operational-excellence
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Douglas Dietrich and the business of small improvements
At Minerals Technologies, Douglas Dietrich works on a scale most people never see: mineral particles, factory routines and thousands of employee ideas. His route from mechanical engineering to the corner office helps explain why the details keep his attention.
Kathy Warden and the value of a change of plan
She went to college thinking about law and left with a future in computing. The Northrop Grumman chief’s career has been shaped by knowing when to change direction - and when to keep working on a very hard problem.
Russell Reeder and the problem with being indispensable
He founded Rightsline to bring order to Hollywood’s licensing business. After years running technology companies, Russell Reeder is working on a related problem: how to build a business that keeps moving when its leader leaves the room.
Joseph Anderson and the Business of Making Ideas Bounce
Before Droplight put him beside race cars and David Letterman, Joseph Anderson worked on the machinery inside companies. His wager is that a good introduction needs an operation capable of keeping its promises.
Samuel Tan and the value of half an hour
An Indonesian factory gave Samuel Tan’s team one lunch break to connect two production lines. The Auk Industries co-founder has built his business around a related question: how much complexity can you remove before useful work begins?
Staci Kroon and the factory tour that kept going
At a plant in Shenzhen, Staci Kroon found enough ingenuity to set a personal record for the longest tour. Her route from Eaton to BraunAbility to TouchPoint helps explain why she kept asking questions.
Anita Samojednik Is Teaching AI When to Ask an Accountant
After two decades running marketplaces and customer operations, Paro's CEO is betting that the future of finance belongs to algorithms that know their limits - and experts who know what to do next.
Paul Lapadat Built a Seven-Brand Dessert Company from a Starbucks Napkin
A finance-trained food executive spotted a simple contradiction: people wanted desserts that felt handmade, while retailers and restaurants needed them made at scale. His answer became a seven-brand bakery platform built on real ingredients, operational discipline and an insistence that the product comes first.
François Séguin Is Building the Factory Behind the Thermostat
The products promise comfort. François Séguin's job is to make the machinery, data and people behind that promise work at industrial scale - from a Saint-Bruno factory floor to a 17-site North American manufacturing network.
Sameer Kazi
Sameer Kazi is the CEO of Pantheon, the leading WebOps platform powering websites for The Home Depot, Kaiser Permanente, and Doctors Without Borders. A two-decade SaaS veteran who scaled ExactTarget through its $2.7B Salesforce acquisition, ran Cheetah Digital across 18 countries, and served as ActiveCampaign's first-ever president, Kazi brings a rare combination of operational rigor and growth instinct to Pantheon's 10,000-customer platform.
Robert Felton
Robert 'Bob' Felton is a serial entrepreneur and nuclear-turned-software pioneer who has founded three enterprise software companies over a 40-year career - TENERA, Indus International, and DevonWay - each leveraging new computing paradigms to serve the nuclear and utilities industries. After Ideagen acquired DevonWay in September 2023, Felton now serves as CEO of Ideagen EHS, bringing his lifelong mission of transforming industrial operations through software full circle. A Cornell-trained mechanical engineer and decorated Navy submarine officer, Felton coined the term 'Enterprise Asset Management' alongside Gartner Group and took two companies public before building DevonWay's no-code platform for EHS, quality, and workforce management.
Errette Dunn
Errette Dunn is Co-Founder and CEO of Rever, a San Francisco-based frontline intelligence platform that helps global industrial companies unlock the creative potential of their deskless workers. Drawing on hands-on stints at Toyota and Airbus, he spent a decade coaching operations leaders across 17 countries before co-founding Rever in 2015. Today the company-backed by Y Combinator, Sequoia, Ulu Ventures, and Mundi Ventures-serves world-class manufacturers like Volkswagen, Grupo Bimbo, and Hyundai in more than 70 countries, giving factory floor workers an AI-powered mobile app to photograph problems, build solutions, and earn recognition in minutes.
Luca Dellanna
Luca Dellanna is an Italian author, management consultant, and systems thinker based in Turin, who has written 10+ books on ergodicity, risk management, behavioral psychology, and long-term strategy. Best known for making the concept of ergodicity accessible to a broad audience, he advises organizations on operational excellence and cultural change, teaches at the University of Genoa, and has been featured on EconTalk twice. His work sits at the intersection of probability theory, human behavior, and practical management wisdom.