Jason Schroeder  00:00

In my mind, the classical business management is profits first, control of people, leadership team control third, but lean is about what’s good for people, our customers, and then the business number three. So I think that lean and innovation, there’s a bigger need for lean thinking based off of respect for people now more than ever.

Richard Sheridan  00:22

Profession we’ve chosen one of high technology and writing software for a living, it’s constantly under pressure to innovate. We’re we are our own worst enemy. Many times we are innovating ourselves just like we are now in this AI revolution,

Joe Dyer  00:38

AI and some of the automation kind of revolution that we’ve been experiencing, even the last decade. It’s not just last two years, it’s really less 1020, 30 years. All of that is still going to be predicated on those people skills of empathy, user-centered design, of doing the Gemba, and going where the work is being done, and making sure that we are entertaining all different types of solutions and all different types of tools to be able to solve problems.

Patrick Adams  01:19

I am here with our three keynote speakers for the upcoming Lean Solutions Summit happening in September, september 15, 16th, 17th. We’ll be in West Michigan, here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we’ll be at Frederick Meyer Gardens, which is a beautiful venue. You’re not going to be disappointed, those of you that will be in attendance for the summit this year, but we wanted to just kind of reach out, do a little kind of a little teaser with everybody, and kind of share out some of the topics that you’ll be hearing about when you attend the Lean Solutions Summit here in September. So, real quick, I have three of our three keynote speakers for the summit: Jason Schroeder, Joe Dyer, and Rich Sheridan on the call, and I’ll just take a minute to just maybe just a brief intro from each of you, who you are, and you know what your company is that you represent, and and then we’ll kind of dive into some of the topics. So let’s let’s start with Rich.

Richard Sheridan  02:21

Hey, Patrick. Great to be with you guys today. I’m Rich Sheridan. I’m the CEO, co-founder, chief storyteller at Men Motivations. We are a custom software design and development firm in lovely downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Patrick Adams  02:36

Love it. Thank you, Rich. And then Joe Dyer.

Joe Dyer  02:40

Yeah, Joe Dyer, thanks for having me. Patrick, Joe Dyer, President of Disher Corp, and we go to market under three brands: our Disher Engineering brand, so Professional Services, Professional Engineering Services, Lean Manufacturing Design, Disher Talent, our Talent Recruitment brand, and then also Leading by Design. So happy to be here, and, and talk lean, all things lean, and leadership together.

Patrick Adams  03:04

Love it, love it. And then, finally, Jason Schroeder.

Jason Schroeder  03:08

Yeah, again, as with the others, thanks for having me on. Jason Schroeder, I get to be the CEO of Elevate Construction, and we provide training, consulting, and project support for construction companies, basically helping them to have all of their projects run well through lean principles that we are stealing from manufacturing. So we’re doing quite well, work all the way around the world, and I’m stoked to be here with you

Patrick Adams  03:37

all. Love it, love it. Well, I’m excited to dive in here. The theme for this year’s summit is better together people plus innovation, and a lot of times when you hear the word innovation, a lot of people tend to kind of tie that back to like could be tied to automation or the sometimes innovation may mean like eliminating people, and just, you know, going down the path of, of work without people. Maybe AI is tied into that sometimes in people’s minds, and I want to, I want to kind of challenge that feeling that innovation, you know, is tied to those topics, and you know, think about it more like an introduction, like new, original, or creative ideas, with the help of people, and I want to kind of talk about that, because that’s going to be a lot of what our focus is for this year’s summit, is you know, with this question of all things AI, and what’s happening in the world, does that mean people are going away, and I think we all on the call today would say no, that’s not the case. And so it’s people plus innovation that’s going to equal being better together. So, with that said, before we kind of dive into the topics for the summit that each of you have laid out, can I just add. Ask you just that, just to touch on that topic of like innovation and the future. What, what are you seeing in the industry, in your industry specifically, when it comes to technology and AI, and how that’s tied to innovation, and what does that mean for people? Rich, can we start with you, and just, what’s what’s been your feeling? You know, you, you work for a digital agency, and I’m sure you know very much in your – this is kind of in your world very heavily. What’s been your feeling?

