Patrick Adams  00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. My guest today is Ken Siegel. Ken is the chief executive officer and co founder of value capture. And his role as CEO can provide support to CEOs of healthcare organizations dedicated to eliminating injuries and improving quality as a means to dramatically raise the clinical and financial performance of the entire institution. I will also say that he is a certified facilitator of the Shingo Institute. And we’ll talk a little bit more about the rest of his background as we get into the show here. So welcome to the show, Ken.

 

Ken Segal  01:06

Patrick, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate the podcast and all of your work, and how you advance the field as well as helping lots of folks. So it’s good to be with you today. Well, thanks,

 

Patrick Adams  01:16

Ken, we actually met in person, this last year at the Michigan lien consortium, you were keynoting, along with Mark Raven, and I sat in and I thought it was super powerful. And we are gonna get into a little bit around that topic today. So I’m excited for our listeners to hear a little bit more about about that keynote, and what you and Mark talked about, on how that can help, you know, many organizations. So we’ll dive into that in a little bit. But before we, you know, dive into some of those things, I mentioned that you co founded value capture. And for those that are, you know, meeting you, for the first time, may have not heard of value capture, can you tell us just a little bit about value captures Miss mission, the history, just so they can get a sense for your work in healthcare and how that combines, you know, safety, and also, you know, kind of ties in with the Toyota production system as well.

 

02:12

Yeah, absolutely. And really honored to talk about it. You know, we’re a trusted advisory firm trying to make the principles that we all share true in health care. And for us, that means, we really say that our mission is about habitual excellence, starting with safety, safety is the lever to get there. And our vision, which we always attach it to is health care without, you know, harm without weight, without waste. And in actually beyond that, working to produce perfect health, you know, so all that’s possible in terms of things to avoid. And then all that’s possible when we really harness these ideas to allow people to do, you know, ideal work, and what that can all mean for us as people. In terms of our history, we were formally founded in 2005. And so it’s amazing that we’re getting to work two decades of work in healthcare to try to bring these ideas forward. We came out of something called the Pittsburgh regional healthcare initiative, which was one of the first efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to come together and show that these ideas applied in healthcare as well as everywhere else. And we were fortunate working with the CDC and others, to show that you could eliminate healthcare associated harms that people had assumed would be were just part of the nature of the enterprise. And that zero was possible. And that beyond that, it was possible not just to succeed and sort of individual harms and individual projects, but to actually apply these ideas across a whole hospital or even a whole health system. And we founded value capture to sort of grow out of that to go work with health system leaders around North America really, who didn’t want to just run projects using the application of lean ideas and safety ideas, but really wanted to apply the principles in the fullest way we think of Toyota Production System as a system. And I’ve been humbly learning and trying to get better at that ever since. One more mentioned, Patrick, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that we were inspired in all of this work, not just by Toyota, but really by Paulo Neill, the former CEO of Alcoa, who had partnered in a really deep way with with Toyota to help improve Alcoa but also brought this amazing leadership framework rooted in safety and thinking about what would he would call theoretical limits, rooted in values we might say TrueNorth to make You know, massive performance turnarounds in organizations possible in people well lead to be able to do things that, you know, they wouldn’t have imagined that they could achieve, you know, prior to, you know, applying these principles in the full way with great leadership. So, you know, those are some of our routes. That’s what we’re trying to do. And I look forward to talking more about it as we go.

 

Patrick Adams  05:23

Yeah, no, I love hearing that history. And just, you know, you guys are obviously very specifically working in the healthcare industry. But a lot of the things that you’re applying that you’ve learned along the way that your, the different institutions that you’re working with are the principles that they’re utilizing, as you said, you know, tie back to a lot of the principles from the Toyota Production System and other areas. So you know, even if someone is listening in, and they’re not from the healthcare industry, that I think that’s what I’m looking most forward to is just hearing, as we kind of talk through this, how those principles are utilized in the healthcare industry, and how they can be, you know, flexible, and if you understand them well enough that the value that these that these principles can bring to any organization in any industry are just so transformational. Yeah, absolutely. safety perspective. I mean, you can’t get any better than that. So that’s what I’m excited about. Before we before we go down that road. Yeah, people are hearing you for the first time, and I gave just a very short snippet of of who you are today. But there’s a lot behind that. Can you tell us a little bit about your personal story, and even, you know, what brought you to this mission of, you know, helping to, you know, improve safety for the health in the health care industry? And, you know, tell us just a little bit about that.

