Mark Graban
- Contributor, Freelance
- Podcast Producer and Host, My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership
Dallas
Find me on LinkedIn. I'm generally not posting here anymore, not deleting my account. Thanks for making a bad thing worse, Elmo.
Articles by Mark Graban
How Toyota Turned Around Its Kentucky Plant: Darril Wilburn on Leadership
Former Toyota team member Darril Wilburn, co-author with Hiro Yoshiki of Courage, Humility, Kaizen: The Three Disciplines of Toyota Leadership, tells the inside story of how Toyota's Georgetown, Kentucky plant went from needing to build almost 90% of its capacity just to break even to a much healthier 60%. We talk about the andon cord myth, “healthy paranoia,” why VPs were sent back to redo their A3s, and why the goal was never to do TPS for its own sake.
Day November 4, 2026
Former Toyota team member Darril Wilburn, co-author with Hiro Yoshiki of Courage, Humility, Kaizen: The Three Disciplines of Toyota Leadership, tells the inside story of how Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant went from needing to build almost 90% of its capacity…
Toyota’s AI Welding Robot: Jidoka Meets Deming’s Funnel Experiment
Toyota's history of building quality into the process goes back more than a century, long before the company started making cars. Now, a new AI welding robot developed by Toyota's GAZOO Racing division and Yaskawa Electric offers an interesting evolution of that principle. The robot can reportedly recognize welding conditions, make adjustments, inspect its work, and correct problems without requiring a skilled welder to intervene every time. That's impressive technology.
Day November 3, 2026
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Carlie Irsay-Gordon Goes to the Gemba (Well, the Sideline)
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 attention.
Day November 1, 2026
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…
Building an AI Email Filter With ChatGPT: A Kaizen Experiment
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.
Day October 29, 2026
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The Danaher Business System Page Talks About Speed. Where Did Safety and Quality Go?
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 seriously and sustained over a long time.
Day October 27, 2026
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…
When “I Have a Pulse” Gets Dismissed: A Toddler Found Alive in a Hospital Morgue
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.
Day October 26, 2026
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…
Signals & Levers: Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi on Change Theater, Open Loops, and Systems Thinking for Software Teams
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 a system.
Day October 21, 2026
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…
Why People Stay Silent at Work: My New Psychological Safety Course
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 TKMG Academy.
Day October 19, 2026
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.…
Creating a Continuous Improvement System in Accounting: Nick Katko on PDCA, Culture, and Psychological Safety
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.
Day October 14, 2026
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,…
Peter Pronovost on Leading with Love: What the Checklist Needed All Along
I recently recorded an upcoming episode of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast with Dr. Peter Pronovost, the Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals (UH) in Cleveland. Most people know him because of the ICU checklist that cut central line infections at Johns Hopkins and then across Michigan.
Day October 12, 2026
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Fear-Based Leadership Worked at Volkswagen. Until It Didn’t.
In July 2013, on a test drive in the United States, Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of Volkswagen, noticed a paint imperfection on a Beetle. The paint was slightly thicker than the company standard. Less than a millimeter too thick, according to a VW source who spoke to Reuters. A difference you would not be able to see without a gauge. He stopped and lectured his engineers about the waste. This was 2013. Winterkorn was one of the most powerful executives in the global auto industry.
A Lean Management System That Doesn’t Depend on the Lean Team — Emily Swaney, OhioHealth
Emily Swaney, VP of Operational Excellence at OhioHealth, explains how a Lean Promotion Office of 11 people supports a Lean management system for 35,000 associates. The approach relies on developing leaders as problem-solving coaches and on connecting daily huddles and frontline KPIs to what the organization measures.
Assembly-Line Nursing Was Meant to Be Temporary
There's a nursing model where one nurse passes medications to every patient on the unit and does nothing else. Another nurse does treatments. An aide does baths and vital signs. Nobody is responsible for a patient. Everybody is responsible for a task. Nursing textbooks call it assembly line nursing. The formal name is functional nursing. But the assembly-line description is not something critics invented.
