Patrick Adams  0:04  

Tell us a little bit about the Kaizen kit. I mean, what inspired the Kaizen kit? And what is it exactly?

Brian DeVries  0:10  

Yeah, it’s exciting. So I can actually show you just this is the small version the big one that I’ve got sitting next. We got a bunch of stuff in it, as I think about, you know, my past joining a continuous improvement team, in some cases, don’t always have the resource to go to to ask, and so that’s what inspired this, was just making it more accessible. They open it up in a training or, Hey, I’ve been I’m a supervisor, I’m a plant manager, I’m a small business owner. Hey, this is going to help you, because not only you’re going to get the tools themselves, but you get the training that goes exactly with the tools, exactly how to use them. You got everything you need, plus you get a you get a live community. So it’s been kind of a fun start to this whole process, and just kind of help fill in a need of making, I would say, lean continuous improvement, more accessible and more folks you

Patrick Adams  1:03  

Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast, where today we’re going to talk about Lean without lecture, teaching CI in a way that people actually enjoy. Has there ever been a time where you were sitting in let’s just say a CI event of any sort a Kaizen event, a smet event, or even a training. And it was the old term death by PowerPoint, right? You’re just, you’re hearing someone just go on and on and on, reading off slides, and it’s just a complete bore and hard to understand. You know, everybody learns differently, so maybe people are learning through that type of lecture style teaching or training. But what I found is that when things are more interactive, when you’re able to use your hands, maybe a mix a hybrid of a little bit of classroom time, a little bit of PowerPoint slides, and then you mix in some hands on practical application, where you get people out of their seats, you get the blood flowing, and you’re, you’re actually taking the things that you learn, and you’re applying them in some type of activity or or you go out to the production floor, out to the office, and now you’re, you’re doing it, whatever it is that you actually learned, right? I mean, that is the way that we at lean solutions, at least that we’ve decided to incorporate learning into our events, is more of that hands on style. So today, we’re going to talk very deeply about this particular topic and really hone in on how to make lean training and lean events more interactive, visual and fun, and this is even for the skeptics. So we have a guest today that is going to give us a little bit more insight into this particular topic. Brian De Vries is a seasoned leader in the continuous improvement space, known for turning chaos into clarity, with a sharp eye for process and a passion for people. I know that personally, because I know Brian personally, and I’ve seen him at work, his passion for people is out of this world. He’s a Six Sigma Black Belt published author, which we’ll talk about here shortly, but he spent his career helping organizations streamline operations and build cultures for excellence. Now he’s a proud member of the Kaizen kit team. We’ll get into that as well. And he’s on a mission to make lean practical, hands on and just a little bit more fun. So Brian, welcome to the show. Yeah, appreciate it. Appreciate you having me. Absolutely. It’s great to have you on the show, but we cannot go any further without talking about your new book that you just published. I think it’s something that is just crazy amazing, because we are we’ve in the CI world. We’ve always talked about, how do we get younger people, younger generations, to understand a little bit more about scientific thinking, about continuous improvement, about Lean before they even get to the shop floor, to the office space, or to the whatever it is. And you’ve taken it even a step further, and you’re like, you know, let’s not start with college interns. Let’s go all the way back to elementary school and middle school. So tell us a little bit about your book, and what, and what your your, what your, your book is about.

Brian DeVries  4:25  

Yeah, for sure. And I was sitting here, perfect product placement, perfect start to this. But, yeah, this, this, this was something that came out of just kind of, I was trying to think about, I always wanted to publish a book, and I was kind of thinking about the kind of the technical stuff, and, you know, one I had to compete with you so that that was out. So I’m not doing that. The other piece, the other part of that, was just, I always kind of thought about, you know, what is it that’s, you know, unique that I bring that’s unique to, you know, whether it’s lean or continuous improvement, or whatever it may be. And one of the thing that I’ve always done is work a lot with you. You know, utilizing a lot of kids books in in my teachings. And I use that, you know, Harold and Purple Crayon. I use the Lorax, you know, there’s that quote at the end, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s gonna get better. It’s not. And I always brought in a lot of that, just to help really take something that can sometimes feel complex and bring it in its most simplest terms for people that they could understand and connect with. And started to think about, well, use all of these, these, turn these tools, these books as quotes and all that. Why don’t make my own and boil some of these concepts down into, you know, something that you know, we could take to to even elementary schools. And so that’s really what inspired it was just being able to take something that’s complex and put it into a form that that really, you know, is simple. And, you know, in my little night here, his name’s William, my four year old, his name’s William, so some of his likeness in there. But really honestly, when I look at this, it’s really, has been a really great, you know, first few months with this great feedback from a lot of folks, we took it into, you know, my son’s at elementary school, and read it both to his kindergarten or early kindergarten class, as well as my older son, who’s in fourth grade. And really, there’s that was where was kind of, really, that hit you, because we started out with, you know, tell me what you think about this book, what words come to mind after we’re done reading it, things that came out teamwork, teaching others all that stuff that you’d you know that and more is pretty cool.

