Patrick Adams  00:04

How can leaders shift from simply promoting this learning culture to embedding continuous learning into daily operation? What

Micki Vandeloo  00:13

I’ve seen companies do is they actually measure how much professional development time they or they measure, you know, how many training events. People took part in or and they have a goal related to that. And the more visible you can make anything, the more it gets embedded in your culture. We’re not

Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:27

just talking about this. We have that up there, kind of like how we have our vision statement. We want people to know this is what we’re for. We also want to be growing people.

Patrick Adams  00:42

You Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your hosts, Shane Dauphin ball and myself. Patrick Adams, how’s it going? Shane, it’s going well, sir, how about yourself? It’s going well. I’m excited this. This is actually the first episode that we’re recording where I’m officially a grandpa. I think I don’t know if I recorded the last one after my daughter had little Edmund. Edmund, we all say

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:09

congratulations. We all say I can hear. Wait, listening. Yep. There goes our listening audience. Just all congratulated you to go. Well,

Patrick Adams  01:16

thank you. I appreciate it. I feel like I’m too young to be a grandpa, but here we are. You know, it’s all good. No, he’s healthy, she’s healthy. All’s good. So, hey, I want to today we’re talking about how to move from culture, having a good culture, to actually capability. And I have a question for you. Want to start with a little question, how many people do you know that own a gym membership, but don’t actually go to the gym?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:46

Shots fired. Shots fired. Seriously. Well, okay, well, I mean, I have to admit that I am one of those guilty people. I was gifted a gym membership, and I never went. And it’s easy to say, you know, I want to get stronger. I want, I want to get in shape, but when I, you know, I didn’t make time for it, so I will, all I’m going to say is, round is a shape. So let’s just go with that.

Patrick Adams  02:13

Okay, okay, I like it. Well, there’s, there’s always time, but may, maybe not for this gym, but maybe another. Anyways. So back to the topic, workplaces do the same thing with learning, right? I mean, they a lot of times they spend a ton of time in the classroom, or they don’t, they feel like they don’t have time, but it’s the application piece, right? So maybe they do spend time in the classroom, but then they feel like they don’t have time to apply it, or they never have time in the classroom, and just the day to day just never happens. It just sits there, like, like an unused treadmill, right? Yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:53

yeah. So much so, I mean, I saw that at so many companies that I’ve been with great intentions in so today we’re going to talk about, you know, not just saying that we want to be about learning and that it matters, but actually that part where, you know, how that happens, you know, how do we actually make that, that learning that we have, and put it into action and building some capabilities for it?

Patrick Adams  03:19

Yeah, it’s not, it’s not just a nice to have, you know, for many organizations, they, you know, they sprinkle in, like, yes, we do personal development. But is it really having an impact on the metrics? Are you really seeing the results of that being applied to whatever it is that you do? And I think that that’s, you know, really where things get interesting,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  03:40

right? And today, I’m very excited that we have our guest today is going to help us unpack just that that we’re talking about this, this idea of moving from culture to capabilities, move from, hey, we’re, you know, we’re all about learning, right? We’re a learning company. But do we have, do we see that play out in the capabilities that the company now has? So today’s guest is Mickey. I’m very excited to have her here. Thank you so much for coming on. She’s the president of Lakeview consulting incorporated a team of five Experienced Grant professionals who have collectively obtained over $220 million in grant funding for non profit and for profit clients. Mickey has over 15 years experience performing grant consulting services for clients in manufacturing communities, including the trade association, foundations, college and university technical vocational programs, Manufacturing Extension Partnership centers, and also just for manufacturing companies, for engineering and business degrees as well as over 25 years of experience in manufacturing provides a sound technical foundation for grant writing services and Mickey, we are very excited to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. Well,

Micki Vandeloo  04:54

I’m really excited to be here, guys and I heard the intro and congratulations, Patrick on little Edmund. And I can share your excitement, because I had my fifth grandchild. Whoa, congratulations. Thank you. They’re they’re 5432, and newborn. So we’ve got a lot of littles there. But yeah, we had a little girl, Parker May. So Parker may welcome to the world on Pi Day. So she’s a Pi Day baby. So yeah, so it’s, you will love being a grandparent. I can just tell you, it’s the best job in the world. Yeah. So I’m happy to be here talking to you guys today about, you know, culture and capability, and more importantly, how you fund that capability and what role that plays.

Patrick Adams  05:35

Love it. Can you Mickey, do you mind? Just so some of our lists, you’re a little bit unique in the fact that we’ve never had someone with your skill set on the show that I can think of. I don’t know, but can you just give us a little bit better of a picture of what it is that you guys do for your clients? Because it may be something that many people who are listening are not even aware of, that exists, or again, I know we’ll be speaking to many US based companies, but also there’s people outside of the US that potentially, their countries or their states may have something similar that they don’t know about as well. So can you just talk a little bit about that before we dive into the topic?

