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Best podcasts about shingo prize

Latest podcast episodes about shingo prize

Shingo Principles Podcast
Episode 46: The Relentless Pursuit of Mastery

Shingo Principles Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2025 33:54


Achieving the Shingo Prize or reaching the highest levels of the Shingo Behavioral Scale is a remarkable accomplishment—but it's not the final destination. The real question is: what comes next?In this episode, we explore the shift from maturity to mastery in organizational excellence. Maturity brings stability and best practices, but mastery breaks boundaries, redefines industries, and sets new standards. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese concept of Takumi—a lifelong pursuit of perfection—we'll uncover three key steps to move beyond sustaining excellence and into pioneering innovation.If you're ready to push past benchmarks and redefine what excellence truly means, stay tuned.To learn more, please visit: shingo.org/articles 

Lean Blog Audio
'The Mistakes That Make Us' Receives the Shingo Publication Award!

Lean Blog Audio

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2025 10:54


Blog postI'm very excited to announce that my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, has been officially selected as a recipient of the Shingo Publication Award by the Shingo Institute (the home of the Shingo Prize for organizations).

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast
Moving Productivity Forward: Boosting Lean with Deming (Part 7)

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2025 35:46


In the final episode of the series, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz discuss the difference between typical companies using traditional management and more successful Deming-style companies. If productivity and performance are so much better, why do companies stick with traditional management? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I continue my discussion and conversation with Jacob Stoller, Shingo Prize winning author of The Lean CEO. And ladies and gentlemen, I just received my copy finally. Productivity Reimagined, it just arrived from Amazon. You can get it there. And that's the latest book that he's come out with. And this is exploring applying Lean and Deming Management Principles at the enterprise level. The topic for today is moving forward with productivity. Jacob, take it away.   0:00:41.7 Jacob Stoller: Oh, thank you, Andrew. Great to be here once again. Yeah. Moving forward. That's really Chapter 13. Whether you consider that, hopefully you consider 13 lucky as I think they do in Italy.   0:00:57.4 AS: We do in Thailand.   0:01:00.4 JS: Oh, really? Wonderful. Okay. Perfect. Anyway, so I wrote in the book, I sort of defined where we're trying to go by describing two companies; a typical company, and then the company that we would aspire to for maximum productivity. So I'm gonna read those, just to illustrate. "Company A follows traditional top-down management practices. Leaders determine how the work is to be done, and give orders to their staff accordingly. Individuals, functional groups and departments are treated as independent entities under centralized control. Pay and promotion are determined by individual performance according to a set of predetermined criteria. Employees are ranked and encouraged to compete with each other." So that's company A, your typical company, which probably comprises what percentage would you say? 90%? 95%?   0:02:03.8 AS: 97.9%   0:02:04.4 JS: Okay. Okay. Let's look at where we'd like to go from there. "Company B is managed as an interactive system where people and functional teams depend on each other. Supervisors aren't expected to have all the answers, and they rely on frontline workers to share their workplace knowledge and take an active role in improving their work processes. All employees know they are part of a team culture pursuing common goals and solving problems together to move the company forward." Okay, so that's really, that's where we wanna be. And the reason you would want to go there is because if you take those two companies and they have similar resources, similar markets, perhaps operating in similar region, company B will outproduce company A 10 times out of 10. It's a more productive model, and it's proven to work. So why don't people do it?   0:03:16.3 JS: Well, there's some thinking that gets in the way, some sort of systemic kinds of barriers that are out there. So even people who aspire to making a company better, and I think there are a lot of people out there that think that, but they run into these barriers, and I'm just gonna review them again because we've gone through them in some detail. But the myth of segmented success, that's the really kind of the exact opposite of a company as a system. It's this idea that all the parts are interchangeable. You can take a department, you can give each department separate goals, and they'll all make their goals and it'll all add up. That's the myth, of course. So the myth of segmented success. We have really stemming out of that the myth of the bottom line.   0:04:11.9 JS: And because of that segmented structure, we believe that we can use finance as a proxy for all the quantitative, all the accomplishments of all these different segments. It all adds up. It's arithmetic. We figure, so why not? We just take, everyone makes their numbers, and then they all make their numbers and they all celebrate together. That's the myth, of course. The bottom line doesn't tell you what's really going on in the company. The top-down knowledge myth they run into, and that's this whole idea that managers are supposed to know all the answers, and their job is to tell people what to do. And it's not just people with MBAs. It's people with degrees in psychology and maybe working in HR. It's engineers, it's any person with professional training, figures that they have not only the privilege, but a duty to actually tell people what to do. And if I'm not telling people what to do, I'm probably not doing my job and somebody's going to be looking over my shoulder. So a big fear around that.   0:05:31.6 JS: Myth number four is the myth of sticks and carrots. And this is this idea of Homo Economicus, the idea that people act in their own financial interest and it's perfectly predictable. Performance is down? Well, let's just pay them more or maybe we need some threats here. Maybe we need to threaten them, or maybe we need to get some competition. So somebody is gonna be a little bit worried looking over their shoulder that they might get fired. Fear is a big factor here, obviously. Finally, there's the myth of tech omnipotence. And this stems right from the myth of segmented success. This idea we can take a process and we can swap out technology, we can put in technology and swap out people. We can reduce head count by 5, 10, 15 people and put in a machine in its place. That's been the business case for technology for decades. And we still have a very strong belief in that. So that's kind of what we're stuck with, those myths. And we really have to crush those myths as we go along.   0:06:42.5 AS: You know, Jacob, I was just at a meeting yesterday with a very senior executive at a very large company in Thailand. And I was just talking to him, it's off the record, so we were just chatting, but he was talking about the challenges that they're facing, and I said, so how are your KPIs? And he said, KPIs are just killing us. They're causing us to be siloed. It's setting up competition in the company. People can't work together. And I asked him this question, like, what can you do about it? He says, not much. What am I gonna do? Remove the KPI system? No. We know...   0:07:31.1 JS: Isn't that interesting?   0:07:34.8 AS: That ultimately that's probably one of the best things that they could do and get people to work together. But it just, you know, he said something to me that just made me think about, for the listeners and the viewers out there who are running small and medium-sized businesses who feel disadvantaged so many times when they're fighting against the big giants...   0:07:53.6 JS: Yeah.   0:07:53.6 AS: Take comfort that you can change your business. But many of these big companies, they just can't. And they won't.   0:08:01.2 JS: Yeah.   0:08:03.5 AS: And they never will. So that's what's so great about these types of principles, both Lean, what you're talking about, Deming, is that if you're a business owner, it's a family business, it's your private business or a group of people that you have real control over the business, you can implement these things. And you can build your business to be great.   0:08:23.7 JS: That's interesting, Andrew. I've talked in my book, I've talked with some smaller manufacturers, and at least a couple of them have said they're getting refugees from large corporations. And he'll interview these people and say, well, I can't give you, you know, you won't have 500 people reporting to you or anything. And they say, I don't care. I said, I really, you know, I've had it with this corporate stuff, and they want to be part of a culture that makes a difference. And so that's maybe catching on. I mean, interesting that the gentleman you're talking with also recognized that.   0:09:00.3 AS: Yeah. And he's just as, his hands are tied in some ways. And, so, but that to me is hopeful for the rest of the businesses that can change. And the other thing I was, you know, I always end with my favorite quote from Dr. Deming, which is that people are entitled to joy in work. Yesterday I was speaking to about 75 students in my Ethics in Finance class, and it's the kickoff day. And so it's a real fun, and I talk about a bunch of things, but the one thing I said is that ever since I graduated from university, all I really wanted was a job that I enjoyed, at a place that I enjoyed doing it, with the people I enjoyed doing it with. That's all I wanted. I wanted joy in work and I got it because I walked away from the places and the people where it wasn't happening, and I walked towards the places where I had the opportunity to enjoy it. Of course it helps that I found my love, which is being a financial analyst. It's just, I understand that so well, but this is where I think I want us to think about hope and potential for happiness in work and all of that. And so I know you've got some more steps that you've got to help people. So maybe we move into that.   0:10:27.7 JS: Sure. Sure. Well, and it would be interesting, this gentleman you talked with, I wonder if he's visited any companies that we would admire that are using Deming principles, or maybe...   0:10:39.1 AS: Well, it may give it away, but this company in the past has fully implemented the teachings of Dr. Deming.   0:10:49.2 JS: Oh, really?   0:10:51.5 AS: But they had a changeover in management, and they completely walked away from this and implemented the KPI system.   0:11:00.9 JS: Yeah. Oh my. Isn't that something? Yeah, that happens. That happens for sure. And we've had, you know, in my last book, The Lean CEO, I found some people, number of companies had fallen off the ladder. And gosh, the Shingo Institute had a real problem with that. People were winning Shingo prizes and then they were falling off the ladder, and they changed their emphasis on criteria now, and now they really emphasize culture. You can't just follow the principles, but you really have to get the culture, and they really grill them on that. So, interesting. Interesting.   0:11:38.2 AS: Yeah.   0:11:41.0 JS: But the first step, the reason I asked you if they've visited anybody is really, I think if you're starting from scratch at company A, I think the first thing is to go visit companies.   0:11:48.6 AS: Yep.   0:11:49.5 JS: I mean, you've got to see what's going on in companies that are different to even appreciate what's possible. And it's...   0:12:00.6 AS: 'Cause it's inspiring.   0:12:00.7 JS: It's not only inspiring, but you see things that you wouldn't expect to see. And I think what they said, what these folks have told me over and over again is that what you see is you actually feel it. There's a culture in there, there's a kind of an atmosphere when you walk in the door. And that's what really wows people. I hear that over and over again. So you have to feel that, you can't write that down, or you can't explain that in a talk. So I think that's really the first step. And fortunately, companies that have gone through these transformations are happy to welcome people to come visit, because it helps them reinforce their culture as well. So it's a reinforcing kind of thing. I think after you've done that, gone the rounds a bit, that's when you really need to assess where you are and what you wanna be. And I think there has to be some honest criticism about the kind of company you are. I don't know if you wanna call it soul-searching, but there's not a realization that we don't wanna go on as we were, you're really not gonna do much. So that's, I think, critically important. You're smiling. Do you have a story there?   0:13:20.8 AS: No, but I'm just, you know, it makes sense. It makes sense. I did actually, you know, in Thailand there was a company that I saw in the newspaper many years ago that it came out in the newspaper that they won the Deming Prize from Japan, from the Union of Scientists in Japan. And so I just called the company and I said, congratulations. And they said, great, thank you. And then I said, and I talked to the CEO of the company, and then I said, could I bring my staff from my coffee, you know, management team from the coffee business to come and see you guys? And he said, yeah. And that started a lifelong friendship with a guy named Srini, who was the guy who won that. He passed away about a year or two ago. And I featured him in my book on Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points. But the idea is...   0:14:11.0 JS: Oh yeah...   0:14:12.7 AS: Go out and...   0:14:14.0 JS: I love that book.   0:14:16.2 AS: Explore and see it, see what's out there.   0:14:16.3 JS: Yeah. For sure.   0:14:17.5 AS: Because you also, when you go out and explore, you also find out, hey, we're pretty good at some of these things and there's things that we're doing well, you know?   0:14:23.5 JS: Of course, of course. So once you've assessed your state, I think it's very, very important, even before you start talking to your people, 'cause it's gonna be a transformation, you're gonna demand an awful lot from your people, you've really got to know where you're going, and you have to establish a vision. And companies have different ways of doing that. But the one thing I would emphasize is that it's gotta be a vision with substance. And I think Dr. Deming would say, by what method? [laughter] You say where you're going. Right? So, for example, a hospital. I saw a hospital that did a very good job of that, establishing a vision, and they wanted to be the safest and most compassionate hospital in their region. They said, well, what would that look like?   0:15:13.3 JS: And they looked at, well, okay, safety would obviously be big. There would be fiscal responsibility. Wait time is a big issue in healthcare, be no waiting. I think there may have been one more as well. But anyway, they established these kinds of what I would call aspirational goals. It's where we, really where we want to be, and it's gotta be something that inspires employees, right? You wanna be a compassionate, safe place for patients to come. I mean, that's what people want. So then what they do is they took it a level down, and they said, okay, well, if we're going to have an exemplary safety record, what would that look like? How would we measure it? And they have safe... The health organizations have safety statistics. So, they have an institution, that third party organization that would report on the numbers, so they could set some targets according to that. And then they go down even further. They say, okay, safety. What are the things that we need to do? What are some of our weaknesses? So they say, well, patient falls was one of them. They have things like medication error, hospital acquired illnesses. So all this goes under the idea of no harm to patients, right?   0:16:44.0 AS: Yeah.   0:16:45.3 JS: All goes together. So, they then started to work on the most pressing one. You know, work on targets, do projects together, PDSA kinds of projects. And they chipped away at it and eventually with a number of projects, they were very successful. But I think the key, of course, is that problems in workplaces and hospitals, maybe especially, are very granular in lots and lots of things, so you need all hands on deck. But they were very, very successful at getting a very high rating just through these efforts. So, that's...   [overlapping conversation]   0:17:28.8 AS: Yeah, the vision with substance is a great one because I think lots of visions are flaky, and we've been working on the vision for Coffee Works, for my company, and that is we supply coffee to every leading brand in Thailand. And that's something that we can visualize, the employees can visualize, they can also see who we don't serve. And also when we lose a customer that's a leading brand, we can say we messed up, but when your contract's up with our competitor, we're gonna be back because we supply every leading brand in Thailand.   0:18:08.0 JS: Right, right.   0:18:10.3 AS: So, substance, vision. Yep.   0:18:13.3 JS: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I guess you share that, been sharing that kind of vision with your people for a long time, right?   0:18:18.3 AS: Yep.   0:18:21.6 JS: But I mean, would you say, how important would you say vision is? I mean...   0:18:23.2 AS: I think it's critical. And I think that part of what happens is that many companies start with a vision, and then they get, it's just so easy to get distracted. And there's so many, you know, business just grows complex, and then all of a sudden you feel like, we can do all of this, we can do this, we can do that, we can do this, we can do that. The best book on this is Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. And he talks a lot about what are bad strategies, and he talks about these fluffy visions that really don't help anybody. And so getting a vision with substance, I think is critical.   0:18:58.0 JS: Okay. So we got our vision, it's got real teeth. It's something that we can stand in front of our people and say, here's what we're going to do. And they won't say, oh, this is just another flavor of the month. They'll realize that we're serious and we're gonna do this. The next step, number four, is building trust. And that's extremely important. And one of the manufacturer actually told me a wonderful story about this. He was working in a very... Had a plant in a very rough neighborhood in Baltimore. And when he took over that plant as a general manager, there was terrible culture. People were... He said there was racism and there were just people quitting all the time. And just walking out the door, not showing up to work. You know, the workers hated management.   0:19:56.7 JS: So this guy went in onto the shop floors. I'm your new general manager. And he said he spent the first three or four months just talking to them about their lives. You know, he was committed to the Lean methodology, but he didn't talk about methods, how we're gonna do things different. He just found out what's important to these people. And a lot of 'em were financially strapped. They were in poor neighborhoods. So the direction was really how to make this company more profitable so we can pay you more. And that was kind of a guiding vision and remarkably successful how it did. How he won the people over. And I think there's so many people out there asking people to do things. And, you know, you really have to... Takes a lot of trust. I mean, you're gonna say, I'm gonna admit when I've made a mistake, I'm not gonna cover it up and you're not gonna fire me. You know, that's never happened. So...   0:21:02.9 AS: And I can tell you, for the listeners and the viewers out there, here's a good inspiring movie to get you an idea of thinking about how to get out on the shop floor and understand from the inside what's happening in the business. And the movie came out in 1980, and it's called Brubaker by Robert Redford. And it's the story of a new prisoner warden.   0:21:25.2 JS: Oh, I never saw it.   0:21:27.0 AS: Yeah. Prison warden who goes in as a prisoner, and the governor of the state has sent him in as a prisoner. And so he lives a prisoner's life for, I don't know how long it was, a week, a couple weeks, a month, until eventually he, you know, reveals himself and then takes over. And then he knew all the corruption and all the problems and all the issues, and he went about solving 'em. It's an inspiring movie.   0:21:54.2 JS: Yeah. And more recently, there was a program, I've seen a couple of episodes of Undercover CEO, you know, where CEO actually goes into the workplace in disguise and flips burgers or whatever. And then discovers what's really going on in the company.   0:22:09.2 AS: Yeah, that's a great. That's probably even more applicable.   0:22:11.2 JS: Yeah. Right. So building trust is just... It's very personal. And from that point, you start to make changes. But those changes... My favorite examples, I don't know if this is a general rule, but some of the best examples I've seen are working on safety. You work on safety because improving processes to make them safer is actually kind of like a gateway drug to doing continuous improvement, right? You start to understand what processes are, but first of all, people are improving the process in their own interest.   0:22:50.8 AS: Yep.   0:22:52.2 JS: So you get them very good at making these changes, proposing changes, speaking out, pointing out when other people are not following safety guidelines. Understanding that something has to stop when safety is not there. No, you build on the trust you created and you start to change the culture around that. So that's number five. So you notice I've gone five steps and we haven't introduced any methods or anything. You know, it's...   0:23:23.8 AS: What I noticed from those first five is that they're really all things that senior management need to do before they go out with all their exciting new ideas and start training people and start really bringing that out in a much more aggressive way.   0:23:41.5 JS: Exactly. So really step six is train and transform. And that's when we do all the... That's when we draw the diagrams, and that's when we start the PDSA training or the Kaizen events or whichever type of transformation you're doing. That's when we start to train the workforce and we start to undergo the transformation. So that's all the work, but the transforming work. But we've done enormous preparation before we get there. And I think that's what I've seen is the best way to do it. So we train and transform, and then of course we have to remove barriers as they come. So it might be removing some aspects of the accounting system because they might be holding us back. So you run into the barriers and you take on those barriers as you run into them and you build momentum.   0:24:36.3 AS: Yep.   0:24:38.6 JS: So step seven really is you're building this momentum and you raise the bar. You've done something and now you raise your standards and continue to raise them. And that leads you to a continually improving organization where you're always expecting to get better. People have a joy in work because they know that they're part of making something better. And you continue raising the bar 'cause people like a challenge.   0:25:07.9 AS: Yep.   0:25:08.5 JS: As long as it's a safe environment and as long as it's a team kind of self-supporting workplace. So finally we get to share and learn. So we've gone full circle. You know, you've got... You've gone through a transformation, you're proud of your work, and you start to open the door to visitors because that's where you really reinforce the culture. And, I don't know, you have... You say you have visitors at the coffee place?   0:25:45.9 AS: Yeah. I mean, for me, I just love going to companies that do like to share and learn. And I like to do that too. We get students, a lot of times it'll be like executive MBA students coming to Thailand and others that I'll bring out to the factory, so to get them to see how we do things. But I just personally love to... Well, it's great when you go out to a place, and there's a lot of factories in Thailand for sure where you can just see that they have a vision of what they're doing and they clearly communicate it. I had a company that I saw in the financial data many years ago when I was an analyst that really did something very odd, which was their cash conversion cycle was negative. Normally it's a positive thing for a manufacturing company 'cause they have a lot of inventory and accounts receivable and the like.   0:26:34.9 AS: And so I went out and I met with the CEO and then I said, how did you do this? He said, it took us five years, but we brought our inventory down to seven days of inventory. And how did you do it? And he took me out on the factory floor to meet all the different people doing it. And he said, I put people in teams and they work together and they try to figure out how do we reduce the inventory here? I help them see the overhead cost that's coming from the executives so they could calculate a P&L and understand like, how can they make their section, you know, better? And then he had some of the guys come and speak and explain what they were doing, some of the supervisors and managers on the shop floor. And I was like, wow, this was impressive. So love that sharing and learning.   0:27:22.7 JS: Yeah. No, it's great. And I've had wonderful visits where people are so excited about their work that you think, wow. And of course that means they're really, really productive. I mean, they just... They're doing it because they love it and it's... You can't compare with that kind of creativity that you get from that. So I guess that I'd like to talk a little about the competitive advantages here of taking this journey and, you know, that's the whole point. Productivity becomes your competitive advantage. You outproduce other companies with similar resources. And I believe that the way the world is changing right now, that competitive advantage for company B type companies is going to grow as things... And I have four reasons I cite for that.   0:28:21.0 JS: Reason one is flexibility, adaptability, agility, whatever you wanna call it. You know, we're going with manufacturing and services too much more into high mix, low volume type scenarios. So the mass production machinery approach has just become less and less relevant to manufacturing and also with services as well because it's not... It's less a ones size fits all kinda world. That's one very strong reason. The ability to hire talent. You know, we're just starting to see that. You know, people don't wanna work for these corporations that they feel don't have purpose. And couple of manufacturers actually told me, and this is in the US, I don't know how that compares with Thailand, but in the US he said there's a real crisis not just 'cause people maybe don't have jobs, but because people don't have purpose in their work, so people go home depressed, they take drugs and they've done medical studies on this.   0:29:30.3 JS: You know, if you don't have purpose in your work and you're doing something even though you know it's dumb and you're doing it anyway, just, you know, because to please the boss or whatever, that places huge stress on people. And there are actually medical... They've done medical studies on that, people who work in those kinds of jobs, on the negative effects. So anyway, I think getting the best talent, I hear that more and more anyone I talk to, and I think that's gonna be more and more of a factor. There's a whole deglobalization process going on right now. A lot of reshoring here in North America. People, you know, companies really realizing that sort of the fallacy of having these very, very long supply chains. So it's all about now shortening that supply chain, having immediate suppliers that are close.   0:30:23.9 JS: I mean, that's the only way you're gonna get your inventory turns down to 50 or whatever your friend was talking about. Right? And finally on climate change, that's getting tougher and tougher to deal with. And it's not just about governments not acting, but it's going to be scarcity of resources. It's going to be having to run businesses in difficult climate circumstances. It's gonna be government regulation. It's going to be whether people will come and work for companies that aren't making... Doing their bit to combat this. So those four reasons, I think that's a competitive advantage that's going to grow. And I think it's urgent that corporations act, and Dr. Deming warned that there'd be a crisis coming if companies kept running the way they were, and the crisis is here. We've arrived and, you know, the statistics are terrible. Don't have to bore you with those, but, you know, it's a very rough world and we need, obviously governments will have to act, but we need better companies. Now... Sorry, go ahead.   0:31:48.2 AS: I was... Yeah, that's why he entitled this book Out of the Crisis 'cause there was a crisis then, and the fact is there's still, and it's so many things are harder too particularly in the US with reshoring and that type of thing because education has been decimated also in the US so it's very hard to bring back, you know, engineering prowess and things like that, so. Yep.   0:32:14.1 JS: Yeah, for sure. So I... My sort of wrap up comment would be, answer to your question, not really a question, but your title, you talked about boosting Lean with Deming. So, you know, when we chat about this, but you know what, I was thinking about this, what as a person who wrote about Lean initially and then took a much deeper dive into Deming, what does Deming add, from my perspective? And what excites me the most about Dr. Deming is that I think he was less interested in maybe methods and more interested in fundamental truths. I mean, he really, I think put forward what are really fundamental truths about people, about the physical world and about how people in the physical world interact. And these are, like I say, this is not slogans or anything like this, this is science. I mean, these are proven scientific principles and I think those principles underline any method you use. You know, if you're really following that. And I'm not a Deming scholar enough to be able to say that that's what he meant by profound knowledge. But when you use the term profound knowledge, that's what that means to me. It means just a very fundamental knowledge of the way things work.   0:33:49.8 AS: Yeah. Well, it's exciting to think about how we can learn from what you've written about and what you've talked about. So ladies and gentlemen, the book is Productivity Reimagined: Shattering Performance Myths to Achieve Sustainable Growth. And I've really enjoyed our time, Jacob, to go through all the different myths and to hear the way you look at things which is coming from your direction originally, the Lean direction, and then bringing that thinking together with the teachings of Dr. Deming. So I just wanna thank you and give you the last word. If you'd like to wrap up for the listeners and the viewers to say, what's the main message you wanna get, want them to get out of all the... Out of the book and out of all of our discussion? How would you wrap it up?   0:34:45.4 JS: I would wrap it up by saying, let's look for those fundamental truths. You know, let's not look for slogans, let's not look for techniques. Let's look at what's really true about humans, about the physical world, and let's build our future based on that.   0:35:04.2 AS: Well, Jacob, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion right now and the prior discussions about each part of your book and the myths and the like. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey, and you can find Jacob's book, Productivity Reimagined, at jacobstoller.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast
Myth of Tech Omnipotence: Boosting Lean with Deming (Part 6)

