Coming   soon…AdaptiveLean.com   …I remember working in an organization struggling to implement some Lean thinking and acting.  One of the Directors tells me about one of his staff asking if the organization was in trouble.  He answered “Well, we’re burning the furniture and eating the pets!”  A bit of an exaggeration, to be sure.  But

In fact, it’s not about just thinking. Or about just doing. It’s about better ways of thinking while doing and better ways of doing while thinking. Is your work environment designed to combine thinking with doing? ….or are you just putting in your time each day? How’s your driving? Have you learned anything new about

In most Healthcare settings, daily Huddles are part of the existing routines.  These are short gatherings of key staff to exchange information and determine priorities.   Huddles meetings can take place at the beginning of the day, at shift handoffs and for various other purposes.  There might be a daily “Bed Management Meeting”.  Surgical teams may take a few minutes in a Huddle to go over the pre-op checklist.  Huddle meetings are characterized as involving the working staff in highly focused review and discussions of real time issues.

These are valuable meetings.   Most often they are “pre-emptive fire fighting” – looking just a few hours into the future as a way to prevent problems from affecting care delivery.

But what if they could be more than that?  What if they could be upgraded to become the primary focus for real process improvement?  Indeed, they already have been upgraded at multiple Healthcare Systems yielding dramatic results.  Upgrading your Huddles could generate a significant return on investment in your organization as well.

The Three Adjustment Knobs Addressing the Project Management of NJ (PMINJ) monthly meeting recently, the problem to be dealt with was essentially “How can Lean Six Sigma help me out as a Project Manager?” .   Project Managers these days are challenged as never before. The pressure is on to deliver what was expected, on time

Do you ever sit in a room with other highly skilled professionals and wonder why it is so hard to get the work done? Well, just throwing people together and expecting well designed work processes to result is the most basic failing of most organizations. Adaptive Work Design developed by AptoLean is the answer. You