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 led by your hosts, Catherine McDonald and myself. Patrick Adams, how’s it going? Catherine,

Catherine McDonald  00:40

yeah, great. Patrick, great. How are you?

Patrick Adams  00:42

I’m doing great. I’m excited for me. Personally, this time of year is one of my favorites, because for one, the holidays, but for two, here in Michigan, we’re starting to get snow on the ground. We actually have a big snowstorm coming in tonight, so we call them snowmobiles. Other places in the world, they call them snow machines. But I think tomorrow I’ll be pulling out the snow machines and and this weekend should be a lot of fun. Oh, that’s so

Catherine McDonald  01:11

Christmasy. Oh, my god, that’s amazing.

Patrick Adams  01:14

That is no no no snow for you, or you

Catherine McDonald  01:17

never, maybe, like a dribble in February or March, but not usually, not usually,

Patrick Adams  01:23

okay, yeah,

01:26

it makes that sounds

Catherine McDonald  01:27

amazing. It

Patrick Adams  01:28

is. I mean, you know, Christmas time it’s nice to have a little bit of snow on the ground. It’s not every year in Michigan that we have snow at Christmas, but most years,

Catherine McDonald  01:36

good stuff. Okay, yeah, we, I will just be doing my Christmas shopping with rain and wind. But that’s okay. That’s okay. Yeah, no,

Patrick Adams  01:47

it’s fine. It’s still Christmas, still the holidays, so it’s good. Catherine, today, we have a great guest, and we’re talking about a topic that I’m super passionate about, and I know that our guest is super passionate about, in fact, will be this will be the theme, closely related to the theme of our 2025 lean Solution Summit, where we’re going to be very much focused on developing the next generation of leaders. And how do, how does the next generation of leaders lead in the future, like in the future. And, you know, is lean, is continuous improvement still relevant for future leaders, as they’re, you know, growing up and all this new technology and automation and digit digitalizing everything. So, you know, today, the the topic is, activate your organization, developing new leaders and managers that win. So this is, this is going to be a good topic. What do you think about that is, do you think lean and continuous improvement is still relevant for future leaders? Absolutely.

Catherine McDonald  02:50

I think it is actually probably more than ever. And I think the topic today that we’re talking about should also be in that mix. Lean continuous improvement doesn’t happen without leadership. So it’s all about developing the people to to develop the organization. So and I think Patrick that most organizations don’t have a clue how to do that. Okay, we have an idea of lean. We have, okay, most organizations have some idea of how Lean WORKS, the mindset, the tools, the everything. But I think we have very few frameworks for leadership development. You go to every organization and it’s different everywhere. So I think this is really exciting. I think it’s really needed to give people some clarity on this. So yeah, very exciting. Absolutely Good.

Patrick Adams  03:36

Well, our guest, I’m going to let you introduce Craig, but as I said, I’m very excited about our guest today, specifically because he has a military background. And a lot of obviously, a lot of our guests know that I served in the military as well, and so I’m excited for just some conversation around, you know, some even bringing in some of those military learnings and tying those in with some of the the organizations that are listening in. So it’ll be cool to just kind of have some of those conversations. So can you tell us about our guest as we bring him to the stage? Yes.

Catherine McDonald  04:15

So Craig Coyle is a graduate of the US Military Academy and former US Army, Apache pilot, Craig is no stranger to leadership in complex and demanding environments. After eight years of active duty service spanning across the globe, his passion for leadership and developing leaders led him to leave the military and found operation lead. So now he shares his message on leader development across the country and helps manufacturers specifically activate their organizations so they can go from surviving to thriving. Welcome to the show. Great. Coyle,

Craig Coyle  04:50

thanks for having me happy to be here.

Patrick Adams  04:52

Craig. I’m excited for this episode, by the way. Thank you for your service, and obviously you know. Being a part of the military academy is another really cool thing. There’s a, obviously, I know a lot of military people, and not everyone has I’ve been able to visit a few of the different military academies, but you’ve actually attended the Academy, which is super cool. And then it’s even, it’s even more. Is that a more cool that you are an Apache pilot. I mean, how amazing is that? So welcome to the show. We’re super excited for you to be here. And let’s, let’s just begin. Can you tell us about your experience at the academy? What was that like?

