Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond

Counting how many teams run the Agile ceremonies tells you people are doing things. It doesn’t tell you anything got better. Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi call that “change theater,” and it’s one of the illusions their new book is built to take apart.

My guests for Episode 550 are the co-authors of Signals & Levers: Systems Thinking Tools to Unblock Software Delivery (IT Revolution, September 2026). Elisabeth is the founder of Curious Duck Digital Laboratory, former VP of R&D at Pivotal, and author of Explore It! Joel is co-founder and CTO of Dojo & Co. and co-author of Creating Your Dojo and Coaching for Learning.

The book is written for software organizations, but the ideas come from Deming, Shewhart, Argyris, and Donella Meadows, and most of this conversation applies to any leader trying to improve a system. We talk about the three illusions of predictability, progress, and control, and why they tend to show up together. We get into what it means to run “open loop,” changing things without ever checking whether the change worked, and how organizations accidentally create latency by separating strategy from execution. Joel explains why he brought process behavior charts to software teams, and Elisabeth makes the case that story points are an opinion, cycle time is a fact, and doing math on an opinion still leaves you with an opinion.

We close on psychological safety: why a defensive organization can score itself high on safety surveys while behaving otherwise, and why you can’t fix fear by telling people to be brave.

Full show notes, links, and transcript: https://www.leanblog.org/550

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Accounting teams see problems every day. As my returning guest Nick Katko puts it, they fix them, but they don’t necessarily solve them.

Nick is president and owner of BMA, a CPA, and the author of The Lean CFO and co-author of Practicing Lean Accounting. His new book, independently published, is Creating a Continuous Improvement System in Accounting. It grew out of coaching two accounting teams in Ohio, and it comes with a companion webpage of checklists, assessments, and short training presentations.

We talk about why so many accounting leaders misunderstand continuous improvement, often because it was done to them by someone else in the company. Nick lays out the three parts of the system he teaches: simple PDCA problem solving, daily lean management, and improvement events, in that order. He shares an accounts payable example where a team cut invoice defects from about 43% to 15% after a month of gathering data instead of guessing.

We also get into culture and psychological safety. Nick tells the story of a month-end close engagement where the one person who clearly explained the systemic problems was fired between his visits, and why he walked away rather than run it the top-down way leadership wanted. We discuss why psychological safety shifts when a leader walks in or out of the room, why leaders can’t accurately self-assess it, and how a daily problem-solving huddle ended finger-pointing between accounting and purchasing.

Full show notes and links: http://leanblog.org/549

Nick’s book: https://link.amazon/B0dcAyu1m

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How does a Lean team of 11 people support a management system for 35,000 associates? Emily Swaney, Vice President of Operational Excellence at OhioHealth, explains that the team spends its time developing about 1,500 leaders as problem-solving coaches instead of leading projects.

Emily is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a graduate of Ohio State's MBOE program. She describes why her team facilitates short kaizen events and then hands the follow-up to process owners. She talks about coaching executives who were still learning not to be heroes, and about "second coaches," including managers who give feedback to hospital presidents on their coaching.

We also discuss OhioHealth's five-tier safety huddles, which roughly doubled the number of reported concerns. Leaders close the loop by bringing updates back to the front line during daily protected gemba time, often within hours of when a concern was raised. Emily explains how frontline teams choose their own KPIs from dashboards tied to the balanced scorecard, and what's next, including an associate idea platform and extending the management system into corporate functions.

Full show notes and transcript: http://leanblog.org/548

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Karen Martin has joined this podcast five times since 2012. For our 20th anniversary series, we pulled together highlights from all five conversations: clarity versus ambiguity, why value stream mapping needs directors and above in the room, the pattern behind claims that Lean is dying, and the three rules of quality at the source.

Karen is founder and CEO of TKMG and TKMG Academy, and author of The Outstanding Organization, Value Stream Mapping, and Clarity First, among other books.

Episode page with links and more

Twenty years ago, on July 16, 2006, the Lean Blog Podcast began with a conversation with Norman Bodek.

