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About This Podcast
If you're immersed in the world of manufacturing or supply chain management, you've likely encountered the elusive concept of excellence. But what does it truly mean? Is it a destination or a journey? And how do we navigate the path to unlock excellence within ourselves and our organisations?
With more than 25 years’ experience in manufacturing across the Asia Pacific region, Ishan Galapathy delves into the heart of excellence, shifting the focus from tools and technology to the true drivers of success: our people.
Ishan shares insights and techniques honed from years of working with teams and leaders, helping them unleash their hidden potential and achieve remarkable results. Whether it's uncovering hidden capacity or fostering a culture of continuous improvement, he explores practical strategies for unlocking excellence in your workplace.
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Recent Episodes
S1E103 Ep103 Mentoring, Communication and Industry Leadership – Stephen Lakey
Build bridges first and the opportunities follow. The simplest shift in networking is to ask what you can do for others, not what they can do for you, and that mindset shapes careers, leadership and…
S1E102 Ep102 Why Great Ideas Fail Without Stakeholder Support
Excellence rarely breaks down because of a bad idea. More often, it stalls because the wrong people were left out of the conversation. Every project, every initiative and every attempt to improve…
S1E101 Ep101 The Hidden Cost of Familiarity
The biggest problem in most workplaces is not that waste is hidden, but that people gradually stop noticing it. Processes become familiar, inefficiencies become normalised, and teams become so…
S1E100 Ep100 Special birthday episode: Ishan’s Journey and his Unlock Philosophy
In this special 100th episode the spotlight is on Ishan Galapathy himself. From engineering student in Sydney to global operational excellence leader, consultant, author and speaker, Ishan’s story is…
S1E99 Ep99 When Cutting Costs Starts Cutting Capability
Redundancies are rising, but something more fundamental is being cut. Continuous improvement teams, once relied on to drive efficiency and long-term performance, are being removed under short-term…
S1E98 Ep98 Three Simple Tasks That Reveal Great Leadership
A quiet Sri Lankan kitchen reveals a powerful lesson in leadership. Three simple tasks uncover what many organisations still miss. Cut a pineapple and you learn the discipline of using resources…
S1E97 Ep97 What Operational Excellence Looks Like in Real Life – Troy May
Sustainable operational excellence is built through clarity, consistency and patient investment in people. Tools matter, but results only stick when leaders communicate clearly, build capability and…
S1E96 Ep96 Tools Only Matter When Teams Use Them
We assume tools will save us. They won’t. Not unless people can actually use them when it matters. Modern organisations are overloaded with frameworks, dashboards and methodologies, all introduced…
S1E95 Ep95 Fix the System Not the Person
When something goes wrong at work, the first question is often who caused it. It feels fast, decisive and accountable, but it rarely leads to real improvement. Blame creates closure, not clarity. The…
S1E94 Ep94 Building Better Teams Across Cultures, Countries and Complexity
Lasting operational excellence is built through trust, clarity and the disciplined use of human potential. Sustainable transformation does not come from tighter control, but from creating…
S1E18 Ep93 The Hidden Power of a Well-Run Daily Huddle
workplaces start the day with a quick huddle. A few questions, a few updates, then everyone moves on. It feels productive, but often it’s little more than a casual chat. What’s missing is structure.…
S1E92 Ep92 Transformation succeeds or fails in the middle
Transformation sounds exciting in the boardroom – new strategy, sharper governance, higher standards, tighter cadence – but step out of the PowerPoint deck and into the engine room, and you’ll find a…
S1E91 Ep91 From Complexity to Clarity: Leading High-Performance Supply Chains – Cedric Lemetter
Leadership in supply chain is ultimately about creating agility, sustaining improvement, and making courageous decisions that protect long-term performance – and personal priorities. Ishan is joined…
S1E90 Ep90 Growth fails not because of ambition — but because of capacity
Growth is exciting, but exhausting. We celebrate the rising revenue, the expanding customer base, the new opportunities opening up. But behind the scenes, growth also stretches capacity, tests…
S1E89 Ep89 When the base is solid, everything rises
In Spain, there is a centuries-old tradition in which teams build towering human pyramids – sometimes up to ten levels high – through extraordinary trust, coordination, and collective discipline.…
S1E88 Ep88 Leadership excellence: conversations, connection & culture – Tim Morgan
Great leaders don’t just deliver results. They leave fingerprints on the people they lift along the way. And today’s guest has done exactly that across nearly three decades inside one of Australia’s…
S1E87 Ep87 Listen better, performance follows
A strange noise in a car that vanishes at the mechanic becomes the spark for a powerful business lesson: listening matters. Ishan explores what we can learn from mechanics who hear problems before…
S1E86 Ep86 Summer Series: Capability before complexity – Thinking skills outperform tools
One of the biggest myths in modern operations is that performance problems can be fixed with better tools. Dashboards, automation and system upgrades promise clarity, but often amplify the very…
S1E85 Ep85 Summer Series: Disruption, Priorities, and Unexpected Clarity
After five intense weeks in Sri Lanka filled with family, friends, and nonstop catch-ups, Ishan is recording this episode in Thailand – off schedule and completely off script! This part of the…
S1E84 Ep84 Summer Series: People, not tools, are the real engine of excellence
When organisations want to lift performance, they usually reach for new tools, new systems, new dashboards. But here’s the truth: tools don’t change culture — people do. Excellence has never been a…
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Excellence Unlocked has published 100 episodes since July 2024, covering topics in Business, Management.
Excellence Unlocked is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 15m.
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