Craig Coyle  05:31

Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for having me and and Patrick, thanks for your service as well. I know you’re a Marine Corps, guys. We got a big weekend coming up, Army, Navy. Yes, about that, but Well, pretty good year. It’s

Patrick Adams  05:45

always fun to watch, for sure. That’s right, yeah,

Craig Coyle  05:47

you know, I always tell people, you know, getting to attend one of the academies, and I have a unique opportunity where I actually did the exchange at the Naval Academy as well. So I kind of got to experience two of the three major academies, you really get to really invest yourself and be indoctrinated into these bubbles of leader development and arguably the greatest leader development institutions in the world. And the funny thing is, through four years of all of that leader development, and then two years of flight school, I go take my first platoon in the army. And guess what happens? I fall flat on my face, and it’s, you know, there are certain things that these institutions do really, really well, but at the end of the day, they’re just like any other college, just teaching certain, you know, academic, academic and leadership curricula. But one thing that that’s hard to teach in a school environment is the heart of leadership. You guys talk about it on the show all the time, and it’s when, when you end up in those roles and you start to adapt that heart of leadership, everything begins to change. And I’m sure we’ll really explore that on the podcast today.

Patrick Adams  07:09

Absolutely such a such a good point and and definitely something we want to weave into the conversation today. So in, in the in the just thinking about the, what we’re going to talk about today, the topic of leaders. And obviously, Catherine and I had some discussion before you came to the stage, just around, you know, is lean, continuous improvement relevant in the future for leaders that are, that are currently being developed to lead our organizations in, you know, into the future, that’s, that’s one thing that I’d like to talk about. But I want to start want to start by looking at our current state, right? That’s our future state. I want to look at our current state. And, you know, there’s many different industries that are represented in our listeners, but manufacturing is a big one. And, you know, being that, you know, Toyota is a manufacturer, and a lot of our Lean concepts and principles stemmed out of manufacturing. What would you say is the reason why there’s so much unused potential that these organizations have like that’s one of the mantras that you kind of stand behind, is that we’re not utilizing, we’re not we’re not holding our people or engaging our people at their fullest potential. So why do you think that is, and can you kind of talk us through that a little bit? Yeah,

Craig Coyle  08:30

it’s funny. It’s when you say, you know, there’s a lot of unused potential energy, if you will, in the workforce today, especially manufacturing, sometimes hard to understand. There’s a great study or report that Gallup does. I think they do it every year. But the most recent statistic, it’s the state of the global workforce. It says, generally, the global workforce is about 35% engaged. And we all know, you know, specific to manufacturing, that tends to be a little bit lower with what you see in these, you know, labor type markets, and so the challenge is, you know why? Why is that the case? And when you really pinpoint what creates engagement in these types of environments that we talk about, why engagement is so important, but what creates engagement is the culture that you’re a part of and what creates the culture is whether or not the leaders are intentionally creating the culture, and if they’re not intentionally creating the culture, then the culture is essentially just growing, kind of like a weed might grow on your drive, right? So you can intentionally landscape your yard, in your driveway, or if you don’t, you’re probably going to have some weeds show up, which is typically what we see in these organizations, and why so many organizations today have unused potential energy that they can be tapping into. Because, quite frankly, you. Uh, most of their employees aren’t engaged, nearly as engaged as they possibly could be. And the powerful thing, if you really dig into that statistic, is there’s a huge variance within that statistic. 70% of the variance is due to their first line supervisors.

