Andy Olrich  00:00

Simple, high level visual approaches, the tools that we talk about that we use to facilitate the alignment and the acknowledgement and acceptance do it, because if it’s all just in a spreadsheet or a list, and you’re not all in the room together, you will get busy,

Catherine McDonald  00:15

especially the bigger you get as an organization, make sure that you are adopting visual management for your strategy, yes. For other things, yes, but particularly when you have a strategy with goals, and that’s filtering down to departments, and that’s filtering down to teams individuals. If you can’t visualize it, then how on earth are you going to explain it to anybody? And chances are that it’s just too big you Hello

Andy Olrich  00:55

everyone, and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions Podcast. I’m Andy Ulrich and once again, joined by my amazing co host, Catherine McDonald, how you going? Catherine, Hey Andy, I’m very well. How are you awesome? Yeah, going really well. Jumped into 2026. It’s amazing. We’re we’re not only here, but we’re seem to be in the thick of it already. So really good to catch up with you. So today we’re going to what I call the next stage. So for all of you who have caught our most recent episode, we did a LinkedIn live, as we do, to kick off the new season, season five, and we talked about setting goals that stick. So really, what we’re doing today is going to step into, Okay, what’s next? So we’re framing this in the way that we’ve we’ve had the strategy and the planning piece very well shaped or sometimes done. And now we’ve got this list. We’ve got these things that we’ve committed to do and resource, but we still need to do a bit of filtering, prioritization to know what to do now, next and later on and see what happens, type thing. So that’s really where we’re going to step in today, and going from the strategy to the starting as we framed it. So Catherine, you’ve obviously had a lot to do in this space and been involved in many different iterations of this over the years. In your mind, what are you thinking about today and where we might be able to take this?

Catherine McDonald  02:13

I’m just thinking back Andy to our LinkedIn live, and something that came up was around, how many goals are the right amount, you know. And as part of that discussion, there was a lot of people saying we should maybe limit the number of goals. And I think what it sparked for me was this understanding, I suppose, that teams don’t struggle because they have no ideas or no goals. Oftentimes, the struggle is we’ve just got so many things we want to achieve right down from the personal level to the team level to the department level, right up to our big organizational strategy. So I think the real skill in all of this is not putting it together, but knowing where to start. So that’s what we want to talk about, right?

Andy Olrich  02:58

Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a plan. And as they say, a plan never survives. First Contact is the real game starts when it’s okay. We’re out there on the court and we’ve got to pull the trigger and make this thing happen, or or most of it, and see what happens. So yeah, absolutely, that was it. And that generated a lot of discussion online. And I had some people reach out to me personally, going the piece around the goals. It’s like, yeah, we go in and we get excited, we and we don’t take that moment to look and go hang on. We’ve got some things hanging out from last year. We’ve got this, not another never ending action plan. Here we go again. You know what? I’m just going to, going to just go back to doing my job and we’ll see how everyone else goes. You can get that bit of stagnation as well. So yeah, that’s that’s great reflections, and I’m definitely aligned with that. So yeah, what? What is this? How do we do this? And some of the things that we see around, hang on everybody. I know that that particular initiative was one that you raised, and your team’s passionate about it, but our strategy and our customers are saying we need to kind of start here the change piece around that and getting it uncomfortable. They might not agree, but at least they understand why Hang on, focus here first. Or, you know what, everyone to their corners, and we all have to work on this at the same time.

Catherine McDonald  04:12

So, yeah, yeah. And have you seen that Andy in the organizations that you work with, in terms of that, even that conversation happening. Or, you know, does it happen all the time?

