This week I am fortunate to speak with Chris Luckett the Network Manager of Process Excellence for the Kettering Health Network in Dayton Ohio. I hired Chris when he was a college student to be an intern at the consulting firm I was at. It was great to re-connect with him and learn about their journey!
1. Tell us about yourself and your company
Chris Luckett, Industrial, and Systems Engineering Degree. I have worked in various industries throughout my 20+ years.
I am the Network Manager of Process Excellence for Kettering Health Network in Dayton Oh. Kettering Health Network is a faith-based award-winning healthcare system of 10 hospitals, 10 emergency departments, and 120 outpatient facilities serving southwest Ohio. With nearly 13,000 employees and 2,100 physicians and ~2B Revenue per year. Emergency Care, Cancer Care, Orthopedic Surgery and Rehab, Neuro & Stroke Care, and Heart Care. Our calling card is to provide improvement science and best practice throughout the NW.
2. How long have you been on your Lean journey?
I’ve been involved in ‘Improvement Science’ from the start of my career 20+ years ago. I was fortunate enough to start my career in consulting while Toyota Production Methodologies were becoming mainstream and CI with my engineering knowledge was just a great fit for me. Professionally, I have been part of many lean journeys through consulting work and with several companies in full-time roles.
3. Why did Kettering Health Systems embark on a Lean journey? What did you hope to gain?
Let me take this in a little bit different direction. Over the years, I have become much less of a ‘purist’ and describe what I do in my role now as ‘discipline agnostic’. There are very prominent foundations that I draw from Lean but have also found that for many situations, it can be narrow-sighted to expect each problem or opportunity to act the same way, especially in healthcare. So, whether it’s Six Sigma/DMAIC, PDCA, 8D, Lean, Project Management, a well rounded ‘Improvement Scientist’ can adapt his/her approach to effectively manage the opportunity.
4. What have been some of the biggest struggles on your journey?
One of the biggest things that I continually find challenging and a struggle is the pressure to have the ‘right solution’ vs experimenting my way to the best solution. Especially as you progress in roles and title in your career, people don’t react well to planning, go and see, not making progress, failing. For me, I’m not afraid of failure or being fired or something, It’s more of my internal struggle to manage my frustration when something doesn’t turn out the way I had planned. We’ve all had the mountain top feeling when the RIE is outstanding and a tremendous success, but that doesn’t happen all the time and so staying disciplined and not ‘chasing the high’ can be a struggle.
5. What are some things you have learned from those struggles?
I’ve had to learn to walk away. I make myself get in the car and go for a drive to detach in some ways. And I’ve had to manage my behaviors in those situations. When my mind is so focused on something, it can end up blinding me to adequate solutions. Inevitably, on Saturday morning when I’m mowing the lawn, it hits me and I’m ready to go and can’t wait until Monday to be back at work trying the next thing. But, I’ve had to learn to discipline myself under ‘damage control’ situations (sometimes of my own doing) by creating diversions, and managing my behavior are two big lessons that I’ve learned.
6. What have been some of your greatest successes on your Lean journey?
I have some really neat, quantifiable, measurable things that I’m happy to say I’ve been a part of doing. But, for me, it comes back to the times that I’ve helped someone do something that they wouldn’t have been able to do without my help. And there are really simple examples that make me most proud. Helping someone do their first executive presentation, someone who’s become ‘control chart crazy’ because they’ve seen the value through working with me, a nurse who had never really led a team on an improvement project. Those are
7. How have they benefited the organization?
a. In context to my last answer….I’m just one person and can only do what I can. But if others are learning and developing, that has a multiplicative effect on how much improvement we can complete across our organization.
8. What have been some of the biggest surprises that you have learned?
People are people…not robots
9. If my company was starting our lean journey today, what advice would you give us?
Think small to think big. I’ve seen many initiatives go down in flames because the goal was so overwhelming ‘We’re going to transform healthcare’ type of stuff and it alienates a lot of the organization right off the bat. So, right size goals and do small experiments to get started.
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