Patrick Adams  6:25  

Oh, that’s amazing. This the soft skills so important, exactly, so. So without spoiling the ending or giving us too much about the book, tell us, like, what is? Tell us about William’s adventures through

Brian DeVries  6:38  

the book. Yeah. So he, it’s really, the tale is just, it’s William, and he has this little boy, and he’s imagining himself as this knight who can go and he solves all these problems, and all of a sudden he runs into a problem that it’s too big for him to solve alone, and he’s got to figure out, well, now what I was always the hero. I always played hero. Everybody relied on me, and goes to his mom and dad, starts talking to him and and learns about, really, the value of teaching others and empowering others and imparting them with problem solving skills. And, you know, being more of kind of the really, what you think about a continuous improvement role, as far as helping guide thinking and putting together plans and actions. And it really goes through that process of, you know how to go in, from being the hero to being the one that helps others be their own hero. So just kind of a fun, I would say it’s a lot of lean and continuous improvement type principles, as well as that servant leadership, where it’s really just kind of, what’s the need of my people, give them those skills, really cool stuff

Patrick Adams  7:39  

that’s amazing. And I think I heard you, I haven’t read it yet, but I think I heard you mention, maybe in one of your videos that you put out that William works to pull together a team, right, and kind of go after some challenges in the book, yeah,

Brian DeVries  7:54  

yep, yes, he does. Yep. There’s as he runs into that big, you know, that big challenge that he can’t solve himself. It’s really kind of at the advice of his mom and dad of go, let’s go teach others. So let’s assemble a team. He calls it, you know, he stands up there on the on the on the crate, the soap box, and calls everybody together. And, you know, really starts to help lay out, you know, here’s how we’re going to process forward. Here’s how we’re going to do this together. And we’re going to use, you know, utilize you, and everyone’s gonna have a job. And, you know, we give everyone jobs, everyone’s doing their job, and things start to work out. So yeah, like we said, won’t spoil the ending. Don’t know if it’s gonna work out or not. Maybe it’s happy ending, but at the same time, it’s yeah, he pulls them all together and kind of runs through what I would think about and what we do in front of folks all the time.

Patrick Adams  8:38  

Okay, I know what everybody’s thinking right now. All the listeners are thinking, maybe this book, maybe this would be good for a book study for our management team. I mean, I know it’s meant for elementary but it sounds like it would probably fit it to help help some of our leaders and organizations to understand, you know, some of those principles,

Brian DeVries  8:59  

absolutely right. I think that’s and that’s part of what I wanted, you know, I always think back, you know, and I’ve had my own teams, and I bring people on. There’s several books that I would give them, and they were always of, of that, you know, that nature of kind of simplifying. It just basically the whole message of, you know, welcome to the team. But at the end of the day, this is, this should be simple, and we should make sure that as we’re going out, we’re coaching and we’re teaching that it’s simple, because people will connect with that much better. And so just about us going out and showing everything we know to our folks, it’s about, how do you take something that’s complex, boil it down to something that that even our even our young kids, can understand, and then at the same time, add a benefit? Now they can then take that and start to learn and move forward through that with those skills. Wow.

Patrick Adams  9:46  

I love it. Love it. Before we get into the bulk of the conversation today, one last question on that, what was the inspiration behind the book? I mean, what? Why did you feel like this was important for you to get out into the world? Yeah. Yeah,

Brian DeVries  10:00  

yeah. I think it’s probably several things. I think, you know, a piece of it is just, I wanted to have, you know, when I think about everyone who’s put those out there yourself, and others that I’ve that I’ve followed and I’ve read and I’ve owned, and I just, I kind of wanted that same like that. That’s so cool. How neat is that to see that out there? So I started to think about, what is my message? What is that thing that I can put out there for folks that will inspire them and get somebody excited. And then I started just to think about just, you know, my training style, and what I’ve what I’ve always brought to the the table in that, that way. And it was always from the the children’s book side of things, and that’s how you simplify. But I think a big thing is, is it’s transformed from the initial thought of, I just want CI professionals to have something where it’s this is an easy way to describe how what we do for a living, in some ways, it’s morphed more into now. Now, how do we take that, you know, to our to a lot of the kids, our nieces, our nephews, and empower them and tell them that, you know, there’s all the superhero movies, and they come in and save the day, and it’s awesome. But at the same time, you don’t always have to be that superhero, as a matter of fact, as a leader. As you grow and you get older, the best superheroes, the best leaders, are teaching others. And so I think it morphed more into that as the desire and the inspiration for going through this process.

Patrick Adams  11:17  

Wow. What a powerful message for all of us, my kids are a little bit older now, but maybe I’ll still sit them down and read them. That’s right. Well, Brian, we’re going to talk a little bit about hands on learning today, and what it means to really engage your learners, whether it be in a some type of improvement event, or training, or whatever it might be. You heard my intro. I’m, you know, I think all of us have sat in sessions where it’s like we’re trying to put pics in our eyes, our lives open, you know, standing up stretching. That’s right. But what I don’t know, if you you can think of, you know, maybe one training session that you personally sat through where, you know, you wish that it had been a little bit more interactive. And maybe, you know, what would you change about that?

