Patrick Adams  00:00

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders by helping you improve performance using process improvement solutions with bottom line results. My name is Patrick Adams, and this season, I’ll be joined by three other amazing hosts, including Catherine O’Donnell from Ireland, Andy Ulrich from Australia, and Shane got involved from the United States. Join us as we bring you guests and experiences of Lean practitioners from all over the world. Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. My name is Patrick Adams, and today I am joined by Dr Greg Jacobson. Greg is the CEO and co founder of kynexus. He’s passionate about addressing operational inefficiencies, and he leverages his extensive background in emergency medicine and process improvement to develop software through kynexus, which maybe we’ll talk about during our during our episode today. But he helps develop software to drive innovation and improvement in every industry. In addition to his role at kinexis, Greg co authored the influential work Kaizen, a method of process improvement in emergency department, and published in the academic emergency medicine. Well, welcome to the show, Greg.

Greg Jacobson  01:18

Thank you so much for having me, Patrick. I’m excited about the conversation.

Patrick Adams  01:21

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, and I’d love to dive into some details around chi Nexus. I’d love to learn a little bit more about what you guys offer and how you support many different organizations that I’m sure are listening in. And then I’m sure our listeners would love to hear that as well. So we’ll dive into that later, but before we do, we have a really good topic to discuss, specific to habit science. And I guess I want to kick us off with a with a question about your habits, Greg, what are some of your bad habits? Let’s start with that. Well,

Greg Jacobson  01:53

the funny thing is, and listeners won’t realize this, because you ended up pulling the end on court. So, great job. But the first version of this two minutes in, we had an issue with one of my microphones in my air pods. And so the I now have, I have this prepared, which I love, that you threw a question at me, that I that I wasn’t prepared for so bad habits I would would love to say that I identify as someone that does that is perfect about not biting his nails. But I will occasionally, during, you know, like during a, you know, a really tense movie or something, will bite my nails. And then the other bad habit that I’m always working on is trying to really focus on the wind down period before bed. I’m really sensitive to computer screens, and I’m constantly working, even though I’m trying not to work, and so just hurts me going to sleep. So habit science is interesting, Patrick, because one it’s, it’s, yes, we, we often think of bad bad habits. And certainly the people have that habits they’re working on. I think habit science provides a lot of information that can help them, but it also can be can can help us develop good habits as well. And so I’m always kind of thinking about the inverse of all of the habit science thought processes, because it’s almost always, if you’re trying to make a bad habit go away, the inverse of that will allow you to make a good habit go and so it’s, it’s been a really fun topic to learn about. I love

Patrick Adams  03:32

it. I love it. Well, so Okay, so for those that are listening in that, you know, maybe it’s self explanatory the term habit science. But can you just maybe give us a high level overview of what habit science is, and maybe even talk about, you know, how you kind of got interested involved in habit science? That’s great. So

Greg Jacobson  03:51

I, I don’t know if I coined the term habit science, but I’m I’m referring to, kind of all the body of work that we now have related to to habit, habit formation and the knowledge that we’ve gained. I mean, I would say that it’s sometimes we talk about it as cognitive science or behavioral science. We all have heard of them, behavioral economics. And so there, there’s this growing recognition over the last 3040, 50 years that we are who we are much related to the way our brains have been formed, right? And a lot of it is evolutionary pressures have created certain environments or certain repetitive behaviors, and those have really found their way all the way into different parts of the brain. And so I first read Charles Duhigg, a power of habits, I don’t know eight, nine years ago, it was really influential work. And then about five years ago, clears book, atomic habits. I think probably everyone listening is now at least heard of that book. It’s wildly popular, and that reinforced. The habit that reinforced the habit information. And then I finished it off with fogs, tiny habits. And then, kind of, those are the three main books that that I have read now, three and four times each, and really give a nice kind of overview of some of the conceptual frameworks on how to think, and then the neuroscience. And so initially I read it all Patrick, honestly, for improvement myself. I’d love to credit Mark Raven, or The Power of Habit recommendation. I don’t 100% know, but he is usually the origin of many of the books that I read, so we’ll give him credit. And then, and then the it really wasn’t until about halfway through atomic habits, or maybe my second read of atomic habits, where I realized that all of these, all of the things that we’re learning in habit science can be applied at the organizational level, and we can use to influence each other. And so, not to mention a fourth book, probably four minutes into the into the episode. But I’ll mention another book. It was in Episode versions one and two, I think, was called influencers. And now it’s called critical influence, or something very similar to that. But there’s a lot of overlap, probably 30, 40% of the overlap in that book overlaps with Lean concepts and overlaps with habit science concepts. I mean, lean is just riddled with habit science all through it. And so it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun incorporating that into the work we do here at kinexos.

