client testimonials
For over 20 years, SISU has been blessed to partner with more than 500 organizations and coach thousands of amazing leaders. The following testimonials are from a few of those leaders:
HEB, Inc.
Companies don’t invest money in ideas, they invest money in ideas that return actual dollars. SISU taught us valuable improvement systems and how to implement them ourselves. Mike’s approach to understanding what the real issues are and how to solve them is what makes him different. We continue to see results from the work SISU did with us.
Thomas Pritchard, Senior Quality Manager
La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries
After implementing the Own the Gap Model, our company has experienced remarkable success throughout the organization. Total sales and margins are up, customer wait time is down, and the organization and the teams are functioning at a higher capacity. We have tried many industry leading best practice approaches to engaging our people, but nothing stuck until working with SISU. Our culture has literally changed. I hate to think what would have happened to our company had we not engaged Mike when we did.
Daralyn Proctor, COO
Baxter Medication Delivery
Our partnership with SISU Consulting Group has been key to moving our organization to the next level in our Lean Enterprise journey. From customized benchmarking tours to open dialogue about our areas of opportunity, what makes SISU different is Mike’s high energy, deep knowledge and his ability to quickly create a self-sustaining learning process for our people. Mike and his team are flexible to work with, committed to excellence and have enabled us to learn and apply advanced Lean principles on site fast and see immediate results.”
Nelson Rodriguez, VP Manufacturing
Christie Clinic
The Own the Gap Model has taken our top-down approach and transformed it into a co-creative development process. The interaction of these systems has created an environment at Christie Clinic that drives an ever increasing number of implemented ideas and for the first time in my career, I see teams of employees exited about coming to work. Net income to physicians is at an all time high, net operating expense is at an all time low and patient satisfaction continues to improve. It is no coincidence that Christie Clinic posted its best four years ever in terms of volume and revenue.
Alan Gleghorn, CEO
aera energy
Implementing the Own the Gap Model has been a game changer at Aera Energy. Prior to working with SISU, we prided ourselves on leading our industry in the application of lean and becoming a benchmark in higher quality, lower cost and a stellar work environment. And while we had impressive gains, we deployed the troops with no system to support them, our results suffered and our people were confused. SISU’s model enabled us to become coaches who pursue ideal behaviors through the integration of the 4-Key Systems. In the process, we learned to love the improvement process again and as a result, employee engagement is at an all time high and business results have never been better.
Dwayne Ziegeler, Process Analyst
business transitions
Mike served as the lead consultant to the Business Transitions companies and was instrumental in overhauling and redeveloping the companies’ internal operations and marketing programs. Mike and his team guided our group of companies into the largest financial services succession planning company in the nation.
David Grau, Founder and President
research data design
Working with SISU Consulting Group is the next logical step for anyone who is serious about developing as a leader and building a truly world class business. Mike’s innate ability to apply his knowledge and experience to any business and create real tangible results is what sets him apart. Mike has been the single most significant catalyst for change and development for me personally and for the business since we started. Bottom line is that I can’t begin to calculate the true ROI because I don’t think I can begin to truly understand the real impact his consulting will have on this company – it is just that big.
John Stepleton, Founder & CEO
portland community college
SISU understands the importance of engaging people and we value the collaborative partnership we have with Mike and his team. Mike brings a wealth of experience to the table and has the rare ability to adapt to any situation at hand and use a down-to-earth, simple approach to engage the team and keep everyone focused on results. He has a gift for using his sense of humor to bring out the best in people and to create a respectful, but challenging environment. After working with Mike, our clients have seen a whole new level of employee engagement, operational efficiency, and bottom line financial results.
Bonnie Starkey, Corporate Training Manager
AbbVie
Eilish was instrumental with our success of achieving the Shingo Prize. Her expertise, guidance, benchmarking, tactical planning and her ability too deep dive into an organization to identify opportunities to achieve strong results was impeccable. She guided our site team to develop a roadmap for continuous improvement. Always polite and respectful, Eilish gave strong feedback and coaching sessions to site personnel that allowed them to achieve best in class results for themselves and for the entire organization.