Andy Olrich  04:25

Yeah, as I said, we get excited. And for some places I’ve been in that position, or have supported organizations where we’ve never done a strategy day before. Oh, this is great. Wasn’t that a great few days and and look at that. Yeah, we can go after this. I see the plan. I can kind of see where I fit in, and the risk there is, we don’t want to say no to anyone, or we just have the list. And I’ve seen group plans where it’s just all of these initiatives, and the bar for the timing on the chart goes from January to December. Yep. And they’re all that long, and you still look at that and go, Well, who’s going to do what? By how? Much by when? So I think, and that’s a maturity thing, or just you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s really trying to help you understand that in quarter one eyes on this is where we’re going. And some of the things that I’ve fallen into the trap myself is, yeah, if I’ve got some people who aren’t on board, or only just coming on board, they might have an initiative that I know will change the thinking and get them on side. Is, how do I navigate that to make sure that it’s not a no, it’s more of a not yet, or if it is a no, they understand, because we talked about a lot in that last LinkedIn live too, was around that change piece, getting the culture on board with what the strategy is and align. So yeah, I do see a lot of common challenges. I see is either they don’t do that strategic planning, they just create a list, and they’ve still got things left over from last year, things like that, but also how they share and communicate and go back and measure against that strategy and execution, because we don’t know if we’re just doing the thing because we said we would, but is it actually making a difference, especially to our customers? So what about you, Catherine, I I’m always fascinated. You’ve got some really good reach through very different industries and your rich experience. What are some of the things that you’ve seen?

Catherine McDonald  06:17

Yeah, so I work in a lot of non manufacturing as well as manufacturing, because that would have been my background years ago. So I often what I see that happens, that’s that’s done well, is actually the strategy day that’s actually done very, very well in a lot of companies, even the smaller companies, are getting more into having a plan for the business now, right? So it’s taken a while to catch on, but a lot of companies understand, yes, we need one now. Okay, so that’s that’s been done well, but where we fall down, and where companies fall down, especially the small to medium ones, I think it’s the whole area of you know, from from a lean perspective, we would call it Hoshin can re or we would call it catch ball. I think you mentioned that Andy in the in the LinkedIn live where it’s not just up to the senior leaders and business owners to create the plan and then filter down to everybody in every department. Here’s exactly what we want you to do and exactly what we want you to deliver on in three months and six months and 12 months time. So we understand now that there has to be more to it. As you said, we have to engage people, because people simply won’t invest the energy, never mind the time, in doing something that they don’t feel they have created or are a part of creating. So I think what’s missing is that high level strategy piece. Again, we think about catch ball being thrown to the different departments, for them to look at it, for them to understand the high level goals, and then for them to be facilitated, to have the discussion. And maybe they can facilitate themselves, if possible. But if they can’t, that’s where the manager or the leader role comes in facilitate the conversation. Or what does this high level goal mean for us? How do we break this down as a team and decide how we’re going to deliver on this. And then we throw that back up to senior leadership, and they tell us what they think, what they think of the plan we’ve put together. And it goes back and forth until everybody is in agreement. And then it goes the same with implementation, back and forth, back and forth on the communication around it, so that often is missing, and if we don’t have that to begin with, I mean, we’re kind of setting ourselves up for failure here, because all we’ve got is a lovely looking plan that nobody has read, and work goes back to normal. Have you seen that?

Andy Olrich  08:31

Yeah, silos stand up, or empire building, I call it. It’s if someone’s running their own measures that make the team look impressive or whatever, and just coming back to that piece around the catch ball, sooner or later, decisions got to be made, that leadership will communicate the what, and that catch ball is really about establishing the how, because what we’re wanting out of that is that commitment, that Extreme Ownership of the sub actions and tasks. Because, yeah, it can’t just be we agree that that’s what our team will do, and our team will deliver it. Really, where it moves the needle is you’ve got that individual responsibility and accountability stood up. But you usually, as you said, you usually get there a lot sooner, with more energy and buy in if there’s that opportunity for them to discuss how they’re going to achieve the what that they’ve derived in the strategy. So I think that’s a really good point that you call out there. And again, this all comes back to the cultural piece. So definitely, what’s in it? For me, I always find that people will gravitate towards something that they personally feel some sort of benefit, not just the salary or the some of the feel good vibes that come to it, but it’s yeah, it’s really about okay, well, I can see the point in that it’s not just all about the customer, either. Because, let’s face it, we we want to be we want to succeed it ourselves as well, and feel like what we’re doing is worth it, and the right people are going to see it, and that might be a promotion or just hold. Where you’re at. So yes, so yeah, common challenges. And I’m sure a lot of our listeners will be sitting there thinking, oh, yeah, we’ve done that, or we haven’t even thought about that yet. So that’d be cool if, when, if people can drop in the comments and things what they’re finding. So that’s really the challenge we’ve called out here. Is where, how we move this thing into being something real and know that it’s working. So what are what are some of the things we can do about that? What are some of the practical, tangible things we can give our listeners to think about or maybe go on and do?

Catherine McDonald  10:31

Okay, so what we’ve talked about there isn’t actually difficult at all, right? It needs a bit of structure and leaves the right mindset and knowledge of how you do this from a leadership perspective. But that’s actually probably still the easy part. Okay, it’s what we need to get to, which is the more difficult part is within those maybe smaller departmental or team platforms, how do those people who are going to do the work prioritize what they’re going to do? Okay, so I’ll give you an you asked me, What can we do? So I think simple structure, simple tools, can really help here. Okay, so one of the things that I use is, if I’m doing a strategy, kind of this, kind of filtering down the strategy with teams, what we’ll do is, I’ll use three P’s, but I’ll make it as simple as this. So what we’re trying to do is, we’re trying to look for where is the intersection of pain proof and pay off. So in terms of pain, where are the things that are causing your company, your customers, the biggest pain? All right, proof. Have we got evidence to support that? Because we don’t have evidence, then doesn’t count. We have to go off and get evidence right. So that’s a very lean way of thinking, but it has to be, because everybody, generally, if we don’t have that, we’ll just give their own opinions. It’ll turn into a big talking shop about all the issues and what our pain points are. So we need the pain, but we need the proof as well. And what I mean by payoff is, well, if we solve this problem, what is it going to do for us as a company? What? How is it going to free us up and give us leverage as a team to maybe work on other things? So that’s where you get your engagement piece and your meaning piece. It’s not just about, oh, if we work on this, you know, it’ll be great for the company and great for us. It’s also about look at the benefits in terms of what we won’t have to do, or something else we could do that we’re not doing now, so that they’re the three P’s. So curious to know, have you ever worked with a team Andy who have used any sort of structure to work these things out, or has the leader brought anything to the table that helped the team work it out? Have you seen anything?

Andy Olrich  12:28

Yeah, so aligned with the three P’s. If I was to put my ADKAR change model hat on, so they have the five P’s, when you’re doing the initial five P’s, is like that high level, the project people purpose payoffs, covers those things that you’re talking about there. So yeah, and if we were to, so that’s a really good way from the people side of change, you know, what needs to change, and getting them connected. But then also, I was to put, if I’m working in a in a Lean Six Sigma framework, and when using that to make road map. And definitely in the defined measure piece, there’s the change would plug in there that, that five piece I’ve utilized to plug into that, getting the the defining and the measure Okay? Piece, that commitment for the team to go on and explore this, getting into the back end of that defined measure is absolutely around. Well, what is the cost of poor quality. Okay, what is this particular pain? So if we use that pain reference that you said, What is this actually costing us now for where we’re at, and again, it must be backed up by evidence, not I think, or I’ve heard before we step into, okay, we’re going to analyze the key thing that our customers in that defined measure stage are also validated that that’s their pain too. Sometimes we get distracted with going, well, in my team, this is the pain, but it can be quite different to what the next group or person on the output of what your team does, or the external customer is actually seeing, thinking, feeling, doing right. So absolutely aligned with that. And it’s a really the three piece is a really good way to lift everybody out of the technical, for example, if they’re not a fan, or they’re a bit fearful of a Lean Six Sigma or something, you know, a little bit harder edged. Yeah, hey, let’s just lift up team. We’re all from different areas. I think the three P’s, the five P’s, again, it’s all about that engagement and alignment before, potentially, in a lot of cases, is we might go on and analyze a problem, but you know what, we really shouldn’t care about at the moment, because our customers aren’t saying it, and it’s not in our strategy that we stood up there a few weeks ago. It’s just that calibration. And then if others can see that a particular challenge or pain is costing the company and there’s risk there of that big sometimes they’ll go, oh, well, that’s Oh wow. I had no idea that that dials mine down a bit on the list. Yeah. So yeah, we’ve got to have that moment to do that prioritization. Another thing that I’ve used just quickly is the the value effort matrix, oh, yeah, or the Eisenhower matrix. So again, it’s a, as I say, it’s a quick and dirty way to get all these little lists of things. Let’s just. Put it up on the wall, get a bit of a lay of the land for what is now, and actually the value and the effort, great idea. But you know what aligned to the strategy? What our customers are telling us not yet, or maybe don’t do it all, but we never delete that. We just keep that there again for that piece I talked about earlier, is, if that’s my idea and someone puts it in the we’re not doing it, as opposed to not yet, that can be a tipping point as to whether they stay on the bus from there on. So, yeah, thanks. Yeah, that’s that’s really some of some my experiences and approaches that I’ve used, yeah, and

