Catherine McDonald  00:04

Usually frontline people, the people who are making the work happen every day, they weren’t involved, they weren’t included. They weren’t set up for success. And they’re the ones that drive change, and they’re the ones that need to lead on it. Frontline

Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:16

workers are really the only ones that are going to get done whatever initiative, whatever is going to happen inside any organization, making things into service organization, if they’re not engaged and knowledgeable and able to complete the mission, it’s not going to get done when you can

Sebastian McLeod  00:35

get those frontline leaders engaged, you know, and feel empowered and actually give them what they need, you know, to truly drive this that’s that’s when the magic happens.

Catherine McDonald  00:55

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your host, Shane duffenbaugh and myself. Catherine McDonald, Shane, how are you today?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:07

You know I am doing fairly well, but you see that, you see my eyes right? Because it means that this year has been flying by like I can’t believe we are already to the end of quarter one. Things are just moving in a shaken and it seems like it wasn’t just, like a couple weeks ago where there was that sluggish zone, I don’t know if that happens in your business as well, but there was like a month or two, maybe three, where it just like things were just really slow. And now sometimes I feel I wake up like my hair is on fire, but but I am doing well, and thank you for asking. Oh, it’s good,

Catherine McDonald  01:44

good. I completely get it. It’s nearly the end of q1 and I was doing some some q1 reports today, and I just couldn’t believe I had to actually start them. And then I was looking back over the last few weeks, going, What have I done? What have we done? Just, it’s just crept up, hasn’t it?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:01

Yes, yes. Yes. Certainly has. We’ve had some, we’ve had some really

Catherine McDonald  02:05

good episodes, I think, in the last quarter, on the Lean solutions podcast, and some really great guests. And today’s guest will be no different. I think I’m, I’m very interested in what our guest has to say today. And I think this is a great topic. Shane, we’re going to be talking about the role of frontline leaders, which is so important. Yeah, so super important, and something we probably don’t talk about enough. So Shane, I have a question for you to set the scene. I know you’re similar to me in the work that you do in terms of change and improvement in organizations. Have you ever come across a situation, Shane, where you’ve been in an organization, and let’s say the organization has some big initiative rolled out number of months ago, everyone has been very hyped up over it. They’ve had loads of work done, consultants in processes, mapped, SOPs, drawn up lots of change plans, and then you go in, maybe it’s been six months, and people say to you, well, we’ve done all this work and Well, nothing’s changed. Everything’s

Shayne Daughenbaugh  03:16

Yes, yes, I I have led those initiatives. I’m embarrassed to say it’s, it’s almost, it’s almost like Groundhog Day, right? Except you’re not, you’re not waking up to sunny and Cher, you’re you’re waking up to kind of dismay, and just the same old, same old, where you just like, Wait, what happened? I thought we made these changes

Catherine McDonald  03:36

exactly, exactly. And you’ve probably, you probably know them, because similar to me, I suppose you we learn from our mistakes, don’t we? And usually we know and we look back and it seems so obvious when you look back, but usually it’s not the tools we used. It’s not even, I guess, the training we put people through. It’s not the plan itself. It’s usually the fact that people, usually frontline people, the people who are making the work happen every day, they weren’t involved, they weren’t included, they weren’t set up for success. And they’re the ones that drive the change, and they’re the ones that need to lead on it. So that’s usually, in my book, anyway, that’s normally what goes wrong. I don’t know if you agree, yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  04:15

yeah. You know when, when we can now, you know, learning some of this along the way, when you can get those frontline leaders engaged, you know, and feel empowered, and actually give them what they need, you know, to truly drive this that’s that’s when the magic happens. This isn’t and I think Patrick, I attribute this to Patrick. How did he say it? Lean is lean is not an event. Lean is a practice, and empowering our frontline leaders to actually practice this, like, like doctors do they do this every day. You know, it’s that kind of practice that that’s when, that’s when those initiatives and those those great things that are done can actually stick and

Catherine McDonald  04:56

Shane, you’re going to love this. I wish I remembered who wrote this. Whoever wrote. This on LinkedIn. I think it was yesterday. This is attributed to you, but I don’t hear your name, so I’m really sorry, but they talked about that. Most people, let’s say, start off trying to be lean, using the hardware, right? The tools, the the techniques, but actually, you need to start with the software, which is not the computer software, the software, as in the soft skills, the communication systems, all of the the things we need to set up to make sure communication and information flow happens properly. And I just thought that was amazing, like, that’s just exactly it. We just start with the hardware sometimes. So today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to dive into what separates great frontline leaders from those who maybe just are going through the motions every day, and how companies can actually support frontline leaders, and why investing in them isn’t just a nice to have, it’s basically a make or break strategy for Lean success. So

