Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond

Joining me for Episode #258 is a many times returning guest, Jim Huntzinger, the President and Founder of Lean Frontiers (check out Episodes 8, 15, 33, 196, and 251, his with Russ Scaffede). Jim has written two eBooks, The Roots of Lean: Training Within Industry: The Origin of Japanese Management & Kaizen and Deflation: The Road to Prosperity. We'll talk about that second book and topic in the podcast today. We're also going to talk about Lean Accounting and Lean Management, the related topics at the upcoming Summits in San Antonio later this month. I hope you can join us, as I'll be giving a talk on "Practicing Lean" to kick off the event and I'll be around that whole day. Lean Frontiers produces many great events and I hope you can check one out some time.

My guest for episode #257 is somebody I've known for a while in the Lean healthcare community, Tania Lyon. She's the Director of Organizational Performance Improvement at St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh. She has a PhD in sociology (like Jeff Liker, author of the Toyota Way book series) and she initially got involved with Lean through PRHI, a common connection to previous podcast guests Paul O'Neill and Naida Grunden. St. Clair is a KaiNexus customer and Tania has played a major role in their rollout of our software to support their ongoing spread of continuous improvement. Regular readers of the blog know my part time role with KaiNexus, as the VP of Improvement and Innovation Services. We initially recorded this to be a podcast and blog posts for our customers, but I thought this was a conversation that would be of interest to a wider audience, as we're talking mainly about Lean and improvement strategies, with a little bit of KaiNexus talk thrown in.

See http://www.leanblog.org/256 Remastered audio 2025 I'm really excited to have Steve Bera as my guest for episode #256 of the podcast. I read about him as he was featured prominently in a chapter of the 1994 Pulitzer-Prize winning book Comeback: The Fall & Rise of the American Automobile Industry. I just finished it during my recent flight back from China. The book is about the struggles of the Detroit automakers in the 1980s and early '90s. Steve was featured in the book as he was one of the first 16 GM managers and leaders to be sent to work with Toyota at the famed NUMMI joint venture factory in California. Steve was also part of the “This American Life” episode that looked back at the lessons from NUMMI. If you're not familiar with the NUMMI story, you might want to listen to that first. He learned some amazing lessons from Toyota… but left GM after his two-year NUMMI stint, as he was concerned that he wouldn't be effective back within the traditional GM (you'll hear about that in Part 2). So, since then, Steve has worked as a consultant and leader in many industries, including some recent time working for large retailers, working to create Lean supply chains. We had a very long chat, so I'm releasing two parts to this discussion in separate episodes (see also Episode #259). I am also sharing a transcript for the episode at the end of this post. I hope you enjoy the reflections as much as I did. You can also read a summary I wrote of the two posts on LinkedIn.

My guest for episode #255 is Mark DeLuzio, author of the recently-released book Turn Waste into Wealth: How to Find Cash in Every Corner of the Company. It's Mark's first book, but he's been well known in the Lean community for a long time. Mark started learning and practicing Lean in 1988 when he worked for Jake Brake, a Danaher company (and Danaher has long been considered a great Lean company). As his bio says, "After studying TPS under Taiichi Ohno's influential Autonomous Study Group, he was instrumental in developing Jake's first zero-defect line for Toyota's Hino Motors. He has spent considerable time in Japan implementing TPS at various world-class companies and has had a successful career in finance." In 2007, Mark was inducted into the Shingo Academy for his contribution to the Lean movement. He is also CEO of the consulting firm Lean Horizons. hixgdxw5

Episode #254 is interesting to me for a number of reasons. For one, I have a "guest co-host" joining me for the first time. He's Chip Ponsford, DVM, a doctor of veterinary medicine and former practice owner who I've gotten to know here in Texas over the past few years. Chip has been a great student of Lean, following a path similar to that of Sami Bahri, DDS ("The World's First Lean Dentist") in reading the "classic" Lean books from industry because there had been nothing written about Lean in VetMed. I've been helping Chip with his "Lean Vets" blog and we've collaborated in a few other ways to promote Lean in veterinary medicine. Our guest is Samantha (Sam) Parrett, the Director of Business & Administrative Services at North Carolina State University Veterinary Health Complex. Chip and I ran across Sam's name in one of the few articles we've found on Lean in VetMed: NC Vet College Dives Into Lean Training In the podcast, we'll discuss their story at NC State and the potential for Lean to make the jump into veterinary medicine more broadly. We hope you enjoy the discussion.

Joining me for Episode #253 is Ash Maurya, author of the book Running Lean:Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works and his latest, being released this week, called Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth. Ash is an entrepreneur and a big part of the "Lean Startup" community. Visit his website at www.LeanStack.com.

My guest for episode #252 is Jordan Peck, a Senior Director in the Center for Performance Improvement at MaineHealth and Maine Medical Center. Jordan and I first met when he was a graduate student at MIT and was involved with the Lean Advancement Initiative (and I was working basically across the street at the Lean Enterprise Institute). At MIT, he earned a PhD in Engineering Systems and Health Care Systems. Jordan and I have continued to cross paths every year at the Society for Health Systems annual conference. His career has taken him to the Veterans Health Administration and now into the private sector at Maine Health, as we discuss in the podcast.

Episode #251 is a bit different in that it's audio shared by the good folks at Lean Frontiers. They recently hosted a webinar where Jim Huntzinger, founder and president of Lean Frontiers asked questions that answered by Russ Scaffede about Lean leadership. See their other webinars here. Russ has a lot of great wisdom and experience to share, so I asked Jim if I could share it here. Russ is a big part of the upcoming event - The Summit on Lean Leadership, which is being produced by Lean Frontiers. It's being held June 21-22 in Charlotte. You can save 25% off that event by using the discount code leanblog. I should also mention that I'm going to be a keynote speaker at their upcoming Lean Accounting Summit in San Antonio this August. In this discussion, Russ shares a lot of gems not just about how Toyota does things (as he learned in his time there), but also some key insights about transforming an organization that is NOT Toyota (as he learned from his experience at Tiara Yachts and other companies).

Episode #250... a big round number. 250 podcasts in just under 10 years. Thanks again to Norman Bodek (my first guest and frequent guest) for the idea back in 2006. My goal with the podcasts has always been to showcase my guests. Occasionally, I take the stage or share the stage with audio of me. Today is one of those episodes. Earlier in May, I had the chance to co-present a webinar with Dr. Jack Billi from the University of Michigan (archived here). The webinar was hosted by the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, which is being spun off by the American Medical Association. Before the formal webinar, Jack and I recorded some informal Q&A with the host, Stephen Davidow. This audio, shared with the permission of the PCPI also includes the Q&A that was done after the webinar presentation. I hope you enjoy our discussion about how we each got started with Lean in healthcare and more.

My guest for episode #249 of the podcast is Steve Leuschel, author of the book Lean Culture Change: Using a Daily Management System. You might remember a post from January that included an excerpt from his book on "huddles." In this episode, we discuss topics including his greatest influences, the lessons he learned from Rodger Lewis (a former Toyota general manager), "mutual trust," PDCA cycles, daily huddles, and more. What's the potential of a Lean management system and why is it difficult to get organizations and leaders to embrace a holistic system like that?