Weee!’s Post

What do Mid America Transplant, the University of Wisconsin-Stout, and The Ritz-Carlton have in common? Excellence in delivering their mission with a Baldrige Performance Excellence focus. This week, at the Quest for Excellence conference, I had the extraordinary opportunity to learn from these best-in-class organizations. Each of them, in their unique domains - healthcare, education, and hospitality, respectively - demonstrates how embedding the Baldrige Excellence Framework into their operations leads to outstanding outcomes. Mid America Transplant’s life-saving mission, UW-Stout’s commitment to student success and innovation, and The Ritz-Carlton’s legendary customer service are all powered by a foundation of continuous improvement and excellence. Their stories are a testament to what organizations can achieve when they are deeply committed to excellence in every aspect of their operations. The insights shared were not just inspiring but also deeply practical. They showed that whether you’re saving lives, educating the next generation, or delivering unparalleled service, the principles of quality, leadership, and strategy are universally effective. I’m returning with a notebook full of ideas and a heart full of inspiration, ready to apply these lessons in pursuit of excellence within our own context. #BaldrigeExcellence #ContinuousImprovement #Leadership #QualityManagement #Innovation

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller As we approach the one year anniversary of the dedication of the new School of Business and Leadership at DePauw it is important to take time to reflect and evaluate its impact, identify successes and challenges, and plan our future actions. This milestone offers us a valuable opportunity to: 1.    Celebrate Our Achievements: Take time to recognize the successes and key milestones we've reached, acknowledging the hard work and dedication of everyone involved. Your contributions have been vital in shaping our journey. 2.    Revisit Our Goals: Recognize that our context has evolved over the past year. It’s important to reassess our objectives to ensure they remain both relevant and ambitious. 3.    Evaluate Our Progress: Review the data to understand what’s worked well, identify challenges, and assess the broader institutional impact. Your feedback will be crucial in this process. 4.    Refine Our Strategies: Analyzing our methods to pinpoint areas for improvement and adopt best practices that will help us work more efficiently and effectively. 5.    Engage with Stakeholders: Transparency is key, we will share our findings and updates with all our stakeholders to keep you informed and involved. 6.    Plan Ahead: We’ll develop actionable plans with clear steps, metrics, and timelines to address any issues and build on our successes as we look to the future. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to DePauw’s mission. Together, we are paving the way for a bright and promising future!

Lean Thinking = Continuous innovation to the work, benefiting the Worker, Customer and Company. We need this type of leadership empowerment on our front lines. We need our associates to own Quality and Continuous Improvement.

Attention Business Leaders! Each summer, Gies College of Business - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students participate in a practicum to provide data-driven recommendations for real-life business challenges. If your business is experiencing any of the following, let's chat! - Identifying/Implementing a New Technology Platform for Internal Use - Developing Strategies to Introduce an Emerging Technology/Innovation to a New Client Segment - Unique Business Challenges with a Technical Component or Industry Focus Learn more about Experiential Learning: https://bit.ly/4aldiiG

You don’t often hear a better purpose than the one Marco van der Werf has for his work BIT Innovation BV; make the best talent in this world work on the most critical issues. And he not only talks the talk, he does also walk the walk. With this purpose he is able to get a set of super bright trainees in. And Marco challenged me to join that group for 2 hours to together sharpen our ideas on: 1.     Why do we need leaders in this world? What are the 3 things every leader should do? And how is that different from management? 2.     What stories should be in the back pocket of any leader? What tome horizons do you cover? 3.     How to tell an appealing story around tech/data/digital? 4.     How to own and live your personal story? Loved the energy. Valuable insights. The group really needed a drink after ur discussion ;-) Leave a comment if you want to know more.

Corporate Culture = Brand ^ Biggest takeaway from this presentation. It's so important to work in a company where leadership values culture. Big thanks to Mark for inviting me to join this talk!

Tomorrow, I'll be sharing my experience with MBA students at Corvinus University in Budapest. We'll be discussing what 'International Business strategy' means, its components, and the critical point of 'The Human Factor.' It's often forgotten that culture, language, religion, and corporate strategy vs local needs play a vital role in this. With my previous experience, I have many stories to illustrate this point. One of the significant differences that I've noticed is the 'humility' of corporate leaders in learning a different reality when dealing with different countries. It's essential to keep an open mind and learn from different cultures to succeed in international business.

I had the pleasure to attend the first ever Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management immersion into how to win by stirring emotion, Unlocking the Creative Advantage. The session featured industry leaders including Gordan Segal, Britt Nolan, Craig Dubitsky, Jess Lanzillo, Anna Shapiro and Jason Narducy. This session was a paradigm shift, challenging conventional wisdom with bold ideas rarely explored in traditional business education. Here are three key takeaways: 1️⃣ Consumer Interest: Surprisingly, what often captivates consumers is something that defies logic, reinforcing the power of unconventional thinking in sparking intrigue and engagement. 2️⃣ Career Approach: Instead of fixating on being correct, the key is to embrace the journey of being interesting. It's about pushing boundaries, taking risks, and daring to stand out in a sea of conformity. 3️⃣ FONT (Fear of Not Trying): Amidst the noise of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), we often overlook the equally potent fear of not trying. Embracing FONT reminds us that the greatest risks lie in playing it safe, compelling us to embrace boldness and innovation. Big thank you to professor Paul Earle for spearheading this event at Kellogg and to our esteemed panelists for their invaluable insights, hope it’s not the last!

Students' feedback 🎓 ✨ Thank you to the brilliant students from the Master (MSc) International Business at Bordeaux KEDGE Business School for sharing their feedback after participating in our recent business game! Playing the role of management team for a cosmetics brand, the students focused their efforts on deciding which countries among 10 emerging markets selected represented the most potential for an international group. We attach a great importance to feedback from students so that we can constantly develop the features of our business game. Among other things, this feedback helps us to make our interface more intuitive and with a better pedagogical approach. Go Global. Wisely. Tatiana Miron, Charly Caudoux, Marceau Duchene, Louna Lafitte, Baptiste Mestre, Manvel Petrosyan, Thalie Sarafidis Thiriar, Anass Bennis, Marine Collantes, Xavier COTTANCEAU, Simon Martel, Mansi Shetty #Kedge #BusinessGame #International #Cosmetics #internationalbusiness #goglobal #PrimeTarget

We’ve been doing Design Thinking workshops with Berlin Professional School – HWR Berlin and Professor Matthias Tomenendal for a few years now, but this year was extra special. We had the opportunity to ideate together with the MBA students in person as part of their ‘Sustainable Business Leadership’ elective. There's always an added magic that comes with live interactions. ✨ My key learnings? 💡 Collaborative problem solving and brainstorming are so important to create new ideas you would likely not have come up with on your own. 💡 The diversity of participants and truly listening to each voice brings a whole lot of different perspectives, allowing us to better build on each other's ideas. 💡 Effective storytelling is key to weaving together a presentation that’s convincing yet engaging. There’s no value in releasing an amazing product if others don’t believe in it. I’m excited for the feedback session next week and seeing how they bring their concepts to life.