Best of Lean Blog 2012
Best of Lean Blog 2012
Posts & Essays from Mark Graban's LeanBlog.org
About the Book
This book was published incrementally during 2012, and is now complete, with the best posts and commentary from Mark Graban's www.LeanBlog.org.
Highlights include:
- Posts from Mark's first trip to Japan
- Highlights and notes from conferences, including Society for Health Systems, the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, Northeast Shingo Prize, Lab Quality Confab, and The Lean Startup Conference
- Posts about "kaizen" or "good change" - the practice of continuous improvement in Lean settings
- Posts about Lean Healthcare
- Essays about Lean concepts in everyday settings ranging from the kitchen, to airports, and other businesses
- Some early "Lean Memes" or funny images and pop culture references related to Lean
If reading on an iPad or connected e-Reader, the book contains hyperlinks to sources, articles, and videos that can be viewed when online.
About the Author
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- About the Author
-
1 January 2012
- 1.1 Blame the Stanford Kicker! Blame the Kicker?
- 1.2 Book Review: One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way
- 1.3 Lean in Your Life – Preventing Health Problems with Technology
- 1.4 This Commercial is Not Exactly the “Five Whys”
- 1.5 Kaizen Videos from a Franciscan “Kaizeneer”
- 1.6 An Inc. “Best Small Company Workplace” & Their Lean Culture
- 1.7 Steve Jobs as a Model Leader? As a Manufacturing Leader?
- 1.8 Suggestion Boxes are Disliked & Ineffective Around the World
- 1.9 Guest Post: Finding Waste at the Stadium
- 1.10 A Lean Guy Watches Moneyball
- 1.11 A Lean Lesson from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- 1.12 A Nice Kaizen Example from the PACU
- 1.13 A Vivid Example of Gaming the Numbers on “The Office”
- 1.14 Guest Post: Talking Lean at the Baseball Winter Meetings
- 1.15 Lean in the Livonia Public Schools
- 1.16 ThedaCare’s “Business Performance System” – and a 10% Target
- 1.17 Guest Post: Is your management system the constraint in Kaizen?
- 1.18 “The speed and flexibility is breathtaking” – But in a good way?
- 1.19 A Reinforcing Loop of Kaizen and Respect
-
2 February 2012
- 2.1 Guest Post: Some Tips & Advice for Young Change Agents
- 2.2 My Podcasting Gear, Setup, and Process – Lean Blog Podcast
- 2.3 Reader Question: “No layoffs due to Lean” extends to “no demotions?”
- 2.4 Reader & Book Reviewer Question: The Business Case for Lean Healthcare?
- 2.5 Kaizen on the Boeing 737 Line
- 2.6 The Fall and Rise of Automotive (and Healthcare) Quality
- 2.7 Mental Models and How We View the Gemba & Workers: GM & Dell
- 2.8 WSJ: How to Be a Better Boss? Spend Time on the Front Lines
- 2.9 What People Think a Lean Healthcare Consultant Does
- 2.10 Continuing Experiments in Self Publishing & Lean Publishing
- 2.11 Hello from the SHS Conference & a Question for the Readers
- 2.12 10 Tips from a Hospital CEO – from the #SHS2012 Conference
- 2.13 ASQ Influential Voices: Young People and the Future of Engineering and Healthcare
- 2.14 Guest Post: Demand for #Lean Professionals Now Exceeds #SixSigma?
- 2.15 Failure to Follow Process Leads to NL MVP’s Suspension Being Overturned
- 2.16 Weekend Fun – Quality Related Band Names (#QualityTermBandName)
- 2.17 “On the Mend” Wins Shingo Award
- 2.18 Lots of Great Lean Healthcare Progress in Iowa
- 2.19 Reader Questions: Lean and Process Improvement in Healthcare
- 2.20 My Conference Kaizen
- 2.21 Today Would Have Been Taiichi Ohno’s 100th Birthday
-
3 March 2012
- 3.1 Wasted Data Entry on my Microwave – Why Enter the Date??