Richard Sheridan  05:30

Yeah, we had the audacity to put the word innovation in our company name 25 years ago and tied it with Edison’s Menlo Park, New Jersey Lab, which is pretty famous for innovation as well, and you know, for me broadly speaking, I think innovation just simply means a new way of doing things, and I would guess that as we dive in with in this conversation that we’re going to find out that Joe at Disher and Jason and Elevate are doing things in doom and different ways, just like Menlo is and has always done, and obviously the profession we’ve chosen, the one of high technology of writing software for a living, is constantly under pressure to innovate, we’re we are our own worst enemy. Many times we are innovating ourselves, just like we are now in this AI revolution, and there’s no question we’re in a moment right now, a big moment for our industry, and we’re paying attention. But I would also probably suggest that we’re all going to acknowledge that innovation doesn’t mean throwing out everything you’ve always done and replacing with something new, that there are some time honored, time tested kind of approaches and solutions that include how we treat our people, and how we think about our people, and how we have respect for our people, and all of those things have to be included in any innovation that’s going to succeed.

Patrick Adams  07:08

That’s right. Love that, Jill. What’s been, what’s been your feeling at Disher with, with everything going on, and you know, what are you hearing from companies that you’re working with?

Joe Dyer  07:18

Yeah, I mean, even when I talk through innovation with our team, you know, we’re mostly engineers, as you can imagine, we have our finger on the pulse of a lot of changing technology, much like, oh, I’m sitting really still in this room, sorry, there’s the lights again, you know, we have our finger on the pulse of a lot of this, and it is constantly changing, also focused on, you know, technology and what’s coming down the, what’s coming down the pipe with with AI. I mean, the message that I’ve been giving, whether it’s to our customer base, whether it’s to our vendors, whether it’s to our team, is that AI and some of the automation kind of revolution that we’ve been experiencing, even the last decade, it’s not just last two years, it’s really the last 1020, 30 years. All of that is still going to be predicated on those people skills of empathy, of user-centered design, of understanding how to solve problems, of, you know, of doing the Gemba, and going where the work is being done, and in making sure that we are entertaining all different types of solutions and all different types of tools to be able to solve problems, and so even in the next five years, I would imagine Rich and Jason, you guys would feel similar. I think that that human-centered approach is going to be an even bigger differentiator for professional services firms like ours, for people who are in the service business, like, like a lot of us are of serving others, whether it’s serving somebody you know on shop floor or they’re serving a customer. I think that human-centered approach and human empathy is actually going to be an even bigger differentiator. So, that’s that’s the message that I’ve been sharing with our team, with our customers.

Patrick Adams  08:59

Perfect, perfect. And then, Jason, what about you in the construction industry? You know what’s been your take, or you know what’s been happening in your industry when it comes to, you know, AI and innovation, and what do you see for the future?

Jason Schroeder  09:14

Well, that’s a.. I’m going to build on the point that I, or the points that Rich and Joe shared, you know, my silly non-official definition of what lean is, is that lean is the willingness to learn and implement excellence for the benefit of people and humanity, and you know when we talk about construction, and I’m not anti really anything, I’m, I don’t really know that I have a message for or against things, but we can either build data centers and tear up the environment and people and disrespect neighbors, neighbors, and neighborhoods, or we can do it the lean way, you know, where we find sustainable ways to build things, and so I feel like the reason for doing things is, is that the base, and I love what. Which, and Joe said, because in my mind that the classical business management is profits first, control of people, leadership, team control third, but lean is about what’s good for people, our customers, and then the business number three. So I think that lean and innovation, like there’s a bigger need for lean thinking based off of respect for people, now more than ever, and just really quickly, because I’m probably taking too long, is that my biggest worry is that it’s based on that we, that we base our innovation on the right things, for instance, like the critical path method affects everyone, even in manufacturing, it’s a disrespect for people system that removes your buffers and increases whip and hurts people, and so my big focus with AI is that it’s based on the right thing. So I’m trying to, with the rest of you, get everything out there, so the AI is pulling from something reliable. So I’m mostly worried that this built on the right base, but it’s accelerating everything. Unfortunately, I do see jobs dropping off every day or every week at this lowest, and but for us in house as a company, it’s allowing us to dig deeper, so there is hope. So, hopefully that was a good answer.