Patrick Adams  10:20

Wow, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a really important statistic to think about, right? Immediate supervisors. I mean, obviously I’ve heard the term many times that people don’t leave. Let me think about how that goes. People don’t leave their jobs because of the environment or the work, but it’s more because they leave the jobs because of bad leaders, right? So obviously, their immediate supervisor, I mean, that’s something that all of us need to think about that have direct reports, like, how, how are our people feeling, and are we, are we actually using their full potential, or, you know, helping them to realize their full potential? I do have a follow up question before I pass it over to Catherine. So, being a military person, and you know, would you say that most areas that you worked in when you were in the military, would you say that most leaders knew how to and they did unlock the full potential energy of their teams. And how do you compare that to organizations outside of the military? Yeah, well,

Craig Coyle  11:25

you know, the military is really unique because of the organizational structure that we have, obviously the commission officer side, which go through very instructional, academic, if you will, development on specifically how the military and their specific branch in the military want them to to essentially lead or manage their organization. And that happens to an extent with, you know, non commissioned officers as well. But the unique thing that the military does is this, you know, obviously we’ve got the idea of missions and mission statements, and that’s permeated our corporate culture as well. But one thing that that exists in the military within that that hasn’t permeated our corporate culture is the idea of nesting our mission statements. So you may visit an organization and they may have this beautifully worded mission statement painted on the wall. And that may sound great, and it may give you a good, warm and fuzzy about what their brand is like and what they care about. But is that flowing all the way down to these small teams in airborne we call them little groups, parent trippers, right? Like, what do these five to 10 people? Why do they exist? What is their purpose, and how does that translate into what they do each and every day in the military? And Patrick, I’m sure you could, you could talk about this with your time in the Marine Corps. We flow those mission statements down all the way to the lowest level, yeah, so that everybody knows exactly what to do and why they’re doing it every single day. And when you create that sense of mission, you create purpose. And when you have purpose, you have a very high chance of creating engagement. And that’s what starts to elevate your organization as a whole. Yeah,

Patrick Adams  13:11

yeah. No, that’s that’s spot on with with what my experience was as well. The other, the other thing that I that just came to mind is, you know, in in the military, they have, at every, every leadership level, they have different training for how to lead, very specifically, how to, how to lead your direct reports. You know, when you become a non commissioned officer, if you, you know, become an officer of Marines, you know, you there’s very specific training on, you know how to how to coach, how to lead on a day to day basis. On it, you know how the mission is woven in, and how that gets cascaded down into, you know, organizational goals and things like that. So I think that’s also something that we we don’t see with every company that we work with, many companies that we work with is that, you know, people get promoted because they’re really good at running a machine, or they’re really good at, you know, whatever department that they’re working in, they get promoted into a leadership position, but the organization never gives them any kind of training or coaching on how to actually lead people. And that’s a that’s a huge Miss for so many organizations, in my experience,

Catherine McDonald  14:22

I really agree with both of you. You both use the word weave in there, right? And that’s really significant, because what you’re talking about is weaving the people, development piece into the organizational process, improvement and development piece. And you are so right? Patrick, when you say that that just doesn’t happen in so many organizations. How many times have we seen lean consultants brought in to help a manufacturing firm? They go into the factory, they work on the processes and create lovely SOPs and give them people, you know, and there is no bringing people in. And to be involved in this, no coaching, no feedback loops, you know, so hugely, hugely missing. I totally agree with you, yeah. So, yeah, Craig, you made the point in the beginning. I think you are absolutely spot on there, yeah. So just, I suppose, moving on from that, then in terms of the people piece, and why we struggle to develop people potential. But why is it, then? Is that the reason do you think Craig why it’s so hard for new leaders coming into a manufacturing industry? Or is there more to it? I’m sure there’s more to it than you know what we just talked about. So what’s your experience about, I suppose, failures or why managers start and then leave or are fired? Why is that happening so often? Yeah,