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2024 30:35


Many companies strive to automate by using more technology and fewer humans. But does their productivity really improve? Does it keep them agile? In this episode, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz share stories of companies that improve productivity because they focus on processes instead of tech alone. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I continue my conversation with Jacob Stoller, Shingo Prize-winning author of The Lean CEO and Productivity Reimagined, which explores applying Lean and Deming management principles at the enterprise level. The topic for today is myth number five, the Myth of Tech Omnipotence. Jacob, take it away.   0:00:29.8 Jacob Stoller: Great, Andrew. Thanks. Great to be here again. Yeah. Tech omnipotence. Well, it's quite a myth. We sort of worship technology. We have for a long time, and we tend to think it can solve all our problems, and sometimes we get a little too optimistic about it. What I wanna talk about is in the context of companies adopting technology and go through some of the stories about that and how that relates to productivity. Really, the myth of tech omnipotence is kind of like a corollary to the the myth of segmented success. In other words, people have believed that you can take a chunk of a company. Now we'll take Dr. Deming's pyramid, and we take a chunk out of that and say, oh, well, that fits so and so in the org chart, let's automate that.   0:01:28.1 JS: And they don't consider what happens to the rest of the organization. It's just this idea that you can superimpose automation. So this has a long checkered history. And the way technology gets justified in organizations is generally what it's been, is reducing headcount. And I used to work in a tech firm, and we used to do this. We would do these studies, not really a study, but you do a questionnaire and you figure out if we adopt this, if we automate this workflow, let's just say, I don't know, it's accounts payable. So you automate accounts payable and you say, well, you got so many people involved, we think we could cut this by three people or something like that. So that becomes your business case. Now, they had categories in these little questionnaires where you would try to get other benefits from the technology, but they tended to be what they call soft benefits.   0:02:35.4 JS: And you know what that word means. Soft benefits means, well, okay, nice to have, but it's not going to get budget money or it's not gonna get approved. So anyway that's really been the kind of standard way of getting tech projects justified. And that goes through pretty much any industry. So what would happen is people adopt these technologies without looking at the whole system. And guess what? You put the software in, you start to implement it, and you run into problems. Doesn't quite work. Doesn't work the way it was supposed to. And so the tech people tended and still do tend to blame the company. They say, well, they had user problems. Users weren't really adjusting to it. These people are sort of way behind. We're a tech company. We've automated the same process for 50 different companies, we know what's good for them. We have to educate them, but they don't seem to want to be educated. So that was kind of the way it was. And I'll give you an extreme example. I did some freelance work for research firm, and one of the studies I worked on, I'm not making this up, it was called Aligning the Business with IT. So it was trying to get people to smarten up with their business and align it to what the smart people are doing with IT. So that's how extreme that kind of feeling was.   0:04:17.3 AS: As opposed to maybe aligning with the customer or something like that.   0:04:21.1 JS: Well, yeah, wouldn't that be crazy? Or how about aligning IT with the business? Finding out what the business wants. So anyway, that whole way of thinking has had, it's sort of filtered into manufacturing in the same way. And I found this out really researching Productivity Reimagined as I interviewed Ben Armstrong from MIT Industrial Performance Center. And what I learned from him is the whole history of automation and manufacturing in North America. And really, what he told me is that between 1990 and 2010, there were increases in productivity, but those were always from reducing headcount. They never found ways to actually grow the value of the business by using automation. So around 2010 or leading up to 2010, manufacturing started to change, and we started to transition into what they call a high-mix, low-volume type of markets.   0:05:33.3 JS: And I've talked to manufacturers that have said, 10 years ago, I only had to make two or three variations of this part, now I have to make 50 or 60. So you're getting shorter product cycles, larger mix. And the big buzzword now in manufacturing is agility. You've gotta be agile. So there was a study MIT, I think this Performance Center did a study. And they found that when you actually try to grow productivity, and this is really since 2010, you actually lose agility at the same time. You're kind of caught in that situation because you can't... That you lose agility when you let go of people. But that was the only way they could increase productivity. Does that make sense?   0:06:29.1 AS: Yeah. So I'm thinking about that's interesting because agility means being flexible, being able to accommodate. And when you think about the typical automation, it's about repetitive, repetitive, repetitive.   0:06:46.5 JS: Yeah.   0:06:47.3 AS: And so I can kind of get that picture about the agility versus, let's say automation or repetitive processes.   0:06:56.3 JS: Yeah. And I think that people are longing for this golden age. You go from the 1920s to 1960s, and manufacturers made incredible gains in productivity with automation. You put in these huge welding lines where they just weld. You look at the body welding, say in a plant, and it's at lightning speed. There's no question about that. But they basically ran into a plateau with that. And one of the robotics companies told me, he said, we learned decades ago how to automate these mass production processes, but now we're getting into a different kind of age where as somebody put it, we're moving from the industrial mass production age into what they call the process age, where processes are becoming more and more important. So to...   0:07:50.8 AS: And I'm thinking about the automation. I've seen videos on like online about let's say a fulfillment center with all these little robots going around and picking, putting things on them and packaging them, and all of that. So I'm thinking, well, automation has become definitely more maybe, I don't know if the words agile, but it's definitely, it's gone beyond like just automating one little part of the process.   0:08:21.4 JS: Yeah. It's gone away from the let's replace people type scenario. And so what the fastest growing segment right now in robotics is collaborative robots, which can work with people. So to put it very simply, instead of a human replacement, they're becoming tools. But these things are amazing. A worker online on the shop floor can programming these, and they have to be able to because things are changing so fast. So a worker, a welder can actually hold the robotic arm and guide it through a weld and thereby program it so it can learn how to do that weld. So then you can get the robot doing all the dangerous parts. If they're welding something large where they might have to get up on scaffolds or something, they might be able to get the robot to do some of the more dangerous types of positions. So that's when you get the real benefit.   0:09:27.7 AS: Yeah. I would think like in a paint booth, which we had in factories I worked at, now you can seal it off and have a robot in there, and all of a sudden lung problems and other things like that just go away.   0:09:40.8 JS: Interesting. Well, so anyway, we're still in a, I think in a rough spot generally with manufacturing because between 2010 and present day, at least in North America, productivity's gone down. And it's because people haven't been able to... They've depended on those people to keep their agility, but they haven't learned how to add value.   0:10:08.3 AS: Can you discuss that just for a second about productivity going down? That's a little bit of an odd thing because I think most people think that productivity's probably going up. What is the measure you're talking about, and how long and why is that happening?   0:10:23.5 JS: I think it's basically... At least I'd have to look at the study that they have, but it's basically output in proportion to the number of hours. I think that's pretty well accepted. So they're losing ground as the demands for agility are increasing. And their attempts to automate have been, caused problems. You automate and you lose your people, and then you're gonna have a heck of a time getting them back right now because that's really hard in manufacturing. But yeah, I would have to look at the study in detail to understand how they got that number, but I was taking it on faith that this is from Ben Armstrong, who's the director of the Industrial Performance Center.   0:11:11.8 AS: Yeah. You just mentioned something that I was just recently talking with another person about, and that was, one of the downsides of an aging workforce is that you're losing really senior people and you're replacing 'em with people that may not have the skills. Also, US kind of is notorious in America for a declining education. And with education coming down for the last 30 years or so, it's also hard to find, let's say, engineers and people that... There's not a deep market in some of these places where there's need. So that's a real challenge that businesses are facing.   0:11:55.2 JS: It is. Yeah.   0:11:56.3 JS: Yeah. And now what they're doing is they're looking at manufacturing from that standpoint. They're now acknowledging that the scarce resource is the human. And we have to actually build, if we're gonna automate, we have to build those processes around people. And that's... I'm gonna just read you a description here. There's, I think you heard of Technology 4.0, where they talked about putting sensors all over the place and having smart factories and that kind of thing.   0:12:27.7 AS: Yeah.   0:12:28.3 JS: Well, we now have something called Industry 5.0, and I'm just trying to get the wording here 'cause this has been around for a couple years, but it's on the EU website. It says it's "a vision that places the wellbeing of the worker at the center of the production process and uses new technologies to provide prosperity beyond jobs and growth while respecting the production limits of the planet." So they're really trying to center technology around that so you're not doing your sort of environmental and your DEI and all that independently of your production, it's all integrated part of it, which is I think something I'm sure Dr. Deming would have advocated.   0:13:17.8 AS: I'm still kind of fascinated by the productivity, and I just look at here in Asia, productivity is just rising. Education levels are rising. Engineering skills are rising. Competency in certain areas, specialties is just rising. And I oftentimes, I think that one of the things why this... One of the reasons why this is a good discussion that we're having is because in the West, in particular in the US, there's a new challenge. And that is how do you bring business... How do you bring jobs back to the economy when you're facing a very, very different workforce from when, let's say I left Ohio in 1985, roughly. It's a very different workforce nowadays.   0:14:07.1 JS: Well, yeah. And I think a lot of the offshoring arguments were about, well, we'll keep the smart jobs here 'cause we're all well educated and we'll export the low paying, less skilled jobs abroad, and we'll all win. But now, of course, we're finding that people overseas are getting darn well educated, so you can't have a more expensive labor force and have people that maybe aren't even as well educated.   0:14:40.0 AS: Yeah.   0:14:40.2 JS: So it's... Yeah, I think the West is in a very tight spot right now.   0:14:45.3 AS: Yeah. So speaking of automation and technology, I was just typing as you were speaking, and looking at productivity, it says... I was using ChatGPT and that says, US productivity growth average 2.7 annually from 2000 to 2007, but slowed to 1.4% from 2007 to 2019. There was a brief pickup in 2020, and then it's been slow since then. And they talked about this productivity paradox that I think is what you're referencing what Ben is saying.   0:15:21.3 JS: Solow's paradox? Yeah.   0:15:22.6 AS: Yeah. So that's interesting. Yep.   0:15:25.8 JS: Yeah. Solow's paradox, what does it say, that you can see the impact of technology everywhere except in the productivity numbers. I think that's what he said.   0:15:36.8 AS: Yeah, so he said that...   0:15:37.2 JS: He said that by the way in 1987. So anyway, yeah, maybe we're slow learners or something like that. But no, that's really fascinating. But I think that there's a difference between GDP growth and the growth of productivity in manufacturing. I think probably the ones that Ben Armstrong quoted were a little closer to actual manufacturing. But right now, GDP includes financial intermediation, it includes... If you own a home in North America, they include imputed rent, the rent you would have been paying as part of the GDP. So I think there's a bit of inflation, I guess, in the GDP over the years. So I think we have to take that sometimes with a little bit of a grain of salt and look a little more carefully at what the numbers are telling us.   0:16:32.8 AS: Yeah. The main ways that we typically look at it outside of GDP is like non-farm productivity, like non-farm worker, what's the output? And the other one is total factor of productivity. So yeah, GDP can be quite distorted for sure.   0:16:50.4 JS: Yeah, for sure. And anyway, and also just taking GDP per worker can be a very misleading number.   0:17:00.5 AS: Yeah.   0:17:01.3 JS: But anyway, yeah, it's fascinating. But again, the myth is... This myth that technology will solve everything is all over the place. I think with autonomous vehicles, the idea of being able to replace drivers is a just enormous economic cherry, I guess, that everybody wants to pick. You think about it what that would mean if you could... If you bought a car and then you could rent it out as a taxi at night, or what it would do to Uber if they didn't have to have people driving the cars. It's just enormous. But it's been very, very frustrating to get to that point. And when you look at a lot of the forecasts, it's still a long way away. So I think we have to be more conservative about that and talk about more the benefits really of technology and people working together. And I think the automatic driving features they have on cars now are fantastic. You can make a car a lot safer. You can slow down if you're tailgating somebody, it alerts you of just even the simple things that if there's a car to your left passing on the freeway, you get an alert, and that's... This is all really, really good stuff, but I still think that the self-driving part is maybe longer off than people think.   0:18:39.4 AS: Yeah. I think regulators too get panicked and then people want action when there's an accident or something like that. You also mentioned something about the computing power that's required for some of what this is doing, and that's a fascinating topic because it's funny, it's just amazing how much computing power is really going to be required over the next 10, 20 years.   0:19:05.0 JS: Yeah. I think there's a bell curve around some of this stuff, and I'm just gonna talk and I'm gonna jump to regenerative AI, which everybody is talking about. And they're saying, how long before I can have regenerative AI write a document that we could actually be held liable for? It can write documents, but you can't trust it. So they keep trying to improve it, but it's a kind of an exponential problem here where the wider you make your bell curve, the exponentially more power you need to do that. To the point where Microsoft is talking about buying Three Mile Island nuclear plant and rebuilding it to power all this AI stuff. So it's just phenomenal amount of power. I think that's somewhat... I don't know, relying purely on more computer power seems like it might not be a winning strategy.   0:20:13.3 AS: Yeah. It's the regenerative AI and all that's going on is also... I like to say when proponents talk about it and its strengths, which it definitely has strengths, I'm not arguing against that, I use ChatGPT almost every day. And I can say I used to have an editor sit next to me a lot of times and now I don't need that because I can go back and forth. But what I can say is that when a proponent of AI gets accused of murder and they're innocent and they're gonna go before a judge, is that proponent of AI gonna use purely AI to build their defense or would they prefer to have a lawyer who's using AI as a tool. I think I would argue we're far away from the trust level of being able to walk in there and say, I trust AI to get me out of this situation that I've been accused of murder and I'm innocent and it can get me out. There's no way any of the proponents of AI would take on that I would argue.   0:21:23.3 JS: Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I very recently had to write an affidavit and my lawyer was being a little slow on it, so I tried ChatGPT just for the heck of it and I created what I thought was pretty convincing. I gave it the facts and it gave a pretty convincing sounding affidavit, but then the lawyer did it and I saw what she did and it was so much... She had it... It was almost a human touch to it. It almost looked a little less like an affidavit. It was more of a sort of a document that had some meaning to it. That was an eyeopener for me.   0:22:10.8 AS: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.   0:22:13.6 JS: But anyway, yeah, I'm wondering if we could jump back to automation and manufacturing because there's a story I wanted to share with you about some of the followers here of Toyota and, of course, company that's strongly dedicated to Deming's principles as well. And this is a company called Parker Hannifin. And what they do, and this is in the Lean tradition, is they're very conservative about adopting robots or any kind of automation. And they realize, when you bring in robots, you're bringing in software, you have to upgrade the software, you have to maintain it, you gotta train people, there's a risk of obsolescence or whatever, there's all that risk. So you really wanna be very, very careful. So what they do at Parker is you have to, but if you're gonna present a business case for a robot, you gotta be able to show that that's the only way that you can get the improvements you want.   0:23:22.3 JS: And by the way, you gotta have a target. You don't just say I wanna automate this, you say I wanna make this process better, here's how. So I got an example from Stephen Moore who's... He's retired now, but he was the VP I think of operations. So he was certainly the top person in terms of all the Lean initiatives that they did. But he told me and gave me an example. He said that somebody came to them, they had a cell with three people and they wanted to use the robot, one, so that they could reduce from three to two because they needed another person in another area. And secondly, there was a safety problem with that cell with loading and unloading the machines. So they came to Stephen and Stephen said, okay, let's divide our team into two groups. One group can sort out, plan the robotic implementation, how it's going to be done. The other group is gonna see if they can achieve the same objectives without a robot. So by the end of the week, the team that was without the robot team was able to achieve both objectives. They were able to reduce it down to two people and they solved the safety problem over the loading. So just by thinking it out by really going deeply into the process, they were able to do everything that people expected the automation to do.   0:24:58.3 JS: So that is a philosophy, I think is a lesson I think to anybody that's automating. 'Cause remember, we've got lots of companies that are just thinking about replacing people, whereas Parker Hannifin is talking about increasing the value of processes. They're concerned about safety here as well as headcount. And very often, they're looking at processes to improve the quality. So we've gotta look with a broader lens.   0:25:29.1 AS: That's fascinating. And for those people that don't know Parker Hannifin, I had mentioned before that was one of my father's big accounts when he was working in DuPont in the old days.   0:25:37.4 JS: Oh yeah.   0:25:38.4 AS: He was living in Cleveland. We were living... I grew up near Cleveland. But Parker Hannifin is about a $77 billion company. It's got a net profit margin of 14% versus the industry average of about 11%, which is already pretty high. And that's pretty impressive. But what's really impressive about Parker Hannifin is that it is the 11th most... If you look at all companies in America and you ask them which has been consecutively producing dividends since 1957, so about 66 years, Parker Hannifin has been producing an annual dividend. And in fact, they've been increasing that dividend ever so slightly every single year for 66 years. That is a very, very impressive feat. And very few companies are out there. In fact, only 10 companies are better than that, that are listed in the stock market. So there's some fun information from a finance guy.   0:26:35.4 JS: Well, of course, and the fact they've... We talked about some of the productivity challenges in the last while and the fact that they've sustained this. We're talking post 2010 when the productivity has been slowing down, and they've clearly kept things going, which is... We've seen that with Toyota and a lot of companies that follow these principles. It's a way of sustainable growth.   0:27:03.3 AS: Yeah. One of the things about Toyota is it's so fascinating is that they're not sold on automation, they're sold on improving processes. And if automation can help that, that's impressive. That do it, but otherwise, fix the process before you automate.   0:27:21.5 JS: Absolutely. And that's again I think this isolation of operations is a sort of a black box of the corporation where people sit in the boardroom and they just say to the operations person, well, that's your problem, solve it. We don't wanna know about it. So they see things outside the box in a sort of a financial lens. I think we talked about that in myth two.   0:27:45.2 AS: Yeah.   0:27:45.8 JS: Whereas the things that go on with process actually defy financial logic. We're improving quality and productivity and timeline very often too, delivery at the same time.   0:28:03.3 AS: Yeah.   0:28:04.2 JS: 'Cause it's a better process. It's simpler, it's better and it's a powerful concept. But I think a lot of people that are not inside process or not inside operations, aren't aware of that.   0:28:17.8 AS: Yeah. So how would you sum up what you want people to take away from this discussion?   0:28:25.3 JS: Okay. Well, I think there are a few, I guess, bullet points I would emphasise. First of all, there's no question that technology has potential to help companies get significant productivity gains. But you shouldn't see it as a technology-only solution, I think again like we were saying, you have to look at it as a way of improving processes and that's where the power of it really is. I think it shouldn't be about replacing people, but it should be combining the strengths of people and the strengths of technology. I think that's where a lot of the high potential is right now. But that means you've got to know how to optimize your process. And that's what Dr. Deming, what the Lean folks all work very hard on. And I kind of think this is a time when companies maybe need to think more seriously about that. And finally, last but not least, I think one of the wonderful things about technology is you can use it to remove the dull, dangerous aspects of work and you can make the jobs more, you know, safer and more human, I guess, more friendly for human workers by using technology. So I think that's a big hope there.   0:29:55.5 AS: Well, that's a great discussion of myth number five, The Myth of Tech Omnipotence. Jacob, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find Jacob's book Productivity Reimagined at jacobstoller.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming and I hope you're living it right now. "People are entitled to joy in work."

