Patrick Adams  00:00

Hello and 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 McDonald 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. 

Patrick Adams  00:33

Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. We’re going to do things a little bit different in this episode where I’m going to talk with you a little bit about my views and my experience in developing a culture of continuous improvement. And then one of our other hosts, Andy Ulrich, from Australia, we’re going to jump on together and just kind of walk through this episode together and talk about our thoughts around this particular topic, because I think it’s really important, as we look at the different organizations in different industries that are trying to develop this true culture of continuous improvement. As many of you know, I worked for two organizations that were on the surface. Both of these organizations would have seemed to look very similar, right? They had very similar artifacts on the walls, value, stream, maps, 5s, floor, tape, right labels on everything. They had similar metrics. If you were to ask them about their business improvement process, they would say that lean or continuous improvement is their business strategy, their way of approaching continuous improvement. But underneath all the pretty floor tape, the scorecards, the the value stream maps on the walls, the artifacts, as I call them, underneath all of that with one of those two companies, was a very toxic culture where people hated to work, where the turnover was through the roof, the metrics were in the dumps, and it was just a really difficult place to work. Well, the other company, the company that had a true culture of continuous improvement, was an amazing place to work, and people love to be there. The turnover was very low. The metrics were doing great, and it was just a really great place to be. So again, many people have asked me, Well, how did that happen? What’s the big differences? What are the gaps? Why did one company have such amazing culture while the other company had a very difficult and toxic culture? And you know what I would say is there’s no road map to developing a true culture of continuous improvement. In fact, if I was to give you the five steps or the 10 things that that particular company did to create a true culture of continuous improvement, more than likely it would not work at your organization. You’re in a different industry. It’s a different time. You have a different team, you know, maybe you’re in a different country, and so there’s a lot of differences in in what you would have in comparison to that particular company. You know, that goes the same with the Toyota Production System. Toyota did some really, really amazing things, but it’s not a cookie cutter approach. When Toyota opened up their doors and said, Come on in and learn about the Toyota Production System and everything that we’re doing, they didn’t expect that companies would take exactly what they’re doing, all the exact tools, all the exact techniques, and apply them to the organization and think that they would have success. What was what they really wanted organizations to see was what was behind the tools and the techniques and what helped to develop the culture was, was really the things that were behind that. So how did they come up with the tools that they came up with? Right? And you think about Kanban, for example. Why was Kanban created? Well, Toyota had very specific problems with inventory, with some of their their planning and their supply chain, right? So they needed to create a pull system that would reduce the amount of inventory that they had between their processes, and that would flow product through very quickly. And so they created a solution that worked for them at the time, that was very specific to the problems that they were having. Now, if you just said, well, we want to be lean, and you go and just start implementing some of these tools into your organization. What if you have different problems than what Toyota had, or than what the company that I work for had, the solutions are not going to give you the value or the output, the results that you’re looking for. So you really have to ask yourself a very clear set of questions. I have outlined those questions in my book, but there you have to ask yourself questions and be realistic and honest about the answers so that you can develop a roadmap that’s going to work for you. But either way, I want to talk about maybe some things. That have come to the surface as I’ve worked with many companies over the last few years while I was in the corporate world as a lean manager, as an operations manager, plant manager, Value Stream manager, and then in the last few years, as I’ve been consulting and training with many companies, there’s a few things that have kind of risen to the surface that I want to talk about, first and foremost, how do you define culture? For me, personally, every team, every company, every organization, has a culture. Culture is an output. It’s something that just happens based on the behaviors, the actions, the habits, the beliefs of the people that are working within that team or that organization. And culture is, again, it’s an output. So if culture is an output, we have to ask ourselves, can we change culture if you’re not, if you don’t have the culture that you want to have, let’s just say that you want to create a true culture of continuous improvement. You want to create a learning culture, a place where people feel comfortable to experiment and move towards continuous improvement within their processes. Can you make that happen? The answer is yes. If you know that culture is an output, then you have to understand what the inputs are if you want to change the outputs. So the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right? We can’t just say we want a different output and expect that it’s going to happen. We have to look at the inputs and we have to be willing to change the inputs if we want to change the outputs. Otherwise, it’s complete insanity. We can’t just say and scream from the top, you know, from the corner office or from the top of our lungs, like, change the culture. We want a different culture. We want to we can’t just do that and expect that it will happen without changing the inputs. Right? That’s complete insanity. So we have to look at the inputs. What are the inputs, the actions, the