Daily Management with Calvin Williams
This week, I’m speaking with the founder and CEO of Impruver, Inc. Calvin Williams. Calvin founded Impruver Technologies after working for 20 years as an Operations Leader and Engineer with some of America’s premier manufacturing companies, generating Billions in growth opportunities and cost savings for those he has served.
In this episode we talk about daily improvement and self discipline to leverage your continuous improvement journey.
What You’ll Learn This Episode:
- Impruver and the benefits of using software in lean
- The connection between lean and fitness
- Daily habits for daily improvement
- The importance of self-discipline
- Time management and making time to improve
About the Guest:
Calvin Williams is the Founder and CEO of Impruver, Inc. and has also worked as a continuous improvement coach and consultant after spending many years as an industrial engineer and CI practitioner.
Calvin built Impruver to address the challenges all companies seemed to face in their efforts to get better. These challenges include: lack of CI skills development throughout the enterprise, lack of leadership support and engagement, and lack of sufficient tools and information.
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. The most dangerous phrase in our language is we’ve always done it this way.
There are an awful lot of posers out there. people that do lean because they’re mandated to do it. They think it will work. how stable are you today? What are your goals? Are you generating small sample improvements? There are very few people that embrace lean with their full heart had an emotion. Let’s imagine that your current output is top notch. Is that enough to stop innovating and stop reaching for more? Patrick’s book uncovers the essence of what those organizations look like, and what the posers look like caution. Are you in the fake zone or the real zone?
Patrick Adams
Our guest today is Calvin Williams. Calvin is the founder and CEO of improver, Inc. and Calvin has also worked as a continuous improvement coach and consultant after spending many years as an industrial engineer and a CI practitioner. So welcome to the show. Calvin. Thank you for having me, Patrick. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I see you do a ton of really, really great work with marketing, you know, just your personal brand, the work that you’re doing in the CI world. And so obviously, you know, a lot of the listeners, myself included, you know, see you out there and for those that don’t know, and I mentioned that you’re the founder and CEO of improver, but but many probably maybe don’t know what improver is. So I’m curious to hear you know, what is improver and that when we say improver, it’s actually spelled IMPRU ve r, so it’s a little different, right. So can you explain that?
Calvin Williams
got the corporate corporate? You know what coming from you on the marketing stuff that is, that is that is I’m truly flattered, because when I see your stuff out there, I’m like, Man, that’s the guy, right. That’s, you know, I gotta get on Patrick’s level. So I’m inspired by you. So appreciate that. Thank you appreciate the kudos there. We’re trying, you know, we try, you know, we’re inspired, we’re trying. So what is improver improvers, a it’s a it’s a two part system on one part, you know, one side of the coin, we like to say it’s a software provide some tools for driving that behavior pattern of daily improvement. And it says notifications is sort of walks automatically coaches a person similar to like the the five coaching questions from Toyota kata, okay, it’s a dashboard, provide some incentives, some gamification, some coins that can be traded in for things from the company, or traded amongst peers as recognitions, tokens of recognition and things like that. So it’s got some neat features to help drive that behavior pattern of daily improvement, because we, you know, I, throughout my experience, have learned that daily improvement is really what’s necessary to drive the discipline that most Company A lot of companies need. Absolutely. In their efforts to drive continuous improvement. So so that’s improver that I asked you a question. I think there’ll be other parts of that, that I know
Patrick Adams
don’t get it all. But But obviously, you talk about daily improvement. And again, you may have some listeners, you know, listening in that may or may not know, and when we say daily improvement, what exactly does that mean? So can you maybe, just in your experience, you know, as a lean consultant, as a lean practitioner, you know, what would you say is the definition of daily improvement, and maybe even some examples of daily improvement that you’ve seen outside of improver?
Calvin Williams
Oh, yeah. So daily improvement itself is quite simple. It is, as it sounds, right. It’s it’s make make some improvement every day, right. And it’s, it’s make some improvement in the direction that the company needs to go, or you as an individual need to go. So let’s make an important change or some improvement every single day. And the significance about daily is that, as humans, above all things, one of the greatest forces in human nature is the force of habit. And in order to form a habit, you know, the science says you need to do something consecutively for 18 to 250 days straight. So, the power, the exponential power behind daily improvement is not just for business results, but the results are there 1% every day times, you know, raised to 365th power is 38 times better results in a year, right. I don’t know many companies putting up those kind of numbers that aren’t like explosive startups or explosively fast growing companies, but the math is there, right? If you do the algebra, the other piece of that is cultural. So as an individual, of course, if you can get yourself into the behavior pattern of every day, make some improvement. I myself, I use a concept called the Power Hour where every day At 6am, I have a same routine, I reflect on what I improved yesterday, I quantify the benefit, quantify the result. So to take away the key learnings and then decide what I’m going to improve what the next the next day, and then the next day, I just repeat the same cycle. So it’s less about tools, it’s less about philosophies and methodologies and all these complicated things that you need a freakin PhD to fully understand. Right? And it’s really just about discipline. Yes. About make yourself do it. Yeah. Even when you don’t want to. Right. That’s right. Um, so yeah, I think that’s, you know, that’s the thing that I like to think a lot of companies are are struggling with, especially when it comes to sustainment. Absolutely. Anybody can get off the couch and go workout one day. Yeah, but can you get off the couch and go workout every day, for a month or two months and three months. And if you can accomplish that four, by our math, if you can accomplish that for about 28 days, 30 days, you can stick with it, and you can do it, you know, perfect perfectly into perpetuity. So right. That’s the that’s sort of the philosophy behind why we push for daily improvement. I lost a lot of lot of others who, who sort of on that vein as well. I think Toyota kata pushes for daily. James clear, atomic habits pushes for daily, you know, 1% every day, there’s a lot of, you know, literature and things like that out there to support that, that the science behind why that’s so powerful.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. Calvin, I’d love to hear a little bit more about you. What do you call it your power hour in the morning? Yeah, it three questions you said that you kind of ask yourself, how did how did things go yesterday? Or you talked about, you know, what, what is the quantifiable improvement from yesterday? Right? I think you said rather than what what are you doing today to make improvements? Right, those were kind of right. areas. So I really love that. Can you give us maybe even an example? Like walk us through maybe a couple you know, maybe this morning or yesterday? I don’t know. You know, what, what were some of the things that were going through your head during your power hour?
Calvin Williams
Yeah, yeah. So it’s a simple model, right? It’s reflect plan do it’s kind of like PDCA or PDSA, but it’s just, you know, a little bit tailored to to what I need, right? So versus reflect, you know, what happened yesterday? What can we take away? even numbers got better? Or I got smarter, right? What are the other? Right, right? Those are both benefits? In my in my book, now you are planning? Is
Patrick Adams
it like sales for your company? Like, are you? Or is this more of a personal? You know, how, how am I doing with, with my kids with my marriage with, you know, or I guess maybe it could be a little bit of both, right?