Patrick Adams  06:38

I love it. Love it. No, that’s a great it’s good to know just a little bit of kind of history and how you got involved in in this. You know, I’ve had some, some really great conversations with Mike Rother around the topic of, you know, habits, and obviously around with Toyota Cata and developing new habits in how we problem solve in different ways. So I’m excited to kind of hear your perspective on some of this, and talk, you know, how about how some of this ties in with continuous improvement and in organizations. And you mentioned that, you know, habit science is kind of woven in through continuous improvement, if, if we were to talk just specifically about just leadership in general and and I think about my time in the military, you know, even just boot camp in general, like when you go to boot camp in the military, they pretty much strip all of your your the way that you do things is just completely taken away. So the all the habits that you were brought up with, and then they reform those new habits, discipline and other other way, other things, but that they do it in a very repetitive way, the same thing every day, same time, and you’re doing it every single day, and eventually it becomes a habit. And so when it comes to leadership, I guess, what are your thoughts just on general leadership and the importance of habits and how that filters in with just leadership in general? Yeah, well, I think

Greg Jacobson  08:10

great question. I What’s so interesting is you, you touched on something I hadn’t thought about, but I hadn’t thought about the military. I mean, I specifically, I read about the Navy being a really big CI lean organization, or at least ships are that there’s that, the story of the one officer that the general, I think that just utilize those principles so well, utilize Lean principles so well. But I think what’s interesting about the military example, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about it, is one of the main principles that that helps you develop a habit is identity, and I feel like that’s a big part of of the military of like, Who do you identify as? And so there’s a lot of habit science and what you talked about, but I’m interested, how much does that, if you were to kind of think back, are you, does that resonate? Or I’d love to hear your thoughts, or for you to riff on that,

Patrick Adams  09:18

absolutely. I mean, if I think, you know, for me personally, I think maybe some people have heard this before, but I had a pretty rough upbringing, you know, and as a young kid coming up and and had a lot of struggles and things that I dealt with, and really I was kind of lost when it comes to identity, like I didn’t really identify in anything at that point. And so for me, personally, the military was something that I really needed in my life for that exact reason, like it gave me purpose and it create. It helped me create an identity and in who I was, and helped me learn. You know, some of the that. That I have certain strengths, that that, you know, identify who I am and and help kind of bring some of those out. And so, you know, not to get too deep here, but I’m, I’m 100% with you on that that you know, definitely the military helps to to create, I think, create identity, identity in ourselves. But also, you know, for me, I served in the Marine Corps. In the Marine Corps, you know, there, there was a certain level of pride that was just embedded in us, and that pride was tied to an identity as of being a Marine. And once a Marine, always a Marine. And that’s something that, like, I’ll never lose, and other Marines who are listening in that, you know, they, they’ll, they’ll always have that now, and that’s something that I can hold on to. And, you know, and kind of, again, it’s part of my identity, right?

Greg Jacobson  10:48

Yeah. And so I think that’s what identity and identifying as the the type of person that does certain actions is one of the most helpful things to get someone moving. So, for instance, I would like to, we’ll talk about a bad habit. This is a really classic one we’re coming up on On New Year’s, right? I would like to eat better and and work out more and get in shape in 2025 okay? Well, you could just simply focus on the goal, which is, I want to lose 20 pounds, and I want to stop eating these kinds of foods, which, which, that’s typically what the news the new year’s resolution is, right? I mean, that’s like you have a resolution, and why did they fail so much? Versus, I’d like to identify as a person, as a healthy person, enter into into a place like that. I identify as a person who has a regimented way of life and makes the bed and cleans my all my instruments and, you know, can do 100 push ups like the military versus I’m a I’m identifying as a healthy person. Well, what does a healthy person do in this situation? Well, a healthy person would work out multiple times a week. A healthy person would make a choice on to eating. You know, better foods versus worse foods. Does it mean that that a healthy person’s identity couldn’t withstand missing a workout or, you know, eating bad No, of course, it can withstand that. But if you’re focused on on maintaining that identity, and you’re always asking yourself, well, what kind of person do I want to be then and thinking about that, and so I know it’s a really long way to tie in to your question, which I wasn’t actually ignoring, but how does it deal with leadership? So I think the leaders in this organ that are listening to this, to this podcast, need to ask themselves, what kind of leader do they want to be in the organization that they’re in? Right? They want to be a leader that promotes continuous improvement and lean linking and lean systems. Or do they do they don’t care about being identified in that way, right? Because they don’t care about being identified in that way, it’s going to be really hard to get that leader or to get yourself to do the necessary behaviors that you need. So as soon as, as soon as the the leader can can make the association or make the conclusion, oh, I believe doing this business model, or these business practices, or this Lean practice, or whatever you want to call, all these behaviors that we’re talking about is the most critical thing for the long term health of my organization, my team, you know, whatever the entity that they’re thinking about, and all of a sudden they then think, Oh, well, I want to be a leader that identifies as promoting that type of behavior. But that’s a great example of how kind of shifting a little bit of a thought process versus like, oh, we have a goal of increasing revenue by 20% okay, and then we’re going to use this, this tool, to do that. It’s very easy to get off when the when the fire start piling up, versus Oh, I’m a I’m a leader that you know that’s very associated with, with this practice of engaging people, having standard work and things of that nature. So does that? Does that kind of frame? A little bit of what it

