How Can My Products and Services Help You Get Better Results?

My goal as the owner of Great Systems is simple and twofold - I want to help you accelerate your pursuit of process excellence, and I want to help you eliminate the frustration that comes from chasing fads. A person can easily learn more than they will ever need to know on the Internet when it comes to process excellence tool options. The challenge lies in (1) helping people find time to use the tools that are out there, (2) installing those work systems that will best meet your performance goals, and (3) doing both in a manner that achieves high levels of meaningful workforce engagement. Over my 27 plus year career, I have learned how to do this through both personal experimentation and my benchmarking of high performance organizations, and I want to share my learnings with you.

It is my goal to provide each of my customers with the utmost value, and I am not just saying that. If you are interested in working with me further in one or more of the following ways, please send me an e-mail at kevin@greatsystems.com or give me a call, and we can set up an initial "How can I help you?" visit.

By the way, my definition of value is "what one gets for what it costs them", both in terms of time and money. I am 100% confident that if you give me the chance to work with you and your team, I can show you how to get great results in a short of time without spending a lot of time. In fact, I am also confident that you will save money. I hope that I can have the chance to talk with you about how to make your work systems even more effective.

Great Systems! Products and Services

	Work System Analysis and Design		Baldrige Quality Award-based Services
	Workshop Design and Facilitation		Great Food Systems!
	TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training		Great Freight Systems!
	Keynote Speaking		Great Health Care Systems!
	Online Consulting		The most popular Great Systems books and workbooks
	Planning Event Facilitation
	Incident Investigation and Investigation Process Design

Work System Analysis and Design Back to Top

My operational definition of a system is based on the use of the term "systematic" in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. That definition refers to "approaches that are repeatable and use data and information so that improvement and learning are possible." I would say that in most organizations, their work systems are repeatable, even though the results they provide or the waste they contain are not actually measured. Unfortunately, the processes that are being repeated each day as a part of a given work system are not (1) producing the types of results that are truly desired and (2) being executed in a similar manner across all people and work groups.

I can help you improve the work, and in particular the management, systems that you already have in place or help you install new ones. Systems I have designed and improved to-date include leadership, measurement, customer and associate satisfaction improvement, process improvement, communication, job design, and training. I will work with your leadership team and other key personnel to evaluate the effectiveness of your key work systems that are currently in place and to recommend possible options for making those that are in need of improvement more effective. I can also focus specifically on improving a given process or job, using my industrial engineering and process improvement skills.

Workshop Design and Facilitation Back to Top

If you invest eight hours of your time in a training session, then you should get eight hours of value. I try to design my workshops to allow time for a lot of skill practice and interaction - that is how adults learn best. I can help also you redesign your existing learning events to make them more powerful, or I can work with you to create a learning event from scratch. Skill understanding, retention, and application are the goals -- lecture-based training will not help you achieve these goals, but my workshops will!

The workshop descriptions shown on this website can be customized to focus on those skill areas that you feel need the most attention. For example, let's say that you wanted to focus more on measurement systems and less on safety in the "Supervising for High Performance" workshop - not a problem. The modular design of my workshops allows for this flexibility. I can also insert customized exercises into a workshop to help better link the concepts being shared and practiced to the associate's daily workplace.

TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training Back to Top

I work internationally as a certified trainer for the TapRooT® root cause analysis process. I believe that this approach to root cause analysis far exceeds the more opinion-based approaches that have been used for years, such as fishbone diagrams, 5 Whys, and fault tree analysis. To learn more about this service that I can provide you with, read my article entitled "How Do You Find Root Causes?", which can be found on this website, or visit the official TapRooT® website.

Keynote Speaking Back to Top

I regularly speak on high performance workplace and motivation topics at local, regional, and national events, and I also make organization-specific speeches. Currently, my most popular speeches are "Do You Work in a High Performance Workplace?", "The Ten Cultural Challenges to High Performance", and "Are You Ready for 21st Century Leadership?" To see additional examples of presentations I have given recently, check out this link.

Online Consulting Back to Top

My online consulting service offers you a low cost way to improve your key work systems. For example, I have worked with past customers in this manner to help them improve their employee survey process and to help them develop balanced scorecards. For a low monthly fee, you can benefit from this improvement approach as well. Give it a try!

Planning Event Facilitation Back to Top

I have been facilitating and leading annual planning efforts for over twenty years, and I really enjoy doing it. Services of this type range from a one day annual planning meeting to coordinating a two to three day offsite planning retreat. In most cases, I work via e-mail or in person with your leadership or planning team prior to the actual planning event to collect information on key needs, challenges, and metrics. We then use a summary of this information during the event to develop an annual operating plan for your site. The degree of detail included in your plan and the number of stakeholders that you choose to involve in the process help determine the number of actual meetings and events that will be needed to complete your plan.

I can also help you develop a more detailed improvement plan as part of your improved planning process. This expanded plan helps you (1) develop a broader annual plan and (2) involve more people in the plan development effort. I can also assist you in reviewing your progress to plan on at least a quarterly basis. Quarterly performance updates can also be prepared to help you document the progress you are making from quarter to quarter. By serving as your systems performance coach, I can help you better adjust to changes as they arise and help you ensure that your key objectives are met as your leadership team executes their operating plan.

Incident Investigation and Investigation Process Design Back to Top

Some of my TapRooT® customers in particular enlist my services to help them analyze persistent problems that they can't seem to make go away on their own. By using a combination of onsite investigation interviews and facilitation, coupled with systems analysis and online consultation, I can help you find the systemic causes of these problems. More importantly, I can help you identify corrective actions, (systems changes) that can be put in place to help minimize the likelihood that these problems will come back in the future. I can also help you improve your existing investigation process so that it routinely produces better results in less time.

Baldrige Quality Award Based Services Back to Top

I am in my ninth year of serving as a National Examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Participating in the Baldrige process as an Examiner has probably affected my work career more than any other personal development effort I have undertaken, including my MBA degree work. I have had the chance to create over 30 scorebooks, go on five site visits, and serve as both a Team Leader and a back-up team leader for both consensus teams and site visit teams. Most importantly, serving as an Examiner has allowed me to see what true, sustained process excellence looks like in a variety of work settings, including small business and health care. In my work as a performance improvement coach, I strive to share my learnings with you and your organization to help it attain similar results in a value added, cost effective manner.

Here are some ways in which I can help you and your organization specific to a Baldrige-based pursuit of process excellence:

• One and Two Day Self Assessment Workshops
• Application Writing and Assembly
• Half Day Systems Development Workshops
• Site Visit Simulations

Great Health System Services Back to Top

In addition to helping health care systems improve from a Baldrige perspective via the four approaches listed above, I can also help you make health care process specific improvements. For example, I have helped an intensive care pharmacy improve its work flow, while at the same time, helping it reduce its average cost to fill an order and reducing the potential for prescription errors.

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The Hottest Selling Great Systems! Books and Workbooks Back to Top

	How to Develop a High Performance Work Culture	$20	Click HERE to buy one or more of these books and workbooks now from Amazon.com!
	Pursuing Process Excellence in Health Care	$25
	The Fundamentals of Lean Tools and Concepts	$25
	Balanced Scorecards: How Teams Use Them on the Front Lines	$25
	Are Your Teams Working? - Keys to Team Effectiveness	$25