The Toyota Andon System in South Africa: Two Buttons Instead of a Cord
When the door from the office area opened onto the production floor at Toyota's plant in Durban, South Africa, I heard a familiar sound from other Toyota plants I've visited: the andon music. Earlier this month, before speaking at the KZN Lean Conference, I spent time at the plant learning how the Toyota andon system works there, and how it has changed. About a year ago, they replaced the overhead cords with buttons.
I'm traveling internationally for ten days and I turned on one of the British news channels. There's a major story about NHS England. First, the awful reality that a nurse would willfully kill babies in the NICU. Then, the second (and more believable) reality that bad management systems (and poor leadership) made the situation worse. So what happened? On July 11th, 2016, the Countess of Chester Hospital put deaths on its neonatal unit onto a “risk register” for the first time.
Day September 15, 2026
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What The Rehearsal Gets Wrong About Pilots–and Right About Leadership Training
Season 2 of The Rehearsal opens in a cockpit. Two pilots are on final approach. The first officer thinks they're lined up wrong and says so, mildly. The captain brushes it off. The first officer tries again, a little more nervous this time, and the captain keeps descending. Then the alarms, a go-around attempted too late, and fire filling the screen. The camera pans left and Nathan Fielder is standing there on the set, looking at the lens.
Day September 14, 2026
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Training as a Countermeasure? The “Fix” You Can Finish by Friday.
In 2006, regulators cited a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin for six violations of state and federal rules after a patient died — three federal, three state. They threatened its license and its Medicare contract. The hospital updated its policies and re-educated its nurses, and the citations were withdrawn. Training as a countermeasure “worked,” in the only sense anyone measured. Think about what you'd have to believe for that to be the right remedy.
Day September 10, 2026
In 2006, regulators cited a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin for six violations of state and federal rules after a patient died — three federal, three state. They threatened its license and its Medicare contract. The hospital updated its policies and…
What 21,050 Clinicians Told Us About Fear and Futility
Hospitals have Quiet Rooms now. There's soft lighting. There's a chair. There's a noise machine, which is a machine that makes calming noises. There's sometimes a succulent in a small white pot. The succulent is doing fine, which makes sense, because the succulent doesn't have a patient assignment. The nurse, on the other hand, hasn't had water since her shift started. She can't tell you the last time she used the bathroom.
GM Adopted Forced Ranking in 2024. Ford Dropped It in 2001.
Phoebe Wall Howard reported recently that a fired GM engineer is suing the company over its employee evaluation system. Tuan Le, 58, spent 27 years at General Motors, moving from industrial engineer to senior throughput simulation engineer. GM terminated him on January 17, 2026. He is the third GM employee represented by attorney Michael Pitt to allege that GM's forced ranking system (as they describe it) requires managers to hit job-elimination quotas that fall hardest on older workers.
Day September 7, 2026
Phoebe Wall Howard reported recently that a fired GM engineer is suing the company over its employee evaluation system. Tuan Le, 58, spent 27 years at General Motors, moving from industrial engineer to senior throughput simulation engineer. GM terminated him…
Three Weeks to Act on a Nurse’s Patient Safety Concerns
For three weeks after his surgery, a patient at the Royal Oldham Hospital (England) had no bowel movement and was in increasing pain. The ward sister kept raising patient safety concerns with the surgeon who'd operated on him. She described him as unconcerned. On September 15, 2020, she stayed on duty after her shift was supposed to end. She'd already gone around him to the ward manager, who escalated it further. A meeting was held. She was told they'd speak with the consultant and sort it out.
Day September 3, 2026
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What I Tell People Who Want to Write a Book About Lean
Twice in the past two weeks, I have talked with people who want to write a book about Lean. Both were early in the process and trying to figure out what they were signing up for. I've had a lot of these conversations over the years. I enjoy doing them and this blog post is not meant to replace future chats.
