Getting Started
Type your question and press Enter (or click Send). You can ask questions in your native language and get replies in the same language.
A little context goes a long way. If you mention your unit or setting and any constraints you are working within, you will get a much more useful answer.
Use It As an App (iPhone and Android)
You can add the Lean Hospitals Coach to your phone's home screen and use it like a native app — full screen, one tap to open, no browser chrome.
iPhone (Safari)
- Open leanhospitalsbook.com/coach in Safari
- Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen — the box with an arrow pointing up
- Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen
- Tap Add in the top right corner
Android (Chrome)
- Open leanhospitalsbook.com/coach in Chrome
- Tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner
- Tap Add to Home Screen
- Tap Add
Once installed, tap the Lean Hospitals Coach icon to open it full screen. The app remembers your session and settings just like the browser version.
Note: this works in Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android. Other browsers may not support the Add to Home Screen option.
Your Role
On your first visit, the coach asks what best describes your role. Your selection shapes the experience in two ways:
Starter questions — You will see suggested questions tailored to your role. These rotate so you see fresh options across visits. They are just starting points; you can always ask your own.
Got it — C-Suite and Director/VP are separate roles in the app. So the help page needs both listed. Here's the rewrite:
Response style — The coach adjusts its tone, depth, and length based on your role:
- C-Suite — Concise and strategic. Leads with the key insight. Frames everything in terms of culture, leadership behavior, and long-term commitment — not tools or projects.
- Director / VP — Concise and strategic. Focuses on operationalizing Lean in their area, coaching managers, and sustaining improvement.
- Manager / Supervisor — Practical, action-oriented. Includes specific examples and small experiments to try this week.
- Frontline Staff — Short and tactical. Plain language, no jargon. Focuses on what you can do in your daily work.
- Consultant / Coach — Skips the basics. Focuses on frameworks, facilitation, and how to build capability in others.
- Student — Clear explanations with definitions and concrete examples. Points to relevant chapters for deeper reading.
You can change your role at any time using the Change link below the input area.
Your Name
The coach can use your preferred name in conversation. You can set or change it using the Set Name or Change link next to your role below the input area. Demo users will be prompted after their first exchange.
Two Response Styles
Use the Tell Me / Coach Me toggle to control how the coach responds:
Tell Me — Concise, direct answers. Leads with the point, then provides brief supporting context. Best when you want information quickly or need something clear to share with your team.
Coach Me — Reflective, Socratic style. Asks questions to help you think through the problem yourself, suggests small experiments, and acts as a thinking partner. Best when you are working through a real challenge and want to develop your own approach.
When to Use Each
Tell Me is ideal for quick lookups, definitions, comparisons, or when you need a clear answer to share with your team.
Coach Me is ideal when you are facing a real situation — a struggling huddle, a process that is not working, a team that is skeptical — and want help thinking it through rather than being handed a solution.
You can switch between modes and styles at any time, even mid-conversation. Your choice is remembered across sessions.
Guided Prompt Packs
Click Explore Topics & Guided Packs below the input area to browse structured, multi-step conversations on key topics like Building Psychological Safety, A3 Problem Solving, Daily Huddle Design, and more.
Each pack walks you through 3-5 prompts in a logical sequence. You can click each prompt as-is, edit it before sending, or skip steps. Packs work with any source mode and response style.
Tips for Better Questions
The coach responds to what you give it. A vague question gets a general answer. A specific situation gets specific coaching.
Good: “How should a team lead run a daily huddle in a production area?”
Better: “Our daily huddle on a 40-person assembly line takes 20 minutes and only half the team shows up. The supervisor reads off yesterday's numbers. How can we make it shorter, more engaging, and focused on improvement?”
A few more examples:
- “We tried 5S in our department but it didn't stick. What went wrong?” (Coach Me)
- “What are common mistakes when implementing leader standard work in our organization?” (Tell Me)
- “What does the book say about standardized work, and how does that compare to how it's applied outside automotive manufacturing?” (Either mode)
- “I'm a new plant manager and my team is skeptical about Lean. Where do I start?” (Coach Me)
Features
During a Conversation
Share — Each response has a Share button. On mobile, it opens your phone's share sheet. On desktop, it copies the question and answer to your clipboard.
Thumbs Up / Down — Flag what is helpful and what is not. If you click thumbs down, you can pick a reason (Inaccurate, Off topic, Too long, Not from the book, Other) to help improve the coach.
Suggested Follow-Ups — After each response, you may see clickable follow-up questions based on the topic. Click one to keep the conversation going.
Stop — Click Stop or press Escape to halt a response mid-stream if it seems off track.
Upload — Click the paperclip icon to attach an image or PDF. The coach can review documents, process maps, A3s, and other visual materials you share.
Chat Memory — A small bar shows how much conversation history the coach is working with. When it fills up, older messages are trimmed automatically to keep responses fast.
Managing Conversations
New — Clears the conversation and starts fresh.
Copy All — Copies your entire conversation as plain text, including any notes you have written.
Print — Opens a print-friendly version of your conversation with the Lean Hospitals header.
History (subscribers) — Save, load, search, and manage past conversations. Use the search box to find specific topics across all saved conversations. Your conversation history is stored securely in your WordPress account.
Feedback — Click the Feedback button to send a note directly to the team. You can report bugs, request features, flag inaccuracies, or just share what is working.
Returning to a Previous Session
If you leave and come back in the same browser session, the coach will offer to continue where you left off or start fresh. Subscribers can also load saved conversations from the History panel.
Quick Commands and Keyboard Shortcuts
You can switch modes and styles by typing a command and pressing Enter:
- Type tell or tell mode to switch to Tell Me style
- Type coach or coach mode to switch to Coach Me style
- Type kata mode to get kata-style coaching
Keyboard shortcuts:
- Ctrl+K (or Cmd+K on Mac) — Start a new conversation
- Escape — Stop a response mid-stream
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
This is an improvement coach. It is focused on Lean thinking, leadership, and continuous improvement — not technical or domain-specific advice.
It may not always be right. AI-generated responses should be verified against your own experience or a knowledgeable colleague.
The coach stays focused on Lean, continuous improvement, and leadership. It will politely redirect off-topic requests.
Privacy
The Lean Coach does not need or want sensitive business data to work well. Talk about processes, systems, metrics, and challenges — not confidential information.
For analytics, each question is summarized into a short topic label (3-5 words, such as “huddle board design” or “A3 coaching approach”). Only this label is stored — your verbatim question is not retained. Topic labels cannot reconstruct your original question.