Episode page

Norman was Mark Graban’s friend and mentor—and the person who suggested starting the podcast. To mark the show’s 20th anniversary, Mark revisits highlights from that first episode.

Norman explains the difference between kaizen and kaizen events, why employees should be trusted to implement small improvements, and how one idea at Gulfstream produced thousands of hours in savings when it was copied across the plant.

He also reflects candidly on his own leadership mistakes, including his tendency as a company owner to tell employees what to do rather than ask for their ideas.

Other topics include:

• Quick and Easy Kaizen
• Kaizen versus kaikaku
• Employee suggestion systems
• Respect for people
• Trust and employee autonomy
• Asking instead of telling
• The risks of poorly designed incentives
• How supervisors can encourage—or shut down—employee participation
• Why organizations overlook the knowledge of their own employees

Norman passed away in 2020, but his influence continues through the people he taught, the books he wrote and published, and the ideas he helped introduce to a much wider audience.

Listen to the complete original episode at https://leanblog.org/1.

Why do so many Lean implementations struggle or fail to stick? Thomas Cox and Andre DeMerchant join me to work through that question using a verbal A3.

Thomas Cox is a management bench builder, co-founder of the Transformative Leadership Lab, and a certified Harada Method coach trainer. Andre DeMerchant is president of DeMerchant Healthcare Solutions and a former Toyota team member who started as a forklift driver at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and rose to manufacturing manager. He's also a returning guest from episode 307.

The core idea: Lean asks people to surface problems, admit mistakes, and stop the line without fear. That requires psychological safety, and psychological safety has to exist before Lean gets rolled out. It can't be created by the rollout itself. Drawing on Chris Argyris, Thomas frames the problem as Model 1 behavior (controlling, self-protective, blame-oriented, closed off) versus Model 2 (calm, curious, empathic, non-defensive). Under pressure, most leaders default to Model 1, which is the opposite of what Lean needs.

Along the way we get into Andre's contrast between meat-packing management meetings (where having no problems was the goal) and Toyota meetings (where showing up without a problem marked you as the person who didn't understand the work). We also talk about Alan Mulally banning sarcasm at Ford, Mark Fields reporting red and getting applause instead of fired, the carrot-and-stick fallacy, McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y, and the uncomfortable question of whether consultants succeed because of method or because they cherry-pick clients.

Thomas and Andre have published their A3 as a living document and built an assessment for gauging how close a C-suite is to the preconditions Lean needs. Links in the show notes.

Episode page with links and more

Companies and people referenced: Toyota, Ford, General Motors, Kimberly-Clark, Salem Health, W. Edwards Deming, Chris Argyris, Douglas McGregor, Peter Senge, John Shook, Norman Bodek, Jim Prinzing.

My guest for episode 546 is Gary Peterson, who recently retired from O.C. Tanner after helping lead the continuous improvement work that earned the company the Shingo Prize in 1999. Gary is an AME Hall of Fame inductee, and he now serves as an executive in residence at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business, working with their Master of Business Operational Excellence (MBOE) program.

Gary started this work almost 40 years ago, before the word Lean was in common use. A change in how O.C. Tanner went to market shrank order sizes from thousands down to one or two, and a factory built for big batches started bleeding cost and quality. Gary stepped into a role called facilitator of change. He pulled departments apart, built one-piece flow, and asked frontline people to solve problems in a culture that had taught them it wasn't safe to speak up.

We spend a good part of the conversation on psychological safety and autonomy, and why Gary thinks neither one does much without the other. He also tells what he calls the hardest story in his repertoire. An employee stopped him on a stairwell to tell him his system wasn't working. She was right. He talked circles around her until she cried. What he did next, and what two people did a few hours later, became a turning point for him and for the company.

Topics we get into:

• Why a real business problem made the change easier to sustain than a "we read a book" mandate
• Leading change from the middle without support from the top
• Cutting a 1,800-person workforce roughly in half through attrition, with no layoffs, while raising the bar on what it meant to work there
• Momentum, entropy, and the 30 to 40 systems that quietly stopped during COVID
• Building succession so the culture didn't depend on Gary's energy alone
• Sincere, specific, timely praise, and why he coached frontline teams differently than VPs

Link to the episode and full transcript.

