Who Owns Your Vet (8)? The spirit of Genchi Genbutsu (#431)

Genchi Genbutsu is a natural evolution from a principle of craftsmanship to a lament for what’s being lost in the corporatization of veterinary medicine.

In Japanese, Genchi Genbutsu means the real place, the real thing.

It’s the practice of going to the source. Seeing for yourself. Listening. And understanding before you decide.

At Toyota, it was a cornerstone of quality and integrity. Managers walked the factory floor daily.

Engineers didn’t rely on reports. They stood beside the machines, heard the sounds, smelled the oil, and learned from the people who did the work.

In veterinary medicine, we once lived by the same creed.

We went to the farm, the stable, the kennels. We listened to the farmer’s story, felt the warmth of a flank, the pulse beneath our fingers, the rhythm of breathing that told us whether we were winning or losing the fight.

We went and saw.

Because nothing replaces being there.

The Real Place, the Real Patient

Every veterinarian knows that clinical truth lives in context. You can’t understand an animal’s illness from a spreadsheet any more than you can feel the texture of a coat through a quarterly report.

You must go and see.

But somewhere along the line, our profession began to lose that habit.

As corporate ownership spread through clinics, the real place shifted from the exam room to the boardroom.

The new emphasis was on metrics, not moments. Revenue lines, not relationships.

The go and see became check the dashboard.

The patient became an entry on a cloud-based record.

The veterinarian became a provider.

And the owner - that once independent guardian of craft and care - became a line item on a private equity spreadsheet.

When the Gemba Moves Upstairs

In the Toyota system, the gemba - the place where value is created - is sacred.

In veterinary medicine, the gemba is the clinic floor, the operating theater, the farm gate.

It’s where the bond between healer and animal, between science and compassion, takes physical form.

Today, that gemba is too often ignored.

The executives making decisions about staffing, pricing, and product sales rarely step into the exam room. They haven’t watched a student’s trembling hands steady over their first venipuncture. They haven’t smelled the antiseptic mingled with fear in a late-night emergency.

They speak instead of efficiency targets, revenue optimization, and synergy. But you can’t measure empathy in EBITDA.

If Genchi Genbutsu were truly practiced in the corporate offices, the leaders would leave their offices and go to where the work happens. They’d watch a nurse cradle an aging Labrador as the syringe empties. They’d see a young veterinarian torn between what’s best for the animal and what’s required by the corporate fee schedule.

They’d feel the disconnect between mission and margin.

The Cost of Not Seeing

When decisions are made without seeing, they lose moral weight.

A policy about time-per-consult might look sensible on paper, until you sit beside a vet trying to explain euthanasia to a family in twelve minutes.

A directive about pharmacy compliance might please shareholders, until you hear a client say they can’t afford the markup and will forgo the medication altogether.

The spreadsheet never cries.

The animal does.

This is what happens when Genchi Genbutsu dies. When leadership becomes abstract. When care becomes commodified. And when those who decide are no longer those who see.

Reclaiming the Gemba

Gemba is a Japanese word that literally means the real place.

• In practice

  
  

  • Gemba refers to the actual location where work happens. Where value is created. Where problems occur. And where truth can be directly observed.

• In Business and Lean Thinking

• In the Toyota Production System where concepts like Genchi Genbutsu originated, the Gemba is the factory floor, the assembly line, or the workstation where products are made.

  
  

• Leaders and engineers are encouraged to perform a Gemba Walk. To go there, watch the process, talk to workers, and understand issues firsthand rather than relying on reports or assumptions.

  
  

Go see, ask why, and show respect.

• So, in Lean Philosophy:

• Gemba = the real place.

  
  

• Genchi Genbutsu = go and see the real thing in the real place.

• They are intertwined:

Gemba is where?

Genchi Genbutsu is how you learn from it?

• In Veterinary Medicine

• The Gemba is wherever care happens:

• The exam room where a vet comforts an anxious pet,

• The farmyard where a cow struggles to rise,

• The operating theater where precision and compassion meet,

• Daily rounds where young vets learn by watching, touching, asking, doing.

If the corporate boardroom is abstraction, the Gemba is authenticity.

The muddy boots, the quiet moments, the heartbeat under your palm.

It’s where veterinary medicine becomes real.

Rick’s Commentary

So, what does go and see mean for us now?

It means:

• Re-anchoring the profession in its physical and moral reality.

  
  

• That practice owners, and especially corporate executives, should spend time each month on the floor, in the consult room, at the farms, with the nurses. Not to check compliance, but to witness care.

  
  

• That veterinarians themselves must resist the seduction of abstraction. The endless metrics, the dashboards, the KPIs. We must remember that medicine begins with sight, smell, touch, and silence. It begins with going and seeing - really seeing - the animal in front of us.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if those who sit atop the veterinary conglomerates embraced Genchi Genbutsu sincerely.

If they spent one night in emergency with a single vet and two nurses.

If they watched the exhaustion, the compassion, the quiet moments of grace.

Would they still speak of throughput?

Would they still push wellness plans designed by accountants?

Would they still define success in multiples of EBITDA?

Or would they finally see what they’ve been buying and selling all along?

A profession built on trust, intimacy, and care.

Because the truth is this:

The soul of veterinary medicine can’t be owned.

It can only be seen.

By those who choose to go to the real place and look with real eyes.

Genchi Genbutsu isn’t just a management philosophy.

Genchi Genbutsu is a moral philosophy.

Go to the patient.

Go to the place.

See what’s real.

Decide with empathy.

And never let the numbers blind you to the beating heart that started it all.

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