behaviors, the habits, the beliefs of most importantly, the leaders in the organization, but really of everybody in the organization. Now, leaders have to lead with intention, and they have to model the right behaviors in order for the entire organization to begin to accept that and and start to change the culture also, I’ll say this is not an overnight experience, right? Changing the culture of an organization is like turning a ship. It takes, you know, ships, cargo ships, out in the water. When they’re going to make a turn in in the ocean, they have to start miles and miles before they’re actually planning to make that turn, because they know that it’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of effort, in order to actually turn the ship right. In the same way within your organization, this is not something that’s going to happen overnight. You’re not going to start making changes to your habits and your in your behaviors, and tomorrow, everything’s going to be different. We have to start now knowing that this is a long term commitment to transformation within your organization, and over time, things will start to change. Are you going to, are you going to, is everything going to work exactly the way that you expect? No, absolutely not. You’re going to have some setbacks. You’re going to take two steps forward and one step back. Understand that all of that’s going to happen, but if you make a commitment to truly transform your organization, it can definitely happen for you. Now, there are three things that set the two organizations that I work for. There’s three things that I would say, set them apart. And those three things are set clear expectations, enable action and sustain the results. Okay, so for company continuous improvement, which is the company that had the true culture of continuous improvement, they did a great job at setting clear expectations, enabling action and sustaining the results. Now, the company that I call company continuous appearance, they struggled with kind of pockets of these three things. You know, sometimes I would go into an area of the business and they would have set very clear expectations, and they they knew exactly what needed to be done. Leaders were very clear on what was expected of them, and they enabled the action. They allowed team members to work on continuous improvement. However, they never talked about sustainment. They never had a good sustainment plan. And so leadership would turn over. And you know, they would, they would put improvements in place, but then people would move around, or, you know, new priorities would come up, and that that that change, or that improvement would just kind of fall apart. And so change was not sustained in those particular areas, other areas of the business I would go to, and they would have enabled action. They allowed people the time to work on continuous improvement. They promote. It within what was important to them, and they had a really good sustainment plan in place. They they were going out and auditing improvements. They were auditing standard work. They were leaders. Were out on the floor making sure that they were supporting the change that was happening, and updating standard work to reflect the improvements, however, in the beginning, they never set clear expectations. They never had good alignment to a true north for the organization and cascading goals. So the expectations were very unclear. And this created this, this lack of organizational alignment. The last thing that I would find is I would see where some areas of the business would set those clear expectations. They had a great sustainment plan in place. However, they never enabled action. They didn’t feel like they had time for improvement, right? And when this would happen, they would have very mediocre results. So the clear distinction was that the company that had the true culture of continuous improvement, they had all three of these things that would set clear expectations, they would enable action, and they would sustain the results, and this created a true culture of continuous improvement. Now I mentioned earlier the importance of having clear expectations, but aligned to a true north for the organization, right? Some kind of a long term goal now for Toyota, you know, their true north was 100% on time, delivery, zero defects, 100% value add activity, one piece flow, right? These are things that were that Toyota looked at as perfection, right? Now, will they ever reach perfection? Will they ever have 100% on time, delivery, 100% value add zero defects? No, probably not. Right? However, what that did for Toyota is it gave them direction, right? So anytime that they were going to make a decision on anything at all, they would ask themselves, is this, if we say yes to this decision, is it going to move us closer to our true north? And they were also able to create target conditions, again, moving them closer to their true north. But all of their planning, on an annual basis, on a quarterly basis, was always aligned to this true north, and then those goals were cascaded down through the organization, creating very clear expectations for leaders. Emily, tell you this, I’ll just give you a quick example. I’m in the process right now of of getting my private pilot’s license, so I’ve been working on, you know, learning how to fly and all of the basics that come along with that. And obviously I travel around the country and around the world quite frequently, so I think about aviation quite a bit, and I always tie it into to a lot of My Teachings. But one of the things I was thinking about when I was flying recently, and also traveling out to Missouri recently, the thing I was thinking of is, when we get onto a flight going anywhere, any destination, the pilot knows where we’re going, right? So, for example, if I’m flying from Grand Rapids to St Louis, Missouri, the pilot knows that the starting point is Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the destination is St Louis, Missouri. And the thing is that people don’t understand is that in flight from one point to another point, pilots make hundreds of course corrections during that flight. And those course corrections could be because of the wind. They could be because of other airplanes. They could be air traffic control giving them direction for different reasons. There’s lots of different reasons why pilots make hundreds of