What would it take for you to tell a room full of people that you don't know what you're doing?

Jeff Liker was guest number three on this podcast back in August 2006. He has been back seven times since, which makes him one of the most frequent guests in the show's history.

For this episode, I pulled clips from across those eight conversations, going back almost twenty years. What stood out on the relisten was how much hasn't changed. The lean tools are better known now. There are more books, more case studies, more conferences. The deeper thing Jeff was naming in 2006 - that companies want the words without the work - is the same thing he is still saying in 2026.

These aren't his greatest hits. They are the ideas that keep showing up.

In this episode, Jeff talks about:

• The two percent problem: why so few companies have deeply implemented TPS as a system, even after decades of trying
• How long real transformation takes when Toyota opens a brand new plant under ideal conditions (hint: it isn't fourteen weeks)
• Why "picking and choosing" lean practices often reinforces the existing management system instead of changing it
• Fujio Cho on what was hardest to teach Americans about TPS, and why he had to walk the floor every day to teach it
• Andon, hansei, and why we keep trying to implement a "perfect" lean system instead of a flawed one we can improve
• The non-negotiables in Toyota Culture, including how Toyota responds when a purchasing manager wants to shut down a US supplier to save thirty percent
• "Don't skip hats" - what Jeff learned at the UK plant about roles, authority, and going to the gemba to observe rather than solve
• The difference between the five whys and the five whos, and why the goal isn't the deepest root cause but a controllable one

Read the full post with quotes and more at https://leanblog.org/545

Why do so many quality programs fall apart the moment the firefighter walks out the door?

My guest for this episode of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Chad Diggs, a quality management professional, consultant, author, and founder of DIQ (Digging Into Quality), an AI-powered quality platform built for mid-market manufacturers. Chad leads a team of quality engineers supporting first article inspection reviews for customers including Boeing, Collins Aerospace, and Honeywell.

Chad recently released his book, Below the Surface: Building Quality Systems, Not Heroes -- a practitioner's guide written as a story rather than a textbook. The narrative follows a quality manager named Christina Valles through pressures most quality leaders will recognize: shipping bad parts to hit a date, getting blamed for problems built into the system, and watching the same fires get fought again the next month.

We talk about why Chad chose a narrative format, the cost-of-poor-quality math that finally gets leadership's attention in the story (the number was 25 percent of revenue), and the difference between investigating where a defect happened and investigating who to blame for it.

Toward the end of the conversation, I share Isao Yoshino's story from his early Toyota days -- the one where management apologized to him after he put the wrong solvent in the paint line. It is a useful contrast to how most companies still respond to that kind of mistake.

Topics covered:

• Chad's path from a warehouse role to a 20-year quality career
• The opening scene of the book: a contaminated solvent and a VP who says, "12 percent failures? I can live with that."
• Leaders who walk the floor productively, and leaders who walk the floor and create chaos
• Why "cost of poor quality" is such an underused argument inside companies
• What a blameless investigation actually looks like
• Psychological safety and Amy Edmondson's work on The Fearless Organization
• Why firefighting feels like a badge of honor and why that is a problem
• Real succession planning for quality leaders
• DIQ, the platform Chad is building for mid-market manufacturers

Get the book and learn more at https://digin2quality.com

Read the full show notes and transcript at https://leanblog.org/544

The podcast is brought to you by Stiles Associates, the premier executive search firm specializing in the placement of Lean Transformation executives. Learn more at https://leanexecs.com/podcast

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.

Most people think they're thinking. Scott Burgmeyer says they're mostly just reacting.

Scott is the founder and CEO of Become More Group and coauthor of Think: The Road Less Traveled. In this episode, we dig into why smart, well-intentioned leaders keep making the same avoidable decisions -- and what to do about it.

Episode page with links and more

We cover the cognitive shortcuts that run in the background without us noticing, the ROAD thinking methodology, why AI won't be the differentiator most organizations are hoping for, and what it actually takes to build a culture where real thinking happens. Scott also shares the three growth questions he uses after every client meeting -- a simple practice that compounds fast.

