Craig Szelestowski is a Lean/Agile transformation specialist with more than two decades of experience implementing dramatic turnarounds. With his coaching, clients have reduced delivery times by up to 95%, increased capacity by up to 400% and created outstanding levels of employee engagement.

In 2007, as Vice President of Human Resources, Lean and Quality, Craig led the Royal Canadian Mint’s Lean transformation, helping to move the organization through a challenging era of cutbacks and job losses into an extended period of financial and organizational health and stability. During his tenure, the Mint realized tens of millions of dollars of Lean improvements, dramatically reduced the time and effort to deliver its products and services, moving from a financial loss, to a profit of over $68 million. In terms of employee engagement, it improved from 100 grievances per year to 20 per year and was named by Maclean’s magazine as one of “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” from 2007 to 2010. 

Throughout this experience it became clear that Lean practitioners at the time, coming primarily from a manufacturing background, were limited in their ability to talk the language of government and understand the unique challenges faced by knowledge workers. Craig incorporated Lean Agility in 2010 to fill this gap, developing a proprietary approach to training and consulting that adapts Lean principles, tools and techniques to meet the needs of non-manufacturing organizations. More than a decade later, Lean Agility has worked with well over 50 organizations and trained thousands of knowledge workers in improvement methodologies that go well beyond Lean to include Agile, Scrum and Service Design. Craig is widely regarded as one of Canada’s leading experts in the field serving as the Director of Lean content at the Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership, contributing often to Canadian Government Executive magazine and appearing frequently as a guest speaker at conferences and events. He is also the chair of the annual Lean Government Summit, which he founded in 2011. 

Craig offers his services in both of Canada’s official languages; he served as the Mint’s Official Languages Co-Champion from 2004 to 2010.

Craig volunteers his services as a trainer and mentor to not-for-profit organizations to do the good work they do, even better. In his spare time, he writes and plays music, and is known for his extensive, carefully-curated list of dad jokes which result in frequent eye-rolls from his wife and daughter. They live together with their dog Daisy in Ottawa.