In this episode, Bob Emiliani and I discuss the problem of classical management.
What You’ll Learn:
- What is classical management?
- You put together an A3 and challenged lean practitioners. Can you tell our listeners what is an A3?
- What were the root cause results of the A3 investigation?
- What are your suggested solutions?
- Any new books in your future?
About the Guest:
Dr. Bob Emiliani has been a Lean practitioner and professor of Lean management for over 25 years.
Prior joining academia, he worked in industry for 15 years and had management responsibility in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain management. He was the first academic to establish a research agenda focused on Lean leadership, resulting in numerous publications and varied leadership development workshops. His work on Lean leadership and Lean as applied to higher education are widely recognized.
Links:
Click here for more information on Bob Emiliani
Click here for The Lean Solutions Summit
Full Transcript:
Patrick Adams: Hello and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. My name is Patrick Adams and I want to welcome my guest, Dr. Bob Emiliani. Bob has been a lean practitioner and professor of Lean Management for over 25 years, prior to joining academia. He worked in industry for 15 years and had management responsibility in engineering manufacturing and supply chain management. He was the first academic to establish a research, agenda focused on lean leadership resulting in numerous publications and very leadership development workshops. His work on lean leadership and Lean has applied has been applied to higher education, and as widely recognized, this is actually Bob's second time on the show. Welcome Back to the Show. Bob,
Bob Emiliani: Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for inviting me back. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.
Patrick Adams: Absolutely. And we are now doing video podcasts. So there are some people that are listening into the audio here. There's some people that are watching for those that are listening into the audio. Bob, Actually, his background is the Newport Bridge in Newport Rhode Island. And before we click before we hit record, or just chatting a little bit about my time in Newport, when I was in the military, I was stationed in Newport Rhode Island and yeah, Bob how long have you been in Rhode Island?
Bob Emiliani: Well. Since 2008, we bought a house that we anticipated retiring in. And but, we came here full-time to live here, full-time in 2017. But both my wife and I met here, because I was in a master's degree program, a University of Rhode Island. She was an undergraduate in the business school so we met here and in that waters at the early 1980s in school basically and…
Patrick Adams: Oh, wow. Okay.
Bob Emiliani: so you know after that we lived in North Palm Beach Florida then we moved to Connecticut Central Connecticut When you're there for 22 years. And anyway, finally got back to the egg here and in Rhode Island. Yeah.
Patrick Adams: I love it. What a beautiful area. I loved taking my wife and we would go and drive around the island of Newport and or go for walks too. And obviously,…
Bob Emiliani: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: and, and see the the beautiful mansions, and just think about the history of that area and everything that you know, has has happened over the years there. It's just such an amazing place to go. Visit and learn about
Bob Emiliani: It is a wonderful place to visit and look around and lots of places to go and surprisingly for such a teeny weeny, little state. There's a lot to do here. It's very bizarre thing.
Patrick Adams: Yes. Yes, absolutely well, it's a it's a beautiful bridge there behind you and always loved going back and forth across that. It reminded me of the Mackinac Bridge which is here in Michigan where I'm from in between the Lower Peninsula. In the Upper Peninsula, we have the the Mackinac Bridge which is very similar to the The Newport Bridge. So Anyways.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah that just that photo was taken. That's from Jamestown. That's a view from sort of downtown Jamestown looking at the new corporate just FYI. Yeah.
Patrick Adams: Beautiful. Yeah, beautiful. I think if I remember right, James Town is the old old town, right? Like super old. Is that right really old fishing town?
Bob Emiliani: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep, yep, it has a lot of history associated with it as well, it was well long story. But yeah, it's the island on the way to Newport that you got to cross to get to Newport. Yeah.
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Patrick Adams: Very cool. Well it's good. Good to see you again Bob. I'm glad to have you back on the show here. So I you what you when we met last time you had put a challenge out to the world. I think it was. You had said you know that you have identified leans number one problem and it was that most CEO still prefer classical management. I remember you put a post out there with an A3. It was a blank A3 and you filled in the The problem statement. You know, being that most CEO still prefer classical management and you and you put it out there as a challenge and said, Hey anybody there to fill this in kind of, which I thought was really cool and you, you got so you got quite a bit of response from that and some really good discussions. I think from a lot of different people, but one of the things I wanted to talk about this but I want to start out with some people are new to maybe the term classical management. Can you just help help some of the listeners maybe by starting and explaining what is classical?