 

06:53

Yeah, so I’ll try to not make this boring. But, you know, by giving only my short bio, you were really protecting me, because when people hear these next few bits, they’ll see I have a pretty checkered past. But I actually started my career thinking the way to change the world was through policymaking in politics. And so I went right down to DC. And I was sort of a fast riser on Capitol Hill as a leadership aide and worked at a mid high level, and I keep presidential campaign and I was even called the policy director of one of our major political parties. But I was getting a little frustrated with how reductive that whole game could be, you know, very important for changing some key conditions. But you know, we all know the limits of that. And I moved back to the community, I grew up in western Pennsylvania, looking for something deeper, and became a foundation program officer in sort of the health public health space. And I was really lucky to learn from a really committed foundation leader that it wasn’t about our ability to hand out grants, it was about our ability, using the funding, we had to get the big systems to work and think differently. And it was in that context, when Western Pennsylvania was trying to figure out how to get out of a deep recession, you know, our manufacturing challenges and problems, and really set a course for the future, including in our healthcare sector, which was becoming increasingly important that we connected with Paulo Neill Alcoa as CEO. And I had been thinking about going to business school outside of Pittsburgh, and I said, Wait a minute, I’m going to restructure everything because I think this is my business school right here. I mean, I ultimately did go, but I, you know, I went to school with Paul O’Neill, and with the great leaders in healthcare, and then, you know, through Paul and others and his team at Alcoa. You know, leaders from TPS from Toyota itself, and others just, you know, have been on a learning journey ever since with these ideas.

 

Patrick Adams  09:04

Yeah, I obviously will drop your full bio into the show notes. But you touched on a few things there. And I think, again, if anyone’s interested to go back and look at Ken’s background, it’s pretty amazing the different things that you’ve been involved with, and you know, again, just the just seeing the the path that you’ve taken and where you are today with value capture is pretty amazing. The work that you guys are doing in healthcare is just outstanding, and let’s talk about that. So let’s talk about lean in health care. The obviously for many people that are listening, I think that a large portion of our listeners, you know do come out of the manufacturing industry, which you know, is understandable given the Toyota Production System, the automotive industry and, and things like that, but in it not too long ago. You know, the lean started To find its way into other industries, including healthcare, and I’m so glad that it did, because of the the amazing results that it’s having. But tell us a little bit about that. What is the state of lean in healthcare today?

 

10:16

Yeah, so. So Patrick, I appreciate that. And I too, am really glad we enemies principles have been breached the wall and healthcare. And you know, and a lot of people realize their potential, in that we’ve had really a lot of examples of single institutions making a big difference for their patients and their teams. And now coming out of formal sort of health services, research, some evidence, you know, formal evidence, highest quality studies, that it where Lean is applied, as the as the study, say, with with intensity, you know, with some level of intensity, it does make a difference on outcomes, from quality and experience and cost. That said, I have to tell you, Patrick, and your listeners, it is not a great success story for these principles in healthcare yet, indeed, I would say to be honest, it’s a it’s a danger point. And, and to share why, you know, and we’re not the only sector this has happened, but with the pandemic, having hit, et cetera, you know, there’s been distraction, you know, some lean journeys have stalled, et cetera. It’s certainly true. But even before that, if you look, we have, I think, now, more than 60% of healthcare institutions say they do Lean, you know, at some level, and, and what is true is there is activity going on in those institutions. Even more, there are people in our community, the improvement community who are deeply skilled, right, who knew what this looks like, who are now working in those institutions, which is great, right? Because from that all as possible. But if you look at the scale of the results, overall, like the actual beta, the actual changes, versus what you and I and our audience, your audience knows are possible, you know, the twice the productivity, you know, the twice the quality, all of that stuff, those magnitude of results across the sector are not there yet. And, and we can talk in a little bit more about sort of how I see why that is, where we are, but I just, I just want to be honest, for all the promise that it’s coming into healthcare, there are ways it’s come in, because of health care’s history and pattern that are sort of not the full system, and not all wrapped together powerful enough to make the difference that we need.