Shayne Daughenbaugh  05:54

that is, that is so true. Yeah. So, so let me, let me introduce our our guest today, honored to have Sebastian McLeod, who is the Chief Executive Officer of trip NT, and he’s played a significant or a pivotal role in the company’s growth since its inception, because it actually started in his basement. He helped transform trip NT into an industrial or an industry leader recognized by Inc Magazine as one of the fastest growing businesses here in America Since 2014 as a US Army veteran Sebastian implies his expertise in organization, discipline and efficiency to streamline operations, foster Innovation and eliminate wasteful product practices. Sorry. His leadership emphasizes respect for employees, customers and product quality, while challenging his team to work smarter and solve problems effectively. Under his guidance, trip NT has cultivated a diverse global client base, offering customizable products that enhance efficiency, a a cult, a key driver. Goodness, I can’t even read a key driver in the company’s success. In recognition of his contributions, I’m very excited about this. He received the 2018 made in Missouri Leadership Award for manufacturer of the Year from the Missouri Association of Manufacturers. Sebastian, thank you so much for joining us today.

Sebastian McLeod  07:19

Oh, man, thanks for That’s That’s quite the How was a mouthful, bro, yeah, man, you’re great. But I was listening to your intro, and I pretty much before you gave before my bio, and I’m just nodding my head about what you guys are saying about frontline leaders. It’s

Catherine McDonald  07:35

excellent. Yeah. And we’re hoping Sebastian, you’ll give us more insights into that, but before, before before we get into maybe asking you some questions about Lean and improvement and all the things we normally talk about, I’m interested to know about your company trip. NT just and you know, all I know is it started in your basement. So tell us a little bit more. What is it? What do you do? And tell us as much as you can sure.

Sebastian McLeod  07:57

Well, okay, it did start in my mother’s basement 31 years ago, and it was my mom and dad that were the first two employees. But my mom was a scientist at a company called Marion. And Marion is a was owned by a guy who was a really popular guy here in Missouri. He owned the Kansas City Royals, and he was the most COVID place to work in Missouri, but as a bench level scientist there, she had a knack for organization, and she wanted to organize her lab one day, and went to back in those times, there were big, thick catalogs that you would buy supplies and write things for the lab, but there were, there was nothing there for organization that was specific to the lab. So she went home to my dad, who was kind of handy guy, and said, Hey, could you make something that looked like this? And she drew a picture for him, and he did. She took it to work. Everybody wanted one. And she thought, Oh, we could make a business out of this. And that was the genesis of the company. That’s awesome. And today, what I guess I would say, is what we do is we make unique products that help fight this organization in the lab and in healthcare. That’s sort of in a nutshell what we do. And that’s what her original products did.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  09:17

Yeah, very cool, very cool, although I still think you should, I think you should have that the tagline, we put wheels on lean.

Sebastian McLeod  09:27

Yeah, you know, one of the first things I learned was with Lean. It was like, man, you gotta, you do need to put wheels on everything. So, like our job, our office, everything’s got wheels on it. And of course, that just saves all kinds of time, right? Things change and things will change. We make about 1000 different products now, and it is all based on our knowledge. You know, fighting this organization is something that we do with our Lean expertise and. And it’s all about how we will apply what we do internally and pass that those products on to our customers, along with knowledge. We we also give classes, we do webinars, all free of charge, for scientists and healthcare workers that are trying to eliminate frustration and fight this organization in their own world.

Catherine McDonald  10:20

It’s interesting that the terminology you use Sebastian, so it’s not like, I suppose, the lean terminology we’re used to. It’s you’ve, you’ve, you’ve made the terminology your own. Is that something you’ve done intentionally?

Sebastian McLeod  10:35

Absolutely, we all grew up on lean terminology here, but when we went out into the world and started talking to started talking to our customers, it wasn’t something that they either resonated with or were able to understand right away. So we sort of backtracked a little bit and decided, you know, what is it that our customers are really frustrated about? And when we thought about that for some time it was, it was a lot about they were having a hard time finding things the, you know, they would get a new piece of equipment, or they’d get a new consumable, or a new boss, or a new space, or, you know, the list went on and on and on, and it would cause disorder and lack of flow in what they were trying to do. So they, they heard this organization. We heard 5s and continuous improvement. And we just started, you know, working with them to what they what they understood. And it’s worth, you know, it’s, it’s done great. It’s because, because it’s all a lot about communication,

Speaker 1  11:33

too, yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes it a lot easier. I think, when

Catherine McDonald  11:38

it comes to getting people just on, I’m going to say on side, but more understanding of the need for change in the first place, when we don’t start with all these terms that we expect people to just learn and know, and then it almost scares them straight away. So really, we just have to put what we want to do into and create in a shared language around it and a shared understanding. So it makes it so much easier. And Shane, I know you said the same as well before you’ve come across those situations as well, right? Yeah, yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  12:08

totally, yeah. I think that that goes, that goes a long way. But let’s, let’s dive into this, because it’s not only the shared language, but it’s also understanding the people that are going to be doing this work, right? So Sebastian, from your perspective, in your business, I’m assuming you, you know, in order to grow like you have, you actually practice what you preach. And I love the sign behind you, you know. And you mentioned when we were off call that you have those kind of, those one word things, just to make people think, you know, all over your your plant and whatnot. But from your perspective, why are frontline workers so critical to the success of Lean initiatives? And you know, how have you seen this firsthand? You know, seeing their impact firsthand?

