The Journey Publication
In December TCCHV signed a publishing agreement with The Lean Enterprise Institute to publish a book regarding the lean transformation journey. The book is coauthored by John S. Toussaint M.D. CEO Emeritus ThedaCare and Roger A. Gerard PHD the Chief Learning Officer of ThedaCare. The book describes the cultural aspects of a complete lean transformation in a highly complex health care organization. The process now involves editing the manuscript and developing the appropriate flow for a broad health care audience. The intent of this work is for health care mangers and physician leaders to have a reference for what not to do in leading a lean transformation. Many of the mistakes in implementation are chronicled and what was done to rectify them.
This book is not about the lean tools, it's about the cultural components of leading a lean transformation in healthcare. Most organizations that fail in this transformation do not pay adequate attention to how this new way of thinking effects their staff. This effect is quite visceral and can be extremely negative as we will show. On the other hand, if that passion can be redirected to problem solving engagement ensues and remarkable performance improvement results. We will describe the ways not to get physician engagement. In fact this really is a “how not to book”. And although ThedaCare has been very successful in it's implementation of lean it was not without many lessons learned the hard way. Our hope is the readers can bypass the mistakes we made on their way to successful implementation of a lean culture.
If all goes well the book should be available this summer.