 

Patrick Adams  13:03

Well, I’m glad that I mean, the transparency is great, because this is exactly what we need in order to improve. Right. So let’s talk about that. I mean, let’s dive in what what are some of the challenges that you are seeing in the healthcare industry with with, you know, the breakdown?

 

13:19

Yeah, well, you know, what, some of the, some of the challenges are maybe endemic to the to the culture of health care, such as health care has a long history of being exposed to different forms of improvement, everything from C QI to Qi to Six Sigma, etc. And sort of making a modest commitment, but not at that profound level to pull it all together and say, this is the way that we’re gonna run the place. And, and so we sort of are left with what people sometimes referred to as sort of an alphabet soup. And then they so so you get these patterns where they just sort of taken well, what does that version of the system happen to have to, to contribute? And okay, you know, we’ve got people with that skill, we run some projects where we, we tap onto those tools, but it’s not powerful enough to move the numbers the way that we want. So, some of that is just sort of a historic pattern. And in there are some universal things right. So one of those being that that if this work is left principally to the experts, right? You know, those of us who are sort of the lean experts in the organization internally or externally and not seen as a fundamental capacity and skill that operating leaders have to embody right to be able to, to to know how to move from push to flow to pull, and you know, in the in the radical change of of, of having, you know, line workers that add value be responsible for building quality in but leaders being responsible for flow, if that sort of fundamental commitment ownership isn’t there, and often it’s not right, we have a very complicated industry, healthcare has certain disadvantages versus other industries in terms of the overall complexity for how it gets paid, and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, we have different professional silos and healthcare that that sort of make leadership harder. But, but that fundamental ownership by operating leaders has not taken deeply enough in healthcare, so that they are deeply committed enough to know what Lean or TPS really is at its core in the production system, right. So we, we don’t have enough power in the production system. The other thing I’ll say, just because I know it’s such a knowledgeable audience, is when you go into health care organizations, you know, if you just pick, you know, that 60%, and you just went and randomly to those doing Lean, you’d see a lot of evidence of management systems typically. And because about a decade ago, we fell in love with management systems, lean daily management systems, in healthcare, and, you know, it came out of certain institutions that were way ahead on lean production, like faded care, in particular. And we were part of this working with faded care. And they had realized that they needed the management system elements to sort of stabilize everything and keep it going and keep it improving. And so they did a brilliant business production system, they call it and then share it with the world, you know, which is a wonderful display of the values and we helped teach it. Yeah, but but in the average healthcare institution, they were not nearly as long as far along and lean production, the management system with its tools that leaders sort of get, you know, get, right, where it easily became an easier thing to hold on to, you know, it wasn’t forcing problems up out of operations continuously. And, you know, such a challenge to a leaders work and what their role is. And so what we got is mature, some maturity in our management systems, less than our production systems. And in the problem is, as you and I and the audience knows, the management system doesn’t solve the big problems, it doesn’t set up the horizontal and flows of value, and make sure they’re going so so in so our prescription our analysis already three. And what we’re sharing with those we work with is we’ve got to rebalance, we’ve got to really rebalance to make sure that primary work system is is set up the right way with the right ownership, really embedding TPS flows, and then built and then take that management system and really lock it all in. So that’s a long diagnosis. But that’s that’s what we’re seeing and thinking.

 

Patrick Adams  18:18

And I think that resonates probably with your listeners that are also outside of the healthcare industry, because very similar challenges, you know, on on either side. And you did you did start to kind of walk down the road of some of the things that you guys are doing to come alongside your health system and helping them to, you know, break through. Would you say is there a like, you know, a lot of times we talked about, you can’t improve chaos, and you need to start with stability. I mean, would you guys in the healthcare industry, would you say there’s a, like a first step, a second step? Would you say it depends on the organization and where they’re at in their journey? I mean, what are the things that you guys are doing to come alongside them and and really help advise them to bring them on the right path?

