A Workshop by Mark Graban
One Full-Day Workshop | Two Practical Sessions | One Powerful Transformation
This workshop was last held in Cincinnati on June 17, 2025.
Contact Mark about your interest in future dates — or to bring this workshop to your organization.
Join internationally recognized author and consultant Mark Graban—recipient of the 2025 Shingo Publication Award—for a full-day executive workshop focused on elevating your organization’s approach to leadership, culture, and performance improvement.
This interactive workshop is designed for executives and improvement professionals who want to lead more effectively, react less, and create the conditions for sustainable success.
Morning Session: Psychological Safety as a Foundation for Continuous Improvement
Most improvement efforts fail not because of bad strategy or weak tools, but because people don’t feel safe enough to speak up.
In this eye-opening and practical morning session, you’ll explore how psychological safety fuels innovation, quality, and engagement—especially in environments striving for continuous improvement.
You’ll learn:
- What psychological safety is—and what it is not
- The Four Stages of Psychological Safety and how to assess progress
- Key leader behaviors that foster trust, openness, and respectful challenge
- Why psychological safety is essential to any Lean, Agile, or CI initiative
This session is grounded in real business outcomes, not theory. You’ll participate in anonymous polling, guided discussion, and peer exchange to explore how to build cultures where people speak up, share ideas, and drive improvement forward.
Afternoon Session: Measures of Success – React Less, Lead Better, Improve More
In the second half of the day, we shift to data and decision-making. Are you tired of chasing every red dot on a dashboard? Frustrated by arbitrary targets and knee-jerk reactions?
This session introduces concepts from Mark’s acclaimed book Measures of Success, including a live hands-on facilitation of Deming’s Red Bead Experiment—a fun and revealing way to uncover the flaws in traditional performance management.
You’ll leave with practical skills to:
- Create and interpret Process Behavior Charts (PBCs)
- Distinguish between “signal” and “noise” in your performance metrics
- Identify real improvement—and avoid overreacting to common-cause variation
- Connect better measurement with more effective leadership and coaching
This isn’t about dashboards. It’s about leading with clarity in the face of complexity.
Who Should Attend
- CEOs, COOs, and other senior executives
- Continuous improvement, quality, and operations leaders
- HR and culture leaders driving organizational transformation
- Anyone responsible for performance, safety, or innovation
Why Attend
- Learn how psychological safety unlocks performance—not just engagement
- Equip your leaders to stop overreacting and start improving
- Understand and apply modern methods for leading with data
- Leave with tools, templates, and a new lens for smarter leadership
Casual and Relaxed Networking — Take Me Out to the Ballgame!
As an added bonus, each class has been specifically scheduled to join a group (led by Mark) to enjoy a Cincinnati Reds home game at nearby Great American Ballpark, providing for a relaxed setting to continue valuable conversations with the facilitators and attendees after the workshop.
Free Copies of Measures of Success and The Mistakes That Make Us.
Each attendee will receive a signed copy of Mark's two latest books, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, and The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
Possible Bourbon Distillery Visits
For those willing and able to stay over for Wednesday, June 18th, we have possibilities of arranging a tour of the nearby New Riff Distillery in Newport, KY — or to possibly take a group trip further south to famed distilleries such as Buffalo Trace or Woodford Reserve.
Questions?
If you have any questions about the aim of the workshop, the agenda, or expected outcomes, please contact Mark Graban.
Location Details
The location will be announced soon. It will be held in downtown Cincinnati or one of the two Kentucky towns directly across the river — Newport or Covington.
If you're attending from out of town, everything is within walking distance or a short Uber ride away once you arrive at the CVG airport.
Feedback from a recent session facilitated by Mark (survey responses were all 5 out of 5):
“Fun and engaging session!”
“The bead exercise helped solidify the concept. Mark is always engaging, thoughtful and relatable.”
“Very engaging and interesting session. Loved the demonstration of the game and using it to learn lessons. Mark did a great job presenting.”
“Highly recommend this session to a colleague! Great hands-on demonstration and approach about process improvement and statistical analysis. Loved how he demo-ed in real time statistical significance and how things that appear on the surface to be outliers can be statistically insignificant.”