Patrick Adams  00:00

 Hello and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. My guest today is George SES. George enjoys sharing leadership strategies from experience as a medical device executive with Johnson and Johnson Zimmer Biomet DJ Oh, global and micro air, combined with the best practice he observed as president and CEO of the Association of manufacturing excellence or ame. He’s convinced of the importance of including people in all business equations. Now he’s a writer, keynote speaker and a coach. He promotes enterprise excellence through a people centric culture to the next generation of business leaders. He’s currently residing in Carlsbad, California, with his wife and their latest edition of golden doodle puppy where he enjoys golfing and walking on the beach. Well, welcome to the show, George.

 

George Saiz  01:25

Well, thank you, Patrick.

 

Patrick Adams  01:28

It’s great to Great to see you. Great to have you on the show. I got to hear more about the golden doodle here. What’s the what’s the story? So how, how new is your your latest addition?

 

George Saiz  01:38

Well, she’s three now. But you know, it’s one of those things where we were anxious to get a puppy, but careful what you asked for, I was always working when we got dogs. And so my wife and you know, the kids always raised them and I got to enjoy them and being retired now and being here. That’s a lot of work. We’re up at night, those first six months were brutal. And, and but but she’s, she’s a beautiful and sweet little little addition to our life. So we enjoy every day.

 

Patrick Adams  02:08

That’s amazing. Well, you know, we also recently took on a puppy into our household and and I definitely know that that you know, puppies become family. And they’re definitely a huge part of, you know, what we do and how we live. So. So that’s really neat to hear about that. What’s your golden doodles name?

 

02:32

Kelly see a li. We’ve been in California for many years. And we just came back when we retired four years ago. And so we named Kelly, nice.

 

Patrick Adams  02:43

Well, that’s great. That’s, that’s amazing. So you mentioned, George, that you’re recently retired. Before we get into your book, which I want to talk extensively about. I had a couple other questions. One of them was specific to ame, the Association of manufacturing excellence. So tell us a little bit about your time as president and CEO there? What was it? Like? What were the people like? How, you know, anything that stands out from your time with ame that you want to talk specifically about?

 

03:18

Oh, sure. Yeah, I enjoyed it. And I’ve been part of ame CAUTI, since 2007, and a member and active in it and ultimately got involved in the board. And and as I went down my career, I thought it would be really neat to, to kind of give back and move over into something in the nonprofit area. And the opportunity came up to, to lead the AME. And, you know, the one thing that the model of ame was to is the share, learn GROW Model. And it was really great to be able to see that in action and to see how important that was, there’s a lot of groups that are doing some really great things and in the Lean area, but AMS focus on this, let’s all get together and share my best practices with you and you’re gonna grow and then you’re gonna go on and share that with somebody else. And I love that whole model. And it was great to see that in action I left just prior to COVID Here. Thanks. So I didn’t have to go through the the whole thing. Oh, now we’re with European remote. And then now try and get everyone back together again. But the value is just tremendous and always was for me as a member getting to see behind the curtain since a lot of work going on to bring that conference together and all the work they do but they do a really, really great job at it. And it’s a it’s fun just to get together with people and share and as we all say, I think we shamelessly steal from each other as long as we’re not competitive. And so that’s that’s great to be able to help each other out. Absolutely.

 

Patrick Adams  04:51

Now I love love the Lean community ame has done an amazing job with with their conference and a lot of the other things that they do. Definitely You know, one of the must attends every year. So I was sad that I had to miss it this year, my one of my team members, Craig Tedra, was there in my place this year, but unfortunately, I was traveling and couldn’t couldn’t make it this year, but definitely will be there next year. It is an amazing event very

 

05:21

well, it’s for me, it was selfishly a great opportunity to see a lot of companies, I got to go on. So many tours and visits and see things that well, that I got to include in the book as well. So I, I wrote from my experiences, but I wrote from, from a lot of things that I got to see in that last three, four years, or if ame. So it was a great experience.

 

Patrick Adams  05:43

Amazing. So would you say now, I don’t know that, you know, this ame have full time employees working specifically for the organization, in addition to a board and what does that look like? Is there an org structure or how many people are, you know, kind of part of that that organization? You know, accurately time,

 

06:06

though? Well, since I left the the organization has gone remote, fully remote, but we had an office in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. And at that time, we have a staff of about 10 people, full time employees. But very Amy’s very dependent on volunteers, you know, there’s so much and so we had a Stephens to marketing and event planning, and registration. But the other volunteers took care of all the content. And that was what was permitted. And that was kind of the idea, we brought in experts to help that could market and do those types of operational functions. But we really felt the volunteers, those were the experts in the subject matter. And so we tried to marry that together. And it was it was fun, because we would tap on so many different people contribute, whether there was they were bringing in somebody that had expertise where they had the expertise, but so that was how was it then would be an independent board that was all volunteer driven as well, that helped oversee that, what we did.

