Shayne Daughenbaugh  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. Led by your host, Catherine the wonderful Catherine and Shane, we are super happy to have you here joining us today. Very excited for the guest that's going to be on I totally appreciate and revere this person simply because of his name as a great start. So, but before we get started to Katherine, to introduce this, the topic of this, I'm curious, if you've had a time where you started to you tried something new rolling out some kind of new project at your house, or it's your work or business or whatnot. That man you wish either you had someone there beside you who is able to give you the do's and the don'ts, or you wish you would have had it have you had that experience

Catherine McDonald  1:20  
so many times, Jane so many times. And look, to be honest, I don't I don't regret it. I was just saying beforehand, you know, when you go to college, you study to be your black belt, you study leadership coaching, but nothing can prepare you for when you go in and start working with teams and organizations. It's a whole different ballgame. And no matter how many tools and techniques and the knowledge that you have, it's impossible, I think starting off to get that right to get it in the right order to do the most with the tools to lead people effectively. So you just have to go out, you just have to do your best. Obviously, there's times where I didn't do my best it didn't go so well. But you know, I'm the type of person to go, look, let's just keep going. Let's improve it. Let's just keep going. And that's what I've done. Because I do feel that I probably wouldn't, I guess be as interest today, today or know what I know today, if I didn't make the mistakes I did back then as well. So I think it's absolutely okay to try it. Try it out, see how it goes. But the most important thing is to reflect on what you're doing, and to improve it because that's what we teach. But we have to be able to do it for ourselves as well.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  2:23  
Right right now. Now there's also with that, like when I started my business, I had the benefit of having people beside me, who told me Hey, Do this, don't do this, do this. Don't do that. And while that was just a portion of what I experienced, just having someone there, and so that's why we're super jazzed to have Shane winter here. Now, Jane, thanks so much for joining us. Katherine. Tell us a little bit about Shane and so that we can jump into

Catherine McDonald  2:50  
Yes. So Dr. Shane Wentz nationally recognized for his leadership, continuous improvement and innovation has saved organizations hundreds of millions of dollars. His army career began as an intelligence analyst and culminated in managing global human capital programs earning top accolades, including induction into the Audie Murphy club, and the Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification. Ghost Army, he led improvement teams at Siemens, Nike and radio, and now he's lead consultant for a change in latitude consulting. Thank

Shane Wentz  3:23  
you. It's, it's wonderful to be here.

Catherine McDonald  3:25  
Great to have you. Great to have you. How are you today? I'm doing.

Shane Wentz  3:28  
I'm doing great. We just got some rain that pass through down here in southern Florida, but it's cooled it off a little bit. So doing really well.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  3:35  
Thanks. Shane, how long have you been with your current company? How long have you been there?

Speaker 2  3:43  
I've actually been doing consulting last about five years. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, loving it.

Speaker 1  3:50  
So my question here for as we get started here, what do you see in talking about organizations that are looking to roll out lean, looking to implement something significant, not just a little smattering here or there? Let's just clean some stuff up. It's something significant. What do you see as some important first steps for an organization in rolling out lean?

Speaker 2  4:14  
Yeah, I think, you know, one is you have to have a plan. I see. I think every organization that I've had the privilege of working with, they want to do it, right. I mean, there's no one that goes out there and says, Hey, I want to mess this up. Right? That's just not who we are as humans. So they want to do it. Right. I think the biggest mistake I see is, most of them have a plan. But I would say that that plan misses some of the key steps or the plan is not flexible enough to adjust if something happens, which normally does.

Speaker 1  4:55  
Right, right. So what in regard to this, this idea of the plan? What are some core components three or four? You know, just as, as our listeners that maybe someone is is, you know, CEO of a company or an organization that wants to do something like this heard about Lean interested? What are some of the core components? That would be that should be part of that plan?