Catherine McDonald  15:35

that’s good. There’s a few different ones in there, which I think people, if you’ve never heard of them before and you’re listening to this, just go look them up. Watch YouTube videos. Using these tools and adding a little bit of structure, especially if you are facilitating some of these conversations, and you’re a leader, they can be really, really useful. Otherwise, as I said, everything just gets subjective and cloudy and conversations go nowhere. So just while you were talking there as well, you sparked something that made me think, you know, sometimes we have goals, right? Big, these big goals, but oftentimes throughout the year, we will still need to improve, like this whole idea of continuous improvement, right? We will still need to improve almost everything we’re doing throughout the year. And sometimes our improvements are not linked to the bigger strategic goals, or they may be, maybe they are, but it’s not really very, you know, clear so, and this is where the whole idea of kaizen comes in, really, so that. So for anybody who’s not sure it’s okay, then continuous improvement, it’s, it’s about bringing the people in who do the work to engage and empower them to understand where work can be improved, and give them the opportunity to take the control over and go away and make the improvements. So sometimes that’s not linked to a big goal, and that’s okay. But I do think, and I do see that a lot of the time, we just go too fast with that, even with Kaiser. And I do think people take away things to work on, and they say yes to things, and it’s all about, what can we do? What are the actions? And I’m all for actions. Anybody who listens to me knows I’m all about taking on the actions. However, I think if you’re again a leader facilitating these conversations, there’s some good questions you have to ask people and get clear within a team before everyone decides to go off and change something. Okay, so just simple things, have we described the problem and defined the problem clearly? As you said, the Define piece? Have we got a measure of it? So those things really link in with, you know what you were saying there? Andy earlier, but I want to talk a pause a little bit more on the measures, because we can define the problem, but oftentimes we think we have a measure, but we don’t really have a measure, and then we fall into problems because we come back a week later and people go, Oh, yeah, that’s, you know, seems like it’s making a good difference, but we don’t really have the measure to really prove that. So have you seen that happen? And what can we do to make sure that when we check in, we’ve got the right measures, we’re using the right data and we use the data properly. Yeah?

Andy Olrich  18:03

So definitely we talk about evidence, just touching on that Kaizen piece, small, incremental, everyday type things. Yeah, there’s got to be that in the organization to grow the culture. But yeah, sometimes it’s all that, or sometimes it’s all big stuff, and we just yeah, we need to have that space to play and try storm and experiment and give them, empower them to do small, simple every day. The two second leads when we go through we analyze the problem. So once we’ve confirmed that we’re going to work on this thing, and the facts are real, yeah, when we start to make improvements again, measures and control. So if we go back to what I like about the control plan in a domain roadmap is you must call out what measures you’re going to use from here on, who’s going to check it to understand whether that lever that we’ve pulled or pushed has gone and is aligned back to the original problem and measures that we were using As our like our key indicator of what this pain looks like when we try to as a measure, right? So, because what that forces you to do is, not only does it give you a thing that you got to make sure that you’re not trying to measure a banana against an apple. Okay, it’s the line’s completely blurred. Now we’re talking about something different on the other end. But also, who’s going to do that? And then what is our plan, if it’s going really well, well, to maybe pause there and move on to the next thing, because we based it or actually we’ve made it worse. And we know we’ve made it worse because this person’s checked it and validated with evidence, whatever that data point is, one of the things I see, like you said, we can go too fast, is, yeah, back when we’re building this thing up and looking at it is like, what’s like, what’s the what’s the right cycle time for that problem to occur that we based our original data on? So if you just have a good day and go, Oh, well, we measured that today, and it’s not a problem, move on. Whereas someone might lift back and go, well over the last six months, actually, it’s this, how do we right size it down? The track to go, and we’re not going to measure the just for the next week and see if that tells us that, because we had to actually test and prove six months worth of trends or customer feedback, or seasonal I’ve got a customer, that their main period of activity in business is during bushfire season, so going on, making changes and using the winter months where they never sell or make as much as the true test of whether we’ve fixed anything or not. So that’s what I mean. It’s really important, is when we move forward is okay? What are the measures we’re going to define as success, and who’s going to check it and who’s going to prove it? Because, yeah, it’s so exciting when one thing works and we pop the court and move on, but three months later, or when the real game starts again, when no one’s even looking at it, and then, oh, we’re here again, or we’re worse. So yeah,

