Kata: A Pattern for Continuous Improvement and Coaching in Healthcare

Have you struggled with developing a continuous improvement culture within your organization? Does aligning the work of each department with clarity around what they are trying to achieve in pursuit of True North and Strategy seem out of reach? Wouldn’t it be great if at each level of the organization a common pattern of improvement and coaching existed to assist leaders and teams in systematically achieving goals through rapid cycles of experimentation?  The truth is, current and future challenges require it.  A kata is a pattern or routine on your path to proficiency and expertise. With continuous improvement in healthcare, everyone has felt like a beginner at one point and many still feel that way.  Building competency around the pattern of continuous improvement and the required coaching to make it work is no mystery; it is a pattern that all can learn and begin applying immediately.

In Toyota Kata, Mike Rother shares with us truly repeatable routines of improvement and coaching that have been missing in many improvement journeys over the years. Through practice within several healthcare organizations, we’ve learned much from Rother’s work—not only how to perform improvement daily within departments, but also how those efforts can be aligned closely with system priorities, engage people, and be truly continuous.  Within this course, we explore these patterns (kata), how these patterns link to scientific thinking and practice (A3), and provide basic routines for doing both rapid cycle experimentation and the coaching routine that is critical to success.

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Review the A3 scientific thinking pattern.
• Describe and demonstrate a pattern for rapid cycle experimentation.
• Learn and practice a pattern for coaching to rapid cycles of experimentation.
• Employ and articulate the importance of setting short-term target conditions in alignment with a larger challenge.
• Create a plan of how to integrate these patterns into your improvement journey.

Schedule: 1-day (8:00am - 4:00pm)

Pre-reading: None

Recommended Reading: "Kata in Healthcare" a Catalysis whitepaper by Bill Boyd and Mike Radtke, Toyota Kata by Mike Rother

Recommended Prerequisite Sessions: None

Who Should Attend: Clinical and nonclinical leaders across the healthcare industry