Sebastian McLeod  12:53

Well, I, I will say, with all the experience I’ve had in my life, and that’s with various other jobs, you know, not, not many, but, but, but in general. And you could, you could say this is lane, or you could say this is anything, but frontline workers are really the only ones that are going to get done whatever initiatives, whatever is going to happen inside of any organization. They could be making things. It could be a service organization if they’re not engaged and knowledgeable and able to complete the mission, it’s not going to get done, or it’s not going to get done at a level that you know that’s going to satisfy the organization or the customer, or whoever is deciding what is going to happen, right? So it is extraordinarily critical that people on the front line who are doing the work are doing their doing their best. I mean, and here we’re looking for excellence, and we may never get there. And you know, all we can do is hope and try, but it starts, you know, whatever, whatever we’re going to do, has to be done by them. So it really can’t get any more important

Shayne Daughenbaugh  14:11

right now, I have seen, you know, in talking about this, I’ve actually worked on projects before where the frontline workers weren’t terribly keen on just the idea of change in the first place. Maybe they misunderstood what we were doing, you know. Maybe they just saw this as the flavor of the month, you know. And they were like, well, this is going to pass whatever. But once we were able to get them involved, once, once, like I came into the room not to say, Hey, this is how you do things. But hey, how could you do this differently? What are some of your ideas to make this better and involving them? They became those biggest advocates, you know, and spreading that around. Have you? Have you experienced something similar? I mean, it’s hard for me to comprehend a company that’s been involved in Lean for, you know, 31 years now, like is. There still those opportunities where those frontline workers actually step up, you know, are is everyone already at the level where you want them to be? Like, how does I’m sorry I’m throwing so many questions at you.

Sebastian McLeod  15:12

Yeah, I mean, this is a good way to just kind of get the lay of the land here, just to give you a little bit of context, like, we weren’t always, we always fought this organization, but we didn’t really understand all of the things that were involved with that. Our first formal introduction to lean was in 2014 with a company called lab conco, who’s who makes lab equipment, lab furniture, that’s fume hoods, bio safety cabinets, you know, pretty sophisticated lab things, and we were super inspired by some of the stuff that they were doing over there. They’re also in Kansas City. And we came back to our place, and we’re like, man, we’re doing this. And we shut the shop down for three days, and we started, like, making all these improvements. We were making tools more visual, and we came out of it with some beautiful stuff. And the impact was amazing. It was people that morale went up, our production went up, our efficiencies went up. It was just amazing. And then about three months later, then, and then it was like, Oh, we got a ship. We got a ship. We’re out of time. We, you know, we, we’ve got, we’re working overtime. Orders are backing up, you know, then the regular pressures of life just keep coming in and and then we say, Okay, well, we know we need another lean event. And then, you know, the one part of the organization was like, Oh, we don’t have time for that. It was like, there’s no, we can’t shut down again. This is not happening, right? And so it died, like a lot of these initiatives, died, and it died with a whimper. You know, it never really seems to go out with a bang. It just kind of just slowly fades away,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  16:48

right? Yeah, so

Sebastian McLeod  16:50

it really wasn’t it. So a few years passed by, and we, you know, it stayed in my mind. But in in 20, late 2018 I read a book called two second lean, and it sort of reignited the Lean lean for me in a in a different way. So with all those questions you asked me, Shane, you know, I don’t know which one I’m answering right now, but

Shayne Daughenbaugh  17:19

I don’t either, but I love where you’re going with

Sebastian McLeod  17:23

this. So, you know, we decided, okay, we again, we’re going after this again. We’re here’s the new initiative, people, okay, we took the risk. We did it again. And yes, of course there was, as you said, there is a lot of skepticism. Is this going to stick? But where I think we really saw what some things that we did right, and it wasn’t everything, but some of the things that we did right were we communicated very heavily. We acknowledged that we had made mistakes in the past. You know, look, we’re going to try something different here. This is not what we did last time. And in the end, you know, there were still people that just weren’t ever going to believe and and that was okay. I mean, it was our job as leaders to do our best to convince them. But, you know, in the end, we lost some people, but we did have a lot of success, and it did change things here, and very sustainably. So, so

