People-Centered Excellence: The Journey of Continuous Improvement

CCL Summit 2025 Story Arc

The Central Coast Lean Summit offers a transformative two-day experience that takes participants on a journey from innovative concepts to practical implementation. Rather than traditional presentations, the Summit delivers immersive learning through a carefully designed sequence of interactive sessions, each building upon the last to create a comprehensive understanding of how people drive excellence in organizations. The unique format combines expert insights with extensive hands-on practice, enabling participants to experience the power of collaborative improvement firsthand.

Day 1: Foundations & Frameworks

Morning: Setting the Stage for People-Centered Work

The Summit begins with impromptu networking that immediately establishes connections between participants from diverse industries and backgrounds. This creates a collaborative atmosphere essential for the learning journey ahead.

Eric Olsen opens with "The Future of People at Work," providing a foundation of emerging workplace trends and collaborative technologies. Interactive breakout sessions help participants identify how these concepts apply to their specific contexts, establishing a common language and understanding.

Following a brief networking break, Scott Gauvin deepens this foundation by reframing "Respect for People" as a systematic organizational practice rather than merely an individual mindset. Through facilitated exercises, participants develop practical methods for embedding respect into their company's DNA, experiencing how this shift transforms workplace dynamics.

Afternoon: Creative Tensions & Practical Applications

After lunch, Rachel Reuter and John Shook guide participants through "Navigating Lean Paradoxes," exploring how embracing apparent contradictions can drive breakthrough improvements. Drawing on decades of experience implementing lean globally, they help participants discover the creative tensions that exist within successful lean transformations.

The day culminates with Nick Katko's session on "Connecting Continuous Improvement to the Bottom Line," where participants learn how financial transparency can become a catalyst for collaboration. Through the powerful "box score" methodology, Nick demonstrates how organizations can create a common financial language that bridges departmental divides. Using a 1-2-6-All liberating structure format, participants apply these concepts directly to their organization's specific challenges, mapping improvement scenarios to box score templates and experiencing how financial literacy empowers everyone—not just the accounting department—to understand and communicate the impact of their improvement efforts.

Evening: Community Building

The Lean Hobnob Social provides space for relationships to deepen as participants reflect on the day's experiences and begin forming lasting connections with fellow improvement practitioners. These connections prove invaluable as the Summit moves into its application phase.

Day 2: Application & Integration

Morning: Human-Centered Implementation

Day Two opens with a brief re-engagement activity that reinforces connections made and insights gained from the previous day, creating continuity in the learning journey.

Paul DeChant then presents evidence-based approaches to recognizing and reducing burnout using lean principles. Participants develop practical standard work for daily huddles that support sustainable high performance, directly applying the conceptual frameworks established on Day One to a critical workplace challenge.

Following a break, Colleen Soppelsa guides participants in transforming their A3 problem-solving by incorporating human factors and emotional intelligence. Through hands-on practice, they learn to combine technical analysis with narrative understanding, experiencing how this integration leads to more effective and sustainable solutions.

Afternoon: Commitment to Action

The Summit concludes with Open Space sessions where participants self-organize around areas of interest that emerged during the previous sessions. These collaborative groups focus on practical application of key concepts, developing specific action plans to implement in their organizations.

The final "Ideas to Action" closing session uses the What/So What/Now What framework to help participants solidify their learnings and commit to specific improvements. This structured reflection ensures the Summit's impact extends far beyond the event itself, transforming insights into lasting workplace improvements.

The Transformative Journey

This carefully structured arc transforms participants through phases of:

Connection - Building relationships across organizational and methodological boundaries
Exploration - Examining innovative approaches to people-centered excellence
Integration - Connecting concepts across disciplines for holistic understanding
Application - Developing practical implementation strategies for immediate use
Commitment - Establishing specific actions to extend the Summit's impact

Throughout this journey, participants don't just learn about continuous improvement concepts - they experience them directly, developing the relationships, insights, and practical skills needed to lead transformation in their own environments.

The Summit Experience

Each 90-minute learning session follows a consistent format that maximizes engagement and practical application:

30 minutes of focused expert presentation provides essential concepts and frameworks
60 minutes of facilitated activity allows immediate application and experimentation
Interactive engagement methods move beyond standard Q&A to create deeper understanding

This unique structure ensures participants spend the majority of their time actively engaging with both the content and each other, creating a dynamic learning environment that models the collaborative improvement approaches being taught.

The intimate size (50-70 in-person participants) combined with thoughtful hybrid integration (15-25 virtual attendees) creates an ideal setting for meaningful connection while demonstrating how to effectively collaborate across boundaries - a critical skill in today's distributed work environment.

The Summit design balances structure with emergence, providing clear direction while allowing space for discovery and co-creation. Each element builds upon previous experiences, creating momentum toward meaningful, lasting change in how we approach improvement across industries and roles.