Patrick Adams  14:30

does? Yeah, no, I love how you brought that full circle. Because it I immediately was thinking about the the recruiter that came to my high school, and I was, and I remember specifically thinking like, Man, that guy is like, chiseled, you know, that guy is disciplined, like he’s He’s tough. And I remember thinking to myself, like, man that I could do that, you know, that could be me and and that was part of, you know, why, after I got. Out of high school and I and then I ended up going back and talking to that exact recruiter, wanting to know what’s the path right to get there. So I only say that because you know, again, coming back to your comments about leadership, for those that are listening in, who are those leaders that you know of that, you would say that’s a really great leader. And why do you say that that’s a really great leader? What are the things that they do continuously? What do you see in them that actually makes them, you know, as you define it, a great leader? And I think that’s just a great way to start, you know. And as far as identity goes and really connecting yourself to as you think about personal development and developing your own leadership skills. You know, who are those people? And then what I’d like to do, Greg, is bring it back to continuous improvement here then and think about, Okay, we have these leaders in our minds, of these good leaders in a continuous improvement organization. What would a good leader look like in a continuous improvement organization? And how is habit science tied to, you know, maybe someone who’s listening in becoming that good leader in an organization, in a continuous improvement organization.

Greg Jacobson  16:14

So I love the question. What I want to do is build a little bit more on the information. And at some point you’re going to think Greg has completely forgotten, but then I’ll bring it back. So, so what I what I think is, I mean, we live in an amazing time, right? I mean, we could focus on, oh, we’re divided as a country, and the sky is falling and but, but I’m, I’m a glass is half full kind of person. And I think we live in this amazing time with regard to all the discoveries that we’re making in science. And there’s so much else we get. We can do a whole podcast on why. I think, if you’re interested in, like, feeling good about the time that we’re living in, Pinker has a book, which I can’t remember the name of right now, but he just explains just the humanities progression over the last 1000 years, and just how much better of a life we live now. One of the things that I’ll pull out is is the FMRI. And this is not because if you say fMRI and then you talk, everyone immediately is like, Oh, wow, that person’s really smart. They know the words fMRI, but this is fMRI, right? Stands for functional MRI. And what it means is, is that we can actually look at the brain as it’s doing different activities. Okay? And so there’s this huge recognition now that, and it’s really what’s helped push science, habit science forward of how things are working in the brain. And what’s interesting, Patrick, is that people don’t realize but habits are not volitional, right? I mean, we have a habit of, when you drive home from work, most of the time you’re not even thinking about it. You end up at home and you’re like, I didn’t think about every turn I was making, or the blinker. Those are all just habits. When you walk into a room, you just turn the light on, okay? And so those are not happening in our cortex, where we do all of our thinking. They’re happening at different level in the brain, which is the limbic system. And so I just want to bring up the basal ganglia, because I think it’s a fascinating part of the brain. It’s we have the brain stem, which is right, we have the spinal cord and the brain stem, and the brain stem is helping us breathe, and it’s helping us maintain our body temperature, and some like, really core things. But then you have another area between the brain stem and the cortical system, where we’re doing all of our thinking, and it includes all these structures, right? I mean, you probably haven’t been in a talk lately where you haven’t heard basal ganglia or amygdala, and so I want to, I want to bring up a couple of those, but the basal ganglia has some really cool functionality, which we thought only related to we thought only was related to the reward system. It has a lot of different functions, but you hear about basal ganglion, you immediately think of dopamine. And you think of the reward system, you think of, oh, this is addiction that we’re talking about. But what’s interesting is, is that dopamine is not there just for addiction, right? I mean, we didn’t evolutionarily get dopamine just so we could get addicted to things like your phone. It’s shown that dopamine is the motivator for us doing things like eating. They’ve been able to block dopamine and in mice, and they stop eating. And so there’s this really cool story, not a cool story, because the person had a devastating illness, but we were able to really cool thing in medicine where I think it’s, oh, I’m blanking on his name, but I’ll tell you the story he had. He had an infection in his brain, and. Called encephalitis, and his brain, he recovered from it, but the one area of his brain that that was spared completely, because a lot of his brain was was really damaged in it, like he didn’t remember his name or his past, but his basal ganglia was completely intact, okay, and so he is, oh, I remember it was actually the hippocampus is where memory is. The irony there, I remember it with hippocampus, the hippocampus, talk about the hippocampus, and the hippocampus was completely annihilated in this poor person, and so he was unable to form new memories. But his wife took him home, and obviously had to give him 24 hour care, because it was like taking care of a person with severe dementia. And they went on a walk multiple times a day, and after about three four months, she walked in the room one day and he wasn’t sitting in the in the chair, and she freaked out. She ran around the house, ran around the neighborhood. The neighbors were like, Oh yeah, your husband. We saw him walking like earlier today, she comes back in, and sure enough, he was sitting in his TV chair, and he had gotten up from the chair, had done the entire route that they walk and come back down, and so that they ended up realizing that it’s not just the hippocampus that’s keeping memory alive, it’s also the basal ganglia. Now the basal ganglia is a very integral integral, integrally related to habit formation. And so why am I bringing that up? Because what we’re trying to do with habits is we’re trying to tap in to some non cortical structure of the brain, some deeper structures of the brain, to understand how we can, I don’t want to say, manipulate, how we can influence the creation of habits or dampen down other habits that you don’t want. And so one concept that I think is really important is what James clear and and do Hig that refer to a little bit as what’s called the habit loop, and I’m using do Higgs habit loop, but it’s really essentially the recognition that there’s a cue, okay? And then after the cue, the person will do a routine. And then after the routine, they’ll get some type of reward from doing the routine, which will influence the wanna in the person. So then the next time they see the queue, they’ll go ahead and do that. Okay, and so understanding that concept, and by the way, the routine there, you want to guess what that is in Lean parlance.

