101 Curmudgeons

“Hooray, Jaded Julie! We’ve reached 101.”

“You’re 101 years old, Curmudge? Congrats! You don’t look a day over 95.”

“No, no, Julie. We’re celebrating 101 postings of the Kaizen Curmudgeon blog. Perhaps we should buy a big birthday cake at Manderfields and invite all of our readers to come to 3 North to share it.”

“Sure, Curmudge. We can invite both of our readers. For them we can buy a cupcake and cut it in half.”

“Well then, we might do something of real value for our readers like publishing a table of contents of all of our postings, but that would be several pages long.”

“I’ve got it, Curmudge. Let’s list the general topics that we have discussed and indicate when in the past two-and-one-half years our readers can find relevant postings. Of course you don’t remember, but they’re in your records. You look them up, and I’ll type them.”

Brand and Generic Drug Names—May 14, 2009.

Branding and Personalized Care—March-April 2009.

Lean Basics—May-December 2007.

Lean Tools—July-October 2008.

Management and Leadership—March-June 2008.

Medical Home—September-October 2009.

Nursing—July 2007, July 2008.

Patient Safety—October 2008-March 2009.

Physicians—June, August, and September 2009.

Primary Care—August-September 2009.

Queues and Workload Variability—July 2009.

Toyota Production System—January-February 2008.

“There! We’ve done it. I hope people find the list helpful.”

“When we started this, Curmudge, I never expected you to come up with 100 ideas to write about. Are you concerned that the well might run dry?”

“I doubt that the blog will terminate because of lack of ideas. A bigger threat is our fragile creative spirit. When that goes kaput, we’ll turn off the computer.”

“So what do we do for an encore? Will the second hundred postings be just like the first?”

“Well, Jaded Julie, we might change our posting frequency from weekly to every other week, and I certainly hope we can collect more Lean Success Stories here at Affinity. One thing is for certain, and that is as long as I am writing this blog, you will be a part of it. Our conversational format might not be unique, but your presence surely makes it distinctive.”

“That’s great, Curmudge. I’ll go home and tell my couch-potato husband that I have a permanent job.”

“Don’t rely on a long-term commitment from an old guy, Julie. Remember that I have to pre-pay whenever I order a three-minute egg.”

Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon