Tag: Kaizen

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.

I was interviewed for Dr. Diane Hamilton's internet radio show and podcast, called "Take the Lead." We talked about Lean Hospitals, Healthcare Kaizen, and more.

A Lean-thinking physician from Canada asks how many people an organization or department should have in a dedicated Lean or continuous improvement function. How much time is needed from staff and managers?

Today, Mark Graban and KaiNexus host Kevin Meyer in presenting a webinar about Lean and Zen. Also, we try to practice what we preach about Kaizen at KaiNexus, as we describe in a blog post and podcast episode.

Last week, I received a few questions from somebody at a hospital system and I thought I'd address one of them here: "Can you suggest any "quick wins" to get staff engaged in a Lean culture?"

This recent tweet of mine struck a nerve, apparently, based on the number of times it was liked and retweeted -- "Heard often: "We don't have time for improvement." Heard never: "We don't have time for fire fighting."

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?

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?

In today's post, I write about how Kaizen starts with you. I share some examples of "personal Kaizen," including the way I've streamlined my call scheduling process, for my benefit and for others.

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:

During the class, there was a case study discussion about a hospital that was trying to solve the problem of nurses not always scanning patient bar codes and medications 100% of the time. In the discussion, I was disappointed that an attendee fell back on saying...

This post looks back at a podcast that I did a few years ago with Joe Swartz, talking about how he helped introduce Kaizen at Franciscan St. Francis Health and how they’ve built that culture.