Person-Centered Improvement: What It Looks Like — and How It Fits With Lean

Aligning Lean, Process Improvement, and Person-Centered Cultures in Healthcare and Beyond

Webinar Description

Many organizations adopt Lean and other process improvement methodologies to improve quality, efficiency, and outcomes—but still struggle with engagement, sustainability, and cultural alignment.

In this on-demand KaiNexus webinar, Sean Paul Teeling explores how person-centered improvement complements Lean thinking and why combining the two leads to stronger results for patients, staff, and organizations.

Drawing on multi-year research, real-world healthcare case studies, and practical implementation experience, Sean Paul examines where Lean and person-centered approaches align, where they diverge, and how leaders can intentionally integrate both without diluting either.

This session goes beyond theory to show how improvement work can respect human experience, strengthen culture, and still deliver measurable operational gains.

View all previous KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinars

What You’ll Learn

• How person-centered improvement differs from (and complements) Lean

• The key synergies between Lean, Six Sigma, and person-centered cultures

• Where improvement efforts break down when people are treated as “resources”

• Why voice of the customer and frontline engagement are critical to sustainability

• How to balance standardization with meaningful human variation

• Real healthcare case studies showing measurable results using a combined approach

Who This Webinar Is For

This webinar is especially valuable for:

• Healthcare leaders navigating complex systems and competing priorities

• Continuous improvement, Lean, and operational excellence practitioners

• Clinicians, managers, and improvement teams focused on patient experience

• Leaders seeking to improve outcomes without burning out staff

• Organizations working to align culture, improvement, and strategy

Why Person-Centered Improvement Matters

Lean works best when improvement is done with people—not to them.

As this webinar demonstrates, sustainable improvement requires:

• Respect for people as whole humans, not just roles or metrics

• Cultures that support engagement, trust, and learning

• Improvement methods that strengthen—not undermine—care delivery

When person-centered principles are intentionally combined with Lean, organizations can improve performance and experience—at the same time.

About the Presenter:

Seán Paul Teeling

Seán Paul Teeling is the Programme Director for the Professional Certificate and Graduate Certificate in Process Improvement in Health Systems at UCD Health Systems. Prior to this, he worked as Lean Manager at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital Dublin, working closely with the Hospital and the UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems on the development of the highly successful Process Improvement in healthcare programmes. 

Seán Paul is an accredited facilitator of Person-centred Cultures in Healthcare. He completed his PhD with and is a member of, and honorary lecturer with, the Centre for Person-Centred Practice Research, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. He is also an affiliate of the Stanford Medicine Centre for Improvement, Stanford University, CA. His research is in the use of process and quality improvement methodologies in healthcare including the Model for Improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma and Agile and in particular the influence and contribution of Process Improvement methodologies on Person-centred Cultures. In January 2011, he was appointed by the Minister for Health as a member of the Health Products Regulatory Authority Advisory Committee on Medical Devices, on which he served for two terms.