00:05:00
Patrick Adams: Management.
Bob Emiliani: Sure. Yeah, so simply put it's just the you can think of it at the old way of doing things. Doing things according to traditions, instead of doing things according to what people need or what the times that we live in demand. So it's a leadership man and it's a leadership and management practice rooted in preconceptions. Whereas what we are all familiar with with TPS or Toyota Way, Lean is a leadership and management, practice rooted in perceptions. Big difference. Huge difference because preconceptions you know, if we carry those forward in time we're just doing things according to tradition. And what did Mr? Ono said In order to succeed with TPS, you have to abandon your preconceptions.
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Bob Emiliani: Which means and it's not every preconception, but the ones that are holding you back from understanding how to go from batch to flow with material and information, how to respect people how to improve continuously, how to how to, you know, Think with a kaizen mind and so forth. These are all preconceptions that we have to abandon. But in my work, I've shown that there's many more than just those kinds of preconceptions. So it's a huge distinction, you know, leadership and management practice based on preconceptions versus one that is based on perceptions and perceptions. I mean, sensory perceptions to make that. Clear sight, hearing touch, etc. That's how we always say. The leader has to go to the gamba understand the gamba, whereas in classical management,…
Patrick Adams: That's right.
Bob Emiliani: the leaders in the office. And they don't ever know anything about the gambler. They don't go to the gambler, they don't care about the gambler, they just look at the dashboards and the spreadsheets and so on. So it's a huge huge difference.
Patrick Adams: Old stale data sometimes.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah, and classical management essentially goes back in time. You know, pretty much as far as you want to take it, you know, you know the ancient Egyptian, you know, five, six thousand years ago because you can just imagine the, the Pharaoh, Saying to, you know, the engineer in the architect, you guys built a lousy pyramid. I'm blaming you and you know blaming you for problems. You…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: so you still see the same kinds of things going on today. These things have been with us for thousands of years, not not all of them. There's certain ways we think today. About things related to economics that are more recent come from the late, Middle Ages, and so on. But basically we're stuck in a world of preconceptions.
Patrick Adams: Sure. Now and Bob you mentioned tps a little bit. What what would you say and you talked about a couple things that I would consider falling into the this area. But what would you say is the opposite of classical management? You know what what would you say would be completely different than what you would see in a company that's managed in that way?
Bob Emiliani: Yeah. Yeah, the opposite that I use is progressive management and by progressive, I don't mean it in a political term. There's a lot of people get upset about that. I mean progressivists just in step with the times that is just current. That is not, you know, inner ears, not behind the times.
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: So, or you could say it's, you know, you know, you got to be careful with the word modern and post modern, because they have different meanings, but but generally like to describe it as progressive management something different,…
Patrick Adams: You.
Bob Emiliani: you know, the word progressive suggests some kind of progress or improvement over, you know, in relation to something else and older way of doing things. So, that's, you know, that's the way I define it in my writings and training.
Patrick Adams: Yeah. And so what here, what characteristics would you see in a leader that is following more of a progressive management style
Bob Emiliani: They're going to be open-minded, they're going to be questioning their assumptions, they're going to be questioning their preconceptions, they're going to be thinking about, you know, how cognitive biases could impair their thinking, they're also go. They're also going to be comfortable getting called out, you know, by somebody on the shop floor and Hey boss, you said this but doesn't seem that's happening or you're not keeping your commitment that you said you would or, you know, something like that. And the bosses like okay, yeah, you're right. Or maybe the boss said, Well, that's not quite right, let me explain it. But you know, it's a it's more of a dialogue. on a peer-to-peer level, because When I say, peer-to-peer level because everybody knows the boss is the boss. You don't need to come into the room and say I'm the boss, You know, everybody knows it.