Craig Coyle  15:47

you know, it’s a great question. I think Patrick really alluded alluded to the answer is, you know, we exist in a society, especially as as we’re nurtured as children and adolescents, in a society where really everything around revolves around what you can do as an individual, how you perform as an individual, and how well you stand out as an individual. And that’s great, but at some point, if you want, and most of us that end up in leadership positions are the type a we are the driven type of people. If you want to continue to move along that path of excelling and promoting and growing in your in your career and just in your life in general, eventually you have to take a step from individual to collective. And the challenge there, and this is where I found personally as a new leader, is I was so successful as an individual that it handcuffed me from being successful as a leader, because the mindset, the core mindsets that allow you to be successful collectively, are almost the antithesis of what allow you and force you to be successful as an individual. It’s no longer about how hard you can work, but how do you bring people together and nourish that climate and help people work together and create synergy? And those are the types of things that unfortunately, just aren’t taught. Because in in our world, the kind of logic has become, well, if you’re really good at x, or you’re a really hard worker, then you’re the type of person I want to put in this position, because then I can rely on you to get stuff done. Well, that person’s going to get stuff done, but you’re probably going to burn them out in the process, and they’re not going to last because they’re approaching this position the same way they approach they’ve approached their whole life so far. And it’s, it’s a really, really quick way to fall flat on their face, and unfortunately, almost all of us have experienced that process. I spoke to a group of business leaders in the local community a couple weeks ago, and I asked them all to raise their hands if they felt like they were prepared when they first entered into leadership, and not a single person didn’t about 50 people in the room, right? So it’s a pervasive challenge that unless our organizations are addressing it, prior to putting these people into these roles, we’re going to have challenges with it.

Patrick Adams  18:29

So true, so true. It’s it, it’s funny that you say that about, you know, people having this specific mindset based on, you know, again, it’s based on how they were brought up, or certain habits that they have, or things like that they we have a tendency to slide back into those same habits so often and again, leading people might take some different behaviors and actions than it, than what you’re used to, what you’ve been brought up in, what you have learned over time Are your habits, and it makes me think about as a pilot yourself. I’m actually in the process of getting my private pilot’s license, and kind of a funny story, but wasn’t funny at the time, but I’m in the in the cockpit with my instructor, and I was those that don’t know you use your feet and your hands to steer an airplane. Okay? So when a huge crosswind hit the this small airplane that I was flying, my immediate feeling was I needed to correct with my hands in the steering, because that’s what I’m used to from driving a car, right? In reality, I needed to use my feet. And so it was immediately something that I went back to my old habits immediately, as soon as I was hit with that crosswind. And so it made me it makes me think about continuous improvement principles, like I think about Toyota kata, and the fact that. Need to change the neurons in my mind to do things a completely different way than what I’m used to when I’m learning how to fly an airplane in comparison to the habits that I have to drive a car. Well, it’s the same thing with leadership. To your point, you know, people have been have these certain ways that they approach problems or issues or whatever it might be that have just been ingrained in their mind over the years, and when something happens, they immediately fall back into that. And what we’re trying to do here is figure out a you know, what are the right behaviors, the right habits that we should be using as leaders in order to lead people in the right way? So I tell, I say that whole story, only to come back to my question of, if we look at the aviation industry, you as an Apache pilot, and some of the things that I’ve been learning, how can things that you’ve learned in the aviation industry, how can that apply to leadership, specifically in helping to, you know, maybe solve problems, for example? Yeah,