Micki Vandeloo  06:16

Sure, so I’ll go back a few years. So I worked in manufacturing for a quarter of a century, which just tells you that, in addition to the fact that I’m a grandma of five, how old I am. But anyway, so when I started in manufacturing, and particularly when I worked for a Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center, I started working with companies on training grants, and we’ll talk a lot about that today, but when I was working with my companies helping implement continuous improvement programs, a lot of times we use training funding to help offset the cost of those grants. Well, I eventually got hired by one of my clients. It was a steel Service Center in southern Illinois, and this company in 2008 2009 I don’t know if all of you remember, but basically, there was this recession that we all had that impacted our companies everywhere, extremely, extremely well. So in the steel industry, there was a significant downturn, like there wasn’t a lot of industries. And in the state of Illinois, last during COVID, there was, you know, the era funding and or there was the ARPA funding and the IRA bla, you know, all those different acts that spurred funding to the States. Well, in during that recession, there was the era funding, which was the American Recovery Reinvestment Act. Similarly, it was distributed to the states, and the states were allowed to use that funding to meet state priorities. Well, one of the priorities in the state of Illinois. If any of you have ever driven through the state of Illinois, you’ll see a lot of wind turbines. There’s a lot of wind in Illinois today. There’s a lot of wind. So there’s a lot of wind in Illinois, and that a lot of those turbines were built and developed during that 2008 2009 time frame. And it was a result of a funding program that the state of Illinois had to spur the supply chain in the state of Illinois for those turbines. Well, our steel service center happened to make steel that could go into those turbines, and so we applied for that funding. And that that we applied for $600,000 of funding. We ended up getting $2.3 million because during that time frame, a lot of companies in the state of Illinois that received the funding had to give up the funding, we did a really great job of managing the funding program, which was my responsibility. I also wrote the grant to get the program and also communicating with the program managers for the program. So we ended up getting all that money to offset about $3 million of investment, and that was what really made me a believer in grants, and the impact of grants on a company. The other thing I realized is that if I wasn’t there getting those grants for my company, nobody was going to do that. Nobody was out looking for the grants. Nobody was getting the grants. And so that, that caused me to start my company. I started the company based on the fact that I knew that in the manufacturing sector, there really wasn’t anybody at companies that was looking for grants or getting grants, and that has been true in more ways than I could have even imagined, because we work with some very, very large and well known manufacturing companies, and they don’t even have the staff to do this. So it doesn’t matter how big or how small you are. Typically, this expertise is not in in your company. And so what we try to do is communicate and educate through these podcasts and different events that I speak at. You know what? There’s people out there that can do this? You guys go and do what you do well, so that and let us do what we do well, so that we can help you get the money and you don’t have to. Spend as much time looking for the grants and writing the grants and unsuccessfully, writing the grants and all that kind of stuff. Let us do it for you so that we can be more successful and help you do it better. I

Patrick Adams  10:11

love it. I love it. One of the things I will say is, in the state of Michigan, we have a workforce development grant that is available in the fall and in the spring, and many of our clients take advantage of that, and be surprised how many companies do not know about it, and or they know about it, but they think it’s only for like, technical type of certifications, where they didn’t even realize that it can be used for continuous improvement training certifications that we offer, and I’m sure other organizations offer, but, you know, there’s a ton of money that’s available to companies that take that put the time in and the effort, or, you know, work with organizations like yours to actually receive the funding. And now it’s not coming out of your training budget. It’s, it’s, it’s a win, win for everyone, right? I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, what a great opportunity is to develop your your your your employees, and help them to learn continuous improvement principles, and then turn that learning, which is what we’re going to talk about today, turn that learning into real, actionable steps that will you’ll receive measurable results. Bottom line results. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty amazing.

Micki Vandeloo  11:27

Yeah, we do a lot of research client projects with our clients, at least in the beginning, to just give them an idea of what’s out there. And they are always surprised by the number of grants that are out there. If companies have any experience with grants, it’s typically with training grants, just because either a community college or their provider, training provider told them about it. But there’s other grants definitely that can fund exporting and recycling and equipment installation and capital investment. So there’s a lot of other grants out there that they can apply for. Let’s

Patrick Adams  12:00

go to the topic, if you’re if you’re okay, we’ll kind of transition here, and then maybe we’ll come back around to some of the conversation around grants, and maybe we can weave that into some of our conversation as we as we go through here today, we’re talking about moving from culture to capability. And you know the idea that obviously we at lean solutions and the Lean solutions podcast and all of our guests, we talk a lot about developing a learning culture, being committed to developing your people and developing those skills, but also to create a culture of learning where you’re continuously growing and learning at every level of the organization. The question that I want to kind of start with is, in your experience, both where you are now in previous jobs. How can leaders shift from simply promoting this learning culture you know, talking about it being all about talk, and how can we shift that to embedding continuous learning into daily operations and make become more doers. Application of the learning, any kind of advice you might give Sure.