- 3.2 Public Radio Story on VIBCO Helping Rhode Island Healthcare
- 3.3 Management Lessons from Zingerman’s CEO Ari Weinzweig
- 3.4 1 in 7000 – What are the Odds for Lean Healthcare Transformation?
- 3.5 Staff Ideas Improving Freeman Health System
- 3.6 Preview of the KaiNexus iPhone App – making improvement easier, anywhere
- 3.7 Farewell to the “Move to Healthcare” Ning Group; Sharing a Success Story
- 3.8 Learning to See (and Spell) in the NHL
- 3.9 Thoughts on National Patient Safety Awareness Week
- 3.10 Momentum of Lean Healthcare Design Continues to Build
- 3.11 Guest Post: Healthcare Kaizen in The Netherlands
- 3.12 Standardized, but Not Identical – College Basketballs
- 3.13 Transcript of Podcast #142 – @EricRies on Taiichi Ohno & #LeanStartup
- 3.14 94% of Problems are Really Caused by…
- 3.15 The More Sophisticated Brains – Robots or Employees?
- 3.16 Guest Post – #LeanProblems
- 3.17 How hospitals are implementing lean healthcare practices
- 3.18 Protecting Patients IS Affordable Care
- 3.19 ASQ Influential Voices: Selling Quality?
- 3.20 Danger vs. Hysteria — “Pink Slime” & Medical Errors (and a Guest Post)
-
4 April 2012
- 4.1 April Fool: Back to the Future: Hospital CEOs and Virtual Reality “Gemba Bots”
- 4.2 Paul O’Neill Video, Speaking to Healthcare Leaders on Quality
- 4.3 Ending the Home Kanban System (For This Home, At Least)
- 4.4 Emergency Department Wait Times are Down, but not Being Measured?
- 4.5 Guest Post: Lean is Patient
- 4.6 My Essay in Naida Grunden’s New Book on Lean Design – Be Lean not L.A.M.E.
- 4.7 Quotes from Lean Healthcare PowerDay
- 4.8 Robert Andino of the Baltimore Orioles & Dr. W. Edwards Deming
- 4.9 Is McDonald’s Really the Big Problem in Hospitals? Or Preventable Infections and Healthcare Quality Problems?
- 4.10 Visual Management in a Prepared Foods Counter
- 4.11 Move to Healthcare Wrap Up – “Feels like Bias” to a #Lean #SixSigma Pro
- 4.12 Mistake Proofing the Home Alarm System
- 4.13 Update on KaiNexus – Making Improvement Easier in New Ways & Places
- 4.14 Mistake Proofing Designed Into a Lock
- 4.15 To Better Protect Patients, Healthcare Needs More “Lean Thinking”
- 4.16 My Trip to the Apple Store was Like a Hospital Visit
- 4.17 ASQ Influential Voices: Happy Quality Professionals?
-
5 May 2012
- 5.1 TED Video: Atul Gawande: How do we heal medicine?
- 5.2 Blame Outsourcing or Bad Processes & Bad Management?