Speaker 2  5:17  
Yeah, I like to break it high level into really three components, there's, I say there's an evaluate or assess, there's a execute, and then there's a sustain, right? Those are kind of the high level three buckets. Underneath that first bucket of assess or evaluate, the first thing I encourage leaders to do is really to identify the why behind it, why are they doing this? Right? If you're doing this, because you're you're looking at growing considerably, however, you believe that you need to do some foundational things before that growth can occur. That's very different than an organization that may be is is I call it bleeding money, and needs to do this to right the ship. Right? So there's, there's a way different storyline behind that. So I think establishing that why. And then the the second part of this, which I see a lot of organizations miss, share that Why share that communicate across the organization, why you're doing this, because what you really want is yes, there is a top down component of leadership saying this is what we're going to do. But you have to get the interest from the employees. And in my opinion, the first way you start to get the interest is telling the story of why we're going on this journey and why it's so important to the organization. So I think that's the critical part of the critical part of that kind of that first bucket of evaluate or assess. Once you get into the execute, then it's about prioritization. Right, so making sure they prioritize the efforts. Once again, what we're trying to adjust for is the mistake I see a lot organizations make which, hey, let's go out and just fix everything, right. And if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. So then it falls flat. And then I think in the in the sustainment, it's about celebrating the success. And it's about creating a poll for continuous improvement or for Lean, right? If you if you do those first two components correctly, you should start to create a poll. So even though the leadership is saying, we're going to do this, you start to have other leaders in the organization say, hey, we want to be a part of this. And that's where the real energy behind it comes. So what happens

Speaker 1  7:30  
with a company that, you know, maybe leadership, heard about this read about it came across something super excited about it? Or? I don't know, whatever it is, but they started down this path. But maybe they've skipped some of this is, is it possible to fix this before you nosedive or crash into the side of the mountain or everyone just stakeholders just like fire you and move on? It

Speaker 2  7:53  
is it is and I think that's where it's incumbent upon whether you leverage an external consultant like me, or whether you leverage an internal internal team or consultant, they they need to be flexible. I mean, the that the change curve right now is real. The one thing I tell people that is a little bit sobering, but the one thing you can be confident of is right now in your adult life is the least amount of change you will experience for the rest of your life. Right. So there's another way, if you think it's changing a lot now buckle up, because it's

Shayne Daughenbaugh  8:27  
I don't know if I like this information right now.

Speaker 2  8:33  
So I think if you understand that, you have to understand that even though you might have a plan, and there was Mike Tyson and said, Hey, you walk in the ring with a plan that's great to get punched in the face. And then the reality of it comes to light, right. And in my military service, you know, when you know, when you're deployed, you go through and do all this practice for, you know, for when you're going to go out and and, you know, go out on this maneuver. And, you know, the reason you spend so much time practicing is because you know that something is going to happen, that's going to change the environment. And you have to anticipate that so you can't just have a plan A Oh, no, what happened? How are we going to adjust? No, you have a plan A, A, plan B, a Plan C, and then you make those adjustments. It's the same thing here you have a plan, right? Let's be clear, you need to have a plan. But then if you get a certain part of the way and let's say the why was not established, and it wasn't communicated, that that doesn't mean that we're going to stop and not go forward. It means we're gonna have to pick that up somewhere along the way.

Catherine McDonald  9:33  
Right? That's that's the real value in doing your homework beforehand, doing your preparation, having your scope, having it all clear the expectation, set the plan, agree, like it's just so important, because then if something does go wrong, we can just go back to and look at what we set out in the first place and say, Where do we go wrong? Why do we go wrong and you can understand that as well. So it's easier once you have all that I think done and prepared and discussed in Beginning. I'm wondering, I'm wondering chain. So you've talked a lot about. So the steps are creating the vision, engaging people in that, you know, doing your assessment, the implementation piece, the sustained piece. I'm interested to know what what point do you think is training important? So a lot of what you talked about is a guess organizations are dependent on the consultant to do but we don't want people to be too dependent on let's say, the external person either. Sure we don't we want to maybe get the organization up and skill to be able to do some of this work. So where does training fit in? Do you think?

