KaiNexus: Continuous Improvement, Leadership, and More

Today, host Mark Graban talks with Emily Kauten, who joined KaiNexus in 2022 as a Sales and Business Operations Associate. In this episode, we talk about why she joined the company and what she does in her role.

Here is a quick preview of a webinar to be presented by Dr. Lisa Yerian, Chief Improvement Officer at Cleveland Clinic. Register here As with many lean journeys, we learn first, then lead. At the Cleveland Clinic, it was the same in developing a lean community of empowered healthcare workers. Dr. Lisa Yerian will share experiences and takeaways from Cleveland Clinic's ongoing lean journey. Dr. Lisa Yerian Chief Improvement Officer, Cleveland Clinic Lisa Yerian, MD, is Chief Improvement Offer and a Gastrointestinal and Hepatobiliary Pathologist at Cleveland Clinic. Since joining the organization in 2004, she has held several pathology and health system leadership positions. In her role as Chief Improvement Officer, Dr. Yerian leads a team of improvement professionals who build an improvement culture and drive strategic improvements for patients and caregivers across Cleveland Clinic. Under her leadership, the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model was developed, tested and refined as the roadmap for the organization to pursue a culture of improvement. The model is now used by other organizations within and beyond healthcare. She also leads Access Transformation – an enterprise effort to easily and effectively connect people with care across digital, virtual and traditional channels. Over the last decade, Dr. Yerian’s team has engaged over 20,000 Cleveland Clinic caregivers in improvement by developing capability across the organization and building systems to support patients and caregivers. These initiatives include an integrated system of tiered daily huddles and an enterprise-wide improvement training program. Dr. Yerian has authored over 150 manuscripts, articles, and book chapters in the fields of pathology and improvement. Her efforts have been recognized in multiple awards, including the Association of American Medical Colleges Clinical Care Innovation Challenge Award (2016), the Smart Culture Conference Buffalo Award (2018) and the Outstanding Innovation in Delivery Solutions Award (2020). She serves on the Board of Directors for Lean Enterprise Institute and Catalysis. She speaks nationally and internationally on liver pathology and on the cultural and technical components of improvement. Dr. Yerian received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Notre Dame. She completed her medical degree, residency training in anatomic pathology and a fellowship in gastrointestinal and liver pathology at the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine. Follow Dr. Yerian on Twitter: @LisaYerianMD.

Get the slides, video, and more Presented February 23 from 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm ET Presented by Morgan Wright (Customer Marketing Manager) and Greg Jacobson, MD (co-founder and CEO), from KaiNexus. This webinar serves as an introduction to the science of habits and how to form them. Future webinars in this series will take a deeper look into how to design Habit Loops for the different types of people in your organization. Key Learning Objectives: Building a culture of continuous improvement The Importance of Habits in continuous improvement (CI) The science behind forming Habits Introducing Habit Loops How Habit Loops can transform your organization

Register to attend live or view the recording February 23 from 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm ET Presented by Morgan Wright (Customer Marketing Manager) and Greg Jacobson, MD (co-founder and CEO), from KaiNexus. This webinar serves as an introduction to the science of habits and how to form them. Future webinars in this series will take a deeper look into how to design Habit Loops for the different types of people in your organization. Key Learning Objectives: Building a culture of continuous improvement The Importance of Habits in continuous improvement (CI) The science behind forming Habits Introducing Habit Loops How Habit Loops can transform your organization About the Presenters: Morgan Wright, Customer Marketing Manager, KaiNexus Morgan Wright is the Customer Marketing Manager at KaiNexus. In her role, Morgan partners with customers to develop and execute on a communication strategy to engage their organization in KaiNexus. Morgan is from Austin, Texas, and graduated from Baylor University with a degree in Marketing. Greg Jacobson, Co-Founder & CEO, KaiNexus Greg graduated from Washington University in St Louis in 1997 with a BS in Biology. He attended Baylor College of Medicine from 1997 to 2001. From 2001 to 2004, he completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he then stayed on as faculty. Starting in 2004, it was his observation and research of operational inefficiencies and unrealized continuous improvement opportunities that resulted in the founding of KaiNexus. Jacobson is co-author of "Kaizen: A Method of Process Improvement in the Emergency Department, published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine."

Enterprise Account Executive Matt Banna joins host Mark Graban to talk about his almost seven years working for KaiNexus.    Find Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-banna/   Enterprise Account Executive at KaiNexus from Chicagoland area, currently living in Austin, Texas. Skilled in interpersonal communication, sales strategy, and discovery, he loves meeting our customers and hearing about how they use KaiNexus!   KaiNexus is a continuous improvement software platform designed to help organizations collaborate and report on continuous improvement projects by giving visibility, breaking down silos, tracking metrics, and more.

Magdalen Vaughn joined KaiNexus in 2022 as a Solutions Engineer. In this episode, we talk about: Why she joined the company What she does as a Solutions Engineer Her passion for acting and theatre From her LinkedIn bio: "I am a professional problem solver and learner at a Continuous Improvement Software company based in beautiful Austin, Tx. I love my company because we help businesses amplify the voices of their front line workers, and to care about one another's quality of life much the same way we care about our coworkers. I am also a professional actor and dialect coach! I write creatively, teach when I can, direct and can be found auditioning for theatre, tv and film during much of my free time. I excel at reading people, thinking outside the box and communicating. I believe in the power of storytelling, representation, equal rights, integrity and systemic solutions."

