DailyKaizen

It’s interesting how during this journey, similar themes come up in our experiences even though Lee and I aren’t always working in the same area. Or maybe there aren’t that many themes to choose from in a LEAN transformation….

Yesterday we had our first ever site visit from a sister health care organization that we have been working with for some time. It’s interesting to think that it has taken this long to invite/allow another organization, one that we think of so highly, to come see what we are doing with LEAN. Partially, it’s to make sure that we provided a good use of there time. Partially, because we hope one day they’ll adopt and want them to see the most realistic view of things, which we assume is a view that occurs when we are more mature. Maybe we’re wrong about that.

In any event, I found myself reciting the story of how we got here in bits and pieces to our visitors along the way, much of it not a revelation to some pretty smart people. We talked about middle management, and the thing that I said, or would say, is not about resistance, but confusion. I heard it said well at a recent series of presentations in Washington, DC (scroll to the bottom of the page to see the presentations on LEAN). One of the speakers said, “LEAN can cause confusion for middle managers because their role naturally changes in a transition from top-down to top-down/bottom-up.” I respect that idea, and I respect them (managers). Like all of the physicians that we get to work with, I think all staff want to do the right work.

Back to the issue of the visit - did we need to wait until things were on “solid” ground to allow a site visit? When is the “best” time to spread LEAN or are there better times than others in terms of the maturity and stage of the transformation?

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