Andy Olrich  00:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Lean Solutions Podcast. I’m your host today, Andy Ulrich. It’s my absolute pleasure to be joining you today. We were supposed to have the wonderful Shane on, but we’ll, we’ll talk on that. Shane sends his apologies, but don’t worry, he’ll be back real soon. Exciting topic today. So, we’ve got one of our returning guests. This guy has been on every sea, every series, every season. I get my words right. Adam Lawrence, and we’re going to be talking about how we strengthen the sustainability of our improvements, so not just sustaining, but how we really make that more robust. So, for those of you who may not have heard Adam or seen him on the podcast before. Adam is the creator of the wheel of sustainability, and we refer to him as the Kaizen Ninja as well. So he is the recognized expert in applying the Kaizen methodology and continuous improvement principles to real world business challenges, and he’s the founder of Process Improvement Partners LLC, and he just goes all over the place, partnering with leaders and teams, manufacturing, distribution service, government, you name it, and really helps lead them through sustainable breakthrough initiatives. So he does lots of coaching, hands on. You’ll get to know a bit more about him, but if not, go back in the reels, and you’ll see some of his previous episodes. Adam, welcome back, mate. How you going?

Adam Lawrence  01:24

Great, Andy, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. And can’t wait to dive into the topic with you today.

Andy Olrich  01:30

Oh yeah, so bit of fun. It did take us a little bit to get here, didn’t it, mate? We had some.. I’m in Australia, and it’s tomorrow, the seventh of May, but Adam and I were playing around with our tech, so we’ve done some real in-the-moment PDCA and Kaizen activity, so we’ve got you on, and unfortunately, as I said, we’ve lost Shane. Shane’s a little bit unwell, but he will be back. So, Adam, what, what have you been up

Andy Olrich  01:59

to, mate?

Adam Lawrence  02:00

Yeah, well, thanks, Andy. So I am your Kaizen ninja. I do call myself that, and so I have been having the opportunity this year to expand some of my offerings, but also help a bunch of really cool clients solve some critical real-world problems during week or less events. So many of the folks are very familiar with guys and events, and you know those of us that have done many of them, we should never be surprised by the breakthroughs that people come up with, but I continue to be surprised by that, and this is what keeps me going. I’ve been doing this 38 years now, and never ceases to amaze me what people are able to come up with when we give them the opportunity.

Andy Olrich  02:42

Yes, extensive experience, and that’s what we love about having people like yourself on those breakthrough events. But yeah, what do we, what do we do with them? And then not only how do we lock that in and make it consistent and stay around, but yeah, we’re diving in today to how we can actually strengthen that and go on to do more great things, and so we’re going to, I’m going to pick into your mind today, Adam, and you’ve got a lot of lessons learned, and you see a lot of stuff, so really about, you know, helping people try and stop that all that excitement disappearing, because it all kind of fell away, and we’re back again, and even to the point where they say, oh, that Kaizen, that lean stuff that doesn’t work. Yeah, we’ll just get on and just, we’ll just, just do better. So, thanks for being on again, mate. I’m going to dive into a question here. So, you, with a bit of a lead in, sorry, so you wrote the book and created the wheel of sustainability. Just give us a quick introduction for those who haven’t been there before, a bit of a reminder. Why did you create this? What was the problem you’re trying to solve?