Joseph Kumor, Senior Director, Environmental Health & Safety
University of North Texas Health Science Center
As a values-based organization, our University wanted to implement a culture of continuous process improvement across campus that empowered people and delivered business results. We selected SISU due to their unique process of developing our team members to identify and ultimately improve gaps in their daily work without the need to continuously hire a third-party to address operational inefficiencies each time they were identified. While the financial ROI and operational improvements have been significant, it is the impact on the daily work experience enjoyed by our team members that has garnered the best return. Using SISU’s model, team members are more engaged, less stressed, feel more empowered, and feel a sense of pride in finding their own solutions to the problems that affect their day to day experiences. Mike was able to engage our teams to believe that they can own and improve their organizations instead of having top-down solutions imposed on them.
James Meintjes, Chief-of-Staff, Office of the President
abbott nutrition
We have been on an enterprise excellence journey that has been validated with the recognition of a number of Shingo Prizes across multiple countries and multiple business units. Eilish has been instrumental in supporting us on that journey in identifying how we can continue to strive for world class performance across our enterprise and build a sustainable culture of improvement.
Judith S McMullan, Global Enterprise Excellence Manager
raytheon corporation
SISU has a unrelenting commitment to results and motivates teams to achieve bottom line financial savings. They approached our goals with a custom built solution and continually drove right behaviors to create a culture of creative problem solving. In addition to providing a full top to bottom organizational assessment and implementation plan, SISU provided 1 on 1 leadership coaching to our executive team. After our first six months working with SISU, our throughput increased 1,100% and the team feels pride in the results because they were part of the solution.
Jessie Nino, IDS Manager
oc tanner
I had the pleasure of working with Mike on a large project where he designed a one of a kind leadership training for our company. We hired Mike to help us improve how our leaders interact with their teams and their direct reports. He identified the key behaviors needed to improve the performance of our teams and individual team members. Not only did Mike over deliver in helping us reach these objectives, he also did it in a very engaging and personable way. He got to know the people in the company at all levels and customized the project to fit our culture. I highly recommend Mike and appreciate his focus on delivering results through daily process improvements.
Michael Cordon, Training and Development Manager
esco corporation
As a company, we are committed to building internal capacity and SISU partnered with us to build a critical skill set for key leaders so they in turn could teach others. After Mike worked with our people, we were able to send them back to their respective plants to successfully teach other individuals. Not many consultants are willing to support a company to do this kind of work and we are grateful for Mike’s impact on the success of our leaders and lean implementation.
Elizabeth King, Director of Organizational Development
university of washington
Mike is very skilled in working with senior management to establish a targeted vision and engaging teams to identify and solve problems. Mike is very adept in breaking down processes into manageable parts. The results have been so impressive that what started out as an engagement scoped to only a portion of the central administration units, in a short period of time has academic colleges and other administration units proactively asking to be involved. Mike’s passion and energy is infectious. It is a pleasure to work with and learn from Mike.
Doug Merrill, Associate Director of Operational Excellence
atk defense
We have been able to embed the lean principles in our large manufacturing organizations by following this approach. Engaging our front line teams and more importantly, the front line supervisors that make factories tick, has made a tremendous difference in our ability to solve problems and drive improvement. This disciplined, practical approach to follow-up has driven immediate results and changed lean principles from concepts in a classroom to the way that our teams logically execute their everyday work.
Karen Davies, VP Operations
American Family Insurance
It’s evident when meeting Mike Martyn with SISU that he’s fully committed to turning dysfunctions within an organization into healthy operating systems. As we navigated the Own the Gap model, production, quality, efficiencies, and employee satisfaction increased. Silos broke down as processes amongst departments became streamlined and aligned with the company strategic priorities and goals. He remained a role model for the kaizen culture as he worked with our leadership team. As a result, we learned to lead teams so that employees at every level became invested in the business and found themselves wanting to provide ideas to elevate the performance. The results are compounding in all business functions and the financial position strengthens with SISU’s guidance.
