84 of my podcast series (which was also episode #10 of my video podcast series).I've had a chance to visit his factory a few times (mostly in the 2009-2011 timeframe). Each time, I've been impressed with the visible employee enthusiasm for improvement and the way VIBCO has used Lean to meet business objectives of better customer service and performance. Then, and over time, I've been impressed with Karl's transformation into a Lean leader.

Beyond VIBCO, Karl has been a tireless proponent of Lean for the state of Rhode Island.

These efforts have led to Governor Gina M. Raimondo supporting Lean and signing an executive order that will mandate the use of Lean principlesand methods in state government.

have been going through some old papers recently and I found two sheets of paper with hand-written thoughts or "truisms" that I had scribbled down in early 2002. The word truism, it turns out, doesn't mean "true" so much as it means "a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting." Oops.This was a list of things I had learned after two years at GM, two years at MIT, two years at Dell Computer, and just over a year at a startup.

These aren't all original thoughts, by any means, but I had written them down when I was in between jobs (the startup had a real cash crunch after 9/11).If Twitter had existed, I might have tweeted many of the thoughts on that paper. Not all of them are under 140 characters, but here some of the things on that sheet from 13 years ago.

http://leanblog.org/audio41'

I hope you might have access to this interesting article from the Wall St. Journal: "Toyota Veteran Rises to Corporate Office From Factory Floor." I was able to access it while logged out from my WSJ account.Mitsuru Kawai, pictured, started working at Toyota in 1963, at age 15. After 52 years of employment, Kawai is going to be in the position of senior managing officer, "the highest position ever held by a blue-collar worker in Toyota's eight decades," per the WSJ.

http://leanblog.org/audio40

Every time I am in a hospital or clinic setting, one of the first things I do is get a pump or squirt of gel or foam from a wall-mounted dispenser to clean my hands.Or, I should say *try* to get hand sanitizer. For one, it's important to practice proper hand hygiene when entering or leaving a unit, for my sake and the patients (and to practice what I preach, a secondary concern). Secondly, I'm testing to see if the hospital's support processes work well - isthe dispenser actually not empty?

It's usually not difficult at all to find an empty gel or foam dispenser on the wall. Sometimes, the first one I try is empty (as are others). Sometimes, I have to try a few... but there's almost always an empty one.

http://leanblog.org/audio39

Joe Swartz and I have been planning the first-ever workshop (a conference of sorts) where people can come see what a Kaizen culture, or a culture of continuous improvement, looks like at his health system, Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis.It's designed to be a small event. We have ten people registered right now, with a few more committed, and we have space for up to 25 people total. You can still sign up and attend on April 22 (full day) and April 23 (half day). Learn more at http://leanblog.org/audio39.

http://leanblog.org/audio38

When people ask me why I do what I do, my first answers are:improving patient safetycreating better workplaces for people

It's as simple as that. Those are the important problems that I'm passionate about (and have been able to help fix, at least in some local situations). At a more global scale, too many patients are hurt or killed by preventable medicalerrors. Too many people end up hating their jobs or going home crying or exhausted at the end of the day. That needs to change.

In my 20-year career, in manufacturing and in healthcare, Lean has been a powerful and effective methodology for meeting those goals, along with improving quality, reducing waiting times (for products or for care), and reducing cost.

But, not always.