Patrick Adams  00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast season three, this is our kickoff episode, and my name is Patrick Adams, I have with me a few of the other hosts that you’ll see during this season of the lean solutions podcast. So I’ll let them introduce themselves. But if you’re not familiar with any of the hosts that you’ll be hearing from today, you can go back to previous the previous three or four episodes and get a real deep dive into their backgrounds, a little bit about their approach, and even learn some of the tools that they use within the companies that they’re working with or for. And so anyways, I’ll kind of turn this over Shane, you want to quick Introduce yourself.

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:11

Hey, thanks so much. I am Shane Daughenbaugh, but happy to be here.

 

Patrick Adams  01:15

All right, Catherine.

 

Catherine McDonald  01:17

Hi. I’m Catherine McDonald.

 

Andy Olrich  01:21

And get a Oh, Mandy All right. All right.

 

Patrick Adams  01:24

Well, today, we’re, we’re just gonna have some some open conversation, we got a couple topics planned to discuss today. The topic for today’s session is getting your organization off the ground. And for those of you that are watching the video, you can probably see that Shane has some really amazing work going on behind him. I think you’re you’re in the middle of a Kaizen event, right? You’re you’re getting this organization, right? Yeah,

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:51

yep. I’m, we’re this is actually a brand new program that we’re trying to get off the ground. Yeah, yeah. Very excited about it.

 

Patrick Adams  01:59

Nice. Are you guys hitting any roadblocks or any challenges? Or how’s it going?

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  02:05

other than it being a new program, like the biggest challenges, did we cover everything? Like, you know, there’s there’s a lot of money involved in this program. And so there’s a lot of potential risk, a lot of potential scrutiny. So we’re just trying to get, you know, mind all of our P’s and Q’s and make sure that there’s no gaps. We mapped this out last week, and then this week, we’re we’re bringing in subject matter experts that were not able to be here, so that they can give us their two cents on hey, does this make sense? I mean, this is going to be if math is going to be reviewed by probably six or seven different divisions in this company. And then, you know, even then we’re still taking it to the execs afterwards and seeing what they say and making sure that it meets what their needs are in regards to what we’re trying to design. So very exciting. Very exciting.

 

Patrick Adams  02:56

That’s great. I love love seeing posted notes on the wall. Anybody else with me? Yeah. And we’re a month into the quarter here. The four of us haven’t been together since before the end of the year. So I’ll just kind of throw it out there. How was everybody’s Christmas, New Years? How has the beginning of the year bend for all of you?

 

Catherine McDonald  03:23

That grace, Patrick, it’s sort of as usual, the time off goes by too fast. And then you wish it had go back and do it all over again. But look, you have to go back to work. And I mean, I think you’re better off just getting into her getting stuck in and not thinking about it too much. So yeah, it’s gone. Well, it’s gone. Well, I have a few projects on now that I’ve carried on from last year. So we’re getting back into those couple of projects with service sector nonprofits. And then I have a lot of leadership coaching coming up in the next couple of weeks as well finishing up poems from last year so kept busy. It’s

 

Andy Olrich  03:57

yeah, I had a very busy end to the year like most of you, all of you there’s, I’d say but yeah, now I’m back into it had a very nice relaxing Christmas news break. But this is my sharpening the saw week this week. There’s not everybody’s back at work where I am now. And I’m really lining up the plans and getting my my plans for the year aligned and up on the wall and starting to do some initial reach out. So there’s some carryover from some projects we started last year, but and some new ones that we put a pin in to kick off early in this quarter. So yeah, lots of lots happening. But I had a fantastic Christmas and ready to give 2020 for a good shake. Yes,

 

