meetings

Meetings: As certain and as joyous as death and taxes

There are very few people that actually enjoy meetings.  I have never heard anyone say, “I can’t wait for the meeting this afternoon” unless it’s followed by “I won’t have to eat at my desk.” Certainly, the people who are called to attend a meeting largely lack enthusiasm are energetic unless they, or their project,…

gridiron

State of Readiness; Carl Kirpes, From Gridiron to Pipelines

In this episode of State of Readiness, we interview Carl Kirpes, responsible for Crude Oil Strategy & Analysis at Marathon Petroleum Corporation. Carl and I met some years ago at an annual conference of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers when he was just graduating from Iowa State University – and we have stayed in…

State of Readiness; Inaugural Episode with Brent Gleeson, Navy SEAL

State of Readiness; Inaugural Episode with Brent Gleeson, Navy SEAL

Welcome to this inaugural episode of “State of Readiness”, a podcast devoted to sharing knowledge of how companies can become high-performance organizations and hosted by Joseph Paris.  Our first guest is Brent Gleeson; a Navy SEAL combat veteran with multiple tours to Iraq and Africa.  Upon leaving SEAL Team 5, Brent turned his discipline and battlefield lessons…

The Recession is Dead – Long Live the Recession

The Recession is Dead – Long Live the Recession

The competitive advantage for businesses in the 20th Century was centered around the efforts related to process excellence – making the processes throughout a business as efficient and as effective as possible. And this was accomplished using a variety of disciplines including (but not limited to) Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, and so on….