Collaboration

Michelangelo once said that a sculpture already exists inside the marble. His work was simply freeing it by chiseling away the superfluous. The same is true of organizational culture. The adaptive, resilient culture your organization is capable of is already there. The question is whether you have the courage to chisel away what is blocking it. 

Hybrid work is often framed as a debate about location. Office or remote? Three days in or two?Core hours or full flexibility? Yet leaders focused on operational excellence know the real issue isn’t geography. It’s design.

The COE Summit is the cornerstone of the Center for Operational Excellence’s annual events calendar—a premier gathering where operational excellence thinkers and practitioners come together for three days of learning and connection. It’s a highlight not only for the COE team, but for our broader community of member companies, lean-focused organizations, and continuous improvement professionals. The 2025 theme—OpEx and the power of people—struck a powerful chord. This theme emerged from conversations with leaders seeking to understand the challenges and opportunities that come with leading and working with people in a rapidly changing world.

We start with a large number of ideas, agree to build on each other's ideas, and work together to build ideas until we have the best ideas possible.

In the post-pandemic workplace, organizations are facing a flurry of changes. As the time available to implement change initiatives shrinks, key success factors for sustainable change are often cut based on the belief that they are an optional luxury or will slow things down. This can result in anxiety, confusion, low morale, and potential turnover of high performing employees.