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: So so you can just have conversations more in a, A team member to team member. We all work for this company. Yeah, I'm the boss. Everybody knows that don't need to repeat it and so forth. We can just have a conversation about, you know, the good things we're doing, the things we need to improve the bad things that happen and that we need to understand what caused them and work to improve. Just have a more of a dialogue rather than debating things or having a superior, subordinate. Flavor to all conversations. Which is a real.
00:10:00
Patrick Adams: Absolutely, that's such.
Bob Emiliani: It's a real turn-off.
Patrick Adams: It is, it's it's, it's such a that's such an important point that you make there, that I don't think leaders understand that. That well not, I can't say all leaders, but there are many leaders out there that are in positions and…
Bob Emiliani: Right.
Patrick Adams: they already have the authority. They've just by having that position, they already have that, they don't it. So, you know, to your point, I mean, coming into to the room or into a work area and just working with people not necessarily, you know, being the boss or, you know, talking in a way that you're the boss. I mean, that doesn't that just doesn't get you as far As it does exactly.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah, just working together. Teamwork.
Patrick Adams: Now, I agree. That's right. So Bob,…
Bob Emiliani: you know, it's like I was just gonna say it's like on a football team,…
Patrick Adams: let's get. Oh, go ahead.
Bob Emiliani: everybody knows who's a quarterback is right. But I mean, you know, you still got to win a game, you got a function as a team,
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: That's right. Agree 100%. So let's get back to what we're talking about with the the A3 that you put together kind of challenging lean practitioners.
Bob Emiliani: Oh yeah.
Patrick Adams: And again, I guess we have to to preface this a little bit because some of our listeners may not know what an A3 is. So I guess one more conversation before we get into the, the results or the the discussions that have happened around this challenge.
Bob Emiliani: Okay.
Patrick Adams: Can you explain to our listeners, maybe, what is an A3 a little bit of background around a threes,…
Bob Emiliani: Sure.
Patrick Adams: and maybe even why we call it, an A3 that, that type of thing?
Bob Emiliani: Sure. So Toyota quality personnel in the late 1970s developed the A3 as a way to Or created the A3, as a way to develop and improve the capabilities of the managers and non-production areas. Because in production areas the managers there were familiar with Kaizen and total quality control and, you know, quality circles and so forth.
Bob Emiliani: But the non-production area managers weren't and so to to engage them in problem solving to engage them and improvement in a way similar to what's going on again. But they created this, You know, A3, which is, of course, the size of the sheet of the paper,…
Patrick Adams: It.
Bob Emiliani: it's 11 by 17 inches. And it's, you know, it has all the things you need to comprehend a problem. The the problem statement shows the analysis shows, the corrective, action shows the action plan, all on when she one sheet of paper. And, and that forms a dialogue between the the manager and there's their subordinate and and the the framing initially of this A through rapport was for managerial use, you know, for the managers to engage them and problem solving. But subsequently, you see the the use of this in, you know, Manager might might engage a direct report who's not in the managerial role. in terms of mentoring them for, for problem solving,
Bob Emiliani: But I think one of the, I don't know what you, what you see out there Patrick, but I see a lot of sort of, a3's delegated to people in non-managerial roles to improve their skills. But it's not happening in the management areas that…
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Bob Emiliani: where it should be and where this thing was originally designed to address. And yeah people who are not managerial roles can be better problem solvers, you know, by learning the A3 process and, you know, thinking through the problem and so forth. But you still have a lot of these problems going on in the workplace that are owned by the managers. And, of course, they're not using a3s. In many cases. Not all cases.
Patrick Adams: Yeah. Yeah,…
Bob Emiliani: Maybe most cases.
Patrick Adams: you know, I I definitely see the same thing. And a lot of times when I see is managers kind of delegating that responsibility down and then and then scheduling some kind of a report out, you know, where people have to come and report out and what, what the A3 is what's going on with the A3,…
Bob Emiliani: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: and it becomes just more of a kind of a show and tell, but not really a whole lot of catch ball happening or, you know,…
Bob Emiliani: Correct. Yeah.