Speaker 2  10:37  
Yeah, I think training is one of the most misunderstood and misused steps, right within the frame, talking about this. Yeah, so here, here's what I asked him often see, and I've seen this both in in corporate internal roles. And as consultants, we are going to train everybody at a certain level, we are going to train 10%, at this level 20% At this level, and we're going to closely track our numbers. And success is going to be measured by the number of people trained. And it's all well intentioned and it fails. And the reason it fails, because training in itself can't be a measure of success. Right? Training is a small piece of what we're trying to do here. So to me, initially, there's some training that has to be done with the leadership, the leaders need to know what is expected of them, if they're going to lead a lean organization, what are the types of things they need to say? What are the types of things they need to do not say not do, then that starts to filter down. I like to start with one site, one department, one division, and and start there, right? Because I think a lot of organizations want to do a complete rollout across the entire organization. Once again, it's well intended, it's most likely not going to work. Right, you need to start in one area. Right, because what we want to do is we want to create that poll, we want to create that excitement, we're also going to make some mistakes, and I'd rather make those mistakes early in that one area and learn from it, then we can adjust as we roll it out to other departments. So I want to do some training so that the leaders of the organization understand what we're doing and why and, and how to lead in a lean organization, I want that department we're going to start working with to have some training, then what we want to do is as we start to roll this out, we'll start doing other pockets of training. But I like to save most of the training for what we call in the line of the work, right? So you know, we're getting ready to do Kaizen, let's do training around what Kaizen is and how to implement it, then what you start to get out of that is you start to get a clearer vision of who those I call them the change champions, right? Who are those people that are comfortable with being uncomfortable, and want to raise their hand and volunteer to help us move this forward? Because those are the people we want to identify for whether we call it lean Master, we call it green belt, black belt, whatever it is, those are the folks I want to start spending some time with because me off ramping as a consultant, which let's be clear early on, I have a date that I'm identifying with the leadership that I want to offer him, right. Those people are going to be the key to me being able to do to do that successfully, because they're the ones that are going to step in and start helping to facilitate in lead what we've been doing. Right,

Speaker 1  13:41  
I can appreciate that because because what I heard in there the that you said, but it may not have come for body listening audience explicit is there's a balance between training and implement implementing, like, it's not just let's just keep training them all the way up to, you know, a master black belt, before we start implementing some of these things. But when you're training leadership, you're training them a chunk, and then they need to be able to practice it, and they need to be able to go into what you've trained them and put that in action, or else it's a waste of time and money. From what I've seen in my experience, but I'm curious, you know, when if you're if your organization thinking about this, and buying into what you're talking about where you you narrow it down to, you know, a smaller, more manageable area, what are some key areas or maybe processes that you have seen that give you the most traction? Are there? Are there any or does it even matter? Can you just start anywhere?

Speaker 2  14:41  
Yeah, I mean, I think what I look for is I look more for the people, the processes and the leaders. One of the things I like to look for early on is Who are those? You know, Simon Sinek describes them as innovators and early adopters, right, so who are those innovators and early adopters that are just going to latch on Do this and be like, Yeah, let's go. Right. If we've got a few of those in an area more than others, that that's probably going to be a starting point for me. Now, the other thing I do look for, if you have organizational organizations where you have a choice between, let's say, a transactional function, versus one that is, let's say, manufacturing, distribution, or you know, is a little clearer to see, I like to go away from transactional initially, because at least in my experience, it's easier. And it's quicker to see the changes in the non transactional functions. Okay, that's just me, if you have a choice, right? Now, you may not have a choice, if we're talking about healthcare, or we're talking about something, you may not have that choice. But if you have a choice between the two, I find, especially some of those people that are new to lean transactional, can be challenging because the the processes aren't as visible. And we say things like, go to GEMBA. And they're like, Well, you know, Shane, where do I go?

Speaker 1  16:06  
Right, right. Right, right. And I appreciate something that is embedded in what you said at the beginning. And starting with those early adopters. That, in fact, you and I kind of had a little bit of a LinkedIn conversation this morning. About, it's not just about don't go first to a process go to the people lean isn't about, or I should say, I should, let's put this in the positive Lean is about the people taking the people with you. And then making the changes. It's just giving them a different framework to think about. And I really love how you just mentioned that hey, don't your first response was look for those initiative, you know, those innovators look for those people that are eager to make a difference? Because that's where the change happens. Not in the process. I mean, it does, but the process is going to change itself. It's the people. So I really appreciate where you came from there. And just has that respect for people. Yeah.

