ABSTRACT
How, what, and when to train are always questions at the start of a new initiative. One approach is to make sure every employee is trained in the new initiative at the start of the journey. This is expensive and training that is not used soon is often forgotten. Another approach is extensive training of the leaders. Virginia Mason, an early adopter of Lean, sends its leaders to Japan to immerse them in the actual doing of Lean (Kenny, 2011). Although this undoubtedly is beneficial, it, too, is expensive and would be politically and financially infeasible for many institutions. This would not have been possible at Denver Health. Thus, we opted for basic training of the leader ship, more extensive training of a small group of selected managers (Black Belts) and the Lean facilitators onsite, and just-in-time training of the workforce as they participated in various Lean events. The executive staff and the physician directors of service (departmental chairs) received four hours of “Lean 101.” As in any discipline, Lean has a body of knowledge that must be acquired; therefore, in retrospect, more intensive training of this group in the beginning would have been helpful. This leader ship group read a number of well-established books on Lean for our joint journal club, including Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones (2003).