Calvin Williams
It’s, it’s, it’s indirectly all of the above, but more directly, I’m now applying it to a sales campaign. And Mark, it’s kind of a sales marketing campaign that we’re doing, where we’re trying to increase the open rates of our email campaigns. Oh, nice. So we have a, there’s there’s 1000s of people on our mailing list. And we want more of those people getting and receiving the messages that we put out there. So generally, and I’ll be transparent with you some some some back office data, maybe a little proprietary, but you know, just exclusive to the Patrick Adams. podcast. Hey, nobody, nobody tell anybody about this. This? Yes. Yeah. Don’t tell anybody don’t tell anybody. Okay, keep this totally between us. All right. What are our open rate, you know, varies between, you know, 15 and 30%, right? 30 on a great on a great email, you can go as low as five or 10% on a really crappy email, right? So we have our, you know, regular cadence, weekly email blasts that we do, but we also take a batch of 25 every single day. And these are cold emails never been contacted, they don’t know who we are, probably don’t know who we are, you know, very targeted to certain people. And we we try a different subject line to see if we can increase the open rate. Right. Okay. And those subject lines, you know, sort of reframe our value proposition in such a way that we learn what people are most interested in, right? We find what people are more likely to click in open and read. So So with that, that kind of that spearhead batch of 25, we learned was hot in the market, like what are people most interested in? What’s sort of the hot button topics that apply to what we’re doing? So and that that sort of the the statistics they come out of that we learn daily, either we form a hypothesis every day, hey, we think if we include these keywords, it’s going to take our open rate above 25%. Most of the time, we’re very wrong. But every time we learn every day, we learned Oh, yeah, I thought that would be much higher. We must have been wrong about these assumptions. Right? You know, and ask yourself,
Patrick Adams
what did we learn and what can we do differently the next
Calvin Williams
time? Absolutely. I love absolutely, then. Yeah. And then that sort of that sort of feeds the narrative of our sort of weekly blast for, you know, our non cold emails or follow ups or second touch third touch fourth touch email. So yeah, yeah, that’s how we’re doing it. Now. We actually use the improver software to manage all that and see That in real time I was going
Patrick Adams
Really? That’s great. Yeah. So we’ll tell you so since you brought up improver, let’s go back to that, because I’d like to hear a little bit more about that, you know, when we, we talk about software in the continuous improvement world, you know, there’s, there’s sometimes a split, where, you know, a lot of ci practitioners, you know, want to stay maybe away from technology or away from, you know, soft new software, you know, and things like that, and not that it’s a bad thing. But, you know, a lot of, you know, lean lean practitioners, they are pushing for individuals to learn by doing by touching by feeling right, and an understanding, you know, how to walk through that in a physical way, right. So, in a way, you know, they, they, they’re recommending, you know, don’t use a electronic, our, by our board, for example, that automatically calculates your hour by hour for you without having a person having to put pen to paper, right? So there’s a little bit of a split there. And maybe some people probably cringing a little bit when we talk about software in the continuous improvement world. So I want to hear from you, you know, why should we be applying software? Why should we be looking at technology, as we move into the future? You know, from a continuous improvement perspective,
Calvin Williams
man, there’s so many as you’re talking there, I was thinking of so many ways to respond to that. Because, you know, at the most, I guess, human level, is that, you know, industrial engineers invented lean and continuous improvement as we know it, right. I’m an industrial engineer, by trade, I just happened to be a little more tech, early adopter, probably tech savvy than most sure my predecessors were. And, you know, if you really look at the source of where those messages are coming from, it’s one engineer telling you that another type of engineer the software engineers wrong, and yet you need to stick with the, the, you know, he does stay committed to us and don’t go to them, right. But the reality is, and people get proven wrong about technology way too often. And if you look at the trajectory, just like in real estate, you see housing, you know, house prices go up over time, well, technology wins over time, right, as a function of time. So the person who says technology can’t help you, is the person who lacks the creativity to to understand how technology can be applied, right? Because anything can be applied, if you got the creativity to apply it, you know, in the most useful way. So although I’m a big believer in a big fan, that when you have a person write a number down, alright, results down by hand, yes, it does do something for them psychologically. That’s right, it does drive greater ownership, it does drive greater accountability, it forces that person to confront the reality a little bit more, right? Because if it’s fully automated, then it’s passive, right? You never really have to confront it, you can just ignore it. And it’s just happening, right? Right scenes where if you haven’t write it down, then you’re you’re confronting it, right? You’re thinking, Oh, crap, this number sucks. I need to figure out what to do what to do about this number, before my boss sees it, or, you know, this is embarrassing, right, you’re kind of forced to confront and deal with it, I think there’s a lot of value, and incorporating that manual input or that manual component in with software. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s, that’s involved in continuous improvement per se, that software can do way better than people. If you want to see a historical about how a lions performing in terms of downtime software can show you that much better than you can do by hand, if you want to see, you know, across divisions or see where you know, you want to find out good ideas across, you know, two, three plants away into three states away software can feed you that much better than people can feed you that kind of information, you will know who’s doing well, well know who’s not doing well want to know who needs more attention, software can tell you that quicker than a manual process can tell you that. So software goes with the user, whereas whiteboards stay at the production area and the area where it’s being applied. So the white boy stays with the process. The software goes with the user, right? It’s right there in your your mobile device. So I mean, there’s so many tools, so many mechanisms that software can give you to make your chances of successful continuous improvement in business in general, that manual just can’t give you and if you if you go in with a bias that all software is bad. You’re closing the door on so so many opportunities for acceleration for your your own goal. Right slides, right. I think the expression we say is why crawl when you can fly? Yeah, so your destination in your journey.
Patrick Adams
So one of the things I because I’ve seen your improver software and and you know, one of the things I think that I appreciate most about it is that you know, you haven’t necessarily thrown away that that engagement piece between the user and the information that’s being you know, put into the system. You’ve got you become very creative about how to how to keep that, you know that that psychological piece of the person actually being engaged in the process instead of having them be removed and having it automatically happen, you know, without them being involved. So I do I do very much appreciate that piece of it because it is, it is very nice to have them still have that that connection piece, right.
Calvin Williams
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s critical because I’m a firm believer that if you’re not being challenged, if you’re if it’s getting too easy, then you probably not improving anymore. Right? You know, before before the tools can help you you got to be, you gotta be dead set on succeeding. Even with improver. Even with improver, we, we say, hey, to start this in your company, you need a champion, you need somebody to find a way to win, and you saw the need that anyway, with or without a software tool, you got to be dead set on winning, you got to have winning, clearly defined, and you gotta be dead set on it, but then the tool can help you make it make winning a little easier. Right, right. Abs like, you know, if I can give you an Shila world class basketball player, but if you’re intent on being a world class basketball player, you know, the tennis shoes then make a lot more sense for you. Right, right. Gotta have that you got to have that purpose and intent clear. And that drive to be successful already. And then and then the other stuff can can make that easier for you to do.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. So Calvin, one of the things that I’ve heard you say before, and I’m curious to have a discussion about is the relationship between lean pneus and fitness? Can you help explain that? Because I think there’s a there’s definitely, you know, something there and I want to I want our listeners to hear about it.