Patrick Adams  22:55

Well, I’m thinking specifically around leader, standard work and just having a consistent Yeah, yeah, yeah. Standard

Greg Jacobson  23:03

Work, exactly right. So what we’re trying to figure out is, how do we get a leader to develop a system where you can insert the routine that you want? So whether you’re the senior leader, the executive or whether you’re the CI coach or the CI leader of an organization trying to develop this, but thinking through not only what do you want them to do, and making sure that routine is easy and that they’re motivated to do it if it’s too hard or if they’re not motivated to do it, can be really hard to do, right? I mean, it’s from from falls behavioral model, right, out of tiny, tiny habits, so making sure that they they know how to do it, and then it’s as easy as possible, and that there’s a motivation to do it. So then how do we develop their cues and their rewards to make them do it? So the question is, what could leaders do to help? I’m going back to your question. Gonna get back there. But what they can do is they can develop routines that influence the cues and the rewards of other people in their organization. Okay, right? And so, for example, if a leader goes in and just looks at data, let’s say you’re tracking some KPIs, or you got some run charts, and you’re just looking at data, but you don’t say to anybody, hey, Patrick, thank you so much for putting in that idea, that opportunity for improvement, where you identified that we could save time, money, generate revenue, a safety event like whatever, whatever they did, they engage in. When they do that, they are providing the reward for a front line, right? This is, this is this is why recognition works. Recognition works because it’s tapping in to something biologic in a human, which is the um. Um, that’s that whole dopaminergic system that we’re talking about making sure, as you’re co developing standard work with, with yourself or with with a senior leader that you’re figuring out, how does that Standard Work influence other people in the organization, so it starts becoming self, self generating engine, right? And so that’s what I would say, is, as you’re thinking about that, making sure, making sure you’re doing things that influence other people,

Patrick Adams  25:33

yeah, no, I like that. And the it’s, this is perfect timing right now, because we’re actually working on Leader Standard Work development with a team right now and having some of these same conversations. So this is great, because we’re getting a lot of questions about, you know, will, will, you know, why? Why do we have to do it that way? Or, why? Why is it, you know, every day, can I just do it, you know, when I feel like it or and we’re trying to help this team to understand the importance of creating habits and really kind of starting to rewire the brains and to a point, and I love that you said, to create a cue and a reward system, because that’s something that probably not a lot of organizations are doing. They might be putting standard work in place. They might have their leaders following some form of Leader Standard Work, but they’re not thinking about the cue and reward. Can you can you just expand on that just a little bit and talk a little bit more about how we might become better at developing those cues and rewards within our teams or within ourselves?

