It's true that great work speaks for itself - but that's not the whole truth, especially for Continuous Improvement professionals.

You also need to advocate for yourself. The people around you probably don't know how to advocate for you. They won't be able to properly articulate the value that you bring to the organization.

We like to think that doing great projects and delivering savings and other impacts are enough. However, when peopl ask you "what do you do here?" and it takes you 5 minutes to answer, you've already lost them. And if you can't answer this question for yourself, how can others answer it for you when you're not in the room.

This is just one of several great topics covered in this episode about how you, as a Continuous Improvement leader, can amplify your impact in your organization.

Leaders develop people, who improve processes, that serve the customer.

When leaders think it's their role to be the hero and fix processes themselves, skipping past the entire infrastructure of people that are there to maintain business operations, then there's a problem.

The sellers market within the labor force that leaders have enjoyed for the last century or so have led to an environment where frontline workers are treated as a disposable resource.

This is no longer the reality. This podcast episode addresses some of these leadership assumptions and provides some ideas on how to better manage a company's most valuable asset - their own people.

How do you take what you've learned at a Lean Conference and use it to address the challenges that you face at work right now?

Lean conferences are one of the most exhilarating experiences to accelerate a person's journey into Continuous Improvement.

In just a few day's, you can develop a thorough understanding of what operational excellence looks like and come out with a really good idea for how you can transform your company's way of working.

I caught up with one of the pioneers in this space, Jared Thatcher, organizer and host of The Global Lean Summit to discuss how Lean conferences are shaping the future of Continuous Improvement.