Patrick Adams: and it's at one level and not necessarily at the the proper.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah. Not only that when you do it in that in that way, where you have, it's a report out and so forth. These report outs at least some some that, some that I have been associated with, certainly not all, but they kind of become political because it'll show something on the A3 report as a root cause or corrective action, that makes another manager look bad. And then they're like,…
Patrick Adams: You, that's
Bob Emiliani: they're like, I want you to change that A3. We saw this a lot with root cause analysis, I want you to change that root cause analysis to, you know, And and…
Patrick Adams: yes.
00:15:00
Bob Emiliani: you know, you're a subordinate and the boss is telling you to change it and so you do it. And so there's that there's that dynamic going on with these things as well.
Patrick Adams: Yep.
Bob Emiliani: Because the truth is in the classically managed business. The truth is not welcome.
Patrick Adams: Mm-hmm. So true. And, and another thing that I saw too was upper management was set up an A3 review meeting before the report out. You know. So then make some adjustments in between and make sure that it's gonna,…
Bob Emiliani: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: you know, that I know what's coming. You know, when we report out to the rest of the group and Uh yeah. So definitely a lot of issue.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah. That because they don't like because they don't like surprises and but for not for being a group of people that don't like surprises, they sure get a lot of surprises.
Patrick Adams: Very true. Okay? So now let's dive into the investigation so I'm guessing when you did that you probably got a lot of feedback information coming back to you you know maybe individuals that filled out the the A3 report sent it back. I'm not exactly sure what the results that came out of that were Okay.
Bob Emiliani: Well. Yeah, let me give you the setup. So I posted on LinkedIn. A power, a PDF file, a pages that basically says, You know, everybody loves power. Excuse me, loves A3, You know reports, but you know, when lean people get together, mostly what they do is talk about their their problems and they complain about things all the time and they end up selling lots of war stories about what happened at this company or that company. And yet they're trained in all these various link tools and methods in a way of thinking and so forth. And but yet, these don't come to bear for for, you know, people's lean problems. so I posted an A3 report that said Okay,…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: you know, the improvement theme is To get to get all see to have all CEOs. Excuse me, let me rephrase it get more CEOs to go all in with lean management. That was the improvement theme.
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Bob Emiliani: And then there was some words for the background, the current state, the negative impact on stakeholders. And then the problem statement was most CEOs, still prefer classical management. And so, what ended up happening was? Yeah, there was a lot of Dialogue back and forth and on LinkedIn on this, but a lot of it amounted to criticism of of the upsetting up the problem statement. It was too many words.
Patrick Adams: Mmm.
Bob Emiliani: It was to this, it was to that, it should have been handwritten and…
Patrick Adams: ah,
Bob Emiliani: so forth and it was like and so what was remarkable was the Folks, mainly missed the point of that post. Which was? We need to stop complaining. We need to recognize our problems. You know, have an awareness of them problem, recognition, and move forward to try and solve our problems. Using the thinking, and methods, and tools that we know how to use. And not one person came back with with an A3 report. Not know it that?
Patrick Adams: Really. Wow.
Bob Emiliani: No, not one. Well, made an attempt as far as I know that some people might have printed it out and attempted it themselves…
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: but the, but the, you know, the areas that you fill in root cause analysis, practical calendar measures the future state, goals and targets plan. The, you know, the follow-up, etc, none of that, none of that was filled in on the free report and…
Patrick Adams: Okay.
Bob Emiliani: think it also you know I think the feedback in in focusing the criticism on the fact that there's too many words in the current state or whatever. And it's not handwritten shows you just a certain kind of dogmatism that that pervades this world That if it's not done exactly the Toyota way. You know, I didn't do it by hand. So it's more legible I did and I didn't do it by hand to make make the problem a little bit more, you know, vivid But you…
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: but that's the kind of feedback you get and I think it also speaks to, you know, the other larger problem of We're not focusing on the problems at hand. We're focusing on, it's not handwritten, it's too many words,…
Patrick Adams: Yeah. Right.
Bob Emiliani: you know. I mean come on. So anyway, so that was the, the outcome of that.