Micki Vandeloo  13:10

So the first thing I would say is that the more visible you can make anything, the more people, more likely people are to do it. So maybe a manufacturer, maybe a manufacturer has a scorecard that they keep up on their, you know, at their at their learning stations, or their workstations, or maybe they have a central learning, you know, conference room, or whatever. What I’ve seen companies do is, in addition to measuring the typical operational metrics, they actually measure how much professional development time they’ve had. Or they measure, how are they note on there, how many, what kind of trainings are going on in the facility. Or they measure, you know, how many training events people took part in, or the and they have a goal related to that. So what I’ve seen companies do is take it so seriously that they have the training plan posted on the wall. They have metrics associated with it. They have goals associated with it. And the more visible you can make anything, the more it gets embedded in your culture. The other thing I’ve seen that companies have done really well is actually flow their training down from their strategic plan. So companies really good companies have good, solid strategic plans. So they have a plan for how they’re going to run their business. One aspect of that plan should be professional development, should be personal development, that should all flow down into metrics and into goals that they can use to help run their facility. So I think one thing that I’ve seen is that companies can get very focused on operational metrics. You know, productivity, parts produced defects, found production velocity. What they don’t tend to put as much emphasis on or make as visible, is. The personal and professional development portion of it. And I think the more that companies can do that, and the more that they can emphasize that in the way they run their business, I think the better off that culture is going to be with regards to continuous learning. Yeah, I’m curious

Shayne Daughenbaugh  15:12

from from your perspective, Mickey and the work that you do, do you see that a lot in regards because I love those two things, you know, the visibility that I wrote down, you know, sharing the goals and putting that out there like, Hey, we’re not just, we’re not just talking about this. We have that up there kind of like, how we have our vision statement. We want people to know this is what we’re for. And that flow down of, hey, our strategic plan says we also want to be growing people in your work, have you seen that as a how often? I mean, I don’t know, how do we, how you would measure this, but do you see that that flow down from strategic as part of their strategic plan they’re embedded in? There is personal development, you know, education and all those kind of things, right? Something you come across often, right? So

Micki Vandeloo  16:01

I would say the 8020 rule applies. So probably 20% of my clients have a solid strategic plan and actually have professional learning and development that flows down from that 80% and I think this is very typical in the manufacturing sector. Many many, many, many manufacturing companies don’t have a strategic plan. They might have a business plan. They may have another operating system by which they run their company, but many don’t have what is truly a strategic plan. I also find that many of those companies don’t have a real training plan. It’s almost always one comes with the other. So what we really try to get companies to do if they don’t have a training plan, we try to get them to outline one in our work with them, because the with training funding, in particular, because it is budget based, and because budgets run on fiscal year cycles, the more money you can go in for in in the initial application, the better off and the more successful you’re likely to be. So if you try to go like course by course, throughout the year, what you’ll end up doing, inevitably is running into the end of the year when they don’t have money to spend. So I always encourage clients, the more you know about what you’re going to do in that fiscal year, the better off you are as far as applying for training funding. So you know that. So we really try to push clients to at least have a training plan, even if they don’t have a strategic plan. And again, they can use that training plan, and we encourage them to use that training plan in communicating with their their employees. Make sure you know which employees need to take which training and really flow that out into a matrix? You know, you can start with the trainings themselves, but then who, what people need to take each training? Do they have that training finished? You know, if it’s online training, are they halfway done? Are they all the way done? So there’s a lot of factors you can you can work into that.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  17:55

So I love what you’re saying there, because that that gives me an idea of being able to do that like you’re saying, you know, so that you can actually go through the whole year and not just, like, right, most of the year, and then drop off quarter four, because you don’t have the money for it, right? But that, that gives me the idea of setting yourself up for success and sustainability. So what other other than, you know, having that training plan and training funding set aside for that plan. Not just, hey, this is a good plan, but we actually put money there. What other systems or structures have you seen successful that actually help with sustaining that, you know, culture of continuous improvement over the long