Speaker 2  17:00  
And I think Shane, just something to add on to that. I think, you know, and I intertwine a lot of continuous improvement with leadership one, because I'm very passionate about both. Two, I have a background of both, but I think that the third reason is you can't separate the two. Right? I mean, you know, lean is about change, and it's about influence. And leadership is about influence. So, you know, for me, what I tried to go in is a lot of organizations will say, Hey, Shane, we want to do a green belt corps, certainly master course. And here's our 10 hypose. Right, our high potential folks, right? And those are the people we want to go through. And and I always say, Hey, do you mind if I spend some time talking to them? Let's call it a screening process. Let's talk and interview process, whatever it is, because normally, I can spend a few minutes with someone. And I know if they're going to be one of those folks that are going to be what we talked about, enter those innovators early adopters. I mean, let's be clear, you can have high potential folks that are your laggers. They don't like change, but they're really technically proficient at what they do. And I would argue that I will take an innovator or an early adopter, that is okay at their job over somebody that is highly skilled at their job, but is more of that laggard and that resistor to change? And there's a difference between the two?

Catherine McDonald  18:27  
Interesting, yeah, it's really interesting. And I fully agree. I mean, I always say as well, you absolutely cannot separate lean and leadership, it's just part of Lean is leadership. And that's just it. One of the things I find chain, I don't know if you find it, or you've kind of touched on it there. But when I go in, some companies think they want lean right, roll out lean, and they think they're ready for that. But sometimes when you go in, they're not ready for it. And there's a piece of work to be done there, whether it's around leadership or culture, but there's just a piece of work or management systems, whatever it is, there's a piece of work that needs to be done first, do you ever come across that? And what's your response? When you do?

Speaker 2  19:06  
Yeah, Catherine, one of the, you know, under that first one, evaluate or assess, one of the things I really like to do, and let's be clear, there's some organizations that don't like to do this. And it doesn't mean I won't work with them, I'll highly encourage them to do this. But is is a an assessment. And it it really is nothing more than spending a few hours with probably 1015 different employees. I asked them a series of questions about 2530 questions. And I do it with different levels of employee. So I, I'll ask the questions of a few of your hourly Associates, a few of your supervisors, a few of your mid level managers and a few of your executive leaders, same questions. And then what I do is I I will ask questions, I'll kind of write down the responses and then me and one of my partners will sit down together and we'll score from zero to five On a maturity scale, and normally we're looking for things like we're looking for those cultural, cultural enablers that experience and research has shown are more likely to lead to a successful lean implementation. And depending on where that score is, I have come back to organizations and I have told leaders, I don't think you're ready. And here's why. Yeah. Now, they can obviously say, Hey, thank you, I understand we want to do this anyway. That's great. I won't say no, but I will make sure they understand that, hey, it is going to take a little more effort. And we're probably going to adjust our plan a little bit. And it might take a little more time. But I want them to know that going in.

Catherine McDonald  20:48  
Yeah, I think those having a maturity, I suppose model or matrix, I find that so helpful, even just a visual to show an organization, and to break it down and say, here's the different levels, and it's become so obvious where they're at, on that, you know, maturity matrix, then and it's very hard to argue with that, as well. So I think that's a really good point, technique and a good point to make that it's important that the organization understands if they're ready or not, what as the consultant or external person coming in, and it's up to us to make that clear as I do that assessment. So yeah, well done. I really like that. That's good. That's really good. So hey, Catherine,

Shane Wentz  21:25  
if I could just add to that, because I think we're there's this overlap with leadership and kind of, you know, these two things we're talking about, because I recently had a client that I did this. And one of the questions is around leaders. And you know, some people, you know, get a little, you know, they don't like the question, but I think it's important. And what I'll ask is, do routinely see your leaders at the place of work, curious or asking questions about how things are going with the grid? And if, if the answer is on the lower scale, let's say zero or one out of five, that tells me that I'm going to have a little more work, maybe a lot more work with some of the leaders because you know, as we know, one of the concepts is go to gamba and actually be present out where the work is. And if that's not something currently being done, it's going to take some training and coaching to get them there versus a score of three or four, where that's already routinely done. So there's gonna be a little less resistance to that, when we start rolling this out.