course corrections, but the point is that they have a destination in mind, right? They’re going from one point to another point, and they’re moving closer to that point. Even though they’re making multiple course corrections throughout the course of that particular flight, they always have that one destination in mind, and that’s why it’s so important that organizations have established their true north. Now here at lean solutions, we’ve established a true north of being the first global choice for process improvement solutions. So I’ll just tell you, you know, I think back to COVID, the pandemic, when everything shut down, and when everything shut down, you know, we, we don’t do a lot of online, virtual training, coaching, consulting. A lot of what we do is in person, face to face. So when organizations shut down, a lot of our clients actually shut the doors and said, you know, we can’t have outside vendors in in our organization or in our on site, in our location anymore. So we were out on the streets and you know, so again, for me personally. As the CEO of Lean solutions. What do you think I did? Do you think I said, Oh, well, everybody, I guess we’re gonna have to close our doors and shut down. And, you know, all of our plans and goals for this year are now shot, so we just have to kind of close the doors and go home. No, of course, that’s not what I did, right? What I did was, I said, what’s our true north? What direction are we heading? We were heading in the direction of becoming the first global choice for process improvement solutions. So just because we have to make a little course correction here doesn’t mean we don’t still have direction right? We had to pivot. We had to make some decisions as an organization and go in a different direction. In order to still, we had to course correct in order to still stay in the same direction towards our true north. So what did we do? Well, we doubled down on e learning, on our academy, online training courses and virtual coaching, and, you know, virtual live classroom sessions. And we started the we started running webinars, which then eventually turned into the Lean solutions podcast, which is what you’re listening to right now. But we course corrected, right and we continued in that same direction. This is important for any organization, for your organization, as you think about developing a true culture of continuous improvement, we have to have clear expectations all the way through the organization, from the top of the organization all the way down to the frontline workers and the people that are doing the work on the value add activities that are happening at the gemba. So one of the things I want to touch on real quick before I kind of start to close this is the I want to go back to those inputs, okay? So the behaviors, the actions, the the habits, the beliefs of the people in your organization, right? I’ve heard this before, this. This is not something that I came up with, but we talk about raising the bar, raising the bar in our organizations, we think about bar as an acronym. The B stands for beliefs, the A stands for action, and the R stands for results. So the results that we get right the culture, the culture of continuous improvement, which is an output, it’s the results that is determined by the actions of the people in our organization, or the leaders in the organization. The actions of those leaders are really determined by the beliefs, by the habits and the beliefs. So if we want to change the results, we have to think about the actions, which then lead us to the beliefs or the habits, the behaviors of the leaders in our organization. If you as a leader, go out and watch and follow your frontline leaders, your mid managers. Where are they spending their time? What are they doing? What are the behaviors look like? Are they at a desk managing through email? Again, it depends on the industry that you’re in, right? But where is the gemba? You have to ask yourself that, where is the value add? The value add actions taking place the value add work. And how much time are your leaders spending there, right? What are the behaviors, if you look at their calendars, are they in meetings all day long, or are they in the place where the value add work is being done, coaching, developing team members, helping to create alignment towards goals, helping to solve problems, helping to remove roadblocks for team members, so that those team members can be successful in their roles. The this is important as we think about developing a true culture of continuous improvement, we have to look at those inputs, the behaviors, the actions, the beliefs of leaders. Let’s raise the bar, right? Let’s raise the bar. Change the behaviors, change the beliefs of the people in your organization, so that the actions are driving the right results. Raise the bar. Hey everybody. I again. I want to thank you. I’m going to transition over now have a little conversation with Andy Ulrich about this particular section on developing a true culture of continuous improvement. I appreciate you listening in if you haven’t already hit the subscribe button. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast. Share it with all of your friends, with your coworkers. Let’s make a difference in your organization, and let’s do it together. Hello, everyone. I am sorry to interrupt this episode of the lean solutions podcast, but I wanted to take a moment to invite you to pick up a copy of my shingle, award winning book, avoiding the continuous appearance trap. 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 my name or the title of the book. You aren’t a reader. No worries, the audio book is also available on Audible. Now. Back to the show. All right. Well, Andy, welcome. Welcome to into my little episode here running. Things a little bit different today. I started out with just this kind of some things that were on my mind. So, you know, a couple different topics that I thought, you know, things that that some of our clients, or, you know, some of my peers and individuals other consultants have been talking about and dealing with, and some of the things that are just kind of relevant right now. So I went through those with our audience. And obviously, you know, you’ve had a chance to listen to that recording, and I’m just kind of curious, what are your initial thoughts? What were your thoughts as we as I went through some of those topics.