Brian DeVries  12:12  

Yeah, that’s, that’s good. I, you know, I was, I was, I was fortunate enough early in my career to actually experience the latter, to experience the opposite, which was very engaging, extremely fun training, and probably part of the reason that I continued to really be interested in it. But as I went on, you know, you have an opportunity as whether you whether you attend events, you go to different sites, or you, you work with different groups. I can remember one kind of midway through my journey so far, where I was sitting in a and I can just picture the building, and I won’t give too much details, so I want to call anything out, but it had no windows. We’re up in just a, you know, I won’t just call it a warehouse building, and zero windows around. It’s loud, it’s still above the break room. And so you have this, this, this environment, and it’s old, and there’s all that, you know, a bunch of old cubicles. There was like this little, teeny conference table. We were all sitting around. And I just remember this environment. And you think about the learning environment, right? You think about some of these great organizations in the just the surroundings of what’s there, just one, just the ambience around you what it was, and just the loudness and stuff. When it was break time, the noise, you could hardly hear anybody talking. And so, you know, you’re sitting there and you’re going through that. And so already it’s hard to engage. And then it was just PowerPoint slide after PowerPoint slide after PowerPoint slide. And there was two elements to that. One, what you’re seeing on the screen wasn’t super engaging. It was real, like basic kind of your white or your black slides with, you know, some text on it, a few pictures scattered in here or there, and they were super grainy, but a few quotes maybe tried to put over top of it. And the other part of it, the person that was actually instructing it felt like, in some cases, it was the first time they had seen the slide. You know, they were just, I think what the slide means is, and they would go into what they were talking about, and so just that whole process of that. And you just think about, you know, luckily, I had experienced really good training. But you think about the folks that are in there that maybe that’s their first experience. Wow. What a what almost a turn off for if I want to continue to do something like this in those because it was just very technical, very, you know, graduate level stuff, and just over and over and over and so it’s just and then the environment itself. So I can just remember sitting in there and thinking, it’s a great lesson in what I don’t want to do as I move forward. Right,

Patrick Adams  14:39  

right? I’m sure many listeners right now are shaking their heads in agreement with you, because I’ve had many conversations with so many people that are have experienced the same thing. And you know, that’s why I think this, this topic is so key. You know, we talk about Lean. Lean initiatives, or, you know, continuous improvement, lean transformations in organizations. And you know, they, many organizations, try to kick things off, and you know, very early on they struggle. And I wonder how much of that has to do with the the training that they’re providing to their team members. And I wonder if part of that, you know, kind of that traditional lean training format is actually causing a, you know, a huge part of why they’re struggling so much so, I mean, what do you, why do you, what do you think about traditional lean formats? I mean, you kind of hit on it a little bit, but just the training itself, traditionally. Why? Why do you think it’s, it’s failed in the past?

Brian DeVries  15:43  

Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a good thought to kind of, kind of rattle around a little bit, because it’s like, you know, I think about traditional, I think about true tradition. It’s, like, it’s learned on the floor we go do and then kind of morphed into, you know, a lot of presentations and concepts and charts and all of that, which is important. You know, it’s, I don’t want to downplay that, but there’s an element of, as you go through that, how much are we now experiencing? And it feels like it’s gone from where companies now, and I know, you know, historically, they did too, but you know, now more than ever, it’s we, we’ve got to get stuff out the door. We’ve got to produce whatever it is, the less time we’re spending and allocating to getting out on the floor. And I remember being a part of an organization where we had a really good, robust, you know, couple day training. And initially it was, you know, one day of classroom, second day, it’s a lot of just immersion in the workplace. And we were asked if we could cut the second day off just so we can get people back to work. And so, you know, the most important part of the day, you know, I think that mindset of, you know, well, we’re going to train, but to your point, really, when we kicked off, about going out and practicing it and trying it, and having a coach there to be able to help correct and course correct and steer is so much more valuable than anything you’re going to get in a classroom. And so I think that’s as I look at it. For me, it always comes back to those experience, you know, not only the experiential, visual learning, kinetic learning, all of those pieces, but it’s also just the experience in general, for the for the learner,

Patrick Adams  17:16  

sure, sure. And you mentioned one barrier. I mean, the barrier of, of having to get people back out to their, you know, to whatever their jobs are. So, you know, obviously that’s one, one thing that keeps many organizations from maybe extending their training or, like, Let’s get them in here for an hour, have them watch this PowerPoint or this video, and get them back out to the production store. You know, traditionally, you know, traditionally, you know, it’s what a lot of organizations have done that’s one of the barriers, is that, and you mentioned, maybe a way to head that off is to do the training out on the out on the floor, be more interactive. And, you know, the PowerPoint, let’s go out and actually do it. Think of any other barriers that are, you know, keeping trainers from, you know, creating more interactive or more successful training in regards to continuous improvement principles,

Brian DeVries  18:10  

as I look at it, there’s probably a few, you know, one, one sometimes, honestly, it’s, it’s really just like our folks on the floor, folks on the front lines. If you haven’t seen what good looks like. It’s really hard to, you know, you know, you’ve made improvements, but I could go a lot further if I don’t know what good looks like. It’s hard for me to get there. And I think there’s times where as a as a trainer, as someone who comes in, and whether it’s, you know, your product, or it’s something that you go into an organization, and now, hey, you’re, you’re charged with going TO to sites and training, if you haven’t seen what good looks like, or how do I engage, or when do I engage, and what questions do I ask? Or, you know, if you can, you know, feel out the room. It becomes difficult to then, you know, build those habits without seeing it. And I think a big piece of it is just seeing it. Part of it too is just, you know, we think about a good, effective train, the trainer being an effective trainer. It takes time, and it takes experience, and it takes good tools, and it takes, you know, just good reference points. And so I think a lot of it comes back to just, you know, personally, just, and I think about me as I’ve grown, is a lot about just, I hadn’t seen what good looks like. And I start to go to conferences and I see, you know, videos on YouTube, or I watched, you know, some of the video podcasts, and you start to see different ways people interact, or different ways people can coach different activities that they’ve incorporated to help drive home understanding with people. I think all of those things add up to that ability to then go and implement and so if I think about the one that I really focus on a lot is really the ones that I can control, which is the stuff internally myself, how I react to it, and part of that’s just through my own development.