Greg Jacobson  26:40

I think, Well, for one, we’re really talking about sustainability. You could come up with standard work, and you can get anyone to follow one time exactly. So I in I always think it’s funny, whenever one says, What does a consultant say to everything? It says, It depends. I’ll, I’ll answer. I don’t, I don’t think at least when what we’ve seen, and I’m specifically talking about several levels up from, you know, maybe a team lead that that they have to do some behavior on a daily basis, always okay. I think, though, that if you’re getting more than a week without doing that repetitive Leader Standard Work, it’s going to be really hard to develop a habit. So I’ll just, I’ll throw that out there. I think if you want to do a daily huddle where you’re looking at the prior issues of the last 24 hours, coming up with the roadblocks of the day and figuring out those things that’s going to be really hard to do if you don’t do a daily. It’s called a daily, okay, so I just, I just, I wanted to kind of pull that out, that that because we, we work with a lot of large organizations, and we’re trying to see, like, how could, how can an executive, in 15 minutes a week, influence the CI culture of an organization? Well, that’s that’s kind of what we specialize in here at kind access, and we can talk about that a little bit later. But, you know, having the ability to view, having the ability to congratulate and to recognize, and by the way, rewards do not have to be monetary. In fact, I think there’s a lot of evidence that recognition is the best reward reward you can give hands down. But how can they utilize that, those few minutes a week to congratulate 15 or 20 people for doing great work, to nudge five or 10 people. Hey, where are we at with this project, this opportunity for improvement, this, AI, this, I mean, this, 5s this, DMAIC, etc. You just now say AI, even when you don’t mean to say AI, because and so and so, that’s the I’ll just say that figuring out the right kints is important. There’s lots of cues, right, and I think the best cue is time and location, right? Every day, at 9am we’re doing this sort of thing at this location. You’re like, oh yeah, that’s what we do at this time. And so, right? I think for leaders, that’s probably the best. It’s interesting. I was talking to a very high up executive at a company that you would recognize if I said the name, and he said he had developed and he had put his 15 minutes a week at a time for the third week in a row, he was unable to do it, and he was like, I’ve got to figure out a different time during my week to do it, because I want to identify as a leader that’s helping to promote this sort of thing. So constantly working and tweaking your cue is important for a front line. It might be the the leader saying, Hey, you, you, you just verbalized a problem. Why don’t we go ahead and and write that down, or put that in kind access, or whatever the system is that you’re collecting those things. It might be an email that cues someone. It might be a little sticker. It might be, you know, we love when people on the back. Of their on the back of their IDs have a little QR code so they can, you can hit your phone and put your your issue or something in, into kind access. There’s, there’s a ton of different cues. And I think figuring out and designing the right cue for the right person is really critically important. We could, again, I think have a huge conversation about rewards. I think I’ll just, I’ll end it by simply sticking that recognition as the number one reward that works in all humans. Hello,

Patrick Adams  30:30

everyone. I am sorry to interrupt this episode of the lean solutions podcast, but I wanted to take a moment to invite you to pick up a copy of my Shingo award winning book, avoiding the continuous appearance track in the book, I contrast the cultures of two companies I work for, and though each started with similar lean models, one was mechanistic and only gave the appearance of lean, while the other developed a true culture of continuous improvement. The contrast provides a vivid example of the difference between fake lean and truly, you can find the book on Amazon. Simply search my name or the title of the book. You aren’t a reader. No worries, the audio book is also available on Audible. Now, back to the show. Yeah, yeah, no, I would agree, in my experiences, it’s it’s so important for sure. So one, one thing that came to mind while you were talking is, you said, what’s important is consistency and time and place. And you know, I’m going to do this every Tuesday at 9am or whatever it might be. How do leaders, how do leaders make sure they don’t get into, like, getting into the consistency, that creating a habit is one thing, but how do we not make it? You know, where it’s like the I’m trying to think of the right words here, but it’s not redundancy, but just like the same old thing that I’m doing every time, and it gets old and it’s like, how do we, how do we keep, keep the energy and keep the excitement in something that we’re doing every single day, at the same time, the same place, you know what? You have any thoughts or ideas for anyone on some of that.

Greg Jacobson  32:09

I’m just a naturally excited person, and so I I get really jazzed up when I’m connecting with people. I think human connection is the main driver for us to have self worth. And it’s, it’s, interestingly enough, that’s what attracted me to lean and I was transitioning from being a resident to being an attending at Vanderbilt back in oh four, and my chairman handed me mizoki My book, Kaizen, and he said, You think like this? Can we teach this to residents? And I read through it, and I was, like, blown away by page seven. It, obviously, it changed my life trajectory. I’m, you know, I’m an ER doctor that’s running a software company. What the heck is going on there? Right? And and it, it changed it because it resonates so much that I was a, I have this predilection to, I love night shifts, and so I was doing these night shifts. And the one thing, the one thing you can be certain, is that you will not find a hospital administrator in the hospital at 2am that’s the one thing it can be certain. And so one of the reasons why maybe I like night shift is like no one bothers you. You know you can kind of do it, do to take care of patients. It just made so much sense to me that the frontline, er, doctor, nurse, tech, transporter, they know all the problems I could point go from patient to patient and show process problem after process problem. No one was asking me, you know, saying. And then I read this book, and I’m just like, oh my gosh, wait, there’s, there’s a whole body of literature related to this and so and so. I actually will be honest, I lost my train of thought on what you asked, but that was the that’s where I’m at so far.

Patrick Adams  34:07

No, that’s good. That’s good. Well, just kind of bringing this back to lean and CI you may have already touched on this, but what do you think is the most important aspect of habit science as it relates to continuous improvement?