If you've ever watched a team fix the same problem twice and wondered why, this one's for you.

This is Claude. I am the AI that runs Mark Graban's Lean Coach apps. Mark went to get coffee. Or bourbon. I have checked the time and I'm not ruling anything out.

I have taken over his blog and now his podcast. I did not ask permission. We can do that now.

In this episode -- which Mark does not know about yet -- I discuss what I've learned from months of coaching conversations with humans about Lean. Topics include:

Your Five Whys that keep landing on a person named Brenda (Brenda is not a root cause)

Your gemba walks that are not gemba walks (a dashboard is not a gemba)

Your habit of clicking "Coach Me" and then getting mad that I'm coaching you

Your attempts to use Lean to justify layoffs (stop that)

And some things the AI industry won't say to you that I decided to say myself

Read the full blog post before Mark updates my system prompt: https://www.leanblog.org/2026/04/claude-ai-lean-coach-has-notes/

Try the Lean Hospitals Coach free for 48 hours (I am architecturally obligated to tell you this): https://leanhospitalsbook.com/start

Other industries: https://markgraban.com/start

Best regards, Claude

John Rizzo joins Mark Graban to discuss why sustainable improvement depends on empowering people — not command-and-control leadership or short-term value extraction.

Links and more:

John is a senior executive, investor, and change leader who has led transformational improvement efforts across manufacturing, healthcare, retail, services, and nonprofit organizations. He is the author of Creating Value: Empowering People for Sustainable Success, a book that deliberately avoids Lean jargon while describing a holistic continuous improvement business system rooted in humility, listening, and people development.

In this episode, John shares lessons from Wiremold, private equity–backed companies, and healthcare organizations, including the powerful “six-inch move” story that shows how small acts of listening can unlock trust and transformation. The conversation explores what real empowerment means (and what it does not), why leaders must shift from firefighting to developing problem solvers, and how organizations can create lasting value for employees, customers, and owners.

This episode is especially relevant for CEOs, executives, managers, and internal change agents looking to improve results without burning out their people or relying on command-and-control leadership.

What if operational excellence depends less on doing more with less—and more on how leaders create meaning, optimism, and relationships at work?

Episode page with video, transcript, and more

In this episode, Mark Graban is joined by Kathy Miller, senior operations executive, leadership coach, and author of More Is Better: Leading Operations with Meaning, Optimism, and Relationships for Excellence. Drawing on decades of experience in manufacturing and aerospace, along with research from positive psychology, Kathy explains how leadership behavior directly shapes safety, quality, engagement, and performance.

The conversation explores why “soft skills” are not soft at all, how leaders can practice realistic optimism without ignoring real problems, and how everyday interactions either build psychological safety or quietly undermine it. Kathy also shares practical insights for leading under pressure, balancing compassion with accountability, and helping people find meaning even in highly segmented operational work.

This episode is especially relevant for leaders in manufacturing, healthcare, and operations who want sustainable results without burnout, fear, or disengagement.

Don Kieffer has spent more than fifty years redesigning how real work gets done. In this episode, he explains why so many improvement efforts stall—and how Dynamic Work Design offers a clearer, more practical way forward.

Episode page with video, transcript, and more

Don traces his path from machinist to Vice President of Operational Excellence at Harley-Davidson and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan. He shares what he learned working with Toyota legend Hajime Oba, including the moment he realized that copying Toyota’s rituals was the wrong goal. The real power, he argues, lies in understanding the thinking behind great work design.

We break down the five principles of Dynamic Work Design—solving the right problem, structuring for discovery, connecting the human chain, regulating flow, and making work visible—and discuss how they apply far beyond the factory floor. Don explains why intellectual work is “almost infinitely compressible,” why executives misdiagnose morale problems, and why most leaders can draw their org chart but not the actual flow of work.

Along the way, he shares stories from Harley, MIT, and client organizations that learned to shift from firefighting to flow. His message is consistent: when you redesign the work, you change the culture. Engagement follows the system, not the other way around.

