For more than twenty years, Lee Rubin has been building high-performance teams in Corporate America, athletics, and non-
profit organizations. This strong core foundation was built early in Lee’s life as he was a highly recruited student-athlete who later became a Captain of the Penn State football team. After college, Lee continued
building teams as a Human Resource professional - building teams for some of the country’s most prominent corporations across a variety of industries. Currently, as a keynote speaker and performance coach, Lee shares his Peak Performance message on stages throughout the country.

Machines are evaluated based on the output of the entire unit, not the impressiveness of their individual parts. Extraordinary teams, like great machines, require certain components that hold their pieces together. While most organizations focus exclusively on building the skills of their individual members, elite organizations invest in the “stuff” that transforms a collection of talented individuals into extraordinary, machine-like teams.

Waleed Mazen holds more than 17 years’ experience in training and coaching company personnel at all levels in lean management, a Japanese discipline designed to eliminate factors that waste time, effort or money. He has accumulated a wealth of knowledge and best practices by serving client organisations throughout a variety of industries, geographies and cultures – saving them many millions of dollars in the process. Waleed has been a long-term champion of kaizen in the Middle East and has regional experience across Europe, Middle East & North Africa.  Waleed is a British Arab, fluent in both languages and cultures. He constantly seeks to empower Arab enterprises – to the point of translating Shigeo Shingo’s books “Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking” and “Fundamentals of Lean Manufacturing into Arabic

Stories engage people beyond facts. As a leader how can you help your people see and approach the challenges they face with motivation instead of hiding them or run away from them. The session will give insights on how to excite and engage people in problem solving.

Moving from Private Ownership to PE Investors & being brought in to turnaround the manufacturing facility. The first thing I recognized was great people – but lacking real leadership and direction. By Listening then setting out a phased approach the team transformed the facility and became an integral part of the Sales & Marketing story. My Rule of Thumb is – for each past 10 years of an organization, it will take ~ 2 years of work to positively alter that history. 

Derek is an experienced Operational Executive who is as at ease with day-to-day operational issues as he is working on Boards. With 30 + years’ experience ranging across various Technologies i.e. Semiconductors/Hybrids/Flex-Circuits/Mobile-Phone/Medical Pulp Moulding/Fibre Optics, Automotive. He has also worked in Italy, Austria, USA, Mexico and Hungary as part of these assignments. Laterally within these roles Derek has been involved in turnaround roles and offered support to management teams during private ownership sell-out to Private Equity and Mergers & Acquisition integration of newly acquired organisations into the new ownership. Derek focusses on assessing the issues, working with team members and key stakeholders to ensure that through a systematic, approach the final result is delivered in a timely fashion. This will focus on operational and financial measures to deliver tangible results. Derek has led and been involved in achieving The Queens Award for Excellence in Innovation, Best Factory Award for Judges special award for – Leadership/Culture Change/Engineering capability improvement, Best Process plant [Highly commended] plus Manufacturer of the Year Award for SME [>125Employees], Highly commended. Derek is now a Judge and site assessor for the TMMX [Manufacturer of the Year Awards] for the last 5 years, focussing on Operational Excellence. Derek has an MBA, Bsc[Hons] in Production Engineering, is a Member of the Institute of Directors [IOD] & Member of The Institute for Turnaround [IFT] . Derek is also a qualified Executive Coach at ILM Level 7 and a Thomas International Personal Profile Analysis [PPA] practitioner. Derek has also completed the IOD – Certificate and Diploma in Company Direction and the IOD - Role of the Non-Executive Director and Role of the Chair.

The Role of the Leader in Problem Solving and the secrets of leading teams for effective problem managementI often get pulled into organisations who want to develop better problem solving teams, but its how leaders lead and facilitate problem solving that engages teams and builds a problem solving culture.The role of the leader in problem solving is one of enabling and developing the scientific approach to both problem solving and problem management In this talk we will look at the 4 Keys to developing a problem solving culture and focus on the mindset and psychology of leading and coaching through problem solving activities.Problem Solving is as much psychology as it is technique.

Mike is a leadership performance coach, and executive coach, he was one of the first managers in the UK Toyota Operations in the early 90’s. He now works with leaders and organisations who want to take their lean operations to another level. Mike has developed a comprehensive framework for mentoring and coaching leaders in driving and enabling a sustainable CI culture. In the last 25 years Mike has supported many blue chip companies such as Rolls Royce, Daimler Trucks, Westinghouse, Ford & Jaguar Landrover through his “Value Added Leadership Approach”

Andrew is going to share his journey of trying to introduce Lean into an organization. From resistance to acceptance, what it is like for leadership to create a Lean culture.