Patrick Adams  04:38

yes. I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be it’s going to be a good year. I’m especially excited excited for this season’s podcast. It’s going to be a learning curve for all of us, right? We before we hit record, we were all just kind of laughing and joking about, you know, some of the hiccups that we’ve already had. And you know, just working through a new process and and excited for the, you know what this season will bring to to all the listeners. But also, you know, always a little hesitant and you know, just some of the hiccups that come when you when you change things right? Change is inevitable and all of us are proponents of positive change. And we all believe this is one of them. So I’m excited this this year coming up, we have a, we have a really awesome schedule of topics that we’re going to be discussing now, for those of you that are listening in, the four of us are not going to be on every single show. So the four of us are sharing the responsibility of CO hosts for season three. So in the beginning of these first few episodes, you’ll see my face probably quite a bit in the beginning. And then and then that will start to change and the position of kind of the lead hosts will start to to pass off to Andy, Katherine and Shane as well. But we’ll always have two hosts on the show for season three. So you’ll have two of us on every single show going forward into this year. And, and I’ll just kind of throw out here some of the topics that we have coming up applying to second lien. So Paul Akers actually gave me a recommendation for an individual who has taken to second lien, and just it’s blown up their their organization. And so we’re going to, we’re going to reach out to Alex Ramirez and have Alex on to talk about some of the application of two second lien within their organization and what it’s done. So I’m excited about that episode. Anybody familiar with two second lien? Have you guys yeah, guys use? second lien? Yeah.

 

Andy Olrich  06:47

Yeah, I’ve got the app in here that it’s great process really, really good. Yeah.

 

Patrick Adams  06:53

And then we have like lean versus six sigma as a topic. That’s, that’s always a fun one, right? You have all the Six Sigma gurus out barring going on lean geeks. And, you know, we’ll try to, you know, throw out both sides of the coin and just see what happens there. So I’ve worked for, obviously, I think all of us are aligned with the fact that we believe that they’re both methodologies have amazing tool sets. And, you know, there’s application for many of the tools and the methodology and all the work that we do. But I was part of an organization that was very heavy, six sigma. And then I was part of an organization that was very heavy lean. And so being at both of those two organizations, it was really interesting to see, you know, an experience, the different approaches, and how the tool sets were used to solve problems and drive, you know, drive to root cause and those types of things. You guys have any similar experiences? And organizations that you’ve been I

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  07:54

know, I’ve just most of mine has been Lean Six Sigma, a combination of the to finding, finding both of them working together in concert. So

 

Andy Olrich  08:04

yeah, I’ve had a an experience where it’s been very much lean focused, and we don’t use leave Six Sigma behind it was it was seen as complex. And whereas again, another organization was six sigma is fundamental complemented by lean with, you know, with this getting in, and the reducing variation and those sorts of things, having a few more numbers and things behind it. But yeah, I’m in the middle, where with my approach, it’s yeah, as you said, this specific tool sets for specific situations, right? Yeah.

 

Patrick Adams  08:39

You have a nail and use a drill if you have a screw, right. I mean, let’s use the right tools for the job. Some of the other topics that we have, let’s see here, celebrating failures. Mark ravens, he just published a book this last year. So I’d love to, to dive into, you know, the power of failures and the importance of celebrating failures, right, and learning from them celebrating the failures that we learned from I guess, right, you know, the I think the only good failures are the ones that we learned from if we’re, if we’re failing, and just not doing anything with that. And that’s, that’s a problem. I think, I don’t know what what do you guys think on that? Yeah.

 

Catherine McDonald  09:22

Yeah, I think it’s all very well to say, we accept mistakes, it’s okay for, you know, for something to not go right. But if that keeps happening, and if there’s a pattern of it, we’re doing something wrong, you know, we’re not learning. So it’s a case of I think, I remember working in one company, and they actually ended up recording near misses because they were recording the instance but not the near misses. And it was by recording the near misses that they actually then had most of their actual learning from because it was too late when the accident actually happened. So it’s a good way to think about it is to kind of Yes, to take that into account as well. You know,

 

Patrick Adams  09:58

absolutely. All right,

 

Andy Olrich  10:00

ladies, great lead indicators, those near misses. With this been particularly in safety in catching that or understanding it before it’s a thing. It’s nearly a thing. And it’s a great one.