 

Patrick Adams  07:17

Now, between the board and the staff, I mean, what kind of culture? Did you guys have at at ame? You know, between the two? Or maybe it’s two different cultures? I don’t know what what did that look like, off really for the team? Well,

 

07:31

between the board and the staff, it was always a very great environment. I think the staff respected the board, because as volunteers, they were giving up their time and so much of it and, and the board really appreciated having a strong team and inside that could, you know, work as a business and as a strong business entity yet, you know, provide the platform for all that great subject matter to come in. So we it was a, it was a it was a good relationship between the two groups. And I think we each appreciate each other very much.

 

Patrick Adams  08:06

Well, I’m excited to dive into your book myself. And I’m excited specifically about the topic of culture. So that’s why I wanted to ask you that question. Just, you know, thinking thinking about ame, and your time there. But let’s back up just a little bit. And make sure that we’re kind of level set as a you know, as a listener base here, because we have a lot of people listening from all around the world, all different industries. And maybe the term culture could mean something differently, Excuse me, could mean something differently, depending on, you know, again, where you’re where you’re from, how you’re brought up, what industry you’re in, so, I don’t know, can we let’s start there, let’s let’s kind of define culture, dork. So what would you say? If you were, you know, asked to define culture? What What would be your definition of culture?

 

08:55

Well, I’ve always seen it as, as the it’s what connects our beliefs to our behaviors, you know, and I think as an organization, and it is unique by by organization, each organization has different set of circumstances. But I think at the end is how we get the work done. You know, we, we, we have a goal in a strategic plan, let’s say that’s guiding the direction of the company. But at the end, how we execute it, I’ve always felt as I was growing up in leadership, it’s through your culture. And so we can talk about some great plans, but if you don’t have the culture to execute it, so I think it’s how we get the work done. And it’s directly related to the beliefs and the behaviors of the folks that are there. That’s my my viewpoint on what are your thoughts?

 

Patrick Adams  09:48

No, yeah, I agree. I think you know, culture everyone has a culture. You know, every every organization, every team, they already have a culture. You know, I really see culture as a A result or an output of those actions, beliefs, behaviors that you’re talking about. So they’re definitely connected in the way that, you know, the culture is kind of what what happens, depending on those actions, those beliefs, those behaviors, that that, you know, as inputs to that. And so yeah, I mean, when people ask me a lot, like, do you think, you know, can you change a culture? And the answer in my mind is yes, you can change your culture. The only way you can do that, though, because culture is an output is by looking at the inputs, and actually changing the beliefs, that behaviors, the actions, because by changing those inputs, then that will again, you know, tie in and have a effect on the output. So I don’t know, thoughts on that. Does that? Does that make sense?

 

10:49

Yeah. And I think that one of the reasons I wrote the book is that going around in companies that I was in, as well, as companies, I visited that, in most companies, there isn’t a plan for the culture. So we ended up with a culture by default. And that culture is, you know, as you said, every company has a different culture, well, in many companies, every door, you go in into another culture, depending on the leader in that in that area, and the way the company is organized, and if a company doesn’t have a plan for its culture, you end up with a default culture, which is usually 40, or 50 Different cultures within a company, which leaves employees very confused. So on one side, you know, they get raises at this man, and their disciplinary action goes like this, and this is how people get promoted. But over here, we do it differently. And, you know, they like to party, they’re not allowed to party. You know, it’s, it’s really confusing for employees. So, yeah, we all have a culture, but sometimes we have even multiple cultures within the overall culture of a company. And that’s, that’s, that’s something I wanted to address through the book.

 

Patrick Adams  12:01

Yeah, it’s so true. It so to your point, culture can just happen. And, you know, you can just allow it to just happen. And, you know, the result of that is going to be, who knows, right? It could be depending on your multiple leaders, you don’t know. But to your point, if you have a plan, you put a plan together, knowing that you can impact your culture, and you can create the culture that you that you know, will support the direction that you’re going as an organization, then why would you not want to take part in that, right, don’t just allow it to happen, actually be part of the process of planning and making make creating the culture that you know, will, will support the direction that you’re heading in.

 

12:49

Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. So

 

Patrick Adams  12:52

the book that you wrote, you wrote a book, specifically on culture. And, you know, again, there, there are a ton of books out there on culture. So, you know, if you were to type in Amazon, you know, culture or, you know, look, there’s your, you’re gonna get a ton of them. So let’s talk specifically about your book and and how it’s different, or, you know, maybe the what is the important message that you’re bringing to the readers that you think is important for them to hear?