 

20:04

Yeah. So I appreciate that question. And, you know, in the podcast is a limited time. And I think of all the nights, you know, we in this field can talk through this stuff right about what’s the right order and all that stuff? Sure. Well, I’ll just I’ll just highlight a couple elements of our basic roadmap, right, our ideal target state, and it’s a little different than some others. But then I’d like to also tell you, what we’re doing on this sort of need to correct toward the work system, as we said, perfect. So because as I said, you know, we’re all about leading with safety. We actually talk with leaders, you know, from the beginning, we don’t come in and assess and tell them what they need to do. We we lead them through a self assessment based on the principles if you looked at it, it’s sort of a three being worked through themselves. Were through going to gamba and looking at their own data and having key conversations around the principles they diagnose themselves, and where are they and what do they need to work on. And so every place does come up with a roadmap because every place is in a different spot. But we talked to them about, you know, you want to begin affecting the culture of the place with these ideas, and these principles and making them true for everybody as soon as possible at some level. And so we encourage them to pick safety, harm to patients or harm to staff and harm to staff is a great one to start with. And right away, make those harms visible one by one to everyone in the organization in a way that traditionally in health care. They don’t, you know, it sort of flows up into, you know, a monthly report, and there’s a department working on that, and things like that. And so bringing greater transparency in real time problem solving to those harms, in a way that sort of begins and begins to mobilize that will kind of help chain right, they will recognize from lean production. And that everybody across the organization can feel right, oh, my god, things are, hey, we’re handling that differently, we have more transparency, everybody’s having to work on their problem solving skills. You know, leaders are grappling with what does this mean about our how our systems are set up right away. So we try to get them going on that level, at one level, but that’s not inherently stabilizing, right. And in some senses, it’s destabilizing, right? Because you’re, you’re trying to, in an exciting way, connect the culture differently, but it’s also about change at a certain level. Right away, we are trained to work with them to say, but the big vat, you know, those are values becoming true, and you will move your safety numbers very fast that way, which is exciting. In terms of succeeding as a business, you’ve got to right away attached to the value stream flows or the pathway flows for, you know, pure TPS. And, and let’s pick an area that is key to your business and key business problem and create what we call an executive learning lab, to sort of see the difference that these ideas can make moving from push to pull out all that stuff, to get the outcomes. And, and then and then, you know, not copy and paste that but you know, spread it by capability building through the growth of leaders. And recently, we’ve really been making a much bigger push about really calling it that executive learning lab, because leaders have to learn how this stuff works, right and how they, they need to lead to put it into place not just you know, if I have a problem calling a team expert in lean to help. And so that’s our generic model. Lately, though, as we’ve realized that the capability isn’t as deep as we want it to be and leaders, in terms of moving at that system’s levels. Our team has started doing something we call leader looping, where we get the C suite, if they’re able, and we put we really advocate for it to come together on a key business challenge. In in healthcare, it’s not hard right now, right? Because we’ve got cost crises driven by staffing problems. Federal Government stopping their pandemic payments. And, you know, there’s a deep sort of set of intersecting business problems happening that has, you know, virtually every healthcare organization deeply worried. And so we’re getting those leaders out to attack a key problems such as when people are in the hospital longer than they should be. That not only exposes them to more harm, because every day you’re in the hospital, your likelihood of harm goes up considerably. But also it costs it’s bad flow and it costs money. And so attacking that problem together, applying the principles through going out and seeing together coming back making sure the problem solving is flowing And across, they’re sort of the boundaries, the top down boundaries that the different leaders lead, you know, through active gamma coming back, changing a threes, just that much more active this is we’re going to take on together and refresh our learning and breakthrough in a big problem way to sort of get ourselves not only solve a big problem help with the quality of the cost crisis, but, but sort of rebase ourselves and sort of how this works as a system. So that’s some of what we’re doing. I love

 

