KPI Fireside: A Continuous Improvement Podcast

KPI Fire
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Management
  • Weekly

KPI Fireside is the podcast for business leaders, process improvement professionals, and anyone passionate about making things better. Through insightful interviews with industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers, we explore the stories behind successful Continuous Improvement journeys. Hosted by KPI Fire, this podcast dives deep into Lean Six Sigma, Strategy Execution, KPI Management, and Operational Excellence—helping you overcome obstacles and drive real impact in your organization.

  1. 20h ago

    Christine Miles on the Business Impact of Listening

    Miscommunication costs US businesses $1.2 trillion a year. That is not a communication problem. It is a listening problem, and Christine Miles has spent her career proving it. In this episode of KPI Fireside, Keith Norris sits down with Christine Miles, keynote speaker, author, and founder of The Listening Path. Christine's background runs from home-based family therapy and structural family therapy training to organizational development consulting with hundreds of companies. She has distilled everything she learned into a simple, teachable framework that helps individuals and entire organizations close the gap between what is said and what is actually understood. 🔻 Why listening is a brain problem, not an ear problem, and why trying harder will not fix it 🔻 How less than two percent of people have any formal listening training and what that is actually costing your business 🔻 Why the listener is in charge of the conversation, not the speaker, and what changes when you know that 🔻 How six questions used by journalists, therapists, and negotiators can get you the full story every single time 🔻 Why summarizing what you heard before moving forward is the single highest-leverage alignment tool in any meeting 🔻 How to know whether your team's rework, missed deadlines, and lost deals trace back to a listening gap 📚 What Is It Costing You Not to Listen by Christine Miles: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=what+is+it+costing+you+not+to+listen 🌐 The Listening Path: https://thelisteningpath.com/ 🌐 Christine Miles: https://www.christinemileslistens.com/ 🔗 Connect with Christine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelisteningguide/ 🔗 Follow Christine: @christine.miles.listens 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Christine Miles on the Business Impact of Listening

  2. Oct 26

    Catherine Bennett on Lessons from Utah Business Leaders

    Catherine Bennett has had a front row seat to Utah's business community for years. As executive editor of Utah Business, she has interviewed the founders, covered the failures, and watched the patterns repeat. In this episode of KPI Fireside, Keith Norris sits down with Catherine Bennett, executive editor of Utah Business. Utah is a thriving place for business, receiving awards like Best State Overall from US News and World Report and Best State to Start a Business, and Catherine's role puts her in a unique position to interact with and observe some of the best businesses and leaders anywhere. A print journalism graduate turned marketer, entrepreneur, and continuous improver, Catherine has launched a marketing agency, led global communications teams, and held executive marketing roles with ties to Utah manufacturing, aerospace, and health sciences. 🔻 Why the most important job of any leader is helping other people grow 🔻 How Utah Business uses a values-based recognition system in Slack that keeps culture visible and repeatable every single day 🔻 What Utah's biggest opportunities actually are and why affordability and habitability are the baseline everything else depends on 🔻 Why showing up to the right rooms, even uncomfortable ones, is still the fastest way to build real business relationships in Utah 🔻 How the best leaders know when to facilitate a conversation and when to narrow the scope and make a call Utah Business Forward is happening November 10. Use code FORWARD100 to get $100 off your ticket. Learn more and register at https://www.utahbusiness.com/ 🔗 Connect with Catherine Bennett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinebennettutah/ 🌐 Utah Business: https://www.utahbusiness.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Catherine Bennett on Lessons from Utah Business Leaders