Patrick Adams  11:14

Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s that’s exactly the type of stuff that I want to really dive deep into at this year’s Lean Solution Summit, because I know there’s just a lot of questions out there, and I think a lot of the presenters that will be in attendance at the summit, you know, will be very focused on the human side of things, and how, you know, we have to complement, you know, what’s happening on the on the digital or the technical side of things, and really, that you know, people and innovation need to need to come together, for you know, for the future, and you know what that looks like, but you know the thing that, again, that I want to just kind of dive into here is, is the topics that you guys will be talking about, and how that ties back to the theme, Better Together, people plus innovation, so rich at this year’s summit in September. Your topic for your keynote is Winning with Humility: The Joyful Culture Imperative. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Because anybody that knows you knows your mission, and you know, and also your book, and so joy is just something that you guys are very, that’s very important to you and your team. So, talk to us about how joy fits into this whole narrative.

Richard Sheridan  12:33

Yeah, for us, joy is a purpose-driven word, much like Jason was saying, when we talk about our purpose as an organization, we should think about those we serve. We should think about delighting those we serve. When we do that, when we get to joy in delighting those we intend to serve, which for us are the end users to the software, that’s our servant-oriented leadership model, is thinking about the people who will one day use all of the technologies, the designs that our team has put together. The work of our hearts, our hands, and our minds is done to delight others, and if we can achieve that, that becomes joy for us. Now, those who know us well know we work in a big open room together. We are an in-person team, which is these days feels like we might be the last one left on the planet. It almost seems, but we may be one of the last technology firms that actually comes into the office five days a week. But for us, at that camaraderie, the human energy of collaborating with one another in close environment is a big first step towards creating joy for others, because we believe you can’t do that. It’s hard work to make sure you’re delighting those you intend to serve you. It’s exacting work, you have to pay attention to details. We think we do that better as a team, and we think we do that better as a team when we are in a close collaboration in a room together, so for us, joy emanates from purpose. Purpose emanates from serving others, and serving others is best accomplished when we are a team that is working shoulder to shoulder with one another. And so we add up all of those things to this joyful advantage that we think we have in the marketplace. I like your rework of my title, but I think I was.. I think the title was winning with humanity, but I love.. I might rework it. Just

Patrick Adams  14:33

wrong,

Richard Sheridan  14:34

working with humility. I think that’s actually really good too. I’ll have to give that some thought, maybe work with humanity and humility, but, but there’s no question in my mind that despite all the advances in technology that have ever occurred, it’s still always about the humans, and I don’t think you get to joy without people being in the equation.

Patrick Adams  14:59

Yeah, you. Love it, no, so true, and you definitely get that vibe when you visit Menlo. I’ve been there many times, and definitely is, you know, something that that you guys emulate in everything that you do. And so I’m excited for the, the, those that will be in attendance to be able to feel a little bit of that from the stage, from you. I’ve, I’ve listened to you speak a number of times, and always walk away with, with some great nuggets that I can apply, and you know, and sometimes challenged a bit too, just in my own thinking, and so I appreciate that about, about what you bring to the stage, Rich, and that also kind of moves me into Joe, because Joe, you and I have known each other for a really long time, and I know quite a bit about your background, and I’m excited about your topic, which is starting as a steward, leading what you don’t own, and I’m excited for this topic for a few different reasons, but can you just tell, maybe tell our listeners a little bit about that topic, and again, how that ties back to the theme of Better Together People Plus Innovation.

Joe Dyer  16:04

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was writing down joy as a purpose-driven word, and, and I really, I really like that it’s a verb, and, and I think the distinction that I have in my mind, and the reason for the theme in that the title of the talk is really about action, and it’s about taking on it’s about action, then taking on a posture. So I’ve been playing around with this idea for a few years now around what it means to be a steward leader versus a servant leader, and so the way that I think about servant leadership is, is yes, serving your team, all these things, true and important, and also adding on to it the steward mentality of accountability to an owner and a mission that’s larger than yourself, and so it’s protecting and growing reset resources and assets on behalf of someone else, and so the reason for that distinction, at least in my own leadership journey, you know, from, you know, Patrick, when you and I worked together, working on manufacturing, working on lean initiatives, you know, solving problems, getting to the root cause for our customers, it was, I think, the differentiator in doing all of that is really taking on this this sense of stewardship of a larger mission and stewardship of everything that is within your influence, and the distinction there, I think, is really important, is that ultimately we all exist in our roles, whether we’ve built it, whether we’ve, whether we’ve taken on something from somebody else, we all exist in our roles to be able to grow, protect, and grow the assets that are under our care, and the things that we have been entrusted with, and even if we’re the owner, in some sense, even for the owner of our business, in some sense, we are actually stewarding it for who comes after, and so for me, this has changed my leadership, changed the way that I, that I solve problems, it’s changed the way that I look at even every single meeting, so oftentimes with our team, you’ll hear me say something along lines of we need to make this decision, not just for people that are in the room now, not just for the people who are on the team now, but who are those that come after after us. We need to have that mentality of we’re stewarding this, we don’t own it, we’re going to hand it off one day to somebody else, and so you know, and I think that just dovetails really nicely with with the theme that that you and your team, Patrick, have have crafted of people in innovation, because in order to do that, in order to have that sustainable, sustainable growth path, you need to constantly innovate, you need to constantly grow, and be in relationship with people, and so I’m excited to share a little bit more about, about kind of how I see that, and, and some, and some good principles, and some good resources that that people can take and learn more if they want to implement some more of this in their own organizations.

