DailyKaizen

There’s two this week, since there’s only one of us posting.

The first, from “Toyota Talent,” by Jeffrey Liker and David Meier:

The variation within an industry rivals the variation across industries.

I “reappropriated” this quote when someone asked me what I would say if someone said, “Our patients are different in this organization, so we cannot do things the same way as others can.” I brought up this quote as a way of saying the variation within a health care organization rivals the variation across organizations, because, I theorized, every patient wants to be empowered, every physician and nurse wants to deliver excellent care, and everyone wants it to be affordable.

The second, from a leader of a health care organization I am working with this week in New York City:

We don’t use the Toyota model. We use the Vespa model - we hang on for dear life.

This was a joke, of course, but I used it to select this week’s “Photo Friday” on my sabbatical blog. I am here observing and shadowing care systems that are different than ours to understand patient empowerment using technology. I am not here to be a sensei or LEAN consultant, but I suppose the words slip out now and then, and the quote comes from that. The great thing about what I have been able to do, thanks to these incredible people, is act LEAN in what I am doing, by observing patients receiving care, and bringing these ideas into the conversation. The quote comes from a leader who’s open to new ideas and can laugh along the way.

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