Patrick Adams: Yeah, so maybe one of our listeners that's listening today, maybe they'll be the first one to print that out. I know. It's right on your LinkedIn. Right. It's on. Your you haven't posted as a post,…
Bob Emiliani: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: so maybe one of our listeners will print it out and fill it out and be the first one to try and complete the A3. That would be fun.
Bob Emiliani: Please, please do you, you know, recently I did related to that, I did A Little webinar was live. I didn't record it because years ago, I created a method to analyze business failures. Could be a product failure or…
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Bob Emiliani: a company failure. And I, in in I created this years ago because I was in a business school and they always teach case studies and they're success stories and they ignore the failures that ex show up every day in the Wall Street Journal. And I said, How can you learn? If you don't, if you just focus on success and ignore the failure. So, I came up with a failure analysis method,…
00:20:00
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: And you taught a course in that for more than a decade. And one of the assignments, I would give to students is, you know, packet of information about lean transformation, not going well. I was one type of failure. And another one was the lean movement itself as kind of a failure because I think, you know, people have been around this for 30 years are kind of looking at it going. You know, why aren't we more successful? As a movement.
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: And so my students, you know, use that failure analysis method that I developed and applied it to those, those kinds of cases. and, You know, I the some of the main focus areas where things that you don't normally see in a failure analysis which was leaders beliefs. And untested assumptions cognitive biases illogical thinking, usually failures tend to be of a very technical nature and they don't include the human decision making That that goes on with that. And so anyway, so that Webinar was very well received because we got into details of Being transformation,…
Patrick Adams: That's great.
Bob Emiliani: failure, and lean movement, difficulties failure in a different way.
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Patrick Adams: Three Challenge. Do you have any thoughts, you know, of what the root cause results would be, you know, given the the problem of most CEOs preferring classical management.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah. Well there's different ways of looking at it. I mean, one of the reasons why they prefer classical management it because it maximizes leaders rights and privileges You…
Patrick Adams: Hmm. Yep.
Bob Emiliani: simply put that, you know, you know what I said earlier, you know, in Lean World, the leader and the person on the shop floor talk as people, you know, not a superior support and so forth. And that's on very unappealing to the classical management world because they want to come into the room and the boss with their entourage or whatever. and,…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: you know, lean upsets Rights and privileges. They still have plenty of rights and privileges with lean, it just doesn't maximize them as they it does in the way of classical management.
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: but the other thing we learn from looking at the, the failure analyzes in particular because you see just Loads of Poor Decision Making. Now, this is not all of, you know, the fault of leaders. Because they've got so much going on. That it's hard to think, clearly and leaders like to try to simplify things. So that so that they can make the problem more actionable and…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: really, you know, usually direct people to go do this or that in the classical management way. And so what you find is is that they're they're thinking skills are poor, they? You know, they're very confident about analysis and logical thinking and decision making and These failure cases that we looked at in my course or more than 60 of them over, you know, 15-year period. Consistently the things that are leaders most that their most confident about Analysis, logical thinking decision making or the things they should be least confident about. Their, their ability to process information is hugely error-prone. And and again it's you know, it's good people trying to do good things generally…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: but they're just unaware of this to my knowledge. There is no course in any business school that school that focuses and it just doesn't need to be restricted to the business school. That teaches failures as my course did as well as teaching leaders what are the how beliefs and untested assumptions. Converged into decision, making along with cognitive biases, and a logical thinking. To create major problems such as the Boeing 737,…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: Max. The Wells Fargo, fraud, I don't know. There's I've said, there's 60 or more of these things but we looked at these big failures so, Big Room, You know, big opportunity for improvement but in classical management that's not something that they're concerned about.
Patrick Adams: Sure, yeah, I I hear you for sure. The The I think Mark Graybons, newest podcast that he just put out with Your my favorite mistake. I don't know if you've heard listen to any of those.
Bob Emiliani: Yep.
Patrick Adams: I think that's a you know. It's a great just a great way to promote the the importance of understanding that it's okay to make mistakes, you know, as long as we're reflecting and learning and growing through those that failures are good. They're a good thing. It's okay to to, and unfortunately, you know, there's many leaders that just will not, they won't stand for mistakes. They don't want failure. They only want, you know, tell me how how we're gonna win? Tell me what, how we're gonna succeed only show me Green. No red, you…
00:25:00
Bob Emiliani: Right. Well,…
Patrick Adams: and that's not reality.