Patrick Adams  18:55

Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of setting up, setting things up for your successor, for those that will follow you, that’s something that you know, a lot of times, unfortunately, I don’t think anybody would say it out loud, but unfortunately, a lot of times you know I’m working with companies and they don’t have any, any plans for that, there’s no systems in place for you know success to come after the people that are in their, you know, in current leadership, and so I think that’s a good call out to be for all of us to think about that, and be, you know, just be very intentional about establishing those levels, those types of systems within our organizations, and challenging ourselves personally to set up those types of systems for those that will come after, so I love that. Looking forward to learning a little bit more from you, Joe, on stage. And then finally, let’s go to Jason. So Jason’s title for his keynote is starting with respect and stability, or respect and stability first. Jason, obviously, respect and stability, they go. Hand in hand, and very much a huge part of what it means for people and innovation to come together and create better for the future, but help us understand a little bit more about what your keynote will be, will be establishing for the those that will be in attendance.

Jason Schroeder  20:19

Yeah, absolutely, and so the respect and stability piece are actually to your point, they connect super well together, and the point that I want to tackle is that they’re both required for us to ultimately respect people. So I do want to say that I’m still finalizing the details of my talk as we go, of course, but let me, let me just say that a couple things here. Number one, in construction, we inherited era one and era two of construction. Era one, not to blame everything on Frederick Taylor, but definitely that era, that era of disrespect, measuring people, you know, people, we’ve definitely been a big inheritor of that in construction, and most of the last, I would say, well, let me just say this: 2030 years ago, command and control was the dominant system, and we’re moving, we’re moving away from that, but with lean systems, as we’re attempting to implement them in construction, there’s a little bit of the, of the forgetting of the respect and the stability part, meaning that we’ll have dirty job sites, or and we actually get to do a lot of consulting with manufacturers and with pre-fabrication shops as well, and the, you know, you’ll go into a manufacturing warehouse and it’s not well lit, the floors are not painted, there’s no markings, it’s cold, it’s disrespectful, and everyone’s like continuous improvement, continuous improvement, and I love that energy, and I love that for us, but, but my main point is the true respect and stability are the foundation for everything else, and this is not the real definition of lean. This is just every lean system and tool, process, and way of thinking that I can find fits into six nice categories for us into construction. Number one, respect for people, nature, and resources. Number two, stability and standardization. Number three, working in one piece process or progress flow, so the process is more the trades moving, so a little bit different than manufacturing flowing together, together on attack time with pull, then total participation with visual systems, then quality and continuous improvement, and the thing that we’ve really not done well in construction is that we’ll move all the way to, hey, we continually improve something, but we didn’t get the respect piece figured out, and we didn’t get the stability piece figured out, so I love the quote, I can’t remember where I heard it. Maybe it was from one of you, but stability based on respect fixes systems, and training with respect fixes people. Now, fixes people. I don’t really like that, but like, builds people,

Patrick Adams  23:14

build people. There you go.

Jason Schroeder  23:15

So, so my, my summary is that, like, like, let me just use data centers as one of our example people. If I, if we say, what’s the biggest constraint there? Land, power, water. I don’t know that that’s true. I think it’s you. We need to start mass producing humans or mass elevating humans the right education, the right support, the right love, and connection, and give them tools, the respect, stability, and training that they deserve. And just one quick thing, because I always talk too long tying into what Joe was saying, like, like stewardship. When I went to Japan, which is the first time that I really started to get it, like I’m a million miles away, but just started to get it, I learned that leadership was about clarity, training towards that clarity, and then support, and getting there. So, that kind of really makes me feel like that stewardship topic, and so I just don’t know that we can respect people if we don’t have a stable environment and the training and the stability for them, because a bad system will be great people every time, so that’s that’s really what I’m going to attempt to talk about in that 45 minutes.