Catherine McDonald  23:09  
Yeah, and it's not a case of No, you're not ready to be lean. It's a case of you're ready, you're just at this level, and this is the work that needs to be done before we do all the stuff you might hear about in terms. You know, that's sort of the way the discussion goes. But it's an important one. I think. So yeah. Well done. Good. Good. So we talked a little bit about mistakes, Shane, and the mistakes people make, and I know you've touched on a few. But there is an awful lot of literature and talk about what goes wrong with Lean. And I know we did an episode on it as well chain in terms of what can go wrong. But what do you see these days as the reasons for why there's still so much talk about why Lean fails can go wrong, when I actually think the knowledge out there in terms of what Lean is how it's based on respect for people, and it's to do with leadership. That's it seems to be increasing. But we still hear this. Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2  24:07  
Yeah, so I want to go back to something I said earlier, because I think it's really important for people to understand. leaders do not try to roll out a they don't do it lean rollout in the hopes that it will fail. I think I hear a lot of different terms thrown out a lot of negativity around well, you know, they just do it wrong, and they don't get it. And, you know, I think we need to all understand that. You know, human behaviors model. Models tell us that people don't wake up in the morning and say I want to do a crappy job at work today. It's just not how things go. Right. Now, you take every group of employees or sports teams and you're going to have a percentage of them a small percent that are elite performers, you're going to have a percentage of them a small percent that are underperformers. and they're gonna have the rest that do what they're supposed to do every day. And I think that's where it comes in. And you have to understand that that Lean is is about leadership. So first and foremost, you have to have leadership engagement. And I think there's a misperception about well, you have to have leadership support. No, no, no support is very different than engagement. Right? You can't just have a leader that says, Yes, I will allow this. No, no, no, you have to have a leader that walks it, that talks it that that understands it, that that has set the expectation that this is what we're going to do. So the number one mistake I see is that's missing. Now, I think if you understand that, you have to understand that's where as a consultant or as an internal lean practitioner, it's your role to help coach those leaders on what right looks like. They they don't just get it, they don't very, very, very few of them just naturally get it. Right. And I think there's we're in the state right now, where I see a lot of executive bashing. Being an executive, being a CEO, CFO is extremely difficult, right? I mean, they're, they're Uber focused throughout the day. And people say, Well, I talked to our CEO, and they have a short attention span. Well, the reason is, they're constantly thinking about three things. They're thinking about dollars and cents, right? Cost revenue, which they better, right, because if they don't, then we're not going to have jobs. They think number two, they think about risk and risk mitigation, right to the organization to the people. And number three, they're thinking about market share, if it's a publicly traded company stock price, if it's private, the share of the market, so they're constantly thinking about those. So we have to use terms that they understand. And we use terms like well, we're gonna build a culture of lean to an executive that sounds like a warm, fuzzy and sounds great. What does that mean, in terms of those three things I just mentioned. And that's the way that we have to put it, and let's be clear, if we do this, right, it's gonna affect all three of those, this is gonna affect dollars and cents market share, and it's going to reduce risk to the organization. So leadership engagement is first and foremost. But I think we have to understand that it's our role, whether you're an internal or external consultant to help coach them on what that looks like. Yeah.

Speaker 1  27:27  
Can you can you talk a little bit more about about that role as an external consultant? In the role in in in that rollout? Like what what really is their role? Can you can you give, you know, some high high level points to that is, yeah,

Speaker 2  27:46  
yeah. And I'll be honest, Shane, I learned this over a period of time, there was a point in my career as a consultant, especially. And I mean, it's fairly recent. I mean, I just got into consultant about five years ago. And I think it was a couple years in where I had a realization, I was talking with a client, I was talking to their CEO, and they said, Hey, shame. I'm gonna say something that I hope you'll take as a compliment, because it's meant that way. And I was like, Oh, here we go. And they said, I didn't quite understand what I was signing up for when I brought you in, like, oh, here we go. And then he kind of did the shift. And he goes, I wasn't bringing in just a link consultant, I was bringing in a leadership consultant. And he goes, the value that you've brought is not just the lead, but he goes, you're coaching me, and you're coaching my team, on what it means to be in an organization that's lean. And he goes, I'll be honest, he goes, I haven't met a lot of people willing to do that. And he goes, most people don't want to coach executives. And he goes, we've had some very tough conversations. And I don't call them tough conversations, I call them necessary conversations, there's a difference. But I find that there's too many. And I understand it, right? As a consultant, I mean, you can be fired at any time. But But I think, if we're going to do our job, and we're going to do it, right, and we're going to keep to, you know, the history of the people that came before us with Deming and Ono, and, and people like that. I mean, they were, they were called names other than brilliant and revolutionary during our times. Let's be clear, and somebody's rugged. Yeah, exactly. Right. So I think we we have to be willing to have those tough conversations and coaches people that maybe aren't accustomed to being coached.

