On Thursday, August 10, I played the role of host for our latest KaiNexus webinar. It's being presented by Warren Stokes, Director of Process Improvement at HonorHealth, a health system in Arizona.
The title of the webinar is:
How to Leverage Lean for Long-Term Success (Under Short-Term Pressures)
You can register here to view the recording.
I did a 10-minute podcast with Warren to preview the topic, which you can read about and listen to here.
Click here to subscribe to the KaiNexus podcast.
Mark Graban, our VP of Improvement and Innovation Services, kicked off the preview interview with Stokes by asking how he defines long-term success.
For Stokes, success is all about sustainability.
“Long-term success around continuous improvement would look like a full operating system that's sustainable, that… provides the core and spirit for an organization in which 100% of its stakeholders are committed to continue improving and moving forward on both incremental improvements and strategic innovation,” he said.
There are many short-term pressures and concerns in healthcare.
Focusing on the long-term is really challenging, in any industry.
I think it's no accident that Principle #1 of The Toyota Way philosophy says:
Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals.
That's the FIRST principle, yet it seems so many organizations aren't trying to emulate that. Nobody ever emails me asking how they can get better at having a long-term perspective.
It's probably fair to say that trying to copy Toyota or “implementing Lean” is going to be a struggle if your organization isn't holding to the first first principle that has probably led to so much of Toyota's success?
Dr. W. Edwards Deming also focused on having a long-term perspective, as John Hunter has written about on the Deming Institute blog.
I enjoyed Warren's webinar. Click here to view it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you've done to help focus more on long-term decision making in your work or organization.
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