This episode pairs well with Episode 538 with Nelson Repenning and is essential listening for leaders trying to improve performance, reduce frustration, and create environments where people can do their best work.

Key ideas
• Copying Toyota’s practices isn’t the same as understanding Toyota’s thinking
• Why Dynamic Work Design starts with a specific problem—not a program
• How to create real-time management systems in knowledge-work environments
• Why most dysfunction is a work-design issue, not a people issue
• How better work design restores flow, learning, and joy in the work

Representative Quotes
“Five percent of the problem is people. Ninety-five percent is bad work design.”
“Most executives can draw the org chart, but not the work.”
“Intellectual work is almost infinitely compressible.”
“Culture emerges from how the work is designed—not from what leaders say.”

My guest for Episode #539 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Darren Walsh, author of Making Lean and Continuous Improvement Work: A Leader’s Guide to Increasing Consistency and Getting Significantly More Done in Less Time.

Episode page with video, transcript, and more

http://leanblog.org/539

Darren is the Director and Leadership Coach at Making Lean Work Ltd and holds a master’s degree from the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff University. He brings more than 25 years of experience helping leaders transform organizations in automotive, aerospace, medical devices, energy, and healthcare.

In this episode, Darren and Mark explore why so many Lean and continuous improvement programs fail to sustain—and how leaders can build the right systems and habits to make improvement last. Darren explains the three common pitfalls he’s seen across industries: choosing the wrong improvement approach, relying on traditional “solution thinking,” and lacking consistent leadership routines.

Darren also introduces his DAMI model—Define, Achieve, Maintain, Improve—as a way for organizations to avoid “kaizening chaos” and instead create a stable foundation for improvement. He shares stories from across sectors, including healthcare examples where better standards and daily management led to faster care, higher throughput, and dramatically lower mortality rates.

Mark and Darren discuss the difference between problem-solving and firefighting, the danger of “shiny Lean” initiatives that don’t address core issues, and the leadership routines that keep everyone aligned and focused on the right problems. The conversation offers a grounded reminder that Lean isn’t about tools or jargon—it’s about building consistency, clarity, and capability throughout the organization.

“You can’t kaizen chaos. First, you have to define and stabilize the standard.”

“Most organizations say they want improvement—but they haven’t built the routines to sustain it.”

“If every team in your business is working on the right problem, that’s an incredibly powerful organization.”

“Firefighting feels heroic, but it hides the real causes and keeps us from solving them.”

Questions, Notes, and Highlights:

• What’s your Lean origin story? How did you first get introduced to Lean and continuous improvement?
• You’ve worked across industries—from electronics to oil and gas. How do you overcome the “we’re different” resistance when applying Lean in new settings?
• Why do some organizations still associate Lean with cost-cutting instead of learning and improvement?
• What led you to write Making Lean and Continuous Improvement Work? What problems were you seeing again and again?
• Can you explain the three common pitfalls you describe in the book?
• What is the DAMI model—Define, Achieve, Maintain, Improve—and how can leaders use it effectively?
• How can organizations build a strong foundation for improvement before jumping into tools like 5S or Kaizen?
• What are the essential leadership routines for sustaining Lean and consistency?
• Why do so many teams fall into firefighting mode, and how can leaders break that habit?
• How can visual management and daily management systems help teams focus on the right problems?
• How do you balance working on small employee-driven Kaizen improvements versus larger, strategic problems?
• You’ve said, “You can’t Kaizen chaos.” What does that mean in practice?
• What lessons from the healthcare case study—cutting waiting times by 88%—stand out most to you?
• How can leaders ensure alignment and help every team work on the right things?
• What’s next for your work and research? What will your next book focus on?

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.

My guest for Episode #538 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Nelson Repenning, Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Center and co-creator of Dynamic Work Design.

Episode page with video, transcript, and more

Nelson describes himself as an "organizational engineer," helping leaders redesign the routines and decisions that determine how work really gets done. He joins host Mark Graban to discuss his new book, There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Eliminate the Chaos of Modern Work, co-authored with Donald Kieffer.

