Lean consultant Christopher Chapman shares some inspiring words for 2021. He asks us to “reflect on lessons learned, in true kaizen fashion, and consider the most impactful problems to tackle in 2021.” He points to President-elect Joe Biden’s top priorities for his administration for guidance on where to prioritize our efforts in 2021: Control the […]
by Brion Hurley While reading the book, Above the Law by Matthew Whitaker, I learned about the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) program that has been deployed in many neighborhoods in the United States to reduce gun violence. “[PSN] is a nationwide initiative that brings together federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and […]
Written by Brion
Bill Wilbert has worked for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division for 17 years. He’s an Environmental Programs Supervisor for the division and manages the permitting and regulatory compliance workforce. Sandy Kilroy was the Assistant Director for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division. She’s been with Wastewater for a little over 5 years but within […]
Written by Brion
In 2011, Dr. Pat Greco began as the superintendent of the Menomonee Falls School District in Wisconsin. She faced no shortage of problems: a suspension rate seven times higher than the state average, performance gaps across income and race, cost overruns, and a failure to meet performance goals defined under the No Child Left Behind Act among others. […]
Written by Brion
Brion Hurley gave a presentation on how to improve employee engagement through structured management systems from Lean. The talk was given at the Deconstruction and Reuse Conference (hosted by Build Reuse) in Pittsburgh, PA. He shared experiences working with reuse nonprofit organizations like ReStore and The Rebuilding Center. He gave recommendations to organizations on how […]
Written by Brion
Heather Barto, with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services is currently supporting the department in a senior process improvement leadership role. Her advice for anyone who is starting to apply Lean Six Sigma in government are these 3 things: Find a mentor Prepare to be resilient Meet people where they are. A […]
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Jarrod Bolte, Faith Connolly, and Marc Stein discuss how practitioners are using improvement science to make smaller changes to achieve outcomes in areas like early literacy and attendance for students in Baltimore City schools. They discuss the availability of data within schools, and how the PDCA cycle can be used to take education research and […]
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The vision for the future of Herman Otto Elementary School has been focusing on the needs of students, their families and the environment – and trying to align activities and the way the school is managed to the fulfillment of those needs. They introduced a new way of working together – based on the “four […]
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In 2012, Louisville Metro setup a process improvement team to help solve problems within the city. Steve Pollock explains how he helped shift the internal improvement experts from reactive coaches to proactive consultants with a daily management system, in order to better engage with the different departments and agencies. They also reduced the lean training […]
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On the second part of my visit to Nakano City (see Part 1 and Part 3), I had a chance to visit two areas of the ward office to talk to the area managers and see first-hand the improvements they have put in place. As I wrote in my previous post, it was inspiring learn how a […]
Written by Brion