Michelle: Thank you for writing for Quality. I think your first article here was really interesting and had a lot of great perspective. So, can you tell us a little more about the article and how you came up with the idea?

Gary: Well, the article is really about focused on leadership and the leadership role in ensuring quality inside any organization. I'm quite passionate about people development and the role of frontline leaders and the role they play in operational efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. And so that was kind of the spur behind the thought process for the article.

Michelle: And could you give our listeners a little more background about your work too? I know you've been in the industry a long time. Can you kind of tell us how you got started?

Gary: A long time is a bit of an understatement for me. I just actually just turned 67. So, yeah, so it's been a long career. I started my career at Canada Post and that was back in the mid-70s. And even as a letter carrier when I started, the idea of quality and the idea of continuous improvement was always on my mind, I remember telling the story about how I took my old rain cape. We used to have these old rain capes and they didn't do a really good job of keeping either the mail or me dry. So, I took my rain cape and I cut it up and created an outer shell bath for my bag, which I carried my mail in. And my supervisor saw it at the time and took pictures of it and sent it to Ottawa. I got an Einstein Award for that creative effort.

That kind of started me in the continuous improvement idea. And throughout my career at Post, I held leadership roles. And in about 2000 or so, I got asked to become the process excellence advisor for the plant here in Halifax. And I had no idea what that was. So, they put me on training. And that was when I started my continuous improvement training and got certified as a Six Sigma black belt, a lean black belt, then I got certified as a master. And when I retired from Canada Post, I was the National Director of Process Engineering looking after all of the continuous improvement processes and training around continuous improvement. And then eventually when I retired, I joined Barrington and for the last 10 years, I've been working with clients, helping them develop a continuous improvement quality CI culture.

It's been really exciting.