“Keep it simple ………Really” – Mantras, teachings and philosophies from a life in performance improvement

Alex MacPhie our keynote speaker, addresses this inter-active workshop with the credentials of an engineer with a 30 year career covering manufacturing operations, consultancy, and executive management.

The focus of the workshop is to join Alex as he journeys through his varied “got-the-T-shirt” career as he explores the real-life experiences of the challenges, barriers and disruptors to improvement, the mistakes made and more importantly the lessons learned, to create a culture that thrives and drives on change, improvements and growth.  

Alex will cover the following points which are both the content and the lessons to be learnt:

·       Are you part of the problem?

·       How do you create a culture?

·       And where there is no such thing why is that making a big mistake?

·       How to understand what can be gained from a negative change experience and how this can be applied to future planning; so, we walk away with new skills in our toolkits.

·       How do we learn to fall down and get up faster – Sharing examples of what has and can go wrong during a process improvement journey and how it can be repaired and setting markers to avoid doing the same again.

·       How do we break the curse of perfection to achieve progress, otherwise everything stops as we cripple our organisations with fear.

·       Show me someone who’s never made a mistake and I will show you someone who has never tried something new. 

·       The deadliest words in any organisation are ”but we have always done it that way”,

·       Accept that change is constant and adapt accordingly.

Above all else how do we keep it simple in a world where everyone wants to make improvement methodologies appear complex and only available to experts or those incorporated into the dark arts through bespoke and expensive training and certification.

Alex will cover these and many more experiences as we meander through his career introducing many of the character who have influenced him, some of the names may be changed to protect the guilty (and the innocent).

Alex MacPhie- Engineer – bio summary

Alex is constantly curious which perhaps explains his career journey. Beginning as a scientist studying solid state physics and chemistry, evolving as a staff engineer working in Semiconductors for Motorola where continuous improvement was embedded in his DNA .

This led to over a decade running his own consultancies providing experience to every sector and size of business. Tempted back into industry first with Oceaneering and then  with JDR Cable Systems.  As Technical Director he has held the executive remits for operational excellence, quality, HSE and Service,