Catherine McDonald  20:54

so as you were talking there, based on what we said so far, I’ve just have a little checklist of what any leader manager can use with their team just to know that it’s the right time to start with this improvement. So first thing, we can describe the goal slash problem. If it’s an everyday kind of kaizen thing, the goal or the problem clearly and everybody can can describe it and understand what it is, we can measure it simply. We, the people doing the work, agree that it matters, because we have to have people, if people are especially if they have to collect data, and, you know, it’s really important that they understand why we’re doing this, so people understand that and agree that it matters, and they’re going to get involved and work together on this goal or problem. There’s a realistic owner. I love that. You brought that up. I don’t think any measure will work. And then we don’t have measures. We can’t go anywhere with our goals. So realistic owners and accountability in all of this is huge. And then we can go out and test a change quickly, and we have a structure where we come back in regularly to review and reflect and understand actions impact next steps. So that’s what I have so far.

Andy Olrich  22:12

Yeah, really, really, yeah, really. Think that that’s a good way to frame it and through all of that, at every step the customer, there’s a touch point there to confirm that, that is, they’re comfortable in a lot of cases, that we’re working on that for them as a team. But also a data is telling us this, what are you seeing out there? What are you thinking? What are you feeling and and that’s, that’s why we’re here, right? So that’s, that’s a great way to wrap that up. And I think if, if people just go back and just jot those few key checkpoints down when we’re looking to stand up, how we’re going to prioritize and get to work or continue on from last year, put them down and just discuss with the team is, are we thinking about those things? We might be able to answer some of those questions now, but that’s where we’re going. That’s our roadmap. You give them quite a simple checklist to build a roadmap and make sure that you know, over over all, that’s probably how we should approach any anything at scale, whether that’s the two second lean or it’s a 12 month multi divisional improvement initiative. So yeah, that’s great.

Catherine McDonald  23:16

Have you seen Andy? I mean, you work with sort of companies of all sizes as well. Have you seen this get more difficult as organizations grow?

Andy Olrich  23:27

Yeah, definitely reflecting to some recent clients that are the smaller, small to mid size enterprise where we’ve it’s been started as a family business, one example, and what they’re doing is working, and the business is growing and sales are increasing, they’re at that point where they’ve got all that they need to they say, I need to let go, but I’m just not sure where I’ve got some good people here, but I don’t want to point them at the wrong thing. So I have to be in it still. I have to keep making all the decisions. So definitely think having that framework where that person can then be a sponsor and enabler, all right, but they’re getting clarity, clarification and alignment, as you said, from the team that has to deliver the work. Yeah, great. We’ll set the direction and and I’ll give you the fence around the playground, but I can see or you’ve helped me understand that. You know what? I’m buried in this, and I had no idea that that team that reports to me is even feeling that pain. Okay, wow. We need to fix that as well, because we might have a key customer objective to deliver, but the approach that someone might decide on in isolation might actually be unsafe, or it might be burying the next step in the process down in unnecessary inventory or unseen so until you’ve got people leaving or or making more mistakes. So I definitely think, yeah, that piece where the business starts to really grow, if you don’t have that clarity on purpose and alignment, you will build more things to do, or you’ll just be out there telling your people to hurry up, or not good enough. They’re going, well, I don’t even know what goodies I’ve got no idea where we’re at, mate, and where is all this going.