 

13:24

Okay, yeah. And yeah, there’s a lot of books out there on culture. And so what I wanted to do is just bring a little bit different look a little bit different slice, at least the things that I’ve seen, going around to different companies. And, and maybe there’s, I think there’s three missing ingredients as well, there’s probably even more but three that I would key on in our discussion today that, that I thought were missing that I wanted to highlight through the book. And the first one is that I think that a lot of companies fail to see the value proposition in culture. And in having the kind of thing we just talked about an established, defined intentional culture. And I think they don’t see that there’s value in doing that, and what that can mean to the company what it can mean to the employees. I cite a couple of different references in my book, and one of them is a book called Firms of Endearment. And in that book, the author’s took a look at companies that embrace the people centered approach to business. And they looked at their ROI and compared that return on investment to the companies in the s&p 500 and the companies in Jim Collins book Good to Great and what they found was the these Firms of Endearment companies that embrace embrace this people centered culture had an ROI that was multiples of of the those other two, in fact, they looked at at five years out 10 years out and 15 years out and by 15 years, they were six times Ames, the ROI of the Good to Great companies in 12 times the ROI of the s&p 500. Wow. What I think people miss is that they think of culture as being that soft stuff. And it’s not soft at all, it’s hard, is really hard. It’s really hard work. But there’s great value in that, right. A second source that I cite is Gallup, and we’ve all probably worked with Gallup on their employee engagement area, they’ve been very big on that with their q 12. Survey. And Gallup took a look at the company’s in their top quartile of employee engagement, and compare the operating metrics to those in the bottom quartile. And again, the same kind of thing. The companies in top quartile had a huge difference in things like productivity, safety, quality, turnover, mean, you name it, but the biggest one was, the company is in the top quartile, we’re 23% and 23%, higher profitability. So everything keeps leading back to, this isn’t the soft stuff of business, this is a key to business success. And then I think from all of us in the Lean community, we understand that it also is a way to engage in fulfill our employees. And so it’s, it’s truly something that I think is missing is it’s a huge win win for the company and for the employees. And so many companies have missed it. So that’s something that I really wanted to bring out in the book that this is an important, important opportunity for you and you’re missing time, if you’re overlooking it and thinking this is just the soft side of the business. So that was one thing I wanted to bring out. Another is that I think we fail to give culture the prominence that it both needs and deserves, and we need to give it that prominence. And in order for it to truly take hold and be successful. But if you look at companies, facts, I was at a conference speaking and I asked everyone to raise your hand if you have a strategic plan in order. Well, first off, do you know how many companies have mission vision and values? And of course, everybody says, Yeah, we all we all have that nowadays, that’s pretty common. So ask them, Well, how many of you have a strategic plan and everybody raise their hand. So how many of you have a plan for your culture, and one person raised their hand, and I think that’s another missing ingredient is that we all establish this mission vision values, we have a strategic plan that addresses the mission and vision with the values part that tends to be up on the wall, or on our website. And you know, and folks do do work at crafting, really good values, but there’s no means no mechanism to integrate them into the business. It’s just a great statement up there. And it’s, well, I hope they all embrace those values. And that becomes part of our culture. But again, if you if you don’t do something specific about it, it’s just gonna stay there. And so, you know, I think that that’s a that’s an important point that I wanted to bring out that you have to come up with, with some kind of an intentional plan for the culture as well. And that can be part of your strategy deployment process. Or maybe you need a separate process. But right now, it’s that one leg that’s sitting up there all by itself. And it’s there’s, we’re not paying attention to it. So that’s, I’m talking a little long winded here. But

 

Patrick Adams  18:32

then the third, he’s continuing, it’s great. Okay, well,

 

18:35

the third thing, I wanted to really hit it in the book, too. That is, I think that, that okay, we we’ve we don’t see the value in it. We don’t have the prominence and when intentional plan, but then if we did have all that we still need leadership to be able to execute it. And I think companies fail that leadership. And I think there’s a big gap. And if we look at at leadership, I was like, I start thinking about, well, how do people get into leadership? What, what gets them their start in there? And I think a lot of times, it’s folks that are good at their functional role get promoted up. Well, were they a good leader? Did they have leadership skills? I don’t know. But, you know, we’re hoping we promote them that they’ll take their best practices and teach everybody else has to do with their, you know, they were the fastest person or the greatest salesperson or whatever. We hope they’re going to teach others but do they have leadership skills? And then when they get in there? Do we teach them leadership skills? Not usually. Nope. So how are they going to lead? Well, I the other day, you know, it’s again, we talked about this when we’re talking about culture. They can lead based on a book they read somebody they work for the past some of their work for today. I mean, it could be almost anything and again, what that creates is that you any door you go into you’ve got it 40 Different cultures and leadership models running amok. And so I really felt that it’s important that we take a hard look at that and look at how we train and equip leaders. So if we have a plan that we can train them to that plan, and then hold them accountable to doing that. So that’s kind of the the things that I wanted to, I think that I thought were missing points a little bit different direction from some of the culture books I’ve seen out there about, well, here’s some of the great elements of culture, here’s how you do it. But I thought that these are some things that were missing today. And I wanted to put them in the book and in Bring, bring awareness to them. Yeah,

