John Rizzo joins Mark Graban to discuss why sustainable improvement depends on empowering people — not command-and-control leadership or short-term value extraction.

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John is a senior executive, investor, and change leader who has led transformational improvement efforts across manufacturing, healthcare, retail, services, and nonprofit organizations. He is the author of Creating Value: Empowering People for Sustainable Success, a book that deliberately avoids Lean jargon while describing a holistic continuous improvement business system rooted in humility, listening, and people development.

In this episode, John shares lessons from Wiremold, private equity–backed companies, and healthcare organizations, including the powerful “six-inch move” story that shows how small acts of listening can unlock trust and transformation. The conversation explores what real empowerment means (and what it does not), why leaders must shift from firefighting to developing problem solvers, and how organizations can create lasting value for employees, customers, and owners.

This episode is especially relevant for CEOs, executives, managers, and internal change agents looking to improve results without burning out their people or relying on command-and-control leadership.

What if operational excellence depends less on doing more with less—and more on how leaders create meaning, optimism, and relationships at work?

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In this episode, Mark Graban is joined by Kathy Miller, senior operations executive, leadership coach, and author of More Is Better: Leading Operations with Meaning, Optimism, and Relationships for Excellence. Drawing on decades of experience in manufacturing and aerospace, along with research from positive psychology, Kathy explains how leadership behavior directly shapes safety, quality, engagement, and performance.

The conversation explores why “soft skills” are not soft at all, how leaders can practice realistic optimism without ignoring real problems, and how everyday interactions either build psychological safety or quietly undermine it. Kathy also shares practical insights for leading under pressure, balancing compassion with accountability, and helping people find meaning even in highly segmented operational work.

This episode is especially relevant for leaders in manufacturing, healthcare, and operations who want sustainable results without burnout, fear, or disengagement.

Don Kieffer has spent more than fifty years redesigning how real work gets done. In this episode, he explains why so many improvement efforts stall—and how Dynamic Work Design offers a clearer, more practical way forward.

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Don traces his path from machinist to Vice President of Operational Excellence at Harley-Davidson and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan. He shares what he learned working with Toyota legend Hajime Oba, including the moment he realized that copying Toyota’s rituals was the wrong goal. The real power, he argues, lies in understanding the thinking behind great work design.

We break down the five principles of Dynamic Work Design—solving the right problem, structuring for discovery, connecting the human chain, regulating flow, and making work visible—and discuss how they apply far beyond the factory floor. Don explains why intellectual work is “almost infinitely compressible,” why executives misdiagnose morale problems, and why most leaders can draw their org chart but not the actual flow of work.

Along the way, he shares stories from Harley, MIT, and client organizations that learned to shift from firefighting to flow. His message is consistent: when you redesign the work, you change the culture. Engagement follows the system, not the other way around.

This episode pairs well with Episode 538 with Nelson Repenning and is essential listening for leaders trying to improve performance, reduce frustration, and create environments where people can do their best work.

Key ideas • Copying Toyota’s practices isn’t the same as understanding Toyota’s thinking • Why Dynamic Work Design starts with a specific problem—not a program • How to create real-time management systems in knowledge-work environments • Why most dysfunction is a work-design issue, not a people issue • How better work design restores flow, learning, and joy in the work

Representative Quotes “Five percent of the problem is people. Ninety-five percent is bad work design.” “Most executives can draw the org chart, but not the work.” “Intellectual work is almost infinitely compressible.” “Culture emerges from how the work is designed—not from what leaders say.”