Calvin Williams
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, I’m reflecting on my own journey and questioning, challenging, I guess whether or not the term leanness really is clear for people for the customer, who are essentially leaders, inside organizations, managers, leaders, supervisors, those kind of folks, so sure, the term lean is sort of implies that you’re going to be skinny, right? You’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna get skinny. And you know, I think a lot of people take it as that weigh in. And we see a lot of companies say they’re doing lean in, and what they mean is that they’ve gone in and cut out all the excess headcount. And I don’t know if that’s healthy. I mean, I know that’s not a healthy way to run a business, especially when cutting those people result in reducing the amount of value that you’re producing for customers. Right. So I question whether fitness is actually a more useful term, then leanness thing, right? In the meaning behind that is, is the company fit for what is out set out to do? Right? Are you fearful, if a person has been sitting on the couch for 10 years, and just wake up one day and decide they’re going to run a marathon, they’re probably not fit for that right? fit for some other things, maybe binge watching, but you’re not fit for running a marathon? So the question is, in fitness is more from an organizational from a company standpoint is kind of look at what the company set out to do what it set out to achieve, are you fit to accomplish that? And the way we’ve said, you know, from a continuous improvement standpoint, the way to get more fit is by working out every day. And continuous improvement working out every day is making some type of improvement every day in learning from those experiments.
Patrick Adams
That’s right, what would you say? What would be your suggestion for somebody that is sitting on the couch and has been for the last, you know, year but wants to run a marathon? What would you say? Now Now apply it to the continuous improvement world, right? That so someone that is maybe just getting into lean, just starting to understand the benefits that it can have for their company? And you know, they’re ready to do this? What would you say would be the first steps that they should take?
Calvin Williams
You know, I like? I like bJ foggs approach, right? So if you sit on the couch, the first thing you need to do is put on your shoes every day.
Yeah.
Like john wooden would say, the coach, UCLA coach, famous UCLA coach is one of the greatest coaches of all time. First thing we’re gonna learn is how to put on our socks, or something like that. He said, our first thing we learn is how to tie our shoes are small, start with the smallest thing you can accomplish and start to get into a routine and routine. Like I say, the greatest force in human nature is to force a habit. So if you can start to develop a routine of action, getting to action every day, and then repeat that action. And then perhaps you add more to that every day, right? So yeah, first it’s like put your shoes on next is like, walk around the block, you know, third, it’s run them out, you know, fourth, it’s, you know, add bicycle, add swim, and you know, whatever it is to do that triathlon or marathon, whatever you going to do. So start by getting yourself in the routine of taking some action, and then you can you can build upon that action, all the way up until you get to the state that you that you want to be in so or your target condition, so to say, right, so yeah. I think BJ Fogg is probably three tiny habits, this a great place to start. If you you know, if you’re looking for ways to, to get the ball rolling in a way that doesn’t cause such a disruption that it causes you to back off.
Patrick Adams
Sure, sure. And, and obviously, you know, you want to, eventually you want to have your whole organization in your whole team moving in that direction, right. So, you know, sometimes, you know, it just it does just take one person to to get the ball rolling, but obviously, you want to, you want to start thinking about how do I also, you know, bring it bring along the rest of my team? And what are some What are some ways that I can maybe have them to start seeing some of the same benefits in, you know, doing small improvements in their own areas? Right? Yeah,
Calvin Williams
absolutely. Yeah. And the best way to the best way to improve is a book out there called peek the secret science of expertise. Okay. And this applies well, beyond expertise. There’s a great book K, Anders Ericsson, he’s a Stanford guy, I think he is I think he passed recently, actually, but the book is phenomenal. talks about the importance of deliberate practice, and practicing with a coach can not only motivate you increase that accountability for you, I think statistics shows that you’re 98% more likely to be successful with a coach than you are without one. Right? So yeah, coach, Coach brings that accountability. A coach also can teach you the science behind what you’re doing a little better, but they also can just just kind of set us help you build confidence and help you set a standard for yourself that’s above and far beyond the point where you would have quit if you were on your own. That’s right. Because ultimately, that’s where, you know, that’s where you that’s what you lose is where you quit. Right. Right. So, so yeah, that’s another big piece. Right? So starting small, but then also having a coach, but if you’re a supervisor, and you’re trying to bring your team along, if you’re a leader and executive, you try to bring your team forward, be that coach, right. And there are certain certain skills that come with being a good coach that, you know, can be learned and should be developed in another coach can help you become a better coach. But yeah, certainly, if you’re looking to bring others along with you, you you may have to be that coach for them.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. No, I love that. And obviously, you know, I know you had you have your own coach, I have my own coach, I mean, that there’s definitely power in having that person that can hold you accountable and be there to demotivate to be intentional about helping guide you in the right direction. So absolutely.
Calvin Williams
I got I got I got several coaches. Some time. I think I got too many coaches. Could be could be a problem, too. But yeah, I mean, I would say there’s times in my life without where I’ve accomplished, the greatest things, even things that have been beyond what I would have imagined for myself. Sure. I’ve been the times I’ve had a good coach in my corner. Yeah, absolutely.
Patrick Adams
Very nice. Hey, going back to your improver again. there’s a there’s a piece of your improver called the improver accelerator, can you give us what is that? Exactly?
Calvin Williams
Yeah, it’s funny, you mentioned that, as you know, so the accelerator is essentially a coaching program is a six week coaching program. That is the purpose of it is to accelerate the person from one PDCA PDCA cycle in a week to five PDCA cycles in a week. So essentially, one per day. Well, if you if you put that in perspective, right, companies improve all companies improve is probably informal, it’s probably sporadic, is probably like, let’s turn it up. Now, while we’re in a crisis situation, and then they fall back into complacency afterward, you know, when the fires put out for the moment, you know, all companies improve, you have to improve your way into existence for a company, right? So you look at the company’s bottom line, and you say, Okay, yeah, they’ve, they’ve done some things well, right, they’ve probably improved a lot along the way to get to that and get to those numbers probably lost a lot along the way, you know, you know, getting to the numbers, they are they’re at so what this is saying is, alright, let’s focus, let’s look really at how many improvements you’re making in a day. You know, in a week’s time, we’re in a month’s time and saying, you know, most people are probably at less than one improvement per week, in our reality, right? They’re kind of stuck in a mode of doing the same thing every day and not really deliberately improving, right? What the accelerator is saying is let’s take you to one improvement every day or five improvements per week, or, you know, 25 a month or whatever it comes out to be so sure, that’s what the accelerators trying to trying to do is sort of teach you you know, the principles, the science, the philosophy, all that stuff, but actually get you to do it, right, make an improvement every day. You know, as Patrick you know, as crazy as that. I mean, a lot of continuous improvement people and a lot of ci people come through the accelerator, right and they come in so confident that they’re about to blow this thing out. Right got ci nailed down world leading expert in continuous improvement, like I let’s see what you can do, right? We get them in the accelerator and they struggle because they got the theory really understand the concepts, but it’s it takes discipline to do yes. And it takes you got to show up, you got to show up every day and and take a series of actions every day, right? That’s right, we talked earlier about my, you know, Power Hour concept. Yes, a lot of people who can’t implement and stick to something like the Power Hour, they just don’t have the self discipline and time management skills to to do that. And we’re learning more and more that, you know, continuous improvement, a lot of it has to do with time management, you got to make time to improve, if you plan to improve, and it’s, if you say you’re serious about it, then I should be able to look at your calendar and see when exactly you’re going to improve. Right. Right. And what exactly you’re you’re you’re being deliberate about improving right now, you should be able to tell me what you’re going to do today to make to to, to produce better results tomorrow.
Patrick Adams
That’s right, right. Yeah. And it has to be intentional. Like you said, You can’t just be intention can’t just wish or hope it’s going to happen. I can’t just think of doing five. It’s not going to happen, right? You have to be intentional. You have to block time or you know, have leader Standard Work that you know, you’re checking off or an improver, you know, accelerator or something that’s giving you that, that intentional piece that you need in order to, to follow through on it, right.
