My husband and I both like to run. I run about three miles once or twice a week—if the weather’s not too bad, and if I don’t have something else going on. Keith, on the other hand, runs half marathons.

Keith goes for long runs on the weekends for three to four hours at a time and shorter runs during the week. He runs in the heat, rain, or cold. He paces himself, being careful not to expend too much energy too early. I bolt out at full speed from the start, with the intent to run 5 km as fast as I can. We both run, but with an entirely different focus and entirely different results.

In the blog post “Lean is not a program,” Paul Levy, the former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, highlights how lean is a “long-term philosophy of corporate leadership and organization that is based, above all, on respect shown to front-line staff.” As the title implies, he reasons that lean is not a one-off consulting stint packaged into a clever playbook.

This reasoning applies not only to lean but to any effective quality improvement effort.

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