 

Patrick Adams  10:14

Absolutely. Let’s see what else we have on the on the schedule here. Why does lean fail? So that’s a topic that we have coming up. Why does lean fail? Creating a people first Lean culture? How many of us have been involved in organizations where they say they put people first? Right, but it doesn’t actually happen? Right? What does that look like, for an organization to really, truly put people first? And what and what are the results of that? What are the benefits of putting people first? Have you guys experienced anything? Anything like that, or the opposite? An organization that doesn’t put people first?

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:02

Look at our faces, and all of us just kind of, say, Guys and go Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy to sound I mean, it just sounds so like counterintuitive or counter, what Lean is all about. I mean, that’s one of the things that is endeared me to lean is not so much the fact that yes, it does improve the processes that we’re working with, that it does improve the flow, and it gives the value to our customer. But I love you know, in regard to if we talk about the Six Sigma versus lean, how it seems like, people are more in the forefront when it comes to lean. So when I see people that say they’re proponents of lean, or companies or organizations, but they don’t follow that up immediately with how they treat people better because of this, instead, you know, maybe it’s way back there somewhere on the train, you know about people, then it just, it kind of makes me shake my head and go you you kind of missed the boat here.

 

Andy Olrich  11:59

I think it’s a great one to share what I call horror stories around where where it goes wrong with lean, and people say, Oh, that stuff doesn’t work. And if you peel under that layer a little bit more, and it was brought in under the guise of cost cutting first, and we’ll see who comes along. As opposed to that that foundational piece that I’m very passionate about is around the other people first. And, and those sorts of stories around where it goes wrong or no, it helps. I think it’s great with this podcast, especially as we can share those things. And and when you’re in the moment, and you can hear something Oh, that sounds familiar to, you know, it’s a bit of a red flag for people that can sort of get ahead of it if they can hear a couple of things aligning together or see that. Yeah, this is not what we mean when we talk about Lean. So I think it’s a great topic to bring in. It’s

 

Patrick Adams  12:47

nice, good. Two more that I’ll just throw out here. Before we get into today’s topic, mistakes young leaders make. I think that’s a good one. I’ve heard a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of people that are new into leadership roles and don’t necessarily know what to do, maybe they were promoted. Because they were really good at running a piece of equipment. Or they were really good at whatever job they are. But they’ve never actually led people before and they don’t know what to do or what’s right, what’s wrong. So I think that’s a really, really great topic. And then the other one that I have for you

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  13:22

tell me Katherine’s on that one. Please tell me, because I really want to hear the executive leadership coach. Yeah. Great, great show.

 

Catherine McDonald  13:33

Did you hear my piece on? Why I’m a teacher principal case, I was explaining that in the one of the recording some time back, which I should listen. I’m a typical case. So I can talk about it all day long.

 

Patrick Adams  13:47

I’m looking forward to it. For sure. typical case of learning from your mistakes, right? Yeah.

 

Andy Olrich  13:55

It’s a great icebreaker. When I when people are nervous about stepping forward, I say, Hey, if you think you’ve you’ve stuffed something up before, just take a seat, and I’ll tell you something that I did. Okay. It’s like a very, very happy to share those, those exceptional failures.

 

Patrick Adams  14:13

That’s right. Yeah, humility is a big, big part of being a great Lean leader, right? I mean, the ability, the the willingness to admit that you’re not perfect, and admit that you make mistakes, and not only admit, but also understand and know exactly what you’re changing or what you’ve learned from that mistake and how you’re doing things differently going forward. I mean, that’s, that’s, you know, such an important aspect of being a good Lean leader,

 

Catherine McDonald  14:41

and also to not look for perfection from other people so much, because I think that’s well that was my mistake years ago, starting out, come out of college, you think you have all the answers you see, you know how to what’s needed, how things should change, and you expect everybody else to meet those standards. Hurry up for the organization. That’s just not that easy. You know? So yeah, I think both of those things are important,

 