Calvin Williams
Absolutely. There’s no such thing as passive improvement. Just like there’s no such thing as like passive excellence. Sure, we we were just minding our business and woke up one day and was excellent. Yeah, it doesn’t work like that. You got to dig Michael Jordan is one of the greatest because he decided one day, he’s gonna be one of the greatest thing and let nothing stop him from getting there. That’s that’s the kind of attitude you got to come into, into your role. Your role, right, as well. Right. Do
Patrick Adams
we think do we think Michael Jordan just that he wished it had happened? it? Probably no. Right? He was very intentional to be very careful in court multiple times a day, you know, X number of hours, you know, right. I don’t I don’t know, statistics. I know. They’re out there, though. How many? How many throw shots? How many, you know, every single day,
Calvin Williams
right? Every day. And if you ask his teammates, his coaches, I watched the last dance. It was on Netflix. Not long ago, ESPN, special one. Yeah. Man, this, this guy probably worked two times harder than anybody else on the team. He was there first way early. He was there last way late, right? He just would not accept not being the best ever. And what he was he still says he’s the best ever. So yeah, it just it just shows you the mindset, right? That’s right. I mean, if you talk to a guy like that, or any Olympic champion, or anybody who’s excelled in athletics, they can talk your ear off about daily improvement, right? They get the concept that Yeah, you need to get a little bit every day cuz you don’t have time to wait, you have a day to waste. That’s right. Right. So yeah, I mean, we bring that same mindset to continuous improvement. That’s right.
Patrick Adams
That’s right. Yeah. And I love that example, too. Because, you know, obviously, that’s a Michael Jordan is a, you know, the example, who’s going to be the next Michael Jordan in their company, I think about right, I mean, maybe you’re not gonna get that far along. But but just, you know, five improvements a week, right? Just pick one thing a day, how are you going to get a little bit better every single day just a little bit. And then it’ll compound it’ll add up, it’ll, it’ll grow. And, you know, maybe eventually, you’ll get to the point where you’re doing, you know, two improvements, or maybe it’s seven a week or eight a week, right? And just continuing to grow that but start small start with one a day. And as your point Calvin, anybody in the morning, anybody can do it. But maybe in the morning, you, you you write that down, you pick that one, one area that you’re going to improve in, and then the next day, you’re reflecting it was able to do it right?
Calvin Williams
Then in reality is like, you’re really just experimenting, right? You’re not you don’t know, improvement is an output from the process. The input is the experiment, I’m gonna try this, and I may get better, I may not want to guarantee I mean, they’re going to get better, I’m gonna get produce a better result. I’m going to learn something because something i thought was wrong, right? And being deliberate about it, you’re sort of challenging yourself and what you really know, right? Right. I think that if I do this, that’s going to happen, you do that, and that does not happen, then you can look back and say, Oh, crap, that I really think that now I’m smarter. Now I’m smarter. And what happens over time is that the smarter you get, the more likely your experiments will turn out successful, successful improvements, but you still have to start the journey expecting to not be very smart and be open minded that you may be wrong about a lot of the stuff that you’re making big decisions based on start testing those assumptions out. In real in the real world situations, you know, in a controlled way, you’re going for the 1% improvement in most cases, tiny improvements and and really learn where you’re at, you’re either going to learn or you’re going to put up better numbers. Both of them are success. You don’t get both as success.
Patrick Adams
So absolutely agree 100%. So Calvin, what? What’s next for you and improver? What’s next? What’s, what’s your we’re playing? What’s your next target condition here?
Calvin Williams
Yeah. So I want to get a lot more coaches certified. Because I think coaching within companies is a is a severely, there’s a severe deficit of coaching capability within companies, we have very much a short sighted command and control type of culture and a lot of companies. And I would love to get more coaches certified on the Socratic method, developing people to to develop other people to develop better processes that that serve better products to customers and better services to come on customers. So, but I think there’s a lot of like, you know, what I see inside companies is managers sort of playing to three levels down a lot of time in organizations, they haven’t figured out how to level up and develop people, you know, develop people better. I also see that, you know, with the generational shift with the technological shift with a lot of things changing boomers kind of leaving out x, y, z is coming in millennials and what are called boomers Now, coming in, I think there’s a huge deficit of leadership capability that is there. And I think coaching is coaching is a capability gap that needs to be closed at all levels within company. So yeah, I want to build that, not just for my company, we have a certification process for coaches, but also to get get companies doing it right. Everybody every day. I mean, I think that’s the play, right? Perhaps, you know, 10 years from now, we can look at ourselves as the rival to Facebook, where, you know, and be as ubiquitous as Facebook, where Facebook is the place you go to waste time improvers the place you go to get it back. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, brand new ci as a as a, you know, this is, this is how you create time, right? You got the power to create time, powerful is that, you know, everybody wants that, but everybody’s off, you know, we don’t have time, we don’t have time. Well, this is how you create it. That’s proven so. So yeah, there’s that. And really, I’m just want to perfect, you know, help professionalize the CI profession. Because I know you see this a lot. And I know you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re ultra professional in the way you conduct yourself, I think, um, but but there are a lot of people out there who are ci practitioners, and they go about their business by trashing and bashing other ci practitioners, right? As if, as if that’s gonna make them look better, right? The reality is, it just makes the entire profession look worse. That’s right. You’re dragging everybody down as a way to try to stimulate something for yourself, you know, maybe some of these guys are, you know, maybe struggling to get business and they see this as a way to kind of position themselves but, I mean, the reality is we you know, as a professional, that means you protect a profession, right, you know, not just yourself as a as a as a cowboy, but, and professional takes care of the profession. So it’s there, and it thrives for years and years to come. So absolutely.
Patrick Adams
And I mean, I love the CI community, there’s so many, so many great people that are willing to share willing to help out. And I think that’s what makes you know, that weight makes the CI community so powerful, but to your point, yeah, there’s definitely people out there that what do they call them on social media trolls, right? That like the pop in conversations? It’s like, are you adding value to this conversation? Are you you know, what,
Calvin Williams
what is it? Like? It’s just very short sighted on their part. It’s just like, I’m gonna try to score a few points now. But what I’m ultimately doing is tearing down the entire profession, right? Because other people outsiders looking in like the CIA people are idiots, right? All you know, all I’m fighting fighting amongst each other. So you don’t want to bad for business bad for business for everybody? That’s right. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on professionalizing. You know, continuous improvement, as a as a trade for sure. For sure.
Patrick Adams
Yeah. So Calvin, where can people get a hold of you? We’re gonna throw some links in the show notes. But if someone wanted to reach out with some questions about improver, or you know, something that we talked about today on the show, how would they get ahold of you wherever they go? Oh, boy, I
Calvin Williams
would say the, there’s two really easy ways to do it. on LinkedIn, I try to stay pretty active. I see. See, I’ll see Patrick Stan, busy on LinkedIn. I mean, you know, I’m trying to be like Patrick, so I’m trying to catch up. But that’s, that’s a great way to get ahold of me. Okay, there. The other good way is just visit visit our site improver calm I am pruvr.com. And there’s a lot of tools to download. There’s obviously the software you can get access to the software there and, and other people there kind of got a growing community there too. So a great resource for leaders trying to drive a CI culture and also other ci professionals. So
Patrick Adams
very nice. Well, Calvin, it’s been great to have you on. You know, you and I have talked before obviously, but just it’s great. To just chat through some of these things and talk about, you know, just your approver stuff, the work that you’re doing in the CI ci world. We talked about, you know, just software technology and and the opportunities that are there. So I just appreciate the time and the opportunity to hopefully this isn’t our last time having you on the show. Oh, man. No doubt. Yeah, absolutely not. Let’s do it. Let’s do it again soon. All right. Thank you having me. All right. Take care. Yeah, you too. Take care. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lien 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.