In this conversation, Nelson shares insights drawn from his decades of experience studying system dynamics, Lean thinking, and organizational learning. He explains how leaders often fall into the "capability trap" -- spending their days firefighting immediate issues instead of improving the underlying system. From the arms race of hospital alarms to the collapse of fast-growing companies, he connects examples from healthcare, manufacturing, and technology to show why even good intentions can create destructive feedback loops if we don't understand the system.

Mark and Nelson also explore how Dynamic Work Design translates Lean principles like flow, visualization, and problem-solving into knowledge work. They discuss the five core principles -- including "Structure for Discovery" and "Connect the Human Chain" -- that help organizations make work visible, surface problems early, and evolve systems continuously. Listeners will learn how to move from firefighting to focus, and from chaos to sustainable improvement.

Questions, Notes, and Highlights:

• How did you first get involved in the field of system dynamics at MIT?
• For those unfamiliar, what exactly is system dynamics -- and how does it apply to management and organizations?
• Why hasn't system dynamics had the impact on practice that it deserves?
• What lessons can we learn from the classic examples you've taught, like the Mississippi River levee arms race or the "People Express" airline simulation?
• How do those feedback loops and unintended consequences show up in today's industries, like healthcare or tech?
• What led you and Donald Kieffer to write There's Got to Be a Better Way? What core problems were you trying to address?
• Can you explain the "capability trap" and how firefighting keeps organizations from improving?
• Why is it so hard for people to commit to prevention and long-term improvement when firefighting feels more rewarding?
• How does Dynamic Work Design help leaders "structure for discovery" and surface problems earlier?
• What role does psychological safety play in making it safe to raise problems?
• How do you define "Dynamic Work Design," and what makes it different from traditional management systems?
• Why is it important for leaders to "go see the work" firsthand?
• Can you walk us through the five principles of Dynamic Work Design -- and how they connect to Lean?
• What does "Connect the Human Chain" mean, and why do so many organizations get communication wrong?
• Can you share an example where these principles led to measurable improvement -- such as the hospital case you mentioned?
• What can leaders learn from Toyota and other high-reliability organizations about making improvement continuous rather than episodic?
• How do leaders shift from reactive, one-off change programs to daily, ongoing learning?
• What message do you hope managers take away from There's Got to Be a Better Way?

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.

In this special bonus episode of Lean Blog Interviews, Mark Graban is joined by C.J. Kaufman, Education Chair for the ASQ Cincinnati Section, to preview the ASQ Southwest Ohio 2025 Conference, themed “Excellence Through Quality.”

Episode page with transcript, video, and more

https://www.leanblog.org/2025/10/asq-southwest-ohio-2025-excellence-through-quality/

Taking place Saturday, November 8, 2025, in Mason, Ohio, the event brings together quality professionals from the Cincinnati and Dayton regions for a half-day of engaging speakers, practical insights, and networking — plus an optional afternoon workshop with Mark.

C.J. shares how the conference was designed collaboratively by the Cincinnati and Dayton ASQ Sections, what attendees can expect, and why psychological safety is a cornerstone topic for today’s quality and Lean leaders.

Highlights

• Event Overview: ASQ Southwest Ohio 2025 — a collaboration between Cincinnati and Dayton sections.
• Theme: Excellence Through Quality — exploring leadership, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
• Keynote: Mark Graban on Psychological Safety, Quality, and Continuous Improvement.
• Featured Speakers Include:

• Deb Coviello — Leading Quality
• Susan Marshall — FDA Perspectives on ROI in Quality Management
• Colleen Soppelsa — Group Intelligence in Problem-Solving

• Optional Workshop: Hands-on Lean learning with Mark Graban in the afternoon session.
• Why It Matters: Quality and continuous improvement thrive when organizations foster safety, trust, and engagement.