Catherine McDonald  18:37

something you said that really interests me. Sebastian, so you talked in the past about doing Lean events. There were these shutdown you made all these improvements. And I guess, you know, I, I’m, I am assuming here, but some of the learning was that Lean is not just about events. It’s not about this kind of short term improvement. So was that part of the discussions afterwards? And what did you do based on that learning? Then, yeah,

Sebastian McLeod  19:03

that’s okay. This was probably one of the most this was one of the biggest insights myself, that I, that I I got from other people, and then it made the biggest impact on our own organization. But throughout time, what I realized, what we were doing in before 2018 was we were essentially batching our event. And that was a heavy lift. For some people. It was total disengagement. For others, the responsibility sometimes shifted. You know, there was segmented schedules that all had to be aligned. It was just like it was so much work when we had, when we were going to do one of these events. And so ultimately, what we did was we started, we changed the this is sort of metaphorically, but it’s also literally. What happened was we, we we started letting our improvements flow and interesting. We went, we went. From this, Hey, we’re going to do this every six months, kind of a thing to, hey, we’re going to do little bits every day. And and that has probably been the biggest contributor to where, how far we’ve come, and the amount of time that we’ve come, and the way that we our organization, has just changed as a whole. And I don’t mean like the performance, I mean like the culture. I mean the kind of people that stayed and the kind of people that come it is for different reasons than it used to be.

Catherine McDonald  20:33

I love that. I love that going from batching improvement to letting improvements flow like Shane, I bet you’re writing that down there.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  20:40

As a matter of fact,

Catherine McDonald  20:43

all you can see is the top machines, head just writing, and that’s amazing that I love that. So that was massive learning. And was that a case of, how did you do that? How did you do that? Learning? Was it as a group? Did you bring in your frontline leaders? Was it conversations? Was it team meetings? Was it one to ones? How did you What were your forums for, for because this is really important. This is the part that most people don’t do. They just, let’s say, fail and stop. So how did you go about that learning piece with your frontline leaders? So

Sebastian McLeod  21:14

it all started with me reading the book two second lean. And I read this book. I got it from a company in St Louis when we actually collected that award that you, that you mentioned in the opening, that I had totally forgotten about. But what the most memorable thing from that trip was I met a company like the little mixer before you go out, you know, before the event starts. And he’s like, Oh, we read this book, and it’s so awesome. And I’m thinking, Hey, man, I’m collecting this award, dude. Like, I’m the one. I’m, I’m like, you know, the top whatever, you know, which was totally stupid, you know, I was, I was never really here again, you know, I was just thinking, I didn’t really take it that seriously. So he, he actually gave me the book. I don’t even know why it was there, and I threw in the back of my car on the way back to Kansas City. And I was six months later, I was driving up to see my daughter in college, about three hour drive, and I got this book, and I said, you know, I want to read this book. And I downloaded it real quick and I listened to it on the way up there. But the book, two second lean by Paul acres, it what? Basically, when you ask me the question, how did we do it? It started with this framework that he laid out and in the framework is basically, you’re going to build into your day different segments of the day that you’re going to do things now, he doesn’t. There’s no times involved or what you’re going to do, but it’s basically, you’re going to start the day off at the morning meeting, and you’re going to learn you’re you’re going to include everybody. You’re going to start removing any obstacle that would keep somebody from wanting to do their best work. Okay, so what’s going on in the company? What were sales, or some metrics that are, you know, important to the company? What are the other parts of the organization doing, you know? And these are things that people, you know, when they’re detached, or in there some other part of the company that, like, they don’t know what’s going on, sales, you know. And then next thing you know, a piece of machinery shows up, okay? And they’re like, Well, why do we spend the money on that? You know? And you know, nobody really knows what’s going on, and you’re wasting all this, you know, bandwidth thinking about things that aren’t driving value to what you’re doing in your job. And you know, what they didn’t know was that, well, sales got a new customer who’s got this great new opportunity, and we’re going to make these widgets for them, and it’s going to be drive value of the company. So there’s all this, the noise that goes on inside an organization that doesn’t drive value. So the morning meeting really brings people in together and helps start off. But from there, it’s all about, okay, where, where are we going to drive value to the company and for us, you know? And I’m going to say this is, this is, I’m going to say a lot of people are like this. I’m going out on a limb, but I mean, mutual, it was definitely true with us. But we didn’t have five minutes, we didn’t have five minutes to have morning meeting. We didn’t have five minutes to clean the shop. We didn’t have any time because we’re already working overtime. We’re already the phones ringing off the hook. Customers are not happy. You know, there’s returns, there’s things that are happening, and it’s like, there’s never time. You’ve never have time to, like, get ahead of this thing. So what we did was we forced five minutes, okay? And that was really uncomfortable. It was really uncomfortable for the leadership of this company, which, at the time, I wasn’t in a leader. I wasn’t, I wasn’t leading this company, but it was hard, but it took some trust, and we found five minutes, yeah, and after five. We found five more, and within two weeks, we had 15. And then it’s like, okay, hey, why don’t we clean the Shop Now we’ve got, how about just for five minutes? We’re going to get as cleans we can in five minutes. And so what happened is, over time, things improved better. Things got better and better, and we started not working overtime, and the shop was clean, and this is over the course of four years. Okay, so, but today, today, we don’t work for the first 85 minutes of the day, and those first 85 minutes of the day are spent with our morning meeting with some sort of a learning, okay, some sort of knowledge. And this is also super important for frontline workers, and we can talk about that in a minute. I know I’m starting to talk too long, probably, but there’s a learning. There has to be new knowledge. If the new knowledge stops, then stagnation will set it so there should always be an element of new knowledge, whether that’s from a book or learning on the web or going to visit another company or having other companies visit you. There should this just should flow also. So there’s new knowledge, and then there’s, we clean together. Okay? We clean this facility together. I clean everybody cleans. It doesn’t matter who you are. We’re all equals when it comes to this, in my bio, you know, you might as I clean the bathrooms. This is kind of one of Paul’s things from the author of two second lean, like you got to get in there and show a man that you’re like, you’re not any better, that, you know, the bathroom is like the great equalizer. You know, we all saying, we all need to use it. It should be clean, we need to respect each other. So, yeah, that’s, yeah,