- 5.3 Not Exactly News – TSA Wastes Money
- 5.4 All Saudi hospitals to report serious errors online
- 5.5 What’s Wrong with “What’s Wrong With the Lean Start-up”
- 5.6 Scared to Death: Worry about hospital errors, not pink slime
- 5.7 Changing Leadership Styles with Lean
- 5.8 “Lean Effort Pays Big” in a Colorado Springs Hospital
- 5.9 My Flight Attendant’s Coffee Kaizen
- 5.10 Lean on Alaska Public Radio
- 5.11 DirecTV Makes it Hard to Cancel & Move
- 5.12 Goodbye Dr. House, Hello “Respect for People”
- 5.13 A Hard Habit to Break
- 5.14 New eBook Compilation – Lean Blog: Sports
- 5.15 Guest Post: Book Review – “Adventures in Leanland”
-
6 June 2012
- 6.1 Weekend Fun: This Park Puts the K in Quality
- 6.2 A Lean Guy Listens to NPR – Waste & Problems in Healthcare
- 6.3 Virginia Mason’s Improvement Cited in NYT Editorial; Their New Blog
- 6.4 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit 2012, Day 1
- 6.5 Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit 2012, Day 2
- 6.6 Interview with Former ThedaCare Leader Kathryn Correia
- 6.7 The Passing of Dr. Genichi Taguchi: January 1, 1924 – June 2, 2012
- 6.8 Lean at the Peterborough (Ontario) Regional Medical Centre
- 6.9 Meeting Masaaki Imai Today in Seattle
- 6.10 Notes from Meeting Masaaki Imai
- 6.11 A Lean Guy Watches “CNN’s 25 Shocking Medical Mistakes”
- 6.12 Moving Beyond “Be More Careful”
- 6.13 Healthcare Kaizen: You Mean Everyone Isn’t Doing This?
- 6.14 Analyzing the Kaizen Improvements in Our Book “Healthcare Kaizen”
- 6.15 More Than Grammar in This WSJ Grammar Quiz
- 6.16 Are Suggestion Boxes Really Going Away? What Say Amazon?
- 6.17 New Book by @PaulFLevy – “Goal Play!” with Lessons for Healthcare
- 6.18 Even with “ObamaCare” Upheld, Much Hard Work Remains to Protect Patients and Make Care Affordable
-
7 July 2012
- 7.1 Weekend Fun: My Ironic Home Office
- 7.2 Google Nexus Q – Made in the USA
- 7.3 Jerks Can Be Creativity Killers, Alright
- 7.4 Reader Question: Hiring for a Lean Culture in Healthcare?
- 7.5 Dr. Gary Kaplan, CEO of Virginia Mason, on Healthcare Morale
- 7.6 “Blame & Shame” is Shameful
- 7.7 Lifeguard Saves Swimmer, Gets Fired
- 7.8 Should Have a Question Mark: Inc’s “The Leanest Startup?”
- 7.9 “Why Charter Schools Work” – Questions of Autonomy, Responsibility, Standardized Work & Results
- 7.10 KaiNexus Gives People a Voice
- 7.11 I Wish American Airlines Would Error Proof This on Their Website
- 7.12 RIP, Dr. Stephen Covey (1932-2012)
- 7.13 “Living Lean” Vignette – Good Illustration or a Bit of a Stretch?
- 7.14 10 Common Problem Solving Mistakes
- 7.15 ASQ Influential Voices: Quality & Social Responsibility (& Lean)
- 7.16 Looking at Medical Mistakes – Learning and Preventing or Repeating?
- 7.17 Quoted in: 7 Ways Lean Healthcare Management Reduces Cost
- 7.18 MD Anderson Presentation: W. Edwards Deming: The Man and the Message
- 7.19 CBC on Lean in Saskatchewan Hospitals
-
8 August 2012
- 8.1 The Two Root Causes of Everything?
- 8.2 For the Want of a Screwdriver…
- 8.3 Dr. Donald Berwick – Ahead of his Time on Kaizen in 1989
- 8.4 I’m Sorry, Did You Blame Me?
- 8.5 A Brave Analogy from Dr. Atul Gawande
- 8.6 Dr. John Toussaint Says “Don’t Kill Me!”