 

Patrick Adams  20:40

no, I so much, appreciate that. And I love, I love the fact that that point number three, I mean, all three points are really important. But point number three, in my experience has been a huge issue. For so many organizations for so long, you know, I go into these organizations where people are promoted into leadership positions, because they were really good at running a piece of equipment, or they met their goals, you know, that for their department or whatever it is that they’re doing. And again, to your point, promoted with zero leadership experience, I’ve never led anyone, or very minimal leadership experience, and the company doesn’t provide them any kind of a plan on, on how to lead or any kind of the development, you know, any development opportunities. So for those companies, I mean, that’s a huge problem. They continue to get promoted. Throughout the company, other people come in everyone has different leadership styles, depending on where they came from, what books they’ve read, different things, there’s no intentionality about it, and yet, the company hopes that they’re going to create some kind of a culture that they have this vision for, with, you know, no direct alignment to leadership behaviors.

 

21:56

Right. Right. How do you connect those dots and it’s such an important I mean, we’re, we’ve got a strategic plan up here that we’ve worked so hard it, this is the group that’s going to translate that into action through the folks that are reporting into them. And but we’ve left them all up to their own device to figure out how to do that. That’s just a huge gap. I just struggled to understand it. But again, it really became apparent. You know, going back to your one of your earlier questions when I was at ame, and like ethical see so many companies, and there were so few, when I did see one that had a great approach. One of them was the the Barry Wehmiller group with bob chapman, they have a college that they send all their leaders to, and they want to make sure they have consistent culture throughout all their divisions. But seeing that was few and far between the most most companies don’t take that time. And wow, what it’s a huge miss. It’s a huge one. For

 

Patrick Adams  22:55

sure. Well, to this point, I don’t think we’ve mentioned the title of your book. And I think it’s important to talk about because, you know, as we think about values, and what’s important to accompany in developing the right culture. Yeah, the title of your book is we started with respect. So why is that? Why was that the title you chose? And why is respect such an important word to you?

 

23:21

Right? Well, I wrote the book and then figured out the title. And, and as I went through looking and evaluating what the book was saying, it was that was really the first message was we started with respect. And, you know, again, I know we’re talking to a lean crowd here. So the basis of, of Lean is, is is respect for people. And so, probably not a surprise to everyone, everyone listening, but for me, it just thinks that, that’s just at the core value of who we are. I’ve been around to a lot of companies, and there’s a lot of employee needs out there. But the one thing I found in common throughout is employees, desire to be, you know, to be respected, and to have respect, right, and to be treated with respect. And so I found that in my career, if you start with that, you open up the door that for all kinds of possibilities to climb the mountains together, but within without it, then, you know, it’s it’s a tough road. But yeah, it it’s just the the ante end of the game to me in the end. And so that was it just kept coming up through the writing as I as I wrote that, and so it seemed like the natural title for the book, and I think it’s important, important, I

 

Patrick Adams  24:33

love it. And, you know, again, I think that, you know, there’s probably some leaders listening that, you know, I would wonder how they would answer this question, but respect, you know, when a lie, hear a lot of leaders say, you know, all the time like, yeah, of course, I respect my people. Of course, I’m a respectful leader. Of course, I respect I respect. Well, what does that actually mean? Because it’s one thing to say A, I showed respect to my employees. That’s one thing, right? I can use the word. But what does it mean to actually show respect for employees? I mean, what what does that look like if we were to, if we were to write it down? Because, you know, I know in your book, you talk a lot about behaviors and actions. And I know we’re specifically talking about leaders right now. But saying something and being loud about it doesn’t actually equate to, you know, having actual people actually feeling respected. So what is it that would make a leader, you know, actually, where you can say, Yes, that’s a respectful leader, what would those behaviors or actions be?

