Episode page: https://www.leanblog.org/438

My guests for Episode #438 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Shannon Karels and Kathy Miller, the authors of the recently-released book Steel Toes and Stilettos: A True Story of Women Manufacturing Leaders and Lean Transformation Success. Their website is opsisters.com.

Kathy Miller is a Senior Operations Executive who has held numerous global vice president and director roles both in manufacturing and lean enterprise leadership.  Kathy is a Shingo Prize Recipient for Large Businesses as a Plant Manager.  

She started her career in Operations as a 17-year-old co-op student at a vehicle assembly plant, and progressed through engineering, marketing, lean, and operations leadership roles, working for four large publicly traded corporations in executive roles.  

Shannon Karels is a Senior Operations Manager who has led multiple lean transformations and run operations for two large publicly traded corporations across various industries and business models.  She started her career in supply chain management and progressed through lean and operations leadership roles. 

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• What are your Lean origin stories?

• Including Chris Harris, John Shook, Jim Womack

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Episode page: https://www.leanblog.org/437

My guest for Episode #437 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Peter Docker. He is the author of the book Leading From the Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control.

He was the co-author of the book Find Your Why and formerly a founding Igniter at Simon Sinek Inc. Peter draws on his 25-year career in the Royal Air Force, and over 14 years spent partnering with businesses around the world, to inspire others to “Lead from the Jumpseat.”

There are opportunities today to connect the dots to Lean, as we focus on styles of leadership that are very compatible with Lean.

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• Mutual respect… “respect for people” connection

• Planning for likely events – checklists 

1. Learning to fly

• Belonging – how can leaders create a sense of belonging?

• This goes beyond the word “engagement”?

• “Learning is a large part of military culture” — what creates that?

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Founder/CEO of CJ Young Consulting, LLC

Episode page: https://www.leanblog.org/436

My guest for Episode #436 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Dr. Cynthia J. Young, PMP, LSS MBB, CMQ-OE, the Founder/CEO of CJ Young Consulting, LLC.

Cindy helps organizations optimize human-centric knowledge to increase trust and support collaboration and inclusion. She is a TEDx Speaker, an HBR Contributor, and a Veteran (23 years in the U.S. Navy)

She is also a Curriculum Developer and Instructor with Leidos, an engineering and defense contractor.

Cindy is also presenting a webinar on February 10th, part of the KaiNexus CI Webinar series… learn more and register here:

Impactful Methods to Benefit Organizational Knowledge Management and Continuous Improvement Efforts

She is also leading an upcoming “Knowledge Management Bootcamp.”

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• Origin story as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt? –> In the Navy

• We should “Resist hoarding knowledge” — is that counterintuitive?

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/435 

My guests for Episode #435 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Sunil Khushalani, MD, a psychiatrist who specializes in Addiction Psychiatry and Antonio DePaolo, PhD, a transformation executive and a Baldrige Fellow with over 22 years of experience in improvement science.

My guests today are the co-authors of the new book, released in December, titled Transforming Mental Healthcare: Applying Performance Improvement Methods to Mental Healthcare.

You can order the book through the publisher at a 20% discount, using code ESBAC.

They are a physician (psychiatrist more specifically) and an industrial engineer:

• Sunil Khushalani, MD, a psychiatrist who specializes in Addiction Psychiatry

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

•  I'm always fascinated to hear your ‘lean origin stories” if you will

• How did you approach transformation / Lean in the Mental Healthcare setting?

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Professor at INSEAD, author of "Built to Innovate"

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/434

My guest for Episode #434 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Ben Bensaou. He is an INSEAD professor and author of Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into Your Company's DNA.

Ben earned his PhD at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where I was an MBA student. He was part of Jim Womack‘s research team that studied the auto industry and that group coined the term “Lean.”

He's joining us from Kobe, Japan, where he is on sabbatical.

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• I'm curious to hear your memories and reflections of the Womack research era

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

My guest for Episode #433 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Gerard Ibarra, an author, business consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur.

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/433

Gerard is the author of the book Good Decisions, Better Outcomes: A Simple, Five-Step Process to Help You Make Important and Difficult Decisions with Confidence and Clarity, available now.

Gerard received his PhD from Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Lyle School of Engineering with emphasis in Logistics Systems Engineering and Operations Research. He has taught graduate courses in logistics systems engineering at SMU, as well as logistics, supply chain management and e-business courses at the University of Dallas' Graduate School of Management.

He's had executive roles in logistics companies, has had his own consulting firm, and was President and CEO of a company from 2008 to 2010. He was also the CEO of Jaguar Logistics, the largest medical on-demand transport company in Texas until acquired by Dropoff in 2018.

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• What's your origin story related to continuous improvement? Where and when and why?

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Show page: https://www.leanblog.org/432 

My guest for Episode #432 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Jamie Flinchbaugh, an old friend of mine and a frequent guest (Episodes 5, 6, 10, 64, and 261, plus the two times he's interviewed me, Episodes 50 and 316).

He's also the co-creator and frequent co-host with me on the Lean Whiskey podcast series.

Today, the talk is all Lean, no whiskey. We talk about leadership, problem solving, more today — talking about his new book, People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem. I put Jamie on the spot to coach me through some problem solving I'm doing related to podcast growth, and he makes a lot of great points.

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• So, we don't need to worry about AI problem solving?

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Show notes and links: https://leanblog.org/431

My guests for Episode #431 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Sonia Singh, a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, executive coach, and professor with 19 years of experience in healthcare operations, management consulting, leadership development, and culture transformation.

She's worked with dozens of companies in improving their performance, resulting in a collective financial impact of $30M. She's trained and coached over 2000 emerging and experienced leaders. 

Sonia is the founder of Sonia Singh International, and one of her offerings is the Influential Leadership Academy, where she helps leaders build emotional intelligence and master their influence. 

She was previously an employee at some healthcare systems and Cardinal Health.

Sonia holds a degree in Psychology from Northern Illinois University, a Master's degree in Health Administration from Tulane University, and completed her professional coaching training at the University of California, Davis.

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• How did you first get introduced to Lean or continuous improvement concepts?

“It's a strength when you can share your power.”

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Show notes and links: https://www.leanblog.org/430

My guests for Episode #430 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Eric Ethington and Matt Zayko, the authors of the new book The Power of Process: The Story of of Innovative Lean Process Development. They are both faculty for the Lean Enterprise Institute, among other roles. Eric has a firm called Lean Shift Consulting and Matt has a new role as Lean Leader at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

The book is available now through the publisher, or from Amazon in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle formats.

Today, we discuss their book, with topics and questions including:

• I like to ask guests about their “Lean origin stories” — When did you first learn about Lean and what was the context?

• Deming's book Out of the Crisis

• If you have flexibility, you don't have to be as perfect

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/429

My guest for Episode #429 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is John Chacon, the Director of Construction Excellence at Black & Veatch. We've been connected on social media for a while and John's reply to a tweet led to this podcast conversation, where he said:

“If you have read this blog post and are still thinking about incentivizing folks for ideas…stop…give me a call and I will tell you some stories about paying your folks to think.”

Today, we discuss topics and questions including:

• John's Lean origin story? In the Marine Corps.

• Not just the process, it's the people

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.