Lean Blog Interviews
Bruce Hamilton and the Northeast Lean Conference, Toast Kaizen, and More

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2024 16:13


My guest for this bonus episode of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Bruce Hamilton, who is joining me on the show for the first time. Bruce is a renowned figure in the Lean world, serving as the President of GBMP Consulting Group and Director Emeritus for the Shingo Institute. As a senior examiner and certified workshop facilitator for the Shingo Prize, Bruce brings a wealth of knowledge and experience. He is also a past recipient of the Shingo Prize in both business and academic categories and has been inducted into both the Shingo Academy and the AME Manufacturing Hall of Fame. During our conversation, Bruce reflects on two major milestones: the 25th anniversary of the now-classic "Toast Kaizen" video and the 20th year of GBMP's Northeast Lean Conference. He shares the humble beginnings of "Toast Kaizen," filmed in his kitchen with the help of his two-month-old son, and its unexpected success. We also discuss the evolution of the Northeast Lean Conference, from its modest start to an event that now attracts Lean thinkers from across the country. Bruce talks about the upcoming conference theme, “Leveraging Lean to Thrive,” and how Lean principles can help organizations overcome uncertainty, especially in today's challenging times. The podcast is brought to you by Stiles Associates, the premier executive search firm specializing in the placement of Lean Transformation executives. With a track record of success spanning over 30 years, it's been the trusted partner for the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare sectors. Learn more. This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast
Myth of Sticks and Carrots: Boosting Lean with Deming (Part 5)

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2024 39:04


Traditional management uses "carrots," like bonuses, and "sticks", like Performance Improvement Plans, to motivate employees. But are humans really built that way? In this episode, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz dive into the myth surrounding that approach and talk about what actually motivates people at work. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.7 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Jacob Stoller, Shingo-Prize winning author of The Lean CEO and Productivity Reimagined, which explores applying Lean and Deming management principles at the enterprise level. The topic for today is myth number four, the myth of sticks and carrots. Jacob, take it away.   0:00:46.2 JS: Thank you, Andrew, and great to continue our conversation. Yeah, it is widely believed that people are motivated by threats and rewards. And to demonstrate that, all you have to do is go into an HR department and look at the job descriptions and the reward programs. And it's all assumes that people are motivated by externalities, right? And that goes back, actually, it's a very, very old way of looking at the world, that there's a term, it's a bit of Latin here, homo economicus. And it's the idea that humans are sort of goal seeking creatures. They seek what's better for them, and it's all material. They'll seek their material gain, and they will behave in very predictable ways, according to that. So you can set up external motivators, mainly money, and you can regulate the way people will behave.   0:01:38.2 JS: So that's the assumption that many businesses are built on. But science has proven that that's not the way human humans work. There've been a number... And starting really in the 1950s, a number of scientists have sort of poked serious holes in that thinking. One of them is Edward Deci, who talked about motivation and did a number of experiments to see that, to find out that people, you know, their motive for doing tasks really kind of transcends rewards. Often they'll do something, for the satisfaction of doing it, in spite of the rewards being greater. We have Frederick Herzberg who developed something called Hygiene Theory. And that's really that... He determined in an organization that money can't actually be a positive motivator. It can't motivate positive behavior, but lack of money can motivate negative behavior.   0:02:49.6 JS: So, you know, and a number of experiments to support that. And then we have, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, hard to pronounce, who talks about joy at work and really did experiments and kind of proved that joy at work isn't just some kind of fancy idea that somebody had. But it's actually a scientifically proven principle. Whereas when people have joy at work and they're fully engaged in their work, they do much higher quality work. So that's kind of the background really here. So what we want, when we manage, is we want people to be intrinsically motivated so that they do their best work. And Deming principles are very, very, I think representative of that. I think Dr. Deming understood that people are motivated when they feel a part of something, when they contribute, when they feel that their team members around them are supporting them. And so that's what we try to do. And Lean eorld tries to do that, and we try to do that with Deming principles.   0:04:06.8 AS: You know, when I start off my discussion on this with students and people that I teach in seminars and the like, I always ask them, you know, which, do you believe in, a carrot or a stick? Do you think more people are motivated by rewards or punishments? And it's a great...   0:04:18.1 Jacob Stoller: Oh, okay.   0:04:24.1 AS: Way to kick off a conversation. But, you know, obviously we're gonna get some people that say, I want people to be feeling, you know, positive rewards and feel positive. And then you have the other people that... What I invariably find is that people who are running large companies with lots of employees, it's sticks. Yes, because...   0:04:40.4 JS: Interesting.   0:04:41.8 AS: It's overwhelming. And then when I think about where it's easiest to do joy in work, and where it's easiest to get the intrinsic motivation is, you know, smaller companies where everybody's close and they're really working together. And that's a dilemma that I never really have had a great reconciling of, but I'm interested to learn more about it from the direction that you're coming. So continue on. But that's just something I have in my mind when heard you talk about it.   0:05:13.1 JS: It's tough to do with a big company, but I wanna tell you a big company story. And actually I'm gonna read, a page or two of the book just because it's, I don't want to, it's a complicated story and I wanna make sure you get all the...   0:05:32.5 AS: Well, you've it written so well. So might as well do that.   0:05:36.1 JS: Well, like, gosh, let's hope so. Let's hope so. But, anyway, this is actually by coincidence. I just, what appeared, this morning on their podcast, so, of this company called Barry-Wehmiller. So, but the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller is a gentleman named Bob Chapman. And he's become quite well known in the Lean world and outside of the Lean world because as a pioneer of what we could call human-centric leadership. So he believes in treating people in the company like family members. But he didn't start out that way. He started with a very traditional background. He took over his father's business and he had a typical MBA background with accounting. And so he grew that company in a traditional way. You know, it started, as one company, and it started really by acquisition.   0:06:25.5 JS: He got very, very good at finding undervalued companies and developing them. So the company grew and it became a sort of a multinational, diversified manufacturer of various kinds of machinery. And so he was a huge success. I mean, he was written up in Harvard Business Review, all this kind of stuff, but he had a feeling, he was very much a family man too, and he had a feeling that something wasn't quite right in the companies that he was running. And he's a... Bob is a very... He watches people, he's very sensitive about body language. And he told me of a time he was in the cafeteria of a company, and it was sort of basketball season, you know, March Madness. That's when the university teams, you know, have their finals and all that, and everybody's betting on them, you know, it's a big deal.   0:07:21.9 JS: So he remembers being in there, and the people in the cafeteria all just having a great time and watching them chatter. And then, he watched the... When the clock sort of moved, so it's a few minutes to having to go back to work, he said the body language changed, all of a sudden they just weren't that happy. You know, it just, all the joy kind of drained out of them. And then they went off to their jobs. And Bob said, you know, this is wrong. You know, that it shouldn't be this way. And he was a family man. He said, I wouldn't want my children who I care about to be working in this kind of environment. So how can we care for the people and how can we actually make that work? So here's what I'm gonna start to read, because here's where it gets complicated.   0:08:08.6 JS: "Chapman vowed to change how people were led at Barry-Wehmiller. His business background, however, didn't provide any help for this. 'When I was in business school, I was never taught to care,' he said. 'It was about creating economic value. It was all business models, market cap, market share. I don't remember in my undergraduate in accounting or my graduate school ever learning to care or inspire the people I had the privilege to lead. And I never read, never was told, never heard that the way I would run Barry-Wehmiller would impact the way people go home and treat their families and their health. But the biggest thing we've learned is that the way we learn impacts the way people live.' Working with a group of team members from across the organization, he developed a set of principles called the Guiding Principles of Leadership, or GPL, which put caring for people as front and center to the job for all leaders in the company.   0:09:05.2 JS: "But the question remained, how do we organize the work in a way that gives workers the experience of working in a caring environment? It happened that Barry-Wehmiller had recently acquired a Baltimore based manufacturer of corrugated paper machines called MarquipWardUnited the company had implemented a number of Lean tools and practices under the leadership of Jerry Solomon, who was also the author of several books on Lean accounting. In Chapman's first meeting with Solomon, he introduced him to the Guiding Principles of Leadership and Solomon immediately saw a connection with the challenges companies face when trying to create a Lean culture. Most companies practicing Lean, he noted, never get to the culture piece. The same concern that caused the Shingo Institute to revise its model in 2008." And by the way, I have to interject here. That was covered in a previous chapter, how Shingo Institute found that they had left out the people and the caring part.   0:10:14.4 JS: And that had caused a lot of companies that had adopted Shingo principles to actually, and had won Shingo prizes to actually fall off the ladder, so to speak. But that's another story. Anyway, "Solomon," Jerry Solomon, this is the, from MarquipWardUnited "felt that what the company needed was what he called a delivery mechanism to integrate the Guiding Principles of Leadership with the company's day-to-Day operations. How, for example, does a supervisor in the shop floor interact with the people doing the work? Solomon felt that Lean and GPL were an ideal fit. Chapman was skeptical, though, 'cause he'd heard that Lean is purely about reducing waste and increasing profits, but not about leading people ... passed.   0:11:06.2 JS: And the group that was working on it, this company in Green Bay, actually was ready to report on some of their results. So they invited Bob Chapman and Jerry to come, to fly in to see the report. So what they got was a sort of a typical consultant's report. They said, well, we've implemented this thing and we've got, we've shortened the lead time, we've reduced the defects, whatever. And Chapman's reaction was actually different than what you would expect. He was very, very upset. 'Cause he said, this is supposed to be about people and Guiding Principles of Leadership. That's what you told me Lean was about. But here all I hear is a bunch of numbers. So he was quite upset. He left the room, actually. And they sort of calmed him down, and they said, Bob, please give us another chance.   0:12:03.6 JS: And it so happened that, the next morning there was going to be a report out from people that were actually on the team that had made the improvements. So Bob says, okay, I'll give you another chance, but I want the people that were actually working on that project to come and report to the presidents. So, an incredible setup. You know, you can imagine, you have these people 7 o'clock in the morning. Well, that's not hard for you to imagine, with the hours you keep. But anyway, 7 in the morning, you have all the principals, presidents of these companies, and you have, a couple of, people in the team and a guy who's never presented to a group like that, getting up in front of a whole group of CEOs. So he had some notes, and he went through his presentation, which was very sort of, you know, what you would expect.   0:12:54.2 JS: It was, yeah, we've got the, pretty much what the consultants had said the day before, right? Yeah. We cut the lead time. We did this. And, Bob listened patiently. He said he listened for about 10 minutes, and then he says, and he says, I don't know where this came from. He stood up and said, Steve, that's the name of the guy presenting. How did this change your life? And there was a silence. And you imagine, right? All the CEOs and or the presidents. And then, and this guy who has never presented to a group like that. And Steve just sort of blurted out, my wife is talking to me more. And Bob said, help me, Steve. I don't understand. Please, please explain this. And Steve then went ahead and told, what Bob said was one of the most moving stories he'd ever heard, you know, and what Steve said is, well, Bob, you know how it is.   0:13:53.9 JS: You go to work and, you know, you punch in your clock. And then they give you some things to do. They give you a list of things to do, but they don't give you any support or anything, or they don't give you the tools you need, but you sort of figure it out. You know, you get through the day and you get nine out of 10 things, right? But then maybe that 10th thing you'll run into some problem. He said, and immediately what they do, they never thank you for the things you did right. They jump on you for the problem you have, that you confronted. They tell you, you didn't do things right. And then they complain about your salary and how they have to pay overtime and all these kinds of things.   0:14:41.6 JS: And he said, you know, at the end of the day, I wasn't feeling too good about myself. And I'd go home and I think it was rubbing off on me. I wasn't being very nice to my wife and she wasn't talking to me. But he said, now with this program we have, the Guiding Principles of Leadership with Lean, people, I'm part of something. I'm part of a team. We've worked on some things and I can see the results. And when I ask questions, these engineers are answering my questions. And when I say things, they listen to me. And, you know, we've got the satisfaction of this project where we see the flow now really working out in this area. So I go home and I'm feeling better about myself. And I think I'm nicer to my wife and she's talking to me. And at that point, Bob Chapman turned to Jerry Solomon and he said, we have a new metric for Lean's success. It's going to be the reduction of the divorce rate in America.   0:15:41.7 JS: So that's, I think, very, very central. That story to everything we're talking about here with intrinsic motivation. Because it's not about money. It's, you know, you've gotta pay people decently and then they have to be able to support their families. But it's about respect. It's about seeing yourself accomplish things. And this isn't just a frill, this is a basic human need. I think Dr. Deming recognized that. And he has a wonderful diagram in The New Economics where he talks about, he calls it Forces of Destruction. You know that diagram?   0:16:23.1 AS: Yeah.   0:16:27.5 JS: Yeah. It's the... How the school system and then the job environments just basically wear a person down, wear down their will and their enthusiasm. And, you know what, another CEO pointed out to me that, very interestingly, he said, we have a crisis in this country because people don't have purpose in their work. So they go from job to job when they don't like their job. It's, he said, it's like changing an app. Something goes wrong, they change it, but they got no purpose in their work.   0:17:03.3 JS: And this company, I should I call them out, 'cause he, mention his name is Mark Borsari. And it's a company that makes wire brushes in Massachusetts. But they do, you know... He said, you really have to find the purpose in the interactions of people. It's in the people and it's in the processes. You don't get people excited about wire brushes. You get people excited about being part of a work environment where your opinion is respected and where you can make improvements. So, he said, that's what people need in the workplace right now. And he said, the result is that people, you know, we have people just depressed and upset and, you know, it's a crisis that's perhaps underestimated, but really needs to be addressed. So that's why I feel maybe so passionate about this sticks and carrots myth, because I see how destructive it is to human beings. And I've experienced some of that myself in, you know, my early days in corporate life where you're kind of blamed and evaluated for things that often you have no control over. And it's, you know, you look at something like the Red Bead Game. There are people that actually live that.   0:18:31.0 AS: Just to highlight for the listeners and the viewers, the book that Bob Chapman wrote is called Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, very highly rated on Amazon. And it looks like it's also in audible form, which would be a fun one. And you also mentioned about Jerry Solomon, his book, Who's Counting is another one on the topic.   