Adam Lawrence  03:47

All right. Well, great question. First of all, sustainability is a leadership process, and the problem I was trying to solve was I was helping teams solve these amazing problems in their factories. Typically, I started out manufacturing, and what I was noticing was a few months later the same problem was resurfacing, so that really bothered me. So one day in the late 90s, so I’m dating myself, but it’s too late for me. Save yourselves, everybody else. I was with a team at the largest ceiling tile plant in the world, in Macon, Georgia, and we were fixing problems that were bugging them for years, and they were excited. First day, we already had made some breakthroughs. Line was running better than anybody remembered it. So, at the end of the day, I noticed that leaders had never shown up to see what we were doing. So, I went to my sponsor’s office, or who I thought was my sponsor. He was gone, so I said, “All right, I’ll catch him tomorrow. Day two, things are going even better, and crew members are excited. We had just a team of operators, mechanics, and one supervisor, and still nobody shows up at the line to see what we’re doing, but crew crews from other lines are coming over. What? You doing when can you come to our line, so everybody’s excited, but nobody from the leadership teams there, and it made no sense to me. So end of the day, I go to the sponsor office, and he’s not there. He went to see his kids’ baseball game, or something like that, or play golf – I can’t remember what it was. I can still picture it. So I was a little disappointed, but third day I said, all right, I’m not waiting till the end of the day, I’m gonna go visit at our morning break. So we had been working for about three hours, we took a break finally, and I go to his office, and he happens to be there, so I’m a young engineer and not the most polished, and I said, hey, man, your team’s doing a great job, really appreciate the opportunity, and I said, but you know, it’d be really great if you’d come out to the line, show how committed you are to what they’re doing. And at that very moment, he looks me in the eye and says, if you’re questioning my commitment, you can question it back at corporate, and I was like, oh, okay. So I walked out very quietly, pretty upset, tried not to show my.. I was angry, you know. Respectfully, I was very angry, not at me, but at him. And, but, you know, which, of course, wasn’t the right answer. But I did not show my anger to him, and I just went out and tried to have a brave face for the team and keep going, right? So, later in the day, you know, we’re still doing awesome stuff. All of a sudden, people start to show up. Coincidence, I don’t know, but we started to get more interaction, and so on. So it took me a number of months to realize that that was not his fault, that was my fault. So, what I hadn’t done, and what leads to the wheel of sustainability, is I never created the image or the expectation of what what good looks like from leadership and sponsorship, support, and participation, and engagement. So many years later, I actually put this system together that eventually got called the wheel of sustainability, and it is mainly a leadership process leading up to the Kaizen event, or the continuous improvement effort, but during the event we actually put all the elements of the wheel into the change, so that it can sustain, so we’re preparing leadership, and then we’re utilizing it, and we’re putting the whole package together, so they know exactly what is expected of them before, during, and after any effort.

Andy Olrich  07:27

I just did like to jump in there, so as when listening to that story, the immediate reaction or emotion was anger, and I guess a lot of people listening here, and, and even I was in the moment going here that leaders, yeah, gosh, I don’t want to work for that person, but then there’s that wrap around where you’ve gone, well, hang on, actually, did I prepare, did I have something in place, or I’ve just launched in amongst all the busy pieces, and they’ve, yeah, they’re sponsoring, you’ve got my support, but is that all you need from me, so we don’t make it clear, so what in that situation? So, so let’s talk about, so we’re engaged, and we’ve got the leadership, the proper leadership buy-in, and support, visible felt leadership, as they call it. We go in and do the Kaizen event. What about? Okay, so let’s, let’s flip that now. So we’ve got this amazing sponsor, you’re kind of saying to them, look, you don’t need to come out here every 10 minutes, mate, like it’s fine, we’ll come and give you those regular updates. So that’s gone really well post Kaizen or Rapid Improvement event, whatever you like to call them, around the place for those listening. What’s the after Kaizen thing? What is that wheel of sustainability that you’ve created? What’s the key part of that that helps sustain after all of that fun and magic and rapid breakthrough has happened?