Patrick Adams  25:31

1. And again, there’s only a short amount of time here. But obviously, I thought, I thought you did a great job kind of laying out as much as you could. And in a short amount of time, we’ll, we’re going to talk about this at the end. But obviously, if anyone’s interested to hear more about that particular topic, being out to you would be ideal, because there’s I’m sure there’s so much more that we could talk about. With that. But you’ve you’ve talked about patient safety a lot. And for obvious reasons. You know, there’s definitely some scary headlines recently about patient safety, not having progressed as much, you know, in the last few years as it could have otherwise. And, you know, even for organizations outside of the healthcare industry, you know, I always see safety, number one, it’s it’s promoted that way. But then I don’t always see the actions. Following that the term safety is number one, you know, even within industries outside of health care. When we were at the MLC conference, and you keynoted, with Mark Raven, around workforce safety, you guys talked about the fact that workforce safety needs to be an imperative to revive or strengthen lean journeys. What would you say to those that are listening in both in the healthcare industry around patient safety, as well as outside of the healthcare industry, around workforce safety, and why that’s such an important concept? And why now is the time were the right time for people to be focused on this?

 

27:09

Yeah. Well, Patrick, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to that. And, you know, I think in a, in a, in a true north sense and constancy of purpose sense, a lot of that comes from, you know, the background we all share, and that particularly with with elements of our Alcoa background, or particularly intense for us, and that is, you know, Paul O’Neill, our founding chairman, he used to talk about, you know, the words are great, but you know, but to your point, you know, every company and even companies doing Lean or TPS, you know, speak the right language generally. But, you know, where’s the evidence that it’s true, right, right, that the values are really true. And so safety, whether we’re actually harming someone on our team, you know, through the circumstances that we allow to be present in our in our environment, or a patient in our care. Like, that’s a pretty good example, you know, piece of evidence that we’re not there yet, right? We’re not yet applying the ideas at the level that that is required, you know, to not only help people, you know, and start not harming them. So there’s a foundational sense of that at, you know, toward the action, you know, and the evidence that it’s true to your point, which would you lead with? The second thing is why now, and why, why did we make the case for for workforce safety as key to lean journeys and re recalibrating things. So if we think about what we all have gone through for the last three years, right, in terms of the pandemic, and its After Effects, all of that’s about people, right? If we look at healthcare, and what’s happened to health care, a lot of people in the healthcare workforce checked out, they said, We can’t take it, right, we got into these vicious cycles of people being put into position of not being able to succeed and caring for patients, which is a terrible psychological burden, you know, not feeling enough support. And so not feeling like they could succeed and sort of opting out, you know, maybe being present, but you know, you’re only getting half of their effort and hard work or picking another career. And then this vicious cycle of having to hire you know, traveling staff or nurses that are working far away from home so that they can get paid more money in the vicious cycle of finance, but also the impacts on patient care, right, then you have much newer nurses or nurses that aren’t used to working there and, and it’s the opposite of the sort of effect that we want, right? But if we keep in mind that it started with people and how they were treated, Did you know we go back to our first principles, and Paul O’Neill saying, Well, if we’re all committed to creating a perfectly safe workplace A, that’s evidence that the values are true in a way that matters deeply to you and I so that we can go back to our families and everybody else in one piece. But also you can’t get there. Without digging into the ideas and your processes deeply enough in actionable enough in bringing your values to bear that, that is the path back to if I describe the vicious cycle, the virtuous cycle that we all want, right? That we are, we know that we are valued, then that we value each other, it’s not even we’re valued by the company, it’s like the company is us. And we are, and we take care of this place, you know, and that means that we take care of each other, and we have expectations for each other. And we are so committed to excellence that we learn how to keep ourselves safe in either a scary industrial environment, you know, based on what’s going on, or medicine is very dangerous, right? The the operating environments, physically the amount of things that are happening with radiation and everything, we figure that out. And that means we know how we can do it for our patients too. And by the way, we can be excellent at all of these processes. And, you know, at this moment, where, you know, in my view, too much of the leadership in our organizations has become too transactional to hey, you know, layoffs are okay, you know, it happens. You know, this is a chance to reconnect with people in the deepest way, which are the sources of excellence, that we have to tap into, and, and in move with together, you know, toward a better future. So we think workforce safety is a great opportunity, not just, you know, safety and what that means, which is profound. And not just for the safety journey, but this deeper tie to lean and TPS, which is necessary for the highest levels of system performance. So that’s,

 

Patrick Adams  32:14

no, that’s a great, great response. And one other question just popped into my head while you were talking, in your experience with the clients that you’re that you’ve been working with? Would you say that some of those other metrics that they’re searching after when they do put, like, really, truly put safety first, and they are taking actions to make sure that their people feel safe? And that their work is actually safe? Do the other metrics follow? Do the results come? Because I do hear that, and I’ve experienced that. But I want to know, from from just from your experience, what do you see?

