Tag: Deming

What are the parallels between the mindsets and approach of a world-class university band director and our mindsets in Lean, Kaizen, and continuous improvement, in healthcare or beyond?

It's good that United's CEO has taken responsibility for system problems. It's great that they are changing some policies. But why does he say they don't have a culture problem if employees aren't empowered? That sounds like "culture" and a "problem" to me.

A returning guest today for episode #280 is John Dyer, president of his consulting firm, JD&A, Inc., and a contributor for IndustryWeek.com. Today, our focus is the famed "Red Bead Experiment." We'll talk about it, he'll share memories of Dr. Deming facilitating this, and we'll both share and discuss our reflections and our experiences with this, and the lessons learned.

Back in 2012, I did a podcast interview (Episode 153) with a psychologist and family therapist, Robert Maurer, PhD. It's been almost five years since the discussion, but I'm often reminded of what I learned from his books and his advice about small change.

People often talk about “fire fighting” in a colloquial way. Today, my guest for episode #278 of the podcast is an actual professional fire fighter, Tom Bouthillet, who serves as Fire Captain / Paramedic for the Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue...

In this post, I look at the impact (or lack thereof) of targets, rankings, and incentives, when it comes to safe driving or PCI (angioplasty) procedures in a hospital cath lab. Are we improving? How do we know? How do we improve?

In today's post, I write about James Hereford, a Lean thinker and leader who is now CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minnesota. I share some links to and highlights from a past podcast with him and other blog posts with his thoughts.

Can leaders get some improvement just by asking for it? Does improvement stall out if we don't have a method for doing so? What can "process behavior" charts show us in our work today?

Lean thinkers do their best to avoid blaming individuals for systemic problems. This lesson comes also from W. Edwards Deming who was deeply influential...

Here is an article that I wrote and published on LinkedIn on Tuesday on the topic of managing metrics in a better, less wasteful, less frustrating, and more productive manner.

I recently got to meet Prof. Donald J. Wheeler when he gave a keynote talk at the Society for Health Systems Conference. Check out his book Understanding Variation and learn more about him in this post.

Today is the start of the main days of the annual Society for Health Systems Conference. I think this is my 9th year attending out of the past 11 or so. Follow the action on Twitter using hashtag #SHS2017. Here are a few posts from the past conferences: