Dave Barrett draws on his more than 15 years of coaching hockey to explain his research into Lean Management.
“If you want to play hockey, I can draw up a beautiful strategy on the board and say: ‘OK now go do it’,” says the Ivey Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Ivey International Centre for Health Innovation. “And you could say, ‘Well we can’t skate, we’re out of shape, we’re not mentally tough.’ So there are many things that have to be done in preparation before a hockey team can implement the designed strategy.”
In the same way, preparation is critical in the successful execution of Lean Management. Barrett’s interest in the successes and failures of Lean Management in the health-care space forms the basis of his dissertation.
“This led me to my dissertation because the health-care space was under tremendous pressure from a financial perspective and a performance perspective. Increasingly, many health-care organizations are turning to Lean Management as a philosophy to effect change, yet they are struggling with the adoption and subsequent management of Lean-based process improvement initiatives. Hospital administrators are actively interested in, yet problematically undertake, Lean Management deployment strategies and approaches that are intended to result in effective and efficient design and delivery of health-care services, but are experiencing varying degrees of success.”
