Lean Blog Audio

Did Toyota's Mindset Really Leave the (Now) Tesla Building? Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"

A Powerful Message from Toyota's President, Akio Toyoda: No Best, Only Better In today's post, I share and write about this message from Akio Toyoda that was posted online: “Making Ever-better Cars and Human Resource Development: The Forces That Power Sustainable Growth“

Should #Lean Conferences Add a "Code of Conduct" for Speakers and Attendees? In today's post, I pose a question: Should the major Lean conferences adopt or adapt a practice that's now common at tech events, including Agile and Lean Startup events: a "Code of Conduct" for participants and attendees. Is this a countermeasure to a problem that doesn't exist in the Lean community? Or, is it still good to proactively encourage people to speak up to conference organizers if they are subject to bad behavior during the event? In this post, I get feedback and thoughts from the Lean Enterprise Institute, AME, Catalysis, Lean Frontiers, and the Shingo Institute.

#ChangeChampions at Franciscan St. Francis Health - in Supply Chain and Beyond Today, I'd like to share the second in my series of articles about "Champions of Change." Here, we feature my friends at Franciscan St. Francis, the health system of my Healthcare Kaizen co-author Joe Swartz. As I wrote about in the first article in this series, successful and innovative organizations have "champions of change" at all levels of the organization, and we see that at Franciscan. You can read the article over at Becker's Hospital Review: Champions of Change Make the Difference at Franciscan Health Or you can download a PDF from Cardinal Health.

I've been going through the book by the late Peter Scholtes: The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done. His work builds upon the legendary W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff, among others. I often quote Scholtes (something also attributed to Peter Senge and others) as saying: "People don't resist change, they resist being changed." I think that's very insightful and that thought has led me to study change management, "motivational interviewing" and other related topics. It turns out that having the right answer and pushing it on others isn't the best strategy for effecting sustainable change. I had to learn those lessons the hard way and I'm still learning.

Who are the "champions of change" in your organization? Is your CEO a champion of change? How many of your front-line managers and staff are champions of change? Are you? What does it mean to be a champion of change? Today, I'm sharing an article that I've written on this subject... and I'd love to hear your stories about champions of change. Please share your stories on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag #ChangeChampions. Or, you can post a comment below. Click the following link to download a PDF version of the article: "The Essential Ingredient to Improving the Hospital Supply Chain" You can also read the article on Becker's Hospital Review.

Of Course Doctors Hate Being "Excluded" From Attempts to Improve Thanks to those of you who sent me this HBR article: Doctors Feel Excluded from Health Care Value Efforts Long story short... brought to you by Bain consultants: Doctors don't like being excluded and organizational satisfaction goes up when you engage and include people. Brilliant! Obvious?

Come Join Me to Study Lean & Kaizen for Healthcare: Japan 2018 In the past year or two, it seems like I have heard more about people and organizations leading Lean study trips to Japan. This has gone on for decades, but there seems to be a resurgence. I first partnered with Kaizen Institute in 2012 to lead a "Lean Healthcare" study tour, we did another in 2014, and we're actively planning our next trip in early 2018. Click here to learn more via a web page that I run. You can also click here for a PDF that previews the 2018 tour. Registration has not yet opened, but contact me if you'd like to be notified with details. The dates are February 26 to March 2, 2018. Details are still being finalized, but the tour would start in Tokyo and end in Nagoya. The plan is to not just visit some hospitals that are leaders in Lean and quality improvement practices, but to also visit Toyota and some other world-class organizations. The trip costs 5400 euros, which is currently about $6300. This cost includes everything from the start of the tour on Monday morning to the end on Friday evening. Your airfare to Japan and back is a separate, independent cost to you. In the past two trips, we've had a very international group (a majority of attendees have been from Europe and Asia). This creates a special opportunity to not just learn from our Japanese hosts, but to compare notes and learn from others around the world. Our trips are intentionally a mix of hospital visits and other types of organizations that we can all learn from. It's great to see a Japanese hospital with a CEO who has been leading their quality and continuous improvement efforts for 20+ years and to hear their perspectives. At the same time, the hospitals we have visited were, at the time of our visits, relatively new to formal "Lean" practices - as they were building upon their "Total Quality Management" engagement and improvement practices... something that was NOT a fad for these hospitals or their leaders. These trips are rich learning experiences. It's not just the formal visits, but the time talking on buses and trains, the meals together, and the networking and sharing that, for me, has continued with attendees long after the week is over. Here are my past blog posts about visiting Japan, with a few links below.

it's great to see an 11 year old thinking like an engineer and an entrepreneur. He's the son of a Toyota "operational excellence" consultant. For those who try to unfortunately equate Lean to a "clean desk policy," the father's desk is a great argument against banning family photos and an illustration of why Lean isn't about putting tape around everything...

The Lean Enterprise Institute (a former employer of mine from 2009 to 2011) has announced a new CEO, the third in their history following founder James P. Womack and his successor, John Shook. Their press release: Lean Enterprise Institute Names Eric Buehrens New CEO The start of the release: "The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute, a global leader in lean thinking and practice, today announced the appointment of Eric Buehrens as its new CEO. The appointment took effect October 1, 2017. A proven lean thinker and leader, Buehrens led lean transformations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he served as COO and Interim CEO, and at Reliant Medical Group, a Massachusetts group medical practice, where he was COO."