Craig Coyle  20:56

absolutely. It’s, it’s funny, you mentioned that, because, as I was, I had a unique experience in the military because I kind of lived two parallel careers, if you will. One as a commissioned officer, promoting through these leadership positions, but simultaneously as pilot, like you mentioned, promoting through my aviation career, right? And one of the things that I kind of recognized as I was really facing some some challenges as a leader, and I noticed it all around me as well. I just didn’t see those same challenges as a pilot, like I felt like as a pilot, especially in the military, like there was a very regimented system to follow with people there to train me and guide me along, a process that was going to help me be successful. And if you think about that, like, that’s a really good thing in aviation, right? Like, when you show up to to take holiday or travel somewhere or get on the plane, you want to know that the people running that operation know what they’re doing and they’re going to be safe doing it. And so I started thinking about, well, what if we apply those types of things that exist for pilots to leadership, like, what would that look like? What would a leadership flight school look like if you were to go through and obviously it doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly long. But what if, before you took a leadership role, you were given some key principles to learn and start to adapt. You can change the way you think as you approach this this new role. Or what if we took this concept of a pre flight and pilots, we love our checklists. I’m sure, Patrick, you got plenty of checklists now. Yeah, right. So we love the idea of a checklist, because it makes sure that we check everything we need to check before we get into the aircraft, whether that’s doing our flight plan, whether that’s checking all of the different systems, nuts and bolts on the aircraft to make sure we’re safe, we follow these rudimentary processes to a T to make sure that we’re going to be as successful as possible within our control. What if we put some sort of a process like that in place for these new leaders to follow on a weekly basis that would give their teams the information, the communication, the meaning the missions that they need on a consistent routine cadence so that they can be successful. Or one of my favorite things to think about is this idea of progression in the aviation world. In the aviation world, whether you’re doing, you know, commercial, private type work, or you’re in the military, there is a step stone process to follow, to go from I’m a new pilot trainee to the most experienced pilot in the world. You know, for me as an Apache pilot, it was I need to get my wings, and then the next step is I need to become what’s called readiness level one in the military, essentially. So I can go do my job, if you will, and then after I’m readiness level one, the next step is to be what’s called a pilot in command. And so I knew exactly what I had to do. I was surrounded by instructive pilots that would teach me what to do. And I had peers to the left and right of me that were on the same journey as me, that were effectively holding me accountable, and I was holding them accountable as well. And so there are so many of these concepts that exist within the aviation industry. And if you think about it, if you look at any professional industry, you could see these principles there as well that encourage people to not only initially find success and get early wins, but to get wins routinely and to continue to progress and grow along their careers. And that’s the kind of concept we really want or. Organizations to adopt, because then it’s not, you know, a consultant coming in and helping you figure one thing out one time. No, it’s helping you create a fly wheel in your organization of developing people and developing leaders that, in turn, are going to create the culture that allows you to become an organization that one people want to be a part of. Two, as a result, people that are attracted to. And then three, that creates a dynamic where all of a sudden look out, right, because you can accomplish anything you want. Hello, everyone.

Patrick Adams  25:36

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 true lean. You can find the book on Amazon simply search by 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. I

Catherine McDonald  26:19

have a question, sort of a challenging question. So I see where you’re going with all that, Craig, and I actually think it’s amazing how and I love structure, and I love the way you think, and I think the way you can make those parallels between what you’re seeing in aviation and then looking at leadership and what’s needed in that space. I think that’s amazing, and I agree with it so much. But isn’t it difficult? Because trying to teach leadership, a lot of leadership is so intangible. We’re talking about things like emotional intelligence, leading yourself first, self awareness, communication skills, inspiring people. So based on that, those intangibles, and there’s so many of them, is it not difficult to put structure on teaching people those things? So I don’t think it’s impossible, by the way. I just love to hear your take on how you do that with those particular pieces that can be quite difficult to tackle.

Craig Coyle  27:18

Yeah, that’s an amazing question. I really appreciate that. It’s it, you know, I kind of look at it the same way. Patrick kind of shared a story about the crosswind, right? Like you could hear about crosswinds in an academic setting, but until that crosswind hits you, and you do something in the aircraft that you know makes you shiver a little bit, all of a sudden, you kind of learn that lesson. And 100% agree there, there are certain things, especially in leadership, that you have to be in the seat figuring out as you go. And that’s why I kind of like to think especially as as we try to create these types of Strategic Systems, if you will, within organizations. I like to think of it as kind of three components. You know, in the military, when, when we used to do field exercises, whenever we would pause everybody, instead of just kind of laying the rifles in the dirt, Patrick, you probably remember this, instead of laying rifles in the dirt, you kind of lean them up against one another, right, so that all the debris doesn’t get inside your rifle. Well, if it’s just you, you can’t do that. If it’s just you and one other person, it doesn’t really work. But if you have three rifles, and you lean them up against each other, you create a little bit of a tripod, and then you can add more to it. And so I kind of think of it not just being structure, but when you have a little bit of structure, and then you have some guidance or mentorship or coaching that’s kind of supplementing that structure, and then you have that concept of community and progression, where people are in the seats actively doing what’s guiding them along this process. When those three things marry together, that’s when you really start to see progress. And I think that’s the unique thing about the aviation industry, is you learn a little bit in flight school, but it’s really just the equivalent of a driver’s permit here in the States, right? It’s enough to be very dangerous. We’ll put it that way. But what you really start to learn is when you become a pilot in command, and now you are responsible for the aircraft and teaching younger pilots how to go through a step you just got through. And so, you know, you can almost apply almost like a cohort model to it, where as long as you’re one step ahead of somebody else, you can teach them how to get to the step you’re at, and as long as we’re giving people an idea of what it takes to get to that next step, and giving some semblance of structure as we go from step to step, we’re helping empower. Our individuals to seek out the knowledge that we know is going to help them be successful wherever they’re at in the certain moment they’re in so