Bob Emiliani: we have the same issue in Lean World because for years, I've been pushing on some of the major Lean organizations to get with it in terms of understanding. The causes of lean transformation failure and so forth and they've just completely ignored it. They're not interested in going there either. which, which unfortunately tells you that,…
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: you know,
Bob Emiliani: That there is you know classical management has essentially invaded the thinking of the lean movement as well…
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: because people, you know, there's still a stigma associated with lean transformation failure.
Patrick Adams: Yeah. Yeah, in it made me think while you're talking to in your book you talk about.
Patrick Adams: At work in the right way and they were the ones that were promoted. And then you got these guys and gals that are, you know, busting their butts out on the production, floor doing all the right things coaching solving problems, not in the conference room, not networking and they're the ones that are getting passed over. That's a serious problem for so many organizations,…
Bob Emiliani: Yep.
Patrick Adams: talk to us a little bit about that this issue.
Bob Emiliani: That's then, been that way, for thousands of years. I mean, one of the things I want people to understand is how far back in time this goes And and how over the centuries, what I call the institution of leadership and system of profound privilege have iteratively made it a lot harder to undo. This. this this kind of problem that you just stated you…
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: a lot of the a lot of the promotion reward system is Is related to who is who is going, who has the best ability and commitment? to uphold the institution of leadership and system of profound privilege, who's going to Trent, who is going to
Bob Emiliani: Transfer those traditions to the next generation most effectively with greatest commitment. Is it going to be?
Patrick Adams: He?
Bob Emiliani: Me, who questions things? No. Or is it going to be somebody else who accepts those things? And so,…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: it's going to be somebody who accepts those things.
Patrick Adams: That's right.
Bob Emiliani: And that's typically what you see and occasionally you see the oddball like me, get promoted and so forth. But at some point you run into problems in your peer group or whatever level you happen to be in in your company and they don't think like you do and so forth. So you know, eventually the most the 99.9% chance is you're out. 0.1% chance is you're now the CEO but not usually and…
Patrick Adams: Yes, exactly.
Bob Emiliani: so, So it really is important for people to understand What is this, institutional leadership The system profound privilege, How long it's been going on? You know why it exists? I mean, I'll tell you, fundamentally people don't understand what's the phrasing. I've been using. They don't I don't understand the intent and purpose of leadership. They're understanding of it is either incomplete or incorrect. and a lot of the intent and purpose of leadership is to perpetuate the status quo, And when you understand it, that way, then you understand that? You know, that phrase from Jean-baptiste's car, the more things change, the more, they say the same. He said that in 1848,…
Patrick Adams: Right.
Bob Emiliani: And everybody has that observation that yeah a lot of stuff has changed the technology and so forth but other things stay the same and…
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: you and what? Usually stays the same, as the social system. The technology changes, but the social social structure social system, etc, pecking order stays the same.
Patrick Adams: Exactly. And then Now now you're bringing me to in my mind I'm going to the red bead experiment and I'm thinking about, you know, the system being broken and no matter how hard we work, if the system is broken,…
Bob Emiliani: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: you're not going to be successful, right? Anyways, Okay, so solutions,…
Bob Emiliani: Well, you…
Patrick Adams: how do we solve this?
00:30:00
Bob Emiliani: I think I obviously think about this a lot and it comes out in the form of these books that I write, because I know, I want to get it out in writing, these ideas and the logic and so on. and, You…
Patrick Adams: Yeah. Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: people ask me, you know what's the answer? Well, you know, I'm one person thinking through this stuff, you know, And so I write the book so the other people can get on my wavelength and think as well and you know hopefully what ends up happening, some days, we have more of a crowd sourcing. Of of ideas on what to do about this. The other.
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: The other possibility is just as time goes by things will change.
Patrick Adams: Mm-hmm.
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: Mm-hmm.