- 8.7 Dr. Berwick’s 1989 Advice on Making Kaizen Happen in Healthcare
- 8.8 Counting the Ways to Solve the Counting Problem w/ Hospital Supplies
- 8.9 Looking Back – What Dr. Deming Taught the Japanese
- 8.10 Paul O’Neill Talks ThedaCare, Lean Healthcare on CNBC
- 8.11 Fun Stuff from the #LeanMeme Contest
- 8.12 For Real Improvement, You Need Honesty & Transparency, Not Anonymity
- 8.13 A Kidney Accidentally Trashed – More Questions Than Answers
- 8.14 Characteristics of Lean Leaders
-
9 September 2012
- 9.1 How @KaiNexus is Different Than “Collaborative Ideation” Software
- 9.2 Labor Day Reflections for a Safer Week (and Years) Ahead
- 9.3 Stephen Strasburg & the Washington Nationals – Long Term vs. Short Term
- 9.4 Reader Question: Getting Clinical Education to Transition into Healthcare?
- 9.5 Reader Question: Lean Healthcare Conferences I Like
- 9.6 My Article: “Lean as an Alternative to Mass Layoffs in Healthcare”
- 9.7 Do You Foster Innovation? Ask Your Employees
- 9.8 More Improvement Requires Less “Change Management”?
- 9.9 Two Blog Posts About “Healthcare Kaizen”
- 9.10 “L.A.M.E.” in the News; These Three Articles Get Lean Wrong
- 9.11 Weekend Fun: LeanMemes.com #LeanMeme Contest Winners
- 9.12 Improving “Door to Balloon” Times and Patient Care – in Some Hospitals, Why Not Every One?
- 9.13 “Lean Management” Debated in the Washington Gubernatorial Race
- 9.14 Can SPC Show if American Airlines Pilots are Staging a “Sick Out”?
- 9.15 Notes from the 2012 Northeast Shingo Prize Conference, Day One
-
10 October 2012
- 10.1 Back from Vacation; Chinese Translation; Champagne Gemba Time
- 10.2 KaiNexus Update – User Badges & Sharing Improvements Widely
- 10.3 Google’s Early Earnings Release – “Human Error” or Process Problem?
- 10.4 Just Call it “5S Six Sigma” Instead of “Lean Sigma,” Please
- 10.5 Make Patients Responsible for Reporting Medical Errors? Really?
- 10.6 Elon Musk Pooh-Poohs Process
- 10.7 Learning Jazz (and Lean?): Imitate, Integrate, Innovate
- 10.8 The Invisible Waste in Healthcare Leads to Visible Harm to Patients
-
11 November 2012
- 11.1 A Test for Executive Candidates – It’s Time to Power Off and Stow…
- 11.2 Guest Post: Showing True Respect by Going to the Gemba
- 11.3 The Gemba and Respect for People
- 11.4 Getting to the Root Cause on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy
- 11.5 Watching the Steve Jobs “Lost Interview,” Part 1
- 11.6 Watching the Steve Jobs “Lost Interview,” Part 2
- 11.7 A Panel of Early Lean Lab Innovators
- 11.8 Lean Startup Conference Talk – Parallels to Lean Hospital Design
- 11.9 Visiting the Toyota Museum in Nagoya
- 11.10 Tweets from Japan, Day 1
- 11.11 Andon Cords at the Toyota Takaota Plant – It Doesn’t Come Naturally?
- 11.12 “Unity in the Essential, Liberty in the Non-Essential…”
- 11.13 A Japanese Hospital CEO on Kaizen, Innovation & Breakthrough
- 11.14 The “Gold Prize” Kaizen QC Project Saved How Much?
- 11.15 A Small Batch of Bread, Other Random Japan Pictures
- 11.16 Article on Lean Design and Evidence-Based Design
- 11.17 “5 Questions” for Mark Graban on the Evolving Excellence Blog
- 11.18 Hospital Workers, Flu Shots & Standardized Work
- 11.19 A Lean Thinker Watches the Documentary “Escape Fire” – A Review
- 11.20 Dr. Gary Kaplan’s Piece on Lean for the Institute of Medicine
- 11.21 Guest Post: The Risk of Ignoring Muri
- 11.22 5 Questions on “Healthcare Kaizen”
-
12 December 2012
- 12.1 Lies, Damn Lies, and Vanity Metrics – in Policing and Healthcare
- 12.2 BCS & College Football Coaches Poll Shenanigans – Bad Voters or Bad System?
