Leadership development, innovation lead roster of April summit's breakout sessions

With less than four weeks to go before we kick off our second-annual Leading Through Excellence summit, we’ve unveiled the full list of breakout sessions you’ll have the chance to experience throughout the day on Thursday, April 10, and Friday, April 11, in Columbus, Ohio.

The full list is available at our website, but here’s a quick look at some of the sessions available:

Behind the scenes at GE Aviation – It’s tough for many organizations to keep a fresh pipeline of leaders with the right problem-solving skills and cross-functional capabilities. Rick Guba, a Master Black Belt at GE Aviation, will offer an inside look at the company’s successful accelerated development process, which links skills and hands-on experience for a best-in-class learning model.

Kaizen 101 – Looking for a crash course in hosting a kaizen event week? Whitney Mantonya, owner of Collaborative Lean Solutions, will walk attendees through the purpose, flow, and structure of one, offering up a primer on basic tools and concepts applicable to all such events.

Leading from the middle – True lean success needs support from the top, but few organizations start out with this luxury. Ted Stiles, a partner with lean executive recruiting firm Stiles Associates, examines how creative mid-level leaders can navigate this landscape and the skills they must employ along the way to boost leadership engagement and influence without authority.

‘Buying’ a lean culture – Harvard University’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was showered with 90,000 employment applications annually, but they needed a new, efficient way to determine which potential hires would thrive in a lean environment and be an integral part to its ongoing success. Alice Lee, vice president of business transformation at Beth Israel, will share the pre-employment assessment tool that was developed and implemented.

Innovation and the element of surprise - Award-winning Fisher professor and researcher Aravind Chandrasekaran will share his research with more than 30 high-tech organizations into the “disruptive innovation” that has dealt a blow to some companies (Polaroid) and, with the right strategy, allowed others (IBM) to thrive.

Paper or plastic? – Through an interactive game that challenges preconceived notions about the environmental sustainability of products in our everyday lives, Fisher Asisstant Prof. Gökçe Esenduran will introduce the concept of the life-cycle assessment (LCA), a powerful tool to evaluate a product from the cradle to the grave.

And there are a dozen more where that came from. Register now before pricing increases April 1!