AGENDA (All times Eastern Standard Time (ET: UTC/GMT -5)
8:30 - 9:25
-
Engaging Leaders in the Lean Transformation
Presenter: Craig Szelestowski, Founder, Lean Agility Inc. -
You can make considerable improvement without active leadership support. However, before long, you can only go as far as your leadership group lets you. Often transformations fall short because leaders aren’t sufficiently engaged in the change initiative.
In this practical talk, Craig, who spent years as a public sector leader and executive, and who coaches leaders to optimize their transformations, will share:
- Common reasons why leaders might not buy-in and support a Lean transformation.
- What you can do as an individual change agent to engage them.
- Critical, specific, roles for leaders to play to amplify the transformation.
Craig is a thought leader in applying Lean to the work of government. As a public sector executive leading the Royal Canadian Mint’s Lean turnaround, he helped it move from precarious financial losses to profitability, and poor morale to being the first public sector organization in Canada being named to Top Canadian Employers lists. Founder of Lean Agility, he has developed this public sector practice into one of the most effective providers of training and consulting in North America. He teaches several programs at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership, including Lean Strategic Planning.
-
Session 1: A3 Thinking for (More) Inclusive Strategy Development
Presenter: Lex Schroeder, Lean Coach and Communications Leader in Tech -
No tool creates an inclusive work environment, but some organizational processes are more inclusive by design. Dubbed “Toyota’s Secret” by MIT’s Sloan Management Review, the A3 report is one of the most powerful tools for organizational effectiveness, creativity, and leadership at work. Learn how to use it to work with the full strength of your team’s collective intelligence. Solve problems and seize opportunities with a strategy alignment process that can (more) fully invite and leverage the brains, perspectives, and contributions of your team.
Lex is a Lean coach and communications leader who helps organizations solve problems and navigate the future of work. Lex got her start at The Lean Enterprise Institute where she was founding editor of The Lean Post and co-designed and led communications for LEI's Lean Product and Process Development Initiative under Jim Morgan, former head of product at Ford. At Twitter, Lex was a senior program manager on Twitter’s operational design and effectiveness team where she used Lean thinking and practice to create a safer platform and help Twitter deliver on its original mission of advancing the public conversation. At Ryder System, Inc., she led continuous improvement, learning and culture, and internal communications initiatives to build teams and strengthen Ryder's digital product development processes.
Lex writes for Harvard Business School's Race, Gender and Equity Initiative and is the editor of numerous books including Change Questions by D. Lynn Kelley with John Shook, Moving Money for Impact: A Guide to Gender Lens Investing by Tuti B. Scott; and Follow the Learner: The Role of Leader in Creating a Lean Culture by Dr. Sami Bahri.
-
Session 2: Succeed with Agile Practices Outside of Software
Presenter: Pawel Mysliwiec, Professional Kanban Trainer, Lean Agility / ProKanban.org -
Agile/Scrum is usually associated with the development of software and digital tools, but it is a powerful method for developing any kind of complex “product”, including the ones often found in government: reports, strategies, and policies, etc.
Pawel, an experienced change agent in the worlds of both Agile/Scrum and Lean, will share an overview of the principles, routines and tools of Agile/Scrum so that Lean practitioners can apply them to their own complex knowledge work processes.
Pawel’s professional mission is to help organizations and the people within them to find a more humane way of working together and creating awesome, sustainable results. A key thought leader at Scrum.org, he teaches and coaches leaders and teams to apply Agile/Scrum to exceed their goals and sustain their gains. He has deep experience working with both the Public and Private sectors.
-
Session 1: Workers of the World, Organize! Creating a Lean Management System to Lighten Your Workload and Improve Results
François Villeneuve, Director, Pension Investments and Treasury, Export Development Canada (EDC) -
Experiencing capacity issues? Feeling like you’ve lost control of your workload? You’re not alone. Join François as he explains how he felt the same way, and, in response, successfully created a Lean management system to help lighten the workload and improve the management of EDC’s pension investments. He will inspire you to try to implement, in your own workplace, the simple-but-powerful activities, methods, and tools that made his system work so well: documented procedures, task sharing, planning, new employee onboarding, skillset development, digital file organization, and continuous improvement.
