Posted by business901 on June 27, 2011
Razi Imam is an accomplished award winning innovator, entrepreneur, and author. He has experience and knowledge of successfully innovating products and services, launching them in competitive markets, and building world-class high-performance teams.
Razi;s new book Driven: A How-to Strategy for Unlocking Your Greatest Potential is discussed in the podcast and you are introduced to a powerful motivational philosophy. I think you will find the podcast a little different than most of mine as we discuss self and team development. Razi is an excellent and captivating speaker.
Razi is the founder of a fast growing software company called Landslide Technologies that is receiving rave reviews from customers, analysts and press. His company has been named 'visionary' three years in row by the leading analyst firm - The Gartner Group. He has also recently founded 113 Industries, an industry-driven business incubator focusing on advanced materials. The goal of this incubator is to help breakthrough discoveries in advanced materials coming from our universities, and government labs become viable commercial products.
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Transforming Ordinary Teams to Extraordinary
Posted by business901 on June 20, 2011
Geoff Bellman co-author of Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results
was my guest on the Business901 Podcast. In this book, Geoff and co-author Kathleen Ryan reveal that people instinctively sense when a group experience is something special, something different from the ordinary, something that surpasses their expectations in a positive, remarkable, and hard-to-describe way. 
In the podcast, I challenged Geoff several times on the touchy, feely aspect of all this and he came back with some good tangible examples. This is one of those books and even the podcast that can contribute some insight to practically any participant. We discussed how to create an extraordinary groups to achieve outstanding results, one of the key indicators.
Geoff has worked inside major corporations for fourteen years before starting his own consulting firm in 1977. His external consulting has focused on renewing large, mature corporations such as Booz Allen & Hamilton, U.S. Bancorp, Verizon, Intuit, Ernst & Young, Shell, Price Waterhouse Coopers, BP, SABMiller, Boeing, and Accenture. He can be found at http://extraordinarygroups.com/.
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Posted by business901 on June 13, 2011
Steven C. Wilson founded Wilson Consulting and Training Services,Inc (WCTS, Inc) as a process improvement consulting firm. He has dedicated himself to this cause by training over 600 Six Sigma practitioners in over 70 companies in the state of 
Iowa. His training focuses on quality to include Lean, Theory of Constraints, Supply chain, Problem Solving and Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt training. Recently, he has developed new approaches to a blended learning platform and is piloting them in his Leadership and Data-Driven Problem Solving Courses. In the podcast with Steve, I came away with a feeling that he looks at his practice more from a training perspective than consulting.
Steve to me is the epitome of today’s successful consultant. He acts as a in-house consultant for a major healthcare facility in the Des Moines, Iowa area, instructs at many of the Iowa Community Colleges, conducts Green Belt and Black Belt training for industry and hosts the Blog Talk Radio Show, Quality Conversations. As a result of this, he speaks on a regular basis throughout the state and has even presided as the Master of Ceremonies at a national iSixSigma Live event. Steve has more offline touch-points than most of us have online touch-points. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I am adamant that most business is still done with a handshake. It seems to me that Steve shakes as many hands as a politician and in Iowa there are a lot of hands shaken.
Another unique aspect of Wilson Consulting and Training Services is Steve’s 20 years of experience has been primarily in the service industry. With this background, he offers a unique perspective, even for the more traditional quality venues such as manufacturing. With all industries focusing more and more on the service aspect applying quality improvement tools to this area is typically the quickest ROI an organization can receive.
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Steve’s website: Wilson Consulting and Training Services,
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Posted by business901 on June 6, 2011
The Friday Video Series with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute recently competed a month long series on PDCA. As I reviewed the video, I found that over 30% of the material had been edited out. I have included the entire audio of the conversation as a podcas. Even if you have watched the videos I think you will find it worthwhile. 
Dr. Balle is a multiple Shingo Prize winner as an author of the The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager. His newest Shingo Prize was on the adaption of The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround to an audiobook that features performances by multiple readers who bring its realistic business story and characters to life.
Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute
Related Information: SALES PDCA Framework for Lean Sales and Marketing
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Marketing with PDCA eBook released on Business901 Website
Lean is not a revolution, Lean is solve one thing and prove one thing!