  3. Oct 19

    Darril Wilburn & Hiro Yoshiki on Inside Toyota's Way

    In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with returning guest Darril Wilburn, senior partner at Honsha, and first-time guest Hiro Yoshiki, who spent 35 years at Toyota Motor Corporation before serving as president of Futaba Industrial, a major Toyota group supplier. Hiro worked on the site selection for Toyota's first wholly owned U.S. plant in Kentucky, helped create the Toyota Way 2001, and led the Kentucky plant's turnaround. Together, Hiro and Darril have co-authored Courage, Humility, Kaizen: The Three Disciplines of Toyota Culture. 🔻 Why so many companies implement TPS tools and still fail to sustain any of it 🔻 What courage actually means at Toyota and why setting a vision is one of the most courageous things a leader can do 🔻 How Genchi Genbutsu goes wrong when leaders show up with the answer already in their head 🔻 How Toyota's escalation model works so that problems get solved at the lowest possible level 🔻 Why the relentless pursuit of QCD is the true definition of TPS and everything else is just technique 🔻 What healthy paranoia means and why Hiro says he prefers it to any amount of recognition or celebration 🔻 How Hiro learned to never label people and why that became one of the most important lessons of his career 📚 Courage, Humility, Kaizen by Darril Wilburn and Hiro Yoshiki:https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Humility-Kaizen-Disciplines-Leadership/dp/B0HJP39WQH/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0#detailBullets_feature_div 🌐 Learn more at Honsha: https://honsha.org/ 🌐 Japan Study Missions with Darril and Hiro: https://www.honsha.org/events/executive-development-mission-next-edition/ 🔗 Connect with Darril Wilburn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrilwilburn/ 🔗 Connect with Hiro Yoshiki on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiroyoshi-yoshiki-619b86a0/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Darril Wilburn & Hiro Yoshiki on Inside Toyota's Way

  4. Oct 12

    Nick Katko on Continuous Improvement for Accounting

    If your accounting team is buried in rework, chasing down missing approvals, and fixing the same invoice errors every month, the problem is not your people. It is your process. In this episode of KPI Fireside, Keith Norris welcomes back Nick Katko, the very first guest on the podcast, former CFO, lean accounting consultant, and author of multiple books on lean in finance. Nick's newest book is written specifically for accounting leaders who want to build a real continuous improvement system without having to become lean experts first. 🔻 How to apply PDCA in an accounting department without using a single piece of lean terminology 🔻 Why the four types of problems require four completely different responses and how to tell them apart 🔻 How a 43% invoice defect rate traced back to a flow problem nobody in accounting could see on their own 🔻 Why overtime is almost never a demand problem and what to measure instead to find the real cause 🔻 How the lean box score connects operational performance to financial performance in a way a spreadsheet never will 🔻 Why jumping to solutions before understanding root cause is the most common reason improvement events fail 🔻 What lean is really about, and why leaders who get that one thing right change everything 🔗 Connect with Nick Katko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickkatko/ 📚 Nick's books: https://maskell.com/about/our-books/ 🌐 Accounting CI System book resources: https://www.accountingcisbook.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Nick Katko on Continuous Improvement for Accounting

  5. Oct 5

    Sylvie Fortier on Operational Excellence Everywhere

    Most organizations try to execute before they have ever aligned on what problem they are actually solving. Sylvie Fortier has spent her career fixing that. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Sylvie Fortier, founder of Phoenix Praxis and a veteran of Motorola during the foundational years of Six Sigma. Sylvie has carried that early education across telecommunications, financial services, technology startups, and now ambulatory surgery centers, where she helps leaders strip away complexity, surface what actually matters, and build operating models that can scale without scaling the friction. Her philosophy is straightforward: operational excellence is not about making people work harder. It is about making the optimal outcome easier, more visible, and more repeatable. 🔻 Why execution can never compensate for strategic ambiguity and what to align on first 🔻 What Motorola taught Sylvie that most organizations never figure out about defects outside the manufacturing floor 🔻 Why scattered data creates the illusion of visibility without creating any real understanding 🔻 How to tell the difference between clinical resistance and a team telling you your process design has a flaw 🔻 Why co-design matters more than a perfect process handed down from the outside 🔗 Connect with Sylvie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviefortier/ 🌐 Phoenix Praxis: https://thePhoenixPraxis.com Home to the 42-Second Phoenix Pulse, a free diagnostic that instantly baselines your exposure to integration bottlenecks and leadership dependency risk in just seven critical questions. 🌐 The Clean Food Protocol: https://TheCleanFoodProtocol.com Systems thinking applied to food sourcing and consumer choice. 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Sylvie Fortier on Operational Excellence Everywhere

