Lean Management Workshop: Achieving Organizational Agility by Creating a “Lean” Culture

 

Paul Leppert and Lorrie Ann Butler

 

In many industries, Lean Startup principles have been used to improve processes, eliminate waste, manage work in progress and thereby drive innovation, agility and output. Join us for this great workshop to learn more about Lean Startup from The Library Coroporation.

 

Through creating a lean culture around the ‘finish fast’ concepts, The Library Corporation (TLC) is able to respond to the business and user needs of our library community quickly, which has created opportunities for continuous innovation, learning-based user feedback and new product development. Our philosophy is to do the right things, before doing things right. To this end, we’ve employed Lean and Design Thinking and have created a culture that embraces innovation.

 

Paul Leppert is the Vice President and Managing Director for TLC’s Denver Office. He is an active member of Agile Software Development Community in Denver and the Colorado Front Range, and has served as the conference coordinator for the Mile High Agile Conference in 2013 and 2014. Before accepting his current position, Mr. Leppert served as Executive Project Manager of the implementation of CARL•X at Chicago Public Library. Before overseeing the Chicago Public Library project, Mr. Leppert was the Director of Technology Operations at Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies where he implemented a hosted tax software solution for his customers. Mr. Leppert has also served as a technical consultant for Deloitte Consulting and Technology Solutions Company (TSC) in Chicago where he led many software development, software implementation, and technology strategy projects.

 

Lorrie Ann Butler is the Director of Product Strategy and Customer Relations for TLC’s CARL•X and CARL•Connect products.  She and her team manage product development, product support and customer relations using lean concepts and Kanban. Prior to this position, Ms. Butler served as the Information Systems Project Manager for the Contra Costa County Library, in Pleasant Hill, CA. and as the Data Training Coordinator, as well as various other positions, for the Denver Public Library in Colorado. In her more than 20 years of service to libraries, she has led many initiatives for innovative and new services through the integration of technology, change management, project management and strategic planning activities. She has also advocated and been responsible for educating staff and customers in the area of information technology. In 2002, Library Journal named Ms. Butler one of America’s “Movers & Shakers”. She remains an active member of her local library community, the American Library Association and the Public Library Association.

 

About The Library Corporation:

The Library Corporation (TLC) is a company committed to innovation. We work with our libraries using Lean, Kanban, and Design Thinking to frame innovation strategies, create new products and businesses, and find ways to sustain and expand their importance in the digital age.

 

TLC is a decades-old technology company, based in West Virginia, and has a rich history of innovation stretching back to 1974, when an entrepreneurial couple realized that automation would revolutionize the library industry. TLC was the first company to find a commercial use for delivering data on CDs, the first to create a viable Windows system to catalog libraries, and the first to conceive a tool that allowed libraries to make their own first-ever websites, among many other innovations.

 

Creating a Lean Culture

Everyone who works at TLC has the opportunity to be equally invested in — and excited by — what happens next. Creating a lean culture allows everyone who works at TLC to be a crucial part of the company’s future.