0:18:32.5 AS: But you know, I was thinking about this for a moment. And I was thinking, you know, I was kind of inoculated to this, I was vaccinated against negative thinking by two things that happened to me when I was young. The first one is, you know, I went into rehab as as a young guy with drug addiction. And I came out of that when I was almost 18. And from that point till today, I've been drug free, alcohol free. And so I had to kind of face all the demons that I had, you know, accumulated at that time, but I left it with a really positive outlook on life.   0:19:29.7 AS: Like I wanted happiness.   0:19:29.8 JS: Interesting.   0:19:29.9 AS: I wanted serenity. And then and then I went to work... I went studied, enjoyed that, I went to work for Pepsi, I really enjoyed it. And then I met Dr. Deming when I was, you know, 24. And and he told me, you know, we should have joy in work. And from that moment on, it's like, that's what I wanted in life. And so I never, I never got caught up in this idea when I worked at Big Bank, you know, Citibank and other places, I just never, nobody could ever convince me that, you know, I should be unhappy with what I'm doing.   0:20:05.5 AS: Like, I really, really enjoyed it. And then I was just thinking about how painful it is, if you haven't been inoculated from the beginning, to have to go through this, and then you end up with, you know, it's it's 9 to 5, it's painful work, it's called work for a reason, it's hard, you know. And I think that before I come to the next questions, you know, about the question we always get on the topic of carrots and sticks, what do we do instead?   0:20:30.6 AS: Before I talk about that, I think I really wanna highlight that what's important is getting your thinking right about this. Whether it's the thinking about I wanna treat people like a family, I want people to enjoy work, I want work to be a source of pride, I want people to wanna work here. You know, if you can get those thoughts right, the solutions to the carrots and sticks, and how do we evaluate and all of those questions, you know, can kind of, they wither away to some extent. What are your thoughts on that?   0:21:02.4 JS: Well, I think Jerry Solomon said it very well, actually. He said, you need a delivery mechanism. And Lean provided that, you know, it has a bunch of tools and organizing principles. So does the Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, right, and the various frameworks that Dr. Deming put together. So that provides that kind of framework. It's not easy to do. I think one of the big hurdles, and this is kind of central to my book is that you're dealing with a lot of unlearning. And they say that it's harder to unlearn something than it is to learn new skills. So we really can't afford to underestimate that.   0:21:51.1 JS: And I think when we have managers and leaders facing massive unlearning challenges, I think what's needed is compassion, you know, we shouldn't be putting them down for applying what they learned, we should be understanding about the changes. And I think Dr. Deming, you know, from the stories I've heard was very good about that.   0:22:00.0 AS: Well, he had something he would say, which was kind of one of his methods of compassions, but I remember him saying, how could they know? How could they know, you know, like, they were brought up in this system, as you've just said, and so, but it's based upon the carrot and sticks and all of these different things. But I'm curious, you know, which I think we at some point we'll get to in our discussion is the, there's listeners and viewers out there. It's like, okay, Jacob, totally agree with you. Andrew, totally agree with you. I want people to have joy in work. But you know, I'm constrained by, you know, the performance appraisals that I got to do.   0:23:07.3 AS: I'm constrained by the punishments and rewards that my company does. And or a leader of a company says, if I let these things go, we're gonna fall apart. How do you respond to that?   0:23:11.6 JS: Well, gosh, I mean, I think you have to just look at the case studies of people that have let that go. And that's why I emphasize I one of the points I emphasize in the book with advice for companies moving forward is a very first step before you do anything is go visit companies that have been successful. You know, go visit Bama Foods, where they have a great culture. Go watch how people interact with people. Go to some of the great Lean companies. All these companies understand that the best gift they can give their employees is to allow them to share what they've learned with other people. It's a great motivator for people. So it's a real win win. So I think it begins with that you've got to see it first. And then you can start to assess where you stand.   0:24:13.6 JS: But we're talking about a transformation here, as Dr. Deming said. We're not talking about implementing a few tricks that we can superimpose on our management system. You've got to manage it completely differently to actually get this kind of intrinsic motivation to be a driving force in your workplace.   0:24:19.2 AS: It just made me think that I wanna come up with the five happiest companies in Bangkok and do a tour and take my students out and my teams out and my company managers out and let's go, you know, see how they're turning on intrinsic motivation, you know. And one thing about Thailand that's interesting is that what people want from work is very different than in the West.   0:24:50.1 JS: Right.   0:24:51.2 AS: And what people want from work is good relationships, harmony.   0:24:57.6 JS: Really.   0:24:57.8 AS: They want connection. They want meaning, more meaning from their work than the typical Western.   0:25:05.8 JS: Isn't that interesting? Interesting.   0:25:05.9 AS: And so when I see and I rail sometimes on to my students about, you know, be very careful about bringing this KPI disease into Thailand, where all of a sudden, you're setting up the Thai people to go against each other, which takes away from what is a core strength is their desire and ability to get along.   0:25:33.3 JS: Isn't that interesting? Wow, so they got a head start.   0:25:42.5 AS: Yeah. My first move to Thailand in 1992, I taught an MBA class. And the first thing I did is what was done with me in my MBA class is say, all right, here's a case study, break into groups, and then, you know, and then they came back and, and then after getting to know them in my first semester that I taught, now I've been teaching for 32 years in Thailand. The first lesson I learned is Thais do not need group work. They need individual work. And because they need to kind of flex that muscle.   0:26:08.8 AS: And then I thought, well, why are we do so much group work in America? Well, because it's Americans are trained and taught from the beginning to think independently, have their own idea, watch out for themselves. And they need help in, let's say, MBA classes to work together.   0:26:26.8 JS: Isn't that interesting?   0:26:26.9 AS: And so what I just saw was a very different dynamic.   0:26:30.3 JS: Wow.   0:26:30.9 AS: And it helped me also to understand that we... The good side of the American, let's say, I know, American worker, I know Americans, just 'cause that's where I grew up. But the good side of that is that there is a lot of independent thinking, they can come up with the good systems and all of that.   0:26:47.3 JS: Sure.   0:26:48.9 AS: But the bad side is that they're oftentimes fired up to be in competition with each other. And KPIs just ignite that fire that just...   0:26:58.2 JS: They do.   0:26:58.3 AS: Really causes, you know, a lot of damage.   0:27:00.5 JS: Well, I got to ask you something, then, do you think that that East versus West kind of mindset is why Dr. Deming's ideas were taken up in Japan when they had been kind of ignored in the US?   0:27:16.9 AS: Yeah, I mean, I definitely I mean, Japan is like an extreme example of Asia and trying to have harmony and everybody, the bigger mission is the company, the bigger mission is the community, the bigger mission is the country. I would say that Japan is like the ultimate in that. Thailand is less so there's more independence and people don't have to be completely allegiant to those things. But still, that desire to be happy at work is there, you know, I think it's there more, it's more innate, for some reason in Thailand, than I saw it in America.   0:27:55.8 AS: And I always explain that, when I worked in America, I think I never went out on a weekend with my colleagues.   0:28:04.5 JS: Really. Interesting.   0:28:05.3 AS: And in Thailand is a very common thing to arrange activities together with your workmates, and go bowling and do this and do that. And I thought, I saw that everywhere. And I was pretty, you know, that just was fascinating to me. So I really, you know, this discussion is all about opening up people's minds, that carrots and sticks are not the only way. And as you said, it's a transformation, it takes time, you got to think about it, you got to reconcile it.   0:28:37.8 JS: Well, and that brings up another really important point, Andrew. And that is that teamwork, team productivity really makes the difference in a company. And when you think about it, you've got a whole bunch of individuals that productivity is very often not gonna add up for reasons, you know, that we've already talked about, you know, it's not part of the system. So team productivity becomes really, really essential. But team productivity, and Kelly Allen actually pointed this out really well to me. And I mean, I'm gonna just look in my notes here to get his words exactly, 'cause he said it so well.   0:29:21.0 JS: Let's see here. And here's Kelly, "a useful operational definition of a team is the collaborative and coordinated efforts of people working together in an atmosphere of voluntary trust." So you got to build that. And, you know, that's kind of tough to do in a lot of North American companies.   0:29:48.5 AS: Yeah. It's such a great point. And I think I've recently been teaching a corporate strategy. And I talk about Michael Porter and all the he's taught about strategy. But one of the things that he mentions towards the end of his books is the idea of fit. And he's talking about how do the pieces fit together in the company. And everybody knows that feeling when the when the process before you or the process after you in your company is being run by somebody that you have a good fit with. It's like everything comes together. And so I think what I realize now is that the power of that coordination that Kelly Allen's talking about is all about how do we get these pieces fit together, working together, coordinating together. That's the magic.   0:30:37.3 AS: Interesting. But Porter, I mean, he talked about a lot of I think, you know, it's been a long time since I've looked at his books, but a lot of his stuff was either or, right? I mean, you know, you decide, am I gonna be a price leader or am I gonna be a quality leader? And I think a lot of what he did disregarded, you know, Deming's Chain Reaction, you know, where he where you actually invest in both. So I mean, that's got a problem and with strategy people in general. Now, I know you've taught strategy. So maybe you're gonna take me apart on this one. But it seems to me that the strategy folks are really missing something.   0:31:29.1 AS: Well, I think most people are missing the type of stuff that Dr. Deming's talking about, but I use an example of McDonald's and Starbucks.   0:31:35.5 JS: Okay.   0:31:37.3 AS: You know, one is a low cost leader. And one is a premium, you know, differentiated, you know, product and service. And we all know which one's which. So which one leads to a sustainable competitive advantage? Which one is better? I always talk to my students. And I say, the fact is, is that both of them have led to a competitive advantage. So part of what, you know, I would say, when I think about corporate strategy, from my perspective, is figure out the direction that fits your DNA, and then pursue that, whether that's about making, you know, I like to tell my students that think of a company run by an engineer, who may be focused on the processes and all that, who may create a very efficient operation, versus a business, let's say run by a marketing or sales person who has a much better contacting and messaging to the customer. Those two business owners should be developing their corporate strategy around their DNA, you know, and if they do that right, that, in theory, should lead to some competitive advantage.   0:31:58.9 AS: And to me, competitive advantage is how do we make sure that our company creates a level of profitability that is higher than the industry average over a sustained period of time. If we think we're doing a corporate strategy that works, and we're making a very low amount of profitability, I think that there's enough reason to argue that that's probably not achieving a competitive advantage.   0:32:37.1 JS: Yeah. And I think we have to put the word sustainable competitive advantage. But along the McDonald's, Starbucks, though, I have a very interesting twist. And I think this was done locally in Canada. But somebody did a blind test of coffees from various outlets to see what rated the highest. And I have to tell you that McDonald's coffee rated very high, higher than Starbucks. So...   0:33:47.1 AS: But it's definitely the case in Bangkok that McDonald's coffee is fantastic.   0:33:50.8 JS: Really.   0:33:51.8 AS: I happen to know very much about that. But I highly recommend that.   0:33:55.7 JS: Yeah. Well, I think we're, you know, we are focusing in this book, essentially on, you know, productivity. Now, marketing, marketing strategy and stuff like that is yeah, I'll acknowledge that. Sure. And that's maybe, you know, I think what Michael Porter was talking about it's very true in terms of marketing. But in terms of quality, output of quality, I think that's where the Deming magic and the Lean magic all come into play.   0:34:12.2 AS: Yeah, I mean, it took me a long time to figure out that what Dr. Deming saying is, if we are continually improving our products and service and our quality, we're driving down costs, and we're making people happier, and we're bringing more value to the market. How... Shall we wrap this up? And how would you summarize what you want people to take away from this?   0:34:26.1 JS: I would say that intrinsic motivation is underestimated in workplaces, it's misunderstood. It's not reflected in the way most companies are organized or their strategies. So it's a big learning curve for companies to create the kind of environment where intrinsic motivation is connected with the workplace. But I think it's worthwhile, it's a very, very important thing. And we have a lot of unhappiness in society. And a lot of it can be traced to a lack of that. So, you know, I hope that more companies will see the importance of this.   0:35:16.6 AS: You know, it's my, my friend who never... He was helping me when I was writing my book, Transform your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 points.   0:36:02.2 JS: That's a great book.   0:36:02.7 AS: And he was editing a book.   0:36:02.8 JS: I love that book, by the way.   0:36:04.3 AS: Thank you. I was trying to make it as simple as possible for the 14 points. But my friend, as he was helping me edit it, he turned to me after many hours of working together over many weeks, he said to me, I figured it out. Dr. Deming is a humanist, he cares about people. And that was just so funny, because he thought going into it, it's all gonna be about, you know, charts and graphs and statistics. And I think that's, you know, that's the key, it's the mindset. I wanna wrap up by by just going through some of Dr. Deming's 14 points that apply to what we're talking about. And, you know...   0:36:39.2 JS: Great.   0:36:39.6 AS: The question really is, you know, when my friend said that Dr. Deming was a humanist, it's 'cause as he started working on the 14 points with me, he started to realize, just listen to these points. Here's point number eight, drive out fear. Yeah, that's critical to having a joyful workplace. Number nine, break down barriers between department. That's the source of so much trouble for people at work is that they're working in silos. Number 10, eliminate slogans and targets and exhortations. Stop focusing on pushing the workers constantly. Figure out how to improve the system.   0:37:10.2 AS: Number 11, eliminate work standards or quotas, eliminate management by objective, management by numbers, substitute leadership. And number 12, remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of the right to pride of workmanship. Remove barriers that rob people in management and engineering of their right of pride of workmanship. My goodness, from eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, all focused on this concept of intrinsic motivation. And to me, that thinking, changing that thinking is what's so critical. Anything you would add as we wrap up?   0:37:25.0 JS: Yeah, I will add one thing to that. And this is very strongly in the book. That is why the first step if you're gonna transform your company is making everybody feel safe. That's got to be the first step, even before you start training them with methods and things like that. You have to build safety, then you can build trust.   0:37:47.2 AS: Fantastic. Well, Jacob, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. So much happening there. You can find Jacob's book, Productivity Reimagined at jacobstoller.com. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming that I just never stop talking about. And today we talked about it a lot. And that is, "People are entitled to joy in work."  