Patrick Adams: Yep. Yep. Well, we're, we're two guys, you're not one. We're two here and we're calling, we're calling all, lean practitioners, all leaders that are out there listening in to get on board here. And and we're looking to have you read the tipping point Bob,
Patrick Adams: Yeah, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Yes.
Patrick Adams: The right cohort. Yeah.
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Patrick Adams: Mm-hmm.
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: Sure. Do you do you have any or art? Are there any studies out there or is there any data around CEOs that manage you know, from a classical standpoint versus CEOs that are more progressive? You know, company-wise financially, you know, metric wise KPIs? I mean, is there proof? I'll
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Patrick Adams: Okay. Yep.
Patrick Adams: Yeah, I I would agree with that. I think there are so many benefits that can be gained by leading in the way that that we're talking about. I mean, you know, that the the fight the, the financials that the cost savings all those things, the KPIs they they definitely will come. But but the other benefits that come from managing from that perspective are just there astronomical. But I mean, I think we can go back and look at, you know, you Toyota being, you know, the example that we all talk about, but you can look at Toyota's financial success in comparison to, you know, some of the other automakers back with, you know, you utilizing less people and you know what they were able to do. I mean there's definitely proof out there for the type of management practices that we're talking about. So I, you know, I I don't think that that but, you know, to your point the 95 to
00:35:00
Patrick Adams: What? I mean, there's a there's a very high failure rate. So if we can focus on the failures and figure out, okay, what's the root cause? And how can we get away from that? The companies that we find that are having success the the three to four or five percent that are having success have clearly identified, those root causes and they're, they're battling against those root causes by changing the culture, by changing the leadership styles by changing the way that they do business and they are finding success and they are having the the financial results that companies like, you know, Toyota had so
Patrick Adams: Absolutely. Yeah, people love it.
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Patrick Adams: Yes, yes. Thank you.
Patrick Adams: No.
Bob Emiliani: It's not like, you know, some impossible mathematical problem that we could never figure out. But it is a very naughty problem. You've heard maybe of the Gordian, not, you know, you can't figure out how to undo this. Not and as I said, there's been, you know, thousands of years iterative Changes to the institutional leadership and system of profound privilege to make it hard to. So,
Patrick Adams: Here. Yes. Agreed. And there's and we've only, we've only scratched the surface here, too. Obviously, which you know that but just a, you know, a couple things that we talked about today, there's so much more that goes into this. And obviously we could talk about this all day, but one of the things I want to ask you before we close up today, Bob is books. Like Obviously, I love all the books that you put out there. We talked a little bit about them already during the episode today, but I'm curious to know, do you have any new books in the future, anything that you're working on right now that we can get a little inside pecan?
Bob Emiliani: Sure. Well yeah, I mean I continued to, you know, engage people and study things, and so on. And so, early last month, I came out with a book called The Changed Perspective and Essential Guy for emerging leaders that dives deep into the preconceptions that limiter prevent change. And it, it challenges, the view. The better leadership is brought about simply by changing leaders behaviors, and I think it basically destroys that whole notion that you can do that. The sequence that I write about is preconceptions that those inform beliefs those beliefs and form behaviors. The behaviors, inform competencies, and most training just starts at behaviors to competencies. But what's in front of that is, but what's in front of behaviors is beliefs? And what's in front of beliefs is preconceptions?
Patrick Adams: but,
Bob Emiliani: so preconceptions are what guide leaders thinking in actions and they get themselves in a lot of difficult situations, you know, like the 737, Max Wells, Fargo, whatever, you know, problem you could think of And and leaders kind of accept, you know, stuff's going to happen. When they should I shouldn't. And, and basically, how do we make these bad situations less common because they have a tremendous fallout, you know, In the case of 737,…
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: max people died suppliers were on life support because the production lines dried up for the 737, max employees got laid off, you know, this huge huge impacts to these problems. And I targeted emerging leaders because basically, I want some of these young people to understand what's going on at an earlier age, will that result in changes down the road, who knows? Again the institution of leadership and system of profound privileges, you know, not very happy with folks who think differently, but in a week or…
Patrick Adams: Sure.
Bob Emiliani: I'll be coming out with a book called The Workmanship of Leaders and this is really weird that there's like back-to-back books because,…
Patrick Adams: Yeah, that's exciting.