Catherine McDonald  30:08

so what you’re saying is, within the a structure which is you need, there needs to be space, space for individuals to, I suppose, engage in mentoring and coaching sessions, but mainly space to reflect, space to think, space to for themselves, and then space to get feedback. But is that kind of what you mean by the the steps? But yeah, yeah, exactly.

Craig Coyle  30:33

You have to be able to do right? You have to be able to go apply, but you also have to be able to seek feedback, seek guidance. You have to be able to talk to other people that you know maybe aren’t a mentor coach, and just get some emotional support. So it’s all these things that kind of have to blend together that help you continue to kind of walk along the journey. Yeah,

Patrick Adams  30:55

now, does this so does this fit in then and start to create the lead, like a pilot framework that that you’ve kind of put together. I mean, how all, how does all of that work? And then, how does it then transfer into organizations you know that that are going to use the framework?

Craig Coyle  31:16

Yeah, exactly. And it’s kind of cool, because you know, most plans you have to follow. You have to take step one, and then you have to take step two, and then you have to take step three. But really, with this, you can really apply any component, if you will, of the system, whichever you think is going to be the highest leverage component for you to first put in place and take from there. But you’re exactly right, Patrick, you know to lead like a pilot, there should be some sort of initial training, and whether that’s, you know, a one two hour quick informational session of, hey, leadership is different, and providing some awareness to those individuals, or something bigger than that, it just depends what resources you have available. Providing that pre flight checklist, I think is critical. I think that’s the easiest win that organizations across the entire world can can have if they put in place just giving a clear set, not how to manage, but how to lead on a consistent routine basis, and then exactly creating that, that whatever progression needs to look like in your environment with the resources you have available. So learning how to how to play with those three components. Help them work with each other. Help them work with whatever your organization is trying to accomplish. From you know, a human resource and development perspective is exactly what we’re after,

Catherine McDonald  32:38

and how important are measures in all of that. Craig so obviously for stepping into a role. Now we’re talking about having the support to go along the path, to step into the role, but to step into a leadership role, to know you’re ready for a leadership role. How important is it for people and organizational leaders to have measures of leadership to know when people are for people themselves to know they’re ready first, I guess. Yeah,

Craig Coyle  33:03

no. Well, that’s a great question, and I kind of have two ways thinking about answering it. One is, at the end of the day, it all, it’s all about growing business, right? We’re in business to be in business, and so we’re not just developing leaders, to develop leaders. We’re developing leaders because we want to grow our business. But the other thing I would say is, if you’re waiting to be ready, you’re probably never going to be ready, right? You’re especially in leadership, it’s one of the hardest things to do, is to go from individual contributor to leader for the first time. You’re never going to feel like you’re ready. But I think, I think these measures are critical, because we want to make sure that our policies and our developed specifically, our development and human resource policies are connected to our business objectives. That’s kind of to, you know, bring us full circle. That’s the whole point of having a mission statement. It’s not to, you know, create people that are, you know, excited about, you know, one specific type of impact, it’s you have to, you have to create an outcome to have that impact. How are we connecting the dots here? So how, how is our leader development creating an increase in our engagement, and what impact is that increased engagement having in the key functions of our organization, whether that’s increased innovation, we’re improving our continuous improvement procedures, quality metrics, are now in favorable reason and all of these things. So I think it’s crucial that we tie these, these organizational improvements to the things that are actually going to move our business, because that’s what’s most important at the end