Patrick Adams  24:26

Love it, love it. Now that’s gonna be great, Jason. I’m looking forward to it, and obviously you, coming from the construction industry, and you know, as the creator of the last planner system and tack planning for construction, I think that there’s a lot that we can take away, those of us who are not in the construction industry, from from what you’re bringing to us, because it is a, it is, there’s a lot of things that are happening in the construction industry where lean is being applied, you know, for the first time in many ways, and so, you know, I think it’s, it’s great that you’re. To be, you know, at the summit in this September, and sharing some of your experiences from that industry with, with the majority of the people who you know, probably are not in the construction industry. There’ll be, there’ll be quite a few, but, but a lot that are not as well. So we’re looking forward to that. So, if.. oh, yeah, go ahead, Jason.

Jason Schroeder  25:19

There’s one quick thing, only because it’s a registered trademark. We invented the first planner system and the tac production system, but last planner was invented by LCI Greg Howell, and the other.. I forgot his name, but just we merged the systems together, so they’re not competing, but I had to say that because it’s a registered trademark, so

Patrick Adams  25:42

I appreciate that. Yeah,

Jason Schroeder  25:44

Glen Bell, yes. So,

Patrick Adams  25:48

okay, so again, just those of you that are just tuning in, we, we are chatting with three of our keynotes for the upcoming Lean Solutions Summit, happening September 15, 16th, and 17th in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Frederick Meyer Gardens, beautiful venue here in Grand Rapids, and there’s.. it’s going to be pretty, pretty amazing summit. We have a couple tours happening on the 15th, one at one will be at Amway Corporation, which we’re super excited about, and so that’ll be a just a great tour location for everyone to attend and check out, along with a few others. And then our keynote opening keynote will be on the 16th again at the Gardens. We’d love for you to attend. There’s actually a QR code up on the screen for 50% off right now, which lasts for two weeks, and then it’ll, it’ll go away, it’ll be the best price right now. So use that QR code to get the best price, 50% off your ticket right now. Just to kind of go around the room again here, Rich, well, for all three of you, but I’m curious to know, like, if you could pick one or two takeaways for those that will be in attendance and listening to your keynote. What would be the one or two things that you want them to walk away with that you think would be most beneficial from your keynote? So, again, I’ll just start with Rich and just kind of go around the room.

Richard Sheridan  27:19

Yeah, so one thing I will talk about is the role that fear plays in our organizations, particularly when we’re trying to build respect for people, when we’re trying to build great cultures. Fear can have a very denigrating effect on our people, and I think fear is running high right now. People are afraid for their jobs, they’re afraid for their careers. Parents are afraid for their children, and whether they’re going to find meaningful work in this modern age. And I think, as leaders, we get to set a tone, we get to set a tone in our organizations, and I think collectively we get to set a tone in society as to what kind of organizations do we want to build, how do we want to treat our people, and as leaders we should be pumping fear out of the room, not in, and you know people are looking for reassuring words right now about how are we going to respond in this time of great technological change, and they’re looking to us for leadership, and I will say, you know, I’ve listened to a lot of experts on everything that’s going on right now, and almost every one of them ends with the same kind of words of, and we have no idea where this is going. Well, guess what, if you don’t have any idea where things are going, you can actually choose a path, and as leaders we need to think about what path are we choosing for our organizations, for our people, for our teams, in light of all of these technological changes that are going on, you know, we can, we can make decisions, we can, we can choose pathways that nothing is certain at this point in terms of which direction all of this is going to go for us individually inside of our organizations, and I think collectively as a society.

Patrick Adams  29:15

Love it. Yeah, great. Thank you, Rich Joe. What do you think? What are one or two takeaways that you would, you’d want listeners to walk away from your keynote with.

