Mike is co-founder and lead consultant for New Roots Consulting LLC, who with his business partner Jill Menzel, provides coaching, teaching, and improvement support to organizations through their lean transformations.
Mike previously served in different healthcare leadership roles over 15 years, including improvement facilitator, ancillary services manager, director of diagnostic imaging, and operational vice president with oversight of areas that included perioperative services, trauma, air medical, therapies, and rehab. Mike’s clinical training and practice was in physical therapy, graduating from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, with his Master’s training in Organizational Change Leadership from the University of Wisconsin – Platteville.
Mike was first introduced to lean process improvement and leadership practices in 2003 as ThedaCare, a healthcare organization in Northeastern Wisconsin, began their lean journey. He had the opportunity to learn and apply lean practices both as a member of the improvement department and as an operations leader. Mike was part of the team that initially developed ThedaCare’s lean management system in 2008, which created a framework for how operational leaders can support and accelerate improvement. Mike has been teaching throughout North America since 2012 on topics such as A3 Thinking, Coaching, Lean Management Systems, Daily Improvement and Coaching Kata, Spreading Improvements, and Deploying and Operationalizing Strategy. Mike has been serving others as an independent improvement and leadership advisor since 2016, focusing primarily in healthcare and education.