Catherine McDonald  26:53

that’s amazing. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, sometimes I talk about, like, in terms of creating spaces so for learning and reflection, and it’s stepping back from the Do, do, do, to just think, think critically, um, prompt one another to, as you said, come up with new ideas, new information. And when we’re not used to that, it definitely takes time, but it’s there it, we just need to draw it out. So I love that. That’s,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  27:20

right, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s awesome to to your, you know, your personal example of, hey, we just tried to carve out five minutes, or, you said, forced. We forced five minutes, and then we found five more minutes, and then we found five more minutes, and now, you know, four years later, from there, we were able to have 85 minutes that you you know, I’m sure that when you first thought of this, you were like, there’s no way in the world. We can’t even figure five. Never find Never mind 85 so that’s thank you so much for sharing that example for I’m hoping that that it inspires some, you know, to just just that five minutes, or two minutes, you know, or whatever it is, to carve out that that space to start being intentional about. We can at least do this little bit. And is it going to make a difference? I don’t know, but I believe, I do believe, in the compound interest of lean, you know, by I’m going to invest this little bit here, and then it’s going to give me a little bit more. And if I put that back into, you know, then it goes from five minutes to 10 minutes to 15 to, you know, however long spacing it out, but I want, I want to you mentioned the frontline workers, and I want to kind of go into that just a little bit deeper. What, what do you see from your experience? What are some key characteristics that separate truly effective frontline, you know, leaders from those who just simply manage daily operations, because the reality is, as as you pointed out, that we have limited time and resource. So not that I want to exclude anyone, but it, it also is, you know, what, where can, who can I invest in to get the biggest bang for my buck. And what are the characteristics of those people that you have seen that maybe they even started with, you know, their arms crossed, like this isn’t going to work, but you saw something in them, characteristics in these people that you said, if I invest in them, if I pull them on board, I know that we’re going to be able to move forward with this. What would you say are some of those characteristics.

Sebastian McLeod  29:21

So there’s the a couple that have stood out in the past from my experience of people who didn’t make it and people who did and thrived. And there’s the first one is if you if you can see a genuine caring inside, inside of a person. And I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to say that they already are proficient at at their craft, okay, if someone, if they actually care about people. And the reason why that’s important, I think, is that I. If you’re going to lead somebody who’s going to be on the front line doing work, you have to understand who they are and what they want, you know, almost in their life, and it’s it’s a leader’s job to then help put this job in the framework of how you’re going to help them get that. It could be the money, it could be opportunity, it could be a stepping stone to say, hey, you know, I’m doing this until I get a job at Boeing or something. It doesn’t really matter. But what matters is that they’re there, they’re in front of you, and they’re on your team, and you have an objective with these people. So if they care about people, then one of two things will happen. One is they will find a way to creatively adapt how this job is going to help them get what they want, or they’re going to be able to identify and help them get out of that team in a way that’s respectful and, you know, with dignity onto some place that is more in alignment with what they want to do with their right. Because if it’s not there, then, then there’s really no in the leader. Good leader can sense that then, then the lead, then they have to find they have to get something else that they need, so the good leader can get them out. So that’s, that’s one thing that’s huge, yeah, the second thing is that I just went blank. I came I but maybe it’ll come back to me in a minute.

