This post follows the four-part series from the Future of People at Work Lean Coffee session at the LEI Lean Summit in Houston (March 13, 2026). A month later, FPW ran the same four themes with a new group of practitioners at the Ohio State University Center for Operational Excellence Summit. Here is what we heard. A month after Houston, we were in Columbus, Ohio, in a breakout room at the OSU-COE Summit. Different city, different crowd, same four questions on the flip charts. The Future of...

This is Part 4 of a four-part series documenting practitioner conversations from the Future of People at Work Lean Coffee session at the LEI Lean Summit in Houston, March 13, 2026. Each post focuses on one of the four cross-initiative themes the community explored: succession planning, time poverty, organizational silos, and AI integration. At the LEI Lean Summit in Houston, the AI integration breakout table did something worth noting: they used the Lean Coffee method to discuss AI. Sticky...

This is Part 3 of a four-part series documenting practitioner conversations from the Future of People at Work Lean Coffee session at the LEI Lean Summit in Houston, March 13, 2026. Each post focuses on one of the four cross-initiative themes the community explored: succession planning, time poverty, organizational silos, and AI integration. “Anytime somebody tries to keep their values close to the vest, it’s like anti-lean.” That was Dan Miano , a manufacturing leader from Santa Maria,...