DailyKaizen

This is how our day began yesterday as Dr. James Womack described why he was at Group Health for a site visit. For those of you that don’t know Ted, he is fearless, and it was not a surprise to any of us last week when we were contacted by LEI for a site visit. Like always, Ted is working magic, even from the other side of the country.

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Yesterday, James Womack the founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute and Helen Zak the chief operating officer spent the morning walking through the gemba of our Model Line area as well as providing us feedback and consultation on where we should be focused as we move forward. The word got out to the teams late last week that our guests were coming to town and there had been a growing buzz ever since. After the visit the teams were still buzzing and our corporate library has had a rush on demand for copies of Lean Thinking. Walking out the door yesterday it was so satisfying to see how proud the teams were of gaining such deserved recognition.

In attendance was our Lean Champion, a small subset of our Lean consulting group and the Model Line leadership team. We started the day out talking about our organizations Lean journey. Both James and Helen had a lot of excellent questions most focused on our efforts to adopt a new management system. We talked a lot about our transition from a strategy that was event (RPIW) focused to one that is focused on shifting the purpose, role and focus of the organizations management. There were a lot of take aways from this discussion, which will become the subject of future blog posting. Mostly I left the conversation with a confirmation that we were on the right track, that we are blazing a trail in healthcare, and that our success is contingent on our ability to adapt the thinking and behaviors of the organization into a new management system.

We then went out into the gemba and visited two teams. James and Helen quickly engaged the front-line managers and staff in dialogue about their experience with the changes in our management system. I was impressed how quickly both of them narrowed in on where the teams were from both a process and people perspective. The teams quickly forgot their nervousness as the opened ended questioning engaged their thinking. I was also nervous at first, and I am not sure why. The teams handle each question with honesty, and demonstrated just how far their thinking had advanced in such a short time.

After the walks we all met back in the conference room to reflect on what we saw and to gain feedback from our guests. During the walks I was curious why James and Helen asked so many questions about standard work. During the debrief the reason became clear that they were testing if our efforts were more show then real. Were we simply putting up visual management systems, running events and applying tools? Or have our efforts been deeper, more substancial? Overall, I think that they were impressed with how quickly we have been able to move. That being said they had a lot of valuable feedback to provide including:

• Our need to continue our focus on implementing standard work with a focus on shifting manager’s thinking and behavior
• Our need to carefully define purpose for each process so that we don’t fix work that should not be done in the first place
• Our need to redesign our work environment and break down the physical barriers that hinder teamwork and problem solving
• Finally, our need to engage senior leadership in their willingness to lead this journey, even though there are so many unknowns

The discussion continued for over an hour with the topics ranging from the current state of Lean Healthcare to the challenges of the United State education system. It was an opportunity that I will not forget. Thanks so much Helen and Jim!

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