Andrew Koenig is the President of CITY Furniture. South & Central Florida’s #1 Furniture Retailer with over 35 locations and 2700 associates. CITY has been undergoing a 15 year Lean Conversion that has now been referred to as the CITY Furniture Operating System (CFOS) that is successfully growing in all departments of the company.

If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then storytelling sets the table for the meal. In essence, we tell stories so we can pass the art, responsibility, and great joy of leadership down to others... In this session, CEO and Chief Storyteller, Richard Sheridan will shine a light on why Storytelling is one of the most compelling approaches to building an intentional culture of joyful leadership. This will include many stories that will leave a lasting impact on attendees. As Rich wrote in the Become Storytellers chapter his book, Chief Joy Officer: "As leaders we are responsible for curating the stories we want shared and teaching others on our team the art of capturing and telling stories. There are many things a leader must do, but among the most important is storytelling, a leadership tradition as old as human civilization. Stories connect us from heart to mind, from spirit to body, from concept to reality." Rich will discuss how to make this art very personal and authentic. He will share practical ways of getting started on this journey and share the value of weaving history into stories to make a memorable point. He will also share the value of telling stories
about the future, a powerful way of using stories to create a shared vision.

Our speaker today is Rich Sheridan, co-founder, CEO, and Chief Storyteller of software design firm Menlo Innovations. Rich has a story to tell that may feel familiar to many of you. From his mid-20s to early 40s, he worked for the same public company and climbed a career ladder all the way to the executive team level with the common rewards that screamed success! Yet the prospect of going to work each day was filled with unsettledness and dread. He had trouble sleeping at night. Something big was missing. Rich went on a mission to figure out what was missing and how to get it back. He wanted and needed more from work. He knew it, his wife knew it, his kids could sense it; heck, it seemed even the dog was wondering how to help. In 1999, Rich found out what “it” was, and his life hasn’t been the same since. He eventually
boiled “it” down to a single word: joy. He shares this journey in his two books, Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear.

To heighten empower businesses with knowledge, understanding, and importance of operational resilience for sustained growth.

Having spent more than two decades working with 250+ organizations within the private and public sectors covering many industries across six countries, I have a deep-seated passion for building simplicity and flexibility around people and processes. Tamar is a specialist at the forefront of operational resilience serving to bring COOs and their organizations the ability to ensure systems capabilities, cultivate adaptable practices, and manage risks in real time with an efficient plan to create profitable outcomes for stakeholders, end-users, and regulators.

Change is often considered complex. The good news is it does not need to be, and it can be simplified. To simplify the complex, we must understand the problem. If the problem is not understood, then the change is not understood, and it will fail. This is often why change fails.A true understanding of the problem the change is trying to solve is needed. Coupled with an understanding of the change journey that people, customers, and organisations need to go on as the problem is being solved and the goal to be reached. Join this session where Samantha will help you learn how to understand the problem by using the Maven Change - Change Story tool. The Change Story tool enables innovation, collaboration and design thinking with a people-first focus. And enables individuals and teams to understand what the problem is and therefore, how to simplify change complexity. In this session you will gain insights on how the simplify complex change, what questions to ask, the perspectives to consider and use some great tools to dig deep into your analysis and develop your own change story.

Samantha Barr has led and delivered some of the largest change and transformation programs across Australia, often heading up large multi-disciplinary teams.Samantha has over twenty years of experience delivering large scale digital transformations and change programs. With extensive experience in the implementation of new ways of working including agile, Agile, scrum, scrum at scale, kanban, SAFe, wagile and blended change and project methodologies. And Samantha is absolutely obsessed with people, customer, and user experience. Samantha has extensive experience in developing change management and transformation practices including, change and project frameworks, toolkits and change capabilities. With proven experience in building and implementing capability uplift programs for leaders, change leaders and change practitioners and significant experience in coaching executives and leaders, to be the face of the change and apply and thought leader on how to lead and implement the change. A collaborator, innovator and creator in defining change delivery approaches to maximise acceptance and adoption and to create the culture of continuous improvement.

