It's one of those questions in life where you can ponder for hours and hours and still not get any closer to the answer. In a way I liken it to a similar question that has puzzled scholars over the millennia ‘what's the meaning of life?' or from my perspective ‘what is Lean?'

Imagine the scene. There's a blinding white light, the glow of satisfaction, the sheer joy of having finally achieved the Holy Grail that is a world class, highly efficient and highly effective healthcare organisation. In this place there are no dissatisfied patients, no objecting clinicians, there are no hospital acquired infections and achieving government targets is a cinch! Simply put you're on top of the world and to paraphrase the great Mel Brooks ‘Its good to be the King!'

Now you're probably wondering why on earth I would be ‘selling' or promoting the Lean Healthcare Academy on my blog, after all you're already on the LHA website? You never know but you might also be thinking that perhaps my Boss has paid me a glorious bonus to write my wonderfully compelling blog? The answer is actually far more compelling.

Yes it is really unfortunate that waste in any process cannot be seen waving a big red flag with the words ‘hello I'm here & I'm waste!' emblazoned all over it. Wouldn't it be nice though! What makes matters worse is that waste can be ambiguous, can mutate and generally hides stealth like unseen amongst other elements of the process. In fact I think that it is fair to say that sometimes waste can be chameleon like adapting to its surroundings to survive.

When days were hard, time against you and stress levels high you somehow stuck with it and saw things through, but no one actually stopped to appreciate the essence or the beauty of the masterpiece that you created i.e. that 6S board or that process flow map or that time when the Lean light finally came on in your colleagues' heads! Michelangelo's David had admirers so why can't your visual management masterpiece have the same? Well it can. How?

 You've heard the old saying ‘how do you eat an elephant? - a BIT at a time!' Well the saying is equally true of implementing Lean into big organisations with complex pathways and issues. There are many ways to improve current levels of performance but the best by far is to utilise the untapped creative force in your workforce.