Improving Productivity with Today’s Uncertainty — July 24 PEN Webinar

With tariffs and continued economic uncertainty, many businesses and organizations have frozen budgets and are again focused on increasing productivity, improving efficiency, and reducing waste. The Performance Excellence Network — in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Performance Excellence and the Iowa Quality Center and in cooperation with the Greater Rochester NY Quality Council — is pleased to host an [...]

2025-06-30T16:07:48-05:00June 21, 2025|

Encore Cool Tools: Exploring Continuous Improvement Tools — July 10 PEN Webinar

With any project -- home improvement, automobile repair, even exercising and working out -- you need the right tools to do the job right.  The same is true for process and organizational improvement!  We all need proven tools to understand the current state, explore solutions and improvements, and design and implement a desired future state. [...]

2025-06-30T08:20:50-05:00June 21, 2025|

Achieving EXtraordinary: 36 Insights from the igniteEX 2025 Conference — May 2025

The igniteEX 2025 conference (with the theme “Achieving Extraordinary Together”) was last month.  The opening session was pretty inspirational and definitely memorable, as a few board members (of PEN & our partners) came up on stage one at a time and shared why he/she attends this conference.  The statements probably weren’t all that surprising – [...]

2025-05-27T13:24:32-05:00May 27, 2025|

Advancing Performance Excellence: Baldrige 201 — July 31 & Aug 14 Online Workshop

The Performance Excellence Network — in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Performance Excellence and the Iowa Quality Center — is pleased to announce a powerful online workshop: Advancing Performance Excellence: Baldrige 201, July 31 & August 14 (mornings). Baldrige 201 builds off of Baldrige 101 (Principles of Performance Excellence (which is offered many times [...]

2025-05-17T10:25:13-05:00May 17, 2025|

Cool Tools: Exploring 20 Contemporaneous Continuous Improvement Tools — October 2024

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” so the saying goes.  In other words, each tool -- be it for carpentry, cooking, or process improvement -- has a distinct purpose.  And tools are sub-optimized if they are used for anything other than that distinct purpose – imagine trying to loosen [...]

2024-10-21T13:05:23-05:00October 21, 2024|

Cool Tools: Exploring Continuous Improvement Tools — Oct 17 PEN Webinar

With any project -- home improvement, automobile repair, even exercising and working out -- you need the right tools to do the job right.  The same is true for process and organizational improvement!  We all need proven tools to understand the current state, explore solutions and improvements, and design and implement a desired future state. [...]

2024-10-07T18:54:33-05:00September 23, 2024|

The Key to Sustained World Class Performance: Deliberate Practice — PEN June 2024

Everywhere you look, standards are rising.  In business, in sports, in education, in healthcare – really in all aspects of human and organizational achievement – what is considered "world class" continues to increase.  For example… It used to take 72 hours by plane to cross the Atlantic (1913); it now takes just over six.  The [...]

2024-06-24T09:00:43-05:00June 24, 2024|

Advancing Performance Excellence: Baldrige 201 — Sept 12 & 19 Online Workshop

The Performance Excellence Network — in partnership with the Wisconsin Center for Performance Excellence and the Iowa Quality Center — is pleased to announce a powerful online workshop: Advancing Performance Excellence: Baldrige 201, September 12 (morning) & 19 (afternoon). Baldrige 201 builds off of Baldrige 101 (Principles of Performance Excellence (which is offered many times [...]

2024-06-03T09:41:38-05:00June 3, 2024|

Insights from igniteEX: A Prequel — March 7 PEN Webinar

In many ways, what's required for organizational excellence these days has changed: there are new work environments (such as hybrid), severe talent shortages, emerging technologies (like artificial intelligence).  But in other ways, nothing has changed: we still need to satisfy our customers; we still need to engage our teams; and we still need to improve [...]

2024-02-21T13:33:15-06:00February 21, 2024|
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