Micki Vandeloo  18:38

haul, I have seen companies, I think one system that can really help is an ERP system. If a company has a really good ERP system, they can usually communicate better with their with their employees through that, and also can provide goals and objectives related to training with that. So there are some ERP systems that really support that effort. I think I love visuals. So I mean to me, if you can have just a big visual of your training plan in the facility, and have it visible to everybody, even the people that aren’t taking the training, they will then understand that there’s training going on. I think also with regards especially to continuous improvement training, really making these continuous improvement events and the events that result from the training very visible to employees and get as many people as you can involved in that event. Because the more you can promote continuous improvement through those events, the more people get it and want to do it and want to continue to do it. So I really seen that with lean, lean manufacturing training in particular, that really works. Well,

Patrick Adams  19:46

yeah, and I want to, I have a question about events, but I want to go, I want to rewind just a little bit back to your answer from earlier, because I have another question on that too. When I’ve worked with organizations. Organizations in the past that, you know, they create a plan and set some goals, like we want to have by the end of this year. We want to have two certified black belts, and we want to have 20 certified green belts, and we want to have, you know, 50% of our organization yellow belt certified. And sometimes what happens is they get so wrapped up in the number of certifications Come on, which we would call like, almost like, vanity metrics, right? Which I think it’s important that we set those goals. Like you said, it’s very important. But how do we make sure that it doesn’t just become a vanity metric of like, you know, yes, we were able to reach our goals of, you know, X number of green belt certified. But yet, what do we have to show for it? You know, where are the measurable results, the bottom line impact that that training is having on the organization? So do you have any, have you seen anything? Or do you have any recommendations on structures or systems, or how can we, you know, not Pat, not miss the fact that we, we need to go a little bit further than just measuring the number of trainings, and go into measuring the the number of, you know, whatever the impact is of that training on the organization. So

Micki Vandeloo  21:17

as far as lane, like lean, Six Sigma, Green Belt, Black Belt. Those people have to do projects, right? So what I would recommend is, in any communications you’re doing with employees and among managers, make sure you highlight the results, the financial results of those projects. So all of those projects lead to financial results, and usually because of those, because of the structure of those types of programs, they have to outline those financial results. So I would say, make that as visible and as obvious to people as possible. Because the more again, the more you can communicate that, whether you communicate it in a newsletter, maybe you have a newsletter that goes out to your employees, and you say you have right on the front page, hey, this one project saved us $500,000 in, you know, efficiencies and savings with purchased goods or something like that. I think that that is the very best way. I think the more you can communicate with your employees. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be, you know, over your TV screens, you have this news flash of, hey, by the way, you know our green belt, our last green belt project, save the company $50,000 you know. And just make it obvious. Because people look at those things, you know, and the more they can see those, and the more again, it gets embedded in the in the communications and in the culture, people will say, well, that’s worth doing, you know. And managers will say that’s worth doing. You know, because as much as we would love to think that we all communicate really well in manufacturing facilities, I’ve seen quite the opposite happen, where even among the management teams, one person may be doing something, but another person on the same management team might not know that they’re doing it. So that’s what I love. That’s what I love right now is, I love the fact that, you know, all these different modes of communicating, whether it be slack or, you know, video screens in video screens in the facility, or whether it be, you know, flashes on the workstations out in the in the on The plant floor. You’ve got so many ways to communicate these things. And the best part is, it’s positive communication, you know, you know, way too many people hear way too much negative stuff these days. And so when they can go to work and see, oh my gosh, our company saved this much money, which is going to give us more profitability, which would like hopefully mean more money in my pocket at the end of the day. They make that connection in their brain. You know, the more they see it, the more they make that connection in their brain, and they know that the company is invested in what they’re doing. So,

Patrick Adams  23:53

yeah, right, that’s a, that’s a really good point. Go ahead, Shane,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  23:56

I was gonna say, and I want to add not just the financial, because I know that that that’s huge, and definitely for managers and whatnot, understanding, hey, we’re we now our budget can go longer because we save this money. But also, I have seen some great things. Now, I’m not from the manufacturing side of things, but the work that I have done, I’ve seen some great results in just the experience of the employees doing the work, you know, maybe it saved them so much time, you know, or maybe it just took, I mean, it was so complicated and calm, you know, just, it was just convoluted, but now it’s streamlined, or whatever. But having like you’re saying, So, because we’re talking about, you know, we have the visibility of, hey, this is our training plan. This is what we’re doing. Here are the results, and maybe it’s, it’s, there’s, there’s a splash on, we save $50,000 here. Or maybe we saved, maybe we saved Mickey 14 hours a week in how we were able to do this right? Like, that’s going to catch people’s attention in that kind of visibility. And I love what you just said about having positive. Messages, not hey, you know, we’re trying to meet this goal, like, start pulling your belt a little bit tighter. But hey, we’re doing some great things because of this training. You should get on board with it as well,

