The need to improve your organization’s performance has perhaps never been greater: customers expect more, competent workers are growing scarce, and competition is intensifying. But regardless of size and type, organizations are complex, so where do you start to improve? How do you improve those “right things” and not waste time and energy? And how to do you sustain the improvement over time to really impact outcomes?
The Performance Excellence Network is pleased to welcome “its own” Brian Lassiter, president of PEN, to our January 17 Twin Ports PEN breakfast discussion: “Achieving & Sustaining Excellence: An Overview of Baldrige & Other Improvement Tools.” The breakfast will be hosted by Regus (in the Wells Fargo building downtown; details provided at registration).
Brian will introduce the Baldrige Performance Excellence Framework, a diagnostic management system that helps leaders identify and prioritize key strengths and improvement opportunities upon which action plans can be created. Attendees will get a complimentary copy of the Baldrige “Excellence Builder,” a mini-assessment that can be used to gauge your organization’s improvement needs. Brian will also highlight several other improvement tools – such as Balanced Scorecard, Lean, Six Sigma, and others – showing how they can connect to each other, proving a robust way to improve organizational performance.
Continental breakfast will be served from 7:00 to 7:30 with the presentation from 7:30 to 8:30 am. No cost for members and clients of Regus or the Chamber; $20 for non-members. To register, contact Brian Lassiter at [email protected].
Biography
Brian Lassiter was elected president /CEO of the Performance Excellence Network (Minnesota Council for Quality) in the summer of 2001. Before his election, Brian held positions with the following organizations: Ian Alliott Consulting (Managing Director), Norstan Consulting (Principal Consultant), The St. Paul Companies (Corporate Quality Consultant), Price Waterhouse (Consultant), and Boatmen’s National Bank (Quality Manager). In these roles, Brian has worked with dozens of organizations in a variety of industries to help them improve their performance and competitiveness.
Brian has served over 20 years in various roles with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, including Examiner, Senior Examiner, Alumni Examiner, and on the Board of Overseers (2012-15). Before his appointment as president, he served as a volunteer Senior Evaluator for the Minnesota Quality Award (1996-97), served as a Judge for the Veteran’s Administration Baldrige-based Carey Award (2004-06), served as a judge on the Baldrige-based Army Communities of Excellence (2009-10), and is serving on the Panel of Judges for the American Health Care Association’s Baldrige-based Awards (2013, 2016-17). He after completing two terms as Chair, Brian now serves as Vice Chair of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, the national consortium of all state/regional quality awards and is on the board of Communities of Excellence 2026, a nonprofit that is working to apply the principles of Baldrige excellence to solve community challenges and improve community outcomes.
Brian was on the Review Panel for the University of Minnesota Carlson School’s Juran Fellowship program (2003-08), is on the Benedictine Health System Board of Trustees (2009- ) serving as chair from 2011-15, and served from 1995-2003 and 2004-2014 on the Board of Directors for Goodwill/Easter Seals of MN.