There are an awful lot of posers out there. people that do lean because they’re mandated to do it. They think it will work. how stable are you today? What are your goals? Are you generating small sample improvements? There are very few people that embrace lean with their full heart had an emotion. Let’s imagine that your current output is top notch. Is that enough to stop innovating and stop reaching for more? Patrick’s book uncovers the essence of what those organizations look like, and what the posers look like caution. Are you in the fake zone or the real zone?
Patrick Adams
Our guest today is Calvin Williams. Calvin is the founder and CEO of improver, Inc. and Calvin has also worked as a continuous improvement coach and consultant after spending many years as an industrial engineer and a CI practitioner. So welcome to the show. Calvin. Thank you for having me, Patrick. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I see you do a ton of really, really great work with marketing, you know, just your personal brand, the work that you’re doing in the CI world. And so obviously, you know, a lot of the listeners, myself included, you know, see you out there and for those that don’t know, and I mentioned that you’re the founder and CEO of improver, but but many probably maybe don’t know what improver is. So I’m curious to hear you know, what is improver and that when we say improver, it’s actually spelled IMPRU ve r, so it’s a little different, right. So can you explain that?
Calvin Williams
got the corporate corporate? You know what coming from you on the marketing stuff that is, that is that is I’m truly flattered, because when I see your stuff out there, I’m like, Man, that’s the guy, right. That’s, you know, I gotta get on Patrick’s level. So I’m inspired by you. So appreciate that. Thank you appreciate the kudos there. We’re trying, you know, we try, you know, we’re inspired, we’re trying. So what is improver improvers, a it’s a it’s a two part system on one part, you know, one side of the coin, we like to say it’s a software provide some tools for driving that behavior pattern of daily improvement. And it says notifications is sort of walks automatically coaches a person similar to like the the five coaching questions from Toyota kata, okay, it’s a dashboard, provide some incentives, some gamification, some coins that can be traded in for things from the company, or traded amongst peers as recognitions, tokens of recognition and things like that. So it’s got some neat features to help drive that behavior pattern of daily improvement, because we, you know, I, throughout my experience, have learned that daily improvement is really what’s necessary to drive the discipline that most Company A lot of companies need. Absolutely. In their efforts to drive continuous improvement. So so that’s improver that I asked you a question. I think there’ll be other parts of that, that I know
Patrick Adams
don’t get it all. But But obviously, you talk about daily improvement. And again, you may have some listeners, you know, listening in that may or may not know, and when we say daily improvement, what exactly does that mean? So can you maybe, just in your experience, you know, as a lean consultant, as a lean practitioner, you know, what would you say is the definition of daily improvement, and maybe even some examples of daily improvement that you’ve seen outside of improver?
Calvin Williams
Oh, yeah. So daily improvement itself is quite simple. It is, as it sounds, right. It’s it’s make make some improvement every day, right. And it’s, it’s make some improvement in the direction that the company needs to go, or you as an individual need to go. So let’s make an important change or some improvement every single day. And the significance about daily is that, as humans, above all things, one of the greatest forces in human nature is the force of habit. And in order to form a habit, you know, the science says you need to do something consecutively for 18 to 250 days straight. So, the power, the exponential power behind daily improvement is not just for business results, but the results are there 1% every day times, you know, raised to 365th power is 38 times better results in a year, right. I don’t know many companies putting up those kind of numbers that aren’t like explosive startups or explosively fast growing companies, but the math is there, right? If you do the algebra, the other piece of that is cultural. So as an individual, of course, if you can get yourself into the behavior pattern of every day, make some improvement. I myself, I use a concept called the Power Hour where every day At 6am, I have a same routine, I reflect on what I improved yesterday, I quantify the benefit, quantify the result. So to take away the key learnings and then decide what I’m going to improve what the next the next day, and then the next day, I just repeat the same cycle. So it’s less about tools, it’s less about philosophies and methodologies and all these complicated things that you need a freakin PhD to fully understand. Right? And it’s really just about discipline. Yes. About make yourself do it. Yeah. Even when you don’t want to. Right. That’s right. Um, so yeah, I think that’s, you know, that’s the thing that I like to think a lot of companies are are struggling with, especially when it comes to sustainment. Absolutely. Anybody can get off the couch and go workout one day. Yeah, but can you get off the couch and go workout every day, for a month or two months and three months. And if you can accomplish that four, by our math, if you can accomplish that for about 28 days, 30 days, you can stick with it, and you can do it, you know, perfect perfectly into perpetuity. So right. That’s the that’s sort of the philosophy behind why we push for daily improvement. I lost a lot of lot of others who, who sort of on that vein as well. I think Toyota kata pushes for daily. James clear, atomic habits pushes for daily, you know, 1% every day, there’s a lot of, you know, literature and things like that out there to support that, that the science behind why that’s so powerful.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. Calvin, I’d love to hear a little bit more about you. What do you call it your power hour in the morning? Yeah, it three questions you said that you kind of ask yourself, how did how did things go yesterday? Or you talked about, you know, what, what is the quantifiable improvement from yesterday? Right? I think you said rather than what what are you doing today to make improvements? Right, those were kind of right. areas. So I really love that. Can you give us maybe even an example? Like walk us through maybe a couple you know, maybe this morning or yesterday? I don’t know. You know, what, what were some of the things that were going through your head during your power hour?
Calvin Williams
Yeah, yeah. So it’s a simple model, right? It’s reflect plan do it’s kind of like PDCA or PDSA, but it’s just, you know, a little bit tailored to to what I need, right? So versus reflect, you know, what happened yesterday? What can we take away? even numbers got better? Or I got smarter, right? What are the other? Right, right? Those are both benefits? In my in my book, now you are planning? Is
Patrick Adams
it like sales for your company? Like, are you? Or is this more of a personal? You know, how, how am I doing with, with my kids with my marriage with, you know, or I guess maybe it could be a little bit of both, right?