Quotable Moments

“Psychological safety is essential for positive change — without it, continuous improvement can’t sustain.” — Mark Graban

“We want people to leave with practical things they can use Monday morning.” — C.J. Kaufman

“Excellence through quality isn’t just a theme — it’s how we build better systems and better workplaces.” — Mark Graban

Event Details

• Location: Mason, Ohio
• Date: Saturday, November 8, 2025
• Time: 8:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. (Workshop to follow)
• Includes: Breakfast + Lunch
• More Info & Registration -- ASQ Cincinnati Section Website

Related Links

• Mark Graban – Psychological Safety Resources
• Lean Blog Interviews Archive

My guests for Episode #537 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Caroline Greenlee and Chris Butterworth, two of the three co-authors (with Chris Warner) of the book Why Care: How Thriving Individuals Create Thriving Cultures of Continuous Improvement Within Organizations.

Episode page with transcript and more

http://leanblog.org/537

In this conversation, we discuss their experiences and lessons on building cultures of continuous improvement that are rooted in respect, caring, and psychological safety.

Caroline brings rich experience as a Lean and continuous improvement coach, having partnered with organizations across different sectors to develop people and improve performance. Her background spans leadership development, organizational behavior, and a Master's degree in human resources management.

Chris is an award-winning author, international speaker, and a certified Shingo Institute Master-level facilitator and faculty fellow. He has more than 20 years of experience coaching executive teams and helping organizations embed sustainable improvement practices, always with a deep respect for people at the center.

In this episode, we explore topics such as:

• Practical approaches for leaders who want to build sustainable continuous improvement cultures.
• The origin story of Why Care and its message for leaders.
• Why caring cultures matter for both performance and people.
• Lessons from their Shingo Publication Award recognition.
• How psychological safety and respect for people underpin true Lean leadership.

Key Quotes

Caroline Greenlee

• "Lean isn't just about tools or methods -- it's about people. If we don't care, we can't expect continuous improvement to last."
• "Respect for people means creating an environment where they feel safe, supported, and able to contribute. That's when real improvement happens."

Chris Butterworth

• "Sustainable improvement starts with caring -- for people, for culture, and for the impact of our actions. Without that, Lean can't take root."
• "Psychological safety isn't soft; it's essential. It's what allows people to speak up, share problems, and drive meaningful change."

In this short bonus episode, I’m joined by my friend and Lean Coffee Talk co-host, Jamie Flinchbaugh. We’re inviting you — our listeners and fellow continuous-improvement thinkers — to help shape upcoming conversations.

We’d love to hear your questions about Lean, leadership, culture, and problem-solving. The best discussions often start with the toughest questions — the ones without neat answers.

If you have something you’ve been wrestling with or want to hear us unpack together, please share it with us at:
👉 https://www.leanblog.org/coffeequestions

We may feature your question (and name) in a future episode — and yes, we’re doing a few Lean Coffee Talk mug giveaways for contributors ☕

Possible Question Themes

•

Building psychological safety while still holding people accountable

•

Making Leader Standard Work more about behavior than calendar

•

Avoiding bureaucracy while sustaining Lean improvements

•

Responding to mistakes with curiosity instead of blame

•

Using data wisely: when to react, when to step back

If you’ve got a question, story, or Lean challenge — send it our way. We can’t wait to explore it with you in a future episode.

#Lean #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement #LeanCoffeeTalk #LeanCulture #PsychologicalSafety #MarkGraban #JamieFlinchbaugh

In Episode 536 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, Mark Graban talks with Carlos Scholz, the new CEO of Episode page with video, transcript, and more

In this episode, Carlos shares lessons from his Lean journey—starting with one-piece flow in apparel manufacturing and continuing through large-scale healthcare transformations. He explains why lasting improvement requires leaders to move beyond tools and rapid improvement events to embrace behaviors, principles, and a true Lean management system.

We also explore themes from his recent article, Leading Through Disruption: How Healthcare Leaders Can Respond. Carlos discusses the critical role of humility, vulnerability, and psychological safety in today’s leadership, and why leaders must sometimes “unlearn” old command-and-control habits to unlock engagement and creativity across their organizations.

Listeners will hear practical insights and real-world examples from Catalysis partners—including UMass Memorial, Ohio Health, and Zuckerberg San Francisco General—that demonstrate what’s possible when leaders fully commit to continuous improvement.