Patrick Adams  00:00

Where this is one of our summit series, we’re meeting with different speakers from the Lean Solutions Summit. This year’s Lean Solutions Summit. We’re meeting with speakers, and we’re just doing a kind of a high-level view of the topics that are going to be talked about at the summit, and having some discussion about what participants can expect when they come to the Lean Solutions Summit. So this is just a good way for those of you that are listening in to gage: like, is this a place for me? Is there something that I can take away from this if I attend the summit? But ultimately, I hope that even just by listening to this recording, you take something away today that you can apply right away in your business or in your organization. So, so with that, I want to just take a minute and introduce the guests that we have today. Again, these are speakers for the Lean Solutions Summit coming up september 15, 16th, and 17th at Meyer Frederick Gardens in West Michigan. Here, it’s going to be an event that you do not want to miss, and you’ll find out why here in just a minute. The first group that I want to introduce, I have Brett Lesewicks and Judd Van Bergen from EV Construction right here in West Michigan. They’re one of the top construction companies here in West Michigan. So we have Phil Rank also here. Phil is the founder from Lean Alaska, and also a veteran from the Army. So thank you for your service, Phil. Appreciate everything that you’ve done and still do for the the military community. You actually train a lot of veterans that are shifting from active duty out to the civilian world. You’re training them, getting them certified in Lean and Six Sigma concepts, continuous improvement thinking, getting them certified so that they can go into the job market and be successful. I want to talk a little bit about the topics that your two groups will be addressing at the summit this year. So let’s go back to to Brett and Jud. Judd, can you can you just tell me a little bit, you know. Maybe scratch the surface here. Don’t give away too much because we want people to come to the summit and and hear all the details. But give me a little bit of an idea. Now, the title of your topic is “Creating Harmony in Construction: Delivering Certainty in an Uncertain Industry. So, talk about that. Why? Where did this come from? Why why do you want to talk about this particular topic, and what can we expect in your your breakout?

Judd VanBergen  02:30

Yeah, I I think where we start is in that title where it says delivering certainty in an uncertain industry. The uncertain industry is what led us into all of this here. So I think that’s a great place to start. Sure. When when people think of the construction industry, and especially those in it, it is a different world than in manufacturing. You’re you’re dealing with variables that are that are weather, that are site logistics. There there’s the issue of we only get one product to work on, and that’s your shot, and then it’s on to the next and a different one. So, so this over there’s a lot of research really over the past half century on on the low or negative productivity in the construction market compared to other industries. Goldman Sachs has a really interesting study out on it. This that came out earlier this year that that shows that curve there. And and there’s there’s a lot of theories as to what’s pouring into that. The variables I mentioned, the the contracting of it, and the the incentives are are a lot different than in the manufacturing world. So so what this all is has led to is where we’re at is we’re in this less productive market, not just by other industries, but even by how we were performing 50 years ago. You go to onto a construction site, you see a lot of the same equipment that was there probably when when your dad or grandpa might have been working on a construction site, and and that really just shows how the lack of improvement has happened in some some of the areas of the industry there. But then, what we came the the issue that that we were up against coming into this pediatric center was we had this once in a generation opportunity to provide a very unique facility that’s going to provide behavioral health care for kids in our community, and there hasn’t been anything like it before. The the owner Pine Rest was was you know very forefront and knowledgeable of that scenario, and they allowed us then really with with our past relationship with them, Evie, we have this challenge before us. Let’s go get our team. So between them and the architect engineer, and then our being able to go select our team, we were able to really approach this knowing those constraints that is meant. Those issues that that we’re seeing in the construction industry, and what we’re going to talk about at the summit is is a is how we were able in that uncertainty. Also coming out of COVID and a lot of the unknowns out of that, we’re into this tariff world. We were peak tariff time at that time, and then we’re going to talk about all these other uncertainties that happen in the construction industry and how we got through those in the project. We were able to do that through relationships and and the harmony that we talk about there. It’s really relationships are the underlying principle there. So, Brett, do you want to go off of anything from that?

