The Heritage Group: Paving the Way for Continuous Improvement (and the Indy Motor Speedway)

“We’ve never done this before. And you might think we’re crazy. But we’re having fun out here.”

Paul Simons, VP of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions for The Heritage Group, is a movement maker. A continuous improvement leader, Paul’s secret sauce is his ability to take a kernel of an idea to a fully realized, actionable place using a principle-based approach to improve employee effectiveness.

For the past two+ years, Paul has had a driver’s seat view, at Heritage Group, to observe and change the way teams think about continuous improvement. A 90-year-old family-owned portfolio of businesses in core platforms of transportation infrastructure and materials, specialty chemicals, and environmental services, Heritage operates with a continual effort to evolve and improve, seeking new opportunities to grow their business through innovative R&D and building high-trust relationships – like the one that led to paving and preserving the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Paul will share how he has helped his team embark on a journey to learn how to say with confidence, ‘This is where we want to go, and we’re going to create a movement to make it happen”, with one-of-a-kind insights into:

• Guiding leadership to self-discovery
• Establishing a culture of enablement
• Empowering teams to learn by doing
• Promoting best practice as common practice
• Embracing continuous improvement software to navigate a shared mission

Presenters

Paul Simons VP of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions for The Heritage Group

Paul is a movement maker and a continuous improvement leader. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Economics with honors, from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and an MBA with honors from the Harvard Business School.  His ideas around transformation have evolved from the building blocks he learned while implementing change at global enterprises, including time spent as P&L leader at Dow Chemical, and various functional roles at Kimberly-Clark.

Phil Ducas General Manager, Upland Software

As General Manager for the project and financial management products, Phil helps customers solve challenges around business process transformation, continuous improvement, and IT PMO. He has participated in thought leadership at international events including Opex Exchange, BTOES, Gartner PPM Summit, and Gartner IT Symposium.