KaiNexus: Continuous Improvement, Leadership, and More

Organizations that subscribe to the Lean or Six Sigma business methodology, and others that are devoted to continuous improvement, often use a host of visual management tools to achieve consistency and introduce positive change. Kanban signs, huddle boards, and value stream maps are all very popular and effective. Process control charts are another valuable visual management tool for recognizing and reacting to process variation.

Webinar presented by Mark Graban on July 27, 2017. In this webinar, Mark Graban talks about the power of "bottom up" employee improvement and also explores some questions about why what's logically true (bottom up improvement is highly impactful) doesn't get widely or easily embraced by organizations.

In our Customer Spotlight, we interview to Lindsey Booty and LeaAnn Teague of Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Louisiana. Our VP of Improvement and Innovation Services, Mark Graban, talks to them about their approach to improvement and, also, how KaiNexus has supported those efforts.

A preview of Mark's webinar on July 27: - What's the focus of the webinar? - How do we know bottom-up improvement is powerful? - Why is bottom up improvement not typically seen? - So what's necessary to help?

We recently had an interesting conversation with a newly minted director of quality improvement in a regional hospital. The position is new, but she has years of experience implementing continuous quality improvement (CQI) programs. The first thing she realized that she needed was CQI software to support the initiative. She made the request for budget to the CFO who told her that fortunately, the hospital already had project management software and that she was free to use it to manage improvement projects.

It may seem odd for a company that sells process improvement software to declare that not every company is ready to buy it. We do like partnering with new customers, after all. But the thing is, we only want happy customers. And happy customers are organizations that have successful process improvement software rollouts, good adoption of the solution, and measurable impacts on key business metrics as a result.

Organizations all over the world, in almost every industry, are turning to continuous improvement software to solve their most challenging issues. The most successful of these Lean organizations are aware that they need 5 elements to succeed in creating an improvement culture: bottom-up improvement, top-down improvement, strategy deployment, coaching, and visual management. That sounds like a lot to manage in excel at all at once, doesn’t it? So how do these Lean organizations pull it off?

Most people will only be involved in a Lean software implementation once or maybe a few times. We help companies with improvement software deployment every single day. Because we have been around the block many times, we have seen what leads to success and which mistakes should be avoided at all costs. We are happy to share what we’ve learned.

A growing number of construction firms are embracing the Lean methodology that emphasizes maximizing value for the customer while minimizing waste. The approach is simple and attractive in an industry where budgets, timeframes, and safety are all critical. But the Lean approach to project delivery is very different than traditional construction methods, making proper execution of the philosophy and techniques difficult to implement.

Mark Graban and Greg Jacobson, MD from KaiNexus answer questions in this video webinar: How can you implement Lean without scaring people with change and Japanese concepts and language? When will Management realize that the employee on the front line is closest to the issue and concerns and usually has be best ideas? Any tips on Lean and Kaizen as applied to parenting? We're interested in KaiNexus, but still trying to figure out if it's best to start with a physical board for the team and then use KaiNexus for tracking and sharing... or should we do everything in KaiNexus? Is it necessary to make improvement mandatory? To set a goal for how many projects people should be involved in? It seems like people won't participate unless we make it mandatory.