Relational Contracts and Lean
I believe that without the total commitment of senior leadership, especially the CEO, Lean can’t succeed. Leadership can launch Lean or leadership can tolerate Lean and enjoy the benefits that it offers for a while, but if leadership wants Lean to be a sustainable...
A Lean Tour: Step 1, Management’s Willingness to Be Transformed
Lean is my favorite flavor of continuous improvement. I see Lean to be a term like “jazz” that defines an evolving philosophy that thrives on innovation. Lean is to continuous improvement as jazz is to music. Jazz is a continuously evolving art form that allows...
Making the Triple Aim a Common Vision
The core ideas of what the IHI calls the Triple Aim were articulated by Robert Ebert, Dean of Harvard Medical School in 1965. Our understanding of the Triple Aim was accelerated by two important books, To Err is Human (1999) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001),...
Optimism or Hope?
During the week after I had given a very positive review of the 27th IHI Forum in my weekly “Healthcare Musings” I received an email comment from one of the regular readers who wrote to me saying that he admired my optimism, but he just did not feel it. The comment...
Healthcare and Behavioral Economics
When you live in a small town that is at least a half hour away from “big box stores” and other commercial outlets you begin to develop some shopping efficiencies. Recently, before driving the one hundred miles south to Boston for me to attend a meeting, my wife and I...Case Study – Elizabeth Mcarthy
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