Practical Lean Leadership for Health Care Managers: A Guide to Sustainable and Effective Application of Lean Principles PDF

Foreword

Before you lies an important book. T he application of Lean principles and methods in health care to improve care processes has grown explosively in recent years. However, Lean can only make a sustainable contribution if implementation increases the problemsolving capacities of professionals, teams, and—ultimately—entire care institutions. Leadership is essential to this process

Lean is sometimes used as little more than a toolkit for analyzing, organizing, and managing processes. If successful, this reduces waste and patients experience more value. If it goes too far, the Lean and mean attitude can result in organizational anorexia. This is common in the business world. Lean is sometimes deployed primarily to improve processes that are part of daily operations in the workplace. If this goes well, problems are identiŸed sooner and the thinking capacities and practical knowledge of workers are used to tackle problems more effectively. If it goes too far, daily and weekly sessions become an end in themselves and motivated professionals lose interest because they no longer consider them relevant. Lean really works well only if these two approaches are implemented in a balanced way and bound by the third element of personal growth through process improvement. This links improvement to a sense of purpose and learning. To me, this is the core challenge for Lean leadership.

This book uses a case story to present the familiar struggles involved in applying seemingly logical theory to daily practice. Lean requires behavioral change and that in turn demands change skills and leadership qualities. By putting daily practice Ÿrst and using theory to support the learning points it presents, the book respects a key Lean principle: improve based on practical experience—or, in other words, “go to the source.” This book is particularly valuable because it is the product of two authors who work with Lean daily in the workplace.

I see the fact that this book is being published at this time as a sign that implementation of Lean in health care has reached the next level. The discussions within the “Lean in health care” (Lidz) network clearly demonstrate that Lean needs are shifting from “what” to “how.” After a few years of experiments to determine whether Lean can make a meaningful contribution to health care, we have now reached the stage of Ÿguring out how to make it work, respecting every detail and characteristic quality of health care. The learning points for Lean leadership are not health care speciŸc; therefore, the book is also interesting for the business community because the challenges of working in a Lean way are equally great.

I hope you enjoy the book and draw inspiration for successful Lean leadership in your own daily practice.