Adam Lawrence  08:50

So I’m going to be like a politician and change your question just a little bit. Don’t hate me for this, because preparation is really the key here. Preparation of we’re going to charter this event, we’re going to be very clear on the problem we’re trying to solve. We’re going to be very clear on the objectives of the of the effort, so the chartering of process help happens typically in my process four to six weeks before. Done with sponsor and then leader. The leader is actually chosen after the team is chosen. The lead, the team, the critical team is step three of my four step chartering process. I call it charting the win. The fourth step is who owns the output, that’s the leader. Okay, so that’s the before. Now, what I do then with the leadership and the sponsorship is the wheel are the elements that we’re going to place around whatever changes we make. So, there are nine elements, the middle element being leadership commitment and visible leadership commitment. So, what does that mean? I actually have standard work for all of this, believe it or not, because it’s just me at the at the moment, so I can’t remember everything. But what does the first day kickoff by sponsor look like? And there are three elements. It’s so simple, and they can say it any way they want. They don’t need slides there. Hey, thanks for being here. Whatever you want to do, this is important. So, nothing else besides your family and your safety is more important than what we do this week. And the third is, whatever you want to do, it’s already approved. We have a charter. The charter says go get it. If we already knew the answer, we would have done it. So that come to the team dinner, come to check-ins, come to the report. They don’t do all of that, but we set that up ahead of time. Here’s all the things I need from you now. Following, which was your real question, we’re going to put in audits, we’re going to put in visuals, we’re going to put in standards, we’re going to put in recognition, we’re going to put in accountability, we’re going to put in all these elements. You’re going to make sure they’re actually working and happening on a daily basis. Okay, so from a leadership standpoint, we’re going to put in a three to five minute audit. You’re going to participate weekly, monthly, whatever, or you’re going to make sure that the proper people have participated. When you take your daily walk, your Gemba walk, you’re going to make sure the audit actually happened, and you’re going to engage with people. So I have this conversation ahead of time. Here’s the message we’re going to give for the thing. Here’s the training we’re going to create. Here are the visuals we’re going to have. Here are the tools we’re going to share. Here are the benefits of the work. Here’s the audit. Here’s this. Here’s that. You leader, you don’t have to do all of it. You just have to make sure it’s happening. You’re supporting it. You’re breaking down the barriers that are keeping it from happening, because without it, that’s when things fade away. Okay, so all that discussion is had four to six weeks before the Kaiser. Now it’s no surprise if you’re going to hire me, you, if you don’t agree to this, there ain’t no way I’m hiring you, right? And even their best of intentions, they may not be able to do these things, but at least we got to try. I

Andy Olrich  12:00

was just going to say, at that, yeah, you, you know, a lot of cases, knowing what you know, after 38 years, you probably might step out yourself and say, look, I don’t, yeah, we’re not going to follow what’s what’s going to help set us up strong for the longer term, I’ve, you know, what, I might have to play elsewhere, because I don’t, kind of don’t want to be connected with it, and plus, when you walk out and you see the passionate teams and they’re trying to solve their problems, if you don’t feel you’ve got that leadership, you, you can’t kind of, can’t lie to them and just go, yeah, no, this will be fine, they’ll come round, they’ll come round when you know it’s a key failure mode of any of these sorts of improvements is if the leader is not present and the sponsor doesn’t turn up and follow through, or just just check in and make sure that, hey, we missed that meeting, we will not do that again, because we spent that time. I do find, how do you question that sort of comes out of that for me is, if you have the need, or you identify the need for a Kaizen event lock away for five days, and we’re going to make some breakthrough. How do you navigate and negotiate with a leader that says no? Well, we traditionally do half a day a week over x amount of time, right? Sure. What’s that point for you with the in relation to the wheel, for example, where you would say, well, no, we have to, we have to spend five days in a row in that space right now, or I don’t really mind. We can spread this out over 12 weeks if you like. There’s that rub around how taking them off the floor off the day to day, especially if they’re in crisis. Yeah, do you have a hard point where you say it must be in a row, or we can split this out.

Adam Lawrence  13:42

Okay, so think about it. The issue with splitting it out, and I’ve done both.

Andy Olrich  13:46

Yeah,

Adam Lawrence  13:46

so, and I will tell you, not in the last eight years have I done both. Okay.

Andy Olrich  13:52

Okay.

Adam Lawrence  13:52

So, what I’ve realized is it’s it’s like what you call multitasking. We know it has proven that multitasking is actually less productive, so if you say I’m going to do four hours every week, okay? Of those four hours, how many of those hours are you actually on the new task, and how many of those hours are you ramping up to do it and catching back up, and then closing out? I would tell you, rule of thumb, 40% is lost of those four hours at least to get people back up to speed, or somebody’s on vacation, or so on. So this is the true test of commitment. Now, Andy, what I’ve done is every charter, unless it’s a pure safety kaizen, which a few have been, have a direct correlatable financial value that has already been measured. I’m an old IE, 38 years, you can tell what’s a person worth, what’s labor worth, what’s downtime worth, what’s a scrap worth. You can figure that. You can get really close, so I know that’s going to sound a little self-serving. That the average value of every Kaizen event I’ve done over the past 38 years is about $1.2 million in savings.