Bob Emiliani: Yeah, the other one. I wrote in November, December time frame and it came out in early, January this one, I basically rode over a two-week period in January. And usually, there's Three to six months between books, but anyhow. But this is the workmanship of leaders systems framework frameworks and…
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: information processing. And so that's challenging. The traditional view of leadership as a profession and rethinks leadership in terms of workmanship, which we don't usually think of leadership as workmanship. And so, you know, when you think about it, Leadership has been. studied and written about for, you know, hundred years about a hundred years now And the results is a lot of fluff, you know, not too much substance. And so I said this earlier that the I think that's because the fundamental understanding of leadership leaders, excuse me, and their purpose is incomplete and in or incorrect. So basically,…
00:40:00
Patrick Adams: Hmm. Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: this is an analysis of what the meaning of workmanship is. And working like diligence is in the context of systems frameworks and information processing. So the systems frameworks and information processing the leaders, you know, are engaged with…
Patrick Adams: Very interesting. Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: yeah, so I'm it's out for review now, so I don't know.
Patrick Adams: Okay.
Bob Emiliani: I don't know if it's any good, you know. One of the things when you write so many books, is you start to wonder? It just starts. You just start to wonder about Are you still producing good stuff? Or you just going one too many. You know, it's kind of like the Tom Brady of books in this genre, you know, should you stop with the prior one? She's doing one more that you shouldn't be doing.
Patrick Adams: Well, I think you can I think you can go to your reviews and, you know, I think you're still getting some pretty good reviews on your books. And I see a lot of, you know, people grabbing little quotes out of your books and things a lot. So it's, you know, definitely still relevant and people are loving it. So I would say keep going, you know,
Bob Emiliani: Well, what I will see. I don't know. Yeah. every time I say,…
Patrick Adams: Well.
Bob Emiliani: I think I'm done and I've run out of ideas that usually lasts about Well, not long, you know, week or…
Patrick Adams: Yeah.
Bob Emiliani: two. Somebody asked me about Riders Block recently. And I said, Well, I don't get that if I do, it's basically overnight. It's just not. Not.
Patrick Adams: Sure, sure. Yeah. I'm ready to get started on another one. I've I'd love to do a book on the appearance of leadership, you know, just kind of a spin-off of my other one but we'll see.
Bob Emiliani: Okay.
Patrick Adams: We'll see. Um, Bob if someone wants to grab those books, where should they go to to find them? Amazon. Okay.
Bob Emiliani: They're on Amazon. You know? Yeah, I should have mentioned earlier the failure analysis method that I talked about that's in the that's in the book Wheel of Fortune.
Patrick Adams: Yeah. Yes.
Bob Emiliani: So, that's embedded in that book. If anybody's interested in understanding that method and what it can do that method, by the way, is also, it's not just a failure analysis method, it's an improvement method, it's an, and it's a leadership development method as well. It's much more.
Patrick Adams: Yes.
Bob Emiliani: It's much broader than just failure analysis.
Patrick Adams: Perfect. Well, we'll throw a link to to your books or…
Bob Emiliani: Okay.
Patrick Adams: to your author page in in the the show notes. That way people can go there and they can see the list of all your books that you have.
Bob Emiliani: Great. Thank you.
Patrick Adams: And then it is there anywhere else that people if they want to get a hold of you, if they have a question or want to send you,
Bob Emiliani: Yeah, they could they can just you know, there's an easy to contact through my website. Bob Emiliani.com or direct message me through LinkedIn. Yep. Happy to talk to anybody at any time.
Patrick Adams: Perfect. Well, we'll plan. All right, we'll throw that in the show notes as well. Bob as always it's it's great to have you on the show and…
Bob Emiliani: Thank you.
Patrick Adams: and love chatting with you. I think you and I could probably talk for forever on these types of topics. Just love, you know, your your take on things and and appreciate your willingness to share and in conversation on out on social media and on the podcast. So thank you.
Bob Emiliani: Well, thank and thank you. It's been a pleasure and I appreciate it. Thank you Patrick.
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