Hi, this is Mark Raben. This is episode 338 of Leanblog
Audio. This is a post that published on
August 22nd, 2023. It was hard to write.
It's hard to read. The headline of the post is
remembering and honoring Chris Burnham, a friend and colleague.
You can find the blog post at leanblog.org/audio 338.
I was stunned and saddened by the recent passing of a good
friend and colleague, Chris Burnham.
He was just 48 years old. Word had started the spread on
LinkedIn. I feel bad about having to share
this news here and and and not having done so yet.
But we're waiting for the family to to make an announcement and
my colleagues at Kynexis to put together some some thoughts.
You you can read his obituary, It's LinkedIn.
The blog post again that's leanblog.org/audio 338.
There will be a Celebration of Life event on Sunday that I will
be fortunate to attend. Chris was most recently the
Senior Director of Lean Strategy at Kynexis, a company I've been
involved with since 2011, Chris for the last two years or so.
Many of his conex's colleagues will also be there to pay our
respects, to honor him, and to support his loved ones.
I I say this with with all sincerity that Lean or that that
Chris was one of my favorite people in the Lean community.
I appreciated his positive and thoughtful approach to lean and
into our work. We shared a love of discovering
new bourbons to share and discuss, which then I guess kind
of you know, lubricated both the social fun and the work
discussions that that occurred at conferences and settings like
that. Chris and I first got to know
each other. I think it was early 2015.
I I know that's when he invited me to be the first guest, the
honor to be the first guest on his podcast called the Lean
Leadership Podcast. As he shared with me then, these
were his goals for starting the podcast.
You know, I'm generalizing here. I'm going to share his thoughts.
He was looking to be of service to others.
He wasn't the type who did these types of things to draw
attention to himself, Chris said in his e-mail to me.
In my experience, leadership has been the difference between
success and failure and successful lean or continuous
improvement implementation. That is the niche in the lean
world that I want to focus on and serve.
My goal and mission is to equip other continuous improvement
agents of change with the experiences and setbacks of the
lean leaders who have had a positive influence on my career.
It is my hope that the stories resonate with the listener and
enables them to breakthroughs. So in 2018, Chris was working at
the time for a company that became a Kinexus customer.
This meant we had opportunities to compare notes and hang out at
the annual Kinexus Customer User Conference.
I I always sought him out, enjoyed our time.
I really enjoyed our time together very much.
His father is a surgeon, so we always had a lot to discuss, not
just about Lean or Lean healthcare, but about healthcare
and the challenges there in general.
During that era. I hosted A Kinex's webinar that
Chris presented in June of 2019 that's embedded in the blog
post. That webinar was titled
Solutions for Sustaining an Improvement Program.
It's it's nice to have these things and and and Chris's
presentation and words save for posterity.
I know I will want to revisit them.
Maybe not right now but at some point now.
Chris was also a guest host with me in the early episode of the
Lean Whiskey podcast in 2019. That's also embedded in the blog
post and you know, I after that. I was thrilled when Chris joined
the Kynexis team as an employee and as a leader.
He hired 2 Lean strategy team members.
You you can see one one of them Linda in in a photo with a
number of us including Chris that was taken at the 2022
Catalysis Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit.
Also in the post embedded a photo from the 2022 AM E Annual
conference. Matt and Kim from the Kinesis
team, our mutual friend Deandra Wardell.
In that photo, Chris loved events like this.
He loved working at Kinexus. He he passed away a few days
before our planned mid annual all employee meeting and and and
during that week and especially during an evening remembrance
event that we held for Chris almost everybody in the company
all forty of us shared some sort of story about how Chris had
positively connected with them and and impacted them in some
way, large or small you know Chris had serious goals this is
serious work but he also had a way of being positive and upbeat
lifting others up including myself and I.
There's times I I need that I don't remember Chris complaining
or being cynical about anything while being mindful of the real
challenges we all face. He loved dad jokes and you know,
it seemed he loved being a dad. There's another video I embedded
in the blog post video we did together about why he joined the
CONEXIS team and what his role was and was going to be.
I encourage you to go and check that out.
And you know, as as we prepared for that event in Austin to
honor and remember Chris, our CONEXIS CEO, Greg Jacobson had a
great idea that we should scroll back through text message
histories to find pictures and fun things that we had shared
with each other. Those photos in my, you know,
messages with Chris included a few bottles of whiskey that he
had sent me. Those of you who know whiskey,
if you see the picture, you'll you'll recognize, especially the
bottle on the right bottle of Blantons, he texted.
Oh, I got this on Kentucky Derby day.
That bottle Blanton's is not easy to find at retail stores.
It's especially hard to find it anything near its suggested
retail price. But wouldn't you know, I stopped
at a random small liquor store in Austin.
It was frankly just the most convenient.
Between the kind of access office and my hotel.
I was going to buy a bottle to bring to the event that evening.