Patrick Adams  19:51  

Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And focusing on yourself and what, what makes, what resonates with. You and then, you know, again, like, for me, personally, I don’t like to sit in a room and listen to someone lecture on a PowerPoint. So what is it that I like? Well, I like to be interactive. I like to use my hands, you know, for for us, you know, like, for example, many people listening, I’m sure will know these but like, when you’re teaching 5s you know, incorporating the numbers game when you’re teaching standard using the old pig drawing activity. I mean, what are some other ways that maybe use you’ve used, you know, different examples of how you’ve taught different CI concepts that are maybe a little bit complex, but maybe used some hands on activities, or used, you know, a different form of training than just sitting in front of a PowerPoint. Yeah,

Brian DeVries  20:46  

that’s good and, and I think it’s, it also goes with the disclaimer that I do use PowerPoint from time to time. It’s, but it’s right. It’s a supplement to what else we do. But, you know, and I use a lot of the different I’d say, I want to say the standard stuff, you know, that’s out there. But, you know, you’ve got stuff like the paper airplane exercises, we’re going through that, and how do we simulate lean and simulate a process, and how we improve it? There’s also things that I think one of the other pieces that I started to incorporate, as well with, with more of the hands on pieces, is especially with my, you know, Lean leader folks, the people that are, you know, really starting to get interested in Lean. And I’m going to go out and I’m going to go out and I’m going to start to facilitate, or potentially facilitate some sort of problem solving discussion, whatever it may be, a good you know, and I got to mention it to you know, Dave KIPP, and a good buddy of mine. I know he’s, I can’t remember if he’s been on the show or not, but I know you know him pretty well. But Dave KIPP and yeah, great, great, great graphic facilitator, if anyone’s ever seen his stuff, does a great job. And so I nowhere near that level, but I try to incorporate as much of that as I can when I’m working with my teams, and then at the same time, when I’m teaching those folks that are going to then take these skill sets and go back and help run a problem solving a Kaizen event, potentially giving them the skills as well to hands on with the markers and getting up in front of a room and, you know, on prompts here, draw this, draw this, and kind of teach them a few of the shapes and how those shapes can morph into different shapes and, and so kind of giving them some of those hands on pieces that are a little bit more fun. You know, the classic tennis ball exercise, where it’s, you know, you get a bunch of tennis balls. How do you get them through the process faster? A lot of different I just try to, and I don’t know, over complicate it. I’ll look for inspiration on all of the stuff that we see used. And I think kind of the next step is, is, how do we use that in an even more, you know, intentional way? It’s not just, you know, let’s just run the simulation. How do we now bake this simulation into the entire training? You know, one of the concepts that I had first day they come in, they do introductions, first thing we do is run first round of a simulation. Feels chaotic. What are we doing? Well, that’s what we’re gonna do the rest of the week. This is how we’re gonna fix this. And so just kind of messing around with just where they fit, and how do we break it up? And how do you give them bite sized pieces? You know, we do ended up doing five or six rounds, and I would say rounds of that simulation, probably three of them are all focused on the first run. But how do we go through that process of iterating and incorporating that into the training? So I just try to get creative with what’s out there, so we don’t have to over complicate it. It’s stuff that people may be familiar with. But then how do you incorporate that into your learning, so much more so that people are up and down and up and down and working in groups and debriefing and learning from each other and trying to incorporate as much of that as I can, but it starts with just, what do we have today? And let’s be a little bit more creative with it.

Patrick Adams  23:37  

Sure, sure. I love it. Another, just just thinking through another area that I like to tap into to keep people’s interest in training is using, you know, real life stories of things that have happened to me when, when deploying, lean into an organization, or even, you know, external type of stories that just make sense, that tie into whatever it is that you’re talking about. A lot of people resonate with storytelling or with real life examples. You have to be a little careful, because, like, I have this one example of when we completely redesigned our laundry room at the house and drove my wife crazy, but she’s very happy now with the the end result. But you know, how have you used storytelling or real life examples in your training? Is that something that you incorporate

Brian DeVries  24:35  

absolutely a matter of fact, there’s this, and there’s probably folks that are listening to this that, you know, I’ve introduced myself to them at their organization, or I’ve worked with them and they’ve heard this, or they’ve been in a training that I’ve been in. But when I, when I start at an organization, there’s a lot of times, especially of a training, or whatever it may be, there’s a lot of people that are brand new to it, or maybe they’ve had a bad experience with it. And so I always start with just how I got into it. And I got into it by chance. Yes, but I always kind of, I come at it from the perspective of, I started out as a manufacturing supervisor and was exposed to lean and continuous improvement, and we utilized those tools to just transform the way we worked in that area. And I remember because I was coming from the golf industry at this time, and I’m going into this loud, dusty, dirty environment, and it was kind of like deer in headlights, chaotic, I don’t know what’s going on. And through the over the course of time, utilizing these tools and these concepts, my life went from trying to figure out work fighting fires to where work just kind of happened, and my job was developing people and solving problems. And it’s the true like it can happen. It’s real. I know what it feels like to be on the end of it feels hopeless. It feels helpless. What can I do? But if you stay the course and you really go through this process and go through these tools and apply them in a way that empowers your team and your people and yourself, you can transform the way you work, and it’s just so to me, that’s always the story I start with. I’m a product of this, of the trainings, of all of that. I gotta do it by chance, and I’m doing it now. I’ve never learned it in a book. Obviously, I’ve read the books. I’ve never learned in a book. Has always learned through application and trial and error, and so I don’t talk about it like a lot of folks would, but I’ve learned it by doing. And to me, that’s the that’s the story I love to lead with, because it’s I’ve been in those shoes. I’ve listened to somebody talk about Lean from this perspective of, I’m working 12 hours, seven days a week. How’s this going to help me? And it’s really just that, you know, it’s kind of the offer in the hand, like, come with me. I’ll show you. And so that’s, that’s, that’s one of the stories I use. But storytelling is so powerful, and I feel like that’s one of those trends that you start to see a lot more of as people are starting to try to find ways to to make things more engaging through story.

Patrick Adams  26:53  

Absolutely. Yeah, I always love hearing Craig tedro, who’s on our team, he’s told this story many times, but he talks about a large furniture manufacturer that he worked with for 30 plus years, and he was working there back when they first deployed lean into the organization. And he says, He tells, tells a story about how lean was done to him, yeah, not with him, and it really put a bad taste in his mouth. And he really struggled for years, you know, with anything rude, and it wasn’t until he had a good experience and was exposed to, you know, the lean being done with the team versus at the team or against the team. And that is what changed his whole perspective, because he was able to see both sides. And when he tells that story, you know, people resonate with that. Because, unfortunately, there’s so many, you know, consultants or whatever trainers out there that have you know done lean to people. And so, you know, we’re trying to script options

Brian DeVries  27:59  

do that, don’t think, I mean, it’s just, I remember being somewhere where we left on Friday, it came back Monday, and the area had changed. No idea. I mean, and that’s, that’s no lie. That’s, it’s nothing like there was rumblings. We knew it was happening. We left on Friday, came back on Monday, and our process looked way different. Had no idea. And you can imagine the change management we had to do. Oh, yeah, and that, I mean, it just was, so you see it, you see it, Craig’s story, I, I it’s, it’s all too common. So

Patrick Adams  28:27  

we talked about a couple different strategies, Brian around how to create more interactive and fun learning environments. We talked about, you know, using hands on tools or or activities to, you know, just engage people a little bit more, get them out of their seats. You know, different lean activities that actually tie back to specific concepts, you know, like the the 5s numbers game and things like that. And then, obviously, using storytelling or real life examples is another really great strategy. The question I have is, have you ever tried to gamify a any learning activities, or, you know, especially in Lean Have you, have you had an experience with that in organizations where they, you know, maybe create point systems, or, you know, anything like that? Has that worked, or any experience with

Brian DeVries  29:20  

that. Yeah, one of my first I was lucky enough, as I said, I was I started some of the things that I got exposed to is really neat. And one of the my lead projects that I remember when I was first into lean, one of my first projects, was creating really just a, what we call the star system, 5s star system. So, you know, each area would have their own star. So you could walk across. The thing about visual management. As you walk across the factory floor, you could see, you know, this area is a three star series, four star, two star. And you could start to see, this is kind of good within the organization, I would say, internal competition. But it was obviously in good fun and good spirits, yeah. But it was always, you know. You had a very visual you could see kind of where you stood today, and as they go through that, I think, is really, really good. So I think for me, being able to put something like that, where you create that, you know, internal competition, and some of those pieces that come through it, that was one of them. We’ve done things where it’s, you know, it’s like a, you know, passport, where you can go through and, you know, different trainings, maybe that you could go and take within, you know, if there’s an online piece, or there’s some in person stuff, but they could stamp the passport, as far as AI completed that. So there’s a lot of different pieces where, you know, where we’ve made it a little bit more fun, even if it’s something where it is, I’ve got to go in and watch a video, do a PowerPoint. I have an opportunity to then that puts my name in for something. And now it’s exciting suggestion programs where it builds up for points, or it builds up with kind of internal dollars, where I can go to the company store and purchase something. And so I think all of those things is it creates that healthy desire of, you know, we all love to win. We all love to, you know, be able to keep score and see where we are. And I think it provides not only the person themselves, great recognition and reward, but it also gives us some really great data from a continuous improvement and organizational perspective, to be able to understand areas that we need to fix or to go work on, and especially even with just if we’re not getting a lot of ideas, and we’re trying to put these rewards out. There’s something else that’s wrong, and so it should key us into some more things to do. But gamification is so key, you know, doing Jeopardy, games, those kinds of things, it’s just a lot of fun and gets people excited and gets people interested, because it’s something different than just the standard, you know, technical talk. And here’s this, this formula, and things that I’m not going to remember later. Let’s have some fun with it. And people tend to gravitate to that more so than others.