Catherine McDonald  31:46

Well, just I have a question, and just it might prompt more thinking. So I, you know, I see that as well. I see the importance of a person just being a genuine, good, ethical person who cares about other people, cares about the business, wants to do the right thing, they’re willing to do the job. They’re willing to learn all of that. There’s another side to it as well. I think when it comes to having the right people, let’s say driving change, because not everybody is a change driver. A lot of people come in and just do their work. They don’t really, let’s say, when it comes to leadership, they don’t, maybe have that leadership bone in them, you know. And I see that, and that’s okay. We don’t need everybody to be a leader, but at the same time, you can’t do all the work. Sebastian, so you can’t be the one to come up with all the ideas. And you know, you don’t want to be telling frontline leaders what to do. You want them to come up with the ideas, and you want them to see what’s needed and work with their teams to drive the change, but obviously not jump ahead of their team. So there’s a real skill there, I think, in terms of working just with people, working in partnership with people, almost the ability to put on and off the leadership hat, that’s what I see the best frontline leaders are able to do. They just know when to step up and they know when to step back.

Sebastian McLeod  33:00

Yeah, I would agree. And I think a good chunk of that comes from knowing what they want and who they are. The second thing, I guess, I would say, and I think it’s in alignment with what you’re saying, is the people that survived here through the changes, was the ones that asked a lot of questions and were genuinely curious, yeah, and because, because, no, nobody has all the answers. And I think that anybody tells you they do, unfortunately, it’s just probably trying to sell you something that maybe, maybe you want, maybe you don’t, I don’t know.

Catherine McDonald  33:33

We don’t want people to think they were all the answers, because, actually, we want them to work with the team to come up with the best answer. So we don’t want somebody who can come in and say, I can do it all. I have.

Sebastian McLeod  33:46

Those people didn’t make it. And it’s not to say again, this is not, this is not a ding on them. This is not a thing on anybody. This is about, you know, you this is about getting closer to excellence and doing what you’re doing today, not what someone else wants to do or for or whatever, but but the frontline leaders that have made it. And you know, those are the two characteristics that I, I saw that they they showed they were genuinely curious about, hey, how does this work? How will we get better? How did you accomplish this? And then the ones that cared about the people who they were leading. So yeah, so

Catherine McDonald  34:28

we know we Okay, so people can have some caring ability in them, they can have some curiosity. And there’s lots of other leadership skills in there that we know people need, right? What then, is the role of more senior leaders, or our managers, senior managers, in terms of developing front line leaders to develop these skills? So how do we improve and develop people as as we go on the job, month on month, year on year? What? What do you think Sebastian is the best way to do that?

Sebastian McLeod  35:01

Yeah. Well, okay, that’s a really good question, Catherine, and I can tell you the way that we approach it here, and we have had quite a bit of success. And again, it’s not perfect, but we’re always, you know, we’re in the same boat as everyone else, but we also bake in time to improve our leadership skills. This is something that has to be done on a study pace. It’s got a flow. There has to be new information that’s coming in. So we, we are at my level, at the ownership company, there’s six people that report to me. We’re always reading a book. We’re always reading a leadership book. So once a week, we’re bringing in new information this way, their teams, then are also doing different types of leadership activities at least once a week. So there’s always new knowledge. And when it comes to leadership and be an effective leader, it’s not just leadership skills, but there’s all these peripheral skills that also make a difference, like communication. You know, communication isn’t necessarily a leadership skill, but a leadership but a leader has to have good communication, because, you know, if you realize in any organization, you’re basically selling a vision to build goods somewhere down the line, and that that that sale has to be, you have to be persuasive all the way down to the frontline workers it, because if they don’t buy it for whatever reason, and this is and by the way, the last stop is your frontline leader. Okay, so if he can’t sell this, if he doesn’t believe in it, if he doesn’t understand it, if he doesn’t have good communication skills, it’s not going to happen. So what? What we do? Because we’ve learned, you know, many, many times when initiatives don’t work. Everything Is Everything is working great. Everything is like seems to be going Perfect, all the way up until the time when it doesn’t work, okay? And when we start backtracking, why did it, why did it not work? And saying, Well, what happened with the frontline workers that were like that? They weren’t able to, you know, accomplish this mission or achieve some objective, and it’s because, generally, there was some piece that wasn’t communicated. Maybe they thought in the past that they thought their boss was just in it for a promotion. You know, they didn’t trust somebody. And it only takes one break in that chain for for the objective to not fail or the improvement to not happen. So it’s, it’s super important, and this is one of the things we do with 85 minutes a day is that we we bake in that time to say, Okay, this is when we’re going to learn about leadership. We’re going to talk about, we always talk about what we call key moments. Everybody’s going to have a key moment. Something’s going to happen right in front of you, and you’re not going to know what to say. You’re not going to know what to do. And the only way you’re going to get better at that is, if you go back, you know, bring it upstream, you know, push the pause button and learn and go back and take care of it. So we provide those opportunities.