Catherine McDonald  29:43  
Yeah, I mean, they don't bring people IT consultants in to tell them what they already know. I mean, they might think they want that but they don't you know, why would you hire somebody to tell you what you already know. So you have to be able to say the hard stuff to be able to say what in I suppose if He wants them to understand what they don't know. So yeah, I totally get that chain. Yeah, I fully agree. Yeah. Yeah, really important. Okay. So

Speaker 1  30:08  
Catherine, Catherine, I'm just curious from your perspective. You know, it's it is a little bit different perspective from a whole different country and the cultural nuances there, but also from a female leadership perspective. What do you see it? And how do you see, as Shane just described that, hey, you're not just coming in, you know, to, for this methodology for the people the process, you know, the lean thing, but also, you know, supporting the leadership and helping grow the leadership? Yeah. How has that been for you?

Catherine McDonald  30:37  
Oh, it's kind of why I made the point earlier about Sometimes organizations contact me to support them on their Lean journey or support and get started on their Lean journey. But they don't actually we don't actually start with Lean, it's often we start with leadership coaching, it's where we help leaders to understand themselves better. So I do emotional intelligence coaching. And I do and I blend that at the start, I just think leaders need to lead themselves is what I always say before you lead other people. And sometimes there's a piece of oftentimes, there's a piece of work there that has to be done. Usually at the same time, as we're rolling out lean, and we're starting small, like you said earlier, Shane, starting small within a small department or a small process. So start small, but also I think, working on the leadership side, very rare, very, if ever, I've gone into an organization in Ireland, and just rolled out lean using Lean language. It's not like that. It's not like what you read. Or see, there's so much more to understand about the people development side first, in every organization I've ever walked into, I suppose that's why I do the leadership coaching as well. I actually went and did that, after I studied in Lean, because I thought I would have everything I needed when I had lien, but I didn't. I needed the coaching side as well. So yeah, that's it's the same over here as I think because it is anywhere else. That's people. So

Speaker 1  31:56  
what what what I'm hearing for both of you is, and this is good for me, because I'm relatively new to my own business. You know, you Shane, you said five years, brother, I'm five months, so. But But what you're describing is very interesting to me, because what the implications of that is a longer term relationship. You know, if I'm going to be if I'm going to be working with leadership, as well, as you know, the people that are doing the work and implementing this, then the only I don't know, unless, you know, unless you find a way to kind of like the matrix, you just plug in and download all that information into them. But relationships take a while is that has that been your experience? And I don't know, I don't want to. And maybe this is this is not the right question to ask. So if so please, correct it, Shane. But typically, how, how long? Does does an interaction go? Is there a standard for it? Is it is it three months, six months, nine months, you know, or even longer for to give them something of value and step away and go, You know what? I believe in what they have, it may not be perfect, but they're moving forward.

Speaker 2  33:10  
Yeah, I think that's an amazing question, Shane. And I, I think, once again, and I'll tie back to the leadership part, right, because leadership that the definition I use for leadership is the ability to influence others to accomplish things by providing purpose, direction and motivation. And the key term there is influence. Right leadership starts. I think John Maxwell says leadership starts and ends with influence. You can't influence people without Catherine, what you brought up, which is trust, right? I mean, what we're doing in a lean rollout, let's be clear, is we're taking people where they're going to be uncomfortable, right? Anytime there's change, there's going to be there's discomfort. And that's part of a lot of discussions I have, right. I mean, if I trained for marathons, and there's nothing about getting ready to run 26.2 miles that is comfortable for me. I mean, I've done it eight times. There is not. Right? So So let's be clear about what we're doing here. This is not going to be about being comfortable, it's going to being about helping you be comfortable being uncomfortable. And so what I tell them is, first and foremost, I need to build those relationships with the key leaders, that is going to take one it's going to take me being there on the ground for a period of time, right? There's some of this that we can do remote, but there's some of this you just have to be together. I think it's critical that you break bread and have meals and get to know people and get to know families and what motivates them and and let them in to know about me and what makes me who I am. Right. And you know, for the first 30 days or so, it's really about starting to build those relationships in the trust. Because I'm getting ready to push them out of their comfort zone so I have to have that trust built. Right. So that's where it begins. So for me, my normal cycle is about six months. Right? Now, there's a lot of it depends, right? Right. There are some organizations where just based on my background, I can walk in, and I can speak the language and I build rapport with them very quickly. And we might be able to go a little quicker. There's others where we might as well be speaking totally different languages. And it's going to take a little while. But I give them that up front, and I say, I'm going to start with a six month timeframe. It may be a little shorter, it may be a little longer. Now there's, there's an engagement right now I've been doing for about a year. But the reason it's been that long is, as we started rolling this out, they said, Hey, Shane, would you mind helping me with some leadership training and coaching of some of my supervisors? So that's been about a three to four month time period. Right? So it kind of like you said, Katherine, it's, you know, I kind of started on the lean side. And then, you know, found I also have a passion for leadership, and I've done it for quite a while. So I started doing more leadership training and coaching. And to me, when you find people that can do both of those, that is a difference maker. Right? People ask me, Hey, what books for someone that's getting ready to begin in the Lean world? Yeah, they're the machine that changed the world. It's a great, right. You know, there are some some specific books to lean and continuous improvement. I thought a lot of leadership books. Right. I'm doing a series right now on LinkedIn about The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey. Oh, my goodness, right, you want to you talk about being effective as a as a lean consultant. Read that and start following that. That's huge.