Patrick Adams  34:45

of the day. Yeah, yeah. A question that I have is, you touched on this just a little bit, but I want to, I’m sure there are people out there that are wondering this. There’s a lot of time. Times where we go into organizations and they tell me, you know, honestly, we’re we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the time. We’re just trying to get shipments out the door, and I just need someone to fill this spot, you know, and I don’t have time to train them. Like, what would you like? What would your response be? Or, you know, obviously all of us who are listening are going to say, of course, they need to be trained. But how do you do it? Like is it? Do you think that they need to do leadership training, you know, outside of the production floor, for example? Or do you think they need to be, you know, on the production floor, leading people while they’re receiving their training, or is it a hybrid of the two? Like, what’s your recommendation on that?

Craig Coyle  35:44

Yeah, no, I think it’s, I think that’s a really powerful question. And in the manufacturing industry, especially where and you guys, I’m sure, both seen this, where Lean has probably been taken maybe too far to an extreme in a negative way, you kind of often see that that mindset permeates some of these organizations. And I’ll I typically say this, you know, when you put first things first second things fall, fall into place. And what I mean by that is we are always going to live and die on the quality of our people, period. And so if we invest into our people first, our people are going to be what collectively lift up our organization to reach the objectives and the goals that we have. Now, some people feel they don’t have the resources to be able to do that. Well, I would then counter argue that, what happens if you don’t and if you don’t have time now, you’re probably never going to have time. So what are you going to like? How do you stay in this moment forever, right? If you don’t do anything, what’s going to change? And I think it really just comes for me, back to that mindset of, if you put first things first, second things fall into place. And with all of these challenges that we have that put so much of us in survival mode, it all flows back down to do we have an engaged workforce, and how do we create that culture that engages them? And that all happens at the intersection of these individual contributors and their frontline leaders?

Catherine McDonald  37:34

So then that makes a lot of sense. It’s not as easy in practice like we know this, things get in the way, shiny objects, distractions. People just struggle with this. Struggle to see the long term picture and the long term results. Of spending time training and coaching people, they just tend to focus on the short term. So I guess anybody who’s in our industry trying to help organizations, it’s really important to, yeah, get that message across to people who you’re, you’re trying to leaders, especially senior leaders, who you’re trying to when you’re they’re trying to support their their middle managers or new leaders, that this is really, really important to not just focus on instant gratification or short term, but think long term, because it’ll be better for you. It’ll be better for them, it’ll be better for the organization. So speaking of First things first, then Craig, what would you say is the first thing if, if senior leaders are listening to this today, to write and they go into the organization all motivated tomorrow, right, to use the potential of the people in their company and develop their leaders and new leaders, what’s the first thing they could do? Do you think? Big question, I know, but what do you think?

Craig Coyle  38:45

Yeah, you know, I think the first thing, and we talked about a little bit before, is figuring out how to apply this concept of a pre flight to their organization. And really the mindset behind that is with with your population of frontline leaders, which, by the way, typically are the people leading about 70 to 80% of most manufacturing organizations, instead of just kind of being on their backs about their management requirements. What if we gave them some some really specific, tangible leadership requirements, five things that they could do every single week. You do it Monday, you do this. Tuesday, you do this, Wednesday, whatever order it has to be. Could look different for every organization you know in the aviation world, we typically talk about mission, we talk about crew responsibilities, we talk about aircraft tracks, we talk about emergency actions. We talk about pilot or fighter management, right kind of checking inside with yourself. And if you do those five things before every flight, you’re controlling what you can control. So if we can create this spirit, and doesn’t take much, you could create a 10 page PDF, hand at every single frontline leader talk to them about. Up for an hour and say this is your number one priority moving forward. Every single week, I want you guys to do this and you nest it all the way up through the organization. Could take a week to put that and implement it throughout your entire organization, and I guarantee you you will see incredible results, because at the end of the day, you’re forcing leadership communication, and that is so often the hardest thing organizationally for leaders to really fully grasp and get right routine.