And wouldn't you know there was a the single loan kind of dusty
bottle of Blanton's on the shelf.
I don't know why. It was sitting there long enough
to get dusty. And it was, it was just $70.00,
which isn't that bad of a markup compared to what a lot of stores
do. So I bought the bottle, we
shared it, we finished it and it was a big group at the event as
as people shared stories and pictures and memories and songs.
I think Chris would have appreciated that and I think he
made sure that bottle was there for us as as we tried to be
there for him in different ways. And so as I went through photos
of Chris, I found a photo I shared in this blog post that
that really illustrates his humble, continuous improvement
driven spirit. I've shared this photo in a few
presentations that I've given with his permission want to talk
about learning from mistakes And I also shared a story that ended
up in my book, The Mistakes that make Us.
It'll share an excerpt from the book that talks about Chris and
and so to describe the photo he's he's standing in front of
the room. You know I think in a fairly
humble if not contrite looking pose that I captured.
He's standing in front of a slide that has the title What
Went Wrong? And and this is part of what we
do at these kind of annual meetings, it's not about beating
ourselves up, but just, I think, the healthy reflection of what
went well, what went wrong in the previous six months.
And on that slide it says in plain language, I made mistakes.
And so here's what ended up in the book.
Psychological safety doesn't just appear.
Leaders at conexes very often and very visibly behave in ways
that create the conditions for employees to decide.
They can feel safe speaking up in some settings, emitting a
mistake can feel risky, if not dangerous if people think
leaders will punish them. But leaders can create
conditions where that risk seems very low or nonexistent.
When leaders admit mistakes with the focus on learning, that's
the first step in cultivating psychological safety.
The second step is rewarding and not punishing employees who do
the same. One of those leaders is Chris
Burnham, the senior director of lean strategy at Kynexis.
During a biannual meeting, Chris candidly told the entire company
I made mistakes. He reviewed what had gone well
in the first half of the year and what had gone wrong, a
standard that everybody follows and giving updates.
Chris explained his mistakes, what he learned and how he
planned to adjust the decidedly positive view of mistakes.
Chris told me I make mistakes every day, some big, some small,
but I own them all. Mistakes are how I learn and
gain experience. Chris believes his transparency
helps his teammates feel comfortable bringing him
problems they can solve together.
That's the end of the excerpt I I I found in my e-mail history
the the first questions that Chris had sent me in early 2015
about being a guest on his Lean Leadership podcast and.
And that's in the blog post. I don't think I'll, I'll read it
all, but you can find it again leanblog.org/audio 338.
So Greg Jacobson, who I mentioned earlier, he's one of
the cofounders of Kinex's, he's our CEO.
He was also later a guest on Chris's podcast and that's
embedded in the post. But to to honor Chris, Greg and
I are planning on doing a series of discussions on the Kinex's
podcast where we go through and answer those questions from
Chris's document as Chris would have asked us and I'm sure he
asked us some of those questions in in the episodes he had a
song. So I have one final memory of a
time Chris shared an opportunity for improvement with me.
It was earlier this year. It was the second time I was
experimenting with what we call an audience view approach using
Zoom webinars as as I had blogged and shared about.
Well, in that iteration of of that process, I had some kind of
Xians, including this time Chris, set up to be panelists.
That meant that the presenter could see them to have smiling
and nodding faces to speak to when doing the webinar.
But the attendees couldn't see them or hear them since their
view was locked in to see speaker only.
But during the Q&A, I wanted the attendees to see what's called
the gallery view of basically me and the presenter together at
the same time. That meant I had to ask the
audience panelists to leave before the Q&A and and this
meant I clicked to remove Chris from the webinar.
Well, I I I thought I had explained the plan clearly, but
look, that was on me. Chris was confused.
He was surprised. Afterwards, he he candidly
shared that he wasn't happy that he couldn't get back in.
He wanted to hear the Q&A live. And as as it was happening, so
Chris helped me realize the problem wasn't that I hadn't
communicated the plan clearly. The problem was actually more
like kicking out the audience panelists wasn't the right
approach. So thanks to the feedback from
Chris, I adjusted that approach for future webinars, allowing
the audience panelists to remain and leaving the attendee view as
speaker only during the Q&A. That's a more elegant and
frankly a better solution. So Chris spoke up in a direct,
candid and respected, respectful and constructive way that that
was Chris, that that's part of why he was respected and and
liked by people he worked with. I still can't believe that he's
gone. I send him my my most sincere
condolences to all who knew and loved him.
You know, we can thankfully continue to enjoy the recordings
of Chris continuing to absorb what he had to share and and and
how you know the way in which he shared it.
We're all better off for having known him as as Chris ended most
conversations he would say I love you brother and now I miss
you. So again, you can find today's
blog post. I encourage you, please listen
to Chris's podcast, whether it's the one with me in them or not.
The video I think you'll enjoy watching or revisiting that.
Again you can find thatleanblog.org/audio 338.