Stephanie Hill recently joined KaiNexus as a Senior Lean Strategist. Read her blog post: https://blog.kainexus.com/the-importance-of-proving-impact-in-continuous-improvement From her bio: "I have more than 20 years of experience applying Continuous Improvement and Leadership in manufacturing, retail, insurance, government, non-profit, and health industries. I have a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma, certifications in SAFe 5.0 (Scaled Agile) and Strategic HR Leadership, a Master's degree in Public Health, and a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Kenyon College. My passion is contributing to the betterment of: organizational culture, individual self worth, and socioeconomic conditions. I practice my passion by enabling people’s natural tendency to see and solve problems in order to leave the world better than we found it."

Video and more Presented by Nick Katko Lean is a long-term business strategy, primarily focusing on employees and learning. Through various continuous improvement practices, employees learn to master their work, solve the right problems and help an organization learn how to do things tomorrow it cannot do today. The operational impact of continuous improvement is well known. Eliminating waste creates capacity, which can be used to serve customers better, improve productivity and improve employee satisfaction. But what about the financial impact? Oftentimes conventional financial analytical practices do not capture the true financial benefits of continuous improvement. This becomes a “problem to be solved.” This webinar will explain how to make the true cause-effect relationships between continuous improvement and financial improvement visible throughout the organization. Integrating these relationships will improve the quality of business decision-making and leverage continuous improvement for financial success for the entire organization. In this webinar, you will learn: the numbers to establish the true cause-effect relationships between continuous improvement and financial improvement. how to use the economics of lean to calculate the financial benefit of continuous improvement how continuous improvement achieves cost reduction over time why certain conventional financial analyses can show that continuous improvement is “not working” financially Nick is the President and owner of BMA. Since 2002, Nick has leveraged his Lean Accounting experience and philosophy in assisting BMA clients in developing, leading, and coaching them in their Lean Accounting transformations. Clients Nick has served a range of organizations worldwide, from family-owned businesses to multi-national companies in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, software, engineering, and service. Nick is an early pioneer of Lean Accounting. In the 1990s, as CFO of Bullard, Nick implemented a complete lean management accounting system in conjunction with Bullard’s Lean transformation, which included eliminating standard costing. Nick is a regular speaker at the annual Lean Accounting Summit and has also presented at conferences in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Nick has written extensively on lean accounting. He is the author of “The Lean CFO – 2nd edition” (2023), which is an updated version of the 2013 publication “The Lean CFO.” The Lean CFO has been translated and published in Turkish and Italian. Nick co-authored “Practicing Lean Accounting” (2021), which has also been published in Italian.

Register to attend live or view the recording January 10 from 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm ET Presented by Nick Katko Lean is a long-term business strategy, primarily focusing on employees and learning. Through various continuous improvement practices, employees learn to master their work, solve the right problems and help an organization learn how to do things tomorrow it cannot do today. The operational impact of continuous improvement is well known. Eliminating waste creates capacity, which can be used to serve customers better, improve productivity and improve employee satisfaction. But what about the financial impact? Oftentimes conventional financial analytical practices do not capture the true financial benefits of continuous improvement. This becomes a “problem to be solved.” This webinar will explain how to make the true cause-effect relationships between continuous improvement and financial improvement visible throughout the organization. Integrating these relationships will improve the quality of business decision-making and leverage continuous improvement for financial success for the entire organization. In this webinar, you will learn: the numbers to establish the true cause-effect relationships between continuous improvement and financial improvement. how to use the economics of lean to calculate the financial benefit of continuous improvement how continuous improvement achieves cost reduction over time why certain conventional financial analyses can show that continuous improvement is “not working” financially Nick is the President and owner of BMA. Since 2002, Nick has leveraged his Lean Accounting experience and philosophy in assisting BMA clients in developing, leading, and coaching them in their Lean Accounting transformations. Clients Nick has served a range of organizations worldwide, from family-owned businesses to multi-national companies in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, software, engineering, and service. Nick is an early pioneer of Lean Accounting. In the 1990s, as CFO of Bullard, Nick implemented a complete lean management accounting system in conjunction with Bullard’s Lean transformation, which included eliminating standard costing. Nick is a regular speaker at the annual Lean Accounting Summit and has also presented at conferences in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Nick has written extensively on lean accounting. He is the author of “The Lean CFO – 2nd edition” (2023), which is an updated version of the 2013 publication “The Lean CFO.” The Lean CFO has been translated and published in Turkish and Italian. Nick co-authored “Practicing Lean Accounting” (2021), which has also been published in Italian.

UMass Memorial Health Webinar page Presented by Cliona Archambeault and Penny Iannelli of UMass Memorial Health Join us for a panel discussion with two leaders from UMass Memorial Health (UMMH) as we discuss how they’ve created a culture of continuous improvement at UMMH that has led to more than 100,000 employee ideas being implemented! They both work for a healthcare organization – this is true – but please keep reading (and join us!) if you work in other sectors, including manufacturing. Why? Our two panelists both worked in industry (including Intel), and they (and other UMMH leaders) are influenced by former Toyota people. We know there will be stories and lessons learned that are transferrable to other healthcare organizations – or companies in any industry – because it comes down to the three things we always talk about at KaiNexus: methodology, leadership, and technology. We are proud that UMMH is a KaiNexus customer and that they use our technology platform to facilitate and document their work – in addition to tabulating their great results. Cliona Archambeault Senior Director, Process Improvement, UMass Memorial Health Care   Penny Iannelli Chief Transformation Officer, UMass Memorial Health Care