Andy Olrich  20:35

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Really the main thing that stood out for me was, and what, you know, this is topic that gets raised so often, is around the culture of, especially when trying to create a culture of continuous improvement, and how you walk through, you know, those key areas, you certainly raised a lot of memories, I think, for me. And then sort of, and also a bit of a reflection as to where I am now, and, and, yeah, look into it a bit as to how, yeah, how am I doing that? Or how is that the leadership in where I am spending my time now, running through those things. So I just think that’s it’s such an important topic, and it is something in, whether it’s lean or whatever we’re talking about, it won’t go away as a topic. It’s just something that’s so important. And depending on what we do, where we are and as an organization, it’s, it’s so critical. So yes, we could, we could have lots to talk about mate, so it’s a good one,

Patrick Adams  21:32

Absolutely. Yeah, so, so let’s, let’s unpack this a little bit. And obviously, yeah, any, any of your experiences that you want to share with our audience, you know, on some of these different topics, would be definitely very valuable, I think, for our listeners. So let’s, let’s just kind of start at the beginning. You know, I talked about culture in general, and you know what it takes to actually create a culture, or how culture even happens? What’s been your experience in, you know, whether the organization you’re in now or other organizations in just the different types of cultures, and how culture gets created and and you know what it looks like to to actually change a culture? I mean, what’s been some of your experiences with that?

Andy Olrich  22:16

Yeah, I think you touched on it well, is that everywhere has a culture, it’s something that that happens. I think was the term you use. So regardless of where you are, there is a culture, and it may be something that’s really, really good and positive, and I’ve certainly been fortunate to have some great examples of that in my career. But also you can have some pretty, pretty toxic ones. And reflecting on that is, what were those key things that stood out and made it a positive or a negative experience for not only myself, but those who are in the organization. And I think I’ll start on the let’s start on the positive end, hey. So I found those ones that had a great culture. There was a there was always deep engagement with the workers, so the people connected to the work on the front lines, or those, you know, back of house processes around the delivery. There was always, you know, a lot of engagement from the leadership, there was a lot of training and support. They probably the best company I’ve been in is, is they showed us a lot of stuff, right? They really go, made it clear what our customers really expected from us and what they were thinking, but also the results. They weren’t hiding a lot of the figures away in the back room. It was all very open and transparent, and that real trust value was being lived and shared by all across the organization, so we knew what was going on, and it was very clear when it wasn’t going the way that our customers or each other expected, so that through all of that, I think that was the biggest thing, was that trust and transparency and the support to learn and grow and share that really drove us in a great direction. It was a great place to go every day. Yeah? So, yeah,

Patrick Adams  23:59

Let me jump in real quick. On Yeah, because you, you mentioned leader engagement with frontline team members, and I just it made me think about, you know, I’ve been in a number of organizations where I’m out on the the production floor or out working with frontline leaders or or or workers, and I hear this a lot with especially at organizations where there’s been turnover in leadership, or, you know, new leaders have recently come in, or whatever it might be. But I hear this a lot where they say, you know, the old boss, or my old supervisor or the old owner, they used to come out here all the time, and they would just talk with us, and they would ask us about, you know, things that we’re struggling with. And you know, we used to see them all the time, and now we don’t see anybody, and we don’t get feel like we’re getting any support. And and I it, you’d be surprised how many times I hear that. And you know, people appreciate leaders that are. Visible at the gemba and not only appreciate it, but leaders that are out there really with a genuine interest in understanding what’s happening, so that they can go and help remove roadblocks and make those people successful. That’s what’s necessary in a true culture of continuous improvement. When leaders remove themselves from the gemba because they’re too busy in meetings, or, you know, trying to get promoted, trying to get that to that next position, or or whatever it might be, they’re they’re really creating, they’re enabling a more toxic culture. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, but that’s been my experience. So

