Session List

Applying Lean Along the Edges

Stealth Lean is an approach to lightly apply Lean Thinking to mid-sized projects. I will share the specific tools and approaches I have been employing early in the project, even when the sponsor is not interested in using Lean.

An Approach to Implement Continuous Improvement in (Education) Teams

In this session, a concept is presented with which continuous improvement can be applied in (education) teams. It is a concept in which a limited number of lean tools are used: x-matrix, standardized consultation, pdca and visual management. This is implemented in a culture of servant leadership, joint responsibility, autonomy and improvement in small steps. Practical examples from Windesheim University are shared and analyzed together.

Building a Process Improvement Roadmap – Who | What | When | How

Departments know when something is not working, but how can they predict issues before they are broken? Using tools to build a list of processes owned by a department (process inventory) and capture the status of health of those processes provides the foundation to build a Process Improvement Roadmap. The health checklist can be used to prioritize actions to improve documentation, performance, and customer satisfaction with processes. The roadmap provides clarity for staff meeting discussions.

Collaborative Edge Effect

The purpose of this session is to highlight how shifting our focus towards interaction as a process can facilitate collaboration and leverage team strengths for problem solving. This entirely interactive session will be experienced as a team problem solving activity that we have conducted across various industries, team compositions and sizes as action research. Grounded in the impact of individual development on team effectiveness, the activity involves a pre and post assessment allowing participants a means through which to reflect and learn. Collaboration happens at our shared edges. We invite you to discover your personal edge in co-creating mutual value.

The Continuous Improvement Journey to Implement Hoshin Kanri, What Will Be the Next Step?

We are thrilled to announce a special presentation featuring two enlightening chapters from the book 'Hoshin Kanri (HK) in Higher Education.' This publication takes you on a profound exploration of the Continuous Improvement (CI) journey, viewed through the powerful lens of Hoshin Kanri, with an exclusive focus on real-world case studies.

COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Eyes of Faculty and Lean Practitioners Across the Globe – A Qualitative Study

This global study on COVID-19 pandemic leverages the knowledge of Lean experts around the globe to discuss experiences at their local level and extrapolate the next steps universities must take to prepare and provide recommendations for universities to consider how they can better prepare for future emergency situations.

The Cycle of Lean – the People’s Dialogue in Hoshin Kanri

A workshop in which the practical application of the cycle of lean is experienced and discussed. * How to use this model to explain the Hoshin Kanri Process * How to use the model to analyse the current situation of your lean implementation * How to use the model to analyse behaviour and resistance in your lean implementation

Daily Engagement Huddles at UC San Diego Health – Lean Champions Strengthen and Sustain Everyday Problem Solving

The Daily Engagement System (DES) is an essential element of a well-designed management system. DES at UC San Diego Health has strong support from leadership to spread quickly across the organization. Our team of DES Coaches will illustrate how we developed local experts as Champions in each area to support DES across the system to increase spread and sustainability.

Emphasizing Learning in Improvement Work Through Service Design

For the past three years, UiT the Arctic University of Norway have explored ways of working to become truly service oriented, and to increase the customer experience for students and staff by improving administrative services. This presentation will reveal challenges encountered and key learning points when we went from a 'menu' of 3307 individual tasks to eighty university services and at the same time building a service culture.

Hoshin Kanri as a Strategic Management Tool at a University of Art – The Case Study

This presentation demonstrates how the implementation of Hoshin Kanri (HK) changes the organizational culture and management system in a typical Polish public university characterized by bureaucracy, a strong hierarchical structure, and deep-rooted traditions. The aim of the presentation is to elaborate on the stages of the HK planning process and the linkages between each step of the process on the one hand, and the growing maturity and readiness of university leaders, managers, and staff to embrace change on the other.

Hoshin Kanri in Higher Education: A Guide to Strategy Development, Deployment, and Management

Twenty-two Lean practitioners from 14 universities contributed 18 chapters to the forthcoming book, Hoshin Kanri in Higher Education: A Guide to Strategy Development, Deployment, and Management. Come meet many of the coauthors who will be at the conference and hear their stories of applying HK to improve strategy development, deployment, and management at their universities. Learn how you can start or expand HK at your institution as shared in this first book on HK in higher education.

How to Capture What You Don't Know

More and more we are using lean to help us manage our processes but are we using it to help us manage our knowledge? This session will look at ways in which managers can capture knowledge but more importantly how to transfer it.

How to Use A3 Thinking to Improve Course Outcomes – and Live to Tell the Story

Need to improve outcomes with limited resources? Use A3 thinking to clarify your current condition, identify root causes, visualize a desired future state, and develop a plan to get there. This session uses A3 thinking combined with a presentation approach to simplify remote collaboration and end with a source to more easily share your story.

Leadership Matters, but Which Leader Matters the Most in Delivering Lean Results?