Lean Blog Interviews
Jacob Stoller on Productivity Reimagined and Lean's Role in Growth

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2024 47:52


My guest for Episode #517 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Jacob Stoller, a journalist, speaker, facilitator, and Shingo-Prize-winning author of The Lean CEO. We talked about that in Episode 221. Episode page with video, transcript, and more His latest book, Productivity Reimagined: Shattering Performance Myths to Achieve Sustainable Growth, was just released by Wiley on October 8th, 2024.  Jacob has published hundreds of articles on technology and business management methods, and is known for demystifying complex topics for general business audiences. Jacob has delivered a variety of keynote speeches and learning events workshops in Canada, Europe, and the US, and authored reports, created training materials, and strategic corporate documents for clients such as Microsoft, Dell Computer, Staples, Pitney Bowes, International Data Corporation (IDC), CMA Canada, and the Conference Board of Canada. In this episode, the discussion focuses on debunking common myths about productivity and exploring how sustainable growth can be achieved by improving operational efficiency without sacrificing quality. Jacob emphasizes the importance of lean thinking and continuous improvement, noting that productivity gains should come from enhancing processes, not just relying on technology or financial measures. We also highlight the critical role of people and culture in driving lasting improvements and discuss how true productivity involves creating more value with the same or fewer resources, aligning with lean principles. Questions, Notes, and Highlights: What have you been up to since The Lean CEO? If you were to do a new edition of The Lean CEO, what would you add? How do you define productivity? What are productivity myths, and how are they affecting organizations? What are some examples of productivity gaps you've observed in industries like manufacturing? What misconceptions exist about improving productivity with lean methodologies? How important is the people side of lean, and how does it impact productivity? What strategies have you found most effective for real employee engagement? What are the pitfalls or misconceptions around leveraging technology for productivity gains? Can you share examples of companies successfully using lean thinking to improve productivity? What are some success stories or inspiring examples of organizations improving productivity outside traditional lean environments? Key Topics: Productivity myths and misconceptions The relationship between productivity, quality, and resource efficiency The importance of the people-first approach in lean Challenges in sustaining lean improvements The role of technology and automation in productivity Leadership's role in driving cultural change and continuous improvement The evolving landscape of productivity in various sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, and sustainability. The podcast is brought to you by Stiles Associates, the premier executive search firm specializing in the placement of Lean Transformation executives. With a track record of success spanning over 30 years, it's been the trusted partner for the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare sectors. Learn more. This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast
Top-Down Knowledge Myth: Boosting Lean with Deming (Part 4)