Brett Lesiewicz  05:39

Yeah, maybe just to go back to some of the problems in our our world, there are these little pockets of innovation. So you have, oh well, we prefabricate and we do these things in advance, and we’ve thought about how to dial this system in, or we have this robot that helps lay out different things, and those are all great. They’re great tools. What we’ve seen, though, is that in our industry, it doesn’t matter if there’s one person on the team that has the best of. The tendency is to always go to the lowest common denominator. So there’s always the guy who still uses a fax machine and just you know writes things down by hand and shows up when he wants to show up, and unfortunately, they are the anchor that just drags the rest of the team down. So, in this in this circumstance with this project, we had an opportunity from the client to say, the mission here is care for these kids as soon as possible. If you had the keys to the car, what would you do different, and that’s that’s really how we got into this space. We were afforded an opportunity to to try something new that normally you just don’t have access to, right? Among the the different players, and so it was a lot of fun. And that’s again why I say we’re we’re newer to this space. It’s not something that all of the owner architect teams are are usually open to, but through those relationships that we had built with them prior, and then we brought in our trades with the relationships there, we’re really able to do some special things.

Patrick Adams  07:14

Yeah, and and so one of our keynote speakers that’s going to be at the summit is Jason Schroeder, who’s one of the co-founders of the Last Planner system, I believe Brett, you guys went out and visited a construction company that was utilizing the Last Planner system, and then you guys kind of tweaked it a little bit to fit your culture and and what you guys wanted to apply when it comes to tack planning. But either you or Jud, can you just walk me through some of the visuals that you guys use at a high level, and then I want to talk briefly about your trades, and then Phil will come over to you for a couple questions as well. But but do you mind hitting on just the the visual management side of what you guys used at on this particular project, and then then I have a question about trades after that as well.

Brett Lesiewicz  08:02

Yeah, so we a few years back we were able to through some networks with our president and CEO. We visited a billion dollar job site, and I think that’s really one of the special things about getting outside your bubble in a summit like this to just experience you. You take that small nugget and you go, wow, that is going to make a huge difference. And we put our own flavor onto it. How can it work in our West Michigan market? How do we think this would work? But we saw two mega projects. It was a Sherwin Williams project down town, a 30-five story high-rise, and then a an R and D facility out in the country. So you have this highly repeatable tower project, and then you have a completely unique. Every space is different, and they were using that last planter system to go through, and and tack planning was one of our takeaways from that. How do you how do you do a flow in a highly repeatable setting, and then how do you do a flow in a very unique setting? And that was the story of Pine Rest. So taking those visuals, I think we thought that is what we need to target, and it basically turned into this exercise where we’re going to put one schedule together. We’re gonna get buy-in from day one. We’re gonna print them, laminate them, post them everywhere, and it’s untouchable. And that’s how we’re gonna present it. And Judd had a lot to do with where to put them and what they looked like, and you know how all that came together. But

Patrick Adams  09:36

yeah, it was it was really fun for me to be able to see and hear from your team on on how that whole process went and the visuals that I was able to see, which I’m sure you’ll be sharing pictures of the entire case study at the summit. But Judd, can you talk about? So I know one of your trades, one of the companies, and. The The person that I spoke to at that company said that when they were presented this crazy off the wall idea from you guys, they were like, “No way, we’re not like this is crazy. And about halfway through, they were like, “This is the most amazing thing we’ve ever experienced. We don’t want to do it any other way. Can you talk just a little bit to that and what you heard from the trades during this project and why you’re going to continue this going forward?

Judd VanBergen  10:31

Yeah, yeah, I know exactly who you’re talking about there, and I give him crap for it, and and I love that now he’s the raving fan of this process. So

