Episodes

  • Your Best Problem Solvers Are Already on Your Plant Floor

    Your Best Problem Solvers Are Already on Your Plant Floor
    Nov 9 2026
    In this special edition of Accelerating Operational Performance, Greg makes the case that root cause problem solving shouldn't be hoarded by a handful of engineers and operational experts. Most operations have a bottleneck: a few experienced people solve every problem, while the frontline employees closest to the work feel unheard and get handed solutions decided in the boardroom. Greg explains how teaching frontline supervisors and their teams the same problem-solving basics your CI team uses (defining the problem, weighing options, deciding, and embedding what works across shifts) raises engagement and gets more improvements made, more often.
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    7 mins
  • Dre Baldwin: The Execution Gap Between Strategy and the Shop Floor

    Dre Baldwin: The Execution Gap Between Strategy and the Shop Floor
    Oct 26 2026
    Your plant has the SOPs, the checklists, and a sound strategy from the leadership team. Yet the same small mistakes keep showing up on the off shifts, and nobody says a word until the numbers slip. Most plants don't have a strategy problem. They have an execution problem. Greg sits down with Dre Baldwin, former professional athlete, business coach, and founder of Work On Your Game University, to talk about what pro sports can teach leaders in industry about execution. You'll hear Dre's five-step feedback loop, his idea of power presence for supervisors promoted from the peer group, and why culture only becomes real when it's enforced. Chapters: 0:00 Strategy problem or execution problem? 2:29 The habit business gets wrong 6:30 Execution reliability 10:27 Power presence 16:12 Culture is what you tolerate and enforce 18:54 The five-step feedback loop 20:03 A takeaway for plant managers 20:46 Consistent correction means fewer corrections 23:21 Execution is the bridge from knowing to doing Is the gap in your operation a strategy gap or an execution gap? Visit UniqueDevelopment.com to talk with our team about your organization's leadership development needs. Guest: Dre Baldwin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreallday/ Host: Greg Schinkel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregschinkel/ Connect with us: Website: https://uniquedevelopment.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/unique-training-&-development-inc-/ Email: hello@uniquedevelopment.com
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    25 mins
  • Neil Thompson: How Engineers Get Heard by Decision-Makers

    Neil Thompson: How Engineers Get Heard by Decision-Makers
    Oct 12 2026
    Greg sits down with Neil Thompson, founder of Teach The Geek, to talk about why technical experts so often struggle to communicate with non-technical decision-makers. Neil shares how a canceled project early in his engineering career pushed him to fix his own presentations, and why it's easier to teach presentation skills to the people who hold the knowledge than to expect someone else to present it for them. Neil walks through the self-awareness gap and the three things technical people should prioritize when they present to management: clarity, relevance, and actionability. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 3:08 Neil's first presentations to the C-suite 4:53 How Neil started Teach The Geek 6:58 The technical expert's biggest strength 8:42 The self-awareness gap 15:08 A six-step process for any presentation 20:00 Clarity, relevance, and actionability Connect with Neil Thompson: https://teachthegeek.com Do your technical experts know their stuff but struggle to get buy-in? Visit https://uniquedevelopment.com to talk with our team about your organization's leadership development needs.
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    23 mins
  • Kirby Griffin: DRIVE Problem Solving Program

    Kirby Griffin: DRIVE Problem Solving Program
    Sep 28 2026
    Your plant has hundreds of improvement opportunities and a small continuous improvement or quality team to work through them. The same problems keep coming back, shift after shift. The people who know the most about those problems are standing right next to the process, but they’re not the ones solving them. Greg sits […]
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    42 mins
  • Dr Pelè: Why Training Alone Doesn’t Create Results

    Dr Pelè: Why Training Alone Doesn’t Create Results
    Sep 14 2026
    In this special dual-podcast episode, Greg Schinkel (our President at Unique Training & Development) sits down with Dr. Pelè Ugboajah of ResultPal to tackle one of L&D’s oldest unsolved problems: how do you actually prove that training drives business results?
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    40 mins
  • Mary Fehr: The Layoff We Didn’t Do

    Mary Fehr: The Layoff We Didn’t Do
    Aug 31 2026
    When tariffs hit and work dried up, Mary Fehr had a spreadsheet answer and a small-town answer. She took the small-town one. Choosing their workers over the spreadsheet. Mary is President of Unifab, a 200-person custom metal fabricator in Leamington, Ontario, founded by her father, Abe, 35 years ago. Before she joined in […]
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    28 mins
  • An HR Director’s 3-Word Leadership Mantra | Seanna Pickard

    An HR Director’s 3-Word Leadership Mantra | Seanna Pickard
    Aug 17 2026
    Seanna Pickard, HR Director at the Federal Bridge Corporation, breaks down the 3-word mantra she uses to make every decision: fair, equitable, transparent.
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    32 mins
  • Umesh Vendargon: Structure Gets You By. Culture Gets You Ahead.

    Umesh Vendargon: Structure Gets You By. Culture Gets You Ahead.
    Aug 3 2026
    Structure will get a team to its KPIs, but it doesn’t always get them past them. In this episode of Accelerating Operational Performance, host Greg Schinkel talks with Umesh Vendargon, COO of Core Linen Services, about the gap between management and leadership. Umesh traces his own path from the operations floor through a […]
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    32 mins