Patrick Adams  15:05

though true. So true. Well, the last one that I have just in front of me here, coming out this year is the top of the title of this. I really like it. It’s lean sucks. And then in parentheses after that, if you’re not doing it, right. Lean sucks, if you’re not doing it, right. And that’s a such a, I mean, I see that so often, you know, obviously, I the book that I wrote was specifically on an organization that said they were lean, but they weren’t doing it right. Clearly, it was the appearance of lean, not necessarily having a true culture of continuous improvement. And so lean really sucked. people hated it. It was the flavor of the month stuff. It was oh, my gosh, you get to do this stuff. Again. Oh, my gosh, you know, it’s terrible. And that really sucks when it’s not applied properly, when people don’t understand the why behind it when they don’t see the benefits and the value, because it isn’t being done. Right. Right. Craig Tetro who works with Lean solutions. He likes to talk about his time with a company where he says he was a floor employee, he was actually running a piece of equipment. And he says, lean was done to me. Not with me. It was done.

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  16:23

I’ve heard him say that. Yeah.

 

Andy Olrich  16:26

Yeah. Is anybody heard of the circus is in town analogy when it comes to lean and continuous improvement? No, no, well, I hadn’t heard of it either. But an employee said to me, just be careful that you know, bring the circus to town again. I said a K, how can you explain that to me a bit more. And he said, Well, I’ve been here a while. And he said, I see it as with what we’ve tried in the past is, it’s like, when the circus comes to town. There’s a whole heap of signs, they put up a temporary fence, you know, there’s all this noise made and all this excitement and, and things happen. And then it’s here for a while, and then it’s gone again. And then, you know, swings back around, or, Hey, we’ve got this thing. He said, I always think of it. It’s like, oh, the circus is back in town. Can we just maybe try and make it stay this time. And we put up a permanent fence off and we put a proper car park here. And it’s not everybody looks at us. You know, I wonder how long this is going to last this time around for those that have been there a while. So yeah, I found that was a pretty interesting way of thinking about it. And I do Lean on that now and go Well, yeah. Am I Is this too much? Is there too many clouds and fireworks and things here? Or am I you know, am I making sure that the good foundational things are in place before we get too excited? Wow,

 

Patrick Adams  17:47

I love that analogy. Unfortunately, have experienced it a lot too, with many organizations. But yeah, I can see where that would be frustrating. Right? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Um, okay, so let’s dive into our topic for today. So I’m going to share my screen for those of you that are watching the video, I’m going to go ahead and share my screen. And we’re going to, we’re going to talk to this in detail though. So for those of you that are listening in on your favorite podcast platform, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll we’ll talk through this little diagram here in detail. So the diagram that you all are seeing, I threw this up at the Lean Solution Summit this past year. And it the reason why it came out to me was because this a similar diagram to this was shown to me a few years earlier. And, you know, just within this last year, I’ve been I’ve actually started learning how to fly. So I’m doing my ground school and, and working on learning how to fly anybody, any of you guys fly at all, or you’ve all been in an airplane? No, that’s awesome. Yes, I am, I am working on my pilot’s license. So I’m excited about that. But the first thing that I learned was this whole idea of lift, thrust, weight and drag, which is which is what you use to get an airplane out of off the ground and into the air, right give given today’s topic and get your organization off the ground, I thought this would be a good diagram just to take a look at so the way that flight works is, let’s wait and lift are opposing each other just like thrust and drag oppose each other. So in order for a plane to fly, you have to have lift and then you have to have thrust to move it forward. But your lift has to be greater. It has to be a greater force than your weight that’s bringing it down. So as long as lift is greater than weight, it will go up. And then as long as thrust is greater than drag, it will go forward. So the moment that your weight or gravity is a heavier force than lift, that’s when airplane, either won’t get off the ground, or it’ll start to come down. And similarly, if drag is greater than thrust, it will slow down and eventually fall out of the sky. So I love this analogy, because it really makes me think about organizations that are trying to get off the ground with their lean initiatives. And, you know, so So I threw some thoughts on here, and I just want to kind of talk through these. So again, those of you that are listening, I’ll just, I’ll just kind of mention a couple of these, when it comes to weight and drag, what holds organizations back what keeps organizations on the ground, a lack of top level commitment and support, a lack of focus on customer needs, lack of employee engagement, lack of clear expectations over emphasis on cost cutting. Shane, you mentioned that a little bit ago, failure to sustain lack of enabled action. So these are all things that keep keep the airplane or keep the organization on the ground. Those things that help elevate us that helped lift us that give us thrust. This would be daily management, daily Kaizen commitment to self development, coaching and developing others creating vision aligning goals, structured problem solving, standardized work, standardized Leader Standard Work, these are all things that if they’re greater than the negative stuff that I mentioned earlier, than those, those are going to help us get our organizations off the ground. So all of us have experience with many of these different areas. I just want to kind of open it up to the group when you guys see this diagram, when you think of any anybody have any thoughts or ideas? I mean, what, what comes to mind when you see this?