Come listen how Parmeet was able to help his group grow 120 times over the last 20 years by applying Lean principles to his manufacturing and consulting businesses. He now has the Vision to make CMX a $100 million dollar (US) group by 2025 from a humble beginning when it was an under US$ 200,000 company when he joined in 1999

I am a serial entrepreneur and run successful companies in the domain of Components Mfg’ing, Consulting & Int’l. Trading with 2 JV’s, 3 Global Warehouses, 4 Mfg’ing Plants, 7 Int’l. Offices and exports to over 51 countries employing over 500 people globally. After joining the small family business in 1999, I developed the quality systems and certified the company as the First Rubber Components mfr. in India to be certified to the stringent ISO/TS 16949 std. CMX Group today is a fast-growing group deploying world class mfg’ing technologies as well as quality systems and we serve renowned names in the Automobile, Defence, Railways, Food Processing & other Industries. I am also a Trainer and Public Speaker having shared at the same platform as the likes of Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield to name a few as a speaker at the National Achievers Conference in 2017, 2018 & 2019. I have authored multiple bestseller books like Blood, Heart & Soul, Struggles to Success, and The Art & Science of Leadership and have written over 100 Articles & White Papers on various topics thus far. I am now on a mission to help other Small & Medium Businesses to scale up and with this vision. Starting in 2020, I have started mentoring and investing in start up’s as an Angel Investor and hope to work with many more in the coming future. I also give my time to various causes such as YBLF, TSCC, MIWA, Sood Foundation among other Social organizations.

In all organizations, we face universal workplace challenges: How to inspire our stakeholders, how to secure budget approval, how to take leadership to the next level. The right stories can turn these challenges into opportunities. Join Ira for a hands-on workshop in storytelling for influence. Learn how to turn your personal experiences, data, and research into powerful messages told with stories. Through an interactive and actionable program, Ira inspires you to “think deliberately” about how you communicate with your stakeholders. Enjoy practical, hands-on exercises where you will learn how to engage, inspire, and influence your stakeholders with an easy-to-use Great Stories Framework™ taught around the world. Key Take-Aways Include: 1) Learn how to turn ordinary life experiences into powerful and engaging stories; 2) Be a StoryThinker. Train your brain to think of stories as solutions to problems; and 3) Start your own “Story Library,” ensuring you are ready for any situation

It all began over 30 years ago, at a high school science fair. Ira Koretsky had presented his computer program on the heart and the circulatory system. One by one, the prizes were announced... third... second... first place. After nearly 100 hours of programming evenings and weekends, he slumped his shoulders and thought to himself, “I lost.” Then... Ira heard the chairwoman announce, “We are awarding the grand prize to a young man who could sell me my own pair of shoes!” And his name was called... Ira started The Chief Storyteller® in 2002. Today, he is also an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, where he teaches public speaking and storytelling. Ira improves your performance through better communication. His secret sauce includes messaging and storytelling. For over 25 years, he has been a sought-after speaker, trainer, public speaking and storytelling coach, and has had over 40 articles published. He has accelerated success for more than 600 customers in 14 countries.

Telling stories is one of the most powerful methods that leaders have to influence, teach, and inspire people. Beyond numbers, goals and KPI’s, stories help to convey the culture and the values that can unite and inspire everyone within the workplace. In this workshop, we’ll learn more about how storytelling can help garner support for Lean by making it more tangible and more relatable for those faced with practicing it

Paul Critchley is a recognized thought leader on employee engagement and continuous improvement, and has helped businesses around the world achieve greater levels of success through the application of Lean techniques. A frequent speaker, he has keynoted at numerous corporate events, as well as at international conventions such as AME’s annual Lean conference and at OpEx Week. He’s also the host of “The New England Lean Podcast”, a weekly show that features management thought leaders, TED speakers, world-renowned authors and university professors. Paul is also a regular writer and contributor to publications such as Industry Week and Quality Magazines.Paul is a former Board Member of the Northeast Region of AME, holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, a M.S. degree in Management and a M.S. in Organizational Leadership. He is a proud supporter of CT’s “Skill up for Manufacturing” program.He is passionate about Lean and creating organizational cultures that are sustainably engaged. He co-authored his first book - The Whole Professional, A Collection of Essays to Help You Achieve a Full and Satisfying Life to bring a fresh perspective on Work/Life Balance and how individuals and organizations can work together to achieve greater levels of attainment.