Patrick Adams  31:47  

Love it. There Was You made me think about a story from the company that I wrote about my book, the company that had a true culture of continuous improvement. And so I taught, I talked about this my book, but they we, at one time, we had a site where we had put together this visual of a football field, and one end was like the starting point, and then, like, each of the yard lines were like, you know, basically, like scoring 5s scoring for, you know, 5s audits, or, you know, assessments. And each of the different teams chose their favorite football team, and then we created, like a magnetic helmet with that team, and then they would move along, and it was a big competition of who’s going to get to the finish line first. So that was kind of a fun, fun visual, fun way to just make, make the the work visual, and then get people excited about what they were doing. On the flip side of that, we also had a went up to the local hardware store and bought a toilet seat and painted it gold, and that was the toilet toilet bowl award, or the toilet seat Award, Golden toilet seat, and that would hang over the team that would had the lowest 5s score. So you can imagine, nobody wanted to have the golden toilet seat hanging above their area. And it was, again, like healthy competition. Good fun. Everybody loved it. You know, it was just a way to just really engage people in, you know, 5s around the plant. So

Brian DeVries  33:23  

Exactly, yeah, people get excited about that kind of stuff. I enjoy that. I enjoy the it’s fun to see what people come up with. I remember, I cannot remember where it was, but I remember visiting a plant at one point where they had all their these tombstones out in the front yard that kind of these were their problems that they had solved, and a few of them had little ghosts on them. As far as like the problem, they actually came back. So here’s the ghost that’s coming out. But as they felt like they solved the problem, boom, Tombstone out in the yard, just to kind of signify it, we’re laying it to rest. It’s gone. Just fun to see what teams can come up with and and that creativity just drives more ownership and more excitement and just more passion across the site. So it’s even though results. Oftentimes, when you think about commitment results, I think commitment comes through a lot of results. For a lot of folks, that’s that kind of stuff as well, really helps sway more and more people. Oh,

Patrick Adams  34:11  

that’s great. And I’ll just say one more story that I thought of. We would do sped events with teams and they would part of what we built into the agenda was the setup carts. Because at this particular place, we use setup carts. The setup carts were like these nasty they were covered in oil. They were rusty. They were just horrible. And part of the event, we actually had them choose, like a, you know, could be a team, or a lot of them chose, like brands like John Deere or things like that. Did the redid, the whole cart, what in whatever their favorite brand was, you know. So we ended up, every time we would do a smet event, we would see these really cool carts popping up everywhere with John Deere or Caterpillar or which were suppliers and, you know, and then some favorite football teams and things like that. But again, just not that that was teaching them anything. But it was, well, I guess it, you could say it was part of the 5s initiatives, but it was, it was something that really got people’s attention, and they’re like, Man, when is my area going to get a new setup cart? You

Brian DeVries  35:19  

know, that’s right, that’s what you love, and that’s what those I think that’s what those things help with. It’s just like, hey, when am I getting this right? You just, you see that. How many times do you do it, even just something simple as a 5s event, where it’s, you go and you clean up an area, you create a model machine, and you know, when are they gonna when you come into my my area, and just you start getting that pull rather than the push. And so it’s, it’s, it’s fun. Why we do what we do? Yes, that’s exactly right. 

Patrick Adams  35:43  

So here’s another question for you. We’re talking a lot about delivering training. You know, getting a group into a room, hopefully incorporating some of these strategies to engage them in the learning process. But how do you switch from delivering training, from pushing training on people, to becoming more of a facilitator? And what’s the difference? How do you facilitate training versus deliver training? Would you be able to kind of talk through the difference in the two of those? 

Brian DeVries  36:17  

Yeah, it’s I think, a good example, you know, personal example that I can share. And it was actually fairly recent when I started, when you start to really think about different stories, and certainly, I’ve had a lot of experiences to do both. But I remember, the more and more I’ve gotten into this business, the more and more it’s like you just you. I love to talk and I love to share, and I get excited about it. And I remember I was at at an annual I was at a conference, and I was doing a section of this, or a breakout session, and it was all about facilitating a discussion and and so what they really wanted was people to learn from each other, which, you know, in a lot of trainings, we want that as well, but there’s also content we need to deliver. Whereas I went into this breakout session and it would the expectation was zero content to deliver. It’s more facilitating this discussion. And so it really does. It is two different skill sets in certain ways you think about being an effective trainer and reading the room and creating, you know, voice and how you hire or lower where I’m moving in the room, how much I’m moving, calling out questions, reframing stuff, I think. And then you you flip to this facilitator mindset, where it’s much more neutral, and it’s, you kind of stand back, and let’s, let’s give some prompting questions and see how somebody answers something and then say more. Who can add to that? And there’s this, this facilitation piece where it’s much more interactive. And I remember this session because it was hard not to stand up there, and because it was all about change and mindset, which I’m super passionate about, and it was hard not to stand up there and just gobble up the whole time and just talk about different tools and things we’ve done to help with that. But it’s that mindset of, I’m completely neutral now there’s, there’s no I have no deliverable outside of I want them to learn as much from each other as they can. And so I think about the setting and what you’re in as far as from delivering training and actually being a facilitator and then taking that and actually helping supplement some of the training that you do. So I’m going to deliver this content, but then I want to start to get more of that conversation going, utilizing, you know, some of the simulations, the hands on, out on the floor, whatever it may be, but using those skill sets now, so that they can learn from each other, while doing is just as powerful, but I know for me that sometimes it’s a hard switch where it’s, you know, I want to deliver this content. I want to make sure you understand the concepts versus I want you have an opportunity to have really great dialog. I can help chime pitch things in if it gets low, there’s a lull, but I want you to learn from each other, because learning from each other’s experience is such a, such a key piece of our business. But, yeah, it’s just, it’s two different switches, and I think, in certain ways, two different skill sets.

Patrick Adams  39:01  

Yeah, so can you expand on that just a little bit and like, what does it look like to if you’re delivered? Well, if you’re if you’ve been charged to deliver a training, if you’re someone’s listening and they’ve been told, you know, you need to put together a training on whatever lean basics or standard work or whatever it is. How do you go from being a trainer and delivering that training to facilitating in the way that you mentioned, like, what would be some things that you might see if I was in the back of the room watching, what might I see someone doing to help create some of that dialog, even though they’re trying to train them in standard work or whatever?