 

32:54

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In the relatively few places that have truly led with safety, and sort of had the hypothesis that it will pay off. You see the same remarkable things in healthcare as an as another industries, again, where it’s not common for places truly deeply to do that. But we were just talking about a significant academic medical center, where a leader about 10 years ago, made this bat. And over the course of four years, all of their key quality and safety and experience metrics improved by at least 50%. So it was, it was a big win there. But it was also it was also their best financial year ever. And that fourth year, you know, and continued to build. And, you know, it’s because it’s about, you know, it’s the hearts and minds, it’s everything coming, you know, things come into alignment, right. These are the most important challenges, we’re working on them. We know, we not don’t just know the goal, we know the way. And we’re developing some skills in the way and we’re developing that what it feels like to win. And you know, another thing I think about sometimes Patrick is we all also hold these little wounds from where we know what we want. And we know how we’re trying to get there individually or in teams, but we also know the gaps. And when you see those gaps start to be able to close and then this gap and then that gap because it’s not we’re not just doing it project by project. It’s Oh my god, we can apply that idea right here, right how to structure a binary connection between people you know, you know, and you start to get those multiplier effects. Like, you know, everything opens up right, and things get better. So it definitely all links in healthcare to where we have that kind of leadership.

 

Patrick Adams  34:48

Yeah, I love it. It’s definitely my experience as well. So but again, like you said, unfortunately, there’s there’s not a lot of organizations that you know, are at that level are committed at that level. But, you know, when people feel like they’re cared about, not just feel it, but they actually experience it. And, you know, then of course, there that’s going to that’s going to be, it’s going to reciprocate. And they’re going to, you know, take care of the company as well. And so, thank you for laying that out. One last question, as we, as we kind of wrap up today can So, a lot of our listeners, you know, probably have heard the term flavor of the month and, you know, activities come and go, or they feel oh, you know, there’s a huge push for workforce safety, and then oh, now there’s not? How do we, how do we combat that? What would you say is, you know, organizations should look at next, you know, when it comes to operational excellence within their, within their facilities, or within their organizations, you know, in order to, you know, kind of keep from heading down that road and, and really be committed to the overall system of operational excellence? What would your thoughts be on that?

 

