Joseph “JP” Paris
Joseph “JP” Paris is a recognized global expert in the field operational excellence; an international entrepreneur; a prolific writer; and a sought-after strategist, consultant, and speaker with engagements around the world. His book, “State of Readiness” (May 2017) has been well received by industry peers and endorsed by senior business leaders from some of the most highly respected organizations in existence – with operations around the world and across industries – and promises to be a definitive work on the field of Operational Excellence.
Having over 30 years of experience in international business and operations, he is routinely called upon to offer guidance to C-suite and senior executives as well as business-operations and -improvement specialists who wish to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations. He is highly valued for his ability to provide strategic insight and tactical analysis—and to convert these thoughts into reality by successful engagement and execution.
With a focus on improving the performance of companies and the conditions of those who work there, JP is regularly sought by companies to help analyze and formulate their strategic vision, to design the tactics necessary to achieve their goals, to identify and organize the logistics necessary to support the plan, and to lead the execution phase. He is engaged by companies and academia to explore and address the challenges and opportunities of today and illuminate and predict those of tomorrow. He is highly valued for his ability to squelch-out the noise and provide strategic analysis and tactical insight leading to successful deployment and execution.
Although he is an expert in the more granular facets of the discipline, he places a special emphasis on the cornerstones for success: the engagement of people and instilling a culture of leadership as part of the company’s DNA. His end-goal is to help create high-performance individuals working in high-performance teams for high-performance organizations.
JP has a variety of interests including being the founder of; XONITEK Consulting Group Int’l (a consultancy), the Operational Excellence Society (a “think tank”), and the Readiness Institute (education and training provider). You can see all of JP’s vehicles for change here.
Paris currently serves on: • the Advisory Board of the Systems Science and Industrial Engineering (SSIE) Department in the Watson School of Engineering at Binghamton University • the Advisory Board of the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management and the RV College of Engineering (Bangalore, India) • the Advisory Boards of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Industry Advisory Board and the New York Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) • he is the owner of the Operational Excellence group on LinkedIn® • and was previously on the Editorial Board of the Lean Management Journal an Adjunct Professor at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management.
David “Mule” Schneider
David “Mule” Schneider is an outlier. After 22 years in retail Supply Chain Management, Mule launched his small supply chain consulting “Enterprise” into the 2008 financial melt’s stormy waters. Thirteen years and 80+ clients later, Mule brings his experience to the Outliers Inn.
Just as you think you have figured out what Mule knows, you find out he knows more. That is because he never stopped learning. Mule is a renaissance man who looks for new challenges and discoveries in daily life. Mule grew in a family of systems thinkers who created new things, new processes, and new applications.
Mule was first a journalist who mastered both writing and photography to tell stories. Repeated experiences with the bias and lack of real discovery in the newsrooms of multiple publications led Mule to become a former ink-stained wretch. Mule discovered his knack for manufacturing management and logistics.
Mule constantly looks at ways to make order from the chaos in operations and logistics. He made his mark in his first supervisory position, doubling throughput in under a year and moving up to new challenging roles. Mule was doing Kaizen before Kaizen was cool, with solutions creative in thought and pragmatic in implementation.
In his 35 years of Supply Chain Management, Mule coached and guided the people who followed him, including his clients, trading partners, and colleagues. Throughout his career, the hardest projects found Mule, who brought each to a successful conclusion. He is not a person to beat-around-the-bush. Provocative, educated, experienced, opinionated, Mule encourages people to think critically, explore the limits of conventional wisdom, boldly deliver new ideas and approaches, and recognize and solve the most challenging logistics problems facing us. Walking his talk, Mule teaches and mentors a high school robotics team, providing over 100 students leadership and project management guidance.
Host Emeritus Extraordinaire;
Benjamin “Antlerboy” Taylor
Benjamin “Antlerboy” Taylor is a founder and managing partner at RedQuadrant. Like most of the British Cabinet and many in high-profile and high-paid jobs, he studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford University. Unlike most of them, his first job was not high profile consulting, but as the admin co-ordinator a youth development charity, from where a move to a local advice centre, serving those in most need in Shepherd’s Bush. For clients who had over a hundred first languages, he undertook many duties including reception/security, appointment scheduling, filing, and toilet cleaning.
For seven years, he worked for London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, including being adviser to the leader of the council (not known for taking much advice), and eGovernment manager (successfully digitising 100% of the council’s services, a feat which, like Sisyphus’ rock, magically undoes itself for each successive generation.
Antlerboy went on to a career in PwC and Sector Projects (part of Capita group), where he worked with clients from the Government of Armenia (an enriching experience, particularly in the fields of vodka and brandy), to Birmingham City council. Having worked for both a ‘fat four’ consultancy and a business process outsourcer, he thought there could possibly be a better business model for consulting, and in 2009 set up RedQuadrant with Dennis Vergne.
RedQuadrant is a network consultancy working to transform public services ‘from within’ by giving them the skills and capacity to change itself. 20-30 associate consultants at a time work on transformation delivery, skills and knowledge transfer, and strategic projects in local government and other public services.
Antlerboy has undertaken voluntary accreditation missions for Youth Business International in Bangladesh, Dominica, and Sweden, and was Chair of the Education Committee for the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants, which really is a thing.
Antlerboy is passionate about systems thinking, customer-led transformation, and generally better ways to run and lead organisations. He holds a lean six sigma black belt and is accredited to run the power+systems organisation workshop and ‘when cultures meet’ workshop. Antlerboy is a visiting lecturer in applied systems thinking at Cass Business School, City University, and has lectured at Nottingham Business School and Oxford Said/HEC Paris. Cycles to work, Boris-style.
benjamin.taylor@redquadrant.com
Twitter: @antlerboy