In Episode #69 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, my guest is Dr. Sami Bahri, D.D.S., widely recognized as the first Lean Dentist. From his practice in Jacksonville, Florida, Dr. Bahri pioneered the application of Lean management principles in dentistry — a non-traditional setting that shows just how universal Lean can be.
His book, Follow the Learner, is available from the Lean Enterprise Institute. You can also watch a webinar that he presented (archive here), along with some text Q&A follow ups that were recently posted.
he title, coined by Michael Ballé, reflects how Dr. Bahri and his team learned Lean together by reading, experimenting, and improving step by step.
In this conversation, Sami shares:
- How inspiration from Jim Womack led him to rethink patient flow in dentistry
- Why teamwork and shared learning were as important as Lean tools like flow and takt time
- How he created a safe environment for experimentation, where staff could test ideas without fear of failure
- Why leaders must provide proof through results instead of relying on command-and-control
- How small experiments evolved into standardized work and lasting improvements
Dr. Bahri's story demonstrates that Lean thinking isn't confined to factories or hospitals — it's about learning together, experimenting, and continuously improving any process that serves people.
Click to play:
There is also a video podcast version of this discussion available as episode #5 of my video podcast series.
For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe.
If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the “Lean Line” at (817) 372-5682 or contact me via Skype id “mgraban”. Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.
Transcript
Mark Graban: Well, joining us here on the Lean Blog video podcast from Jacksonville, Florida, is Dr. Sami Bahri. Thanks for being here today.
Dr. Sami Bahri: Thank you. Thank you for hosting me, Mark.
Mark Graban: We're here to talk about your new book that's out and available from the Lean Enterprise Institute. It's called Follow the Learner: The Role of a Leader in Creating a Lean Culture. And so I was wondering if you could tell us a little of the background of the title and where that phrase comes from, how it relates to the work you've been doing there in your dental practice.
Dr. Sami Bahri: If you remember, we presented our work at the Shingo Prize Conference. And then I was awarded the title “First Lean Dentist,” and it generated some interest. Michael Ballé came to the office from the Lean Enterprise Institute and stayed with us a little bit to see how we're doing things. And as we told him our story, he saw how we learned everything from books and discussing ideas together and working on improvements. So he thought these people are learners. And one day he was just discussing things and he goes, “Follow the learner. That's the title, Follow the Learner.” And it really came from Michael.
Mark Graban: So you've been learning and reading books and then also taking action and applying that in a very active way in the practice over the past years, correct?
Dr. Sami Bahri: That's right. I'll take you back to 1984. I was in charge of a dental school, and I used to go to the clinic and see how things were going every day. And I would see the patients coming one day for diagnosis, the second day for a filling, the third day for a crown and so forth. I would see the same faces coming back. And then I thought, “Why can't we put that patient in the chair and have a specialist from each specialty and treat that patient so they would finish faster and go to their own lives?” Then I thought, dental schools have been there forever. So someone would have found a solution. Someone would have thought about that. And I dismissed it until, in 1996, I was listening to a tape by James Womack. Jim was talking about his daughters folding newsletters for their mom, and they were doing it in batches. He said, “Why don't you do it one at a time?” They said, “Because it won't be efficient.” So that was the same idea I had about my patients, like, finish one patient at a time. So I stopped the tape, thought, “I need to investigate that. I need to look more into it.” I looked at the bibliography he had, and he talks about Taiichi Ohno, he talks about Shigeo Shingo. So I thought, maybe those people have books. So I went back and read their books, and I would find an idea in a book and apply it in dentistry and dismiss the entire book as manufacturing. Then I read another book and I find another idea who was originally in the first book, but then now I understand a little bit better, and I include that idea one after the other, one after the other, until in 2005, we had a breakthrough where we had very good results from Lean.
Mark Graban: And it's funny you say you didn't want to dismiss ideas as having come from manufacturing. And I would hope people that would take a look at your book would not dismiss it as being a book just about dentistry, that the themes of leadership and culture and teamwork are things that would be very transferable to other types of businesses. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the focus on teamwork and what you've tried to develop along those lines, instead of just focusing on the technical tools that we might know of in the lean methodology.
Dr. Sami Bahri: Yes. Well, at first, as you know, we have learned the tools. We have learned the tools, like what is leveling for dentistry? What is Takt time for dentistry and so forth. What is lead time? What is one-piece flow? And we haven't thought that in the same time, we were learning teamwork in the meantime, we were learning how to make decisions together. We were learning how to use the PDCA cycle, try something. If it doesn't work, we try something else, or we improve the same thing until it works.
So the learning process was very important to us. I would learn one idea, come to the office and share it with one person, because that person had more time, maybe, and everybody was busy. So that person would become more involved, becomes more excited about the process. She would learn it better. Then once we had some results, we would go and discuss it with the rest of the team. I would be the teacher then, not the learner anymore. And when I'm teaching, I'm not as excited as the learner. And the people who are sitting and listening to me are not as excited as people who are trying. And little by little, we came to realize that everybody needs to work now. Everybody needs to try something. And that's how we get excited, that we learn together. That's how we get motivated about improving things. And that became very important to us. And obviously you see that the title of the book is The Learner. And it's not only me, it's everybody in the office.
Mark Graban: And I mean, I think that's an important idea, working together, learning, experimenting, trying out things. Can you talk a little bit about that experimentation and how you learn by doing and by trying new things and how you help facilitate that as a leader?
Dr. Sami Bahri: Well, as a leader. A long time ago, three people from one department of the dental school wanted to implement something new in their department, and the fourth person was against it. So they met for a couple of hours and they were in a deadlock. So one of them came to my office and said, “We're not going anywhere. We're not getting anywhere there. Can you come and help?” So I didn't know what to do, but it just came to me, like, naturally. I don't know where it came from. I looked at my friend, I said, “They're willing to try something. Are you willing to let them try?” And if it doesn't work, we revert to what you're doing now. He said, “Yes, I'll let you try.” So he let us try. It worked very well. And then he didn't want to go back. Actually, he started helping improving things. So from that day on, I try to let people go back whenever they want to. So in our environment, it is safe to experiment, to make mistakes if it happens, and if you don't like it, you can go back without feeling guilty. And I felt that was very important. I mean, it removed a lot of barriers to resistance to lean and to improvement and change.
So this is one of the things that I think is very important. Then my job as a leader, I need to provide proof. See, if you don't want, you call it command and control. If you want to go against that, how do you go about it? You have to provide proof to people. You have to convince them that what we're doing is working better. So the best way to provide proof we found was through experimentation. We do small experimentations. If they work, then we include them in our standard work. If they don't work, then either we try to improve them, which happens most of the time, or we try something else. So that was very important to us.
Mark Graban: Well, I want to thank you for sharing a few glimpses into your work and what's there in the book. I hope people will pick it up again. The title is Follow the Learner: The Role of a Leader in Creating a Lean Culture. It's available at lean.org, the Lean Enterprise Institute. And if people want to learn more about what it was that you were doing, you have a webinar that you did, an hour long that's archived, if it's not already. It will be soon on the web. So I hope people will check that out and hope people will buy the book. Not just to slip under the dentist's door to leave in the waiting room, but hopefully they'll read and learn something about your leadership style. And I want to thank you for sharing that with us.
Dr. Sami Bahri: Thank you, Mark. Thank you.
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