Joe Dyer  29:25

Yeah, well, I’m excited to hear from Rich and Jason and all the speakers in the breakouts too, because even, even as we’re just talking here, I’m like, oh yeah, that’s so good, you’re out of the room. So, yeah, for me, for me, it’s taking on this identity as a steward, so what does it mean? How do you start, and I chose that word “start” very purposefully to say in some ways every day is a new day, every day you get to start fresh, every day there’s there’s fresh mercy to start and to take on a posture as a steward, and so I want to I want to leave a. The audience in all the attendees with how can I start doing it, how can I start taking out this posture? Where are some actual next steps that I can take to really to put this on and start living into this identity as a steward leader, and then really the second thing is tying it to that innovation people and also lean principles of what things are you stewarding, so what sorts of capitals I call them, what sort of capitals do you have at your disposal, and and the easiest one to remember is financial, but that’s the first one, it’s one of a number of others that I’ll share, I’ll just leave it at that, financial is one easy one to understand, it’s the one that we measure oftentimes, but like we know in our lean practices, what what gets measured, that’s what gets improved, that’s what we can work on and continuously improve, and so oftentimes we’re not measuring some of these other ones, and so I wanted to share a little bit more about what that means to really steward, protect, and grow all the capitals that are at your disposal, if you’re living into that posture. So, physical teaser there.

Patrick Adams  31:10

Yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing the other ones.

Joe Dyer  31:13

All

Patrick Adams  31:13

right, Jason, what do you got? One or two nuggets that you want listeners to walk away with?

Jason Schroeder  31:19

I got, I got three quickly, never. And this is punchy. I would like people to walk away with a strong – I won’t say hatred, I’ll say a strong dislike for classical business management, the toxic classical classical business management. I would like people to take away that we cannot be psychologically safe in bad systems,

Jason Schroeder  31:45

which

Jason Schroeder  31:46

is, which is accidentally of no ill intention from anybody. What folks are doing when they implement lean, they’ll, they’ll say, “Hey, let’s kumbaya, but they won’t fix the toxic system behind them, and the important part, as a lover and a resident, and somebody who’s born in the United States, communicate that if the US is going to compete on a global scale, we must start working together with two things we don’t yet do well in Western culture, which is respect each other and work in total participation, and so those are the three big takeaways.

Jason Schroeder  32:24

I love it, man. It

Patrick Adams  32:25

is going to be a powerful summit. You know, we’re again, we’re just scratching the surface here by listening to, you know, just a small tidbits from each of our three keynotes. We have multiple other great breakout speakers, workshops, the global lean competition, which is always a ton of fun, where we have four teams that have six that will be competing against each other in a challenge that none of them will know until they arrive, and all their thinking has to be made visual on the wall, so you have to be able to see everything, and everybody can walk through and watch what’s happening with the competition. It’s a ton of fun. Gentex won it last year. Gentex Corporation, here in West Michigan, which they will be one of our tour locations as well, on the 15th. And so, for those of you that are just logging on, we are advertising for the Lean Solution Summit coming up, september 15, 16th, and 17th in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There’s a QR code on the screen for 50% off your ticket. You’ll never have a price this low. Plan to be here in West Michigan. The other cool thing, which two Joe and Rich probably know about, I don’t know if Jason does, but the Art Prize in Grand Rapids is happening the week it actually starts the Friday after the summit, so literally the next day, if you want to extend your stay a little bit, you can get into downtown Grand Rapids for the Art Prize, which is, I mean, it’s a, it’s a globally renowned event that you know lots of people attend and see some pretty amazing art, we’ll actually see quite a bit of that at Frederick Meyer Gardens, which is one of the stops for the Art Prize. So, I didn’t.. did you know that, Joe or Rich?

Joe Dyer  34:09

Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. I would just say, if I can, as a another local West Michigander here, the venue is unbelievable. I mean, it’s. it’s an amazingly beautiful, unique place. If you’re a fan in any bit of culture of the arts, you should definitely check it out. It’s a beautiful spot, and ArtPrize is always a lot of fun. I think it runs two weeks here in and around West Michigan, but mainly in Grand Rapids. So, it’s the best time to visit West Michigan is in September,

Patrick Adams  34:43

and just another little drop to kind of tease everybody, but we also, we on the Wednesday night of each week of the summit every year, we do like kind of a team building event, and this year it’ll let. Last year it was, we went on the Detroit Princess, which was pretty amazing out on the Detroit River. This year it’s actually going to be a concert by Kyle Jennings, so if you don’t know Kyle, look him up, he’s a pretty amazing local artist. And again, that’s going to be on Wednesday night, so lots of fun happening at the summit, in addition to hearing from some amazing speakers like Rich, Joe, and Jason, who you’re hearing from today, so real quick, as we kind of wrap up, just just around the room once again, and just any closing, just a closing comment for everyone that is thinking about maybe attending the summit in September, just a closing comment, your thoughts on the summit itself, some of what you’ve heard so far, and what the keynotes will be talking about, or some of the other additional things that will be happening as part of the summit, anything at all. So, let’s start with Rich. Go ahead.

