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."...
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...
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.
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 ...
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 could...
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....
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 ...
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.......
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 )....
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....
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 Resilien...
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."
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...
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?
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 ...
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
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 fr...
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 ."...
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 sma...
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 ...
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 mis...
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 im...
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 (...
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 i...
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 ...
http://www.leanblog.org/audio304 It was a sad weekend, hearing about the passing of Paul H O'Neill, Sr. on Saturday. He was 84. I had the good fortune to meet and spend time with Mr. O'Neill on a few occasions and I'll share some reflections in this post. My condolences go out to his family and friends, and especially to my Value Capture colleagues who worked with him at Alcoa or at the firm over the past 15 years. Here are his obituaries from the WSJ , the New York Times , and the Pittsburgh Po...
http://leanblog.org/audio303 This is from the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals . I've copied and pasted from the book with no additional edits, although I'll bold italic some parts for emphasis. I'll some closing thoughts at the end. For a more complete PDF excerpt, click here (requires Dropbox access)....