Micki Vandeloo  25:12

well. And I think the other point that I would make with regards to that is tie it also to business development. You know, if, if you can announce that you got a new customer or a new client and the it was a direct result of the improved efficiencies that you got through those projects, make that link for them. Communicate that, communicate that, and say, you know, the reason why we were able to take on this new project, which, by the way, is going to bring us X amount of business into this facility is because we were able to increase our efficiencies. It’s because we did this, this and this project, or it’s because of Joe’s work in in as a green belt Six Sigma that we were able to do that really tie that to people, because one that rewards a person for having had such a part, but also it gets people to tie business development and sales into continuous improvement, which, you know, I don’t know that they naturally make that leap. Maybe sometimes,

Patrick Adams  26:04

yeah, it has to be intentional. I know of some organizations that you know, even just another example, where, you know, they were able to reduce the number of defects that were reaching the customer, and then they took those, the quotes that came back from the customer on how happy they were, and they and they plastered those all over the place to let the team members know, like, Thank you for the continuous improvement work that’s being done to reduce defects. Look at what our customers think of the work that’s being done here, you know. And I hope that our listeners are really taking notes here, because this is key, especially if you’re an internal CI manager, or you’re you, maybe you’re a consultant that’s working with companies. This is a must. You You have to make sure that the work that you’re doing, the learning, if someone goes through a Green Belt certification or Yellow Belt certification, or whatever it might whatever it is that you’re setting the deliverables up ahead of time for the projects. You’re tying that back to business objectives and and then you’re following up to communicate the results and make sure that everyone knows and understands the value that that’s bringing. One other thing that I that I’ll just throw out there too, is a lot of times I see companies will run, you know, a green belt training event, and they’ll certify whatever, you know, 510 green belts in their organization. They complete each complete one project. They celebrate that. And then you never hear of any more projects. And it’s like that’s a huge miss. You know, your earlier question, Shane about sustainment. Once someone’s certified and they’re they understand and know how to run a an improvement project like that, they should have a form of objectives, like two projects a year or something that they have to return back to the organization going forward. And those should be ran exactly the way that the first one was where they’re working through all the tools they’re they’re tying it back to business objectives, and they’re reporting out to the organization on the value that that project brought back to to the team. So I love it. Lots of really, really great nuggets right there. So again, I hope people are taking note, because it’s so important. Now I want to go back to my question about events. You mentioned events. And from a continuous improvement perspective, events are so key. You know, daily Kaizen, daily improvements are key. But if you can take what would happen in three months time and squeeze it in and get it done in five days, I mean, that’s a pretty good deal. So an event, a Kaizen event, or whatever type of improvement event, is a good thing. However, I do see organizations that only do events. You know, they’re not doing projects, they’re not doing daily kaizen. They’re only doing events. And it’s one small piece. Are they getting some improvements from that, sure, maybe. But my question for you is, what role does leadership play in ensuring that the learning is not just an event, but that it’s really embedded, that capability is really embedded into the organization, that it’s something that they’re thinking about continuously, not just during the five day Kaizen or the three day kaizen event.

Micki Vandeloo  29:23

I think a lot of it goes back to education. When I was working in with the MEP center and working with companies, a lot of times, we would insist that the lead management be trained alongside the people that were going to be doing the events. They were separated from the day to day on the floor. It was always good. At a minimum, we wanted them in on the report out so they could understand what was done. Because when the leadership of the company doesn’t understand what’s going on, they’re going to have a really hard time promoting it. So if they can see directly what. Happened as a result of an event. So one of the best practices we found when we were talking with companies is, at a minimum, have your company leadership sitting in on the report out that one tells the employees that what they did was important and impactful, but it also lets the leadership know, okay, this was impactful. Let’s do this again. Let’s make sure we continue to do this. So I don’t know what processes you guys promote with your clients, but a lot of times we would start with was a, was the value stream map, right? You start with, actually a map of the process or a process mapping. And what we did was we said, Okay, let’s take the low hanging for first so we do the Kaizen events for those events, but that map should, should give you the path to true continuous improvement, and that comes through many events. So again, the more you can educate leadership, I think the more that they’re going to be willing to back it. I think the other thing is that leadership really needs to know what’s happening so they can then go out and get grants. So a lot of the people that we work with are the CEOs and the CFOs and the CEOs, and if they don’t know that these things are happening, if they’re not educated, if they’re not informed, they may miss an opportunity to get grant funding for those activities. And the larger the companies are, the more that gets separated, the more that the more dispersed that knowledge is. So we really try to get people to do is if, especially for writing a training grant, make sure you have the HR manager or the CI manager participating in that grant team, so that we can truly capture everything that’s being done. Somebody at that facility is tracking all the training that’s happening, whether that again, be the HR manager, continuous improvement manager, make sure those people are on the grant team, because the grant team is very important, and the makeup that that team is very important to the access to the success of the grant, not only because they can provide the information to make the grant application more complete, but then they can actually take that information and flow it to other people in their department and say, Listen, we’re going for a grant to help, you know, get half off the cost of this training that gives us literally double the amount of money to spend on the next training or the next effort that we want to do. So one thing we tell companies, and I think it’s a way that it’s a really good way for companies to look at grant funding. Grant funding not only reduces the cost of an effort, but it frees up that money to go out and do other things, whether it be other investments, whether it be additional training, whether it be, you know, I’ve seen companies save, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars through grants. Well, that money is then available for them to do something else. So it, not only, you know, in the short term, helps you save money and increase ROI, it also helps you free up money to do other things that you want to do. Hello, everyone. I

Patrick Adams  32:43

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 track in the book, I contrast the cultures of two companies I work for, and though each started with similar lean models. One was mechanistic and only gave the appearance of lean, while the other developed a true culture of continuous improvement. The contrast provides a vivid example of the difference between fake lean and true lean. You can find the book on Amazon simply search by name or the title of the book. You aren’t a reader. No worries, the audio book is also available on Audible. Now. Back to the show. Mickey, can you? Can you expand a little bit on the grant team? And you said you work with coos and CEOs. What? What are the responsibilities that come in at the at the C suite or the executive level when it comes to grant funding? Like, what types of things should they be expecting if they want to go down that path? Sure, so

Micki Vandeloo  33:45

the COO or CFO or CEO, somebody in the C suite really should be on the grant team, just because they have the overall knowledge of what’s happening at the plan. They may not know the details of everything that’s happening, but they typically know, you know, here’s the major initiatives we’re working on. They know about the strategic plan, they know about the business plan, but then on that grant team, we also need people from operations. So we need somebody from the production floor, because typically they’re going to be closest to what’s happening to the details of what’s going on out there. HR, because training grants and different things, a lot of those run through HR financial. We need somebody from the financial side to put together the budgets and make sure the numbers are accurate and are aligned with what the budgets are for the facility. So I actually, and I do want to promote our website. Our website has a ton of articles, and I just wrote an article on how to create a great grant team, you know, because it is really important that you have that cross functional team to make sure that you take into account everything that’s going to happen, because if you leave one of those people out, your budget may not be correct, or you may not have asked for the right things on the equipment side, or you may not have you may not have taken into account a training program that you were doing that was kind. Outside the norm. And, you know, nobody knew about it, except for the HR manager, because they were working with a very specific group out on the on the floor, you know. So I think it’s just important to have that cross functional team and and the leader doesn’t necessarily have to take a lot of responsibility for the writing of the grant. More we need from the leadership is knowledge of the grant, and then they are typically the grant contact, so they have to be informed on what the project is that’s being proposed, and they have to be available. And typically, you have people on the floor that are really dug into the day to day, and they really, you know, it’s really hard to keep them available and make them, you know, knowledgeable on every aspect of the project. So that usually is the major role of the CEO, or the CEO, or they are the grant contact. They are the most senior person. They’re the one that signs a grant application. They’re the one that knows about it.

Patrick Adams  35:51

So the the I’m excited to to learn a little bit more about how organizations can take advantage of some of these grants. Where, where would they go if they, you know, let’s just say, you know, again, because we have listeners that are in all states, in the US, but also even outside of the US. I mean, where would they start to if they wanted to find a grant? You know, I think about in the state of Michigan, we have what’s called the going pro grant, which is a workforce development grant. And that grant, that particular grant, comes available in the fall and in the spring, we’re actually getting ready for the spring period. So we, you know, as I said earlier, we as a Training Group, we help organizations to get connected in the state of Michigan to that grant. But how else, like if someone was in the state of Washington or Texas? I mean, where would they go to find these grants? So