Calvin Williams
It’s, it’s, it’s indirectly all of the above, but more directly, I’m now applying it to a sales campaign. And Mark, it’s kind of a sales marketing campaign that we’re doing, where we’re trying to increase the open rates of our email campaigns. Oh, nice. So we have a, there’s there’s 1000s of people on our mailing list. And we want more of those people getting and receiving the messages that we put out there. So generally, and I’ll be transparent with you some some some back office data, maybe a little proprietary, but you know, just exclusive to the Patrick Adams. podcast. Hey, nobody, nobody tell anybody about this. This? Yes. Yeah. Don’t tell anybody don’t tell anybody. Okay, keep this totally between us. All right. What are our open rate, you know, varies between, you know, 15 and 30%, right? 30 on a great on a great email, you can go as low as five or 10% on a really crappy email, right? So we have our, you know, regular cadence, weekly email blasts that we do, but we also take a batch of 25 every single day. And these are cold emails never been contacted, they don’t know who we are, probably don’t know who we are, you know, very targeted to certain people. And we we try a different subject line to see if we can increase the open rate. Right. Okay. And those subject lines, you know, sort of reframe our value proposition in such a way that we learn what people are most interested in, right? We find what people are more likely to click in open and read. So So with that, that kind of that spearhead batch of 25, we learned was hot in the market, like what are people most interested in? What’s sort of the hot button topics that apply to what we’re doing? So and that that sort of the the statistics they come out of that we learn daily, either we form a hypothesis every day, hey, we think if we include these keywords, it’s going to take our open rate above 25%. Most of the time, we’re very wrong. But every time we learn every day, we learned Oh, yeah, I thought that would be much higher. We must have been wrong about these assumptions. Right? You know, and ask yourself,
Patrick Adams
what did we learn and what can we do differently the next
Calvin Williams
time? Absolutely. I love absolutely, then. Yeah. And then that sort of that sort of feeds the narrative of our sort of weekly blast for, you know, our non cold emails or follow ups or second touch third touch fourth touch email. So yeah, yeah, that’s how we’re doing it. Now. We actually use the improver software to manage all that and see That in real time I was going
Patrick Adams
Really? That’s great. Yeah. So we’ll tell you so since you brought up improver, let’s go back to that, because I’d like to hear a little bit more about that, you know, when we, we talk about software in the continuous improvement world, you know, there’s, there’s sometimes a split, where, you know, a lot of ci practitioners, you know, want to stay maybe away from technology or away from, you know, soft new software, you know, and things like that, and not that it’s a bad thing. But, you know, a lot of, you know, lean lean practitioners, they are pushing for individuals to learn by doing by touching by feeling right, and an understanding, you know, how to walk through that in a physical way, right. So, in a way, you know, they, they, they’re recommending, you know, don’t use a electronic, our, by our board, for example, that automatically calculates your hour by hour for you without having a person having to put pen to paper, right? So there’s a little bit of a split there. And maybe some people probably cringing a little bit when we talk about software in the continuous improvement world. So I want to hear from you, you know, why should we be applying software? Why should we be looking at technology, as we move into the future? You know, from a continuous improvement perspective,
Calvin Williams
man, there’s so many as you’re talking there, I was thinking of so many ways to respond to that. Because, you know, at the most, I guess, human level, is that, you know, industrial engineers invented lean and continuous improvement as we know it, right. I’m an industrial engineer, by trade, I just happened to be a little more tech, early adopter, probably tech savvy than most sure my predecessors were. And, you know, if you really look at the source of where those messages are coming from, it’s one engineer telling you that another type of engineer the software engineers wrong, and yet you need to stick with the, the, you know, he does stay committed to us and don’t go to them, right. But the reality is, and people get proven wrong about technology way too often. And if you look at the trajectory, just like in real estate, you see housing, you know, house prices go up over time, well, technology wins over time, right, as a function of time. So the person who says technology can’t help you, is the person who lacks the creativity to to understand how technology can be applied, right? Because anything can be applied, if you got the creativity to apply it, you know, in the most useful way. So although I’m a big believer in a big fan, that when you have a person write a number down, alright, results down by hand, yes, it does do something for them psychologically. That’s right, it does drive greater ownership, it does drive greater accountability, it forces that person to confront the reality a little bit more, right? Because if it’s fully automated, then it’s passive, right? You never really have to confront it, you can just ignore it. And it’s just happening, right? Right scenes where if you haven’t write it down, then you’re you’re confronting it, right? You’re thinking, Oh, crap, this number sucks. I need to figure out what to do what to do about this number, before my boss sees it, or, you know, this is embarrassing, right, you’re kind of forced to confront and deal with it, I think there’s a lot of value, and incorporating that manual input or that manual component in with software. But there’s a lot of stuff that’s, that’s involved in continuous improvement per se, that software can do way better than people. If you want to see a historical about how a lions performing in terms of downtime software can show you that much better than you can do by hand, if you want to see, you know, across divisions or see where you know, you want to find out good ideas across, you know, two, three plants away into three states away software can feed you that much better than people can feed you that kind of information, you will know who’s doing well, well know who’s not doing well want to know who needs more attention, software can tell you that quicker than a manual process can tell you that. So software goes with the user, whereas whiteboards stay at the production area and the area where it’s being applied. So the white boy stays with the process. The software goes with the user, right? It’s right there in your your mobile device. So I mean, there’s so many tools, so many mechanisms that software can give you to make your chances of successful continuous improvement in business in general, that manual just can’t give you and if you if you go in with a bias that all software is bad. You’re closing the door on so so many opportunities for acceleration for your your own goal. Right slides, right. I think the expression we say is why crawl when you can fly? Yeah, so your destination in your journey.
Patrick Adams
So one of the things I because I’ve seen your improver software and and you know, one of the things I think that I appreciate most about it is that you know, you haven’t necessarily thrown away that that engagement piece between the user and the information that’s being you know, put into the system. You’ve got you become very creative about how to how to keep that, you know that that psychological piece of the person actually being engaged in the process instead of having them be removed and having it automatically happen, you know, without them being involved. So I do I do very much appreciate that piece of it because it is, it is very nice to have them still have that that connection piece, right.
Calvin Williams
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s critical because I’m a firm believer that if you’re not being challenged, if you’re if it’s getting too easy, then you probably not improving anymore. Right? You know, before before the tools can help you you got to be, you gotta be dead set on succeeding. Even with improver. Even with improver, we, we say, hey, to start this in your company, you need a champion, you need somebody to find a way to win, and you saw the need that anyway, with or without a software tool, you got to be dead set on winning, you got to have winning, clearly defined, and you gotta be dead set on it, but then the tool can help you make it make winning a little easier. Right, right. Abs like, you know, if I can give you an Shila world class basketball player, but if you’re intent on being a world class basketball player, you know, the tennis shoes then make a lot more sense for you. Right, right. Gotta have that you got to have that purpose and intent clear. And that drive to be successful already. And then and then the other stuff can can make that easier for you to do.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. So Calvin, one of the things that I’ve heard you say before, and I’m curious to have a discussion about is the relationship between lean pneus and fitness? Can you help explain that? Because I think there’s a there’s definitely, you know, something there and I want to I want our listeners to hear about it.
Calvin Williams
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, I’m reflecting on my own journey and questioning, challenging, I guess whether or not the term leanness really is clear for people for the customer, who are essentially leaders, inside organizations, managers, leaders, supervisors, those kind of folks, so sure, the term lean is sort of implies that you’re going to be skinny, right? You’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna get skinny. And you know, I think a lot of people take it as that weigh in. And we see a lot of companies say they’re doing lean in, and what they mean is that they’ve gone in and cut out all the excess headcount. And I don’t know if that’s healthy. I mean, I know that’s not a healthy way to run a business, especially when cutting those people result in reducing the amount of value that you’re producing for customers. Right. So I question whether fitness is actually a more useful term, then leanness thing, right? In the meaning behind that is, is the company fit for what is out set out to do? Right? Are you fearful, if a person has been sitting on the couch for 10 years, and just wake up one day and decide they’re going to run a marathon, they’re probably not fit for that right? fit for some other things, maybe binge watching, but you’re not fit for running a marathon? So the question is, in fitness is more from an organizational from a company standpoint is kind of look at what the company set out to do what it set out to achieve, are you fit to accomplish that? And the way we’ve said, you know, from a continuous improvement standpoint, the way to get more fit is by working out every day. And continuous improvement working out every day is making some type of improvement every day in learning from those experiments.