In his over 20 years at EDC, François has held a wide variety of leadership roles that involved everything from managing financial risk to managing a group of financial software engineers. Since 2017, Villeneuve has managed the pension investments of the defined benefit and contribution components of EDC’s pension plan. Passionate about Lean, he has been remarkably successful in applying improvements to make work easier, better and faster in all the areas he’s worked in. He holds a Master of Mathematical Finance from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics-Science from the University of Ottawa.
-
Session 2: Strengthening Resilience: Tools for Positive Disruption
Jean Marleau, Director, Strategic Planning and Research, Canadian Heritage -
The winds may howl, but I will not be swept away.
Isn’t that what we all want when facing the winds of challenge and change? There’s no miraculous way of avoiding being swept away AND there are also some proven ways of being more resilient to change.
Leading change within the Public Service is a challenging endeavor. Being an "agent of change" requires immense energy, resilience, and a commitment to self-care. Join Jean Marleau, a self-described "positive disruptor," as he shares practical tools to help you strengthen your resilience. Discover strategies to navigate challenges, maintain a positive mindset, and sustain your change effort.
Jean Marleau has over 20 years of experience as a public servant, having worked in departments such as Employment and Social Development, The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, and Canadian Heritage, where he is presently. He started on the front lines, bringing services directly to Canadians, and has risen more recently to hold a variety of executive roles. As a dedicated Lean practitioner, he is passionate about continuous improvement and is particularly interested in the human aspects of organizational change.
-
Mini-Session 1: Less is More: The Hidden Power of Subtraction in Public Service Delivery
Chris Irwin, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. -
Do you remember learning to ride a bike? For most of us, it meant wobbly starts on an overly large bike outfitted with training wheels, with our parents frantically running behind, trying to prevent us from injury. Today, many kids learn to ride more effectively-- and with fewer scraped knees-- using a smaller and simpler “balance bike”, stripped of everything but two wheels and a frame. Learning how to ride a bike was dramatically improved—not by adding features to a “big kid” bike, but instead by subtracting them.
Faced with our current service delivery challenges, our first instinct is always to add more: more staff, more guidance, more oversight, more systems. But what if we could improve service quality by subtracting instead?
Chris will draw on both Leidy Klotz's groundbreaking research in subtraction bias and his extensive experience in improving processes in the public sector to show you how government organizations achieved breakthrough results by daring to simplify and improve their processes through the counterintuitive power of subtraction.
Prior to joining Lean Agility Chris was a director in the Lean Office of the Cabinet Office of the Province of Ontario, providing Lean training and project facilitation to the entire provincial public service. In his time in this role, he co-led the province to become one of the leading North American jurisdictions in Lean process improvement.
-
Mini-Session 2: The Power of Shielding the Team to Get Results
Alain L'Abbé, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. -
Alain will speak about how leaders who act as “shields” for their staff tend to get better results from them. When team members do not need to deal with unnecessary obstacles while executing their daily work—obstacles such as having to managed unplanned requests, noisy distractions, countless interruptions, excessive workload, and competing priorities -- they are more engaged, focused, and productive.
Alain will draw on his real-world experience in facilitating improvement projects and guiding teams in their day-to-day way of working to provide you with practical tips and tools to help you shield your team…and get better results.
Alain is a Lean government and transformation change agent and teacher/mentor. He is also an accomplished and strategic senior Change Management and Project Management professional with over 29 years diverse (military, public service and consultant) work experience and a broad educational background. He has developed cutting-edge and highly effective approaches to creating and sustaining Lean change in a government setting and managing high performing teams.
-
Session 1: Clear Vision, Clear Results: Transforming University HR Processes Through Value Stream Mapping
Tim Francis, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc.
Maria Chirico, Continuous Improvement Specialist, University of Calgary -
When processes slow down, complexity and waste multiply. Team members get pulled into endless status updates, data grows stale and needs refreshing, and scope creeps inexorably outward. But what if there was a better way?
In this engaging session, learn how University of Calgary teams are using Value Stream Mapping to shine a light on process bottlenecks and hidden inefficiencies. You'll discover how this powerful Lean tool helps teams invest the right effort in the right places - leading to dramatic improvements and results. For instance, the university’s Human Resources and contracting teams drastically reduced its time-to-hire while also reducing their amount of work effort. Similarly, administrative units eliminated weeks of delay.
Join us to learn practical techniques for eliminating the "process tax" that slow work imposes on your team and organization.