Micki Vandeloo  36:48

we actually offer for companies that are looking that want to see what’s out there. They don’t necessarily want to engage with everything, but they want to see what’s out there. We offer a free manufacturing grants database. Again, it’s through our website, and they can sign up for that. It’s absolutely free, and they can see they can search by state and by activity that they’re doing. So you can actually search, if you’re in Washington and you’re doing a training program, you can just look at the training grants in Washington that are offered, and most grants for manufacturers are offered by the states, but there are some pretty significant grants that are out there, and then there is a way for them to contact us if they want to pursue the grants, if they want help pursuing them. So that’s one great way. The other thing we offer through our website. We have a couple of really great free things that we offer through our website. One is that manufacturing grants database. The other one is a grant readiness quiz. How ready are you to apply for grants, and they can take that quiz and say, you know, hey, I’m pretty ready. I’ve got a lot of the things that I need to have, maybe out of contact Lakeview and see what they can do for us. We also offer an FAQ document. We found that our manufacturers have a lot of questions about grants, and my main purpose with our company is educating manufacturers about the grants that are out there and that there is grant funding out there, but we came up with an FAQ document that they can look at as well and get all their questions answered. Great resource. Yeah, that’s great.

Patrick Adams  38:15

So shifting gears kind of back to the topic, if we think about many of the people that are listening today, and I think about clients that we’ve worked with, where I hear this all the time, like, well, we just don’t have time for training. We can’t pull people off the manufacturing floor or or, you know, maybe they did training and now they’re like, we just don’t have time to to allow the team members to apply that learning. You know, maybe they don’t say it like that, but that’s kind of what happens, right? They just get busy, and it’s like, well, that was really great, but let’s get back to, you know, the day to day. Any advice for organizations on how they can balance the need, you know, for training and, you know, the resources or the time that’s required for it with their day to day work, and you know, if they’re committed to developing a culture of learning,

Micki Vandeloo  39:09

one thing I’ve seen companies do is break the learning up into smaller chunks, so maybe five, two hour or four two hour chunks of time, so it works out better. The other thing I’ve found that is more of a permanent solution is have more cross train people within your facility. So cross training is a big deal, and it’s getting to be a really common thing in manufacturers. It was back when it wasn’t back when I was in manufacturing, but I’ve noticed a lot more companies now have started to cross train their employees. So they might have an employee trained in, you know, trained in operations, but they are also helping out in the office, and they can do this particular task. One thing I found that works really well with that is a functional accountability chart. If you can develop an accountability chart for all the people in your facility. Uh, then you can see what each person does, and you can identify opportunities for cross training. You might say, Sally has this primary responsibility, but she also knows a lot about this, so we can probably train her to do this when this person’s gone. So that way that frees that person up. And you know, quite honestly, what I tell people is, you let your employees take vacations. How do you do that? You know? How do you make that happen? And you can’t make this training happen, you know? I mean, that’s really, I mean, I know it’s not a comfortable question to ask, but it is true, you know. I mean, you don’t have your employees there every day, all day. You know, they have to. They have personal things, and they they have, they have maternity leave and they have, you know everything I mean. So if you can, if you can let them go for a week, how can you not let them go for four hours or eight hours? That’s

Patrick Adams  40:48

right, and sometimes it, it will be a step back, maybe to for some organizations, unless they’re already cross trained. But in order to get there, you might to get to the cross training place. You might need to take a couple steps back. Sure, you might need to, but what will happen is you’ll take a couple steps back, and then very quickly, as that learning is applied, you’re going to move way farther than what you would have otherwise, right?

Micki Vandeloo  41:15

Yeah, and I, I do find that companies in general are willing to provide the training, and are even more willing, like I said, than ever, to do the cross training, because they just realized that, you know, they have to have a backup. You know, customers don’t stop demanding just because somebody’s on vacation. So, and some of it in a more informal way. You know, it’s more like we know this person can cover for this person, you know, and always find a backup for you, you know, type of thing you know. So I think there’s a lot of different ways to do it, both formally and informally, but it’s a big it’s a big thing to be able to do it. So that’s

Shayne Daughenbaugh  41:54

awesome. Yeah, I have, I had never heard I am this many years old since I’ve heard a functional accountability chart, and

Patrick Adams  42:03

I think it would be similar to, like a training matrix, right? Kind

Micki Vandeloo  42:07

of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, listing out what each person does, yeah, does?

Patrick Adams  42:13

I think that’s used in as far as I know, EOS Entrepreneurial Operating system, using an accountability chart, yeah,

Micki Vandeloo  42:19

it is, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And for really large companies, that might not be feasible. I mean, you know, but I also think that you can make it the responsibility of the managers in those departments to make sure that there is a backup for somebody. And in larger company, you got more people, right? So, I mean, you know, you have more to me. While there is the inability, there’s also the ability, so you have to look at what are we able to do, and who can we have cover for this person that if they need to be at a training program? And again, it goes back to the leadership as well. The leadership says, No, we can’t let anybody be cross training. Train. No, we can’t let anybody off the floor. It’s just too important for them to be on the floor. You’re never going to get training programs off the ground

Shayne Daughenbaugh  42:59

right. And I think also understanding, or having, helping leadership, understand the the non tangibles of the benefits, non tangible benefits of right? Having an employee trained like you’re investing in this person, and even though it may not make them, you know, create this widget so much faster, but it’s going to expand their capabilities. Again, that’s what we’re talking about. Expand their capabilities for what they can offer the company and to not be so short, short sighted about, well, I don’t want Mickey to go to this conference, because, well, she doesn’t do that. I mean, yes, it has to do with her business, but that’s not her role. So we’re limiting, you know, the company’s overall capability. Now I understand you have to balance, like you were just talking about balance between, you know, the budget, the resources, the time, those kind of things, yeah. But you know, it is more than just functionally sharpening this person’s side. It’s actually expanding their capabilities. You know, well, and

Micki Vandeloo  43:56

you even think about something like time management training that’s not directly related to somebody’s job, but if somebody can be a better manager of their time, they’re going to do their job better, you know. So I think that’s the hard thing about training, is there’s not always that tangible this is going to do this much for our company. There is with like lean manufacturing, you can put point to some tangible benefits, but with something like time management or personal interaction, or coaching, you know, all those things. Those are kind of like, how do we, how do we actually measure that? You know, and it is hard, but I think if you think about it long enough and hard enough, you could actually make the case for it, yeah, and

Patrick Adams  44:36

there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of training that can happen on the job. And, you know, I think about with with scientific thinking, as organizations are teaching their team members how to think more scientifically, and maybe even using a structure like Toyota Cata to do that. You know, they’re they’re running experiments continuously, and they’re learning along the way. So while they’re doing their job, yeah, exactly so. So there are ways to develop that continuous learning culture without having to send someone to a conference. Right

Micki Vandeloo  45:08

trainer to train the trainer programs too, I know are very common, because a lot more companies are training specific people that to then flow down training to other people that can help sometimes with that resource, loss of resources, maybe they won’t have to send somebody outside for five days. They can do a three day event using an internal trainer. So,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  45:26

right, right, excellent. I have, I have loved this conversation. I have a full page of notes. I have one more question for you, and then, and then, we should probably be wrapping up for a listening audience or viewing audience as well. You know what it what can you? Can you give us one or two practical things that a company can do today to start embedding this idea that we’re talking about, you know, to growing their capabilities, not just giving lip service to learning and training, but we’re taking it beyond just talking about it to actually embedding it into their systems or their processes, or whatever it is, what is one or two things practically that they may be able to start this journey if they’re not there yet today,

Micki Vandeloo  46:15

right? I would think the first big impact thing they could do is actually to document their training plan. Many companies don’t have it documented and in a matrix with all their employees saying, this employee needs to take this this, and it’s not a hard thing to do, especially with Excel and all the tools that we have today available. You can even do it on a white piece of big piece of white sticky paper and stick it on, you know, while you make it formal, you know, it’s something you could do today. I think the other thing to do is really consider doing a strategic plan. Really consider strategic planning as a way to grow and run your facility if you don’t have one. I’m sure there’s a lot of resources out there that can help you get one chat. GPT is probably a great resource for that. Quite honestly, I, you know, I’ve used it for some of that strategic planning stuff myself, so I think that, you know, they could, they could actually go out and develop a strategic plan, at least the framework of one, pretty easily, and that should drive everything, and that will make even the grant process so much easier, so much easier. Love

Patrick Adams  47:21

it. Well, Mickey, it’s been great to have you on lots of good content. Obviously, we only have so much time. I’m sure we could continue for a while. But if anyone’s interested in more information, you mentioned your website earlier and all the great resources that are available there, we’ll throw these into the show notes. So if anyone’s interested, they can go to the show notes and get a link directly to your website. But what, where would they go to if they want more information?

Micki Vandeloo  47:48

So my website is a great way to get it in contact with us and to get all the free resources I talked about before. It’s Lakeview consulting.net, that’s my website. Also on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. I do a lot of different, you know, different. Sorry, I do a lot of different posts on LinkedIn. So with regards to manufacturing grants and that type of thing, and I also promote our articles and our website, different things on our website, on on LinkedIn. So look me up. It’s Mickey M, I, C, K, I, and vandalieu, B, A, n, d, e, l, o, or you can look up my company’s page at Lakeview consulting.

Patrick Adams  48:24

Perfect, awesome. Check the check the show notes for those links. But thank you for coming on, Mickey. We so much appreciate the conversation and look forward to chatting with you more at a later point. Sounds

Micki Vandeloo  48:37

great. Thanks so much, guys.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  48:39

Thank you. Have a great day.