Allison Seckman, Agency Owner
shingo institute
The SISU team are truly remarkable in so many ways. Not only are they experts in transformational change, they are passionate about helping organizations achieve sustainable results by focusing on people and systems of excellence. I have worked with both Mike Martyn and Eilish Henry for over a decade, and they are engaging, energetic, and experienced individuals. They consistently are our top rated instructors teaching workshops in conjunction with Shingo conferences. I know that each and every time they teach or present, the outcome will be valuable to our attendees.
Mary Price, Events and Marketing Manager
baxter cartago
Mike’s combination of passion, energy, knowledge and personalized attention matches perfectly with our culture. He is excellent at motivating people and his commitment to helping our leadership team accomplish its goals was truly unique. Mike led us through the process of launching a new continuous improvement model and made sure that our group gained a deep seated understanding of lean concepts and tools during the implementation. I am confident that my key leaders now have the skills to transform our business to a higher level of success on our lean journey.
Chester Zelaya, Plant General Manager
MOUNT HOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Over two years, Mike Martyn, Principal, SISU Consulting Group, became an integral and valued member of our college’s leadership team. Mike and his team, helped employees from throughout our institution analyze our current situation, expand our vision through action and insight, eliminate resistance to change and helped us build sustainable results through adaptable process models in both our Office of Instruction and Office of Finance and Administrative Services. The “breakthrough results” we realized in these two Offices have now inspired other units within the College to engage Mike and his team in other projects that have been identified because of his earlier work with us.
John J. Sygielski, President
the boeing company
Mike leads by example. His experience being in the trenches leading lean transformations allows him to have open and honest communication at the CEO level as well as on the shop floor. He does whatever is necessary to help his clients achieve their goals and when its time to get results, engages the workforce and lets his actions do the talking. Mike always comes prepared with proven methods and a plan of action and his great personality make it a seamless transition from setting business objectives to getting traction for individual teams. Regardless of the industry or size of organization, I would highly recommend Mike and his team to anyone who wants to get results.”
Wesley Bare, Boeing Commercial Airlines Group
Boston Scientific
Our Shingo journey was an exciting time as we transformed our culture. Mike & Eilish first completed a gap analysis and their feedback was very picture-perfect and we used the information to inform our next steps which enabled us to achieve the Shingo Prize. We worked very closely with SISU over a 3 year period. Eilish’s experience, professionalism and insight were critical to our success. We really enjoyed working with SISU! Their spirited approach brought enjoyment and fun to changing environment.
Theresa Moloney, Global Operational Strategy Manager
Teva Pharmaceuticals
Eilish has been instrumental in supporting Tosara Pharma Ltd in the process of managing change within the business environment and embedding a sustainable culture that was key to the success of the site achieving Shingo recognition. Her role not only supported striving for world class performance but her professional and respectful approach brought “value add” and ownership to all levels within the business. Her influence of “vision for change” and “the importance of each individual bringing value to the business” has left a lasting impression.
Michael Bizzell, Site General Manager
IRISH CENTER FOR BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
I have engaged Mike Martyn and SISU for many years to bring experience and energy to enable real change at every level in organizations. Mike has a great ability to both engage and inspire teams to learn and develop as individuals, and through structured systems brings a challenging environment that people actively deliver in, every day. His model has enabled significant change and improvement rates for the companies, and has developed real Leaders. In sustaining that long term journey, Mike continues to be a real charge point to re-energize the teams to move forward. As a guiding mentor, he has supported many future Leaders by bringing the structure, systems and learnings to life so they can actively follow.
Kieran Noonan, Chair, Executive Board
JD MAchine
Getting sustained results from change initatives can be challenging and SISU has one of the best approaches I have seen for improving your organiztion. Mike provides a common-sense approach and the systems needed for driving real and sustainable improvement. SISU’s model has been proven to produce amazing results and is applicable for any business size in any sector of the economy.
Matt Wardle, Founder and President
OUR MISSION
We are a performance improvement company, dedicated to helping leaders maximize the passion, purpose and contribution of their people to help the organization be better everyday.