Last year, after many years of physical therapy, cortisone shots, and experimental treatments to prop up my failing knees, I decided to go bionic and get full knee replacements. Holding out hope for more than a decade that emerging cell-therapy technology would offer breakthrough cartilage regeneration, I waited until I had no cartilage left to regenerate. My gait was increasingly resembling the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.

Now, I already had some vicarious experience with knee replacements, because my wife, Maureen, had the surgery 10 years earlier. I was inclined to use the same doc, as Maureen’s experience had been great. But then a few of my lean friends offered alternative solutions involving new methods and materials; cutting-edge, custom-formed prostheses; even robotic surgery, which I’m told is becoming commonplace. “Less chance for error,” they told me, “lower cost,” and “faster recovery.”

Everyone had advice. But the best advice came from my friend and lean mentor, Eric Dickson, M.D., who encouraged me to ask this one question of potential surgeons: “How many knees have you done?” This put all of the discussion about technology in perspective. “Hm,” I thought, “I have direct evidence of success from Maureen’s experience.” And her doc, David Mattingly, has been doing knee arthroplasty for 40 years—pretty much since it became available. This sealed the deal.

At my pre-op visit with the doc, as he and I viewed the X-rays of my knees, it was apparent that he’d seen knees like these before—lots of them. When I related what I’d learned about technology advances since Maureen’s surgery, he acknowledged the advances, but his advice was primarily that I should follow the rehab regimen religiously. I did, and it worked. Last weekend I went for a jog, something I’d not been able to do in perhaps 20 years.

Yesterday I received a letter from Mattingly announcing his retirement. I’m grateful for his 40-year devotion to his craft, and lucky to have slipped in just under the wire with my surgery.

A couple of lean lessons from my experience:
• Fix problems instantly.
• Technology and new methods can improve our ability to solve problems, but there’s no substitute for experience.