Patrick Adams
That’s right, what would you say? What would be your suggestion for somebody that is sitting on the couch and has been for the last, you know, year but wants to run a marathon? What would you say? Now Now apply it to the continuous improvement world, right? That so someone that is maybe just getting into lean, just starting to understand the benefits that it can have for their company? And you know, they’re ready to do this? What would you say would be the first steps that they should take?
Calvin Williams
You know, I like? I like bJ foggs approach, right? So if you sit on the couch, the first thing you need to do is put on your shoes every day.
Yeah.
Like john wooden would say, the coach, UCLA coach, famous UCLA coach is one of the greatest coaches of all time. First thing we’re gonna learn is how to put on our socks, or something like that. He said, our first thing we learn is how to tie our shoes are small, start with the smallest thing you can accomplish and start to get into a routine and routine. Like I say, the greatest force in human nature is to force a habit. So if you can start to develop a routine of action, getting to action every day, and then repeat that action. And then perhaps you add more to that every day, right? So yeah, first it’s like put your shoes on next is like, walk around the block, you know, third, it’s run them out, you know, fourth, it’s, you know, add bicycle, add swim, and you know, whatever it is to do that triathlon or marathon, whatever you going to do. So start by getting yourself in the routine of taking some action, and then you can you can build upon that action, all the way up until you get to the state that you that you want to be in so or your target condition, so to say, right, so yeah. I think BJ Fogg is probably three tiny habits, this a great place to start. If you you know, if you’re looking for ways to, to get the ball rolling in a way that doesn’t cause such a disruption that it causes you to back off.
Patrick Adams
Sure, sure. And, and obviously, you know, you want to, eventually you want to have your whole organization in your whole team moving in that direction, right. So, you know, sometimes, you know, it just it does just take one person to to get the ball rolling, but obviously, you want to, you want to start thinking about how do I also, you know, bring it bring along the rest of my team? And what are some What are some ways that I can maybe have them to start seeing some of the same benefits in, you know, doing small improvements in their own areas? Right? Yeah,
Calvin Williams
absolutely. Yeah. And the best way to the best way to improve is a book out there called peek the secret science of expertise. Okay. And this applies well, beyond expertise. There’s a great book K, Anders Ericsson, he’s a Stanford guy, I think he is I think he passed recently, actually, but the book is phenomenal. talks about the importance of deliberate practice, and practicing with a coach can not only motivate you increase that accountability for you, I think statistics shows that you’re 98% more likely to be successful with a coach than you are without one. Right? So yeah, coach, Coach brings that accountability. A coach also can teach you the science behind what you’re doing a little better, but they also can just just kind of set us help you build confidence and help you set a standard for yourself that’s above and far beyond the point where you would have quit if you were on your own. That’s right. Because ultimately, that’s where, you know, that’s where you that’s what you lose is where you quit. Right. Right. So, so yeah, that’s another big piece. Right? So starting small, but then also having a coach, but if you’re a supervisor, and you’re trying to bring your team along, if you’re a leader and executive, you try to bring your team forward, be that coach, right. And there are certain certain skills that come with being a good coach that, you know, can be learned and should be developed in another coach can help you become a better coach. But yeah, certainly, if you’re looking to bring others along with you, you you may have to be that coach for them.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. No, I love that. And obviously, you know, I know you had you have your own coach, I have my own coach, I mean, that there’s definitely power in having that person that can hold you accountable and be there to demotivate to be intentional about helping guide you in the right direction. So absolutely.
Calvin Williams
I got I got I got several coaches. Some time. I think I got too many coaches. Could be could be a problem, too. But yeah, I mean, I would say there’s times in my life without where I’ve accomplished, the greatest things, even things that have been beyond what I would have imagined for myself. Sure. I’ve been the times I’ve had a good coach in my corner. Yeah, absolutely.
Patrick Adams
Very nice. Hey, going back to your improver again. there’s a there’s a piece of your improver called the improver accelerator, can you give us what is that? Exactly?
Calvin Williams
Yeah, it’s funny, you mentioned that, as you know, so the accelerator is essentially a coaching program is a six week coaching program. That is the purpose of it is to accelerate the person from one PDCA PDCA cycle in a week to five PDCA cycles in a week. So essentially, one per day. Well, if you if you put that in perspective, right, companies improve all companies improve is probably informal, it’s probably sporadic, is probably like, let’s turn it up. Now, while we’re in a crisis situation, and then they fall back into complacency afterward, you know, when the fires put out for the moment, you know, all companies improve, you have to improve your way into existence for a company, right? So you look at the company’s bottom line, and you say, Okay, yeah, they’ve, they’ve done some things well, right, they’ve probably improved a lot along the way to get to that and get to those numbers probably lost a lot along the way, you know, you know, getting to the numbers, they are they’re at so what this is saying is, alright, let’s focus, let’s look really at how many improvements you’re making in a day. You know, in a week’s time, we’re in a month’s time and saying, you know, most people are probably at less than one improvement per week, in our reality, right? They’re kind of stuck in a mode of doing the same thing every day and not really deliberately improving, right? What the accelerator is saying is let’s take you to one improvement every day or five improvements per week, or, you know, 25 a month or whatever it comes out to be so sure, that’s what the accelerators trying to trying to do is sort of teach you you know, the principles, the science, the philosophy, all that stuff, but actually get you to do it, right, make an improvement every day. You know, as Patrick you know, as crazy as that. I mean, a lot of continuous improvement people and a lot of ci people come through the accelerator, right and they come in so confident that they’re about to blow this thing out. Right got ci nailed down world leading expert in continuous improvement, like I let’s see what you can do, right? We get them in the accelerator and they struggle because they got the theory really understand the concepts, but it’s it takes discipline to do yes. And it takes you got to show up, you got to show up every day and and take a series of actions every day, right? That’s right, we talked earlier about my, you know, Power Hour concept. Yes, a lot of people who can’t implement and stick to something like the Power Hour, they just don’t have the self discipline and time management skills to to do that. And we’re learning more and more that, you know, continuous improvement, a lot of it has to do with time management, you got to make time to improve, if you plan to improve, and it’s, if you say you’re serious about it, then I should be able to look at your calendar and see when exactly you’re going to improve. Right. Right. And what exactly you’re you’re you’re being deliberate about improving right now, you should be able to tell me what you’re going to do today to make to to, to produce better results tomorrow.
Patrick Adams
That’s right, right. Yeah. And it has to be intentional. Like you said, You can’t just be intention can’t just wish or hope it’s going to happen. I can’t just think of doing five. It’s not going to happen, right? You have to be intentional. You have to block time or you know, have leader Standard Work that you know, you’re checking off or an improver, you know, accelerator or something that’s giving you that, that intentional piece that you need in order to, to follow through on it, right.