 

25:45

But I think somebody that that, well, I’ll go back to the first of the definition, one of the definitions I found for respect, it came from a Greek word called time set, which means to honor and value. And I think that that is something that a leader can show is by honoring and valuing the employees that work for them. And, you know, I talked about this in the book, I think it’s important in the company, a lot of times when we talk about respect, we tend to talk about respect of management, respecting employees. And I think that’s, that’s absolutely imperative. But I think that it needs to go throughout the organization, it should be from employees to management, our sharing from employees to employee, and sometimes we we stop at that first step of, of, you know, just management respect employees, but, but we need that respect going in all directions in we shouldn’t be honoring and valuing each other for all of our differences and all the unique qualities we have. And, and so I think that’s, that’s part of it. And, you know, one thing I did, I did mention in the book I hadn’t thought about today, but there’s a lot of times where you have opportunities to go out and do whether it’s a Myers Briggs test, or a disc analysis, some type of personality profiles. And I think there’s a real opportunity there to develop respect for each other. Because what we find then by doing that is that we’re all different, we’re wired different, we have different values and thoughts doesn’t make us bad, it’s just different. And that’s what makes the world go around. But learning to respect each other for that, and to appreciate that and, and when I’ve taken groups through those, those exercises, it’s amazing how you come out on the other side and realize, oh, that’s why you do what you do. Now, I understand that I respect that. That’s how you’re wired. And that’s, you bring value to us, because I wouldn’t do it that way. And we missed that part of the equation. And, and so I think that’s there’s an opportunity, a specific opportunity of how we can develop respect for each other.

 

Patrick Adams  27:46

Absolutely. No, I love love that that mutual? And again, it has, it can’t just be one way, it’s got to be both ways. And I want to go a little bit deeper with this. So respect and then honor and value, what would be what would be behaviors that people could display that would show that they are honoring their teammates, or their boss or their employee? Are there any specific behaviors or actions that you would call out that would say, you know, that shows an honorable leader that shows, you know, that they have respect for their employees? Anything specifically come to mind that in your experience? Well, I

 

28:31

think the first one that comes out is the word listening, the ability to listen and to respond in, you know, so as a leader, listening to your employees, and then responding to them, and sometimes it’s, it’s, yes, sometimes it’s no, sometimes it’s let’s discuss it or listen, investigate it. But, you know, being heard, and being valued, and that your input has been valued as critical for for employees. And I think that’s a behavior that a good leader will learn. You know, so that would that would be the first one in your being willing to teach as a leader. You know, so many times we demand but we don’t teach in, in the folks do want to learn, and they do want to be good, but sometimes it takes somebody to take the time to help them through and make it through that next step. Right.

 

Patrick Adams  29:24

Yeah, that’s very true. Now, those are two really good ones. Teaching and listening. Definitely taken note of that, that those are those are two good ones. I appreciate that. Another thing that I wanted to mention, before we get into the the insides of your yearbook, on the cover, it also says that it’s a novel and then there’s a line through that and it’s replaced with the word blueprint. Can you explain that to our listeners a little bit why? Why do we call it a blueprint? Okay,

 

29:57

well, first off, it’s a I did write it as a business novel. The first business novel that I ever read was the goal way back by illegals, right back when it wasn’t. And it for me, it was at a perfect time, I was in my very first role in a business turnaround situation where I was the senior leader. And so the main character, Alex Rogo, I can identify directly with him, our business was under extreme pressure of whether we were going to make it or not, and, and we had to turn it around to survive. And so I really enjoyed the novel part because it made me want to read it all the way to the end, as well, I was able to give it to my wife, because it wasn’t just this dry your business, legalese, or whatever it is, but it was a story. And so she read it, and she could really understand much greater what I was going through as as a leader in that situation. So I always thought if I wrote a book, I’d really want to do it in a novel form, although you have to be careful what you ask for that as well, because writing dialogue and characters and timelines a lot more difficult. But, but as I wrote it, I, I also wanted to make it somewhat of a blueprint for readers because personally, I’ve read books, and I, and somebody shares some really good insights with me, but then I’m, I’m left with, Okay, well, now, how do I put that into practice? What does that what would that really look like in a business? I’ve got some great ideas or theories out here, but there’s no doesn’t didn’t show me how to do it. And so by writing it into a story, and through these characters, was able to show Okay, well, here’s some insights. But now, here’s some examples of how they went about doing it with your some of the pitfalls that they ran into. And I took that from some of our real life situations that we’d been through as a team and shared that and so that there’s actually a vet full circle of here’s an ID, and here’s what could look like. And here’s some things you might encounter along the way. So I hope that that would give them a little more of a blueprint. Now, as I say that I say, the book is meant to be descriptive and not prescriptive. So if this isn’t the definitive recipe for this is how you must do it. But here’s the set of ideas, because I think, well, when we look at culture, I think there’s a lot of commonalities among companies. But there’s also some uniqueness at each location with with some of the environments, they’re in whether, you know, there could be a union environment, it could be, they’re all remote, it could be that work in clean rooms all wound up, like surgeons and some of the companies that I worked with. And so there’s some unique circumstances. But, you know, for the most part, a lot of it is the same. But I wanted to give people a folks with idea of what that could look like, but without saying, here’s the only way to do it.