- 12.3 #LeanStartup Conference 2012 Notes – Get Out of the Building
- 12.4 Patient Participation in Lean Renews Her Faith in Health Care
- 12.5 Japan Tour Reflections: Taking Home Lean Artifacts or Lean Thinking?
- 12.6 The Newtown Tragedy – Our National Response and Problem Solving
- 12.7 Visiting and Teaching at Ohio State – Meeting Archie Griffin, Reflecting on Values and Winning
- 12.8 My Human Error with my Keurig
- 12.9 Start 2013 with “The Spirit of Kaizen”
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$12,130,341writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #2
Jetpack Compose internals
Jorge CastilloJetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. Master how it works internally and become a more efficient developer with it. You'll also find it valuable if you are not an Android dev. This book provides all the details to understand how the Compose compiler & runtime work, and how to create a client library using them.
- #3
Functional Programming Made Easier
Charles ScalfaniA Functional Programming book from beginner to advanced without skipping a single step along the way.
In my 40 years of programming, I've felt that programming books always let me down, especially Functional Programming books. So, I wrote the book I wish I had 5 years ago.
Functional Programming will never be easy, but it can be easier.
- #4
Windows 11 Field Guide
Rafael Rivera and Paul ThurrottThe Windows 11 Field Guide is a full-length e-book about the latest version of Microsoft Windows, aimed at those users who will upgrade from Windows 10 or acquire Windows 11 with a new PC.
- #5
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
- #6
Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA
Trisha Gee and Helen ScottIf we treat our IDE as a text editor, we are doing ourselves a disservice. Using a combination of tutorials and a questions-and-answers approach, Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA will help you find ways to use IntelliJ IDEA that enable you to work comfortably and productively as a professional developer.
- #7
The Art of Functional Programming
Minh Quang Tran, PhDA master class on the fundamentals and principles of functional programming. It contains 20 programming challenges with detailed solutions and 44 quizzes with answers and explanations. Moreover, 84 diagrams graphically illustrate how concepts and techniques work. Two real-world use cases show how to apply functional programming in practice.
- #8
R Programming for Data Science
Roger D. PengThis book brings the fundamentals of R programming to you, using the same material developed as part of the industry-leading Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization. The skills taught in this book will lay the foundation for you to begin your journey learning data science. Printed copies of this book are available through Lulu.
- #9
Mastering STM32 - Second Edition
Carmine NovielloWith more than 1200 microcontrollers, STM32 is probably the most complete ARM Cortex-M platform on the market. This book aims to be the most complete guide around introducing the reader to this exciting MCU portfolio from ST Microelectronics and its official CubeHAL and STM32CubeIDE development environment.
- #10
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
Top Bundles
- #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #3
1500 QUIZ COMMENTATI (3 libri)
3 Books
Tre libri dei QUIZ MMG Commentati al prezzo di DUE! I QUIZ dei concorsi ufficiali di Medicina Generale relativi agli anni: 2000-2001-2003-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017-2018-2019-2020-2021 +100 inediti Raccolti in unico bundle per aiutarvi nello studio e nella preparazione al concorso. All'interno di ogni libro i quiz sono stati suddivisi per... - #4
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #5
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #6
The Python Craftsman
3 Books
The Python Craftsman series comprises The Python Apprentice, The Python Journeyman, and The Python Master. The first book is primarily suitable for programmers with some experience of programming in another language. If you don't have any experience with programming this book may be a bit daunting. You'll be learning not just a programming... - #8
Growing Agile: The Complete Coach's Guide
7 Books
Growing Agile: Coach's Guide Series This bundle provides a collection of training and workshop plans for a variety of agile topics. The series is aimed at agile coaches, trainers and ScrumMasters who often find themselves needing to help teams understand agile concepts. Each book in the series provides the plans, slides, handouts and activity...
