I'm really excited to host and moderate the latest webinar in the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinar series, which will be presented by my friend Dr. William Harvey. REGISTER
I saw William give a great presentation last year at the AME Annual Conference in Cleveland, so I asked him to give the same talk (with continuous improvement iteration, of course) in our webinar series.
About the webinar:
Enterprise excellence and inclusive excellence are closely linked, and real-world challenges have shown that both are essential to any organization's success. To achieve enterprise excellence, organizations must focus on improving their operations and processes while creating an inclusive environment that engages everyone. In this interactive session, the facilitator will highlight commonly established business practices and how they limit our ability to engage everyone every day. More importantly, participants will likely gain increased awareness of what we can do differently to maximize enterprise excellence through deliberate inclusion.
What is Enterprise Excellence?
Enterprise Excellence is a holistic approach that's aimed at achieving world-class performance across all aspects of the organization.
What might I learn?
A way to engage all in creating Inclusive Excellence. Lessons from the US military and their parallels to the story of Harry Potter. How belt systems and CI teams can destroy inclusive practices. How leadership language invites people to the party. There are three things leaders can do to engage everyone every day: maximizing psychological safety to create environments where folks learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo.
Who might benefit? Anyone and everyone leading folks from the shop floor to the top floor.
You can register here:
Enterprise Excellence is Inclusive Excellence
If you can't attend, we'll email you a link to the recording.
Here's a quick preview:
Preview Video:
Transcript:
Mark Graban:
Hi, it's Mark Graban. Welcome to the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement podcast. Today, we're doing a quick preview of our next webinar, Enterprise Excellence is Inclusive Excellence, which will be presented on May 30 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Mark Graban:
It's going to be presented by our guest here for the podcast to do a quick preview. It's a friend of mine, I've seen him give an earlier version of this presentation. Dr. William Harvey. William, thanks for being here. How are you doing?
William Harvey:
First? Happy to be here, Mark. Love the KaiNexus thing. And if I could show you my computer now. I love the stickers that Kinexis is putting out, so they are out and about in full force, really doing well.
William Harvey:
The weather is breaking in Cincinnati, Ohio. So really excited about what the summer offers for us.
Mark Graban:
We're almost there and I messed up on following my standard work, but so I do want to jump in and remind people, as I should have to register for this webinar or after the 30th to view the recording, you can go to kainexus.com/webinars to register and look for a link in the show notes specifically for this session's webinar page. So I'm back on track now. I'll check that box on my checklist. And William, as we do here in the preview, I'm first going to ask you in your own words, rather than me reading the bio, tell us about yourself and your career.
William Harvey:
Yeah, so it's a, it's a brief bit, but I would just share. There was a genesis in the Marine Corps. So left high school to join the Marine Corps very quickly. And some of the conversations and lessons learned actually show up in this conversation about some things that were done really well that I think helped with enterprise excellence and inclusive excellence. After leaving the Marine Corps, I didn't really know what that translated to, so I got in a supply chain before embarking in a manufacturing career on operations and operational excellence, and during that time started to apply a lot of the continuous improvement principles many know on the call.
William Harvey:
And then over the last seven years, I've worked at the University of Cincinnati as a professor in the management, marketing and finance areas. So found a beautiful blend between what I'm learning there and how it relates to the profession and vice versa, taking that back to the students. So a really good mixture of both things.
Mark Graban:
So you're learning and you're teaching and that, that those verbs apply, it sounds like, to both the teaching and the operations leadership position. I'm guessing, yeah, absolutely.
William Harvey:
So I'd say the specific link I'm trying to explore is how do you get better at assessing training competence and then looking at job instruction and some of the other J programs to say how they complement one another and really get that in a practical application. And recent guest Tracy Defoe is one of my favorites to chat to about this. But adult education is not the same as childhood education, and so many of the principles we learn as adults are not necessarily executed very well. So it's really saying, take that back to the training program, because people do come to the workforce with a different set of skills, and it's often overlooked with the training program. And without assessing that through, like the J program or similar, I find that my training wasn't as good as it was because I was starting at square one with everybody when I should have had a chat about what do you know?
William Harvey:
And those two just intersect so well.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. So let's maybe just hear a little bit of a preview of the topic. Again, the title is Enterprise Excellence is Inclusive Excellence. People know what all of those words mean individually, but putting that all together, as you're going to do in the webinar here, give us an overview of what people are going to hear, what they're going to learn.
William Harvey:
This really came from all those experiences I just mentioned going through the Marine Corps through now, and what I find many of the most established practices at organizations I've been a part of. What do things that actually deter people from being part of the continuous improvement programs? And these are really just to cast a light on some of these assumptions we make. So things like a belt system, should I have black belts and green belts in my organization? It's like, maybe, should I get about t shirts?
William Harvey:
Maybe? And I'm not really here to say that you should or you shouldn't, but what I am here to say is, is this actually engaging everyone every day? And if engaging everyone every day is the goal, what are the system constructs we create in the workplaces we lead? And if we're not doing the best work, we're not really getting the best of everyone. And I have a deeply held belief that questions lead.
William Harvey:
The creativity and those creative efforts are likely going to be better than what I would generate alone. So for me, it's how do you really bring that out with everyone every day? By engaging them in the conversations we have.
Mark Graban:
How would you connect inclusion to engagement or engaging? Including and engaging. Um, what, what are those connections?
William Harvey:
Yeah. So for me, I'm going to use a very specific phrase I'm going to steal from my buddy Mike Rother. He talked about deliberate practice, and the phrase I'm coming up with my mind is deliberate inclusion. So maybe it exists elsewhere, but it's, am I thoughtfully thinking through, how do I engage everyone? If the answer is no, then I said, missed an opportunity.
William Harvey:
And where it links to engagement, for me goes into something very, very, I'd say, deep in terms of the research that's out there, and this certainly an experience piece, which is, do I have psychological safety? Is this work meaningful for me? Do I have the time to do it? So for inclusion and excellent, or inclusion? And I would say the idea of engagement, it's really about, do people have the time to engage?
William Harvey:
Is this meaningful for them, and do they feel safe? And without those three, I've really come down to the point saying, okay, well, I really can't include everybody unless those first three are met. So it gives me, personally, a really actionable way to go out and approach people and say, you know, does Mark not want to commit to the project, or does he just simply not have time? Is this not where he's headed in his career? Because he wants to switch gears and go to a different department?
William Harvey:
And by certain, you know, seeking to understand, I get in a position where I go, well, now I understand where Mark's coming from and can then engage him and then really include him in the journey, because it's his journey, and I'm just trying to figure out how do I line up those things for us?
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Well, William, I'm excited to hear, you know, kind of the new, continuously improved version of the talk that I heard back at the Society for Health Systems event earlier this year. I'm excited to be able to bring it to the podcast audience and our regular webinar attendees. So I invite you to register and to attend again. It's titled Enterprise Excellence is inclusive Excellence.
Mark Graban:
It'll be presented live May 30, 01:00 Eastern by William Harvey, who joined us here today. So go to kainexus.com/webinars or look for a link in the show notes. And we're going to have a good Q and a session. So that's the benefit of attending live. Otherwise, we hope you'll check out the recording.
Mark Graban:
So, William, thanks again in advance for doing the podcast, and thanks for doing the preview here today.
William Harvey:
Absolutely. Thank you, Mark. And thank you, Kynex's team.
Mark Graban:
Sure thing.
What do you think? Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Or please share the post with your thoughts on LinkedIn – and follow me or connect with me there.
Did you like this post? Make sure you don't miss a post or podcast — Subscribe to get notified about posts via email daily or weekly.
Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:
