What You’ll Learn:

In this episode, host Patrick Adams discusses the importance of continuous improvement using the analogy of climbing Mount Everest, emphasizing preparation, teamwork, and simplicity.

About the Host:

Patrick Adams is an internationally recognized leadership coach, consultant and professional speaker. He is best known for his unique human approach to sound team building practices, creating consensus and enabling empowerment.Patrick has been delivering bottom-line results through specialized process improvement solutions for over 20 years. He’s worked with all types of businesses from private, non-profit, government, and manufacturing ranging from small business to billion-dollar corporations. Patrick is an Author of the best selling book, Avoiding the Continuous Appearance Trap.

Links:

⁠Click Here For Patrick Adams’ LinkedIn⁠

⁠Click Here For Patrick Adams’ Book⁠

Patrick Adams  00:00

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders by helping you improve performance using process improvement solutions with bottom line results. My name is Patrick Adams, and this season, I’ll be joined by three other amazing hosts, including Catherine O’Donnell from Ireland, Andy Ulrich from Australia and Shane got involved from the United States. Join us as we bring you guests and experiences of Lean practitioners from all over the world. Well, thank you for the amazing introduction. Took a little bit of my thunder too. That’s okay, though, in 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first hikers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 29,028 feet above sea level. I I might have the same issue. There we go. Oh, no, we don’t want that, okay? 29,028 feet above sea level. This was something that no one had ever accomplished now since then, hundreds of hikers have tried to make the summit, and only about 5000 have actually made it to the top. Let me just paint a picture for you, if a hiker decides that they want to summit Mount Everest. It takes years and years of training and preparation to get ready to make the climb. On the day that they’re ready to make the climb, there they’re putting in for days of climbing before they even reach the first, the second and then the third camp before what’s called the death zone, the last hike to the summit. So just imagine that they’ve made it past all of the challenges, the opportunities, the potential avalanches, the cold weather, the food poisoning, the lack of oxygen, having to traverse these massive chasms. And they’ve made it to camp three, and now it’s time to make the final hike to the summit. At this point, they’re waking up well before sunrise, because once the sun comes up, it starts to melt the snow and could potentially create an avalanche. So prior to the sun coming up, hours before, they’re putting on their spikes. They’re putting on their headlamps, oxygen masks, their thermal snow suits, and they’re taking off towards the summit of Mount Everest, after hours of inching forward towards the summit, the sun starts to come up and they reach what’s called Hillary step, a 40 foot rock face almost straight up, that they have to climb before they get to the summit ridge, which is about one to two feet across that they have to walk through one fall Step 29,000, feet down, but eventually they make it To The Summit. They celebrate. They plant their flags, but most of all, it’s the view that makes it all worth it, all the preparation, all the training, the opportunities, the challenges, they’re finally there and they’re they sit back and they just enjoy the view. The view was worth the climb. Now, for those that actually accomplish the climb, they they say that it’s about 50% luck to actually make it to the summit of Everest, 50% luck. And for all of us, luck is this, this mystical thing that only blesses the chosen few, right? Why don’t think so. Think about all the opportunities and challenges that the climbers have along the way. Luck is really. Where preparation meets opportunity. Years of preparation, years of training, and a team, both Edmund and Norgay, neither of them, did it alone. They had a team, right? So let’s think about your Summit, whether it’s the state office or your department. What’s your Summit? And who are you climbing with? Who’s your team? Some of you may know that I volunteered with a nonprofit organization that takes at risk teens on backpacking trips. Hence the backpack. You’re all probably wondering why I’m wearing it, right? Any hikers I heard, I think Jamie said she was a hiker, hikers in the room. Yeah, lots. Okay, so who knows that if you’re hiking, whether you’re on flat ground or having to climb a mountain, if you have a pack on your back, it makes it a little bit more difficult. Would you agree? Yeah, now the heavier the pack, the harder it gets, right? I think it was Jesus that mentioned this, that that sometimes there are things that can cause our pack to be a little heavier than it needs to be. If we think about continuous improvement, all of our journeys thus far, what are the things that cause your pack to be a little bit heavier. Going forward, as you think about the summit that you and your department will go after, what are the things that are weighing you down? What are the things that are causing your pack to be a little bit heavier? Is it maybe lack of lack of engagement? Maybe it’s a misunderstanding of how the tools are used, or maybe it’s too much an overemphasis on cost cutting. Maybe it’s lack of support from leadership. All of these things cause our pack on our journey to be a little bit heavier, right? Well, today, we have the opportunity to lighten our pack. We’re not here alone. We’re on this journey together as a continuous improvement community. We’re on this journey together. And as I said, I I volunteer with an organization that that takes at risk teens on backpacking trips, and one of the rules that we have as an organization is that you never take your pack off alone. You always have to have someone to help you to take your pack off. So I’m just going to ask Jamie, do you mind coming up and just helping me take my pack off? It’s getting a little heavy. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. So what I want you to know today is that we are not on this journey alone, and today is your day to lighten your pack. You have many people here sitting at your table around you, leaders from your department, from the state, that are here to help you lighten your pack today. So take this time to just take it in. As was mentioned already, take some notes and think about what are the one or two things, maybe more, that you’ll take back to your department, to your organization, that you can apply right away to help improve the state of Missouri. And just going to the get a point this way, maybe I’m going to give it a second before I keep hitting the button. There we go. All right, so the big idea for today, the big idea, I’m going to need your help again as a community together. The big idea number one, I want you to turn to someone next to you and tell them to keep it simple. Good, good. I saw some of you intentionally pick a person that you said that to, all right. Now turn to the other person on the other side of you and say, keep it visual. Alright. Now I want you to find someone on the other side of the room and yell to them, continue to improve. All right, so the big idea today is keep it simple, keep it visual and continue to improve. So again, I want you to take one or two things out of this message that you can apply right away when you get back to your department. For those of you that are note takers, you can scan the QR code for a an app PDF that you can download, I think it’s on Dropbox that you can take notes on if you’re the traditional note taker with pen and paper. This is what your page should look like. Here’s your outline. Keep it simple. Keep it visual. Continue to improve under each one of these points, I’m going to give you three more points to help solidify the main point. All right. Did everybody get it? All right, let’s move forward. There was a time I was a young production supervisor on third shift, brand new to this company, and I was walking through the facility introducing myself to my new team, and I had this this lady waving me down from across the plant. And so, of course, I went over to her, and I introduced myself, and she introduced herself to me, and she said, Patrick, I have this idea, and I really think that if we implement it, it’s going to change the way that we assemble product in this particular assembly cell. And I said, Great, tell tell me what it is. Tell me your idea. And she said, Well, it’s pretty easy. If we we have two tables here. If we take this table and we turn it 180 degrees and we slide it a little bit closer to this table, we don’t have to keep walking around, and we can just hand the product to each other, and it’s gonna, we’re gonna be able to to double our output. I know it. And I’m like, This is amazing. This is great. What a what a simple idea that we can implement right now. Let’s do it. Let’s move the tables. And I went to move the table, and she said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can’t just start moving tables in this place. And I’m like, What do you mean? You have a really good idea. Let’s let’s run the experiment. Let’s try it. Let’s see if it actually works. And she’s like, well, I know you’re new to this place, but we don’t just change we don’t just move things around. We don’t just make changes. You have to submit a change request. And I was like, a change request, okay? What do I do? Show me how I’ve submitted change request. And she brought me over to this area where there was this, this process map, and she said, this is our change request process. This is what it looked like. Anybody relate? Oh, yeah. Don’t Okay. Some of you were like, I don’t know if I want to raise my hand. Sometimes we start simple enough, but over time, things get so complex that it’s almost impossible for us to maintain right. Imagine wanting to move a table and having to go through this process in order to move a table, how many people are going to submit ideas? How many people are going to experiment? If the process is this complex for us to make a change, probably not very many, right? Simplicity, as I said, things start normally simple. It’s human nature. For some reason for us to want to just add and add and add more until it becomes so complex that it’s unmanageable. What process do you have in your department, with your team that is so complex that it needs an overhaul? Let’s talk about safety or safety simplicity. Keep it simple. Three points. The first point that I want to talk about, I want to just bring you to the State of Michigan. This is my favorite backpacking place in the state of Michigan. It’s called the Manistee River Trail. It’s a 22 mile loop, and it’s beautiful. It’s amazing. I’ve been hiking this trail for, I would say, 15 years, once or twice a summer, 15 years, and I know the trail like the back of my hand. But one year, I brought my daughter with me to hike the trail, and she had never been on the trail before. I think at this time, she was probably 1111, 12 years old, something like that. And so I pulled out a map for her when we got to the trailhead. There we go. I pulled out a map for her, looked something like this, and I laid it on a rock, and I said, Taylor, where do you want to go? This is a 22 mile loop. We could go this way, we could go that way, we could go this way. What do you want to do? And she said, Dad, I don’t care. I don’t care which way we go. Let’s just go. And I said, Whoa, wait. A minute now, I had to give her a little class on charting the course. Okay? I said, if we don’t have a plan for where we’re going, where are we going to end up? What are we going to miss along the way that we would have otherwise seen? If we had a plan, if we had direction, what if we had other hikers with us and they didn’t know where we were going. What if they got lost? That could be an issue, right? So we have to have direction. We have to know where we’re going before we set out, so that we can make sure that we see everything we want to see. We know when we’re getting closer. Our team can also experience the journey with us, and no one gets lost, right? It’s this concept of a true north. There we go, this concept of a true north, right? As we think about your Summit, we think about your summit and where you’re going in your department, can everybody see that? Bring it back? There we go. What’s your true north? Where are you heading? What’s your direction, right? If we imagine ourselves here, this is where we’re starting here, and we’re heading here to the summit, what are the things that we need to think about along the way? If this is what I told my daughter at the trailhead, I know this is weird, but for those of you that are continuous improvement, lean nerds like myself, you understand our families have to deal with it, right? Yeah, okay, so I said, Okay, if we don’t have a plan, what happens when bad weather hits? What happens when we see something cool on the side, and we want to go that direction, or this direction or that direction. How long is it going to take us to actually reach our summit? If we’re going, if we’re being pulled in all these different directions, how long is it going to take us, will we ever even arrive? Are we heading in the right direction? Are we spending our time working on the right stuff? Maybe not right. So Toyota has a true north 100% on time. Delivery, zero defects, 100% customer value. Add activities. These are, these are true north initiatives. Now, will Toyota ever receive? Will they ever arrive there? Will they ever arrive at 100% on time, delivery, zero defects, 100% value add, activity, zero waste, no, right? They won’t they won’t arrive there. However, what does it do for them to have that as a true north? It gives them direction, right? They know where they’re heading. They know if they’re getting closer or further away. When someone says, Hey, we should go do this. We should, we should make power boats, and they’re like, does that align with our true north, or does that pull us away from our true north? It’s a pretty easy decision for them to say, No, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to