Andy Olrich  25:39

Agree, and you know, especially in the example, in the essence of speed or yeah, let’s say a senior leadership team, they may not be getting on so well at their level, okay, and they’re in constant reaction or firefighting mode. Hang on a second. What we might do is to save us a bit more time so we can get our meetings more efficient or work out things out we, what we’ll do is, yeah, but they won’t be as present out there where the work is done, but also they won’t invite people into, you know, present or be part of those meetings. They’ll kind of, oh, I’ll just talk on behalf of my team, and we’ll just stay in here. That in some some spaces, like, I get that, but then there’s other places where it’s like, you’re kind of building this, this one giant silo around the leadership. And there may, you know, be absolutely nothing untoward going on, but it just puts that little bit of barrier. And like I said, that keyword trust is like, Oh, well, hang on. I want to come and tell my story. Or, hey, yeah, you used to come out here and and talk to us. What’s what’s going on? Are you? Are you making a gap? Because you’re going to make a decision that’s going to impact me, you know, poorly in a personal way. Or, Yeah, where are you? And I don’t really have those little moments to get those one percenters and we have that discussion, or you can see that that challenge out there in the floor. So yeah, it does. It drives. Because especially with new leadership, if you have a leader that you don’t even get to know, and you only go off what you hear, or whatever visual management or performance things are visible, you start to make up your own mind what’s going on there. And that does drive people to then kind of go inward within their own teams. And yeah, I’ve been there if we didn’t have our information. So we kind of, yeah, in one example, we we said we kind of went to war on each other a little bit there, because we were just like, well, hang on, if I, if I don’t know what’s going on there, eventually it may impact me. So yeah, absolutely, it’s you don’t get to see that human side of leaders as well, which can be quite, you know, it’s hard for you to if you see them once a month and they might say five words to you and then walk off and you’re like, Well, what was all that about? Right? As opposed to, you know, every day or every week or something, at least, you get that connection, and they get to know a bit about you as well, because it’s, it’s too hard, especially in the world where we have the online space, there’s some organizations that still do that type of engagement purely online. Hit the go button, you know, pops up like the Brady Bunch. There’s all the faces on the screen. They finish what’s, you know, the meeting. Bang, everyone’s gone. And you don’t have that little opportunity to just have a conversation or show them something that’s in your in your workspace, really. So they get where you’re at, instead of the decisions are just being pushed down. So as I said, it starts that, what do they say? The fish rots from the head down. In particular around that trust and transparency, I’ve seen that if the leadership aren’t accessible, you know, fear starts to creep in, you start looking over your shoulder, that’s, yeah, I’ve certainly experienced that in the past. They’ve got to be sure, yeah, they’ve got to be, got to be connected, really, right?

Patrick Adams  28:51

And you said, before I interrupted you, you were, you were talking about a positive culture, and some of the experiences from a positive standpoint. So obviously visibility at the gamble was one of the things, and engagement with leadership at the gemba was a positive thing. I kind of flipped it on to the negative side with an example, but you, I think you were moving into talking about maybe some experiences with culture from a negative standpoint.

Andy Olrich  29:20

Yeah. So yeah. We touched on a little bit of that is that, yeah, they’re not being available or engaged and just seen as this group, somewhere afar in leadership. The other thing is, you know, the rate of change that can be pushed on to teams I’ve seen, you know that they, I think was it Billy Ray Taylor or somebody said that they they read a book at the airport, and then, you know, we’re going to change or that they’ll Yeah, that constant, disruptive change, unsettling for a workforce and and some people might just stop doing anything different, because they just, what’s the point? If we start this, are going to change it next month. And. So I think, yeah, constant disruptive change. With that that clear why where we’re doing, or it’s not seen as that true north is not clear, and why, what are we actually heading towards over the next, you know, beyond 90 days, and I can see where I fit in. So that lack of transparency around the cascading strategies you talked about, and we might have a high level corporate scorecard up here, and we get access to those results, and that may be what goes to shareholders or whoever ultimately pays the bills, write down, and then there’s nothing in between, and then it’s kind of like water out here. Just do your job. And you might get some people thinking they’re going, okay, or actually, they’re getting feedback. They’re not, but they don’t really see until they get that reactionary type of review or statement put on them. So definitely the visibility about where I fit in and how things connect up to why we’re all really here and what our customers truly, truly value. The other thing too, is if it’s if you are seeing your work purely from a cost perspective, especially with with Lean, you know, we know there’s a lot of examples where it’s brought in, and the message is around, purely around saving money, which, you know, ultimately, that does happen if we do it well, but it’s that can be quite toxic. It’s all about the dollar. Just find a better way and but at the end of the day, the measure we’re going to hold you all accountable to is just this financial one. Because people, certainly I have experienced where it kind of makes you feel a lot more that you’re just part of a transaction. You’re not actually there to learn and grow, and that that purpose of I’ve got a job, but actually, you know, I’m here to do something, and I feel there’s a real sense of purpose there. So again, that lack of clear messaging, or you just might be in an organization that’s all about that there’s been many a time where I’ve had a phone call saying, hey, we want you to come in and deploy lean over the next six to 12 months, because we need to save X million dollars and over 12 months, and I’m like, well, to do it properly. It’s that three to five years a slow burn. If you just want to save money, you don’t need me. You just need to do what a lot of companies do in the short term is just reduce your headcount, reduce your maintenance budgets, you know, all that sort of stuff, if it’s purely around that, right? And I’ll see in about two years time when all the other cultural things have fallen apart, people aren’t there anymore. And so there’s a few examples there, but I just keep bringing it back to if, if we can’t see where we fit in, and it’s not, we don’t have those good engagements with not only that, the teams are in or across the T, you know, but also up the up the chain, yeah, that fear based culture really starts to come in. And it’s kind of everyone for themselves. So yeah, if I don’t know, I can’t see and I can’t feel, Yeah, everybody’s different. And now, depending on where they’ve been or what they think might be coming down the road, we all react differently as humans, I think, and that’s that can be a real risk to what comes out. That’s your inputs, right? And then what comes out the other end, the customers might be going, what is going on in that place? Or maybe I’ll go, and I feel differently when I go to that organization over there and see what they how they treat me. See you later. So, yep,