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2024 20:41


In this episode, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz discuss the myth that managers need to know everything in order to manage. What happens when you ask non-managers for feedback? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Jacob Stoller, a Shingo-Prize-winning author of The Lean CEO and also Productivity Reimagined, which explores how to apply the Lean and Deming management style at the enterprise level. The topic for today is Myth Three: The Top-down Knowledge Myth. Jacob, take it away.   0:00:31.2 Jacob Stoller: Okay. Great to be here again, Andrew. And, yeah, the myth we're gonna talk about is this notion that managers can make their workers and their people more productive by telling them exactly what to do. And that's surprisingly prevalent in the workplace. But I wanna start out by just saying how this relates to the other myths that we were talking about, 'cause we started with this, what Dr. Deming calls the "pyramid," the org-structure type or...   0:01:08.9 AS: Organizational chart.   0:01:09.9 JS: Paradigm idea, yeah, the organizational structure that says that everything is a independent component, right? You got your different departments, they all work independently, we optimize each, and we optimize the whole, right? So, from that, it naturally follows. And we did Myth Number Two that we can follow financial logic, 'cause financial logic fits nicely into that structure. And of course, we saw last time that all the shortcomings and problems you get when you follow that kind of thinking. So, the third myth is we get to top-down knowledge. And again, that follows from the pyramid structure. If it were true that interdependent components weren't interdependent, that everything could act independently, it would certainly follow that you could have knowledge about those components taught in school and that it would all make sense. I think it's the interdependence that really shoots that whole thing down of top-down knowledge. So... Sorry. Yeah.   0:02:16.3 AS: Go ahead.   0:02:18.8 JS: I wanted to start with a bit of a story just to illustrate how prevalent this is. I was doing a workshop with a small excavation company, and we were looking at ways to make them more effective and serve more customers, grow more effectively, and stuff like that. I did an exercise with them, and we looked at where maybe the waste was taking place the most. And they were driving trucks around a lot. This was a rural area, so there was a lot of mileage that was perhaps being wasted. So, we did an exercise with tracking value and non-value mileage. If you're going to a customer, that's adding value. But if you take a detour to have lunch or something, well, that doesn't add value to the customer, right?   0:03:08.8 JS: So, we were exploring those things, and that exercise worked out really well. They made some big changes, and it actually really helped the company grow. They started posting little notes in the trucks talking about, "Remember, value versus non-value." They were tracking it. And it was really interesting. But the success was largely due to one participant. And I'm sure you've seen this, Andrew, in workshops where somebody really seems to get it. And he had all these ideas, a very, very thoughtful guy, and we were just writing down his suggestions. He had a lot to do with that. But after the workshop, I sat down with him when we were chatting, and he told me that he'd been in the construction business for 15 years, and nobody had ever asked him for his opinion about how work was done. Never.   0:04:04.7 AS: Incredible.   0:04:07.1 JS: I was just stunned by that. This guy was so good. [laughter] When you think about that, it's pretty typical. And I think it's really, people are, managers are taught that it's their job to tell people what to do. And often that puts them in a tough spot. Often they have to be in a role where maybe that they're not that comfortable, because maybe they know deep down inside that there's a lot of knowledge out there that they're not aware of.   0:04:41.3 AS: Yeah, it's interesting. It reminds me when I was a first time supervisor at Pepsi, and I worked in the Torrance factory in Los Angeles, in Torrance, California, and then I worked in the Buena Park factory. And at Buena Park, I was given control of the warehouse. In both cases, I was a warehouse supervisor.   0:05:02.9 JS: Right.   0:05:03.1 AS: And I remember I worked with the union workers who were all moving the product all day long. And I just constantly focused on improvement and that type of thing, and talking to them, and trying to figure out how can we do this better, faster, cheaper and with less injury and all of that. And when I left, it was two years, it was maybe a year and a half that I was at that facility. And one of the guys that had been there, he said... He came up to me, he said, "25 years I've been here, and nobody really listened to us the way you did."   0:05:41.0 JS: Oh, wow. Well, that's a hint.   0:05:41.8 AS: And it just made me realize, "How can it be?" Now, I know Pepsi was taking first-time graduates out of school and putting them in this job, and... I don't know. But I just was... I was baffled by that. So, at first blush you would think you'd never hear that. People are always talking, but people aren't always talking. That's not that common.   0:06:03.1 JS: Yeah, for sure. And it's so really deeply entrenched in the system that it's very, very hard to break. One of them, I talked to a couple of companies that actually went through transformations, and this was with Lean, where they transformed their managers as a lot of Lean companies do. And I know Deming companies do this as well, where they changed their role from being someone that tells people what to do, to somebody who actually is a coach and an enabler, and draws people out and uses their knowledge and encourages them to solve their own problems, whether it's PDSA or whatever methods they support. And both of these companies lost half their management team through that transition. But both of the leaders admitted, they were honest enough to admit, that the reason why they lost the managed, they blamed themselves. They said, "It's 'cause we as the top leaders didn't prepare those people for the change." So, that was interesting as well.   0:07:17.6 AS: I want to go back and just revisit... Myth Number One was the myth of segmented success. The idea that, "Hey, we can get the most out of this if we segment everybody and have everybody do the best they can in each of those areas." Dr. Deming often said that we're destroyed by best efforts. And part of that's one of the things he was saying was that it doesn't work. Segmented success doesn't maximize or optimize the output for a system. The second one was the myth of the bottom line, and that was the idea that just measuring financial numbers doesn't tell you about productivity, and just measuring financial numbers doesn't give you success. And then the third one was, that we're talking about now, is the Myth Number Three, is top-down knowledge myth. And so, I'm curious. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by "top-down knowledge myth."   0:08:17.7 JS: Essentially it's knowledge from outside the workplace being... How do I wanna say it?   0:08:26.0 AS: Pushed down. [laughter]   0:08:28.0 JS: Pushed down, imported, or imported into the workplace, imposed into the workplace. It's really that idea that something from outside can be valid. And it certainly can, to a degree. You can have instructions on how to operate a machine. You can have all kinds of instructions that are determined from outside, but there's a limit to that kind of knowledge. And when you really wanna improve quality, it really does take a lot more input. But I think there are many... This is one of the myths I think that there are very many different sides to. And one of the sides is that what I call the... It's related to variation, but it's really what I call the "granularity problem." And it's the fact that problems are not these nice, big omnibus types of items that a manager can solve. They tend to be hundreds of problems, or thousands.   0:09:37.0 JS: And so, when you've seen transformations, for example, in hospitals, I think that's an environment we can all understand, again, it's because of many, many different improvements that they become better. One example that I was given is, let's suppose you have a medication error problem. That's really, really common in hospitals now, right? But medication error is, it's not one thing. It could be because of the label, labeling on the bottles. It could be the lighting when people are reading the medications. It could be the way they're arranged on trays. It could be the way they're stored. It could be in the supply chains. The really successful healthcare transformations have been by getting thousands of improvements. And I mean literally thousands of improvements from employees who live with those processes every day. Managers can never [chuckle] know all these hundreds and thousands of things, especially, they can't be everywhere. So, really, the answer is that you do need an army of problem solvers to really get the kind of excellence that we want.   0:10:56.0 AS: Dr. Deming had a quote that he said which was, "A system cannot understand itself." And he's talking about, you got to understand... Sometimes it takes someone from outside looking at the system. And that's different from what you're talking about, which is the idea of someone at the top of the organization saying, "I know how to do this, here's what you guys got to do, and here's how you solve it," without really working with the workers and helping understand what's really going on. And I think what you're saying in this too is the idea that people who are empowered at the work level to try to figure out what's the best way to organize this with some support from above, that's management in that sense is a supporting function to give them ideas. If there's a person that understands quality or Lean, or they understand Deming's teachings, then that outside person can also give that team resources and ideas that they may not typically have. But the idea that a senior executive could be sitting up at the top of the company and then being able to look down and say, "Here's how to do each of these areas," is just impractical.   0:12:12.3 JS: Oh, yeah. And I think Dr. Deming was... He was giving managers, I think, a very challenging task to understand systems and to know, 'cause you're responsible for the system if you're management. So, you really have to know when you have to be constantly getting feedback from people who are working in the system and trying to improve their work within the system. So, yeah, it's got to be a definite give and take. And in Lean, they call that "catchball," where there's a constant back and forth between the managers and the workers in terms of the problems they're having and what needs to be done to help them. So, yeah, it's very tuned in to each other.   0:12:55.0 AS: Yeah, and I would say, from my experience in most companies, management's not really trying to help them. Each unit's fending for itself and trying to figure it out, and they're not really getting that much support from management. And so, the idea being that with the proper support and encouragement to learn and improve, the teams that we have in our businesses can achieve amazing things. And this goes back to also to the concept of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic. And I think what Dr. Deming, what was appealing to me about Dr. Deming when I first started learning about it, was he was talking about "unleash the intrinsic motivation of people, and you will unleash something that is just amazing." And the desire to improve is going to be far better than... And that's why sometimes he would just say, "Throw out your appraisal system," or "Throw out these things, get rid of them," because what you'll find is you're gonna unleash the passions and desires and the intrinsic motivations. And so, that's another thing I'm thinking about when I'm hearing Myth Three: The Top-down Knowledge Myth. It just, it doesn't unleash that intrinsic motivation.   0:14:16.8 JS: Well, it's interesting, this thing was really studied by the Shingo Institute, where they, they, about, as I think you may know, they give out something called the "Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing." They also give prizes for books too, which I was fortunate to receive. But they had for years been giving the Shingo Prize to excellent manufacturers leading up to 2007 or so. But they found out that most of the people that had got the Shingo Prize had essentially fallen off the ladder. So, they did a very detailed study, interviewed all kinds of organizations: Ones that had fallen off the ladders, so to speak, and ones that had actually maintained the kind of excellence that they had won their prize for.   0:15:20.5 JS: And they found that the ones that had fallen off the ladder had a top-down engineered approach, whereas the ones that had been successful were much more respectful of their people and getting a lot more feedback from the people, the sort of the respect-for-people-type idea that Toyota has. So, really, what they were saying is that the top-down approach, you might be able to fix up your factory and get really good ratings for a while and you have great processes, but in the long run it's not sustainable. So, they changed their criteria so that now, to get a Shingo Prize in manufacturing, you really have to show culture; you have to show how you're listening to your people, the whole thing. So, it's very different now.   0:16:12.0 AS: Yeah. And it's interesting, we have a company in Thailand that the company and its subsidiaries won the Japanese Deming Prize. And there was 11 companies total in this group that won the prize at different years as they implemented throughout the whole organization. And then a couple years later, the CEO resigned. He retired; he reached the end of his time. And the new CEO came in. He wasn't so turned on by the teachings of Dr. Deming, and he saw a new way of doing things. And so, he basically dumped all that.   0:16:57.0 JS: Oh, really?   0:16:57.8 AS: And it's tragic. It's a tragic story. And the lesson that I learned from that is, one of the strengths of a family business is the ability to try to build that constitution or that commitment to "What do we stand for?" Whereas in a publicly listed business where you're getting turnover of CEOs every four, six years, or whatever, in just the case of Starbucks recently, we just saw turnover happen very, very quickly. And the new CEO could go a completely different direction. And so, when I talk to people about Deming's teachings, I say that family businesses have a competitive advantage in implementing it. And I think Toyota is the ultimate family business in Asia, right?   0:17:50.9 JS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, pride in the family name, and that's... Yeah, and a lot of the interviews I did were businesses like that, where there was a desire to do more than make money, to have a purpose, sustain the family name and that kind of thing. So, yeah, for sure.   0:18:10.0 AS: So, let's wrap this up with you giving us a final recap of what we need to be thinking about when it comes to the Myth Number Three: The Top-down Knowledge Myth.   0:18:24.0 JS: Okay. Well, I think essentially people need to understand that there are limits to what a manager can actually know. And I think the healthcare example, this illustrates that very well. I think they also need to understand that what you ultimately want if you wanna maximize productivity is team productivity. It's the productivity of the group. And people are motivated. You were talking about intrinsic motivation. Part of that comes from actually working together as a team. So, you need to create the kind of trust where information flows freely, and where somebody doesn't hoard their own knowledge but is willing to share it with others, because they don't feel they're in competition with each other. So, again, that's related to driving out fear. So, everything's really interrelated. But I think we have to accept knowledge as something part of a shared collaborative work environment, where everybody wins if knowledge flows freely. And people have to be willing to admit that what they've learned in the past, what they've learned in school has limits in how it can be applicable. And those limits have to be respected. And you have to be willing to listen to every employee, not just the ones that have degrees.   0:20:00.8 AS: All right. Well, that's a great recap. And, Jacob, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And you can find Jacob's book, Productivity Reimagined at jacobstoller.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming: "People are entitled to joy in work."

Reflect Forward
Productivity Reimagined w/ Jacob Stoller

Reflect Forward

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2024 36:46


Jacob Stoller is a journalist, speaker, facilitator, and Shingo Prize-winning author of The Lean CEO. His latest book, Productivity Reimagined, will be released in October 2024. He has published hundreds of articles on technology and business management methods and is known for demystifying complex topics for general business audiences. Jacob has delivered a variety of keynote speeches, learning events and workshops in Canada, Europe, and the US, and authored reports, created training materials, and strategic corporate documents for clients such as Microsoft, Dell Computer, Staples, Pitney Bowes, International Data Corporation (IDC), CMA Canada, and the Conference Board of Canada. Episode Insight: The key to success is building cultures that respect every person and engage them in continuous improvement teamwork. This is productivity reimagined. Background: In this episode of Reflect Forward, I welcome Jacob Stoller, journalist, speaker, facilitator, and Shingo Prize-winning author of 'The Lean CEO.' We discuss his latest book, 'Productivity Reimagined,' which explores the importance of productivity from a team and cultural perspective. Jacob shares his journey from a technology sales rep to a lean management expert, highlighting the significance of teamwork and culture in achieving productivity. We dive into case studies and practical advice for leaders aiming to enhance their company's productivity through a people-first approach. Tune in to learn about culture's critical role in lean transformations and how true productivity can be achieved by focusing on human logic over just financial metrics. How to find Jacob LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobstoller/ Amazon: https://shorturl.at/loOo4 Website: https://www.jacobstoller.com/ Order my book, The Ownership Mindset, on Amazon or Barnes and Noble Follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn. Subscribe to my podcast Reflect Forward on iTunes Or check out my new YouTube Channel, where you can watch full-length episodes of Advice From a CEO! And if you are looking for a keynote speaker or a podcast guest, click here to book a meeting with me to discuss what you are looking for!

Connecting the Dots
Believe with Morgan Jones

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2024 26:26


Morgan started 4 years ago in BMA Daunia and is the BOS CoE Practice Lead. Morgan has over 30 years' experience in Lean and 20 years in Six Sigma, a pragmatic and experienced improvement Leader, delivering over $2.1.Bn in hard savings to organisation, improving customer, staff experiences and improved Health and Safety. The legacy capabilities of Business Improvement have resulted in over 23 international awards and chairing 27 international conferences around Business Improvement. Morgan is an international award-winning author and written 8 books, two of which have won Shingo Prize publications awards. He has led a business unit with overall P&L accountability of $367M and led an organisation to be the first bank to a Shingo award. He is also a Chartered Engineer, Certified Master Black Belt, Lean Master and Executive Coach. Morgan has leadership experience in marine, manufacturing, government, military, mining, utilities, telecommunications, oil and gas, banking and supply chain.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Shingo Principles Podcast
Episode 40: The Shingo Leader

Shingo Principles Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2024 34:42


The Shingo Model promotes a culture of respect for every individual, with leadership rooted in humility. Gary Peterson of O.C. Tanner exemplifies this through his leadership, which has been the subject of research by Helen Zak, who is the Research Director at the Shingo Institute, Peter Hines, who is a Shingo Faculty Fellow and Shingo Academy Member, and Juliana Salvadorinho, who is working with the Institute as a research assistant. Their study focuses on O.C. Tanner as a Shingo Prize recipient site and investigates Gary's leadership effectiveness over the past 37 years, emphasizing four key leadership systems at the company. While traditional organizations focus on specific leadership tasks—like gemba walks, strategy deployment, and coaching—O.C. Tanner goes deeper by prioritizing the cultivation of effective behaviors. This begins with hiring individuals who exhibit the right behaviors and fostering mindsets that allow these behaviors to thrive. The company emphasizes two key mindsets: the Growth Mindset, which views all experiences as learning opportunities, and the Outward Mindset, which encourages actions that benefit others. Gary models these principles through his micro-behaviors, including his language, tone, body language, and emotions, which consistently convey positivity, trust, and collaboration. His inquisitive communication style and consistent non-verbal cues build a culture of trust and alignment. What distinguishes O.C. Tanner is how Gary's approach has been adopted by the entire leadership team, ensuring a unified mindset and leadership style throughout the organization.To learn more, please visit https://shingo.org/articles. 

