Jaded Julie Learns About "Gemba"

“Hi, Jaded Julie. I see you decided not to wear your kimono at work.”

“The kimono might have been okay, but I couldn’t see myself clop-clopping down the hall responding to a ‘code’ wearing those wooden shoes with blocks on the bottom.”

“Those are ‘geta,’ Julie. I agree with your good judgment.”

“You said last time that we’d learn a new word today—something like ‘gumbo’.”

“Not gumbo, Julie, ‘gemba.’ We’re doing Japanese, not ‘Cajun. Gemba means ‘the real place.’ It’s your workplace.”

“But I thought my workplace was called Four South.”

“Julie, in a hospital gemba is any place where services are performed for our customers, the patients. The OR, ED, lab, radiology, examination rooms, patient care units, and lots of other places are all gemba. But not executive offices or the gift shop.”

“I get it. Gemba is where the action is no matter where it’s at.”

“I couldn’t have said it better. Without all of these gembas Affinity couldn’t fulfill its mission of providing services that promote the health and well being of the communities we serve. In Gemba Kaizen®, an older brother of Lean, the organizational pyramid is inverted with gemba at the top. The role of all of the managers and directors is to support the workers in gemba. To help with solving problems or making improvements, managers are told to ‘go to gemba’.”

“That sounds great to me, Curmudge. I always wanted to be at the top of the pyramid even if it’s really the bottom.”

“You’re the top, Julie. You and the rest of the folks in gemba. Masaaki Imai said, ‘If we call the customer king, we should call the gemba people Buddha’.”

“I’m for that, Curmudge, as long as I don’t have to sit cross-legged on the floor.”

“’Bye, Julie.”

“’Bye, Curmudge.”

Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon

Profile Change

The Curmudgeon and Jaded Julie Talk About Names

“Hey, Jaded Julie, I have a new name. It’s The Kaizen Curmudgeon.”

“I liked your old name, Affinity’s Quality Curmudgeon. And the columns you wrote on patient safety, standards, and Lean were easy to find in Quality Management’s home page on the Affinity intranet. Why the change?”

“I’ve got a new home, in Affinity’s Kaizen Promotion Office, and I’m going to write a blog instead of intranet columns. So it’s new geography, a new communication medium, and of course, a new name.”

“But with your old name, I at least understood one of the words.”

“My last name wasn’t so bad. Although the dictionary says that a curmudgeon is a nasty old person, I prefer to think of him as a grouch possessing a significant amount of perspicacity.”

“Thanks for the help. At least I know what a grouch is. But what’s that Kaizen stuff?”

“Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning ‘change for the better’ or ‘continuous improvement.’ It's one of the principles of the Lean transformation that we are initiating at Affinity Health System."

“So why use Japanese words? They are all Greek to me.”

“Lean was first used in Japan. It's their game, so we use their words. It’s sort of like the way they use our words for our game, baseball, or besuboru in Japanese. Other baseball terms that the Japanese have adopted (sort of) are pinchi hitta (pinch hitter), rukii (rookie), and senta (center fielder).”

“Hey, that Japanese stuff is a great idea. Maybe I can wear a kimono at work instead of my blue scrubs.”

“We’ll see. Julie, next time we get together I’ll introduce another Japanese word, gemba (the workplace), and we’ll talk more about what is involved in a Lean transformation.”

“I can’t wait, Curmudge."

"Sayonara."

Affinity's Kaizen Curmudgeon