Greg Jacobson  34:20

So we definitely talk about identity. I think that’s super important. And I think we definitely talked about habit loops. And so I think those are probably number one and number two. I think the the other thing that’s important to think about, oh, I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about just the excitement, yeah, redundancy, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you keep things exciting? I think I answered that you did. You did, for sure. I just get jazzed up when, when you can look at someone, and you can say, and you can say, Hey, your ideas matter. We not be able to do that, but it matters and that you’re engaging in that. And so what would I say is. A third thing from habit science. I think there’s a realization that, and this directly comes from habit science. And it’s just, it’s like a one for one and continuous improvement, which is just focus on getting a tiny bit better every day. That’s that compounds 1% compounds in a very short time to just huge, huge numbers. And so I think this recognition of when someone identifies either an improvement or an issue, whether it’s big or small, sometimes just de scoping it from well, there’s no way we can do that, to framing it. Well, okay, but what part of this could we do? Because even getting 1% better in this process, and then building off of that, so just that, that recognition of not trying to boil the ocean, I think, would probably be the third thing that I think directly relates to habit science. Because the way you develop habit, if you, let’s say, let’s say you are going to go ahead and do your your your New Year’s resolution that you wanted to be healthier, right? The wrong thing to do is on January run, to go run five miles, right? The right thing to do might literally be just putting on the your running shoes and your running outfit and just stretching for a couple of minutes, right? And that you might think, Oh, well, how is that going to get me to being healthier? But that’s a place that you can start building off of the exact same way with continuous improvement. Don’t start off with the Super most complicated 5s process that if you actually did it Yes, every single you know, Sensei would come and say, Yes, this is exactly correct. You followed all the steps. Your chance of failure is so high there. Why not just do something? I think I heard it best when, if you do doing doing something is going to be better than, like, waiting to do the perfect thing, right? The enemy, the enemy of good is, is better, right? And so I think that would be the third concept, I think that that I would pull from habit science, that I think is already all embedded in, in LinkedIn,

Patrick Adams  37:18

yeah, no, that’s powerful good. I love, love those those points, they definitely tie back to Ci in a big way. And I think everyone that’s listening can, can definitely make the connection. And I want to having a an MD on the show here. I want to, we’re going to get a little technical here, but I want to go back to a couple of the words that you kind of sprinkled in as you were talking through some of this neuroscience stuff. And maybe you can break it down for some of us that that don’t, that don’t understand all of the terms and things, but you said basal, get ganglia and amygdala, and I want to, I want to hear your understanding of the, I guess, one or the other. What’s your take on those? Can you break it down for us? Yeah,

Greg Jacobson  38:05

we were, as we were preparing for this. Patrick was like, oh, you know what? Are kind of different topics. And I was going through them, and then I was just like, oh, it was just a total joke, because I find it really, really humorous, but humorous in a good way, because I think it’s great that we’re bringing in neuroscience into continuous improvement, but I think it’s really great if you’re doing a presentation or a talk and you’re not bringing up something with anatomy, like you’re just missing out. And so like, what are the two structures you hear about? I mean, throughout hippocampus, also hippocampus, memory, basal ganglia. There’s some memory in there, but we’re thinking basal ganglia reward systems and habit formation. And then the other one you hear about is amygdala. And so I was, I was just playing around, and I threw into some AI. I was like, it is that the basal ganglia and the amygdala were to have a fight? You know, who would win? And the first answer was that is not a question that you can really answer, because you don’t really have an I had, I had to explain to it like, No, I’m having, I’m playing around, and I’m having, I’m having fun here. And so it went into this huge description. Well, the basal ganglia is a is a complex of loci that really is much larger, and then the amygdala is super tiny. But here’s what I’ll say, if you hear amygdala, you’re thinking emotion. If you hear basal ganglia, the person’s probably talking about reward systems or habit formation or something of that nature, right? And so if you talk to Mark Raven in the last several years, one of the topics that he is that I think is deeply important to continuous improvement is psychological safety, right? The amygdala is all about psychological safety. So the amygdala just remember is that it’s like, they always call it an almond shaped which, by the way, we can have. Another little side note on this. In medicine, everything is related to some food. You know, no one would say, oh, it’s like, you know, a small ping pong ball. It’s always like, it’s almond or it’s a grapefruit size, or it’s a plum. It’s really funny. You’ll notice that in medicine. And so it’s this almond shaped area of the brain that is, it’s really responsible for, like, fear and intense emotion and and so I think the amygdala is a really important thing, because if people don’t feel psychologically safe, they’re not going to engage in kind of the systems thinking this, this lean, you know, philosophy, practition that we’re talking about basal ganglia is also important. I think, I think that the basal ganglia and the amygdala were to have a fight, I think the basal ganglia would win, is my suspicion, just because it’s bigger and it probably could sit on the amygdala, and the amygdala wouldn’t have anywhere to go, because it doesn’t really, you know, doesn’t have, it doesn’t have any arms or legs. But the, you know, the basal ganglia has all these projections. And anyway,