Potentiel 2 Manager
ITW Pamela FILLON ~ De la reconnaissance d'excellence avec le Shingo Prize et la gestion RH | E10

Potentiel 2 Manager

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2024 28:29


Bonjour à tous et bienvenue dans ce 10ème épisode de "Potentiel 2 Manager". Dans cet épisode captivant de "Potentiel de Manager", j'ai eu l'honneur de recevoir Pamela Fillon, une directrice des ressources humaines inspirante. Nous avons exploré son impressionnant parcours dans diverses industries, notamment l'automobile, l'agroalimentaire et le secteur pharmaceutique. Pamela a partagé des insights précieux sur le management, l'amélioration continue le Shingo Prize et l'importance de la reconnaissance des collaborateurs. Elle a également abordé l'impact de l'intelligence artificielle sur les RH. 3 points clés à retenir de notre discussion :

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast
The Myth of Segmented Success: Boosting Lean with Deming (Part 2)

The W. Edwards Deming Institute® Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2024 27:27


Is the whole simply a sum of its parts? In this episode, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz discuss what happens when you divide a company into pieces and manage them separately - and what to do instead. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my conversation with Jacob Stoller, Shingo Prize winning author of The Lean CEO and Productivity Reimagined, which explores Lean and Deming management principles at the enterprise level. The topic for today is myth number one, the myth of segmented success. Jacob, take it away.   0:00:30.4 Jacob Stoller: Great to be here with you, Andrew. And yeah, before I dive into that myth, I'd like to just start with a quote by Albert Einstein. "There is no failure in learning, but there can be in refusing to unlearn." Now that's something that's gonna occur over and over when we talk about the different myths. And the fact is, as many people have observed, unlearning can be a lot tougher than learning. So I think we always have to keep that in mind. So I want to tell a little story which kind of illustrates just how deep this unlearning can go. And this was told to me by Rich Sheridan, who has a company called Menlo Innovations, they're a software development company. And very interestingly, the theme of his work has been about joy in work. Sounds familiar?   0:01:28.3 AS: I love it.   0:01:28.5 JS: Well, he didn't really discover Dr. Deming until he had already written two of his books. So it just shows to me that there's some very underlying truths behind what Dr. Deming was teaching. But anyway, the story Rich tells is that he had his family in for a wedding. And they had a new office they'd moved into, so everyone wanted to see it. So he brought his granddaughter in, an eight-year-old. And he said, well, where do you sit, pop-pop? And he said, right here. Here's my desk. Here's my computer. And the granddaughter looked at his desk and was puzzled. You know, she said, well, where's your name? You got to have your name somewhere. And so, I mean, Sheridan was amazed. He says, I thought, wow, she already has it in her head that as CEO, I should have a corner office with a placard that showed how important I am. And you know, I felt a little embarrassed. She was somehow implying that I can't be much of a CEO if I didn't have a placard with my name on it.   0:02:35.5 JS: And she's only eight. So no, here's a CEO that's just really, really, you know, ahead of a lot of people. You know, he understands a lot of the Deming principles. And he sees just how deeply people hold these myths. She believed that there's this pyramid structure and there's got to be a CEO at the top and there have to be all these departments and people reporting to various people, et cetera, et cetera. So this really, this belief she had is really, it's sort of the pyramid that Dr. Deming described. And Dr. Deming actually wrote, he said, in The New Economics, you know, his last book, he wrote, this book is for people who are living under the tyranny of the prevailing style of management. And he talks about the pyramid. And I think that kind of encapsulates everything we're dealing with in terms of beliefs. And I'm just going to read it because he was so concise about saying it. "The pyramid only shows responsibilities for reporting who reports to whom. It shows the chain of command and accountability."   0:03:55.3 JS: "The pyramid does not describe the system of production. It does not tell anybody how his work fits into the work of other people in the company. If a pyramid conveys any message at all, it is that anybody should first and foremost, try to satisfy his boss and get a good rating. The customer is not in the pyramid. A pyramid as an organization chart, thus destroys the system, if ever one was intended." So I've never seen a more pointed description of the prevailing style of management. But think of this young girl at age eight, you know, I mean, and a lot of them, what happens is they go to school and they learn. And then maybe they eventually go to business school. And then sometime, maybe 30 years later or something, this person, this young woman is being told, we're not going to manage according to a pyramid anymore.   0:04:54.3 JS: We're gonna change the whole structure. We're gonna respect people and we're gonna respect their opinions. And we're not gonna assume that all these departments automatically fit together like building blocks. We're gonna work to define a system. All these things that Deming taught, you know, how do you think she's gonna react to that? You know, we're talking about things that this person has believed, not just from training in business school, but for years and years. So I think that kind of underlines the task we all have in terms of learning and unlearning. It's just an enormous thing we have to deal with, which is why I think it's important to look at the myths and various myths. And that's why I really worked to define those. So, when we...   0:05:46.5 AS: I would just highlight one thing about, if we go back to maybe, I don't know, constructing the pyramids, it was all about power and force, you know, get things done. It was about power and force. And I think what Dr. Deming was saying at a very, you know, many, many decades ago, he was saying that power and force are just, you know, a tiny factor in the world of business. The real motivating factor is intrinsic motivation, satisfying the customer, working together. Those types of things are the forces that will bring a much better outcome in your business, rather than just having an organizational chart that just shows the flow of power and force.   0:06:30.4 JS: Exactly. You know, and I think that if you look at the pyramid structure, it's actually a great system for consolidating power. So it works that, and, you know, but if you start to look at producing quality products and services for customers, it doesn't work at all. And, you know, so we need a new kind of logic, not this kind of logic. If we really do, like I say, we want to produce excellence. And if we want to have productivity as our competitive advantage, right?   0:07:06.4 AS: And one thing I just want to, for the listeners and viewers out there that may get confused, like what is a pyramid chart? We're talking about an organizational chart with a CEO, you know, and the like at the top, and then all the different department heads and the people below them. So Dr. Deming referred to that, and Jacob's also referring to that as a pyramid chart. Let's continue.   0:07:27.5 JS: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that. Okay. So that gets us to myth number one, because, and myth number one is the myth of segmented success. And the idea behind it is that the productive resources, this is a myth, this isn't true, but according to the myth, the productive resources of a company can be organized as a collection of independent components. The whole equals the sum of the parts. So this is essentially the glue that holds this org chart structure together. If that myth were true, then that org chart structure would be perfect for organizing a productive organization. But it is a myth. And what we see is that when you run a company according to that, with that assumption, you get into all kinds of trouble.   0:08:20.5 JS: And I'll just give you a very simple example. We have, let's say we have a company that does heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and they're selling stuff to industry, various machines, and they're installing them, and they're servicing them, all that kind of thing. Right? So let's say there's the end of the quarter and the sales rep has to make his or her numbers. Now salespeople are rewarded based on their sales numbers. Production people or the service people are rewarded based on their numbers, on how many service calls they satisfy or whatever. So installation people are rewarded for how much installing they do. So everybody's got quotas, and they're all sort of independent like components. So you get this sort of negative chain reaction where the sales rep does a big deal to make the numbers at the end of the quarter. He brings it in, the bell rings, you know, hooray, this person's made his numbers, he gets to go to Hawaii or whatever it is. Right?   0:09:27.6 JS: But let's supposing to get that deal, that's a big deal, it's high volume. So guess what? Low margin. And guess what? Maybe the sales rep had to make a few concessions to get that deal. Maybe the sales rep didn't reveal all the fine print to the customer, you know, in sort of the rush of getting the deal. So after the deal, the next quarter, well, the service department's got problems now dealing with this order. The installation department's got problems. So both of these departments have to hire extra people, have to pay overtime. So the end of that quarter, their numbers are going to look bad. Right? So that's a classic case. But it just happens over and over and over again, because you have all these different business entities compensated based on their own separate objectives as if they were separate companies. And yet that's glorified, that's seen as entrepreneurial. We'll run our department as a business, as a profit center. But they don't consider the whole overall system. So that's the kind of the tragedy, I guess, in modern business. And again, it's assuming that everything is kind of gonna work out if you manage them independently.   0:10:53.2 AS: And I was thinking that, you know, the head of the sales department is gonna be rewarding the salesperson for what they're doing. And if the head of the manufacturing or service department could anticipate that this deal that the salesperson's closing is gonna cause a lot of problems because of, you know, they're rushing it and they're trying to give great terms to get something under a deadline. There's just a very difficult for the head of the sales department to listen to that complaint to the head of, let's say the service department as an example, because they're being judged by the numbers they're delivering in their department by their boss. And so they got to kind of let it happen.   0:11:33.5 JS: Yeah. Yeah. And this is by the way, based on a real life story. And this is a company called Air Force, I think, Air Force One, it's called actually, and it's based in Ohio. It's a heating, ventilating air condition company. I could say HVAC, but they use the acronym. And they worked with Kelly Allen. And very soon after working with Kelly, they got rid of sales quotas and put everybody on salary. And the whole thing took off, you know, as the CEO told me. They're getting better deals, customers are happier, veteran sales reps are helping the younger ones close deals. Everyone's helping everybody. And the business is really, really expanded rapidly. You know, they've, I think, doubled or tripled their revenues in the last three or four years. So yeah, these things, when you get rid of these artificial barriers, businesses can really take off. And we got all kinds of case studies showing that.   0:12:45.3 AS: Yeah. And for the listeners and viewers out there, like, wait a minute, I can't do this. You know, my salespeople, they only are gonna work when they're incentivized individually as a department. I think the first thing that I would say is listen to what Jacob's telling you, listen to the stories that you're hearing and think about it. You don't have to move on it. I think that transformation in the way that you think about, you know, things takes time. And the natural reaction, when you hear something new, you know, you started with the idea of unlearning the natural reaction, when you hear something new is to say that can't work, but just keep that open mind as we continue through myth number one. So why don't you continue on, Jacob?   0:13:25.3 JS: Yeah, well, and as Kelly Alley, Kelly Allen you know, made some points on that. First of all, he said, you don't go in with your guns blazing and just take away the sales quotas. He said they worked very carefully so that CEO understood the whole system, how all the parts interact. And then once you understand the system, then you're in a position. Often people go in prematurely, remove all the sales quotas and you get chaos because people don't understand all the dependencies that are there. So it's really, really important, I think to manage the change in a responsible way. And again, as Kelly says, you've got to understand the system and how it works.   0:14:10.4 AS: Great. And I think you have more stories to tell.   0:14:14.2 JS: Oh yeah. Well, I actually a wonderful one. It's, and it's not just sales quotas, by the way, it's any kind of rating and ranking system. And one of the real classics is the, a company called Bama, Bama Foods, which is, uses Deming's principles. And the CEO, Paula Marshall, actually might've been this little girl, eight-year-old girl who was looking for the desk of the CEO 30 years later, because she started working with Deming just by accident, really, because she had taken over the company business at a young age and she, they were trying to deal with some quality problems. And she went to a Deming seminar and Dr. Deming asked who in the audience is the CEO? And she was the only one that raised her hand. And so he said, will you come and , be part of a study group? So that's how she got to work and got to become actually today's the only living CEO that's actually worked directly with Deming, or the only active CEO that's actually worked with Dr. Deming.   0:15:32.4 JS: But anyway, she started to talk with Dr. Deming about the problems they were having and he said, and she described a rating and ranking system that they had had, and they had spent, I think millions of dollars even back then with a very, very reputable consulting firm. And it was one of these things where they rank people on a scale of one to 10. And the idea was let's make all our people accountable. That's how we're going to get quality. We'll have accountability. Everybody has to be rated by their managers and we'll create some fear and we'll create some incentive for people to work harder and solve our problems. Well, the first thing Dr. Deming told her is get rid of that rating and ranking system. So it was very, very hard for her at first, you know, she'd spent a lot of money on it. And she said, you know, but eventually she said she realized that it wasn't helping the company. It wasn't doing anything, but it was still very, very hard to let go of that idea. But eventually she did. Eventually she got on a conference call.   0:16:40.3 JS: They got rid of it and the results were just incredible. She said by the, you know, everyone had hated the system and it just turned the conversation around. I mean, instead of saying, well, here's why I've ranked you, Andrew, on, I've only given you a seven instead of a nine. We would be having a sort of a constructive conversation about the problems you're facing in the workplace, how we can make things better, how can we work together, that sort of thing. So it was, it became much more constructive and much more cooperative. And they were able to evolve to a whole system where teams of people work together to solve problems. But without taking away that system, it would have been very, very difficult to do that 'cause, you know, well, that means that person will be ranked higher than me maybe, you know.   0:17:31.2 AS: And we know very well in the area of sports that, you know, great coaches are not sitting there ranking and rating and ranking their employees and beating them over the head with that. They're trying to identify the strengths and weaknesses. How do we, you know, build this team so that we can beat the other teams? And that really requires coordination. And if you do rating and ranking type of thing, you start to destroy coordination. And for those people that are thinking, of course, you know, I'm terrified to look at this and remove my rating and ranking. One thing you can do is take, you know, five or 10 people that you respect their opinion within the company and ask them how they feel about the rating and ranking system. And you'd be surprised what you hear.   0:18:15.3 JS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Right. And, but yeah, about the sports team, I guess. Yeah. I mean, there's some documentaries on the Chicago Bulls, you know, and I think they had some very good stories about teamwork and stuff like that.   0:18:30.5 AS: Well, Phil Jackson was amazing in that the documentary on Netflix was great, The Last Dance. But what you can see and you can hear it from the players, I think Dennis Rodman was a great example where Phil Jackson understood how to deal with this kind of disruptive kind of situation and guy. How do you deal with that and get the most out of him on the court in a way that still follows the values of yourself and your team? And he just showed that very well in that. And so I think that that was a great example of how you coordinate your resources.   0:19:08.5 JS: Yeah, a great example, I think, for people to watch. Yeah, 'cause it really does. It does really show that.   0:19:15.3 AS: You know, you were talking to me about just before we turned on the recorder about Deming was a scientist and physics and all this, some things I never even thought about. But maybe you can tell us a little bit about your thoughts in that area.   0:19:28.4 JS: Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that, first of all, the when you look at the traditional pyramid and all the traditional style of management, I mean, that's really based on reductionism, cause-and-effect. Essentially, it's Newton, you know, it's Newton's golden principles. So you have a business system that's built on 17th century logic, basically. And so what I think is wonderful about Dr. Deming, I mean, we think of him as this philosopher. But here he was, Dr. Deming in the 1920s, getting his PhD in mathematical physics. So at the time he's doing his PhD, I mean, there's Heisenberg developing his uncertainty theorems, all that kind of stuff was just exploding. And the whole view that people had of the physical world was just being turned upside down. So Dr. Deming was very, very cognizant of that.   0:20:35.2 JS: You know, when it started, you know, with statistics, but gosh, you know, science of psychology was changing too. And I think Deming, you know, when you read him, he was really thinking like a scientist. You know, this is the way the world works. And was very, very sensitive about all the components of that. You know, the science of the way people think and what motivates them. You know, he knew that people aren't motivated by sticks and carrots. And we'll talk about that later. He knew that there are limits to how much you can know if you're not right there in the workplace. You know, he understood all that because of variation. But I think when he was introducing those ideas, people really weren't thinking that way. I think they are a bit more today, but he was really a pioneer in that.   0:21:33.4 AS: Yeah. In fact, I was just looking at, he got his degree in mathematical physics from Yale university in 1928. So yeah, there was a lot going on in the world then.   0:21:46.3 JS: Sure was. Yeah. So yeah. And he, I guess he's very patient with us. You know, you think of someone having a degree like that talking, you know, over everybody's heads, but I think he really developed the style of communicating.   0:22:06.5 AS: So what else you got for us on this topic? I think you had some takeaways that you mentioned some four points or some other items.   0:22:14.3 JS: Sure. Yeah. I can, I did summarize at the end of the chapter just to sort of a bluffers guide, I guess, to, you know, this myth of segmented success. But, you know, first of all, you know, as we were just saying, conventional management practices are based on an outdated view of the world that emphasizes reductionism and predictability and ignores the influence of complexity and interdependencies. So you don't see how things actually affect each other in a company. Operating companies so that interdependencies are reflected in management practices and understood by all employees enables wide engagement in improving quality and productivity. To create a strong team environment, managers need to remove barriers such as siloed incentive plans and clearly communicate the aim of the organization. And finally, recent lessons from supply chain disruptions during the COVID epidemic show how segmentation extends beyond the walls of a company and how closer collaboration with supply chain partners can prevent such disruptions.   0:23:41.3 AS: So how would you, let me ask you, how would you wrap everything up in a very short statement? What do you want people to remember?   0:23:53.4 JS: I want people to remember that just because it says so in an org chart doesn't mean that that reflects the way things actually happen.   0:24:05.7 AS: Yeah, that's a great one. And I think we're trained, and this is where Dr. Deming used to say that, you know, what we're being taught in management schools, you know, is the wrong thing. And this is exact type of thing where we're talking about this concept of the, you know, the org chart and the way power flows and all of that stuff. So yeah, great points.   0:24:28.4 JS: Yeah. Not only in management school, but in grade school, you know, when we're rating and ranking kids before they even know how to learn and read, even before they know how to read and write.   0:24:41.2 AS: Yeah. And that brings us back to that first story where a kid walks in and what has she seen? She's seen the teacher and the principal with the name tag at the front, in front of the class.   0:24:53.4 JS: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if we can keep talking, but you know, Rich Sheridan also discovered a drawing, which is actually, it's a diagram in The New Economics, but it shows how people's creativity and joy in work and stuff are systematically destroyed throughout their lifetime. They're constantly put down by teachers, principals, and they go to college and university and there's competition. And then they go into the workplace and they're rated and ranked. And it just destroys the natural of joy in work that people have and the enthusiasm people could have in the workplace.   0:25:39.5 AS: And for those listeners out there who used to listen to The Wall by Pink Floyd, Roger Waters was talking about how the school system was just pounding out any creativity, any fun, any joy. And so it's not unusual. And it's the case in many educational systems around the world. And so I think, you know, this is a good reminder of, you know, joy in work. And also this idea of segmented success. I think you had a statement that you said to me just before we started, which I thought summed it up perfectly, which was the whole doesn't equal the sum of the parts.   0:26:18.3 JS: Yeah, that's exactly. And we can basically reduce it all to that.   0:26:28.4 AS: Yeah. So I'm going to wrap up there. So for ladies and gentlemen, I think that's a great description of myth number one in Jacob's book, but I think ending it with this, the whole doesn't equal the sum of the parts, helps us all to realize that, you know, just bringing competition between different people and different units within an organization does not bring the optimum output. Jacob, on behalf of everyone at Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for the discussion and for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find Jacob's book, Productivity Reimagined at jacobstoller.com. And this is your host Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. We've been talking about it today. "People are entitled to joy in work".