 

Patrick Adams  32:49

Right. Right. Well, and I love that you, you’ve woven in real life experiences to it. And that I think that makes a really big difference. And when it specifically when we talk about a blueprint, you know, part of the blueprint in your book, we started with respect, that the team actually adopts the seven key principles, and we talk about those through the book. Out of those seven. You know, obviously, I know they’re all important, but out of those seven, are there any one specifically that you know, in your 40 plus years in the medical device business three plus years at ame? Is there anything specifically that you think, you know, maybe we’re have been overlooked by organizations or not paid enough attention to not given the priority that they should be given? Because they are so important to, you know, successfully transforming company culture? Which, which one or two, would you call out and say, you know, these are the ones that we need to discuss?

 

33:51

Yeah, but Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t say start off with respect, respect is one of the elements and, and I think it does get overlooked. But, you know, I think it’s the starting point. And I think in the end, it’ll, it’ll be the glue that holds it all together. In the company. Beyond that, in the book, I think there’s one area, it’s covered by two elements, but that area is buying. And one of the elements then is 100%, leadership buy in to 100% of the plan. And so when I share that, I know a lot of times it raises some eyebrows about really, you think you’re gonna get 100% of the leaders on board and you’re gonna get to 100% of our plan. And, and I think yes, that’s, that is absolutely the goal. And, and I think it’s doable. And I’ll appeal to, certainly to our Lean society, and to say, wouldn’t we don’t we expect that whenever we create standard work, if we create standard working in production, we’re not I’m putting it out there as this is an option. But if you’d like to do it a different way, go ahead and best of luck to you. Hopefully it turns out green in a box and does these things. But we don’t we we give standard work. And we expect everyone to do it the same way. And to follow that, that that approach, I don’t think leadership should be any difference, we should see that same consistency throughout and we should be training and equipping our leaders. So this is an area that I think is is overlooked. And it goes back to our discussion on leadership, so that that element is important. And I think the best half of the equation of the buying equation is leadership. The other half of the buying equation is employees. And I think that occurs through another element that one of the seven elements, and that’s employee engagement. So we talked a little bit about that about the work Gallup has done. But we’ve seen that, that through the Gallup numbers that employee engagement, they have three categories for engagement. Employees are either engaged or not engaged or actively disengaged. And their numbers for last year for 2022 Were only 31% are engaged. 52% are not engaged and 17% are actively disengaged. So you’ve got two thirds of the company in it that are either not engaged or actively disengaged. So if you’re looking at doing some type of a transformation, whether it is a Lean transformation or culture transformation, you starting off with two thirds of your employees, probably not in it with you. And so it’s that’s why that work is is very hard, and a lot of times why the transformations that we work through are very hard. Yeah.

 

Patrick Adams  36:46

And I think Gallup defines actively disengaged, as almost like intentionally sabotaging what you’re trying to do you have 17% of your workforce that is intentionally sabotaging the work you’re trying to do. I mean, not so not only that, but then you have the other. What was it? 31% that’s just disengaged. So you have to get that person or sorry? 50? Yeah, that’s the other way around. So that’s a huge number. I mean, yeah. So if you wonder why it’s so difficult, right? So yeah, that’s, that’s huge. And so those two things, I think, are super important. I love that you mentioned the leader, you know, the the ability to hold them accountable to some kind of a standard, you know, what we always like to do is create a work of leadership teams to create kind of a matrix of, you know, here are the different leadership positions across the top, and then along the left hand side, are, you know, the different areas that that we’re looking to, to create some kind of standards around. So one of those areas might be tier meetings, for example. So at a team leader level, you know, how should they be involved with Tier meetings, while they’re, the expectation is that they’re actually leading a daily tier meeting, and then maybe a supervisor is attending a tier one and leading a tear to on a daily basis, or whatever it may be. So the expectation is laid out right away to all leaders around what standards need to be built into their Leader Standard Work, which will, again, help support the behaviors and actions, which, like we said earlier, those inputs that will help them develop that that culture in the end. So I think, you know, that’s huge buy in, and employee engagement, you know, two really, really important pieces that, you know, have to be looked at, where would you say in those two areas? I mean, where should companies start? Like, you know, if there’s someone listening in, and then they’re like, Well, you know, out of those two elements, we don’t have leadership buy in, and we don’t we have, you know, maybe they have 60%, that’s engagement. I don’t know. But where would you where do you think they should start any step one, step two kind of stuff.

