Lean Blog Audio

I've long been appreciative of the work that Toyota does, through their non-profit TSSC subsidiary, to help non-profits and community organizations improve. The latest example of that is some work done at Children's Health in my other backyard, in Dallas: "Children's Health Joins Forces with Toyota to Improve Patient Safety and Quality of Care" As it says in the release: "Through a collaboration with Toyota, Children's HealthSM, the leading pediatric health system in North Texas, announced today it has successfully reduced rates of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSIs) by 75 percent with patients in the gastroenterology unit."

One challenge with teaching Lean is that there isn't aways a consistent definition that's used by everybody. Some of the definitions are really bad. Some of them are just different from others. Let's start with "different." Is a lack of standardization in definitions of Lean a problem?

I'm excited to announce that the audiobook version of our book Practicing Lean is complete! It's available for purchase via LeanPub.com and it might be available through other channels in the future. The audiobook is nearly seven hours of audio, which is the entire book, completely unabridged. As per the LeanPub.com approach, you can choose your own price. The suggested price is $24.97, but you can pay as little as $9.97 -- and you can pay as much as you want, considering ALL proceeds are being donated to the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation (about $2500 so far). Click here and choose the "Book + MP3 Audio Book" option, along with your price and you'll be able to download all of the MP3 files.

Let's start by stating the obvious: it sucks to wait 24 hours or more on a stretcher in an emergency department hallway waiting for a real hospital bed. It's sad and frustrating to have a couple of blog readers from Canada send me this story from Quebec: Quebec wants 24-hour cap for patients waiting on stretchers in ERs Barrette says there would be consequences for hospital staff, doctors who don't comply I think there's agreement that waiting 24 hours, 12 hours, or four hours for a bed after an admission is a problem. That's a problem worth working on.

This is an elaboration on something I originally posted on LinkedIn. I saw somebody touting an approach that would guarantee "maximum efficiency for your management gemba walks." Ah, the efficiency trap. Is efficiency really the goal here? Efficiency is usually defined as outputs divided by inputs. Visiting more departments more quickly would increase "efficiency." Shouldn't the goal there be "maximum effectiveness?"

Any rare event creates a number of challenges when it comes to manufacturing and supply chains. We're seeing a pretty historic "spike" in demand for products like the inexpensive glasses that allow one to safety view the eclipse (our friends in the totality zone can look at the totally-eclipsed sun safely, but that's the only time). You could call it "supply chain challenges" or a "lack of planning on my part," but I cannot find eclipse glasses anywhere. There are MANY articles online about this widespread problem -- it's been impossible to buy "eclipse glasses" anywhere. Why is this? What could have been done?

Highlights of "Boss Level Podcast" - Gen. Stan McChrystal and the Book "Team of Teams" I've read most of retired General Stanley McChrystal's excellent book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (I start a lot of books and finish a few). Amazon reminds me that I bought the book just over two years ago. I meant to blog about it and never got around to it (I have a lot of ideas about posts and write a few). McChrystal, in connecting his lessons learned from helping reshape the military and, in particular, the special forces, to the business world ends up talking a lot about issues and history near and dear to those of us working with Lean as a methodology. I'll come back to my thoughts on the book later, but I was thrilled to stumble across a podcast called "Boss Level Podcast," which is hosted by Sami Honkonen from Finland.

Today at 3 PM, I'm doing a webinar at the invitation of the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council, as part of their "Quality Café" series. Thanks for the invitation! It's open to the public and it's titled: "Standardize What Makes Sense... Then Engage Everybody in Improving What You Standardized" I hope you can join us...

I enjoy "gemba visits" (of sorts) to wineries and vacations often focus on this walking, tasting, and learning. I usually read the wine column that's in the Wall St. Journal each Saturday, and this one stood out to me: "Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Sommelier?"

Back in 2012, I blogged twice about aspects of Dr. Donald M. Berwick's 1989 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Continuous Improvement as an Ideal in Health Care.” The full text is only available to subscribers. As I posted on LinkedIn, another aspect of this article caught my eye when I was reviewing it the other day in advance of my talk at the Studer Group "What's Right in Healthcare" conference next week.