Tag: Culture

I was at an organization recently where one of the relatively senior leaders kept using a curious phrase that made my ears perk up. The senior executives were continually being referred to as "the decision makers." Why can't everybody be a decision maker?

While I'm writing here about Northwestern men's basketball learning from Duke (without copying everything), the same ideas apply if you're Ford learning from Toyota or a hospital learning from ThedaCare.

Why did "The Rock" and his movie make me think about Lean? Are many individuals (or organization's) willing to put time into continuous improvement every day for 20 years? If so, the results and "after" picture seem astonishing, right?

Mischelle McMillin, from Franciscan St. Francis Health, shares “dos and don’ts” for leaders going out to the “gemba” (the workplace). What is “the riddler” and why should you avoid being one in your efforts to create a culture of continuous improvement?

Lean sometimes gets, I think, an unfair rap that it’s only a method for incremental improvement. See this article, for example: “Limits of Lean — Transformative Care Redesign Must Go Beyond Typical Lean-Based Improvements.”

I saw this article a few days ago in one of the larger healthcare industry trade publications: How One Woman Saved IU Health $54 Million The headline is misleading, as addressed in the opening sentence / sub-headline of the story (via HealthLeaders): “With a little help from about 10,000 of her friends and colleagues, the head

When I talk to organizations about Kaizen, or continuous improvement, there's far too much self-defeating talk, where people say things like: "We're not going to try this Kaizen process because our culture isn't ready yet."

In my travels, I often meet people or visit organizations that say something like: "We're doing Lean... we just call it Process Improvement." They have a "Process Improvement" (PI) department...

Domonique Foxworth, who earned an MBA from Harvard Business School after his NFL playing days, says, "... there are competitive advantages to be gained in the way that organizations are run.”

My guests for Episode #270 of the podcast are two physicians: Paul DeChant, MD and Diane Shannon, MD. They are co-authors of the recently-released book Preventing Physician Burnout: Curing the Chaos and Returning Joy to the Practice of Medicine.

I had a chance to visit one of their community hospitals, Hillcrest Hospital, as well as the main campus. It was a very stimulating visit and it was great to see the progress they were making in building a “culture of improvement.”

I saw this quote the other day and tweeted it. It seemed like food for thought and something to reflect on for a new year. A Google search doesn't lead to a clear creator of this quote... it's a common thought that has been around a long time, I guess.