 

39:09

But I would start with the leaders, because I think that it is in the way starting with respect it shows the respect to to our employees, and I think employees, sometimes you find employee that doesn’t, you know, maybe cut the cut it but for the most part, I think most of the times it’s a failure of leadership that we haven’t, we haven’t trained, we haven’t placed them in the right position. And so I would start with with the leadership group in that, that developing the plan, and then the other leadership group and the approach that you want your leaders to lead and come up with a training program to train and equip them. I think that’s the first the first step. I think, on the other hand, when we do get into employees that a lot of times when folks attack employee engagement they tend to do things that are a call in the book episodic. And they’re really good things, but they do a lot of things, a lot of activities. So maybe we’re going to do a barbecue or a health fair or, you know, a company picnic, and those are all great. And but people are living from one side to the other. And you know, maybe there’s a week or months in between. And in the book, what we challenge the leaders to do is to come up with a way to daily engage their employees. In fact, one of the ideas that we put up in the book is just like in the supply chain, they have the plan for every part, we talked about having a plan for every employee, so that every day, they can go home, understanding how what’s their work, contributed to either achieving their department goal, and or preferably the company goal. And the fact that came up in the book, we come up with a, and we did it a company that said I was leading, came up with a goal statement of engagement, we’re here in fulfilled when we go home. And so we kind of want to challenge that, can we can we create that daily engagement and daily fulfillment, especially if we create daily fulfillment, you’re going to achieve an engagement? So?

 

Patrick Adams  41:13

Absolutely. And I wonder what, you know, leaders would say maybe, maybe you have a thought on this. But, you know, it’s always nice to be able to make that measurable. And, you know, employee engagement is hard. I know, there’s a lot of engagement surveys out there different things, but how do you measure that at the end of the day, you know, were you fulfilled today? Yes or no? Is there a way to measure that? Is it A, is it a feeling by leaders? What are your what do you think, but

 

41:42

what I’ve recommended in the book is to come up with this plan for every employee, but that would be a plan that’s developed jointly by the supervisor and the employee, and would include both professional and personal goals. And in in in that would have would be some type of way of measuring what they do on a daily basis, and how it contributes if, like, one guy said, you know, it’s if you don’t have a scorecard, how do you know, you know, whether you’re, you’re making it, you know, whether you’re winning or losing, right? If you just go home every day, saying what I hope what I did made a difference. That doesn’t really help but it but if you can come up with a way to that an employee can go home every day, to some type of contribution measurement in, you know, whether that’s how many they produce, or how many people they touched, or whatever, you know, that might be but together working out, you know, what, what does that look like for each employee? And that’s hard work. I mean, they kind of rebel in the book about this. That’s, that’s, that’s gonna be difficult to do. And yes, it is. But I think it’s possible.

 

Patrick Adams  42:51

Really? Yeah. No, I agree. And, and that goes back to respect for people, right? By involving them in the process instead of going and telling them this is how we’re going to, we’re going to measure whether you’re fulfilled in your day, right? Know what, let’s, let’s talk through this together, you know, at the end of your day, on the days that you feel fulfilled, what what happened during that day, and then then we’re working through that together to figure out how can we measure this together versus me telling you how we’re going to measure it?

 

43:23

Right,

 

Patrick Adams  43:24

that’s good. I love that. George. So you obviously wrote this book. I also wrote a book and I know the hard work that comes with, you know, writing, not only just writing the book, but also getting it out and published. What would you say is something that you learned over the course of writing this book? Is there anything that stands out where you would say, you know, this was an important piece that I took away in the process of getting this book written and published?

 