Tim Francis is a creative Lean process transformation specialist with industry-leading strengths in technical, analytical, and human dimensions of change in government. Prior to joining Lean Agility in 2022, he led successful process improvement projects while working at Veterans Affairs Canada and Infrastructure Canada.
Maria Chirico has worked with the University of Calgary’s Human Resources department since 2006. In 2021, she took on the role of Continuous Improvement Specialist. She successfully completed her Green Belt certification with Lean Agility in early 2024 and subsequently went on to transform many other processes within the University’s HR area
-
Session 2: TBA
-
-
Session 1: TBA
-
Using Continuous Improvement in government can be exciting for teams. Empowering and engaging the front-line team members is valuable and can unleash some great ideas and countermeasures. However, coaching from the middle has challenges. Executive leaders, Directors, Division Directors, Elected Officers as well as middle and front-line leadership need to understand their role in Continuous Improvement. Leader behaviors impact the success of projects and their sustainability. Some of these Lean behaviors may be different than are found in traditional leadership models.
To address this gap, we created an interactive CI Leader Program. Our goal was to develop leaders as coaches to transform their teams and team culture. We developed a set of tools and resources to support leaders in promoting team engagement in innovative and creative solutions for improving their work.
Kristi, Shannon, and Alenka will share:- Why a CI Leader Program is important for leadership development, supporting the efforts of the front-line team members, and ultimately creating a culture of continuous improvement across the organization.
- The journey of discovering what was needed and the framework for building the curriculum
- Our lessons learned and next steps for this program including advancing opportunities for certified leaders
You will learn to:
- Identify the value of investing in your leaders
- Define the core concepts and leader behaviors important for empowering and engaging front-line team members in continuous improvement efforts
- Describe ways to develop a shared learning environment
Kristi Hoagland, Director of Operational Excellence at Snohomish County, draws upon 23 years of experience in Lean Leadership. Her healthcare leadership background includes overseeing revenue cycle, clinic, and hospital operations, where she successfully implemented and sustained a Lean Management. Kristi’s passion for Lean drives her mission to build programs that cultivate Lean leaders who champion innovation, empower staff, and foster a continuous improvement mindset for the benefit of both employees and residents.
Alenka Fields is a Continuous Improvement Specialist, Project Manager and Change Practitioner for Snohomish County. She has over 20 years of Lean transformation experience as a coach and consultant for a variety of organizations in Healthcare and Insurance, within the US as well as the UK and Canada. Alenka has a passion for coaching and guiding leaders and teams. On her deck overlooking the sound with her husband and doodle is her Zen place.
Shannon Boswell is currently a Continuous Improvement Specialist/PM at Snohomish County as of January 2023. Shannon brings over 20 years of hands-on Lean experience in healthcare as well as consulting in organization transformation and change management. Pairing Lean concepts with practical experience, she works with executives, frontline staff, and everyone in-between in the implementation, adoption, sustainment, and realization of successful Lean management.
-
Session 2: Continuous Improvement Leadership Development: Setting Your Continuous Improvement Efforts Up for Success
Kristi Hoagland, Director of Operational Excellence, Snohomish County, WA
Shannon Boswell, Continuous Improvement Specialist and Project Manager, Snohomish County, WA
Alenka Fields, Project Manager and Change Practitioner, Snohomish County, WA -
Using Continuous Improvement in government can be exciting for teams. Empowering and engaging the front-line team members is valuable and can unleash some great ideas and countermeasures. However, coaching from the middle has challenges. Executive leaders, Directors, Division Directors, Elected Officers as well as middle and front-line leadership need to understand their role in Continuous Improvement. Leader behaviors impact the success of projects and their sustainability. Some of these Lean behaviors may be different than are found in traditional leadership models.
To address this gap, we created an interactive CI Leader Program. Our goal was to develop leaders as coaches to transform their teams and team culture. We developed a set of tools and resources to support leaders in promoting team engagement in innovative and creative solutions for improving their work.
Kristi, Shannon, and Alenka will share:- Why a CI Leader Program is important for leadership development, supporting the efforts of the front-line team members, and ultimately creating a culture of continuous improvement across the organization.