Catherine McDonald  38:10

That’s brilliant. That’s it’s almost like peer coaching, as in, you’re in a room, you’re discussing something, a concept, maybe the book is prompting you to talk about it, but you’re sharing the learning and asking each other questions. And I just think that’s amazing. I’ve worked with companies before who had book clubs, but they were voluntary, and I actually think that your, I suppose, way of going about this with your morning minutes, where you just bring it in and it’s just as standard, is probably a much better idea, because if it’s voluntary, people are just gonna say no, right? And you’re just sort of keep trying to draw them in. But this is just the way we do things, the way we learn. I just think that’s brilliant. I love that it’s, it’s micro learning every single day or a week, or however often you do it,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  38:53

right, right? What I, what I loved about what you said, Sebastian, is, rather than giving us, Hey, do this, this, this and this. You taught us how to plant the garden. You said, Hey, this is we’re cultivating this so that we can better develop our frontline leaders, but we have to be developed first, because leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Leadership isn’t just about you know me, leadership is how I work with those that are following me, right? That’s really it’s got to be about that it’s not just for my own value. It’s actually for the value of those that are on my team. And what you just described, all those things you just described, were not specific things that immediately touch into that team. It is, hey, just get yourself primed and ready for those opportunities that come about. Rather than, here’s this, here’s the prescription, you know, to do it. Hey, here’s the tools to cultivate this ground so that you can leave those up. I and I. Love, Love that that was as I was listening to I was like, Holy crap. He’s not giving us like, Hey, do this, this and this. Like, that was the question we asked. But you answered it actually a little bit better than what if it would have just been, hey, do this, this and this.

Catherine McDonald  40:14

Still, though there’s another part to this that I wonder about. So every you might have, how many frontline leaders? Would you have Sebastian roughly about

Sebastian McLeod  40:23

four. Well, four in production. So, I mean, I guess I look at frontline with production, but I’d say probably five. Okay, let’s

Catherine McDonald  40:32

say we have four or five frontline leaders. We know that everybody has individual development needs, right? Well, that’s in most companies, not everybody’s the same. So how do you tackle that part? If, if one of your frontline leaders maybe is a little bit disorganized and needs to improve their time management and organization and just personal management systems, another one maybe needs to get better at communicating, at coaching their team, how do you what’s your approach to developing individuals. Then, if the other is your approach as a team, what would you do then, on a maybe a torn basis?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  41:09

Well, I’m glad you’re answering that and not me.

Sebastian McLeod  41:12

I will tell you. You know, we we do a tiered I don’t know it’s not, I guess, leadership, but really, generally speaking, there’s no one person that has any more than like, six direct reports. So there is at every level, someone is getting some sort of new learning and coaching at at, you know, either level up or level or level down, and, you know, I guess the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know personally how they do it, how a leader would do it at a different level, other than myself. So because I’m not in those meetings, but I can answer personally myself, and that’s that as the leader of the team of the people that I’m on, it’s my responsibility to understand how I can best help my my team. Come on now, and that’s, you know, when I see a gap, or when I have a one on one with somebody, or I see somebody’s performance, who’s who’s lacking in a certain area, I feel like it’s on me to say, Hey, how can we help you? Looks like you’re struggling with this. Like, you know, how are we going to address that? Or do you want to address that? You know, a lot of times by the time you get into a leadership position here, because we’re all, we all have been promoted from internal internally, except for one person they you know, we understand how it’s okay at the stage we’re in today, it’s okay to have to say you have a shortcoming. But a lot of times, I mean, tell me again, I promise you that’s not that was an easy place to get they had to people, had to witness someone screwing up real bad, and then seeing, checking people’s reactions. And that had to happen over time before, I’m talking, you know, a few years before, you know, a lot of folks would say, Okay, I’m not going to get destroyed for this, or I can take a risk doing this and fail, right, right? So, you know, to answer your question, I think it is up to the to the leader and how effective they can be to understand how their team is doing and where they need to step in and try to offer support. I

Shayne Daughenbaugh  43:29

mean, one of the things, one of the things you said earlier that I wrote down is, and it kind of ties into that is giving space to Hey, what are the obstacles that are that are keeping you from doing your best? Yeah, exactly. You know, in that sounds like kind of what you’re saying as a leader. Hey, Shane, what are some of the obstacles that keep you doing your best? Because we see these. Like, do you see these as well? You know? What can we do to help that’s that’s some pretty that’s great. That’s great. Now we are just about out of time. But I do have one more question for you, for our audience, for a listening audience here, companies that are looking to, you know, build that culture that you’re you’re talking about, that that took years, and thank you for saying that multiple times. This isn’t just something you can inject in there and suddenly, like steroids. You know, you’re you’re lifting cars. No, this is something that has taken years, but it’s not without results along the way, right? Like it didn’t. It’s not that now you’ve arrived, but you’ve had those things a long way. So companies that are looking to build a company a culture of this continuous improvement. What advice would you have on, maybe identifying and training or retaining even you know some of these high impact frontline leaders. You know, what can companies do?

