Upcoming Events
June 3 | 12 - 1 p.m. | Zoom Webinar
Organizations lose 65% of employee time to distraction, yet most leaders treat this as an individual willpower problem rather than what it actually is: a systems failure. While 92% of employers recognize lost focus as alarming, they’re implementing solutions that fail 77% of the time because they're targeting the wrong level. The problem isn’t your people — it’s the environment you’ve unknowingly designed around them.
This leadership-focused session reveals why individual productivity training consistently fails and what high-performing organizations do instead. Drawing on research with 750+ professionals, you’ll discover the three operational pillars that separate teams drowning in distraction from those consistently delivering strategic impact: Clear Priorities, Clear Communication, and Clear Space.
This webinar will cover:
- How to diagnose the hidden organizational patterns that fragment attention and guarantee burnout (most leaders miss at least two of the five systemic traps)
- The cascading priority framework that gives your team the language to negotiate capacity without guilt or pushback
- Why “just block your calendar” doesn't work — and the psychological safety shift that actually protects deep work
- The communication protocol that eliminates constant urgency cycles while maintaining team responsiveness
Leaders will walk away equipped to identify where their organization is systematically stealing focus, establish shared productivity language that defines how work actually gets done, and implement the practical frameworks that make sustained high performance possible at scale — without requiring heroic individual effort or burning out your best people.
Jenna Piché is a team productivity consultant and professional speaker who helps organizations redesign work environments for sustained focus and strategic performance. Her proprietary research — The Productive Few — studied 750+ professionals to identify the behaviors and organizational systems that separate the genuinely productive from those stuck in constant reactive mode.
With 20 years of corporate marketing leadership experience and certifications as a Full Focus Certified Pro and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Jenna brings a unique lens to workplace productivity: the intersection of organizational design, human performance, and systemic change. She's the creator of the FOCUS Culture Framework™ and host of The Other Side of Busy podcast.
Jenna has delivered keynotes and workshops for organizations including American Family Insurance, Penn State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S. Ventures, Financial Executives International, and SHRM. Her work has been featured by audiences ranging from entrepreneurs and people leaders to executive leadership teams who recognize that protecting attention isn't a soft skill — it’s an operational imperative.
She lives in southern Wisconsin with her husband and family.
June 10 | 12 - 1 p.m. | Zoom Webinar
Lean Into AI Series
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how organizations solve problems, make decisions, and deliver value. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in workflows, upskilling is no longer optional for organizations to prepare their workforce. This series brings together leaders and practitioners from across the operational excellence community to explore where the powerful forces of lean and AI meet—and how they can evolve in tandem.
To continue the series, Dr. Ada Safak will join Steve Pereira for a conversation on developing AI training that keeps workforce skills aligned with fast-changing technical capabilities and real work needs. Dr. Safak will share from Worthington Enterprises’ journey implementing a persona-based AI learning academy designed to overcome the challenges of generic training that leaves employees underprepared, slows adoption, increases risk, and delays measurable business value.
Webinar attendees will gain insights on:
- Applying a Data + AI Literacy framework to structure AI upskilling
- Tailoring AI training to different roles and proficiency levels
- Identifying strategies to promote adoption of learning tracks and track progress over time
Speakers
Dr. Ada Safak is an Advanced Analytics Analyst II at Worthington Enterprises, specializing in AI and Data Literacy. With a Ph.D. in STEM and over a decade of experience teaching mathematics, she bridges the gap between complex analytics and real-world impact. Previously, a software developer, Dr. Safak now empowers teams to leverage AI and data-driven decision-making. A passionate educator and speaker, she focuses on upskilling professionals with the conceptual understanding needed to navigate AI’s evolving role in business.
Steve Pereira, emcee, is obsessed with making tech human and leveraging it to deliver continuous value. Steve has spent over two decades improving the flow of work across organizations. He’s worked through tech support, IT management, build and release engineering, and as a founding CTO for enterprise SaaS.
He serves as lead consultant for Visible Value Stream Consulting, as a board advisor to the Value Stream Management Consortium, Chair of the OASIS Value Stream Management Interoperability technical committee, and co-founder of the Flow Collective to bring flow-focused professionals together. Since 2017, he has been developing and facilitating Flow Engineering to make flow improvement in large organizations accessible, collaborative, and actionable.
Host Organizations
This series is part of the collaborative work of leading OpEx consortia under the shared initiative Future of People at Work:
- Catalysis
- Central Coast Lean
- Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership (GBMP)
- Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI)
- Ohio State’s Center for Operational Excellence (COE)
- Shingo Institute
- Toyota Supplier Support Center (TSSC)
This initiative represents an unprecedented collaboration among leading improvement-focused organizations dedicated to building better ways of working together. Together, these networks are reimagining work and continuous improvement for a new era of technological change.
June 17 | 1 – 5 p.m. | In-Person Workshop
Join the Center for Operational Excellence for a dynamic, hands-on White Belt workshop featuring the “Lean Sim Machine.”
This half-day course will showcase the power and utility of Lean principles, tools, and techniques for beginners. Participants will complete activities and use the “Lean Sim Machine” in a simulated manufacturing setting to experience the breakthrough improvement possibilities with Lean.
Participants will be equipped to:
- Describe lean thinking and compare/contrast it with mass production thinking
- Distinguish between value added and non-value added activities in the workplace
- List the “eight deadly wastes” typically found in the workplace and give specific examples of each
- Identify lean tools for flow improvement and implement them in
- Work as a team to make improvements to a process
- Discuss ways to implement lean tools in their work environment
Jerry Browne is an experienced instructor, consultant, and coach that has been helping businesses learn and implement continuous improvement across the state of Michigan full time since May of 2023. He has over 14 years of experience in quality and continuous improvement roles in a variety of industries including vaccine manufacturing, medical device manufacturing, paper/plastics manufacturing, industrial manufacturing and hospitals.
Jerry received his Master of Education in Instructional Design from Western Governor’s University where his capstone focus was on the transfer of training from the classroom into work practice. He also holds associate and bachelor’s degrees in business administration.
Jerry has conducted Dr. Deming’s red bead experiment across the state of Michigan, including the Annual Deming Conference at MSU. He has presented at numerous Michigan Lean Consortium (MLC) events and has served as a member of the MLC Advisory Board. Jerry has a tremendous passion for educating others, particularly in quality and continuous improvement methodologies.
This is a limited-capacity, in-person only workshop on the campus of the Fisher College of Business. Please submit your interest using the form below. Participants will be selected from interest form submissions in coordination with COE board representatives from each member company. If you have been selected, you’ll receive an email by May 29.
Save the Date
July 15, 12 - 1 p.m. | Organizational Intelligence: Building Teams That Scale Webinar with Julia Sebastian and Natalie Huezo (Virtual)