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

Last Friday morning, I partnered with Chip Ponsford, DVM, a doctor of veterinary medicine, to give an introductory Lean continuing education presentation at the annual conference of the Texas Veterinary Medical Association.Our talk was titled: "What Veterinarians Can (and Should) �Learn From Toyota." That was Chip's suggested title... him talking to the vets, not me as the engineer telling them this.

Dr. Gary Kaplan is the CEO of Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center, considered one of the world leaders in the adoption of Lean healthcare principles. He wrote the foreword for my book The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen.He co-authored a recent editorial in the BMJ Quality&Safety journal:"Lean and the perfect patient experience" http://leanblog.org/audio127

Each Saturday, I get an email newsletter from the UK-based site "Nursing Times." They cover issues that are somewhat universal in healthcare, including patient safety, healthcare culture, nursing shortages, budget cuts, and the like.Last week, this article, caught my eye: "Workplace principles revealed for NHS staff in Wales." http://leanblog.org/audio126

http://leanblog.org/audio125 The Spurs have had great players, but there's a culture of teamwork and unselfishness. The Spurs (after learning their lesson with Dennis Rodman) have learned to draft and sign players who FIT into their culture and system.Here's a recent interview with head coach Gregg Popovich: "Gregg Popovich broke down what he looks for in players, and it was an inspiring life lesson" "For us, it's easy. We're looking for character, but what the hell does that mean? We're looking for people -- and I've said it many times -- [who] have gotten over themselves, and you can tell that pretty quickly. You can talk to somebody for four or five minutes, and you can tell if it's about them, or if they understand that they're just a piece of the puzzle. So we look for that. A sense of humor is a huge thing with us. You've got to be able to laugh. You've got to be able to take a dig, give a dig -- that sort of thing."

http://leanblog.org/audio124 I made a few tweaks to the content of the 3rd edition's "first pages" based on some input from Jamie Bonini, vice president of the TSSC group within Toyota. They are the ones that did the great work with UCLA Harbor Medical Center and others, as highlighted in "The Toyota Effect" videos and earlier work with the NYC Food Bank.Jamie talked with me and contributed a number of thoughts and ideas about the Toyota Production System and what we might describe elsewhere as "Lean Culture." There's a triangle diagram on the TSSC webpage that describes an "integrated system" that consists of: technical methods managerial methods philosophy

This article posted anonymously on AllNurses.com has over one million views in the month since it first appeared:"Hospitals Firing Seasoned Nurses: Nurses FIGHT Back!" It's an "Open Letter to Hospital Administrators."

Engaging Staff in Improvement is Actually the Toyota Way, TooHere, I blogged about an article I read in Modern Healthcare that said, basically, Toyota isn't innovative and maybe therefore healthcare should look to Google as a management system and model of staff engagement and continuous improvement. WHAT? Toyota doesn't engage staff in continuous improvement? That's, frankly, ignorant and it's a great example of L.A.M.E. -- Lean As Misguidedly Explained.

I wrote a new piece for LinkedIn that I hope would be of interest to you even if you’re in healthcare. Why? It’s a story about what an organization does when you don’t have enough (or any) direct work for your front-line staff to do. Toyota would continue paying employees and would put them to...

I get asked a lot, "How do you know if a hospital is truly 'Lean?'"Nobody is ever perfect or "fully Lean," but you could ask, "How do you know if somebody is on a legitimate Lean transformation journey?" http://leanblog.org/audio120

Last year, Joe Swartz and I hosted a workshop at his organization, Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. We called it“Kaizen Live!” and it was designed as an opportunity to see a culture of continuous improvement – what does it look like? What do people say?We lay this out in our Healthcare Kaizen books... http://leanblog.org/audio119