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  21:45

I mean, first, first of all, I really appreciate the diagram in how that you have the opposing forces to actually launching. And I think the analogy is, is pretty spot on here with that with the things that drag you down or cause weight and the things that can actually lift or thrust. I just appreciate this as as a, as an analogy of launching a business, or getting a business off the ground, whatever, whatever it is that you’re trying to do.

 

Catherine McDonald  22:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. I actually love it as well. It’s so concise, and there’s yet there’s so much in it. And it explains, you know, lean deployment, so well, in terms of what pushes it forward and what holds back. And it’s very simple to read. I love it. I would say that it also helps me understand why Lean fails. And we often hear that talked about so so much. And you know, we said it’s gonna be one of our topics as well, why does lean fail, but I just think when you look at this, and you look at what’s necessary for lean to work, it’s not that it’s difficult. It’s just the commitment it takes to doing these things like coaching other people, daily Kaizen, you know, even standardized work. And so many organizations are actually so far away from so many of these things, and they don’t understand that actually, I suppose, lean or bring, bringing a bit of structure in the benefits of doing that. So I think that just really sums all that up for me so well in terms of the issues, and then the opportunities, it’s great.

 

Andy Olrich  23:15

You show me a picture. I’m a I’m such a visual guy. And I think for me, when we have these simple images put up with those things called out it’s a really good checkpoint to go, Okay, what is our level of top may our top level support to this, and etc. And I really like it to like lean and Lean Six Sigma, it’s very scalable as well, like, I would look at this as well for it being applicable to any improvement initiative. There’s this key parts of all of that, that I think might get that initiative off the ground within a broader program or deployment model. So yeah, yeah. And I’ve been watching a lot of Top Gun over the holidays as well. So it’s the plane. When they’re, when they’re in that death spiral, in one of the scenes out and thinking yeah, sometimes it goes like that, too. Right. And how do you how do you pull out who’s the first to blink and actually pull themselves out of that? That? Yeah, great picture, Patrick. Thank you for sharing.

 

Patrick Adams  24:10

Andy. I would be the new tool. Go ahead. Patrick. Punch the old one.

 

Andy Olrich  24:15

Sorry, that which which

 

Patrick Adams  24:17

Top Gun did or did you watch the newest one? Yeah, Maverick

 

Andy Olrich  24:20

that’s just coming out on Netflix down here in Australia. So I’d seen it before but yeah, it’s I’m getting in trouble now for why not this again? Yeah, it’s a bit of fun.

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  24:35

I was gonna say, you know, as I’m looking at this, I appreciate there’s what looks like to me kind of opposites. And they’re from the two corners the lack of top level commitment and support which Andy you mentioned kind of the drag side of things. And on the thrust side of things is that create vision and align goals, like I see those two As, as as opposites. I would I would love to hear You know, from from some of you that have been at this a little longer than I have, how you help an organization or leadership, as I think that that top level commitment support comes in the way of vision and aligning goals, how do you help an organization or leadership create that vision? If they don’t if I mean, if they don’t have it? Or maybe it’s just not aligned with what their goals are? How do you how do you have that conversation with them? I’d love to hear some of that.