Patrick Adams  10:39

right,

Judd VanBergen  10:39

yeah. So we we went into this off of what Brett was talking about there, where we went and learned this this new tech planning to us, and and Jason, I I’ve been looking into his work more, and he’ll be at the summit. He’s he is going to be the technical expert there. We don’t claim to be that by any means, but we did just dive right into it, and we were like, “What? What is this? We we see that it’s a it’s a proactive way to engage all of our trades, get a plan set, and most importantly, get buy-in from the entire group. So so that’s where the the key difference is. Where before, and this is I say before this is where probably most construction managers in our market right now are developing this Gantt chart over the course of a whole project, and off of maybe previous history, a little bit of hey, is this going to work? Asking around, and then there’s the there’s the schedule. So you might have a 40 week ductwork duration on that Gantt chart, and you don’t-you just set that up, and the the lowest bid ductwork contractor said, “Yep, we can do it in 40 weeks. And then you’re at, you know, you’re at week 20, and you’re like, “Are we halfway through? And and the contractor’s like, “Yep, we’re good. And then all of a sudden, you’re at week 38, and ah, we’re six weeks behind. And you’re just what? What do you mean? The schedule had this, and and they had no buy-in in doing it, and all their incentives were there to say yes, we can do it. Where we used tact planning and stepped into that world is is we on the front end we brought in all of our trade partners into our office, and we brought them into a space, which at the time was an old classroom, like stuck in the 90s or 80s. I don’t know when that space was finished out. And we put up a bunch of a bunch of papers on the wall and gave everybody their own color sticky note. And we’re like, you are going to set the schedule that you can make. And and they went and put their sticky note up there. And then the the the next person that’s following them has to go, and then wait a minute. I I can’t be I can’t go in there as the ductwork guy until the electrician’s out of here for this reason. You know there there were those conversations happening for about three to four hours. We were in that room and it was high energy the entire time, and the end product was the schedule that these trades built, and it wasn’t perfect. And actually, the first iteration, it looked like we were going to be over you know over schedule. But we were then able to work with that. We were okay. Let’s get creative on this. And you know, over months, we were able to plan that out before we even got those trades on site. So that contractor, to go back to what you asked, that contractor you’re talking about, in particular, they’re like when we ask them, okay, here’s the schedule. Now we have to break the entire building up into zones because the whole process here is is we’re having the entire building we’re pulling people in it on an assembly line through the product, so reverse thinking of having an assembly line go along a bunch of people, they were like, we we can’t do it in these zones. We need the whole area at once. It’s just not going to work like that. And then after you know some more, I don’t know if enticing is the right words, but after just keeping it in front of them, hey, let’s get creative on it. By the end of it, they were like, “Wow, this is the smoothest project we have ever done. And we’ll talk more some about you know why and what was involved with that. But it’s an awesome testimony.

Patrick Adams  14:13

Yeah, we’re just scratching the surface here with what you guys were able to do, and you know I know that there are other companies in West Michigan, that are watching you guys and going, man, they’re this is pretty smart because obviously the trades are going and talking about it, and they’re working with other construction companies, and so I’m excited to see how that continues to progress for EV construction and help you to meet the deliverables that you have with your clients because it’s a pretty cool thing that you guys are doing, and I’m excited for our participants at the summit to see that this September. The other cool thing about it is you don’t have to be in the construction industry to walk away with some value add from Jud and Brett during that breakout. They’re going to be talking about a lot of really cool visual management or visuals that they were able to use. Just the the whole change management process. With their vendors, so it’s it’s going to definitely be one that you don’t want to miss. But I want to shift over to Phil. So Phil from Lean Alaska spoke at the summit last year, and we had such good feedback on his breakout presentation that we wanted to have him back again this year. And Phil, your presentation topic is thinking differently, empowering innovation with the seven thinking gears. So, Phil, what are you going to be? Without giving too much away, what are you going to be talking about at the summit this year?

Phil Ranck  15:30

So, yeah, interestingly enough, it actually kind of connects to what what Judd and Brett were talking about. And one thing, as I was listening, I wanted to make a point to that, and then I’ll flow into the other. Oh,

Patrick Adams  15:40

perfect! Yeah, jump in.

Phil Ranck  15:41

What what I love about what they were saying, and and Patrick, I don’t know if you’ve read it, but I think it was about a year and a half ago. So again, in the lean world, we know what downtime is. We know what the eight wastes are, the Muda, the Muri, and so forth and so on. You know, and whether you’re using downtime or Tim Woods really is just body of knowledge driven. It’s the same, you know, the same eight categories of non value added. You know, and and a lot of that goes back to manufacturing, like Judd met. What I found interesting is about a year and a half ago, I read this report where there were a lot of of practitioners in our space that were looking to add a ninth area of weight. Area was conflict. Interestingly enough, it was contracting and construction where that conversation was being had, because again, as he mentioned with manufacturing, everything starts to become a cog in the wheel. So those eight ways fit in pretty well. But when you have something as volatile as a contracting community, when you have all these disjointed organizations that have to blend together in one, conflict becomes a real driver of time lost over an extensive project. So I don’t know that that’s you know landed too far, but just hearing both of them talk, that’s the conversation that I hear is like, hey, don’t overlook conflict as an area of non-value added when you’re looking at assessing the flow of your movement and times and projects and scheduling, and what they were describing is just brilliant. So I mean, I’m very excited to hear that. Hopefully, we’re not at the exact same time because I want to come over. Yeah, I just wanted to add that in. Yeah, because like that’s that’s what I see, and and we talk about that when I get in that training. We teach the eight wastes, but I add that in there as well, and I tell them like, hey, now there’s another industry outside of manufacturing that has experienced something, and they’re adding to this. And it’s worth noting that something that is a little more service-driven than it is, you know, manufacturing-driven has this element of conflict, which actually goes right into what I’m going to talk about at at the summit. Again, lean six sigma-that’s kind of my my core, or just lean and six sigma. I mean, there’s a lot of ways to package process improvement as a term.

