A board retreat is a great way to get alignment of the key leadership positions within a nonprofit organization. Typically, nonprofits hold board meetings monthly or quarterly, while a board retreat is typically conducted once (maybe twice) a year. These retreats allow an organization to step away from the day-to-day management, and instead think more ..read more

Sally worked many years in the hospitality industry applying Lean Six Sigma, and she shares her experiences to improve the guest experience. She also shares an example of a project that determined the optimal reward points to get customers to agree to reduced or no housekeeping, which was good for the environment, resulting in less ..read more

Lynne Smith, former Director of Business Design at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the potential and difficulties of applying Lean Thinking to NGOs, and how it can be used to scale impact. She reflects back on the lean transformation at the Gates Foundation with an interview with Steve Bell and Roberto Priolo, and ..read more

The panel discussion, hosted by Rod Morgan of RPM-Academy, offers insights and real-world experiences as three seasoned municipal continuous improvement leaders – Brenda Stonehouse (City of Kawartha Lakes), Michael Norman (City of London), and Kenneth Leung (City of Mississauga)– share their journey in deploying Lean methodologies in the Canadian municipal sector. From discussing the evolution ..read more

In this episode of the WLEI podcast, they discuss how universities are connecting students with for-profit and nonprofit organizations to practice and apply hands-on lean learning experiences. Dennis Wade from Oakland University and Lisa Eshbach from Ferris State University (both schools in Michigan) go into details about their background in industry, how each of their ..read more

In this episode of The Lean Solutions podcast, Patrick Adams interviews Shayne Daughenbaugh on his unique journey into process improvement as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt that lasted 5 years with the State of Nebraska, and his new venture into consulting. He shares his experiences leading successful organizational change within government, focusing on streamlining ..read more

Does your Lean Six Sigma training structure help the organization sustain improvement gains? Do you struggle with the “one-and-done” trend where Green Belts complete a project, get a certificate, and then fade from the problem-solving culture? The State of Vermont has experimented with a different path for their Lean and Six Sigma training program. They ..read more

The IISE Annual Conference Volunteering Event, organized by the Sustainable Development Division, connects volunteer with a local nonprofit agency in the conference’s host city. The organization selected for 2023 in New Orleans was SBP, which shrinks the time between disaster and recovery. To achieve their mission, SBP takes a holistic approach to disasters—increasing resilience before ..read more

Jeff Trageser and Mike Vazquez from Lifesharing were interviewed on the JIT Cafe podcast by Elisabeth Swan and Tracy O’Rourke to discuss how process improvement has been used to help procure and facilitate organ and tissue donations from donors to local transplant centers. They discuss metrics used to track the success of organ transplant, dealing ..read more

Bella Englebach interviews Kerry L. Bass about his work with ASQ to help make elections secure and fair. He discusses the variation in state election laws, the challenges of voter registration, long lines at polling locations, and how the Kano Model can explain voter expectations. You can visit “The Edges of Lean” podcast episode page ..read more