Patrick Adams  33:22

Yeah, and that’s the problem that that comes right? And I do think that, you know, obviously every I agree with everything that you talked about, but you know, just kind of shifting over to the inputs there, and the the behaviors, the actions of the people in your organization, specifically the leaders, you know, putting some structure around that, and coming together as a leadership team and saying, Okay, what are the right behaviors, what are the right actions? How much, what? How much time should each role, you know, be spending at the gemba? And when they’re at the gemba, what should they be doing? We can create structure around that, especially in the beginning as we’re learning, you know, it’s important to have structure, some type of leader, standard work now, as you go on and you mature in your in your Lean journey, and you know, it just becomes the way that you manage, maybe some of that structure can be backed off a little bit, but especially in the beginning, as you’re learning, You know, being able to have some accountability around that and some very specific details around those inputs, my recommendation would be sit down with your leadership team and talk through those. What are the things that are important when it comes to gamble walks? What does a gamble walk look like for us? How often should it be happening? What happens to the the output of the gamble walk itself. So creating some structure around that, how often should each person be doing them? What do they look like? Looking at Tier meetings, for example, an escalation. How do you escalate problems? What did tier meetings look like? What should be talked about? What are the agendas? How often should they be happening? I. You know, looking at problem solving in general. You know, how do your How do you attack problems, medium low severity, low frequency problems. How do you attack those? What about medium severity? Medium frequency, high frequency, high severity. How are you addressing those problems? How often should you be going after those problems? What does that look like at each level of the organization, creating some structure around that in the beginning, and I’m only mentioning a few here. But what are the inputs? Right? You have to decide that for your organization, if you’re in a healthcare organization, in a doctor’s office or in a hospital, your inputs might look a little bit different than someone that’s it on a production floor in a manufacturing facility, or someone that’s in an office a nonprofit organization you know in a small rural town, your inputs are going to be different. So again, I can, I could go through and give you a list of inputs that I have experience with, but they might not work for your organization. Sit down with your team, determine what are the right inputs that are going to give you the outputs that you’re looking for, and then run an experiment. Try it out. Test it. See what happens. Ask your people what they think. Make adjustments. Learn accordingly, and make adjustments as you go and watch as your culture just starts to thrive, because that, that’s what you that’s how you have to start thoughts on that. Andy,

