Michael Ballé, PhD, is a lean management practitioner, business writer, and author. His most recent book, co-authored with father Freddy Ballé, is Lead With Respect: A Novel of Lean Practice, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute.

They're co-authors of two earlier Shingo Research Award-winning business novels about lean management. The Gold Mine tells how lean concepts turn around a failing plant. The Lean Manage describes the conversion to a complete lean business system. Michael also writes the Gemba Coach column at https://www.lean.org/balle

For the past 25 years, he has studied first-hand lean transformations, helping companies and people in fields such as manufacturing, engineering, construction, services, and healthcare make the transition to different ways of working and managing.

As a managing partner of ESG Consultants, Ballé coaches executives on how to obtain exceptional performance through lean tools, principles, and different management attitudes. His main coaching technique is the "real place visit," where he helps senior executives learn how to really see their own shop floors, teach people the spirit of kaizen, and reach the right conclusions for the whole business.

An engaging and colorful public speaker, Ballé also is an experienced workshop facilitator, an associate researcher at Télécom ParisTech's Projet Lean Enterprise, and co-founder of the French Lean Institute. Ballé holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Social Sciences and Knowledge Sciences. He is co-founder of the Project Lean Entreprise and the Instituet Lean France.

Nicolas is founder and CEO of Aramisauto.com a hyper growth digital company that transforms the car purchase experience. He started writing with Michael Ballé to get clarity on his learning experience of lean leadership in day-to-day management. He is one of six lean experts who are co-authors of the book The Lean Sensei.

Business processes owner (Reglementation compliance and Project and product documentation), digital transformation enabler and lean questioner.

Partner with Lean Sensei Partners, member of the French Lean Institute, leader in the agile community, and expert of the obeya approach in the IT and digital worlds.

Daryl Powell is Lean Programme Manager at the Subsea Division of Kongsberg Maritime AS in Norway. He is also an adjunct professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Eivind Reke is a writer, partner at Flowit, as well as the co-founder organizational secretary of LOS Norge, a knowledge-sharing network of learning organizations in Norway.