SPEAKING
Eric has been speaking out of turn since grade school, and professionally talking in front of audiences since 1995. In the beginning most of his audiences were skeptical of Lean, and even more cynical about a person hired to talk to them about it, so he had to develop ways to genuinely engage them. He lived through the transition from seminar-style trainings where interruptions were removed to our current always-distracted environment, so he knows the power of telling stories that keep attention and get key points across quickly. He’s also fallen in just about every Lean pothole you can imagine, so he tries to keep it light and as entertaining as possible. We’ve all suffered through presenters we wish weren’t on stage – Eric isn’t one of those.
PODCASTS
As a passion project, Eric hosts The WYpod and interviews everyday leaders across Wyoming. Guests range across industries, professions, and ages (including an amazing grade schooler who started a national anti-bullying program). If you listen to an episode or two, you’ll learn about incredible people doing incredible things…and also get a feel for Eric’s personal style. He’s conversational and always focused on the guest – not on himself. And, who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself so intrigued that you’ll want to head to the Cowboy State and meet some of these great folks in person. If so, you’ll also get to tour the company Eric manages and meet his team. Be sure to quiz them all to recite their five Lean Values while you’re there.
LEAN EDUCATION
Eric’s Lean education began in an aerospace tier one supplier environment. The company was well into its Lean journey and had reached an impasse. They were seeing the same people participating in Kaizen Events and were struggling to get new participation. Resistance to Lean was significant, including the organic formation of AKTs, or “anti kaizen teams.”
In order to understand the resistance, Eric steeped himself in their traditional approach…learning things like the importance of 5S, the counterintuitive power of one-piece pull, and the dangers of waterfalling. In his time with the organization, Eric developed a specialty in bringing key resistors into the Lean system and channeling their passions into organizational improvement. Participants in his programs regularly moved into senior roles in the company’s Lean processes.
DEVELOPING CURRICULUM
He then began working with multiple aerospace prime contractors. These companies had a long history of implementing improvement programs, which meant employees had a long-term habit of skepticism. Eric learned to analyze and explain common threads between Lean and programs like TQM, Quality Circles, Agile, and Six Sigma. It was in this environment that he began developing curriculum that would eventually be published as The People Side of Process Improvement, a training program still offered across the globe. It focused on the concept that all improvement initiatives struggle from common problems – most of which lie in the “people side” of the organization.
Developing and rolling out this program gave him access to a wide variety of companies attempting to implement Lean and other programs like it. His personal highlights include three days spent with groups of finance industry Six Sigma Black and Master Black Belts in New Jersey. (This is also the first place he heard the words “ice” and “storm” used together.) On the other temperature extreme, he was thrilled to work with scientists in New Mexico on their implementation of the Theory of Human Error. A multi-year project in the rail industry provided insight into a Lean implementation driven by a senior executive who was himself a Lean consultant and author.
THE MOVE TO WYOMING
Eric moved to Wyoming so his children could grow up in the same small-town environment in which he was raised. Thinking his Lean journeys had come to an end, he held a number of management positions. This provided him insight into the challenges of implementing Lean when he wasn’t a consultant or an outside trainer. It reinforced his beliefs in both the technical values of Lean…and also in the “people side” challenges of implementing them.
About the company
307 FIRST
Years later, he encountered a remarkable organization in the relative wilderness. 307 First has purchased a number of companies and invested in others, with the goal of keeping them owned in Wyoming. Eric was pleasantly surprised to learn that they had years of experience in Lean and that they wanted to implement it whenever they acquired a company. This led to him joining the group and eventually stepping into day-to-day operation of one of their companies. This provides him the never ending opportunity to further enlist everyone in the company to solve problems using Lean tools.