43:55

Yeah, well, a couple of things to stand out one of them. It goes back to just that importance of having this intentional plan. I incorporated it into the book, I will say I didn’t learn it as a result of of the book. But in preparation for the book I did, but you know, it was actually passed on to me is, when I was pressive, of a medical device company, and I was having a meeting, it was actually an ame meeting on leadership and on people centric leadership, and it was hosted by bob chapman and Bob, use this word intentional, and I, we were the company that was guilty of all the things we talked about earlier, we spent a lot of time crafting our, our values, and, and we did a lot of episodic things to engage employees, but those values were left up on the wall and and I realized what Bob said that we didn’t have an intentional plan. And so that was something that was very, very important for me that I’ve learned recently that incorporated the book, but I think in the book, the other big aha for me was the whole Topic of change management. And I had gotten involved a little bit in change management. But as I wrote the book, actually, I had a beta reader that came back and said, I think you need to incorporate more on change management. And so I went back and did more research on it. And I learned a lot there. And it was so impactful to me that I ended up dedicating a whole chapter to change management was that important? So one baseline thing that I learned in there through the research is that change is difficult for all of us. And from a, I guess, a brain wave, the way we operate, change, resistance to change is normal for all of us, it is a normal reaction. And, you know, we were all talking about Lean transformations, culture transformations, guess what, we’re gonna meet a lot of resistance. And we need to prepare for that and have a plan of how we’re going to go about that. But it’s, it’s it’s a normal reaction. So that’s it’s not a bad thing. And since you’ll we tend to think, oh, doggone, that person’s resisting. We have to let them process it and figure out how to help them process through that. And understand that it is normal. The other thing, though, was it was there was an article in the Journal of change management. And this one blew me away, Patrick, it’s said that 70% of our change initiatives fail. That, wow, that’s a that’s a big number. That’s a big number. Well, you know, what’s, what’s behind that? Well, there’s a lot of research behind that. And I found, you know, more to support that. But they had three big reasons of why that happens. And the first reason was that, that we failed to understand the systemic nature of change. And when we’re doing a Lean transformation, or a culture transformation, or operational system change, we’re not just affecting a couple of people, we’re affecting the entire company. And that resistance to changes is there that we need to navigate. So we fail to see that. Secondly, change takes time, which most companies don’t have a lot of. And so we miss it because of that. And thirdly, that, you know, it’s just such a change is an emotional event. And it challenges a lot of our deep seated human emotions. And so we have to figure that out. And so it’s a big topic, it merits I encourage, folks, especially if you’re leading a Lean transformation, that to check into to change management and figure out a plan for your group, because we do hear a lot about failed transformations. And, you know, I think this is a big part that hasn’t been recognized in general, I know, there’s a lot more work going on and change management in the last five to 10 years. But I would encourage folks to really check that out and do some research and come up with a plan for your team and for your project. And every project should have that integrated into it. And so that was a that was a big aha, for me.

 

Patrick Adams  48:04

I love it, George, it made me think about, you know, a couple of different organizations that I’ve worked with were going into a transformation, they, you know, said hey, look out for so and so and watch out for this guy, and this one over here is going to be really negative, and that one’s got a whole list of stuff they’re going to bring into the room. And the thing is, is, you know, they like to your point, you know, they may look at that as being a negative thing, because they’re like, you know, this guy is is resisting, you know, this is bad. It’s actually that I found in my experience that those are the people that I actually want to talk to, because they have usually have really good reasons to be to be a little skeptical, or, you know, Stanback ish about, about the change. And if we can figure that out, the ones that are being vocal about it, probably others feel the same way. But they’re just the ones that are being vocal about it, we can figure that out and get them on board with the change. Well, that’s just going to help snowball that transformation. You know, if you can get some of those more skeptical people that by not just by forcing it, but by really understanding genuinely wanting to understand what the pushback is, and then working through that with them. The the long term effects of that on a Lean transformation are, you know, through the roof, so

 

49:25

it goes back to listening and it goes back to respect. It all wraps up there. Another interesting part, I’ll share on that on that, just remember that McKinsey and Company did a study on 40 companies and their change management practices. So these are 40 companies that recognize the importance of change management, and they had practices in place. And they monitored how their initiatives are going and it turned out that out of these companies, 52% of them still had failed change. initiatives even though they put change management practices into place? Wow. And in some of them, I think they said they recognized, like 20% of their of their goal. And on the other hand 48% of the companies did achieve the goals and sometimes two or three times the goals. So they looked and said, What was the difference in the difference was in the robustness of their change management and the the moral of the story is, even knowing about change, management doesn’t exempt you from failure, you really have to be good at it. So this is a big topic and a big opportunity, another one a chance to, for you to differentiate your organization from others to because if the 70% is hitting us all wouldn’t be great to be in the 30%. That’s

 

Patrick Adams  50:45

right. That’s right. So true. Ga I feel like we could just keep talking forever. At some point, we got to wrap this up. So hey, your book, we started with respect. how can listeners get a copy of that? Where do they go to to find that book if they’re interested?

 

51:01

Well, the couple places one is on Amazon or any other bookstores, Barnes and Noble, they all they all carry that and you can get it in the eBook or hardback or paperback. You can also take a look at my my website has a link to that in my website that have these podcasts and blogs and articles I’ve written. So there’s a lot of information there if people would like to take a look through that. But it also has a link into to purchase a book as well.

 

Patrick Adams  51:28

Perfect. And that that’s your first and last name on we’ll have that in the show notes. So if anyone’s interested to go out and check out George’s website, just go right to the show notes, you’ll find his website there, as well as a link to the book. And, you know, some of the other information that’s out there and available. Well, George, it’s been great to have you on. Obviously, your experience, you know, in the medical device industry and, you know, with ame is much respected and I appreciate you coming in and just sharing some of that, not only on the podcast, but through your book as well. Obviously, just a great value to the Lean community. So thank you again for everything that you do and and his work with us today.