Calvin Williams
Absolutely. There’s no such thing as passive improvement. Just like there’s no such thing as like passive excellence. Sure, we we were just minding our business and woke up one day and was excellent. Yeah, it doesn’t work like that. You got to dig Michael Jordan is one of the greatest because he decided one day, he’s gonna be one of the greatest thing and let nothing stop him from getting there. That’s that’s the kind of attitude you got to come into, into your role. Your role, right, as well. Right. Do
Patrick Adams
we think do we think Michael Jordan just that he wished it had happened? it? Probably no. Right? He was very intentional to be very careful in court multiple times a day, you know, X number of hours, you know, right. I don’t I don’t know, statistics. I know. They’re out there, though. How many? How many throw shots? How many, you know, every single day,
Calvin Williams
right? Every day. And if you ask his teammates, his coaches, I watched the last dance. It was on Netflix. Not long ago, ESPN, special one. Yeah. Man, this, this guy probably worked two times harder than anybody else on the team. He was there first way early. He was there last way late, right? He just would not accept not being the best ever. And what he was he still says he’s the best ever. So yeah, it just it just shows you the mindset, right? That’s right. I mean, if you talk to a guy like that, or any Olympic champion, or anybody who’s excelled in athletics, they can talk your ear off about daily improvement, right? They get the concept that Yeah, you need to get a little bit every day cuz you don’t have time to wait, you have a day to waste. That’s right. Right. So yeah, I mean, we bring that same mindset to continuous improvement. That’s right.
Patrick Adams
That’s right. Yeah. And I love that example, too. Because, you know, obviously, that’s a Michael Jordan is a, you know, the example, who’s going to be the next Michael Jordan in their company, I think about right, I mean, maybe you’re not gonna get that far along. But but just, you know, five improvements a week, right? Just pick one thing a day, how are you going to get a little bit better every single day just a little bit. And then it’ll compound it’ll add up, it’ll, it’ll grow. And, you know, maybe eventually, you’ll get to the point where you’re doing, you know, two improvements, or maybe it’s seven a week or eight a week, right? And just continuing to grow that but start small start with one a day. And as your point Calvin, anybody in the morning, anybody can do it. But maybe in the morning, you, you you write that down, you pick that one, one area that you’re going to improve in, and then the next day, you’re reflecting it was able to do it right?
Calvin Williams
Then in reality is like, you’re really just experimenting, right? You’re not you don’t know, improvement is an output from the process. The input is the experiment, I’m gonna try this, and I may get better, I may not want to guarantee I mean, they’re going to get better, I’m gonna get produce a better result. I’m going to learn something because something i thought was wrong, right? And being deliberate about it, you’re sort of challenging yourself and what you really know, right? Right. I think that if I do this, that’s going to happen, you do that, and that does not happen, then you can look back and say, Oh, crap, that I really think that now I’m smarter. Now I’m smarter. And what happens over time is that the smarter you get, the more likely your experiments will turn out successful, successful improvements, but you still have to start the journey expecting to not be very smart and be open minded that you may be wrong about a lot of the stuff that you’re making big decisions based on start testing those assumptions out. In real in the real world situations, you know, in a controlled way, you’re going for the 1% improvement in most cases, tiny improvements and and really learn where you’re at, you’re either going to learn or you’re going to put up better numbers. Both of them are success. You don’t get both as success.
Patrick Adams
So absolutely agree 100%. So Calvin, what? What’s next for you and improver? What’s next? What’s, what’s your we’re playing? What’s your next target condition here?
Calvin Williams
Yeah. So I want to get a lot more coaches certified. Because I think coaching within companies is a is a severely, there’s a severe deficit of coaching capability within companies, we have very much a short sighted command and control type of culture and a lot of companies. And I would love to get more coaches certified on the Socratic method, developing people to to develop other people to develop better processes that that serve better products to customers and better services to come on customers. So, but I think there’s a lot of like, you know, what I see inside companies is managers sort of playing to three levels down a lot of time in organizations, they haven’t figured out how to level up and develop people, you know, develop people better. I also see that, you know, with the generational shift with the technological shift with a lot of things changing boomers kind of leaving out x, y, z is coming in millennials and what are called boomers Now, coming in, I think there’s a huge deficit of leadership capability that is there. And I think coaching is coaching is a capability gap that needs to be closed at all levels within company. So yeah, I want to build that, not just for my company, we have a certification process for coaches, but also to get get companies doing it right. Everybody every day. I mean, I think that’s the play, right? Perhaps, you know, 10 years from now, we can look at ourselves as the rival to Facebook, where, you know, and be as ubiquitous as Facebook, where Facebook is the place you go to waste time improvers the place you go to get it back. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, brand new ci as a as a, you know, this is, this is how you create time, right? You got the power to create time, powerful is that, you know, everybody wants that, but everybody’s off, you know, we don’t have time, we don’t have time. Well, this is how you create it. That’s proven so. So yeah, there’s that. And really, I’m just want to perfect, you know, help professionalize the CI profession. Because I know you see this a lot. And I know you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re ultra professional in the way you conduct yourself, I think, um, but but there are a lot of people out there who are ci practitioners, and they go about their business by trashing and bashing other ci practitioners, right? As if, as if that’s gonna make them look better, right? The reality is, it just makes the entire profession look worse. That’s right. You’re dragging everybody down as a way to try to stimulate something for yourself, you know, maybe some of these guys are, you know, maybe struggling to get business and they see this as a way to kind of position themselves but, I mean, the reality is we you know, as a professional, that means you protect a profession, right, you know, not just yourself as a as a as a cowboy, but, and professional takes care of the profession. So it’s there, and it thrives for years and years to come. So absolutely.
Patrick Adams
And I mean, I love the CI community, there’s so many, so many great people that are willing to share willing to help out. And I think that’s what makes you know, that weight makes the CI community so powerful, but to your point, yeah, there’s definitely people out there that what do they call them on social media trolls, right? That like the pop in conversations? It’s like, are you adding value to this conversation? Are you you know, what,
Calvin Williams
what is it? Like? It’s just very short sighted on their part. It’s just like, I’m gonna try to score a few points now. But what I’m ultimately doing is tearing down the entire profession, right? Because other people outsiders looking in like the CIA people are idiots, right? All you know, all I’m fighting fighting amongst each other. So you don’t want to bad for business bad for business for everybody? That’s right. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on professionalizing. You know, continuous improvement, as a as a trade for sure. For sure.
Patrick Adams
Yeah. So Calvin, where can people get a hold of you? We’re gonna throw some links in the show notes. But if someone wanted to reach out with some questions about improver, or you know, something that we talked about today on the show, how would they get ahold of you wherever they go? Oh, boy, I
Calvin Williams
would say the, there’s two really easy ways to do it. on LinkedIn, I try to stay pretty active. I see. See, I’ll see Patrick Stan, busy on LinkedIn. I mean, you know, I’m trying to be like Patrick, so I’m trying to catch up. But that’s, that’s a great way to get ahold of me. Okay, there. The other good way is just visit visit our site improver calm I am pruvr.com. And there’s a lot of tools to download. There’s obviously the software you can get access to the software there and, and other people there kind of got a growing community there too. So a great resource for leaders trying to drive a CI culture and also other ci professionals. So
Patrick Adams
very nice. Well, Calvin, it’s been great to have you on. You know, you and I have talked before obviously, but just it’s great. To just chat through some of these things and talk about, you know, just your approver stuff, the work that you’re doing in the CI ci world. We talked about, you know, just software technology and and the opportunities that are there. So I just appreciate the time and the opportunity to hopefully this isn’t our last time having you on the show. Oh, man. No doubt. Yeah, absolutely not. Let’s do it. Let’s do it again soon. All right. Thank you having me. All right. Take care. Yeah, you too. Take care. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lien 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.
0 Comments