We often hear about the need for commitment and support from leaders at the highest level of an organization to enable the success of a Lean initiative, but what's happening at the grassroots level where the day to day work is taking place? Who's leading there and does their behavior matter in the big picture? We studied the interactions of 28 teams, their supervisors, and their higher level managers to shed some light on this.

Leading Without Authority

Projects span across several cross functional teams. There are always challenges to connect the members of the project to the WHY and help them identify 'what's in it for them'. Come join us in a session to chat about how to lead without authority so the project team can connect to the change and trust that you will lead them to move the project forward and the change will benefit them too.

Leveraging Scale for Value – the Power of Yellow Belt Training

Join us for a panel discussion about how we have used one campus' Yellow Belt material to jump-start Yellow Belt training at other UC campuses. Find out how the material has been tailored and customized over time and how different campuses have adapted the material. Learn how quickly Yellow Belt training can be launched using a train-the-trainer approach, and how gamification has enhanced the virtual learning experience.

Low-Touch Touch-Time: Collecting Process Time Data on an Enterprise Scale

Nothing is more valuable than going to "Gemba" (the real place) to observe a process. Operational Strategic Initiatives (OSI) at UC San Diego found itself in a position where Gemba-level insight needed to be captured quickly and in a scalable way to improve it's processes in an Enterprise Cloud-Based Systems. Join OSI's Practice Director of Continuous Improvement in a presentation on the trends of automated process mining and how to efficiently capture process time (touch time) data without losing what makes it "real."

Outcomes Matter: Give Your Stakeholders What They Value Most

As we're trying to improve a process, we've learned to look at it through the eyes of the user to best understand the experience, but how do we help them think about the benefits of their efforts? What lens should we use to understand the interests of each stakeholder? This session will help you plan for and communicate positive outcomes of your projects for each of your key stakeholders.

Rapid Improvement = Growing Enrollment

Come learn how the University of North Alabama used a form of mapping called Rapid Improvement to change the recruiting culture and grow enrollment.

Reducing Resistance in Projects

This presentation explores the integration of Lean Principles and Change Management methods within projects, showcasing the potential to leverage their combined benefits for successful project outcomes while mitigating resistance to change. Drawing from UT Arlington's 5-year journey of growth and blending Lean and change management practices, this session shares valuable lessons learned and provides practical tips for integrating these methodologies within projects. Attendees will begin building a sponsor change plan and engage in discussions regarding the blending of these methods.

Respect for People: Improving Your Personal Wellbeing

In this interactive workshop we will share some creativity and coaching tools that can be used to improve wellbeing and prevent burnout.

Summertime and Summer Compensation Requests Are Easy

Learn how we used a small pilot among departments as a proof-of-concept for a standardized, shared form for summer compensation requests.

Sustainable Improvement Work

When we work on projects with specific improvement methodologies like Lean or Design Thinking, the focus is clear. However, in everyday life, we tend to forget what we have learned. In this workshop, we discuss, and aim to co-create, how to integrate improvement work as a natural part of the job without labelling it specifically or making it a separate project.

University of Melbourne Service Excellence Capability Build Program

The 14-week Service Excellence Building Capability Program developed and implemented by the University of Melbourne aims to create integrated learning experiences to uplift human-centred design, service improvement and project management capabilities across the University. This Program has been developed to upskill our people in the principles, practices and tools needed to deliver service excellence initiatives and to build an awareness of key success factors.

Unleash the Lean Mindset: An Immersive Escape Room Workshop

The primary objective of this workshop is to provide participants with a hands-on experience of Lean thinking principles while navigating through an interactive escape room game. By immersing ourselves in a challenging scenario, we will explore how Lean methodologies can be applied to solve problems, improve processes, and foster a culture of continuous improvement within organizations.

Using Lean HE Best Practices to Create Goals and Develop Tactics

Best practices can provide a starting point for taking the next step with Lean at your organization, but they tend to be broad statements and not directly actionable. In this session, we'll explore seven best practices for Lean in Higher Education, then work together to see the different ways they might be evidenced. We'll develop lists of tactics you can take away from the session, allowing you to tailor your next moves to your university.

Using Tableau to Create an A3 for Lean Six Sigma Projects

Tableau is an intuitive, accessible software that assists leaders in visualizing complex problems and translates data sources such as Excel into vibrant visualizations. The system is still dependent on the scientific thinking of the user to accurately address the organizational problem and that is where the A3 form comes in.

The State of Lean HE

What is your vision for Lean HE in 2028? Our plenary presenter and panelists will lead a Lean HE community conversation on the future state of Lean HE. Our presenter, Bill Balzer, will share data and thoughts regarding whether Lean HE is thriving, simply surviving, or in danger of expiring and what actions we might take together to ensure a healthy and positive future for our discipline. The panelists, Steve Yorkstone, Melissa Hankinson, Ruth Archer, and John Hogg, the leaders of Global Lean HE and its three continental divisions, will share their visions of the future and reactions to the presentation. Importantly, session attendees will have multiple opportunities to contribute their thoughts and views toward a collective consensus on the future state of Lean HE and how to get there.