Brian DeVries  39:47  

Yeah, right, yeah. I think I look at that. It’s, it’s, a number of different pieces. One, it’s the amount of prep work that goes into being an effective facilitator versus just an effective presenter. Is world’s different. I think about like, if I’m just gonna go present something, I’ve got my computer, my clicker, and that’s kind of it. When I think about being an effective facilitator of an event, of learning, if we’re talking standard work, you know, the prep work that goes into that number one is understanding, you know, the the breakdown how the room is set up. Uh, effective, you know, good placement of my flip charts, whiteboards, markers, stuff that’s on the table, sticky notes, pens, yeah, uh, standard work, charts, stop watches. You know, of course, most people have phones now, so you don’t really need those as much. I still have one in one of my facilitator kits, but don’t use that very much anymore. But the but I look at it more as is how you kind of manage the room, just as much, how much you manage the content. And what you’re looking for is, Are people engaged with the work? Are you giving them enough break? Got exercises. And a big piece of being a good facilitator, I think, in creation of good training and good really hands on experiential learning is is having those times where they can go work on something themselves or with a group, and then come back for coaching and feedback. I think that just what I can go and do and then come back and here’s, here’s what we got, here’s where we came from, or here’s what we came up with. And have those, those learnings. And even if you have opportunities to do learnings in the moment, it’s really, really good. I remember going through what was a facilitator training early in my career, and a lot of it was, was on, not only just how you presented and how you knew the content, but a lot it was how you engaged audience members, and how often you ask questions, how you dealt with somebody who’s being disruptive, somebody who wasn’t listening. And started to think about all of those skills that go into because you can go and deliver a training, and people can be on their phones, people can be talking, and you can still deliver the training, and you’ve met that deliverable, but, you know, being a good facilitator, making sure that you understand the room. But I think it starts with just understanding what’s my room setup look like. How do I want the you know, what do I want the whole experience for my people that are learning to feel like, put yourself in those shoes, you know, is how much content before we do an exercise. And with that exercise, where are they going? What are they going to do? How am I now as a facilitator, walking around making sure things are doing, listening to conversation, help give some cues. So it really comes down to just setting up that structure. And that initial structure is really, really good, you know. How do I set up my room? Where are my people going? How much content prior to, you know, to going out and doing a hands on, you know, exercise, it’s all important pieces to be ineffective and getting a good message across, while the folks are going to be able to hand on, engage

Patrick Adams  42:42  

powerful. This is perfect timing, because I’m actually facilitating a 3p event next week, and so tomorrow, I’ll be putting together my kit. And you know, any any good facilitator, as you said, is bringing the right stuff, is doing the right preparation up front. And I’ll be honest. I mean, when I do an event, you know, we’ve done a lot of work to try to prepare for this kind of stuff, but you’re still finding yourself searching for things like, Okay, do I have enough posters? So I have enough markers? Do you know, did I do I have this? Do I have that? And sometimes when I get on the road, and then I’m going through everything, thing to myself that I did, I forget anything, you know. And the worst thing that could happen is you show up at the event and you’re like, Oh, crap, I don’t have this. I don’t have that. I didn’t deal whatever it might be. So this kind of moves me into something else that I mentioned earlier, as I introduced you, is about the Kaizen kits. And I want to hear a little bit about the Kaizen kit, because, man, could I use what? Tell us a little bit about the Kaizen kit. I mean, what inspired the Kaizen kit, and what is it exactly? Yeah,

Brian DeVries  43:52  

it’s exciting. So I can actually show you just, this is the small version, the big one that I’ve got sitting next. We’ve got a bunch of stuff in it, nice. But it’s really, it literally, is a kid. It’s a box that, you know, it’s bigger than this. This is just a small, you know, it’s like you walk into a store where they’ve got the model tents and their little tiny ones. It’s, yeah, the little tiny, this is the little tiny version. But this is the, you know, what really inspired this was just as I there’s a few different pieces that come out of this. So one of them is just, you know, as I think about, you know, my past, whether it was joining a continuous improvement team or, you know, way back when I was a supervisor, and you kind of get, hey, we need to do a better job with Tier boards, or we need to do a better job with 5s and you don’t always, in some cases, don’t always have the resource to go to to ask or go to to look at. And so that’s what inspired this, was just making it more accessible. Yeah, the other pieces of it, too is just like that. I’ve I’ve gone out and I I go and I do a 5s training, and here I am, s1 we’re talking about sort we talk about red tags, and I don’t have a red tag in my hand. And inevitably, somebody says, What’s one of those look like? Well, here’s a picture of one. Well, that’s not exactly the greatest hands on tangible experience. And so part of this, you know, for instance, you know, with right here, the 5s version. You know, they can have this sitting there in front of them. They open it up in a training or, Hey, I’m a I’ve been I’m a supervisor, I’m a plant manager, I’m a small business owner, and I really am interested in this. Or somebody has told me I need to go do this. I’m not really sure. Hey, this is going to help you, because not only you’re going to get the tools themselves, but you get the training that goes exactly with the tools, exactly how to use them, exactly how to go to implement you got everything you need, plus you get a you get a live community. So it’s been kind of a fun start to this whole process, and just kind of help fill in a need of making, I would say, lean continuous improvement, more accessible to more folks. Wow.