Andy Olrich  15:12

Yeah,

Adam Lawrence  15:13

okay. How do I know that? Yeah, prove me wrong. We’ve had some $10 million ones, we’ve had some $200,000 ones. Now let’s go back to your earlier question, a little bit. We’re going to make the process safer, simpler, and less stressful, which is going to drop to the bottom line beautifully. If I’m a leader, do I really want to be the leader that allows the process to go back to the less safe way of operating, so 38 years of doing this, I can say those. Are you really willing to put your people at the original risk they were at when we have just proven that we’ve just reduced safety risk by 92% Are you willing to do that? If you’re willing to do that, we probably shouldn’t be working together anyway, right?

Andy Olrich  16:04

Yeah,

Adam Lawrence  16:05

because that is not sustainable leadership, that is not what you called felt leadership, that is not true north leadership, right? Whatever the name is, you want to place with it. So, if nothing else, it’s hard to argue the safety topic, financials, you may not believe my numbers. That’s fine. Let’s just get orders of magnitude close. But do you like saving money? Do you like getting it to the customer faster? Do you like making a safer environment for your employees? If you like that, then why wouldn’t you want to sustain that? And if we give you a system to sustain it, that’s really not hard. Now that’s easy for me to say. I wrote the book on it, but that’s just from 27 out of 38 years of screwing up and trying to learn from what I screwed up to put the system in to stop screwing up so much. I still make boo boos, of course I do, and we don’t always get every element perfect, but at least we gave it a shot, which gives them a much better opportunity than if they had done nothing.

Andy Olrich  17:07

I love that authenticity about you, Adam, and, and I either intentionally or accidentally say something similar to, and look, trust me, because I have screwed this up before, or I’ve had, I’ve been in that position, don’t do what I did, and here’s the inverse, right? So, I think that that that’s really great. How you’ve said that is, and again, that that sharpening of the saw that comes to mind, you’re giving your.. we don’t just.. it’s Friday, can you be here Monday and run a five day Kaizen event? If we want this to sustain, we need to get to work early, and for me, all those things are around effective change management. You’re not just the technical side, but the people side. You’re preparing the group, you’re making sure that, yeah, this is the right thing that we should care about. As they say, I think that’s terrific, and I just can’t thank you enough for bringing up that and being okay to say that four to six weeks out, like that’s the deal, right? That is, we need to do this, because if we don’t, if we rush this and we just fire off, you’re not going to get it, or you’re going to go back, as you said, Who wants to be that leader? So I think

Adam Lawrence  18:17

one thing I would add to that, so my joke has always been, hey, you want me to do a Kaizen, I can do it in an hour. You’re not ready, you’re not ready. So, and then they look at me like, what? Well, first of all, How do you know who your team is? How do you know the problem you want to solve? How do you know the scope and the what’s in scope and what’s out of scope? And how do you know the value of it? And how do you know Joe’s not on vacation, or Sarah, or whoever. I mean, all that takes some time.

Andy Olrich  18:45

Yeah,

Adam Lawrence  18:46

so what I want to do is I want to set them up to win. So the first thing to do that is to get leadership ready to have them be able to win, and then the rest of it is just pure in the moment craziness and chaos and brilliance of Kaizen, which is just mind blowing to me every time.

Andy Olrich  19:03

Yeah, yeah, so true. Yeah, I’m ready. I can do this anytime, but you’re not ready. That’s, and yeah, sometimes people feel not that you’re hacking on them, but it’s just, well, I’ve got to spend the money this month, or those sorts of things pop out as well. I want to get this done before the end of financial year. Okay, we can work, try and work with that, but I just, yeah, for something of this magnitude, especially safety. I love, I love that about your approach, is it’s we need to take the time to make the time, and there’s, there’s can some non-negotiables, if you want the Kaizen Ninja to come in and help you be as good as what you can be without sounding too much like I’m giving you a plug, but I am a fan. So, you wrote the book a few years ago. Okay, so this point in time, what’s your plan with it, mate? What problems are you trying to solve with the wheel of sustainability now?

