Tag: Culture

Joining me for Episode #303 is Craig Deao, a senior leader with Studer Group. Today, we're talking about his book The E-Factor: How Engaged Patients, Clinicians, Leaders, and Employees Will Transform Healthcare. We'll talk about the differences between satisfaction and engagement, how to tell if people are engaged in their work, and how to engage various stakeholders, including employees, clinicians, and executives. We'll also talk about how Studer Group became a recipient of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in 2010.

Last week, a nurse manager downloaded the free first chapter of my book Lean Hospitals and wrote this message in the contact form: "Interested to see how the disconnect between management and the staff supervised can be helped. Too many managers refuse to help those they supervise. A growing number have never done the work that they are in charge of getting done. Patients and residents feel it, not healthy. Poor PR. It does get back to the consumer. Difficult to fix at that point." In my experience working with many hospitals, her comments resonate with me. Identifying problems like these doesn't mean Lean provides easy solutions for organizational transformation.

I did manage to buy a book that was published by NUMMI to celebrate their 10th anniversary. "10 Years of Quality & Teamwork" is the title. Here is the cover and I'll share a few things that caught my attention inside. It's interesting to think through this book in the context of : Tesla (the current owners of the building - see my past blog post) Healthcare organizations

There's a lot to admire about Elon Musk. I admire his risk taking and his entrepreneurial spirit. I use PayPal a lot (one of his early companies) and I admire the innovation of Tesla and SpaceX. But, I question how much Musk and Tesla have been willing to learn from Toyota or people like Paul O'Neill.

My guest for Episode #297 is John (JJ) Villareal, Ed.D., the superintendent of the Rockwall I.S.D. here in the Dallas area. In this podcast, we talk about the applications of Lean in education, how to move beyond what JJ calls "the behavior waste of judgment and blame," and how visiting a factory was inspiring and helpful, among other topics. Even if you don't work in education, I hope you'll be inspired by this podcast.

Joining me for episode #294 is Clay Linkous, an account leader and speaker with Studer Group. He is an accomplished cultural transformation and leadership expert who has synthesized Lean and other improvement methods with Studer Group principles and practices. Today, we'll talk about Clay's career and his purpose and motivations - both for working in healthcare and improving healthcare. We're both firm believers in the combination of Studer and Lean practices, so we're also discussing that as our main topic. I hope you enjoy the discussion!

I recently read this article on the IndustryWeek website: Whirlpool's Green Takes Aim at World Class Manufacturing Byron Green, the vice president of manufacturing for Whirlpool's 14 factories in the U.S. and Mexico, said: "...manufacturing was littered with companies that saw lean as a collection of tools that could be deployed for a quick win. Successful companies, he said, instead see it as a bedrock of their culture."....

I recently blogged about a healthcare improvement job posting that had me scratching my head when the interviewing process included an process improvement exercise...

One book about the late, great W. Edwards Deming that's been on my shelf for a while is The Deming Management Method, which was written by Mary Walton, a journalist who spent some time with Dr. Deming in the 1980s. There's a section that really made me think about Lean over the past few decades (and it might seem familiar to those who use Six Sigma or other methods).

Today, we're looking back at a podcast that I did back in 2015 with Alan G. Robinson, PhD, co-author of many books including The Idea-Driven Organization....

Every month or two, Greg Jacobson, MD and I have an "Ask Us Anything" video discussion with questions submitted by members of our KaiNexus...

Another in the series of "do words matter?" posts... do phrases like "Lean Transformation" resonate as much as "Business Transformation?"