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Mark Graban

Mark Graban is a Senior Advisor at KaiNexus. Mark graduated from Northwestern University in 1995 with a BS in Industrial Engineering and later earned an MS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is author of two Shingo Research Award-winning books, and has worked as a consultant to healthcare organizations throughout North America and Europe, teaching and implementing kaizen and other Lean management practices. He was previously a Senior Fellow with the Lean Enterprise Institute and the Healthcare Value Network and continues as an LEI faculty member. Mark is also the founder of the popular LeanBlog.org and its podcast series.
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Recent Posts

The One Metric That Tells You If Your CI Culture Is Real

March 16, 2026

Across the Ask Us Anything series, Greg Jacboson and I have fielded dozens of questions about culture. How do you measure it? How do you...

React Less, Improve More: A Preview of My KaiNexicon Keynote

March 10, 2026

Most metrics reviews follow the same pattern. Someone pulls up the dashboard. A few numbers are red. The room reacts. People start...

Should Improvement Be Mandatory? Reflections From 30+ Ask Us Anything Episodes

March 9, 2026

One of the most persistent questions across the Ask Us Anything series was deceptively simple:

Should continuous improvement be...

Culture Is Not an App: Greg Jacobson and Mark Graban on the Just in Time Cafe Podcast

March 4, 2026

Greg Jacobson and I recently joined Tracy O'Rourke and Elizabeth Swan on the "Just in Time Cafe podcast" to talk about KaiNexus,...

No Topic Here

Why Experienced Leaders Resist Lean — and What Actually Works

March 2, 2026

When Greg Jacobson and I recorded the first Ask Us Anything webinar, we were just trying to clear a backlog of questions. We had no idea...

Ten Years of Questions: The Ask Us Anything Insights That Still Hold Up

February 24, 2026

Ten years of answering questions from CI practitioners taught us that the hardest problems aren't technical -- they're human. Leadership...

What 200,000+ Frontline Ideas Look Like When Leaders Actually Listen

March 3, 2026

This blog summarizes key insights from a comprehensive whitepaper detailing UMass Memorial Health's remarkable transformation journey. 

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Go Slow to Go Fast: What I Learned from Jon Miller About 8-Step Problem Solving

February 19, 2026

TL;DR:Continuous improvement stalls when teams skip disciplined problem solving. Jon Miller’s overview of Toyota’s 8-step framework...

Mutual Trust and Respect in Lean: Toyota’s Real Competitive Advantage

February 18, 2026

TL;DR: Toyota’s real competitive advantage is not its tools -- it is mutual trust and mutual respect. Leaders are responsible for...