Lean Blog by Mark Graban

Carlie Irsay-Gordon Goes to the Gemba (Well, the Sideline)

Mark Graban — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 22:09:35 +0000

Most NFL owners watch games from a luxury suite. Carlie Irsay-Gordon, the principal owner and CEO of the Indianapolis Colts, watches from the sideline near the bench, with a headset on and a notebook in her hand. She's been doing this for years, going back to when her father, Jim Irsay, owned the team. But after she took over in 2025, following his death at age 65, the sideline routine has drawn a lot more […]

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Building an AI Email Filter With ChatGPT: A Kaizen Experiment

Mark Graban — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 08:08:00 +0000

Another email arrives about a potential podcast guest. I haven't responded to the first pitch, but the sender wants to make sure it didn't get lost in my inbox. A few days later, there's another reminder. I don't necessarily object to the first pitch. Some publicists introduce me to interesting people for Lean Blog Interviews or My Favorite Mistake. But if I haven't responded, I generally don't want a sequence of reminders. Once is enough. […]

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The Danaher Business System Page Talks About Speed. Where Did Safety and Quality Go?

Mark Graban — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 08:38:00 +0000

Danaher has been one of the most cited Lean success stories in the United States for decades. The story usually starts at Jacobs Manufacturing (Jake Brake) in Connecticut in 1987, with Art Byrne, George Koenigsaecker, and the Shingijutsu consultants who had worked with Taiichi Ohno. What started there became the Danaher Business System, or DBS. A lot of people in the Lean community, me included, have pointed to DBS as an example of Lean done […]

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When “I Have a Pulse” Gets Dismissed: A Toddler Found Alive in a Hospital Morgue

Mark Graban — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000

On Super Bowl Sunday in February, an 18-month-old boy was pulled from his family's pool in Gilbert, Arizona, and rushed to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. At 11:52 p.m., staff from the medical examiner's office arrived to transport him. They found him breathing in the hospital morgue. He was flown to Phoenix Children's Hospital. According to the ABC15 Investigators, who obtained the police report and body camera video, an […]

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Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: October 23, 2026

Ryan McCormack — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 18:30:41 +0000

Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. Today's Mixtape is about slowing down long enough to see the problem clearly before jumping to a fix. Highlights include Steve DeWitt's five-question check before approving any solution, Dave Snowden on why Frederick Taylor […]

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Signals & Levers: Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi on Change Theater, Open Loops, and Systems Thinking for Software Teams

Mark Graban — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:16:21 +0000

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guests for Episode #550 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi, co-authors of the new book Signals & Levers: Systems Thinking Tools to Unblock Software Delivery (IT Revolution, 2026). The book is aimed at software organizations, but its sources are Deming, Shewhart, Chris Argyris, and Donella Meadows, and most of what we discuss applies to any leader trying to improve […]

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Why People Stay Silent at Work: My New Psychological Safety Course

Mark Graban — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:06:28 +0000

Someone in a meeting sees a problem coming. Maybe it's a risk in the plan, an assumption that doesn't hold up, or a direction that doesn't feel right. They don't say anything. The meeting moves on, and the moment passes. Most leaders have seen this happen, and many of us have been the person who stayed quiet. That silence is the subject of my new course, Leading with Psychological Safety, which is now available from […]

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Creating a Continuous Improvement System in Accounting: Nick Katko on PDCA, Culture, and Psychological Safety

Mark Graban — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:13:00 +0000

Accounting teams see problems every day. As Nick Katko puts it, they fix them, but they don't necessarily solve them. We talk about what a continuous improvement system looks like inside an accounting department, the three parts of that system, and why culture and psychological safety have to come before improvement events. Nick shares an accounts payable team that cut invoice defects from about 43% to 15% by starting with data, and a harder story […]

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