Patrick Adams  17:40

Sure,

Phil Ranck  17:41

but just like they mentioned, communication. Communication is without it we don’t move forward. You can have the best laid process on the planet. That’s great. If there’s no way to communicate said process, it doesn’t move. People move processes, and if we don’t communicate that well, it starts to stagnate. So that’s kind of where I got in with this this whole innovation through six thinking years. I I bumped into something a few years ago and and started practicing it. What I started to learn was how we communicate differently in organizations, right? So we typically have what what we would call as an argumentative or a Western style of communication. If you, I mean, think about it, and feel free to jump in and answer the question. If you have a meeting with 15 or 20 people in there, a typical meeting with 15 or 20 people, how many are talking at the same time? How many people traditionally are actually having a conversation out of the 15 or 20 at once? An active conference, one maybe two, right?

Patrick Adams  18:43

Yeah, yeah. You’re

Phil Ranck  18:44

saying something, I’m saying something, and then the other 13 people are updating Facebook. Not going to update itself, right? So they’re in the meeting. What is that? That’s non-value added. It’s the bane of existence. That’s why they have patches that said this meeting could have been an email or a fight. I mean, the way we communicate becomes a problematic time that we have, so the Western argumentative style of communication says you’re going to say something, then I’m going to say something, and we’re going to debate that back and forth until we either we agree to one another or we just abandon the topic. That takes that takes a lot of the concept that says what if instead of communication in this argumentative state, we have a parallel or a lateral style of communication, where instead of discussing a point versus a point, we all talk about the same thing at the same time for the same purpose, and then we move on together. But everybody is going to have the conversation at the same time. If you’re not part of the conversation, you probably don’t need to be in the meeting at the begin with. I think Elon Musk had a thing that was running around, and he would tell his workers, “If you’re in my meeting and you’re not taking anything away from it, leave my meeting. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. It just tells me that I’m utilizing you incorrectly, and you’re going to do better with your time than I will. Right. So that’s where this came along, and we started talking about these. Seven thinking gears, and it plays off of another six thinking concept that was out there. But the idea was to change how we communicated, and they said, “Okay, we’re going to stick to this very structured thing, right? We like projects, we like Lean Six Sigma. All of those are structured. Why isn’t communication structured the same way? With seven thinking gears, we start off with the foundation. In part of a conversation, you have to start off with the facts. What do we know empirically right now? Not what do we think, not what are we arguing. What do we know? So you start off with the first gear of stating the facts. Then you move into the second gear, which is the emotional gut reactions to it. Okay, we’ve established these facts. Now let’s talk about what are our gut feelings or our initial reactions, because that’s where we, as the humans, offer our experience. Right? It’s where AI hasn’t figured it out yet. The reason that AI is not taking over is it’ll never be as unpredictable as a human. You have no idea what somebody’s going to say during a meeting, and it could blow your mind.

