This month marks 13 years of my formal association with KaiNexus.
I've been around longer than our mascot, Ofie, seen below.
As I often say, I've always had a part-time role, but also have a FULL belief in the mission, the team, the product, and our customers' purpose.
Thanks to Gregory Jacobson and Matthew Paliulis as co-founders. Thanks to early employees Jeff Roussel, Maggie Millard, and Adam Hamed for your talents and leadership — and your ability to attract amazing people to be KaiNexians.
Thanks to every current KaiNexian and all KaiNexus alumni!! You're a driven group, and you're a lot of fun to work with. Keep up the great work!
How KaiNexus Has Evolved
When I joined the team, KaiNexus had two employees and I was the second part-time contractor. Today, there are more than 40 people on this great team.
The initial target market was healthcare, which made sense since our co-founder, Dr. Greg Jacobson, is still a practicing emergency medicine physician (part-time), and he learned about kaizen in healthcare. Today, KaiNexus serves customers in a wide range of industries (and countries), including manufacturing, healthcare, and services.
KaiNexus started off as a very focused employee-driven “small kaizen improvements” platform. In hindsight, that was our “Minimum Viable Product” that customers were willing to pay for. Now, it's a full-fledged enterprise improvement system that customers use to manage improvements small, medium, and large using a number of methodologies.
My role has evolved to being an advisor to the company in various ways, speaking at the annual KaiNexicon user conference, and managing our podcast and webinar series.
Our mission remains consistent: to spread continuous improvement.
Looking back to 2011:
This was my announcement about joining the company in 2011:
Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Let’s work together to build a culture of continuous improvement and psychological safety. If you're a leader looking to create lasting change—not just projects—I help organizations:
- Engage people at all levels in sustainable improvement
- Shift from fear of mistakes to learning from them
- Apply Lean thinking in practical, people-centered ways
Interested in coaching or a keynote talk? Let’s start a conversation.
