At the beginning of June hundreds of members of the lean healthcare community gathered at the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit (in-person in Salt Lake City and virtually) to share how they are thinking systemically and acting with purpose within their organizations. Healthcare organizations that were able to thrive over the past few years relied on […]
Organizations implement management systems for many different reasons; to improve performance, open lines of communication, and to develop a team of problem-solvers (to name a few). Adopting a management system requires a different way of leading. It means managing by process rather than managing by objectives. Often organizations realize some quick gains when they begin […]
In healthcare there is no shortage of problems to solve. Some problems seem to have an easy solution, while others require a much deeper look to understand them. There are many tools for improvement that healthcare organizations use to see and solve problems, including things like 5S, error proofing, pareto charts, and process flow mapping. […]
Being a humble leader is essential to cultivating a culture of continuous improvement. Leading with humility is one of the Shingo Principles of Organizational Excellence and requires deliberate practice. Here are some things to keep in mind about leading with humility.
A management system can help you understand your business, create alignment throughout your organization, measure and review performance in real-time, enable problem-solving in the gemba, and sustain improvements. These are just a few reasons why hospitals and healthcare systems around the world are implementing management systems. Data has shown that hospitals with management systems in […]
As 2021 comes to a close, it is a good time to pause and reflect on events from the year. Reflection is integral to the learning and personal development process. This important part of the PDSA cycle helps us take stock of what went well and what we can improve on in the future. The […]
Each week we share blogs in the hopes of inspiring healthcare leaders to accelerate change throughout the healthcare industry. We strive to share knowledge that will help transform organizations to a culture of improvement, delivering continually higher value outcomes for patients, staff, and communities. In 2021 we focused our blog content on building and strengthening […]
Leading in a continuous improvement environment is very different from the way many healthcare leaders have been taught. It isn’t about having all the answers and fixing every problem. It’s about enabling others to solve problems and helping people connect their work to the work of the system. It can be challenging for leaders to […]
A daily huddle, or improvement huddle as it is sometimes referred to, is an important component to a management system. Huddles provide an outlet for valuable communication that can be escalated and shared throughout the different levels of the organization. We have heard from many organizations that a consistent huddle process and management system enabled […]
Visual management helps to support culture transformation by turning data into information that can help tell the story about the business. In her book, Beyond Heroes, Kim Barnas acknowledges that the idea of publicly displaying defects is hard for some healthcare leaders to accept but also explains that, “patients and family know our faults and […]