continue on this path, right? So for my daughter and I, back to back to the conversation. I said, we need to have our true north. We need to know where we’re heading, what direction, so that we know if we’re getting closer, and we know which way to go, this way, that way. And she said, okay, okay, Dad, let’s go to the suspension bridge, which was about 10 miles on the east side of the river. And I said, Okay, let’s do it. And we took off. And if we hadn’t had that true north, we may have never arrived here at the suspension bridge. Now, again, not everybody arrives at their true north, but we had direction. We knew where we were going. We knew when we were getting closer as we watched ourselves on the map at different points along the way. And again, if we had other hikers with us, if we had a team with us, and they got lost, or they went down a different path, they knew where we were heading, so they could get right back on path at any moment. So I ask you, for your department, what’s your true north? Do you have one? Do you have a simple vision for where you’re heading? Someone, throw, throw, throw. One out there. What is one thing that might be a true north for your department, safety and security. So zero safety incidents, 100% security. I heard customer service on. 500% customer service, right? I hear others being yelled out there. Now, will we ever achieve that? Maybe, maybe we will. But what if every decision that we make from this point forward is moving us towards that true north? Can we stay on path? Does it make it easier for us to make decisions if we have direction? Yes, right. So then I ask you, what’s your next target condition? Where’s your camp one, Camp two, Camp three? Where are they? If we’re heading towards zero safety, what’s camp one? Maybe it’s, I don’t know. What is it? You tell me, what is your what would, what would your camp one be zero faults? Or maybe, maybe, obviously, we don’t want to plan for a fault or an incident, so this might be a bad example, but, you know, maybe it’s 100% customer service. Maybe we say camp one is 70% and camp two is 80% and camp three is 90% and then to 100 right we don’t have to figure out how to get to 100 right away. All we have to do is we have to figure out how to get to 70. How do we get to camp one? We’ll figure out camp two, three in the summit at a later point. Right? So what are the things that we have to do to get to camp one? That’s all we have to figure out. So your first point under keep it simple, is communicate a simple vision. Communicate a simple vision. It can be as simple as this, 100% customer service. That’s what we’re shooting for. Simple right? Communicate a simple vision. When I was in the military, there’s this, anybody serve in the military? Okay, in the Marine Corps, all right, you’re so you’ll know this one. We learned this, this mantra that’s called Napoleon corporal, and it’s a true, it’s true about history with Napoleon as a general. He from a strategic standpoint, he would take a young Corporal from the front lines, and he would pull them into the room when they were talking about strategy with all the generals. And he would set, set the corporal on this, you know, at a chair on the side. And they would determine their strategy, their battle strategy, and what they were going to do. And they would break that down into how they would actually communicate that out to the troops. And then Napoleon would turn to the corporal, and he would say, do you understand the plan? Do you understand the simple vision of what we want to do, and do you understand how we’re going to do it, and can we communicate that out to the troops? And if the corporal said, it’s a little confusing. I’m not getting it. Then they would go back to the planning table, and they would continue to break it down until it was simple enough for this young Corporal to understand and for them to be able to communicate that out to the troops before the battle happened. Napoleon’s corporal, so your second point under keep it simple, is simple communication, right? Once we’ve established that vision for ourselves, that true north, where we’re heading, we have direction. We need to figure out how to communicate that to the rest of the team. Everyone needs to understand and be aligned with the vision and how we’re going to actually achieve it. Thomas Edison said opportunity is missed by most people because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like hard work, hard work. I think about Henry Ford as well. Had a very simple vision. His vision was that every US citizen has an automobile. Seems pretty simple. Do you think it took a lot of hard work? Of course, it did. It took a lot of hard work for Thomas Edison, it took a lot of hard work for Henry Ford. It took a lot of hard work for Edmund, Hillary, Tenzing, Norway, for every one of you on your CI journey, it’s not easy. It’s a lot of hard work. So the last point under keep it simple is that simple does not mean easy. It’s going to be a difficult journey. It’s going to take a lot of work to achieve the results that you’re looking for. Keep it simple. All right, so I’m. Guessing that your favorite baseball team here is the Detroit Tigers. No, that’s not the case. Well, mine is okay. I’m from the state of Michigan, so I’ve been to a couple Tigers games. Whoever your favorite team is doesn’t matter. I want you to imagine that you’re at a game, professional baseball game, and you’re watching the field, and the game is underway, and you look around and you notice that everyone is staring at the scoreboard. Why would they be doing that the game is out on the field. Why does the scoreboard matter? Why? Why? Why is there even a scoreboard? Do you think it’s important for us to have a scoreboard at a baseball game? All the statistics for the game are on the scoreboard. Right? The coaches, the players, those that are in attendance are looking at the scoreboard trying to decide what the next step is for the team in order to win, to win the play, to win the game, right? So the number of strikes, the number of balls, what inning it is, what the score is, all of these things are important in helping us make decisions. It’s important in your organizations, in your departments, that you also have something that’s visual, that can tell you how you’re doing. How are we doing against the goal? What are the statistics? What are the things that we need in order to make the right decisions, not based on emotion or feel, but based on data, based on the score the statistics, right. So let’s talk about keeping it visual. There we go, keep it visual, three points under keeping it visual, I want to ask you if you can understand that what’s written here. First, one knows Arabic. Anybody know what that says? No one. Okay, let’s try a different one. How about Dutch? No one, okay? Chinese, No, all right. These all say the same thing, by the way, Russian, oh, we got someone that knows Russian, okay? Japanese, now as a team, if we were utilizing any of these languages as a way to visualize how we’re doing, how would we do? Be a little weird, right? Would we would we know how we’re doing? Would everyone know? One person would know who knows Russian in the back of the room? What about this? Do we all know what that says? Does it matter what country you’re from? Does it matter what department you work with? Visuals have to be understood by all we have to be careful when we’re utilizing visuals to make sure that everyone on our team understands the visuals that we’re using. Just because we put together some numbers and some statistics and we put that out there to the team, doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to be on board or understand what the data is telling us, right? So the data has to be something that’s understood by all. The visuals have to be understood by all. Just tell you a really quick story about a facility that I worked in where we put in a kanban system. And for those of you that are not familiar with Kanban, it’s a tool that helps us to manage inventory. There’s also signal Kanban for those of you that are working in Agile, or if you’re using them to signal tasks or things like that. So Kanban can be used in a few different ways, but this particular Kanban that we were setting up was on a machine, and it was regulating what was being ran on that particular machine. Now, the gentleman that ran this machine had been working for this company for 2530 years. He was a legacy employee. He knew how to run the machine. He knew everything about the facility. So we felt like it was a great place to implement Kanban. Well, we put up Visual cards on the wall, a system that had all the inventory accounted for on the wall. Every card represented a box, and each column represented a different part number. And what we did was we had as the cards went in. They would signify that that is a box that was used out of the warehouse. So the cards would go in and they would build this column, and eventually they would, we had colors. So eventually they would go from green, as the cards would fill up to red, which would signal there’s a problem. This part needs to be ran because it’s in the red, meaning, like, we’re going to have orders and the customer is not going to have parts. So it was pretty simple. Green, red, each card represents a box. Pretty simple, right? After a couple days, we missed a shipment, and then another shipment. And I’m like, What is going on? So we go out to the machine, and I’m like, Ben, what’s the board is full of cards. Why are you not running this stuff? And he’s like, I didn’t know when I was supposed to run it. And I said, we talked about this, when it gets to the red that’s when you run that particular part number, and he’s like, Well, I’m colorblind. I don’t see red. I was like, Ben, you could have told me that. Like, man, all right. So we had to make an adjustment, and we had to add a card in there that said trigger point. And it was all fine. It all worked out. But the story just, it’s just an example of understanding your people. When you’re working with people, many people understand visuals differently, or they can or cannot depending on any kind of limitations. So you have to understand your people. Just because something means something to you doesn’t mean it’s going to mean the same thing to someone else, right? So your first point under keep it visual is that your visuals need to be something that everyone understands. Okay, alright. Taichi Ono, who’s known as the father of the Toyota Production System, he said having no problems is the biggest problem of all. Have you ever heard someone say that in your organization or your department, like, Oh, we’re good. We don’t have any problems. We’re set No, no issues. I still remember working with an organization that I went out into the the the office area, and one of the ladies said to me, why are you guys here? Like, we make so much money, we don’t need to worry about all this stuff. And I was like, Are you serious? Right now? She was like, Yeah, we’re good. We don’t have we don’t I mean, we have problems. We don’t need to worry about them. We make plenty of money, no issues. And I’m sorry to say, unfortunately that that organization has now sent all of their work overseas, and she no longer has a job, not because of any of the work that we did there, but because of that mentality of not having any problems every organization, every team, every department, every state, local, state, government office, we all have problems. There has to be a point where we normalize red, where we say it’s okay that to show your problems, it’s okay for us to talk about the issues, the struggles, the challenges that we have. Because if we don’t, if we’re hiding those problems, then that’s the biggest problem of all. If we’re hiding the problems, and we have no no one knows about them, we can’t go after them, right? So we have to create a an avenue, a way, that we can make these problems visible. I want to show you a quick example real just before I talk about the example, how many of you have seen the iceberg of ignorance right? 13% of problems are visible to upper management, upper executives, leaders in every organization, about 13% when they run the numbers. Now, 100% of There we go. 100% of the problems are visible to the staff, the people that are working in the gemba, in the place where the work is happening, 100% and yet, still, organizations decide that they’ll take one person in upper management, and that’ll be our green belt. That’ll be our black belt. We’ll certify one person, we’ll train them in problem solving, and they’ll be the problem solver for the organization. They’ll be the one person that handles all the issues, and we’ll just call them when we have an issue problem, and they’ll come in and they’ll fix it, and then they’ll leave right? The problem is, it’s the people that are working in the area that know the problems, and many times they know the solutions. Why would we not want an army of problem solvers, everyone in the organization who speaks the same language, who understands what waste is, right, who’s open, who doesn’t care about the. Fear of saying we have an issue, we have a problem, we have a challenge. We need to go after this. We need to solve it. Here’s another problem. Here’s another problem. Here we’re in the red. Let’s celebrate it. We’ve finally found out where the problems are. Now we can actually solve them, right? So I want to tell you this just a quick story. I do these assessments a lot, where I go into organizations, and I sit down with 100% of the staff, and I ask them all the exact same questions. Now this is something that you could also do. You could do it with your citizens. You could do it with your departments, your employees, your team members, whoever it might be. I know it’s crazy to think about, but I sit down and I talk to each person, and I ask them the same questions. First, what’s the biggest what’s what’s your biggest pain point, what’s your biggest problem in your area? Tell me what it is. Second, what’s something that’s good, something that’s really great about your team, your department, your organization. And third, are there any do you have any ideas opportunities for improvement? Anything that you think we could do to make this better? Three very simple questions, but what happens when you ask, let’s just say, 50 or 100 people the exact same questions, and if you tally those answers, what happens? We’ve now turned emotion feelings into what data. Now we can make decisions right? Because what happens when you ask the exact same question? You’re going to get the one offs. My boss hates me. I drive too too far to get to work. You’re going to get the one offs here and there, right? But then you’re going to start to get these clusters of people saying the exact same thing. Now we have a cluster, we have a data point that we can go after and make some decisions on right? So here’s the results of one of the assessments that we did. Okay, what do we do that’s really, really good this particular organization. You can see the clusters that started to form based on some of the questions that we had and the individuals that we were interviewing this particular team, said, We have a lot of trust within the shifts within the teams. We have a lot of trust. You’ll you’ll see later on, though, that between the teams, there wasn’t very much trust, but within a lot of trust. So that was a good thing, right? They had a really, really great safety program. A lot of really, really really good things happening from a safety perspective, true ownership at the Gemma, with the people that were actually doing the work, it was pretty amazing to see these were our two biggest clusters when we went to what are we not doing very good? What are the problems? This was really interesting. The biggest issue, and you can see how massive these clusters are, they almost go together to communication between shifts, which also falls back on leadership, and then this leadership breakdown, miscommunication, distrust, slow, decision making, favoritism. Now, leadership brought us in knowing there were some issues. When I saw the results of this, I was a little concerned about what, how they might react, right? Because now it’s out in the open, it’s on the table. What are we going to do with this? Are we going to try to pretend like this isn’t real? Because data speaks for itself, right? This, it’s not like we had everybody in the same room and had everybody give us the same answer. This was separate, one on one interviews, and when the data came out, it was very clear that this was a problem. This was an issue that that the leadership team had. So what I will tell you about this particular team is the leadership team, when we presented the data to the team, they were very much accepting of this data, and they said, we have a problem and we need to fix it. And they went in front of the entire organization, they displayed this data up in front of the entire team, and they said, We are sorry, and we’re going to make changes, and, oh, by the way, here’s our plan on how we’re going to change things. They presented the group with their plan with with owners dates on how they were going to change this, and it was a pretty amazing transformation. But it wasn’t until the problems were made visible that this actually became something that was worth going after for the for the leadership team, not that they didn’t care, but it just it needed to be made visual. It needed to be turned into data. This is another set of questions that we ask everyone on these assessments. This is called an empowerment continuum. So on the left, you have managements in full control of all decisions. On the right. Eight is more shared control. So when decisions are being made, we ask the team three questions. Basically each person three questions, where were you like five years ago? Four to five years ago? Where are you today? And where do you where do you want to be in the future? On this empowerment continuum, when it comes to decisions. So pretty interesting results here. This was where were we five to seven years ago for this particular team, and you can see it’s broken down by by shifts or teams, including leadership. Management decides, then informs employees. Management’s in full control of all decisions. They make all the decisions, and then they tell us what the decision, what the result of the decision, is going to be. Five to seven years ago. Where are we today? Where are we today? See how the data moved. Let’s go back five to seven years ago today. Now nobody saw where anyone else was putting their data points. This was one on one with a blank sheet, and they’re putting their finger and pointing this is where we are today. This is where we were five to seven years ago. Where do you want to be in the future? Isn’t that interesting? Where were they before? Where are they today, and where do they want to be in the future? The data tells us what to do, right? It’s not feelings, it’s not emotions, it’s data points that are giving us direction. Now this was really interesting as well. So this is the third shift team, and you can see the purple data point and point and number three is the supervisor for that team. And the team are all the other points. So when asked, Where are we today when it comes to decision making, the supervisor was like, Oh, they can make decisions. They’re allowed to make decisions. They don’t have to have any fear of bringing problems up to me, and the team was like, we don’t talk about problems. We don’t talk about the red we’re not allowed to make decisions. We come to work, we punch a clock, we leave. That’s all we get to do. So this was an eye opening opportunity for that particular supervisor as well. And again, this supervisor responded in the proper in the right way, apologizing to the team, and made a change that significantly transformed the culture for that particular team. Pretty awesome. So the second point under keep it visual is that you want to make problems visible how I’m challenging you. How do you make problems visible within your department, within your team, what are some things that you can do in order to allow the problems to come to the surface? As long as you’re hiding them, you can’t go after them. You can’t solve them, right? All right. So those of you that have been in Lean for a while, I saw there was some green belt class that’s getting ready to to finish up. So you know 5s right? 5s is a foundational, basic lean tool that helps us to create stability within an organization, right? Just like standard work, the 10 second test, if I was to come to your office or to your team, your department, and I said, find me a calculator. Could you do it in 10 seconds? Okay, okay, not everybody can do it. 5s. Is foundational. Organized is efficient. I worked with a team. This was years ago, but they were they were struggling because in the office, they were struggling because they were spending so much time going walking back and forth to this printer, this centralized printer, and they had to walk around a bunch of storage items and file cabinets and other office cubicles and all this different stuff. And the office was very disorganized, very chaotic. And I observed over a period of time, them going from their desks to this centralized printer. And every time they would go, it would just be like they’d hit print, and then they would just go on this journey through the office, around cubicles, over file cabinets to finally get to the office room with this desk or this printer. Alright? So 5s you can’t come to a lean conference. You can’t go through any type of Lean training. Out hearing about 5s because it is so foundational, it is such an important part of what we do, you cannot start to improve if you haven’t first created some level of stability. And it doesn’t matter. I know that you’re not working in a factory. It doesn’t matter you’re not making widgets, you’re not making automobiles. It doesn’t matter. 5s is foundational. If you’re working in a state of chaos, then it creates, it takes away the opportunity to improve. So 5s is foundational. You can’t improve chaos. Everything has a place. Everything’s in its place. It allows you to see the abnormal from the normal, right? If you have a good organized work area, then the problems become very obvious. So the third point under keep it visual is that organized is efficient. Organized is efficient. My wife hates it when I at some I think Rebecca mentioned the post it notes and like, don’t touch my garage. And we’re, we’re going to use post it notes to plan the vacations. Yep, yep, that’s organized is efficient. No, she doesn’t hate me. She loves me. All right, let’s move into the last point. What small things are you doing to build the right culture? Everyone in this room, every department, every group, every state office, every local office has a culture. You have your own culture, maybe a combined culture, but culture is an output. It happens. The question is, do you have the right culture? Have you developed or created a culture of continuous improvement, one where it’s okay to to make your problems visible, where it’s okay to experiment and try new things. Have you developed a culture where small, simple improvements incrementally lead to massive change within your organization? What small things are you doing on a regular incremental basis in order to build the right culture continuous improvement? Kaizen is something that we all have to be committed to if we want to continue to develop and build a state where citizens love to be and taxpayers are their their money, their their tax, their everything is valued, right? So continuous improvement has to be a part of everything that you do in every part of state government. Let’s talk about the first point I uh, go ahead. There it is, alright. Uh, I’ve visited the Grand Canyon for the first time a few years ago with my family. And has anybody been to the Grand Canyon? It’s pretty amazing, right? It’s like, you’re not even ready for it when you arrive, you’re like, I didn’t. I never imagined. I never knew that it was this amazing. This was me by myself at sunset, because my family was like, It’s been four hours, like it’s time to go, and I’m like, the sun’s still setting. Okay, we’re we’re staying but here’s the reality. The Colorado river runs through the Grand Canyon, and there’s there’s no denying that the Colorado River has helped to create what we now see as the Grand Canyon. But how did that start? One drop of water with persistence over time can cut through rock. It’s true. If you come visit the state of Michigan, and you go up to the Upper Peninsula, there’s all these really, really great rock patterns along the Lake Superior that have been created over time of water slowly dripping and and cutting through the rock and building these amazing visuals. The same thing happened with the Grand Canyon. Over time, small things can create massive change. One drop of water over time has created the Grand Canyon. It’s pretty amazing. So how do we build culture? How do we build a continuous improvement culture, it’s the small things, little things, over time, that give us massive change in an organization. Culture, as I said, is an output. There are very specific inputs that we need to understand in order to create. A culture of continuous improvement. What are the inputs? Have you put consideration into the actions, the behaviors of yourself and those on your team? Because those are the inputs. That’s what’s creating the cult. The result is the culture that you have. If you don’t have the right culture, you have to back up and you have to look at the inputs right. So this is a study that was done, and I’ll just kind of read through these. An organization tracked suggestions for one year, almost 2000 opportunities for improvement. Identified over 300 different employees. That’s an average of six ideas per person. 91% of those opportunities were completed to the date that this study was done. Watching my time. I was in Japan this last year, and we met with a couple different companies that were supplying product to Toyota and even with Toyota as well. And we asked them about suggestions. Do you guys ask for suggestions from your team members? And they were like, yes, of course we do. And they said we average anywhere from 90 to 98% implementation of every single suggestion that comes in. Now, it takes a lot of work to get there, right? You have to you have to create expectations. People have to understand the the where the summit is right, where the the where we’re heading. Ideas should be helping us to get to camp one and then camp two and camp three. The team has to understand this, right? We just don’t. We don’t just open up the flood gates. Instead, everybody just throw us suggestions, whatever you want to do. Let’s get it done, right? Ice cream and at lunch for everyone. And no, we have to make sure that every idea, every suggestion, is moving us closer to our to our true north. But if the ideas are submitted in the proper way, we should be trying to implement 100% of them, if possible, right? So this particular team had 91% of those opportunities completed to date, 93.5% of the completed opportunities resulted in a change. 755 ideas improve the quality of the organization and its products in some way. 216 ideas improved safety of the vendors and employees. 893 ideas improved the satisfaction of customers employees, and 837 resulted in over $7 million of financial impact. Wow, small things lead to significant change. Small things. One idea, if you don’t follow Paul acres in two second lean, he’s on YouTube. There’s a great book. Two second lean, he talks. He’s a very huge proponent of small, simple, little things, two second improvements every day. One two second improvement every day to change your organization. It’s the little things that matter. So number two under continuous improvement is find your big in the small. Find your big in the small. There we go. Okay, so I mentioned that I spent some time in the Marine Corps. I spent about eight years in the Marine Corps, and while I would never want to go back to boot camp, it was one of the the best things that ever happened to me. I’ll talk a little bit more about that here shortly. But in Marine Corps boot camp, you learn to use your your rifle for very important reasons, right? Be in the military, you also learn how to break down your M 16, a two service rifle and clean it. Because what happens if you’re in a firefight and your rifle jams because you didn’t clean it properly? That’s a pretty big problem, right? So in boot camp, Marine Corps, drill instructors make sure that we understood why it was so important that we took the time to break down our rifles, clean them properly, and assemble them back together in the right manner. Very important reason. It could save our life. It could save someone else’s life, or again, if we’re not doing that. The opposite could be the case, right? So we understood the why. We understood why it was so important for us to understand this. This is the M 16 standard work in the Marine Corps for cleaning instructions. We were given these cleaning instructions. We. And you can see there’s a note there to use the it’s hard to read for me, the certain type of brush only right? Do you think that that was important? Do you think the drill instructors paid attention to that? This also tells us to clean certain areas. There are certain areas that were called out within the bolt assembly that needed to be cleaned. Do you think that the drill instructors inspected that and made sure that we cleaned as per the standard work instructions? Did I get upset when the drill instructor would come over and look at my I mean, we’re talking about boot camp, so yes, of course, I would get yelled at right, if I didn’t do it right. Little bit different, but because I understood the why, because I understood what could happen if I didn’t do it properly, it was important to me that I did it right, that I learned it right. And the drill instructors knew that as well, so they inspected to make sure that I was following the Standard Work Instructions. They also set clear expectations and provided the right tools. They didn’t just say, make sure you have a clean rifle. They gave us the work instructions. They set the expectation. They gave us the right tools that we needed in order to be successful. They showed us how to use the tools, and they inspected what they expected. All of these things were important. As we looked at how to sustain the improvements that we were learning about, they took it one step further, the tools were actually kept in the butt of the rifle. Never had to search for the tools. They were right there. No matter where I was or when I needed the tools. They were accessible to me. And there was this handy dandy cloth that gets pulled out and laid out that gives me a little shadow board for taking apart my rifle, putting all of the pieces where they need to go. And then what do you think would happen when I would put it back together and there was still a piece sitting right there? Uh, oh, it was pretty clear if I did it properly or not, right? I knew if I had something left over that I missed something. I to try to try to fix it before the drill instructor comes back. But again, they set the expectations. They made it very clear to us. And then we had the inspections on a regular basis, where they would come in, they would check the rifles, make sure that they were cleaned properly, and then give us feedback, positive feedback, negative feedback, whatever was needed in order for us to understand the importance and follow the expectations that were being given to us. So when a drill instructor would reinforce the expectation during any kind of an inspection, this is what it looked like. Here’s what I saw. Here’s why, and they would respond to the reason. There would be some kind of a response, right? So here’s what I saw. You didn’t clean behind the rear sight aperture. The reason why that’s important is this, and here’s what you need to do next time in order to ensure that it’s done properly, it’s important that we inspect what we expect. We can’t just put something out there and expect for the team to continue without some kind of follow up, with some kind of follow through, without some kind of inspection of the expectations. So the third point under continue to improve is to sustain the improvements. Sustain the improvements. Alright? So before I close with a story, here’s your notes. For those of you that have been diligently taking notes, let’s run through this very briefly before I wrap up with a little story. Number one, keep it simple. Tell the person next to you. Keep it simple. All right. Number one, communicate a simple vision. It’s important that we have a simple vision. It’s got to be something that everyone understands. It has to be something that can be passed along to any part of the organization, to every department, to every individual through simple communication. Number two, that everyone understands how, why and what the expectations are. Number three, simple doesn’t mean easy, right? It’s going to take a lot of hard work. It’s not going to happen overnight, especially if you’re trying to change a culture, something that’s been in place for a long time, or, I know. Now there are sometimes struggles from an operational excellence perspective with state government, because sometimes you have leadership changes that happen that are outside of your control, right? New leader comes in now, all of a sudden, things aren’t as important as they used to be. That’s a challenge. That’s a real challenge that you guys experience. So how do you how do you get around that? It takes a lot of hard work. It takes diligence. It takes the ability to develop a system that everyone can agree to that’s simple enough for everyone to understand and be committed to. Second point, turn to the other person and tell them, keep it visual. The visuals need to be clear enough that everyone can understand them. Visuals are important. We need to know how we’re doing towards the goal. If no one knows or can see where we’re going, how close we are. If I were to ask you, how did you do today? Did you win your day? Yes, I did. How can you show me that? Do you know, is there a way to measure it? What about your week? Did you win your week? Did you win your month, your quarter? Do you have a way to visually represent that? Do you know, not at the end of the month, but do you know day by day, week by week, how you need to make adjustments along the way in order to make sure that you don’t wait until the numbers come out at the end of the month ago? Ah, crap. We missed. Alright, let’s try again next month. No, what are you doing every day, every week, to make adjustments along the way to stay on path in the direction of your Summit, of your true north. What are you doing? To make sure visually, that everyone understands the expectation and is and is able to respond accordingly? Make your problems visible. Create an environment where people are comfortable to bring problems to the surface. To say, I have an issue. I’m struggling with this. I need help. This is a problem. We need to address it together. Let’s figure out the root cause, and let’s actually solve this problem. Number two, make problems visible. Number three, organized is efficient. 5s is foundational, work and Standard Work is foundational. Organized is efficient. Be organized if you have if you find yourself or your team shuffling through multiple folders to find things, if you’re ever looking searching for stuff for longer than 10 seconds, you might need to overhaul that process. You might need to look at it and figure out, how can we organize this in a better way that’s more efficient for our team, that’s going to result in something better than what we have today. All right, the last one. Continue to improve. Learn to build culture. Learn to build culture. Culture as a result. What are the inputs? What are the things, the behaviors and the actions of you, your team, your leadership, can you put some standards around that to ensure that you’re getting the right results, that you’re building the right culture? Number two, find your big and your small. It’s the little things. We’re not looking for massive change. We’re looking for the leading indicators that will give us the massive change. What are the leading what are the small things that you can do on a day to day basis, to make improvements within your department, within your organization, within your personal life, and then the last one, make sure that you’re sustaining the improvements. Enable action and then sustain the improvements allow people create the opportunity for sustainment. Don’t just think it’s going to stick. Create systems that will give you the sustainment that you need. So I want to finish with a quick story. I’ve never told this story before, so bear with me. My my son in middle school. He’s now 20. In middle school, he struggled considerably. And I’m telling you this story because so many times I hear people say, well, lean doesn’t apply to us because we don’t make widgets, or we don’t make automobiles. We’re not Toyota, right? Continuous Improvement applies to every area of life, every area of business. It applies to you and your department, your state. So the story about my son is how he applied continuous improvement to be where he is today. So I want to start with the here, right? So when he was in middle school, he was struggling with depression, anxiety, he had some suicidal tendencies. And the reason why this was so impactful on my wife and I obviously it there you can. I understand why, but I also struggled in middle school around that same age, and ended up in rehab in ninth grade. And so when my son started to have some of those same struggles, I was like, Oh my gosh, what are we going to do, right? And we started with small things. We got him into counseling and had him to start talking on a regular, consistent basis with someone other than us. And the counselor worked with him on little things that he could do, little adjustments that he could make, to how he was going about his day, to how he was approaching his friendships, his relationships, little things, and eventually we got to a point where he was doing really well. And the counselor said, we have to figure out a a long term goal for him that he can focus on. And I was like, You mean, like a true north and she was like, No, you’re no, no. She was like, Yes. And I was like, I’m a lean geek. I can do this stuff. And she was like, We need to find a long term goal. So we talked to him, and we knew that he was a crazy fast runner, and he really enjoyed track and field, and we so we asked him, like, what are some of your long term goals? What are some things that you want to do in life? And he, he came out and said, I want to run in the Olympics. And my wife and I were like, oh, okay, how do what do we do we do with this right? Run in the Olympics? My goodness, you’re in eighth grade. I want to, I want to run in the Olympics. He said, we had our true north, right? Where are we today? Long way to go, depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies, a lot of struggles and issues. But then we backed from there. We said, What’s your camp three, what’s going to get you to the Olympics? And he’s like, Well, I mean, I’d have to, I’d have to be a, I’d have to run at Nationals. Nationals camp three, what’s going to get you to to Nationals? So I’d have to run for a university. You’d have to go to college, maybe d2 school. Okay, what’s your camp one? Well, I gotta graduate high school, and I really would love to be a state champion someday in high school, and we were like, Oh, that’s great. Okay, well, let’s focus on Camp one. How do we get there? What do we need to do? How do we make it visual? We have a simple, simple long term vision, right? I want to get to the Olympics. It’s going to take a lot of hard work. Yep, it’s going to take a lot of hard work. Is it really possible? I mean physical limitations and all I mean he he’s not as tall as all these other guys that he runs against. Is it possible? Maybe, maybe not. Does it give us direction? Absolutely right. So, how do we get to camp one? How do we make it visual? Well, I need to get good grades to stay on the team to graduate high school. So I got a scorecard, right, and I can start tracking how I work out. I can do some of that on my own. I can create a scorecard, and I can start to track that, and eventually that’ll get me to my camp one, where I graduate high school and maybe even have a state championship. And then what about camp two and camp three? Right? Well, here’s what I’ll tell you. This year my son, Patrick, Patrick the third, beginning of this year, he’s he, he’s in his going into his senior year, running track at the university. He just qualified for nationals. I told you it’s going to be a little difficult to do this one, because I’ve never told this story before, but I but let’s back it all the way up before I read you a couple text messages here. Two time state champion graduated with honors from high school. Got offers. Yeah, he got offers from many schools, including d2 schools, and he’s been running at the University for the last three years. This will be his senior year, qualified for nationals. And, I mean, these are some of the text messages that my wife and I receive. Remember the accountability piece, right? We’re a part of that, right? This was this. This past July, day one of the grind. Here are my goals, 50.9 7.9 coming soon, a video of him lifting weights. Morning session complete. What’s going to set you guys apart today? This was his text, yeah, be ready. I’m like, I’m trying to just get up for the day, and lights are still off. He sent me a picture of the track at the university. Lights are still off, first one in, last one out. Get some this text I received this morning, picture of the parking lot. It’s dark, patiently waiting for them to unlock the doors, first one in, last one to leave. Get some continuous improvement. Continuous Improvement can apply to every aspect of our lives, everything we do. We have to be careful that we don’t allow it to get so complex that it’s unmanageable. We have to keep it simple. We have to make it visual. Everything that we do, we need to be able to see, and our team needs to know how we’re doing towards our goals. And finally, we have to be fully committed to continuous improvement everything we do, our personal lives, our work lives, every department, every part of the state, and that’s where real, true, lasting transformation will take place. Thanks a lot, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please give us a review. Thank you so much.