Adam Lawrence  19:56

Yeah, so you know, I wrote this book. And I teach it during Kaizen, and I one day, about three years ago, somebody looked at me, goes, “You make it sound so easy, but we really don’t know how to do any of this, and I’m like, “Okay, that’s cool, you’re right. So the new problem I’m trying to solve is, how do I make it even more accessible? So the first thing I started doing was on day three or day four of any Kaizen event, depending on how long they are. We do, I call it improv. So, what we do is we get whatever the team is working on, and I’ll take a volunteer – they don’t even know they’re volunteering – and I actually run the wheel for them around whatever change they’ve made. So, every element I play at them, they play the challenging employee, okay? And I’m going to take them around each element, showing them how leadership commitment fits with what they did, and the message of why this mattered so much, and how the visuals tie in, and all the various elements, and people gave me pretty good feedback on that, that makes a lot of sense, but still, a week or two later, they’re like, what was that again? Yeah, okay, so now, because there’s just one of me, and nobody’s buying my book, and I’m not trying to plug my book, by the way, I hand them out, it’s like candy, I love handing out. If anybody wants to read a book, just send me an email, I’ll send you a PDF of it, or I might mail you one. So I got a lot in a box over here, I don’t need them, okay? But I realized the other thing is, hey, not everybody wants to work with that and wants to do a Kaizen, but they want to know a little more about sustainability. So, very recently I was pushed, nudged into you need to make me more accessible, create an assessment, create an assessment. I say, I don’t have, I don’t have clue what you’re talking about, so my marketing folks kind of explained it and gave me things to look at, and all of a sudden this assessment, the idea of this was, hey, you can answer some questions about your specific organization, or your department, or your whatever, and this thing will spit out ways to strengthen your sustainability system without Adam. Okay, so it’s a free thing, and the idea is to give the masses an opportunity to learn something that they can use immediately to give their teams a better chance of sustaining change. Based on my wheel of sustainability, I created the assessment, so of course it’s based on my system. Are there other systems? Of course, there are. This is just the one I know best, because it’s my baby. So the assessment was born. I get about five people a month taking it, and sometimes they have more questions, and I can answer them, but the results page is trying to guide you with some very specific feedback that hopefully you can actually use, and I know you just took it really fast, so I don’t really know if it helped you at all, but that’s that’s the intent.

Andy Olrich  22:53

Yeah, so thank you, and it’s a, it’s a, we’ll pop a link in the show notes to go to that assessment, you can do yourself. I did it. It’s just really quick and interesting. Some of the things that popped out, and I just looking at it gives you that kind of maturity or a sense check. And self-assessing can be challenging, but also doing it, I would get some people in a room as well, and go, let’s do this together and try and score ourselves, because, yeah, it just gives you those insights into the areas where you may need to focus more than others, and for me, when I was trying to answer those questions, or when I was answering them, was, yeah, okay, specific examples, yeah, we don’t do that, oh, I think we do that pretty well, and I was basing it on some recent clients that I’ve been with, just to go through the process, but highly recommend you do that, and again, it’s based on something that has, let’s just say, 38 years of wins, but also learning what not to do, so I, and it might cost you a dime, so I think that’s that’s probably a good thing, I encourage people to jump on and do so. I have, I have a question. I’m going to throw in here. How can you? What’s, what’s one quick way we’ve done as I said, we’re post Kaizen or improvement event. We’ve got these things. What’s one quick way leaders can test if the improvements will actually stick. I’m following the wheel of sustainability lock of us. I’ve got it all framed and mapped out, but what’s what’s the little sniff test?

Adam Lawrence  24:30

Love it. Go to the place where you did the work and see if it looks better than you left it. That’s one, that’s a, that’s a simple one. Culturally, this is my better test when somebody comes up to you as a leader and says I love what you did over there, when can you come to my area?

Andy Olrich  24:48

Yeah,

Adam Lawrence  24:49

okay, so I’d love to give you one real quick example of that, because it was just mind blowing to me, was with a whiskey distiller in January, and we were on one of their six. Operating lines, we’re doing a changeover event, right.