Patrick Adams  20:55

So

Phil Ranck  20:56

after you’ve laid out the facts, you need the raw emotional response to the facts. So great. Now we have our second gear in motion. We’re picking up speed. Then the third one is now that we have the facts and we have the assumptions and the gut feelings. The topic that we’re discussing: what are our negatives? What are our resistant factors that we may have to identify here, based on the facts and our assumptions? What are going to be our roadblocks that we may be able to pre-identify? But we’re all discussing the roadblocks at the same time. I’m not talking about the roadblock while somebody else is introducing a new fact that creates conflict in conversation, right? You move from the negative to the positives. Okay, we’ve established our roadblocks. Well, what are the good things that we get out of this? We need a positive note that associates with our assumptions and with our our facts. Once you move through that, then we start talking about solutions. Solutions don’t generate out of thin air. They have to come from some kind of a root cause or foundational aspect. And we’ve built that in these gears: facts, assumptions, roadblocks, positives, or lights. Now we can start talking about ideas that are going to move us to where we need to be, and then the last year, the seventh gear, becomes the leadership, because we all know that without leadership, things don’t move. Like every organization on the planet has three levels, right? And somebody’s more than welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, right? But we have leadership, management, and personnel. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Amazon or Mom and Pop’s Bakery Shop. You fit into. You could have a different title, but you fit into one of those three categories. You’re either making decisions, responsible for the decisions, or executing the decisions. Really, the only three functions we can have. So you can’t have a gear of communication without the leadership’s input in that on well. Because again, go back to change management. We remove resistance at each one of those layers differently. How I remove resistance with leadership is different than how I remove it with personnel. Well, the conversation of the facts and the assumptions and the negatives and the positives-that’s the personnel and the management. They’re the ones boots on ground that are bringing that to the table. So it only stands to reason we need a gear where the leadership has the ability to influence what’s been said as well. So we bring them in when we’ve laid everything else out for them, because they’re the ones that ultimately are going to own the strategy that we’re working towards. And when we started putting these seven gears together, the one gear that I missed was the facilitator’s gear. Right, that’s the me of it, where we’re just making sure. In my job as the geared instructor is to make sure that if somebody’s talking about positives, somebody else isn’t talking about negatives because that creates conflict, right? So I keep everybody on path, kind of like you do with podcast, right? We have an agenda; we have to stick to it. We don’t digress or advance. So that’s what we do. So you get to the end, and what we found was, if we keep everybody on target and segmented to these gears in this motion, it condensed the amount of time we would spend in a meeting. It would reduce the amount of non-essential personnel we had during those conversations, and it produced some kind of a decisional outcome, a strategic outcome that we needed. So, a purpose to a meeting as opposed to a briefing that we could have read in an email. So, but all of that was to drive change. It is to drive processes, right? So that’s probably a little more than I should have thrown out there. But it gets deeper.

Patrick Adams  24:13

Oh yeah, no, I know. I know you’re you’re planning to to bring some examples of how teams are using this, and and you know the break those down a little bit deeper, but that’s what a great structure that is. And I, I mean, I’m sure people aren’t surprised, but I’m always surprised every time I go into companies and I and I immediately see how wasteful their meetings are. And I remember one company specifically; they had a four-hour continuous improvement meeting that that that was happening, and the the entire leadership team was in there, whether they needed to be or not. And you know that was the immediate recommendation: was let’s let’s only bring people in as we need them, and you know, and let’s structure this in a way that it’s more productive for the people who are in the. Meeting and it sounds like that’s exactly what you’ve done and what you’re going to be talking about at the summit. So I love it. What a great what a great tool and technique that people are going to be able to walk away with at the summit this year. So thanks, Phil. I want to go back to to Brett and Jud real quick. the The theme of the summit this year is better together, people plus innovation. So it’s like a formula: better together equals people plus innovation. How does what you guys are presenting? How does that tie back into the theme of better together, people plus innovation? And now go to either one, Brett or Judd, whoever wants to jump in first.

Brett Lesiewicz  25:38

Well, we’re I don’t want to spoil too much, but one of the one of the main themes that we’re looking at with this is we’ve taken this case and studied it a bit. Kind of came up with a certainty isn’t created by eliminating uncertainty; it’s creating by building relationships that are strong enough to withstand it. So we just recognize that in our industry, you can’t always get rid of those uncertain things-the labor shortages or material volatility, supply chain disruptions, anything like that. You’re going to get hit with those things, but can you build a team that’s strong enough to withstand those uncertainties? And I think that there’s these tools that they’re great. We’re learning more and more about them. We love them, and we’re bolting those on where we can. But there’s opportunities along the way when you’re doing a poll plan session or where you’re getting people in the room. There’s some magic that can happen off to the side, if you’re not using those opportunities to build and deepen those relationships, you’re going to miss out on the magic that those tools can help bring. So, so true. We are going to touch on that.