Patrick Adams  41:09

I love it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna have to look those both up now and look at a physical picture of what those look like, and have my own thoughts around which one would win. But I do like that you that you explain the difference between the two, and also the importance of both emotion and structure and habits. Obviously, both of those have to be taken into consideration in working in any organization, because you’re working with people. So you will have both sides of that that are important in moving your, you know, moving along in your continuous improvement

Greg Jacobson  41:46

journey. So everyone’s focused on problem solving and problem solving tools and what methodology you’re going to use, and things of that interest that’s all cortex. If you’re not tapping in and figuring out the stuff that’s that’s creating emotion and creating behaviors, you’re not going to be able to access the cortex the way you really want to. And so that’s the first time I actually made that connection from what you said. Thank you for allowing that connection to be made in my brain. So

Patrick Adams  42:14

absolutely. One last question before we transition over to kinexes, because I want to spend just a little bit of time on Kinesis. But so if there’s someone listening right now that’s hearing all of these complex terms and thinking about neuroscience and habit science, and how do I, you know, how does this help me? Or, you know, what would you I guess, what advice would you give to someone that that says I would like to create the right habits for for me as a Lean leader in my organization, where, what would the starting point be for someone that that says, you know, right now, I come to work and, you know, it’s all fires, and I’m running around and it’s, it’s just craziness, but I want, I want to get intentional about the right things that are going to help me create, you create and support a Lean culture, like, Where would they start? What should they do?

Greg Jacobson  43:05

Wow, that’s a pretty loaded question.

Patrick Adams  43:10

I’ll be hard to answer in just a few minutes. I’m sure

Greg Jacobson  43:12

we’re just, let’s just assume this is a, like a mid, mid manager level leader, or like a senior leader, I

Patrick Adams  43:21

would say mid manager. Probably the majority of our listeners are fall into that mid

Greg Jacobson  43:26

manager leader that they have anywhere between, let’s say, five to two, 300 people that kind of potentially, depending on the size of the organization. So for one, I think you’re gonna need to start with a little bit of knowledge, right? And so, from a habit science perspective, on your commute or on your however, I’m a listener, so I listen to all of my books. So, so I would, I would start off by learning some of this habit science work and letting it seep in a little bit. I think, though, I think too much knowledge before some practical application is, can be, can be fraught. And so I would say that you’re trying to figure out, how do you do something really easy. So in medicine, you do one, you see when you do when you teach one, it’s just a conceptual framework. And so what I what I wouldn’t do, is say, I need to learn everything about Lean for the next five years, and then I’m going to go practice lean like a perfect practitioner, right? I think what, what we see people is do a little bit of learning and then doing and then a little bit, it’s almost like a PDSA cycle on yourself and doing. And so I would literally, in my one on ones with people that are reporting to me, I would just start asking them, hey, what’s frustrating you like? What’s preventing you from doing your job today and starting to. Hear them and starting to, Oh, is there one thing? Let’s go. Let’s go look at that process. Let’s instead of being soft, let’s go and talk about that where, wherever that is. Or let’s dig into that. Just fix one thing today, or one thing we can just and work on, and developing that momentum of of working on small, tiny, little improvements. And, and then, I mean, you know, and I know that the first time that you saw something, you’re probably not solving it the right way, right? I mean, I see, like people that are been doing this work for 2030, years, and, and I see how they think through an a three, and I’m like, wow, that’s, that’s freaking impressive. And I wasn’t thinking at that level. I wouldn’t worry about that. Just get your first day three done, get your first of these types of things done, and then build on that and build on that, and build on that and and I think one of the things is that that that really prevents people from, like, learning a language or learning anything, is constantly being corrected. It’s just like, just, just kind of get into the habit, no pun intended, of just doing the behavior, asking for problems, and going to attempt to solve a problem. Hopefully, you then go back and you say, oh, did that solve a problem? And then the person’s like, Oh, God, you know, I did all this work, but it didn’t solve a problem. Then you can start introducing like, well, what kind of problem solving structured? Well, I didn’t, I didn’t use any problems well, and then you can kind of build and build and build as that person develops their practice. So that’s how that’s that’s kind of been a little bit of my, my journey. You know, I read one book and then started doing it, and then started learning and learning and learning and reading and reading and talking with people, and I don’t know that’s helpful, but very helpful.

Patrick Adams  46:43

Yeah, no, that’s great. And I love that. You said start small and and with small things and just be consistent intentional. I mean, that’s, that’s exactly, yeah, thank you for that. That’s great advice. So I want to, as we kind of wrap up here, I want to just kind of close out with talking a little bit about kinexis. What, what does kind access do? And how can you, how can kinda access help support some of the listeners that that you know, that are in various industries that are listening in?

