Shingo Principles Podcast

Episode 5: Back to Basics: How Leadership Style Shapes Culture with Alisha Garrett

Unlock the power of leadership style in shaping the culture and performance of your organization. In this episode, we sit down with Alisha Garrett, Chief Enterprise Strategy Officer at Utah Transit Authority, to explore how a leader’s approach influences their teams, their systems, and the overall organizational environment. Alisha shares practical insights from her executive experience—highlighting the connection between leadership behaviors, strategic alignment, and the cultural outcomes that follow. Whether you're a seasoned leader or developing your leadership journey, this conversation offers valuable takeaways you can apply today. 🎧 Listen now and elevate your leadership impact. To learn more about the Shingo Model, please visit https://shingo.org [https://shingo.org].

Episode 60: You Can Be Lean and Creative

In this session, innovation excellence experts Norbert Majerus and Brian Abraham explore how the Shingo Model extends beyond Lean, serving as a powerful framework for building cultures where creativity and innovation thrive. Challenging the common belief that Lean stifles innovation, the presenters share insights and experiences that reveal the true barrier: organizational culture. After uncovering how fear of failure, misaligned leadership, and rigid processes often limit innovation, they reveal how the Shingo Model helps overcome these obstacles. In addition to highlighting practical strategies to foster psychological safety, empower employees at every level, and encourage experimentation through low-risk, high-impact approaches, the session showcases compelling examples, from employee-driven innovation systems to hands-on “moonshine labs,” that demonstrate how organizations can embed creativity into daily operations. With an emphasis on the importance of aligning innovation with strategy, this session outlines how to channel creative energy toward meaningful outcomes, ensuring that ideas deliver real value to both customers and the organization. Whether you’re leading a transformation or looking to ignite ideas, this session offers actionable insights to help you integrate innovation with operational excellence. Join us to learn how the Shingo Model can unlock the full creative potential of your people—and position your organization for sustained success. For more information, please visit https://shingo.org.

Episode 59: Leading Enterprise Excellence: Achieving Sustainable Results

Discover why culture change often fails—and what it takes to make it stick. Based on the book Leading Enterprise Excellence, this episode uncovers how aligning purpose, engaging people, and executing the right systems can drive sustainable results. You'll explore some of the Shingo Model’s powerful insights into how systems shape behavior and learn practical strategies for building a culture where continuous improvement thrives. Join us, and find out how to turn ideal behaviors into lasting organizational excellence.  To learn more, please visit https://shingo.org [https://shingo.org].

Episode 58: Redefining Excellence - From Maturity to Mastery

This session explores one organization's evolution from industry excellence to Shingo maturity—and ultimately organizational mastery. Participants will examine distinct phases of excellence: industry excellence establishes credibility through measurable performance—quality, delivery, cost, and customer satisfaction—while Shingo excellence deepens that foundation by aligning principles, systems, and behaviors, creating cultural stability and sustainable results by leveraging the Shingo Guiding Principles.   But maturity is not the endpoint. As organizations grow in scale and complexity, excellence must continue to evolve. This session introduces five transformational principles that define mastery: contributing to society, embedding a philosophy, designing for experience, driving innovation, and learning continuously. Together, these principles expand excellence beyond optimization toward enduring impact.   Attendees will gain insights into how high-performing organizations move from maintaining standards to redefining them, ensuring excellence evolves across leaders, generations, and changing conditions. To learn more, please visit https://shingo.org [https://shingo.org].

Episode 57: Improvement as a Human Endeavor

In this episode, we explore why sustainable continuous improvement depends less on tools and more on people. Using The Gund Company as a case study, we trace its two-decade journey from Lean tool adoption to a deeply embedded, people-centered system grounded in the Shingo Model. You’ll hear how leaders shifted from driving compliance to developing people—integrating respect, humility, and listening with practices like A3 problem-solving and meaningful gemba engagement. The result? World-class engagement and quality, sustained 15% annual growth, and a culture where people know their contributions matter. For more information, please visit https://shingo.org [https://shingo.org].