Patrick Adams  40:33

Yeah, we use the term Leader Standard Work and create, you know, having some structure to the day to day behaviors, the daily management, whatever it may be, and it’s almost like your pilot’s checklist, right? So what are the things on Monday that are non negotiables that you have to do? What are the behaviors and the habits that you want your leaders to be doing and actually giving them that structure? And to your point, don’t start with, you know, 1000 items, like pick five, pick five things, and make it very simple, and maybe even make it measurable, but do that in a way that it starts to change the behaviors and the habits over time. So I love that. That’s a great, great first step.

Catherine McDonald  41:17

It is. And you know what? There’s you once you have that, and I think people new leaders actually need that bit of structure and guidance in the beginning. Because when you said that at first, I was kind of thinking to myself, Greg, well, shouldn’t we just let them do it, or should we do it with them? But actually no, then I thought it through, and I thought, as a new leader, you need that structure, but where the continuous improvement piece comes in is where you have your one to ones with those new leaders every week or couple of weeks, and you they come back to you and say, Oh, look, I tweaked my Leader Standard Work. And now, look, I’m doing this and I’m saving this, so we have to not just give them the structure, but also let them know that there’s an expectation that they will work on this. They will improve it, they will, you know, bring in the efficiencies by going and doing the work and reflecting on it, you know. So think that’s actually a great tool. I love the Leader Standard Work tool anyway, but I think it’s a great tool when it’s used in that way. Absolutely, yeah.

Craig Coyle  42:13

And I think the biggest differentiation that it creates is it actually instills a mindset shift in all of your frontline leaders, and it says, I know you have a lot of management responsibilities, and those are important, but in this organization, moving forward, we’re going to differentiate between management and leadership, and we’re going to make your number one priority leadership. And we believe if you do these five things routinely, you are going to be an effective leader. And it kind of is that Home Depot principle of inverting the organizational hierarchy. It flips the script of everybody in the organization from thinking about, Oh, what do I have to do for this guy, to thinking about, what can I do for that guy or gal? And that changes everything.

Patrick Adams  42:58

I love. It powerful, powerful stuff. Craig, I’m sure many people are hoping that we continue, but we have to, we have to cut, cut the for time. But if people want more information on, you know, the lead, like a pilot framework and some of the things that you’re working on with with organizations, where would they find more information? Yeah,

Craig Coyle  43:23

absolutely. So you could always find us@operationlead.com there’s actually a leaders pre flight checklist you can download there. So I encourage everybody to go check it out. Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Just Craig Coyle should be able to find me pretty easily. And then, you know, exclusive offer for listeners of the show today. We do have a new program called activate your organization that we’re launching in January of 2025 we’re going to reserve at least three of those slots, so three out of the 12 slots for listeners of the show today. So when this episode launches, if you guys listening are interested and go ahead and send myself, Craig, so CR aig@operationlean.com with the Lean solutions podcast and subject title, we’ll hop on a call and one of those three spots will be available to you.

Patrick Adams  44:10

Since we’re recording this right now, can I take one of those right now? Before anybody else does now, we’ll put out. We’ll get all three of those out to everybody, and actually we’ll put that. We’ll put information for that into the show notes, along with your website, Operation lead.com, and your LinkedIn link as well, so people can connect with you. Craig, it’s been great to have you on and I love to hear back from you on how those three individuals do in within the program. So please keep us in the loop and and hopefully we’ll hear back from you sometime in 2025 we’ll get you back on and talk about another concept and that in the framework. So thank you

Craig Coyle  44:51

absolutely, absolutely thanks for having me. It was a blast.

44:54

Thank you.

Patrick Adams  44:55

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.