One of the best parts of my job is meeting with healthcare leaders from across the country and hearing about their organization’s cultural transformation as well as their own personal transformations as leaders in a lean environment. I recently had the opportunity to spend time with Keith Knoll, President at Wellspan’s York Hospital. It was […]
It’s not uncommon to hear statements like “I think this will help us achieve that target,” or “I hope this change in process will get us to where we need to be” from operations managers when it comes to new goals or targets being defined for the year. But hope is not a strategy, and […]
Why don’t people adopt best practices? I get asked this question a lot. What are some of the possible answers? Sometimes, it’s as simple as people not being aware of the better way. You can’t blame people for not adopting something they haven’t been taught. Other times, people just get really anchored in the […]
Many executive teams spend significant time and resources developing a differentiating strategy, defining their priorities and deploying performance targets to set them apart from other hospitals or health systems. Unfortunately, all too often they look back and realize that they didn’t get where they planned to go because of poor execution. Why does this happen? […]
There are many types of problems in the world, and even more methods that can be used to solve them. The key is using the right method or tool to solve the problem at hand. Let’s start with an analogy. You want to hang a picture on the wall. You have multiple tools at your […]
“Without the capacity to measure, we would be uncertain, literally, as to where we stood and where we are going. We would not know if we are rich or poor, hot or cold, old or young. The very word ‘measure’ pervades all fields… You can’t make decisions, connections, money, or music without true measurements.” – […]
https://createvalue.org/blog/are-you-measuring-the-right-things/
A while back at Catalysis we did an ice-breaker before a value stream mapping event that demonstrated how the meaning of words can differ from person to person. First, the facilitator tells the story of a man who was found dead inside a cabin and nobody else was around. The team takes turns asking questions […]
Often improvement team members are in the position of coaching someone who is a senior leader in the organization and who may even have positional authority over them. This can often be nerve-racking and make these coaches feel like they are not equipped to succeed.
Healthcare leaders all have the best intentions to become better leaders and transform the culture at our organizations. Maybe there are behaviors we want to work on, or maybe we just need to get to gemba more often. The problem is that things tend to get in our way, there is always some other work […]
St. Charles Health System’s embrace of lean practices led to a new culture and revitalized governance model Health care is ripe for change. The evidence is all around us. A majority of healthcare leaders recently surveyed said hospitals and health systems are most in need of disruptive innovation (New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst, February […]
https://createvalue.org/articles_and_news/applying-lean-principles-board-work/
