Senior Lean Continuous Improvement Specialist

Lean Process Excellence – Midwest Healthcare System

Northern Iowa

·         You relish an opportunity to combine your professional career objectives with meaningful work that also reflects your personal values and beliefs (respect for people).

·         You are personally and professionally obsessed with safety, quality and excellence.

·          You want the excitement of working with talented, visionary teams in one of the most highly-respected professions, within an innovative health care organization that “gets it” about process excellence.

·         You thrive in a fast-paced yet collegial environment, where your daily decisions make a direct, clearly visible impact on the operational effectiveness of your organization, and beyond.

·         Your mother tells you she always wished you’d gone to medical school…

Our client is a faith-based, not-for-profit community health care system that offers comprehensive health care services for people residing throughout northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. Their mission is to continue the healing ministry of the Church, promoting the well-being of people in the communities they serve by living the values of Compassion, Respect, Excellence, Stewardship, and Concern for those who are poor. Our client adds value in the communities it serves by striving to provide each individual with the best personalized care and healing experience in the nation.

Our client launched its Lean Process Excellence journey approximately three years ago. Slowly at first, and now more quickly and deeply with each passing day, the Process Excellence team is converting the skeptics, broadening the buy-in, and demonstrating measurable results with their systemic approach to Lean transformation.  The CEO is 100% onboard, as are key directors and community leaders (mayor, city council members).  It is, indeed, a partnership with a broad group of committed stakeholders who are passionate about delivering better health care outcomes in a compassionate way. 

And at the moment, there are simply too many transformational opportunities just waiting to be addressed. Hence the need for this Senior Continuous Improvement Specialist.

The position will be based in a comfortable, warm and welcoming community in central northern Iowa, about equidistant from Minneapolis, MN and Des Moines, IA.  It reports to the Director of Process Excellence and is considered a highly-collaborative individual contributor role.  It is also a highly visible (CEO level) position, one with exceptional growth potential in an industry critical to America’s future.

As a Lean Senior Continuous Improvement Specialist  on the Process Excellence Team, you will assist in guiding our client’s Lean/TPS initiatives.  You will be internal coach and mentor to a wide cross-section of medical/clinical and support staff at every point within the organization. From Hoshin planning and deployment events, to nursing station and laboratory value stream mapping and problem-solving activities, you will be there.

·         You have demonstrated deep-dive, hands-on Gemba problem solving and coaching expertise, as well as 30k-foot strategic-level Lean Hoshin perspective and sophistication.

·         You offer a proven track record driving operational excellence and continuous improvement initiatives, focused on safety, quality, customer satisfaction and cost, utilizing Lean Thinking (Toyota Production System) methodologies.

·         You have successfully managed something (plant, focus factory, operational group, etc.) where you also drove a Lean transformation resulting in sustained improvement and positive culture change.

·         You have outstanding communications skills.  This enables you to interact with senior management executives and influence their decision-making, as well as to effectively partner with the other exceptionally talented people broadly across this organization.

Generally limited to local communities within the hospital network. Unusual to be away from home overnight, except for Lean conferences, benchmarking visits, and maybe a trip to the Shingo Prize Awards Conference.

Competitive, based on your qualifications;  consisting of base salary, sign-on bonus, partial relocation assistance.

Please connect with me in whatever way is most convenient for you. We share no information about you with anyone outside our firm until we’ve agreed on this with you. If you don’t have a resume, that’s fine. Let’s talk first.

Adam Zak Executive Search