 

Patrick Adams  25:28

 Yeah, that’s a really great question. I mean, I think like, one of the things that I always want to be careful of is, like, there’s no cookie cutter approach, right? So you can’t break a diagram and and just think that, Oh, if I just do all of these things, then we’re going to create a true culture of continuous improvement. Now, this is an enabler for sure. But I think it all depends on the organization, the industry, the team, where they’re at, in their journey, there’s just so many factors that have to be taken into consideration to answer your question, Shane, but what I will say is, what I think would be a really great exercise is to look at top level commitment and support. And as a as a leadership team, like what is let’s define that together? What does what does that look like? What does it mean to have top level commitment and support to us as a leadership team? And then maybe we’ll ask the frontline leaders and the rest of the organization? What does it look like to have top level commitment and support? Like, if it was happening? What would you be experiencing? What would you be feeling? What would you be seeing? And then, you know, use that to develop, you know, some, maybe that is how you create your Leader Standard Work. But you know, by taking the output of that, and then creating intentional actions that are happening by leaders to show that they they do have commitment and support. And I think one of those is creating vision and aligning goals. Right. So the on the checklist would be, you know, I want my leadership team to create a long term vision, tell me where we’re going. And then help me to align goals, my goals to that so that I know that the work that I’m doing every day is helping us to get closer to that. So I need top level leadership to help make that happen and and show support remove roadblocks, ask, going in, hold me accountable to the goals that I’ve set for my team. Right? Those are all things that I would hope to see in that list. So again, that’s just so how

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  28:22

how how granular do you get with that, let’s say I’m frontline worker, and you’re an executive and you so your vision and goals are, are typically very lofty. But I love how you said and I’d love to hear some fleshing out of tell me how my work can actually lend itself toward and build upon or push forward our vision and our goals as a company or an organization. How do you take those executive lofty goals, that whatever they might be in and translate them into the common language, that, you know, a frontline worker can then go, oh, this is how I can do because I’ve seen, I mean, we’ve seen how, if you’re in lean, and you know, for any amount of time, how we have smart goals, and those smart goals can trickle down. If you have a hierarchy organization, you know, the supervisor, to the manager to the frontline worker, and then back pi, we can support each other’s goals. But what I have found that is that frontline workers or those that are you know, elbows deep in the work have a hard time with is if the leadership has asked them, hey, tell me how your goals aligned to mine. And they’re like, I don’t know, like, they sometimes there’s the organization is either so big or they’re so deep, you know, so far removed from leadership goals that they have a really difficult time. Like, they know, Hey, I am doing this. I’m creating, you know, I’m designing a road. I don’t know how it necessarily, you know, goes to the state highway plan. I guess it’s in there somewhere, but the actual work that I do I don’t know. So So going back to my question, sorry, I’m circular in my thinking here. But how can we help leadership to create vision and goals that can be translated or scaled down to that frontline worker? Or you know, those that are elbows deep in the work? And how important is that?

 

Andy Olrich  30:21

Yeah, Catherine. Now, you’ve done a lot in this space. I’d love to love to hear. Yeah,

 

