Tag: Leadership

Measures matter. The proper analysis of data and performance metrics allow us to separate good changes from bad, progress from stagnation. The methods in my book, Measures of Success, help us determine if our performance is getting better, getting worse, or essentially remains unchanged. Having the right set of balanced scorecard metrics is important. But the role of leaders is important, too. How do leaders interpret measures? How do they respond to changes in metrics? How do they know if a change is worth reacting to?

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.

Over the years, many people have asked me some variation of the question: "Why are my employees not embracing Lean?" More often than not, the tone of the question is of blame... blaming the employees for not embracing Lean. In this post, I share something I originally wrote on LinkedIn and I'll elaborate a bit and share some of the LinkedIn comments...

Today, I'd like to share the latest in my series of articles about "Champions of Change," which is based on a discussion I had with Suzi Collins, an experienced Lean healthcare supply chain leader.

I’ve heard a lot of rumblings recently about what might be happening at ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that’s been considered one of the best examples of "Lean healthcare" anywhere in the world for more than a decade. It seems that there is an evolution occurring in their approach to Lean. I’ve received a formal statement from ThedaCare public relations, which you can find in this post, so I will stick to the facts that they have given me and other information that's publicly available online.

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 guests for Episode #300 of the podcast are Tracey and Ernie Richardson, authors of the excellent book titled: The Toyota Engagement Equation: How to Understand and Implement Continuous Improvement Thinking in Any Organization

In some of the major Lean transformation stories (in manufacturing in healthcare) usually include stories about some percentage of managers, doctors, or employees who chose to leave the organization. This is often a badge of honor of sorts. Sometimes, those people get labeled as "concrete heads" (I term I think we shouldn't use, as I've blogged about). Is this really the right way to view things?

Last week, I blogged about some employee complaints related to rotating day and night shifts at the Toyota San Antonio plant. In that post, I mentioned that employees who post on Glassdoor.com and other sites might not be a representative sample of the full employee population. With that in mind, what happens when we search the Glassdoor surveys of some well-known "Lean hospitals?" I posted a few of these employee comments on LinkedIn the other day (a short post that has received over 50,000 views and prompted a lot of discussion).

The official report is out in Hawaii after the traumatic accidental missile warning that was sent last month. An employee was fired. The leader accepted responsibility and resigned. Why are others being punished?

Joining me again for Episode #298 is Billy R. Taylor, for Part 2 of a discussion we started in Episode #293. Last week, a friend texted me last week and said he couldn't wait for Part 2. He said he pulled off the road to take some notes when he listened to Part 1. So without further ado, here is Part 2. Here, we discuss "extreme ownership," why creating ownership is more important than forcing accountability, and important lessons he's learned along the way.