Patrick Adams  45:50  

Wow. So I love the idea, and as I said, it would be great to have something like that right now. But what like if I, let’s if I had a 5s kit, and let’s just say I received one of these kits for every individual in it, in a room, and they went to open the box, what would it look like when they when they open the box. Maybe. Maybe what we can do for those that are watching this video, maybe we can flash and show the actual box with with some of the items in it, so people can look at that. But yeah, for those that are listening to the audio, maybe, could you talk us, But yeah, for those that are listening to the audio, maybe, could you talk us through like, what actually comes in the box?

Brian DeVries  46:30  

Yeah, for sure. So I’ve got a few things sitting here too, and I know, for those who can’t see it, but, you know, to give an example, we have one of the ones that I’m kind of excited about, and I’ll just share it. We have one that it’s kind of our Lean foundations. You know, if you think about a yellow belt or a new, you know, a continuous improvement, leadership, kind of, I wouldn’t say green belt, but you have a yellow belt level where I’m gonna, I’m interested in continuous improvement. I want to learn about how I more move through this. We have this book, you know, this, this box where it’s six different boxes that comes through it, and it really walks you through all the process. So in this box, you’re gonna find your your journey. So it’s just gonna be your kind of your journey, one through six. You know, for box one, there’s some reflection cards. So every day I’m going to take one, and it’s going to just kind of reinforce some of the learning that goes with it. You know, am I fixing the symptom or the root cause? You know, that’s one of the reflections. So if you think about that, just picking that up on one day, and there’s 30 of those, you’ll have, obviously, the downloads that have links to all the training. So any of the tools, anything that’s included in here is going to have trainings, and it’s, it’s, it’s specifically for those tools. And then the cool thing, you know, I can’t say too much about what’s in this, this box, and probably one’s an audience, it doesn’t really matter either way. But there’s a really cool gift in there for those starting their journey and usually utilizing this, this kind of lean foundations core box. But you know, they’re going to open up and find all sorts of those things. And then for the first ones, you know, you’re also going to see a copy of that book in there too. So it’s kind of I thought I would include that signed copy, and for those who are going to start that journey, but, and that’ll morph, it’ll change over time based on our customers and what they what they want, what they desire. But right now, we’re starting now we’ve got the core journey, Lean leadership and as well as that 5s track, and the last one that we’ve got was our gimbal walks. So bunch of different ways to start,

Patrick Adams  48:16  

yeah, membership based. Subscription, right? Yeah, it

Brian DeVries  48:22  

1. It is just Kaizen six boxes. You can subscribe to those, and they just show up every month and you work through it. Same thing with 5s we actually made it into six boxes because I wanted to really focus a lot on improvement and next steps with the six box. But as you go through that each each time they show up on every month and go through that process, and like I said, tools training that relates those tools, and then certainly the the Live community, where I will be, as well as many others, will be involved in sharing their successes, their issues, and a great place to network.

Patrick Adams  48:56  

Love it. I mean, this is the solution for those that are looking for that hands on activity, for their for their training, or even just for their personal development, like you talked about earlier, and going through these and making sure that you’re getting a good understanding of the foundational concepts of lean, as you know, as you’re new to a position, a CI position in the company, or or you’re you got invited to a Kaizen event, and you want to know what the stuff is all about before you get there, exactly before we wrap. Wrap up today, Brian, there’s something exciting that’s happening. You and the Kaizen kit team are giving away a six month subscription to one lucky listener today, right? So that’s half a year of mindset shifting. Energy, team, energy, so in order to do that, they’re they’re going to go to the link, which we’ll put this link into the show notes. So if anyone’s interested, to jump on the wait list, because this isn’t available right now, but when it does available, you’ll get some information about the Kaizen kid and the giveaway. And obviously someone will that winner, I think, will be announced on May 23 it’s Kaizen kit, com, forward slash welcome. And could you wanted to just say anything about that before we Yeah, no,

Brian DeVries  50:11  

this is, this is, it’s, it’s an exciting thing. It’s a huge value for what’s in there, a lot of cool stuff. Like I said, you get the book, you get the the neat little starting gift that I won’t share. You know your journey complete with stickers as I complete things, so I know where I’m at all the trainings, all the cool stuff. But it’s certainly an opportunity for us to kind of recognize the folks that are trusting us with that, getting on the wait list. Let’s learn a little bit more about it. I’m interested. It’s really important that we do that, and the more excitement we can gain around this, the better. It’s just an opportunity to make this more accessible to a lot of folks. So it’s a cool product. It’s something that I’m really excited about. It’s why I was, why I wanted to be a part of it, and I. That’s really, yeah, I’m full on behind it. Love it.

Patrick Adams  50:53  

Very cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on Brian and talking to us today about just hands on learning, and hopefully someone that’s listening today took, I’m sure many people took away many tidbits, but if nothing else, grab one thing from this episode and incorporate it into your training or your own personal development. And I think you’ll be you’ll be happy because of it. The strategies that Brian talked about today are are working for many organizations in my experience and in your experience, Brian, so hopefully people will walk away with something great, and then, you know, one of us listening will walk away with a with a Kaizen kit today. So yeah, thanks again for being on. Really appreciate your time today.

Brian DeVries  51:42  

Yeah, I’m glad we made it happen. It’s, it’s fun to fun to be on. I love the show, and good to be a part of it.