Larry Culp on Resistance to Lean: Compliance Isn’t Belief
In early 2025, Eric Veiel asked Larry Culp a question that most Lean deployment articles skip: when you're getting ready to implement one of these programs, is there some hesitation from the workforce? Culp didn't argue with the premise.
Day September 1, 2026
In early 2025, Eric Veiel asked Larry Culp a question that most Lean deployment articles skip: when you’re getting ready to implement one of these programs, is there some hesitation from the workforce? Culp didn’t argue with the premise. “Well,…
You Came Back From the Training Ready. Nobody Around You Could Change a Thing.
You came back with real energy. You'd seen how the work could be. You had notes, a few ideas, maybe a plan you'd already started sketching on the drive home. Then you walked back into the same building, run by the same people who weren't in the room with you, and within a couple of months the energy was gone. Not because you were wrong. Because nothing around you could move. You could see the problem perfectly and still couldn't touch it.
Day August 31, 2026
You came back with real energy. You’d seen how the work could be. You had notes, a few ideas, maybe a plan you’d already started sketching on the drive home. Then you walked back into the same building, run by…
When “Human Error” Is the Root Cause, the Investigation Stopped Early
Tennessee regulators released an eighty-page report this week on the medication error at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown in Nashville, where four patients scheduled for routine joint replacement were injected in the spine with potassium phosphate instead of an anesthetic. Two are paralyzed. One remains on ECMO. I wrote about the case when it broke and updated that post with what the report found. The report is said to name human error as the primary cause. That is true.
Day August 29, 2026
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Making It Safe to Admit Mistakes at Work Might Start With Thank You
I've been rereading Takehiko Harada's book Management Lessons from Taiichi Ohno. Harada joined Toyota Motor Corporation in 1968 and spent about four decades there, including time as project general manager of the Operations Management Consulting Division, the group Toyota used to spread TPS inside and outside the company. There's a short section near the end about how to make it safe to admit mistakes at work. The advice is more practical than most of what gets written on the subject.
29 Warning Signs and a Can Opener Bridge
I've been photographing warning signs for years. It started as a running joke and turned into a whole category on my site. Signs that say “Be Careful.” Signs that say “Do Not Spill.” Signs that exist because something went wrong and nobody wanted to change anything else. So when I read that Kentucky had 29 warning signs posted around one intersection in Louisville, my first thought was that I need to drive down there and photograph all 29.
Day August 25, 2026
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Why Speak-Up Programs Fail: Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Who Reads the Report
My wife and I watched Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing last night. It's Rory Kennedy's follow-up to “Downfall,” and it's built around former Boeing employees, including quality managers and inspectors, describing what they saw on the floor and what happened after they reported it. What stood out to me was the distance between two descriptions of the same company. The quality people described one Boeing. The executives, in earnings calls and congressional testimony, described another.
Day August 24, 2026
My wife and I watched Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing last night. It’s Rory Kennedy’s follow-up to “Downfall,” and it’s built around former Boeing employees, including quality managers and inspectors, describing what they saw on the floor and what happened…
Four Patients Got the Wrong Drug in Nashville. Ask a Better Question.
On August 14, four patients went to Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown in Nashville for joint replacement surgery. All four were harmed during the procedure. The hospital has not said how. One family says the drug was potassium chloride instead of the anesthetic. That patient is paralyzed from the chest down. Why it matters: Spinal anesthesia for a knee or hip replacement is among the most routine things a hospital does. People go in expecting to walk out.
Day August 20, 2026
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Ten Psychological Safety Outcomes, and What They Do and Don’t Prove
The second revised (and expanded) edition of Timothy R. Clark's The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety came out this week. My copy showed up yesterday, and I've been working through it. I've learned a lot from Tim over the years. The first edition gave me language I didn't have for things I'd been trying to describe for a decade, and I went through LeaderFactor's 4 Stages certification, which sharpened it further.
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