36:08

Yeah, and that, you know, and I don’t have the full answer on this at all, I, you know, and I, I really appreciate how you explore this on the podcast, and, you know, and, you know, and it’s an ongoing conversation, but I think some of the ideas that I have, just to share a couple are, you know, not not revolutionary. But, you know, we got to get back again to, you know, the holding on to TrueNorth. And having that be really clear for everybody, this will not change. Yeah, next recession. next pandemic, this is who we are. And in all our behaviors, we aspire to make this true period. And a, you know, a commitment and a realization, and all the studies show this, the places that switch horses all the time on what formula is right? tend to be mediocre performers, right? There are approaches to this that are more powerful than others. But the key is, pick a version, we hope it’s lean, and TPS in the deepest sense, you know, driven by safety, and then continuously improve that, you know, and that’s because then you’re building the skill, right? You’re building the continuous improvement skill for whatever it is, and you’re constantly keeping the, you know, that really powerful sense of the goals tied to TrueNorth that embeds you know, sort of the values and behavioral characteristics. And then the method is, how fast can we go that way? And Paul O’Neill used to talk about, well, don’t we want to find the methods that have worked the best since World War Two and have been proven, you know, to produce these differential results. So if we keep that in mind, I think that’s one thing. The other thing, and that I’m talking a lot about now in healthcare, is we have to simplify it. We we have, in some instances, too many tools, too many Christmas trees and things that can feel overwhelming to leaders or people coming in like it’s a little bit of a cult. And I point to a healthcare leader we have in South Carolina, who’s going to be hosting a sort of go and see for other leaders for us in June, who he came out of the army came out of the Special Forces and work with us and Mr. O’Neill about 15 years ago, and that he has boiled things together in a way that is super powerful. And he calls it pancake syrup. He calls his method pancake syrup. Wow. Okay. And I did it for him, you know, and he is Mike Bundy down at Prisma. Health and, and Mike says, you know, so what are you talking about? And, and he says, Well, you know, when I sit on these analyses of harms that have happened in institutions, you always hear about time, the frontline staff doesn’t have time. They don’t have time, they don’t have time. Why? Because things go wrong and daily operations. And, you know, we have to have the pancakes here on the patient’s food tray, every time the right way. Or else you know, and 15% of the time that nurse is going to get a call ball or something that is waste that is distracting them, and it’s keeping them from their standard work, you know, and in what is that and so he teaches everybody what he calls micro API. And then every day, the whole place starts with the frontline teams, which he calls special operators like the specialists. They have their standard work checklist. The suppliers have there’s all tied to flow. We’re organized by safety because we don’t want people in the hospital longer than they need to be. And it’s all transparent if you are off on any If your metrics, things go wrong on any of those, you’re doing a root cause on that in real time in your Indian, you know, in with your customers and your suppliers. And you don’t hear a lot of Lean words, you don’t hear a lot of TPS words, you see less visual management, it’s all honed down, compared to other places, and he gets better results faster. So I think we have to really get back in touch with what’s the essence of the thing in how our places are run, to really, you know, get much better velocity, and much better attachment from a broader cross section of people.

 

Patrick Adams  40:44

Love it. So Ken, I’m very interested in the show until in June, can you? Can you just tell our listeners a little bit more about that if they were interested to to, you know, maybe, maybe be part of that. And then what we’ll do is we’ll show it, we’ll drop some links into the show notes for anyone to get some more information or register for that. Can you just tell us when

 

41:06

air? Patrick? Absolutely. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate the opportunity. So this is a we call it our CEO seminar. It’s called leading with safety. And it is co sponsored with a group called the LeapFrog group who does sort of been the leaders on safety, advocating for safety and tracking safety and health care. It’s going to happen At PRISMA health and Columbia, South Carolina on June 12, and 13th. And it’s full of going see it’ll be primarily healthcare leaders in the key is that we want to, it’s okay for an improvement executive to come if a C suite operating leader is there, because it’s really about the the operating leaders meeting with safety sort of listening in a way to to the approvement side of the ball. But if you’d like to come, please come the last one that we did. At Duke University Health System in June, we had the mayor of a major city, we had a superintendent, the school district in California come and join the learning and of course that adds to it right. So if you’re not in healthcare, don’t worry, you’ll learn a lot. And you’ll actually contribute a lot to the learning. So thank you for making it possible for people to find that it’s on our It’s on our website, that you capture llc.com And thanks for putting it in the show notes. It’s called leading with safety CEO seminar leading the safety.

 

Patrick Adams  42:35

All right, perfect. Yeah. So we’ll throw that in the show notes. I also want to make sure that everyone that’s listening has your contact info as well. What’s the best way for them to reach out to you can and if they have questions or want to connect with you, or or learn about value capture,

 

42:50

yeah, so email or cell is great. You can also you can also get to me through through LinkedIn. And in Twitter, also, I’m on in my key is my last name is Seagull, S E G L. And all my contact information is available on our website. Just pull down who we are. And you’ll find me right there. And I of course, I’d love to talk.

 

Patrick Adams  43:19

Perfect. Well, Ken, it’s been great to have you on the show. I love what you guys are doing at value capture. And, you know, obviously, it was great to connect with you up here in Michigan, and learn a little bit more about what you guys are doing around workforce safety and patient safety. Thank you for what you’re doing and just appreciate you. You’ve been on the show.

 

Ken Segal  43:40

And Patrick, you know, I want to extend my thanks to you. Again, it’s a great opportunity to share what we’re doing and more than us, you know, the leaders in health care that are that are applying these ideas under challenging circumstance. But then a deep appreciation to you how you’ve advanced the field and how you’re helping everyone.