Sebastian McLeod  44:53

Well, okay, I can

Shayne Daughenbaugh  44:58

tell you what we do. I. That’s, that’s, I like this.

Sebastian McLeod  45:03

We are. We look hard. You know, if you look at lean and you’ve got the two pillars, continuous improvement and respect for people, right? That’s the simplest form that I can talk about it in. And if you take that respect for people. Piece very seriously. And if you realize, if you realize, if you believe, that the performance of your company is directly dependent on the performance of your people, then what you can do, and what we do, is do your best as a leader, to create the conditions inside of your company that are going to get the best out of people. And what that generally looks like is people need, you know, these are from studies. This isn’t for me, but a sense of belonging. Okay, an organization, if they have a friend at work, they’re probably going to stay. They’re probably going to do better if they sense that there’s opportunity to grow. Could be laterally, could be vertically, could make more money, whatever that opportunity is. This is something. This is a condition that a great place will have to work where a frontline leader or any employee is going to want to do their best, right? Do? Are they getting challenged? There has to be an element of challenge inside, because if there’s no challenge, there can be no achievement, and without that achievement, this is the thing where they get to go home, sit in front of their families, fully engaged, but with the homework and the dinners and whatever, feeling good about what they did during the day, ready to wake up in the morning and drive to work and be tapping their finger on the steering wheel. You know it’s like so you know when it comes to retention or keeping your front line workers, creating the conditions that are going to get the best out of them as a human. Thank

Shayne Daughenbaugh  47:02

you. Thank you. Guess what we do? Yeah, as a human, not as a resource, right? Not as a cog. As a human,

Sebastian McLeod  47:09

they will learn they are natural problem solvers. You know, if they understand the mission and they’re in the right condition, you will start to get the results that you’re looking for. And I want to say this, and I know you didn’t ask me, but it has to go with the compounding effect of, you know, basically chipping away little bitty things over time. It’s the, this is the it’s the sum of all these improvements from all these different people. You know, when we couldn’t find five minutes. Now we have 85 minutes. This is the only reason this the compounding effect is the only reason we had the time to do these things. We reinvested it back into how do we make it a better place to work? How do we have fewer customer service issues? How do we, you know, yada yada yada. But in the end, what’s happened is our revenue per person per year has gone up 33% and we’re working 85 minutes less a day. Okay, so think about that for just, come on now that’s like, I mean, that’s the hard, cold data, and we have that, you know? I mean, it’s real. It’s not something that we just made up. And our lead times went from six weeks down to about two days, and they’re continuing to go down. You know, there’s really no end in sight, you know, we’ll, we’ll continue to do better and better. So it’s not, I guess I hope, to some expense, to some extent, I could help inspire some of your listeners like, this is real. This. This has happened. It’s happened for us, and we’re willing to share anything that we have at zero charge. We don’t, you know, we do tours. We do special tours, we do quarterly tours that are on our website. I would love it if you guys came down the next time you’re in Kansas City. Encourage anybody who wants to come drop by or send me an email like, I’m happy to help. Our whole team is happy to help we, because, you know what, we have the time now, okay,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  49:09

right? Love it.

Catherine McDonald  49:11

I think this is, this has been one of the most practical sessions podcast episodes that we’ve had, and I think that’s really inspiring for people to get these real, I suppose, the real nitty gritty of how you have done what you’ve done, I think you’ve laid that out really, really well, Sebastian, and I hope, and I know that so many people will benefit from having heard your story and Shane or Sebastian, before Shane, we wrap up Sebastian, just, are you on LinkedIn? Or where can people reach you? Or how can they reach you? So

Sebastian McLeod  49:45

I’m on LinkedIn. My Sebastian McLeod. I’m also at Seb, S, E, B, at trip N t.com our websites, trip N t.com with two P’s, and we have you can sign up for tours there if you like, or you can just send. Us a message, and, you know, we’ll always get back. We also, we give, you know, free classes, free webinars, you know. And we’re really, you know, we’re here to help. We’re here to make the world better place. I mean, we’re after a better tomorrow. We think you deserve one. So that’s amazing.

Catherine McDonald  50:18

It’s just excellent. Shane, before we finish up, have you any last words? Not

Shayne Daughenbaugh  50:23

anything other than we’ll we’ll make sure. We’ll put those things you just mentioned, Sebastian, in the show notes, so that people can can find them. So if you’re interested in Hey, where is this? Just check the show notes, and you can click on that and get straight to it. So

Catherine McDonald  50:37

awesome. So time to wrap up, Sebastian. Thank you so much for an excellent conversation. Some really great tips, and I really enjoyed that chain. I know you did too. So everybody else, thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoyed the show, and we will see you soon. Bye for now. Have a great day. You.