Patrick Adams  26:52

So true. I love it, and I know you you you mentioned briefly about some of the innovation that you guys are working with, but when I when I was on site and saw your robot, that am I allowed to talk about that? I don’t know if there’s any. Okay, the robot that you know is taking the layout and actually painting it throughout the facility. I mean that’s amazing. You know what a what a great way to ensure that that you know all of your trades know exactly where everything’s supposed to go without having to go back to the the shed outside and take a look at the you know the drawings and things. So that’s cool. Is that is that a pretty regular tool that construction companies are using nowadays, or is that fairly new for your industry?

Brett Lesiewicz  27:40

We’re hearing about it more and more, but it is fairly new. I think the problem is that it takes work. Sure, all this stuff requires the same the same decisions. Where does that outlet go? What is that door swing going to be? How do we measure off this steel? All that stuff is going to be figured out eventually. All we’re doing is pulling it way forward, and not many people have that appetite or that sense of urgency to do it now.

Patrick Adams  28:06

Right.

Brett Lesiewicz  28:07

People are motivated by I can see steel up, and I know that my turn’s next, and I’m going to get the call. But if that is a year away, how do you create that same sense of urgency to do it and pull those decisions and everything up front.

Patrick Adams  28:22

Yeah, it

Brett Lesiewicz  28:23

takes a lot of effort. So if we’re willing to do that, now we’re we’re creating a better environment when the time does come. We try to think through everything, and that robot is a really good tool to do that. It’s it’s bridging the gap between that planning process and the physical, because without that in the middle, you still have human error. You still have somebody to at that inflection point to say, you know what? I think we’re just going to go back to where we are. You know what? I’ll just snap lines. You know what? I’ll just measure because that’s quicker. That’s what I’m used to. But that robot sort of literally prints out the plan in place and says it’s a visual statement that says no, we will continue to follow this new plan. So that’s been a lot of fun for

Patrick Adams  29:08

us. Yeah, yeah, and and I think I don’t know if the if the listeners heard this or not, but you you shared a a secret that I think is very valuable in that decisions are moved way up in the process, and you know, for traditional planning, a lot of times what happens is you know the customer comes in at the end and they’re like, “What happened there? What happened there? Why is this like this? and and it’s now you’re having to rework everything. What you guys are doing is you’re moving a lot of those decisions and those touch points way up in the process, so that you can adjust in shorter cycles. So, and the customer is brought along during the during that time, and then that way, by the end, you’re you’re done, and there’s no rework, hopefully, or minimal rework that happens towards the end. And I mean, that’s just amazing. So, I wanted to point. That out because that you mentioned it very briefly, and I think that’s a a key to all the stuff that you guys are doing is moving those decisions way earlier in the process. Very nice work, Phil. Same question for you. The theme for the conference this year is better together, people plus innovation. How does your topic tie back to that theme? Theme.

Phil Ranck  30:22

So the the people plus innovation, and I don’t have anything specifically crafted for it. But when we’re talking about the communication, first off, innovation comes from the people, right? But a lot of times, what we’ve what I’ve found, maybe just my experience, I don’t want to use the word we, but what I found is innovative people most often don’t even know that they’re innovative.

Patrick Adams  30:44

The

Phil Ranck  30:45

ones that do the best in that space are unaware that what they’re thinking is a new concept or an idea because it’s just the way that their brain works. So part of the people plus innovation, you know, to build together is to have a communication path that that helps them see their own geniuses in those spaces, right? The innovation comes from somewhere. Well, as I mentioned, you know, AI is the future. It’s not going anywhere, but it’s not our replacement yet. That unpredictability, that unknown innovation space that we land, it still requires the people. But sometimes people need a little bit of guidance to understand that what they’re thinking of fits in that space. You know, you’ll. It was. I remember how months ago, how many months ago it was, but we were doing some work with one of the fish processing plants up here in Alaska, and it was in a meeting because everything’s in a meeting. But there was this the one participant that was kind of in the back corner, not saying a whole lot. And as as the meeting went on, I kept recognizing they they didn’t really have much to offer, but that you could tell something was going on. The gears were moving, you could see them processing, and and I assessed this as a very introverted person, right? Didn’t like to just come right out and say everything, right? You can tell I’m very introverted, right? And if you believe that, I’ve got some Amway products for you, right? But I’m loud as everywhere that I go, and this person wasn’t. But I I recognize that, so we found a time, and I’m like, I really want to know what this person has to share. So as we started involving them in the conversation by quieting down everything else, the idea, the concept that they had come up with was, you know for lack of better terms, it was a wet table, is what they were using when they were processing sports catching and commercial caught fish. Nobody knew that this person had been thinking that, and the table that they came up with just completely changed the landscape of how that operation went. You know, so for some outbound metrics, that company was losing somewhere around 250 to $300,000 a year because they were having to pay customers back for lost product or a mismatched order, and a lot of that was happening around this table space. And once this guy put the innovation in place, it reduced in the first year. It took them down to only $30,000 and then the last, the next year after that, they were in a profit plus space. But that’s crazy connection. Nobody, nobody knew to ask this person what they thought. They weren’t a general manager. It wasn’t like it was one of the team leads. But that that the thinking gear concept that we put in place, it doesn’t look at what position you are in the organization. It says if you have something to offer, you’re going to get a chance to offer that, no matter what your position. And by incorporating that concept, bringing the people into the innovation space, it allowed for the change that ultimately was going to be the starting point for their new journey.