- The journey of discovering what was needed and the framework for building the curriculum
- Our lessons learned and next steps for this program including advancing opportunities for certified leaders
You will learn to:
- Identify the value of investing in your leaders
- Define the core concepts and leader behaviors important for empowering and engaging front-line team members in continuous improvement efforts
- Describe ways to develop a shared learning environment
Kristi Hoagland, Director of Operational Excellence at Snohomish County, draws upon 23 years of experience in Lean Leadership. Her healthcare leadership background includes overseeing revenue cycle, clinic, and hospital operations, where she successfully implemented and sustained a Lean Management. Kristi’s passion for Lean drives her mission to build programs that cultivate Lean leaders who champion innovation, empower staff, and foster a continuous improvement mindset for the benefit of both employees and residents.
Alenka Fields is a Continuous Improvement Specialist, Project Manager and Change Practitioner for Snohomish County. She has over 20 years of Lean transformation experience as a coach and consultant for a variety of organizations in Healthcare and Insurance, within the US as well as the UK and Canada. Alenka has a passion for coaching and guiding leaders and teams. On her deck overlooking the sound with her husband and doodle is her Zen place.
Shannon Boswell is currently a Continuous Improvement Specialist/PM at Snohomish County as of January 2023. Shannon brings over 20 years of hands-on Lean experience in healthcare as well as consulting in organization transformation and change management. Pairing Lean concepts with practical experience, she works with executives, frontline staff, and everyone in-between in the implementation, adoption, sustainment, and realization of successful Lean management.
Lean Clinics: "Book Club Edition"
These clinics are intended to smaller-group, informal discussions amongst Lean and continuous improvement practitioners. To get the discussions going, each of the Lean Agility consultants has chosen a book or article that has inspired them personally in their improvement careers and practices.
Come join them to hear more about why they chose the text they did and what their three biggest take-aways were. Do you have a favourite book, video, or podcast that inspired you in your own Lean practice? Come share yours and join the conversation!
-
"This is Lean" by Niklas Modig and Par Ahlstrom
Ken Eakin, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. -
Our conventional understanding of “efficiency” is incorrect; when organizations focus too much on utilizing resources—that is, keeping people busy-- it actually increases the amount of work there is to do, making the organization as a whole less efficient. Modig and Ahlstrom call this the “Efficiency Paradox”. They explain, with simplicity and clarity, how Lean organizations break away from this conventional notion of efficiency by focusing much more on flowing value to their clients.
-
"Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less", by Greg McKeown.
Alain L'Abbé, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. -
The art of saying “no” to the trivial many, to reserve time for the Critical Few; prioritizing to avoid overwhelm.
-
"What's the Point If We Can't Have Fun?" An article by David Graeber
Tim Francis, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. -
Just as scientists struggled to justify animal play through purely rational explanations, we may be overlooking the vital role of experimentation, social interaction, and apparent inefficiencies in our workplaces. Through this lens, we'll explore how Lean thinking might evolve by understanding that not everything valuable can be measured in terms of immediate productivity.
-
"Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows
Chris Irwin, Senior Consultant, Lean Agility Inc. -
Many problems we face cannot be solved by quick fixes in isolation; see the whole system and reach deeper to the structures and mindsets that are at play.
-
"Atomic Habits" by James Clear
Craig Szelestowski, Founder, Lean Agility Inc. -
Evidence-based strategies to create new and sustained habits, particularly useful in helping teams sustain new flow-creating behaviours.
15:05 - 15:50
-
TBA
-
You can make considerable improvement without active leadership support. However, before long, you can only go as far as your leadership group lets you. Often transformations fall short because leaders aren’t sufficiently engaged in the change initiative.
In this practical talk, Craig, who spent years as a public sector leader and executive, and who coaches leaders to optimize their transformations, will share:
- Common reasons why leaders might not buy-in and support a Lean transformation.
- What you can do as an individual change agent to engage them.
- Critical, specific, roles for leaders to play to amplify the transformation.
Craig is a thought leader in applying Lean to the work of government. As a public sector executive leading the Royal Canadian Mint’s Lean turnaround, he helped it move from precarious financial losses to profitability, and poor morale to being the first public sector organization in Canada being named to Top Canadian Employers lists. Founder of Lean Agility, he has developed this public sector practice into one of the most effective providers of training and consulting in North America. He teaches several programs at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership, including Lean Strategic Planning.
Copyright © 2022 Lean Agility Inc. All rights reserved. Powered by QuickSilk.