Catherine McDonald  30:26

actually, we do. So I think the first of all, it’s what are we talking about Lean goals, or whatever we’re talking about, let’s say overall organizational goals. Because a lot of the time what happens is we go into an organization that’s already exists, we’re not talking about a new organization, but an organization that already exists. And what will happen will will try and bring lean in, you know, train people in Lean, deploy lean, but oftentimes, in the past, I think that has lean has sat aside from what the actual organizational goals are. So as lean consultants, I think the first thing to do is understand, in a very simple on a balanced scorecard, get down on one page, what are the organization’s goals? So you know, you know, what your balanced scorecard is, you’ve got your four or five areas? And you’re saying very basically, what are the goals? And then how, what are we going to do with Lean here, what how is lean going to help us achieve these very simple goals. And then I think once you’ve got that level of clarity, it becomes much easier then to have conversations. And actually, it’s in that diagram, the importance of coaching and developing others. The thing about it isn’t there, keep your goals simple, and you keep them you know, a goal should be inspiring to everybody a goal that’s written on a, let’s say, a balanced scorecard anybody should read it and go, that’s a great goal. Because obviously, we want our employees and everybody to be involved in the creation, I’ve done vision, mission and values workshops. And they’re so good for bringing cross sections of organs of employees in to actually understand those elements vision, mission and values, and then how they transpire into goals. And I think once you do that, and you keep doing that, and keep repeating that every year, and you keep bringing those having that discussion on a from a strategic point of view, in your coaching sessions, which are teams and individuals, you actually don’t have to align goals bar people, they will align what they’re doing to the goals, if the proper work has been done in the first place, for the people working in the organization to understand what it’s all about. Does that make sense? Because that’s the way I see it happening.

 

Patrick Adams  32:26

Yeah, yeah, the key point that you mentioned in my mind is the coaching aspect. You mentioned one on ones in coaching and communication. I mean, if if leaders are read communicating regularly and intentionally, on what you know, what their goals are, and what their vision is for their group, and how those goals align, then everything else should fall into place. But the problem comes when there’s there’s this where leaders are removed from what’s happening. And there’s this big gap or this wall in between, you know, what’s happening in operations or or you know, in the operating room or wherever it may be and what’s happening you know, what’s being discussed with leadership and we need to close that gap we need to and that comes through intentional coaching in one on ones and you know, constant and intentional communication around those the vision and those goals.

 

Andy Olrich  33:25

I think with this while have a plan on a page or in a three those sorts of things this picture okay for me when I look at that it’s a great conversation starter if nothing else, it’s in each of those areas we can look at and then you touched on a Patrick was around a cable one a lack of top level commitment and support what does that even mean? The conversations that I have with leaders is around wall if you don’t, how much support do you need from me? What does that look like? Show me what it looks like if in this area if we’re doing it to how we should be doing and it’s a good little leveler to sort of baseline on each of those in each of those boxes for example around the plane is okay, well, do we even know what that means? What where are we now those sorts of questions and and what’s enough for us so we’re not trying to overdo it in in too many ways. Because too much thrust or too much lift can be a problem as well. So I think it’s any of these images with some call outs around the site. I think it’s a really good opportunity for that first kick is to say well standardized work what does that mean here? Are there some examples of it? And what’s going well, what are some examples that we would like to showcase to others who have never seen this before and don’t connect with it or how and point the I think it was Shane or Catherine sorry, I can’t remember was around. Yeah, the frontline. Is frontline that people on the floor is well, we’re all talking about this stuff up here. Can you connect with that? Is this language even making sense? Where do you see us with the plane those sorts of things so I’m just such a passionate advocate for just put, show me a picture and put some Key things around it just to get us that gives you your framework for what you’re going to talk about. But a really good opportunity to do a bit of a self assessment or baseline or bring someone in like Katherine, etc, to, to help you drag that out. So,

 

Patrick Adams  35:12

right. And you mentioned the self assessment. I mean, this, this could be a regular recurring process that you’re going through, right, whether it’s quarterly or monthly, or whatever it might be. But going back to that picture, maybe if that’s if that’s what makes the most sense for you and your team, go back to that picture and ask yourselves, how are we doing? Are we on course, are we still on the ground? You know, Where where are we at as far as what we want to be, which again, should be laid out by executive leaders or, or your top level leaders on? Where are we heading? What’s the vision? But then once you have that, and acted all of those dots, coming back and revisiting that on a regular basis to to kind of reflect and go, Okay, what’s working? What’s not working? What do we need to do differently? Do we need more emphasis on daily kaizen? Do we need more emphasis on coaching and developing others? Are we being held back by this over emphasis on cost cutting? Is there a lack of employee engagement? Right, having those conversations and then taking action to, you know, to actually make things happen? Right.