  6. Sep 28

    Catherine McDonald on AI, Leadership, and Collaboration

    Most managers were promoted because they were great at their job. Nobody taught them how to lead. Catherine McDonald is on a mission to fix that. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris welcomes back Catherine McDonald, founder of MCD Consulting and a leadership development coach who combines lean thinking, organizational behavior, and executive coaching to help managers at every level become the leaders their teams actually need. 🔻 Why time management is the foundation of every other leadership skill and how to use AI to finally build it 🔻 How to create your leader standard work in one week using nothing but your calendar and a chat with AI 🔻 Why asking one focused question gets you further in a coaching conversation than asking ten open ones 🔻 How to use the GROW model to structure a coaching conversation even if you have never been trained as a coach 🔻 Why you have to process the feeling before you can think clearly about the problem and how the FTLA model helps 🔻 Why recording your team meetings and running the transcript through AI is one of the best free feedback tools available 🔻 How to apply PDCA at the team level to make every meeting more useful than the last 🔗 Connect with Catherine McDonald on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-mcdonald-b6157210a/ 🌐 Learn more about MCD Consulting: https://mcdconsulting.ie/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Catherine McDonald on AI, Leadership, and Collaboration

  7. Sep 21

    Jonathan Lewis on The New Story of Work

    The old story of work is gone. Work hard, be loyal, get rewarded, retire to a beach someday. That shared story no longer exists. So what story is your team telling instead? In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Jonathan David Lewis, president of McKee Wallwork, a brand strategy firm, Forbes contributor, and author of The Rebuilders: Daily Foundations for the Leaders We Need. Jonathan led a national psychographic study of over 3,000 workforce participants to understand how people think about work today, and what he found should change how every leader thinks about hiring, culture, and what it actually means to lead. 🔻 Why the shared story of work has fragmented and what that means for every person you hire 🔻 How 56% of today's workforce describing themselves as struggling or suffering should change how you lead 🔻 Why your most important job as a leader is not strategy or execution but telling the right story 🔻 Why laddering up the purpose of work is the difference between people who show up and people who are all in 🔻 Why you cannot take the same things for granted from this workforce that you could from the last one 🔻 How the idea at the center of your culture determines everything and most leaders have never named it 📚 The Rebuilders by Jonathan David Lewis: https://www.mckeewallwork.com/book-review/the-rebuilders-daily-foundations-for-the-leaders-we-need/ 🔗 Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanlewis11/ 🌐 Learn more about McKee Wallwork: https://www.mckeewallwork.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Jonathan Lewis on The New Story of Work

  8. Sep 14

    Ram Sukumar on Scaling Continuous Improvement Across 13 Manufacturing Plants

    Most CI programs start with good intentions and stall at one plant. Ram Sukumar built one that works across thirteen. In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Ram Sukumar, Director of Continuous Improvement for Hexpol Compounding Americas. Over the last six years, Ram has built and deployed the Hexpol Production System across 13 manufacturing plants in the US and Mexico, trained more than 1,100 employees across white, yellow, and green belt programs, and created a culture where CI is not a program that happens to employees but something they genuinely own. Ram is one of the most thoughtful and people-first CI leaders you will find anywhere in manufacturing today. 🔻 Why understanding the culture of a plant before you push a system into it is the difference between adoption and resistance 🔻 How Hexpol built a four-level belt program that starts with leadership training 🔻 How to standardize metrics across 13 plants so every managing director is learning from every other plant in real time 🔻 Why conflicting priorities kill more CI programs than lack of tools and how Hoshin planning finally solved it for Hexpol 🔻 How to scale AI into your operations without rushing in before your data and your people are ready 🔻 Why improvement is not an event or a program and what it looks like when your CEO believes that too 🔗 Connect with Ram Sukumar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramsukumar22/ 🔗 Learn more about Hexpol: https://www.hexpol.com/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/

    Ram Sukumar on Scaling Continuous Improvement Across 13 Manufacturing Plants
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5
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6 Ratings

About

KPI Fireside is the podcast for business leaders, process improvement professionals, and anyone passionate about making things better. Through insightful interviews with industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers, we explore the stories behind successful Continuous Improvement journeys. Hosted by KPI Fire, this podcast dives deep into Lean Six Sigma, Strategy Execution, KPI Management, and Operational Excellence—helping you overcome obstacles and drive real impact in your organization.

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