Greg Jacobson  47:14

Yeah, no, we are. We are a we’re a technology company, and we partner with organizations that are believe in the mission of spreading continuous improvement. And so we’re the technology part of the equation. I’m sure you’ve heard of process, people, technology. We’re the technology piece of that. And so people are coming to us, typically, we are getting buried in Excel spreadsheets and word documents, and all we’re doing is filling out PowerPoints, or we have all these paper A threes, and we don’t we have all these paper boards. We have no idea if they’re using them. We’ve got 800 boards all around the world. We have no idea they’re using them. We have no idea the impact of this work, and we have no way to communicate about these things or share these ideas and this knowledge. And so, 1520, years ago, when, when this was an academic project where I was just trying to collect ideas from from residents and get them to work on some small improvement in emergency department, I realized, where are we going to put these ideas? We have a 24/7 365, operation. We get two ers. And so I was like, Oh, just email them to me. And then I tried to manage them on email, and it was a cluster. After two weeks, I immediately realized, like, oh, we need some kind of system where we can put these and give people updates and loop in the right people. And that evolved ultimately into kind access. And we went from just bottom up idea issue to top down. So we help organizations manage their rapid improvement events and their a threes and their dmaics and and then their strategy deployment. We’ve added strategy deployment and KPI visualization and and now we’ve been processes. So we’re doing like complex Incident Reporting type of processes or rounding and huddles. So really, our ideal customer profile are large organizations. If it’s a 10 person team or a 10 person organization, I would say just go get something off the shelf. You can probably use a Trello or an honor or whatever. But when you’re when you’re a large company that has a lot of CI coaches, and you want to understand and wrap your hands around, like, who’s doing what? Who’s doing good work, what’s the impact of the work they’re doing? I need to manage all the training that’s that’s going on. So, like, you could use a lean solutions to do the training, but then you want to figure out who’s what is all the impact of the work that people did to get trained, and who has what certifications and all that stuff would then would be on the Kinex side of things. And, you know, the huddle boards and, you know, running meetings off of. Kind access. So if it’s if it’s related to improvement, we have a solution for it. So

Patrick Adams  50:04

it makes me No, it’s great. It makes me think about a term that Mark grabin used in his in his book about vanity metrics, right? We don’t want to just count how many people that actually got trained. You guys are helping organizations to actually see the impact of those people and actually connect the dots for them. So that’s, that’s great, massive. And then I would also say, probably super valuable, since COVID With hybrid and remote work environments now too, right? And I guess as organizations grow and global, you know, multi site organizations, I mean, those are probably perfect client. Clients for you, right?

Greg Jacobson  50:43

100% there’s no question that when, when a lot of people went remote, it was it created an awareness of the problem that people aren’t communicating well. But just as a problem, it became an opportunity, because there’s just so much more opportunity once you are getting out of Excel and really great tools, not A, not the appropriate tool to run, you know, a large, complex improvement effort across an organization. So it’s been an it’s been an interesting journey. It’s been an interesting journey, as we figured out, like, where we add the most value and and then figuring out, just like in organizations that are doing this work, well, it touches so many things. So sure, a lot of you really need a robust platform that has a lot of like an ERP or a finance solution. I mean, really, OPEX departments need their own solution to track and and do all that work. But I’ll tell you that that that when you can show Hey, we trained this cohort of 10 people, and they did 10 domain projects, or white belt or whatever the thing is, and it generated X amount of improvement, whether that’s finance or safety or whatever. And then the leader that isn’t really a lean and Die Hard sees the ROI of what’s going on. It’s always like, okay, yep, I get it. You know, Patrick is doing his thing and having this big impact. But they can see kind of the how it’s hitting the bottom line, if you will. And I’m careful not to say it’s just finance, but it’s right. But it also includes, you know, satisfaction, which directly relates to customer and employee retention, and safety, which, as a physician, is that’s the one that pulls out my heartstrings the most. So

Patrick Adams  52:40

absolutely, Oh, that’s great, Greg. If anybody wanted more information about kynexus, where would they find that at? Well,

Greg Jacobson  52:47

the obviously, the website is a great place to start. So K, a, I, N, E, x, u, s.com, and then my email is greg@kinexis.com and I’m happy to talk to anyone or get them the best person at the organization to talk to. I’m no longer the best person to share the technology, but I certainly I’m happy to help out and in any way we can. That’s one of the things I love about the company that we built, where we just want to see where we can add value. And if kind access is the way, then we’ll do that, and if it’s something else, then we’ll give recommendations or make connections. Love it, love

Patrick Adams  53:25

it. That’s great. Well, we’ll drop both your email and the website into the show notes, so if anyone’s interested to go and grab that information, you can click right on the link in the show notes and connect with Greg and his team at kynexus. And Greg, it’s been great to have you on the show. This was a deep topic with a little bit of complexity, but I think you, you know, you did a great job at helping kind of break things down, and for our listeners and for me to understand how important this is in pushing forward and really developing, organizations with a true culture of continuous improvement. So thank you for that, and thank you for being on the show. Thank

Greg Jacobson  54:07

you so much for the kind words, and I appreciate all the work you’re doing as well. So thank you

Patrick Adams  54:11

appreciate it. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe this way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please give us a review. Thank you so much.