Andy Olrich  36:31

Yeah, the word that just keeps jumping out is standards. So when we talk about, you know, the structure and the and the framework, like just getting down, you know, clear on how, you know, what’s our excuse me, what’s our special source, like, what are we going to do, leader, standard work, and just, just going through the motions of documenting that so around, you know, what does it look like? What? What are the behaviors that leadership will display and follow? And then, then we expect of others. How often are we out there? What are some standard ways of working that we can document and then we can take that, as you said, run the experiment, but you’ve got something there that you can look back on a real thing and say, well, we plan to do this and like this, and here’s what here’s what we got and what we learned. So I think that’s you’re having that, taking that time to kind of map that out and then agree it’s not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be the best way you’ve ever done it, but it’s just like, look, this is what we think will work for us, for where we are and where our people are, capability wise, we’re not. You know, if the leadership’s had all this training, and they come from all of these high performing organizations, and then they dropped into a company that may not be that. How do we calibrate ourselves to see, again, respecting the people, what’s fair? And then how are we going to inspect what we expect? So if we don’t have that’s saying, no standard, no improvement. I think that’s that’s absolutely fundamental. And again, where, when we drop into some of the tools that we use in in the Lean space, they can facilitate that activity. But again, the the inputs and the outputs and the content that comes from heads and hearts. And I’m a big fan of when we do strategy deployment that, you know, the top down, bottom up, we do that bit of catch ball initially, when we’re putting the targets in, hey, this is what we would like you to do. That’s the what, how are we going to do that? And then, is that achievable, or those sorts of things, if it’s just this strategy that’s just driven down? And again, there’s no framework around them coming out quickly and often to see if that’s really what is being delivered on the ground. So the measures are even relevant. Yeah. Again, for me, there’s that, that word standard just drops, drops in there hard, because it’s without that we’re just kind of, we think we’re doing it, or what’s in my mind, of what I expect you to do when, when you’re out there, may be different to how you interpret that, or how you think you should be working so, yeah, that that really jumps through for me? Yeah,

Patrick Adams  39:01

No, I agree. And one of the things I think a lot of leaders struggle with, because we talked about this earlier, you can improve in chaos, right? So, so having standards in place is a way to create a level of stability that you can then start to improve on. But then here’s the here’s kind of the struggle is, you know, people say, Well, which one is it? Is it standards, or is it constant improvement and change? Well, the answer is, it’s both, right? You you can’t just create a an atmosphere of complete chaos. You know, we would say in the US, the wild wild west, like just running around, changing things and just improve what you want make changes. You know. Third shift comes in, and everything’s moved around. They move it all back then for you know, first, no, that’s complete chaos, right? There has to be a level of stability and standards that have to be in place. First. So once you’ve established that, now you’re doing controlled experiments, right within some type of boundaries that you’ve given your team, establish clear expectations, which I talked about as one of those three areas. So clear expectations alignment towards a true north. Where are we heading if I’m going to make a change to the layout in my area. How is that change going to help us move closer to our true north? And how have we cascaded that true north down so that I know how the work that I’m doing is actually impacting that true north, so that I can make good decisions about what improvements need to be made that are in alignment with that, but I have a standard layout for my area just as an example, and I know that if I make a change to the layout, it’s going to allow me to reduce the lead time or improve the flow through that particular area, which will then allow me to improve on time delivery, just for example. So I can see the connection with this improvement to my long term goals, which have been cascaded through and are very clear to me, very clear expectations. Now we have to enable action. So do I have the freedom to be able to make changes? You know? I know some leaders give their teams a, you know, a certain amount of spending that they don’t need to ask for approval. They have boundaries. But then Anything over that, you know, maybe they have to have some kind of an ROI, or they do some, some something to request, you know, something more than that. And, you know, maybe there’s some stipulations around communication and making sure that everybody’s on board before I do a controlled experiment. So now I’m going to they’re enabling me to take action and actually make an improvement. So I changed the layout to my area. Now we go into sustaining improvements, right? We’ve proven, because we have metrics, data, some kind of performance metrics, that’s showing us that because I changed this layout, I’ve been able to improve the flow, which is now allowing me to, you know, increase my output through that particular cell, or whatever it may be, I can. I’ve shown that through data, and I’ve proven the experiment out. I’ve proven my hypothesis. Now, how do I sustain that? Right? So now I’m updating my standard work. I’m implementing some type of an audit, or I’m, I’m, you know, maybe it’s a short term, you know, you mentioned, inspect what you expect, right? Leaders come and inspect, make sure that the accountability is there around sustaining that improvement. You have to retrain everybody to the new layout and how that’s being used. So there are things that you have to do intentionally to actually sustain that improvement going forward. Now we have a new standard, right? So I said it’s both we want to improve, but we also have to update our standards, retrain people, and develop a new level of standards that creates that level of stability. So it’s almost like a staircase, like we’re improving and then we’re stabilizing, and then we’re improving, and then we’re stabilizing, and that’s really how continuous improvement should work.