Patrick Adams  33:37

Wow, that’s great! Very, very cool, Phil. Excited to hear some more of those those stories of how the the seven gears are transforming meetings up in Alaska, and I know you work all over, so it’s not just in Alaska. But always love your stories. They’re they’re just there’s not a lot of people that get up there to Alaska, so it’s cool to you know you talk about you know fish. You said it was a fish hatchery,

Phil Ranck  34:02

so this was a processing plant. So one of the big about Alaska and innovation is, as everybody mostly should know, we’re disconnected, right? There’s no rail that comes into Alaska from what we call the Lower 48 or the Contingent 48. So, and then you have we have one road system that runs the entire state, but our communities span the entire state of Alaska, which is damn near the triple the size of of Texas.

Patrick Adams  34:26

Right.

Phil Ranck  34:27

In order to run a business here in Alaska, you have to be innovative and you have to be self sustaining. So it requires them to think outside of that box all of the time. So we do get to do some very interesting things. But yeah, this company. So for all the salmon that gets caught and the halibut and all of these seafood products, they bring them centrally into this company that’s responsible for taking the catch, processing it, and then getting it out to consumers. So that you know it becomes that bottleneck. So if it doesn’t move right, nobody’s having salmon tonight at Outback.

Patrick Adams  34:59

Right. Right, well, I think Brett, Judd, and I would prefer coming up there for salmon if you’re okay with that. Maybe

Phil Ranck  35:06

absolutely. Maybe next

Patrick Adams  35:07

year the summit we can shift over to Alaska.

Phil Ranck  35:11

Yeah, season. I mean, fishing season is right now. Saturday running, freshest year.

Patrick Adams  35:17

Yeah, we’re in. Well, guys, I wanna I wanna kind of close up here. But for everybody that’s listening in, we are talking about the 2026 Lean Solutions Summit, which is happening this September, September 15th, 16th, and 17th. The 15th is our tour day, and then the 16th and 17th are the summit days. And you you do not want to miss the summit. We we’ve really tried to think through what is what are the all the problems and the gaps that traditional conferences have, and we’ve really tried to flip that on its head. And you you’ll walk away with practical ways that practical tools, techniques that you can apply right away. Lots of hands-on experiences, lots of fun. We have a blast at the summit. So this year, it is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Meyer Frederick Gardens, which is a beautiful venue. Brett and Judd, have either of you been to the gardens?

Brett Lesiewicz  36:11

Oh yeah, yeah,

Patrick Adams  36:12

beautiful place, right? I’m excited for the for the just the venue in general, just to be able to be sitting in that space and holding our our summit, it’s going to be pretty awesome. And then on the 16th, on the evening, we actually always do a team building activity of sorts. Last year, we were on the Detroit Princess on the river. This year, we’re we’re throwing a party. We’re going to have a concert with a very popular country singer, and it’s going to be pretty awesome. So I think he does more than just country, though. So for those of you that aren’t country fans, he does all different types of music. So we’ll be we’ll be having fun on that on the evening of the week that Wednesday. So guys, I appreciate you coming on. Looking forward to your presentations. Can’t wait for the summit. You you guys are just a couple of our star speakers that are going to be, you know, hosting workshops, breakouts, hands-on learning, and everyone that’s in attendance is going to walk away with something really great that they can apply back in their organization. So, thank you all for coming on today and and talking with everybody, and and we’ll see you in September.