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

Here is my latest article for the LinkedIn“Influencers” series, written for a general audience that might not be as familiar with Lean: How These Credit Card Websites Illustrate Lean Mistake Proofing I hope you enjoy the article, even as a Lean thinker.

http://leanblog.org/audio77 I did a similar post in 2012, but here's a post where I share some recent NPR stories that I've heard recently (through the NPR One app, which I absolutely love).This is similar to my "A Lean Guy Reads..." series, my "Cleaning Out the Backlog" series, and the "Stuff I'm Reading" posts. Not All NICU Babies Should Get the Same Treatments Shrinking and Cutting Isn't the Only Path for Hospitals More Expensive Cancer Drugs Aren't Always Better Getting Patients Involved in Choosing Better Care

http://leanblog.org/audio76 The Kaizen approach to continuous improvement is important to me, of course. The Japanese hospitals we've visited have a strong tradition of practicing Total Quality Management. Some are now embracing Kaizen as "daily continuous improvement" in addition to their six month long TQM projects.We're again organizing a Lean Healthcare Study Trip to Japan, which will take place September 13 to 19 in Nagoya and Tokyo. Learn more via http://www.japanleantrip.com.

There's another approach that goes underappreciated, I think -- the "model line" or "model cell" approach. It has nothing to do with fashion models. I don't like the term "cell" because it might make people think of a prison or a gulag. Then again, the word "line" might make people think of "assembly line medicine" in a negative way. Maybe "model area" is a better term? I'll think about that as I work on the updated 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals.

http://leanblog.org/audio74 In this post, I'll be presenting a parody video of Keith Olbermann's "worst persons in the sports world" videos.I don't know how much overlap there is in people who read my blog and people who are fans of Olbermann. I've always been a big fan of Olbermann the sports guy... Olbermann the political commentator not so much. But, "the worst persons in the world" is a bit that he's done on MSNBC and ESPN. In this video, I'm playing a character... a parody you might call Keith Olber-Lean. I'll be taking some shots at people... naming names as the tongue-in-cheek "worst persons in the Lean world." This video might seem mean spirited. I'm not normally this mean spirited on my blog, although I've made comments about these issues and people before (worse, worser, and worst). Olbermann often seems mean spirited. But, he's entertaining and usually makes a serious point through humor. I'll try to do the same here. The serious points I'm making are: Lean leaders and consultants should be humble... that'sthe Toyota style Lean office initiatives should solve real problems that matter for customers and employees (not create situations like this) It's factually untrue to say that Lean is only about speed and that Six Sigma is the only method for Quality. Lean is about both quality and flow (read more)

I'm sure anybody who has done any work with Lean has heard these words said in one form or another, often prefaced with a "You don't understand..."We're different.

What did I learn about learning to eat sushi and incremental Kaizen (change for the better) during my 2014 Lean Healthcare Study Trip to Japan? Listen to find out... and learn more about our upcoming Japan trip at http://www.japanleantrip.com.

http://leanblog.org/audio71 Episode #403 of the public radio program "This American Life" originally aired in 2010, telling the story of the NUMMI plant that was a joint venture between GM and Toyota (it's now where they build Teslas). As a joint venture, that meant the closed-down GM Fremont plant was re-opened to be managed under the Toyota Production System.The This American Life story asks why GM didn't learn more of the lessons from NUMMI. Well, GM did learn many lessons, but it wasn't enough to save the company from bankruptcy (going from 50% market share to just over 20% will do that, regardless of how Lean your factories are, when you have moreretirees than active employees). The story re-aired on NPR stations last weekend, which I learned of when many of you emailed me or tweeted at me about the program... and even some of my personal Facebook friends who don't share my passion for Lean shared the link with me. What makes it a throwback, in a way, is that I first blogged about the episode in 2010 in this post: NPR on the "End of the Line" at NUMMI and My Story About an Interviewee.

http://leanblog.org/audio70 How did a few episodes of HBO's "Silicon Valley" make Mark Graban think about continuous improvement and the need to avoid a "culture of fear" in an organization?

How can the NHS reduce waiting times without throwing money at the problem? Are they using Lean to increase capacity and throughput in a way that also improves quality? The recipe is "reduce waste."There's usually the need to improve three things in any industry: Quality Cost Speed Traditionally, people would say you can get it "good and cheap but not fast" or some combination of just two of those things. Lean healthcare helps show that we can improve in all three dimensions simultaneously. We need "better, faster, cheaper" healthcare around the world and we need to go about it right way - improving systems rather than just cutting costs in a way that slows care or hurts quality. Big challenges, global challenges.