Andy Olrich  43:02

Yeah, and, and I just think that we’re in, we’re in that space where, you know, even just, just looking to change challenge, or change the standard, bringing your customer in regular to say, hey, we’re thinking of doing this. Or we’ve, are you happy? We’ve just, we’ve just done a change that maybe you would you don’t see it once it moves out the gate, or when you walk into our doctor surgery, or wherever you’re applying this change, what do you think? And getting that quick, regular customer feedback, so before you absolutely lock that standard in, for example, and make sure that the previous documentation or training and everything you know, because you got to take that stuff away then, so we it’s hard to slip back there again. There’s that little bit of a point there. Yeah. So again, voice of the customer is, is super important. So making that visible as well. When you talk about the the standards, you know, metrics drive behaviors, so it’s really the workforce might be. Well, why are we even changing this? Hey, here’s the voice of the customer survey about 90 day or we’ve had these suggestions from our customers. Yeah, it’s not just leadership saying this. It’s our it’s our customers, or our competitors just started, and here’s their product and service they’re delivering. So it just gets people connected a bit more with the why? Because, yeah, as humans, with the whole change, like all of continuous improvement, is all about change, right? There’s a change. And the first thing people naturally think of, I think, is, well, what’s in it for me? Why should I care? And why are we changing again? Well, if it’s just seen as a bit of a thought bubble by a leader who’s just, we used to have one, they called him ricochet rabbit because he just bounced off the walls all the time, and you wouldn’t know exactly what was coming next, as opposed to our customers are actually prepared to accept a less appealing looking product if it lasts longer for the same price. So that then adjusted well, we had the calibrated eyes, so either people would look at this product and go. Think that’s a nine out of 10, or that’s, I don’t think that’s good. We better put that in the scrap, working with our customers again to say, hey, if it looks between this and this, is that acceptable? That actually took some work off the the process, and we focus more on the durability and longevity of the product, because they certainly didn’t want to pay more. But we were conscious that if we had to get everything looking a certain way, that’s that waste of over processing, right? We would we our scrap was up and our costs were up, and we were looking to then drop a price increase on the customer, whereas we went, hang on, what would they what would they be actually satisfied with? And again, that that was really for to dial some of those workers down who wanted were seeking that absolutely perfect looking thing. It’s like, hang on, hang on. Here’s x, y, z, brought the customer in and spoke to the operators and said, look, hey, at the end of the day, we need it to do this. And as long as it does it for this long at this price, we’ll keep coming back through the door, right? If it looks less than, you know, so than this particular one I’ve got here in my hand, yeah, I’m not going to accept that either. So that really helped us develop those visual tools that that go, no go, gages, you know, our standards, our training, and even how we set the machines up and how hard we used to run them. This is in a manufacturing environment I was in. It’s so critical that voice of the customer and connecting that to the workers, so that it’s, again, it’s not just seen as leadership’s just trying to clobber us, or, Hey, that new leader is dropping our standards. And I’m not comfortable with that, because I’ve been here 25 years, and it’s gotta, we’ve gotta be number one, and in my mind, it means it’s the prettiest thing out there. Yeah, it all sort of starts to come up, come apart from there, but definitely that metrics drive behaviors around a known standard at that point in time, and where’s your customer, and showing me why, why I need to change or stay the same and where I fit in, I think that’s just, I just keep leaning back on that.

Patrick Adams  46:58

Yeah. So key, so key. I mean, I love that you brought it back to the customer, right? The most important piece of all of this is the customer. If we didn’t have the customer, we wouldn’t be in business. Yeah. Also, I’ll just say, you know, sometimes we also have internal customers too. So again, depending on the improvement that you’re making or the change that you’re making, it could be, you know, as Andy said, bringing in, you know, the customer of the next downstream process, you know, or it could be the end customer that you’re bringing in, or, you know, again, whatever it may be. So I love that you brought it back to the customer there, Andy, and I think we could continue on for quite a while here with lots of good conversation, but I want to pay attention to time and just make sure that we keep within our time frame here and but yeah, maybe I like the way that we did this. I think maybe we should do it a few more times and kind of see how it goes here. But I appreciate you coming on and just talking through this, this episode with me. I think it’s an important topic that, you know, many of our listeners will find value in. So again, thanks for the conversation, man, it’s been good.

Andy Olrich  48:10

That’s awesome and well, as I said way back at the start, you know, culture, it’s something we’ll be talking about more long after you and I are gone, and as I say, culture, it’s strategy for breakfast, and it’s so important. And I, I, yeah, look forward to that. And maybe, maybe people hear a bit of passion coming through in the voice and resonate with a lot of this stuff, because it does as humans, it there’s little nerves there that sometimes, if you bring it up or connects to a memory that’s positive or negative, we go in. So I Yeah, thanks, Patrick, and I’ll chat to you next time.

Patrick Adams  48:44

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