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  36:18

I think I think that’s something interesting, Patrick, the things we’re talking about right here, actually employee engagement. And, you know, we like to use those terms, some of those terms you have on there, you know, and I appreciate how from the very beginning, it was like, Hey, we should probably define these as an organization if we’re going to take off. And these all of these boxes that we have, you know, those things that lift us up are those things that drag us down, let’s define what those are. But I imagine there are many organizations out there and it could be, it could be wrong, and I apologize to all of you. If that’s the case, but don’t understand what an employee engagement is employee engagement to them means they come in, maybe they just have this vague idea that they come into work, and they actually like what they’re doing in their work. And that’s one thing. But I also agree with all the things that are going around in my little Brady Bunch of squares here, that you guys are mentioning, these are employee engagements, these are, you know, passing the vision down, bringing it up having coaching sessions, you know, asking for feedback and having those self assessments, all of those things are ways that we can engage our employees. And I, I want to make sure we understand the reason we engage employees is I guess I should I should ask the question why? Why do we need employee engagement? What’s the benefit? What’s the goal? Because rather than focus on tasks, hey, this, you know, employee engagements means this task, this task, this task and this task, rather than focusing on tasks, what’s the goal of employee engagement? Because I think all these things that have been talked about so far, can lead toward that employee engagement. But maybe this is for another discussion. We could just keep going. We

 

Patrick Adams  38:05

definitely could. Andy, any any brief thoughts before we wrap up for the day? On that one for employee engagement?

 

Andy Olrich  38:13

It just brings it back to the people need to be at the front of all of this. And when we talk about engagement, are we truly engaging with them? Or are we just communicating? So that’s a two way it’s a catch ball piece that I really like it’s the top down bottom up and everything in between? So where’s your plane at a off the ground? Are you still taxiing down the runway? Are you still in the shed? I think it’s a great thing for people to just go away and have a little bit of a think about so. Great, great chat. Thanks.

 

Patrick Adams  38:41

Yeah, then the last thing that I’ll say on that today, I actually just just came from a coaching session with an individual who’s doing a project on change over reduction. And he said that he has always been the sole problem solver. And because he’s a really nice guy, and he, and he loves to help out. And he knows everything, because he’s been at the company for a long time. So everybody comes to him. And he said, one of the things that I realized through this is, you know, these people are coming to me, and they’re fully capable of of doing this, but they’re intentionally coming to me for what I now stand as a few reasons. One is they know that I’ll solve it for them, so they don’t have to think about it. And number two is, where’s the accountability at now the accountability is on me. So if things don’t work out, I’m the one that’s been held accountable. So there’s no ownership either. Now, you know, again, I’m not I’m not saying that the setup tax or the operators are doing that intentionally, or that they’re bad people by any means. But as leaders, we need to build an army of problem solvers. And we need to have shared accountability where everyone’s rowing in the same direction towards the same goal. Right. And so there’s a lot of benefits by empowering engaging the people Work closest to the the the issue the problems, the challenges, the value add activities. In that right there, the experts they know what’s going on hands down. So we need to involve them in all of the work that we’re doing to, you know, to promote improvement initiatives within our organization’s Well, guys, it’s been, it’s been a great discussion again, we have to be careful when we’re all foreign together because I feel like we could talk for hours, which is good, which is good. We have a lot of time left in the year to have some really, really great conversations. So all of you that are listening in from all around the world, we’re inviting you back every Tuesday to listen in on different discussions that we have over this next season. And just super excited to have all of you co hosting with me, and I’m looking forward to an amazing season. So thanks again for today’s discussion. Appreciate it.

 

Catherine McDonald  40:55

Thank you.

 

Shayne Daughenbaugh  40:56

Yes, thank you guys. Great time.

 

Andy Olrich  40:58

Thank you. See you next time.