Andy Olrich  25:03

Yep,

Adam Lawrence  25:03

day one, we’re out in Gemba assessing the changeover, right. That’s part of the process. Let’s look at it in the current state, and all that kind of good stuff. There was a gentleman on the line, right next door to us, rather large fella, looked like he’s a little skeptical, and he says to me, he had never met me, and he says, ‘What are you screwing up today? Didn’t even introduce himself. I’ve met many of him. I’m like, ‘Man, we’re going to try to fix this thing. This team’s going to do some awesome stuff. You just wait and see, because that’s kind of my answer, anyway. You know, I don’t.. I mean, I’m a small guy, so this guy was like two times my sitting down. down.

Andy Olrich  25:43

I’ve won every fight my life by at least 50 meters at him. So

Adam Lawrence  25:46

I’m hearing you. Second day, he goes, he looks at me, he’s like, I don’t know about what you’re doing. I said, hang in there, man, we’re still early, it’s our first day of making improvements, all that kind of stuff. Third day, he looks at me like late in the day, he sees the people are just having the blast fixing stuff never fixed before. He looks at me and goes, so when you get to fix my life, and I said to him, I’m sorry, have we met? So you know, so by the end of the week, you know, we’re like best buddies, we didn’t go out and have a beer together. It was just hilarious, because his whole attitude changed when he saw the thing was actually being done for the people that do the work, not for the managers, not for the shareholders, but for the actual folks that have to change over the line. So it creates a belief, right. So, the sniff test, like you called it, is go to the area, see if somebody wants more of it, go to the area and see if it looks as good as or better than, because somebody fixed something while no one was looking. Those are, and lots of great examples, I’m sure you’ve seen the same thing. So that’s a cultural measure, that’s a cultural KPI, and I think that’s the more important thing. Any Kaiser event, they’re great, they’re wonderful. It’s how does it strengthen your culture and have engagement to get people to feel like you really care. It’s the respect for people and respect people, two principles that are probably there’s probably nothing more important: respect for people, and respect people, and if you do that, and if you have that, you’re going to win.

Andy Olrich  27:26

Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s such a great way to wrap that up, Adam, because it’s, it is, it’s a sometimes people are forced to go to these events, right? Let’s be straight, it’s like you are going in there with that team, and if it’s five days in a row, people, you can just see the color drain out of their face, and they’re going, are you serious? I haven’t slept in a week, and all this sort of stuff, but if you can get them to, and especially on the outside, be curious, and your skill absolutely out of is getting them to that place where you have a bit of fun with it, and then they’re they’re kind of pulling you in, going, okay, hey, hang on. This isn’t a toe cutting exercise. Sometimes it’s not all about the financials, and it’s just stats. It’s like, wow, these people actually are there. They’re doing more than I ever thought they would. Wow, that’s yeah, it’s a great place to put it. And again, that’s why I do this stuff. It’s all, it’s all about people, and I know you, that’s that’s you, mate. So, it’s been awesome having you on. Now, if everybody wants some wheel of sustainability and Kaizen Ninja in their life, how can we find you, mate?

Adam Lawrence  28:30

Well, you can certainly find me on LinkedIn, Adam Lawrence. I also have Process Improvement Partners has a page on LinkedIn. We have a website, pi partners.com and the assessment is pi dash partners dot score app.com so lots of nice free resources, you know. Again, you know, and what I love is when somebody reaches out and says, I want to know more, and then, you know, then I start talking like I’m talking to you now, because I love the stuff. It’s so much fun to help people, as you know.

Andy Olrich  29:00

Yeah, giving back, Adam. Appreciate the.. so we’ll have all the links and everything in the show notes, and of course, yeah, reach out to Adam if you want to know more. And I know we’ll have you back on again. It’s maybe sometimes twice a season we have you on. Okay, we get a lot of good things coming back from when we have you on. So thanks again for sharing your richness of experience, and we’d just love to catch up, and hopefully Shane can make it next time. So, get well soon, Shane. But for everyone else out there, please, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the channel, share with your friends, and if you’d like to know more, or you want us to bring Adam or others on for a particular topic, let us know in the show notes. But other than that, we’re done, and I hope you all have a fantastic day, wherever in the world you’re listening to the Lean Solutions podcast. Take it easy. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Lawrence  29:46

Thank you.