Plenary

Developing Problem-Solvers: How to Increase Both Value and Engagement

In this interactive workshop, you will learn strategies to create the space for improvement work in your team environment. Daily improvement that is supported with tried and true problem-solving methods eliminates waste, which means happier customers and happier team members. It's a win-win!

Drive Strategy and Success at Your HE Institution: A Hands-On Hoshin Kanri Workshop

Hoshin Kanri is Lean’s approach to strategy development, deployment and management. It is a key element we should all include in our Lean practices but has received limited attention in higher education (HE). This workshop is designed to expand the HK knowledge and hands-on skills for those engaged in, or planning to engage in, the strategic planning process at their HE institution.

Get Connected Get Engaged: How Are You Working on the Edge?

In working with a large group, how do you get people to connect and directly start working on the problem at hand without going around the room sharing introductions one-by-one or using less than meaningful icebreakers? We will be using Impromptu Networking as an introduction to Liberating Structures and to open up the 2023 Lean HE Conference with connection, engagement, and energy. In just 25 minutes we will be making meaningful connections and start sharing thoughts on the problem at hand: How are you working on the edge?

Crowd Source Our Boldest Ideas for Improvement

We use the wisdom of crowds to source and sort your best ideas for improvement (and have lots of fun doing it). Everyone contributes their “ten times bolder” ideas for improvement based on their Conference experience. Based on what you’ve learned, what should we do to make real change in our organizations? Using the Liberating Structures 25/10 Crowdsourcing facilitation approach allows a group of any size to generate and rank individual ideas to a top 10 list in just 30 minutes. Discover, motivate, and spark ideas.

Joyful Journeys: Unleashing the Power of Joy in Continuous Improvement

In our pursuit of efficiency and productivity, we often forget that work should be more than just meeting goals and metrics. Going to work shouldn’t be a constant stress. It shouldn’t be a place where people burn out and feel like their tank is emptied repeatedly and yet never gets filled back up. Imagine a workplace where employees have a sense of excitement. A source of fulfillment, inspiration, purpose and yes, even joy. Tracy will talk about companies that promote joy as a part of their culture and what we can all do to increase joy at work.

Daily Engagement System - Tiered Huddling Tour at UC San Diego Health

Join us for this special and insightful tour inside the UC San Diego Health system. The group will be provided with a brief explanation and then experience the Daily Engagement System (DES). After witnessing several rounds of the DES, we gather for discussion and questions. This tour has limited availability. The Daily Engagement System (DES) is an essential element of a well-designed management system. It is a tool that is made up of many different aspects, but the most tangible aspect of DES is tiered huddles.

DES huddles are short, focused meetings that share information from front line staff all the way up to the executive level. These huddles are essential because they ensure problems are solved at the appropriate level, that operational needs are escalated to the right leadership tier, and make sure that front line staff have what they need to successfully serve patients.

Creating Flow: Case Studies in Lean Across the University of California System

In March of 2010, something rather unusual occurred at the University of California. All the critical factors aligned and created near-perfect conditions to launch a five-year experiment that simply had to work: $100 million would be subtracted from the operating budget of the UC system each of those years, transparently predicting success. That eye-popping number sounds like a classically ill-fated top-down goal, but it turned out to spur innovation and collaboration in new areas of administration. An analysis of this extra-large-scale change, with the perspective of time, reveals clear wins as well as some missed opportunities. In another case, a far less ambitious and fully voluntary goal was put forward to a much broader set of organizations across the state of California. This challenge is still underway in earnest today. It is a plucky unfunded collaboration with a loyal following and pockets of outstanding achievements, most of them rather small in scale. It may not be fair to compare; but there is so much to glean.

Future of AI in Higher Education

AI has recently taken the world by storm. Everyone is talking about AI and Data Science. In this presentation, we will briefly explain the relationship between Data Science and Lean. What are the differences and the commonalities? We will then cover how AI has obvious use cases across the entire university enterprise, from intelligent tutoring over resource allocation to smart transportation and auditing. The presentation will cover both what is possible today and where we see this trend going within the next 5-10 years.

Processes, Flow, Waste: Lean Fundamentals 2-Hour Workshop

In this fun and interactive workshop, you'll practice visualizing the fundamental Lean concepts of flow and waste and see how you can apply them to your job right away. You'll also learn about Lean culture and the principles of Lean thinking, and participate in problem-solving using the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) model. You'll learn about the 5 Whys to help you discover root causes, identify waste and unsafe acts and conditions, use meeting management tools to keep your improvement discussions on track, and recommend process improvements. After the workshop, you'll be ready to actively participate in a kaizen (improvement) event. These tools can assist you in your efforts to create the best possible experience for students, faculty, staff, and other customers.

Leading Lean Implementations in HE Since 2006

Learn from Steve Yorkstone's experience with Lean implementations in Higher Education Since 2006. This session offers case studies, anecdotes, lessons learned, and an interactive ask-me-anything Q&A.