A 3-Day Workshop Series for Senior Leadership Teams
The Performance Excellence Network (PEN) together with its partner, Better Business Results, is offering this workshop in two locations to make it more accessible to members.  The same material will be presented at each location on the respective Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

Locations and Dates

Workshops – St. Paul

St. Paul: Location TBD

Day 1: March 31

Day 2: April 17

Day 3: May 28

Cost

All pricing is for the 3-Day workshop and people from the same organization

1-2 people – $900 each person

Teams of 3 people – $2,400 per team

Additional Team Members – $750 each

Non-members add $300 per person to participate

Please register your entire team for either the St. Paul or Minneapolis option

Participation is limited to 5-6 teams at each location

If you are a senior executive in an organization and desire to attend less than the entire three days please contact PEN for single day pricing.

 

Registration

To start the registration process send an email indicating your organization’s interest in attending to [email protected]

General Description

• A series of three one-day interactive Workshops on Change, held over three months, allowing participating organizations to apply what they are learning and to embed the concepts into regular work practices.
• Understand the Essential tools – the right questions to ask by senior executives, directors, managers, senior administrators, etc.
• Make it personal and practice, by applying it to your organization’s priorities
• By attending all three workshops, participants will see the link and integration between strategy, change activities, and results, and best practice tools to enable their local implementation.

Who should attend?

Organizations should consider sending leaders and core teams of 3-5 people.  Any

group that is expected to make changes happen and deliver expected results will benefit from concepts and How-To’s of this workshop.

It is highly recommended that organizations send their leadership team or project team and those who will subsequently review team progress and results.

Participation at each location will be limited to 5-6 teams (maximum 25 participants) to ensure the highest level of interaction between the presenters and each group.

 

Key Outcomes

At the conclusion of the three days each organization will have

• Better tools, more experience, and confidence that previously ambiguous or fuzzy goals are translated into actionable and clear before charters before they are approved.
• The right questions to ask when identifying, sponsoring, evaluating, and prioritizing potential improvement actions and projects.

 

Postwork: Organizations will leave the workshop with prioritized action plans. PEN will recommend resources in addition to Fechter and Floss who can work with core teams and their organizations as they implement their action plans.

Benefits: Participants will leave understanding how to:

• Create a plan to translate strategy àinto tactics àinto projects àinto daily processes àinto results that stick
• Understand the difference between status quo performance and what specific performance is expected from the improved state. Tangible, actionable improvements.
• Common language to express goals, charter projects, and deal with roadblocks
• Set the stage to translate fuzzy goals, wishes, and hopes into specific actions with S M A R T metrics – and identify which parts of your organizational systems need to take action
• Learn and practice affinitizing many ideas into actionable themes
• Utilize prioritization tools such as impact/resources required/ complexity of the change project/ interrelationship digraph

 

Instructors

John Fechter currently leads a consulting practice, Better Business Results, LLC and is also an Executive Fellow at the Veritas Institute, University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business. Over the course of his career, he has served as a research psychologist at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, director of quality improvement at Honeywell, vice president of quality for Honeywell Bull, senior vice president of continuous improvement and training at KeyCorp, and Lean Six Sigma master black belt and deployment Leader at Medtronic. Fechter also is a Thwaits Fellow in the University of St. Thomas’ School of Engineering, where he serves as the program leader for the M.S. in technology management degree. He has been an adjunct faculty member at St. Thomas since 1983.

Fechter has been a senior examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and a judge and forming team member for the Massachusetts Quality Award. He currently serves on the 2011-2016 panel of judges for the Minnesota Quality Award, and served as a judge for the 2014 American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) quality award.

Fechter holds a B.S. in psychology and an M.S. in applied science from Montana State University. He also earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of South Dakota, focusing on human factors engineering and ergonomics. He has taught at the universities of Southern California (Pentagon Branch), Minnesota, and South Dakota as well as at St. Thomas. He was an officer of the Minnesota Section of ASQ 2002-2004 and is an ASQ Certified Quality Manager and Certified Quality Auditor.

Gary Floss served as the Director of Quality Assurance and Continual Improvement for Marvin Windows and Doors for 8 years until recently retiring. Floss previously served as the Managing Director of BlueFire Partners, a consulting firm specializing in providing services to organizations to improve enterprise-wide business excellence. Floss has extensive quality leadership and operational management experience in high-tech global industry Fortune 500 companies including Medtronic, Inc. and Ceridian, Inc. (formerly Control Data Corporation). His quality leadership experience includes applying the principles of process management and continuous improvement to a wide range of application areas including development, manufacturing, field support, customer requirements and relationship management, and administrative support functions. His operational experience includes general management and program management for large-scale computer and peripheral development programs. Floss’s strengths include: developing customer-focused quality strategies; leading results-oriented process improvement projects; coaching management championing of business process improvement projects; facilitating strategic planning, and designing balanced metric scorecards to measure business progress.

Floss is a 15-year member of the adjunct faculty for the University of St. Thomas teaching a graduate course called Strategic Quality Management. He serves on the Board of GOAL/QPC (a training and consulting organization.) He is a 24-year member of the Malcolm Baldrige Board of Examiners having also served as a Baldrige Judge for three years. He has conducted numerous Baldrige site visits and delivered more than 60 presentations regarding the Baldrige criteria. He was a principal designer in establishing the Minnesota State Quality Award in 1991 and served on the MCQ Board of Directors and has recently completed his 4^th three-year term as a judge. Floss has served as a judge for the Baldrige-based Army Communities of Excellence Program and currently serves as a judge for the American Health Care Association Baldrige-based Program. Floss has coaching and assessment experience in applying the Baldrige model to all sectors: manufacturing, service, healthcare, education, and non-profit organizations.

Floss holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kansas and has done post-graduate work at the University of Minnesota.