🌟 Brewing Success: Chad's Secrets to Operational Excellence
Welcome back to Eye Openers, where we not only deliver eye-opening insights but also share the perfect cup of inspiration to make your business and life better! Today, we have a special guest, Chad Bareither, who not only speaks our caffeine-based love language but also has a passion for continuous improvement that parallels the art of making that delightful cup of coffee.
Just like crafting the perfect brew, Chad believes that loving the process is the key to achieving outcomes you'll truly cherish. As a quality engineer and a champion of operational excellence, he's here to share his wisdom and guide us on a journey of learning from his wealth of experience. So, grab your favorite drink, and let's savor every drop of knowledge Chad has to offer.
In this episode, we discuss:
Importance of Alignment: Chad emphasized that successful continuous improvement initiatives start with clear alignment. Understanding the "why" behind the change is crucial for choosing the right processes to improve and ensuring everyone in the organization is moving towards the same vision.
People-Centric Approach: While data and metrics play a significant role in process improvement, Chad highlighted the importance of considering the human factor. Change management becomes essential to empower people to embrace new processes and ensure successful implementation.
Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Chad shared a valuable failure story that taught us the significance of a continuous improvement cycle. Learning from both successes and failures helps refine approaches and methodologies, ultimately leading to sustained progress and success.
Listen Here:
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I hope this interview inspires you to embrace the spirit of continuous improvement. And if you do? Your business will thrive like you never imagined.
Share your takeaways from this interview or any experiences with continuous improvement in the comments below. Let's keep the conversation going and learn from each other's journeys!
Eye Opening Insights:
[00:07:06] “Every process can be improved. Right? And I'm not, I don't think I'm gonna back off that statement, but the question is, which ones, right? If there's so much work to do, that's the one of the crux, I'd say that the main crux of my approach in this improve less philosophy of saying, we don't need to improve everything. We need to improve the key things that actually get us to the goal. So where do we start? We always just start with why are we changing our approach to the business? What is it? That we need to accomplish, that we can't accomplish today, that's gonna help us choose which processes to one, even look at and then which ones actually need improvement.”
[00:18:18] “So to check and adjust to continuously refine that approach. Um, at the conclusion of a workshop, you know, direct feedback from the client as well as what I recognized went well, didn't went well, didn't go as well. Mm-hmm. Um, and then right now really working on continuing to refine my systems and processes. Yes. So even a process improvement consultant has systems and processes that we're trying to improve. Some of those are, are backend processes that no one will ever see, like scheduling calls and performing invoicing. But that, that's time that's consumed and it's non-value added time for the client. So if I can free up that time by improving the process, fantastic.”
[00:20:06] “In order to get different results, we have to change something in the process. Whether that is the person and their capabilities or the technology or the tools or just the sequence of events, you have to change something. So we shouldn't. Underestimate, you know, another learning from that. Underestimate the change management of like, are the people actually ready to adopt this change? Cuz you're, you're asking someone to do something differently. Mm-hmm. The paradigm effect that we have in our own brain is like, it, it's a challenge for me to think about doing something differently, whether we're talking about a strategic level, engaging with leaders. Whereas I'm asking you to do something differently or at a or a tactical level, I'm asking you to execute this process differently. There's always a change and so there's always a change management component and we can't move the results faster than the people can adopt it.”
About Chad
From an early career as a Quality Engineer, Chad Bareither quickly found his niche and passion in Continuous Improvement. Now, with years of experience as an internal change agent for larger organizations, including three Fortune 500 companies, he takes that operational excellence mindset beyond the “shop floor”. As the owner and principal consultant of Bareither Group Consulting, he enables organizations for sustainable continuous improvement. Chad partners with his clients to clarify and deploy their strategy, make process improvements to achieve those goals, and establish a system for daily management of the business. These three elements of the Focus and Align Framework TM are the subject of a forthcoming book to help even more organizations and leaders get their time back … and improve performance.
Chad is a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University as well as master’s degrees in both Industrial & Systems Engineering and Applied Statistics from Rutgers University. Chad and his wife reside in Southwest Michigan with their three children. They support their kids competitive sports schedules and enjoy a variety of outdoor activities and traveling.
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