Cheryl Jekiel, Founder of the Lean Leadership Center, works with visionary organizations that require strong people strategies and systems to achieve their business vision.   

 She and her team help leadership teams increase the capability of their people to create limitless organizational value.  Ms. Jekiel has developed an expertise in lean manufacturing with a particular focus in cultures of continuous improvement.  Prior to owning Lean Leadership Center, Ms. Jekiel held several senior leadership roles including operations, human resources, and general management in the food manufacturing industry. 

 As the author of “Lean Human Resources: Redesigning HR Practices for a Culture of Continuous Improvement”, Ms. Jekiel is committed to building Lean HR as a recognized field of work.  She lives in the Chicagoland area with her husband and two dogs, Sid and Ginger. 

Change is hard. But you won’t create a joyful workplace by leading the way you’ve always led. In this talk, Rich explores his own journey to joy, focusing on how he had to learn to lead in a completely different way and, by doing so, witnessed results that exceeded his wildest expectations.

Participants will identify opportunities for coaching that might normally go unnoticed. Focusing on respect for people, this session reveals how tending to what people need to perform well provides a basis for developing a coaching style of leadership.

In addition to the traditional Lean applications, the session focuses on being aware of how leaders are interacting with their teams on a continual basis.  The session is based upon lean being both a mindset and a way to work.  Therefore, the coaching style of leadership also needs to be both a mindset and a way to work.  Not only is daily coaching an approach for leaders, but also amongst peers as members of a team.

Participants will first identify opportunities for coaching team members and then practice types of questions that are helpful to addressing these coaching challenges

Kelly Mallery is a Lean Manufacturing Coach at GE Aviation in Rutland, VT.  She joined GE in 2019 after 7 years of manufacturing engineering experience in solar and industrial consumer products.  Kelly has been practicing continuous improvement for her entire career and in the last two and a half years has transitioned from practicing to coaching.  She completed her bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.  Kelly and her family live in the Upper Valley nestled between Vermont and New Hampshire. 

After introducing Lean to 4 organizations, Patrick combined the healing mission of organizations he led with implementing Lean to develop a unique theory of addressing the psychology of lean during implementation. This systems approach is partially based on a Restoration to Health hypothesis Patrick envisioned for addressing Childhood Acquired Trauma. Initially designed to implement lean management and addressing behavioral issues in tribal health systems, he saw a direct application for guiding an organization through the difficulties of lean change management. As CEO for an anti-poverty organization in Alaska, he used this systems approach to achieve a startling transformation in less than 3 years

WHY I DO WHAT I DO

Two things about my work intrigue me. I love helping clients solve their culture puzzle. What is working well? What is not? What norms hold the current culture in place? How can we understand the root causes behind why the culture is the way it is? Then we work to build and create an intentional culture. When I work with individual problem solvers’, I love the A-HA moment when they realize that this stuff works! They get solid results and then they want to apply the concepts even more. I’m fascinated by what people accomplish using the improvement methods I teach.

• I enjoy spending time with husband of 25 years and my two boys…being involved in their lives and watching them grow up.
• I like to stay active with biking, hiking, and Pickleball. I enjoy traveling and seeing new places, especially visiting our country’s National Parks.

A results driven lean director and manager with over twenty years experience implementing lean manufacturing and continuous improvement. Deep understanding of the Toyota Production System with proven ability see any organization’s potential, cut to the core issues, gain “buy-in” and get things moving by engaging the entire team to develop solutions to impact the bottom line. An effective change agent who facilitates the process of discovery.

Specialties: Lean Manufacturing implementation in brown field or green field operations.

Operations Excellence · Leadership Team Training and Development · Study Missions · Strategy Development · Value Stream Mapping · Taming ERP / MRP Systems · Supplier and Supply Chain Development · 3P · Kaizen · Heijunka · Kanban · Work Cells · A3 Problem Solving

Always seeing the possibilities.