Catherine McDonald  36:47  
Yeah, it's, it's funny, it's, it's, I've been trying to get my head around the Lean language and how we introduce it to organizations, let's say, as you said, who are at the maybe immature level, it's some organizations, as you said, you can just go in and start talking about Kaizen and Kata and process mapping and value stream mapping, Annville, no question. Anything get stuck in, then others, you just can't do that. They don't understand what you mean, like the language can be a real barrier, I think. And we have to adapt what we're saying and bring it in very, very slowly to organizations that are not used to using it. And there's, I don't about you, there's nothing better than when people start using the lien language after a period of time. And you hear them speak in the language and slowly developing because it is the language really is. I don't know, your experience as well. Yeah,

Speaker 1  37:37  
yeah. It has meaning to them, like, they see, oh, they've made that connection in their head from the principles you're teaching to how it applies to their work.

Speaker 2  37:46  
So yeah, you bring up a great point there, right. And, and I've done this in several organizations. And I think this goes back again to, you can't skip over the evaluator the assess phase, right? Because I can go in and just spend a little bit of time into these evaluations or assessments. realized very quickly, I did this with an organization about a year and a half ago. And I had leaders that started asking me the same question over and over, Hey, Shane, are we gonna use Lean? Or we're gonna use six sigma or use agile? And my answer was the same every time it was yes. Because I knew it was a trick question. Right? I had done the assessment, and I knew where they were going with it. If I said, lean, they're gonna say, well, we're not Toyota. If I said Six Sigma, they're gonna say, well, we're not GE, right. So initially, I wanted to start and I needed to start in a very non threatening manner. I said, Hey, listen, here's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get a little bit better every day. Right? That's our goal. Now, we're gonna start rolling out some methods, and we're start rolling out some tools that will help us get there. And in all, I'll be honest, at about the three to four month mark, I was a little worried, as I call, they're still not using the language and um, you know, I was like, oh, man, is this going to be one of those where I just completely it's going to take like, two years, and, you know, all of that. But all of a sudden, there's a point. And I there's about the four, four and a half month mark, where I started hearing terms like CATIA, and I started hearing kaizen. And I was like, yes. It just, it depends, right? When is that going to happen? I don't know. It's gonna depend on the organization. Right?

Catherine McDonald  39:29  
Yeah. Right. And that's a very good point on the assessment piece as well. And to bring that into your assessment at the start, what do they understand what language can I use based on what they understand? Yeah, totally agree. Yeah.

Speaker 1  39:40  
So we need to wrap this up. It's been like the time has flown by with the information that in the conversation we're having, but I'd love for you to, to leave us with a story a story of success. You know, anytime you're coming into an organization, or just about anything that has to do with human beings, when we're trying to You bring something new, some kind of change. You know, there's there's fear and there's resistance to that. Do you have a favorite story that you can share about how you were able to address those fear those fears and the resistance to build trust so that something beautiful could be implemented and grown? You know, what do you got for a story?

