Cinnamon Dixon on Tiered Huddles at Cleveland Clinic

We saw Cinnamon give a great presentation at this year's Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, so we asked her to do a podcast with us talking about Daily Tiered Huddles and how that fits into the Lean approach at Cleveland Clinic.

Hosted by Mark Graban

Here is a link to the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model that we discuss. `

What role does Visual Management play in the CCIM system?

What are the “tiered huddles?” Can you talk first about the front-line huddles? What gets talked about? What are the expected responses or actions coming out of the meeting?

Then, how do the huddles follow upward in the leadership chain?

What sorts of issues get escalated vs. being handled locally or at a certain level of the organization?

How did you roll these out?

What have you learned and adjusted during the time you’ve been using these huddles?

What advice would you have for others on daily tiered huddles?

Biography

Cinnamon Dixon, MA, CDP is the Director of Continuous Improvement at the Cleveland Clinic. She has over 15 years of experience in organizational effectiveness and continuous improvement.

Cinnamon started her career at the Cleveland Clinic as an organizational effectiveness consultant. In that role she led the development of teams and leaders. Her work included leading system-wide initiatives such as the implementation of the employee engagement survey which focused on how to create and sustain an engaged culture, she was also instrumental in developing and facilitating the Cleveland Clinic Experience which was an interactive exploration for over 50K caregivers on how each person contributes to the mission and values of the organization.

During this time her curiosity for continuous improvement peaked. She shifted her focus towards creating and sustaining systems that support the great behaviors that we want to see in our leaders and teams. This led her to join the Continuous Improvement team. In her current role she leads a dedicated group of Continuous Improvement Specialists who execute projects, programs and apply lean methodology as they work to advance the foundation for a continuous improvement culture enterprise-wide.

Cinnamon is also an adjunct instructor for Tri-C Corporate College in Cleveland, Ohio. There she teaches a variety of courses centered on organizational effectiveness and continuous improvement.

She earned her M.A. in Diversity Management Psychology at Cleveland State University with an emphasis on leadership development, group processes and adult learning.