Catherine McDonald  25:05

So, yeah, I think that’s right. If you are the business owner, the business leaders, you have to be crystal clear on not just, I suppose, your strategy and your goals, but your implementation plan. How am I going to work with these teams, and how are individuals going to be worked with, so that the actions that they engage in every day are going to and every week are going to support our goals to be achieved. And I think those that’s a conversation that is not always had

Andy Olrich  25:34

no and just a quick little example on the quick wins piece. So going back to that value effort matrix, a recent example was we had a we got right through, and then we had these things to do. We creating these lists of ideas and problems to further solve what we did for the group, to get them aligned with not only the value effort, but like put a time sort of box around it. So when we talk about quick wins, we want a commitment for the 30 day, 90 day, 180 days, and we’ll see what happens. Maybe not yet. There was probably about 100 sticky notes, okay, but what seemed like a bit of a rudimentary sort of problem, but we should have a crack at it and see if this works. 80% of them were sitting in the Quick Wins box because I just said, Let’s just go. And I intentionally let them do it. And then I looked at that, and I said, Okay, there’s 12 people in this room, and let’s say we’ve got 80 actions that you’re all going to stand up and deliver in the next 30 days. How do we feel about that? And you could see all of them look at the sticky notes. You know, it’s really great visual management tool. And they’re looking at it. They’re going, There’s no way we’re going to, yeah, great. I can Wow. Look at that. Look at that pile, that cluster mess, or hot mess, someone called it. So again, having that simple framework, very visual, it helps calibrate the team to kind of temper the excitement and go it takes me three hours to watch 60 minutes in this place like it takes me a week for someone to get back to me just for an email. No way am I going to put my name on 25 things to do in a month? So I caution people there too is, you don’t want to start with that, but that again, those those simple, high level visual approaches, the tools that we talk about, that we use to facilitate the alignment and the acknowledgement and acceptance, do it, because if it’s all just in a spreadsheet or a list, and you’re not all in the room together, you will get busy. So yeah, that’s so have you got anything else in that space?

Catherine McDonald  27:29

I think that’s an excellent point to end on. That if you, especially the bigger you get as an organization, make sure that you are adopting visual management for your strategy, yes. For other things, yes, but particularly when you have a strategy with goals, and that’s filtering down to departments, and that’s filtering down to teams individuals. If what you’ll find is, if you can’t visualize it, then how on earth are you going to explain it to anybody? And chances are that it’s just too big. So if it’ll tell you a lot when you try to visualize it alone and but that’s an excellent point to end on. I think it’s really, really important in this conversation. So, yeah, yeah, agree, fantastic.

Andy Olrich  28:08

So yeah, a lot of like this, as we’ve committed to in this podcast, we’re kind of, you know, just trying to be a little bit more targeted with the time that we have there. But there’s a lot more we could discuss. So if anybody’s listening here, and there’s a particular part of this episode that you want to do a deeper dive on. By all means, reach out. But yeah, rolling back to that clarity of the purpose, the pain, the payoffs, what are you going to do now, next and later? Or do you just have that multiple bars that go for the whole year, and we’ll see how we go. So bit of reflection there, but Catherine, as always, love to catch up. Have a great day, and for all our listeners out there, hope you have the same and any final words from you, Catherine on your end,

Catherine McDonald  28:55

don’t start where it’s exciting. Start where it’s expensive. Start where the pain is high and just get in there and get uncomfortable. I know the quick wins are great, but when it comes to making an impact, we have got to get into where it’s expensive, and you might find there’s quick wins in there as well, but start where you know that there’s pain points, because you want to free yourself up through not having that much pain and suffering in your job. So yeah, don’t start where it’s all exciting.

Andy Olrich  29:28

Yeah, start where you intend to finish. As my grandmother used to say in some ways. So all right, we’ll catch you all next time. Thanks, Catherine. See you then. Bye.