Client Testimonials
Below are several testimonials from Lean East client organizations:
MAINE DHHS
“I just wanted to say again how much I enjoyed your Project Management Boot Camp last week. I feel you offered a very real world approach to your training delivery, and my Team will be the better for that experience.” -Tara Pelotte, SAMHS Federal Grants Coordinator, Maine State Department of Health and Human Services
OFFICE OF MAINECARE SERVICES
“We chose the lean six sigma experts at Lean Healthcare East (LHCE) to engage our employees in improving the operational processes that support our MaineCare providers and members, resulting in more streamlined and efficient work processes. LHCE also provided a lean approach to helping us implement our strategic plan for organizational excellence, focusing on creating a more satisfied and effective workforce. Our team was excited to take a new approach that will help improve the way they work and manage employees. We also leveraged Steve and team to develop strong Key Performance Indicators to measure, monitor, and manage our performance in various business areas. These indicators will help us focus on delivering more value to Maine citizens every day.” – Douglas Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Office of MaineCare Services, Maine State Department of Health and Human Services
MID COAST HEALTH SERVICES
“Steve has facilitated performance improvement teams for departments including Surgical Services, Diagnostic Imaging and the Pharmacy. He has helped us identify wastes and cut costs. He is a teacher and coach that uses a proven process for his projects and stresses that good things will happen when you put the patient first. We have asked Steve to support our performance improvement efforts and Triple Aim initiatives in the coming months. I highly recommend Lean Healthcare East and Steve for healthcare improvement.” – Lois Skillings, President and CEO, Mid Coast Health Services
NEW HAMPSHIRE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES
“Steve was a trainer and coach for the NH DPHS QI 101 training sessions in 2014 and again in 2015. The training and projects were well received and resulted in improved confidence in the team members’ ability to use improvement tools and dive into process improvement. We even had the DPHS management team participate in the second session. I was particularly impressed with Steve’s ability to quickly understand the context of each team’s problem area, help them drill down to specific improvement projects, and provide guidance to each team as they progressed through their unique improvement journey.” – Laura Holmes, Quality Improvement, New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services
BIGELOW LABORATORY FOR OCEAN SCIENCES
“Bigelow Laboratory is a non-profit research institution that relies heavily on federal funding resulting from grant proposals submitted throughout the year, often in response to RFPs. In response to falling success rates, Lean East was engaged to look at our institutional and individual performance in this critical area. Throughout the summer and fall of 2012, Steve and Lean East facilitated a cross‐functional team that looked at our Grant proposal and submission process. By mapping out the process, our team was able to separate the value from the waste and improve communication and teamwork. The project helped our award rate increase from 13% before the project to 22%, an increase of nearly 60%.
I recommend Lean East enthusiastically, and particularly their ability to work with both the scientists and administrative teams.” – Professor Graham Shimmield, PhD, FSB, FRSE, Executive Director of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
Team Member Testimonials
Feedback our individual team members have received includes:
- “Steve has facilitated performance improvement teams for departments including Surgical Services, Diagnostic Imaging and the Pharmacy. He has helped us identify wastes and cut costs. He is a teacher and coach that uses a proven process for his projects and stresses that good things will happen when you put the patient first. We have asked Steve to support our performance improvement efforts and Triple Aim initiatives in the coming months. I highly recommend Lean Healthcare East and Steve for healthcare improvement.”
- Bob “actively solicits and listens to customer input to define product/service requirements…actively participates as a customer, responds to service providers in a positive and helpful manner…demonstrates positive and professional interactions, recognizes that everyone is a customer and collaborates with others to achieve a common goal…seeks customer feedback and recognizes and resolves conflict constructively…provides relevant, timely, accurate information to reduce rework and minimize impact to customers and service providers.”
- “George worked with us for three years assisting with system requirements development and then provided the program management skills to plan, test and integrate delivered software. I leaned on him heavily to manage the process, report the progress and to flag issues that require my direct involvement. George is an extremely dedicated and professional individual with strong program management skills and the highest integrity.”
- “Steve is known as a leader who will take the time to make sure that the right questions are asked, that problems are pursued to root cause, and that each individual on the team has the right training, tools, and information to be as productive as possible.”
- “I have met literally thousands of business analysts over my career. Raija is one of the brightest, and with a solid background in science can tackle some unique project areas. This is just one area of her competency though, and her ability to perform is more about the ability to handle complexity and large critical projects. She can be a very valuable asset to any team, and from my experiences with her in discussing BA challenges, I do not hesitate to recommend her completely. She is a professional and a very intelligent and personable individual.”
- “Michelle and I worked together to develop and implement a new online performance evaluation process for our salaried workforce. Michelle’s expertise in performance management was essential to the successful implementation of the new process. Michelle led the development of training for 1,200+ employees prior to implementing the new system. I would not have been able to implement this project without her organization capabilities, facilitation skills, strategic thinking capabilities and her exceptional team work ethic.”
- “Mr. Cameron was the lead on the Performance section of our organizational assessment. He led the team that developed an approach and provided group and one-on-one training to the writers. We were complimented numerous times by the Inspectors as being an Excellent Organization. Bob was personally responsible for 21% of the key processes as either owner or support. He excelled during the planning and the execution of the one week assessment.”
- “Raija has some unique skills that cross science and technology. She has excellent skills in digging into the details, and asking great questions to get at the root cause of issues. She also has developed very strong analytic skills as a business analyst, and is able to establish requirements even when the users have incongruent requests, by bringing about a collaborative approach.”
- “George brought a wealth of project management knowledge, experience, and discipline to our project. Strong project management was a critical success factor given the importance and magnitude of the program scope, which consisted of several interrelated projects.”
- “I worked with Michelle for years at a large engineering and manufacturing organization. She has best-in-class organizational development skills, and was consistently sought out for strategic, operational and cultural guidance. As a lifelong learner, Michelle is current with best practices from a human capital perspective, and is able to weave in the nuances of organizational behavior, team dynamics and adult education in all of her work.”