Speaker 2  40:22  
Yeah, Shane, I think as I was so fortunate that it was early in my career. I was at the tail end of my time in the army. And I was still a soldier, and I was leading a project. And, you know, I won't go into all the details, but it was the way in which soldiers are evaluated when they come back in they have an injury or an illness, right. So it's basically a medical board. And this was at the time that Iraq was going Afghanistan was going. So we had 10s of 1000s of soldiers a year coming back, having to go through this process to be evaluated to figure out it's gonna be one of three results, either they're okay to continue in the army and doing their job. They're okay to stay in the army, but they have to change jobs. Right? Or, hey, it's so serious that they have to be separated from the army. And the team got together, we went through we we gather data, we came up with a recommendation. We piloted it. The process, as it was, was taking anywhere from a couple of months to a year and a half. Wow. Oh, yeah. Right. I mean, it was completely backlogged. They hadn't been changed since the 1950s. And we were actually, I'll never forget this moment, we were at the Pentagon. I was the junior person in the room, I was an enlisted soldier and a bunch of room with very senior civilian leaders, there was a three star general that was a senior person in the room, and we were pitching our solution to them. Now, we also had congressional staffers because we were also going to have to change federal law, which if you've ever been involved in changing law, you might know that Shane, he meant the state level. Oh, my goodness. Right, right. It is not going to three years. So we were making this recommendation. And I didn't do any of the talking. I was a junior person, one of the senior people on the team did the presentation. And at the end of this, the general looked around the room and said, Okay, I get it, right, you know, it's taken a year and a half, you think you can get it down to less than a month. And actually, we had it down to two weeks. Right? And he goes, but But once again, I'm just you know, can someone in this room tell me why we have to go right now in front of Congress and try to get this law fixed. And they were crickets, and I stood up. And it's one of those moments where I'm like, Okay, this is either going to be a career ender, or it'll go, okay. And I basically did, I told a story of me meeting, family members of a soldier that was an amputee, right had lost their leg in Iraq. And there was a spouse that was a cancer survivor. That was on 1000s of dollars of medications a year, the army was paying for all of that. And this soldier had been waiting for about 16 months for a decision. So keep in mind, soldier, spouse, three kids, all in limbo, waiting for this decision on what's going to happen with their career. And I said, Sir, the reason you need to go and ask that this be changed immediately, is because if you don't, you're letting that soldier and their family down. And, you know, long story short, we ended up getting approval. It ended up getting changed into law. The process now takes weeks, not years. And that general came up to me afterwards. And he said, he said, Hey, Shane, that was a great story. And it goes, that was the difference maker, you had all the data. You showed me all the tools, but your ability to humanize that and tell that in a way that it impacted soldiers and their families. That was a difference for me. And that's made the difference for me and how I've tried to, to work as a consultant is to humanize this. I think too many people get stuck on the process and the tools. There's human beings at the center of this. And I think that's what has to continue to be at the center of this.

Speaker 1  44:28  
Mic drop right there. Let's just like That's amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking some time for spending some time with us here. Thank you for all the time that you've spent the hours years and whatnot, in how you have improved the world around you, Katherine, any last any last words that you would have to send us off with or we could just

Catherine McDonald  44:53  
a big thanks to Shane. I was just saying earlier, I follow him on LinkedIn and the YouTube as well. We're all connected on LinkedIn. But first time I've actually met And I absolutely admire your approach the way you speak the way you speak about people and put people first and that's the way it should be, you know, lien is built on respect for people. And that very clearly comes through when you talk and I've just really enjoyed the opportunity to listen to you in person today. So thank you, Shane, for everything. It's been amazing. Yeah,

Speaker 1  45:20  
is there were other than your LinkedIn and they would just spell your name out for them. But where else could they connect with you? Maybe it's an organization that likes what what you're talking about and would love to talk with you but yeah, how can we get a hold

Speaker 2  45:34  
of you? Yeah, Shane. Without the EY, sh Sha. Any Wentz Wentz. I think I'm the only ball chain went on LinkedIn.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  45:44  
Handsome, handsome. Sure, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2  45:48  
Yeah, on LinkedIn. Once again, if you look for Shane Wentz, ACL consultant, we are a change in latitude consulting. WOMAN Oh, and my wife is 51% owner, disabled veteran owned small business. And we love working with companies large and small on helping them as we say, improve their latitude, which is leveraging their people to improve the organization.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  46:15  
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you, sir. It's been a pleasure. We look forward to talking and seeing in the ether in the internet and possibly sometime in the real. So enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, for listening. We look forward to hearing seeing you hearing from you and talking to you. At least by next week. Have a great day everybody.