Richard Sheridan  35:58

Well, I am officially excited about hearing my two fellow keynoters, Joe. You know, I love the concepts of stewardship. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Memos 25 years old, and I’m getting to the point where people, you know, I must look old or something, and how long I’m going to last, and I think I still got a few years in me, but I want Menlo to live to be 100 years old, which means this is going to outlive me, and and I want it to stay privately held. So, the concept of stewardship is a really big deal these days in my mind. So, I’m really interested in, in what you have to say, and Jason, from such a longstanding kind of industry that you’re in, the fact that you’re talking about stability and you’re from the construction industry seems key. I want any building I’m going to live in for a long time to be stable, of course. I also love the way you introduced yourself, you said I get to be the CEO at Elevate, and I love that. I think give that some thought.

Joe Dyer  37:10

Yeah, I can hop on next here. Yeah, I’m just thinking about this idea of innovation and, and what it means to iterate, because you know we do a lot of design thinking, we do a lot of product development, especially, you know, things that you see, chairs that you sit on, you know, cars that you drive in, things that you’re interacting with on a day-to-day basis, and you know, when we think about how do you make a great product, you know, you’re thinking about the user, but you really, in the nitty gritty, it comes down to iteration around innovative ideas, and so you’re not going to always get it right the first time, you know, it’s extremely rare to get it right the first time, and so I think about this idea of of innovation as iteration and continuous improvement, and I think it just dovetails so nicely with with the theme with a lot of the thinkers in the room around, you know, around lean, lean, and solving, you know, root cause problems, and, and so I’m excited about that. I’m excited to hear from, from both of you, and just your take on what it means to, to be, to be a great leader in your, in your industry with your company, and to focus on, you know, focus on having a humble vision for the future that’s hopeful, because I think that’s what what we need right now is is a hopeful vision for the future. So honored to be to be speaking with both you.

Jason Schroeder  38:30

Yeah, that’s a really great point, Joe and Rich. The this is going to start sounding like a love fest, but I feel really excited to be speaking in and around you all as well, and to learn from you, because sometimes if you’re speaking with folks, you can be intimidated or nervous, or feel like there might be conflict. If I’m any judge of character, I can tell you all are really nice, kind, knowledgeable, wise people that I can learn from. So I’m really excited for that. My moment for this is this kind of silly, but when I, the first project I ever ran as a project superintendent, and for manufacturing folks, that’s anywhere between, you know, a team leader all the way up to the general manager, somewhere in between, there’s what a construction superintendent is. I was able to do training from Lean Core, do AGC Lean courses, read books, do tours, and went and implemented it, and it was the coolest thing ever. Our job was the cleanest, safest, organized site in Arizona. We had huddles that respected the workers, people said it was like Disneyland. And then after that, helping companies scale it, implementing it in our own business, learning more about it, and then going to Japan, like this. We are there’s never an end to this, like the, the like it’s never going to stop. So, if somebody wants to come to this conference and like learn from the speakers, from the breakout sessions. That journey of what I think is like the true meaning of life will begin, because I said this to Paul Acres one time, I said, if heaven exists, I doubt very seriously we’re going to be sitting there drinking my ties for two weeks on the beach. I think we can do that for about two weeks, and then we’re going to be bored out of our minds, and then it’s going to be hell. Really, what I think heaven is, is that we are going to help each other, serve, grow, learn, and keep progressing, and so that means we can live heaven on earth today. We can learn, we can serve, we can grow, we can be out and about, we can do better things, we can learn about complex things like Little’s Law and Kingman’s formula, and like, go read new books and visit Japan, and go to these conferences. So, my invitation for anybody wanting to come is, if you want an opportunity to live the latter half of your life in a remarkable way, I believe that lean is the best chance humanity has to take its next step. That would be my invitation.

Patrick Adams  41:02

I’m super excited to see you guys in person at the summit. Looking forward to it. I appreciate you guys jumping on with us for, you know, the last 40 minutes and just kind of sharing your hearts and what we can expect from from the stage from you all. And yeah, we’re looking forward to it. We’ll see, see all of you in September. Appreciate all of you, and looking forward to

Jason Schroeder  41:25

it. Awesome. Thank you, thanks everybody.

Patrick Adams  41:27

Have a good one. Take care, guys.

Jason Schroeder  41:29

Bye.