People Solve Problems
Reimagining Productivity: Uncovering Hidden Problems in Organizations with Jacob Stoller of Conversation Builders

People Solve Problems

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2024 21:50


In the latest episode of the People Solve Problems podcast, host Jamie Flinchbaugh welcomes Jacob Stoller, an accomplished journalist, speaker, facilitator, and Shingo-Prize-winning author of The Lean CEO. Jacob, who is also the author of the upcoming book Productivity Reimagined, brings his extensive experience in demystifying complex business and technology topics to the forefront of the discussion. As the founder of Conversation Builders, Jacob has a deep understanding of organizational dynamics, and in this episode, he dives into the often-overlooked issue of how companies conceal and avoid dealing with problems. Jacob begins by exploring the concept of productivity—a term that, despite its frequent use, is often misunderstood. He notes that many people equate productivity with simple metrics like GDP per worker, but such measures fail to capture the full picture. In Productivity Reimagined, Jacob redefines productivity by emphasizing the importance of quality in tandem with quantity. He argues that a superficial increase in output is meaningless if it comes at the expense of quality, using the metaphor of manufacturing defective products to illustrate this point. A significant portion of the conversation centers on the cultural challenges that prevent organizations from addressing their problems effectively. Jacob highlights how traditional hierarchical structures, where authority flows from the top down, discourage the open discussion of problems. He explains that problems often cross departmental boundaries, but organizations tend to manage each component separately, leading to conflicts and inefficiencies. This fragmented approach makes it difficult for companies to recognize and address issues that affect the entire organization. Jacob stresses the importance of creating a culture of trust within organizations, where employees feel safe to bring up problems without fear of retribution. He points out that for companies to truly solve their problems, leaders must be willing to prioritize long-term value over short-term gains. This involves pulling the "andon cord," a lean manufacturing term that refers to stopping production to address an issue, even when it might temporarily disrupt the workflow. Such actions, Jacob argues, are crucial for fostering an environment where problems are seen as opportunities for improvement rather than threats. The discussion also touches on the issue of conflicting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which Jacob identifies as a common barrier to problem-solving. He gives the example of a mining company where the operations department's KPI for equipment availability conflicts with the maintenance department's KPI for preventing breakdowns. These opposing goals create a situation where short-term decisions lead to long-term failures. Jacob advocates for a value stream approach, where all stakeholders work together towards a common objective, thus eliminating the conflicts that arise from siloed thinking. Throughout the conversation, Jacob and Jamie reflect on the broader implications of these challenges, drawing on examples from various industries. Jacob shares insights from his research, including the surprising ways that lean principles and productivity strategies are being applied outside of traditional business contexts, such as in environmental sustainability initiatives. He recounts a case where a winery reduced its environmental footprint and increased its output by addressing waste in its processes, an example that underscores the value of looking beyond conventional metrics. As the episode concludes, Jacob leaves listeners with a powerful reminder: productivity cannot be reduced to a single number or metric. Instead, it requires a holistic understanding of the factors that contribute to or detract from a company's performance. He invites listeners to rethink their approach to productivity, considering the systems and processes that underpin it rather than focusing solely on outcomes. For more insights from Jacob Stoller, visit his website at jacobstoller.com and connect with him on LinkedIn at Jacob Stoller. His latest book, Productivity Reimagined, will be available for pre-order soon at this link.

The Lean Solutions Podcast
The Lean Turnaround Answer Book: Lean Accounting and Set-Up Reduction

The Lean Solutions Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2024 56:44


What You'll Learn: In this episode, hosts Shayne Daughenbaugh, Catherine McDonald, and guest Art Byrne discuss Lean strategy and its extension beyond manufacturing as well as its potential to transform any business by enhancing overall operations.  By eliminating waste, delivering consistent customer value, stimulating growth, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, Lean principles enable companies to be more responsive to customer needs and increase wealth for stakeholders. About the Guest: Art Byrne began his lean journey in January 1982 as a General Manager at GE, leading the first just-in-time [lean] implementation there. As a Group Executive, he initiated lean at The Danaher Corporation. As CEO of the Wiremold Company, he led a lean transformation that increased enterprise value by nearly 2,500% in nine years and won a Shingo Prize. As an Operating Partner at J W Childes Associates, he implemented lean across their private equity portfolio. Art authored The Lean Turnaround and The Lean Turnaround Action Guide, both Shingo Prize winners. He is a member of the Shingo Academy, the Industry Week Magazine Manufacturing Hall of Fame, and the AME Hall of Fame. Links: ⁠Click Here For Catherine McDonald's LinkedIn⁠ ⁠Click Here For Shayne Daughenbaugh's LinkedIn Click Here For Art Byrne's LinkedIn Click Here For Art Byrne's Book: The Lean Turnaround --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leansolutions/support

Manager Memo podcast
Creative LEAN

Manager Memo podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2024 44:30


Norbert Majerus, Leading expert in Lean Product Development & Innovation, author, and Shingo Prize Winner shares how LEAN principles can be applied to creative R&D. Along the way we discuss Luxembourg (0:52), Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (1:30), Elon Musk (16:30), Nummi Auto (20:05), “Get a Bigger Hammer” (23:15), the Shingo Prize (30:38), and examples of “getting it right” (37:00). Checkout Majerus' novel, Winning Innovation through this link. Please consider donating to scholarships for children of military veterans @ www.lukeleaders1248.com Music intro and outro from the creative brilliance of Kenny Kilgore, lead guitarist for The Shadows @ Blind Willie's Blues Club, Marietta, Georgia. Lowriders and Beautiful Rainy Day. 

The Lean Solutions Podcast
Podcast Spotlight: Lean Leadership Basics

The Lean Solutions Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2024 46:13


As the midpoint of the year, we've carefully selected a few of our standout episodes from Season Three. These episodes stood out for their ability to captivate and engage our audience, making them the highlights of the season thus far. As always, the continued success of this podcast is made possible by your unwavering support, and for that, we extend our heartfelt gratitude. We're thrilled to revisit and share these moments with our dedicated listeners! What You'll Learn: In this episode hosts Shayne Daughenbaugh, Patrick Adams, and guest Charlie Protzman discuss lean leadership, a transformative approach to management that prioritizes efficiency, continuous improvement, and respect for individuals within an organization. About the Guest:  Charlie Protzman is an internationally renowned Lean implementer, trainer and Shingo Prize winning author with over 35 years' experience in Materials and Operations Management. He has consulted with manufacturers, hospitals, government agencies and other service industries. He has currently published Leveraging Lean in Healthcare Series, One-Piece Flow vs. Batching, Card Based Control Systems for A Lean Work Design, and the Lean Practitioner's Field book as well as in the Journal of Production Economics.  Links: ⁠Click Here For Charlie Protzman's Book: Lean Leadership Basics ⁠Click Here For Charlie Protzman's LinkedIn⁠ ⁠Click Here For Charlie Protzman's Website⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Click Here For Shayne Daughenbaugh's LinkedIn⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Click Here For Patrick Adams LinkedIn⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leansolutions/support

Shingo Principles Podcast
Episode 38: Challenging for the Shingo Prize

Shingo Principles Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2024 35:42


In this podcast learn the steps necessary to Challenge for the Shingo Prize. The Shingo Prize is based on a complete assessment of an organization's culture and how well it drives world-class results. Most organizations do not wait to challenge for the Shingo Prize until they are likely to achieve it. Rather, they use their challenge as part of their progression to guide their journey of continuous improvement. Listen to this podcast to learn more about the process or visit https://shingo.org/awards/challenge-for-the-shingo-prize. You may also email our team at brittney.ogden@usu.edu or shaun.barker@usu.edu for individual questions about the Shingo Prize challenge process.

Connecting the Dots
Go & Observe with Shaun Barker

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2024 33:59


Shaun Barker has been the assistant executive director for the Shingo Institute since 2001 where he is responsible for such organizational operations as finance, human resources, information technology, marketing, and development. He is also responsible for the assessment value stream and its pool of approximately 160 examiners from industries around the world. He has personally participated in dozens of comprehensive site assessment visits to business and government organizations worldwide that have challenged for the Shingo Prize. Mr. Barker participates in the development of Shingo educational offerings and is a contributor to both the world-renowned Shingo Model and the Shingo Prize Application Guidelines - the international standard of operational excellence. He was a key participant in the creation of a Lean certification program sponsored by AME, SME, and the Shingo Institute. Mr. Barker is an engaging speaker and instructor for the Shingo Institute and trains companies on the Shingo Model and the Shingo Guiding Principles, teaching how to apply principle-based leadership to their own operations and to use assessment tools to foster continuous improvement within their organizations. As a result of his expertise, Mr. Barker has delivered presentations and workshops to professionals in various parts of the world including the United States, Canada, China, Mexico, and Europe. Mr. Barker's professional industry background in retail management operations included 14 years of work with Sav-On Drugs, Wal-Mart, and Dollar General. He has experience with profit and loss responsibility for multi-million dollar operations in high growth environments. Mr. Barker earned a bachelor's degree in marketing with a minor in economics from Utah State University and an MBA with an emphasis in entrepreneurship.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

The Lean Solutions Podcast
Lean Leadership Basics

The Lean Solutions Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2024 46:13


What You'll Learn: In this episode, hosts Shayne Daughenbaugh, and Patrick Adams discuss lean leadership, a transformative approach to management that prioritizes efficiency, continuous improvement, and respect for individuals within an organization. About the Guest:  Charlie Protzman is an internationally renowned Lean implementer, trainer and Shingo Prize winning author with over 35 years' experience in Materials and Operations Management. He has consulted with manufacturers, hospitals, government agencies and other service industries. He has currently published Leveraging Lean in Healthcare Series, One-Piece Flow vs. Batching, Card Based Control Systems for A Lean Work Design, and the Lean Practitioner's Field book as well as in the Journal of Production Economics.  Links: Click here for Charlie Protzman's book Lean Leadership Basics Click here for Charlie Protzman's LinkedIn Click here for Charlie Protzman's Website ⁠⁠Click Here For Shayne Daughenbaugh's LinkedIn⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Click Here For Patrick Adams LinkedIn⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leansolutions/support

KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast
A Poka-Yoke Primer: Mistake-Proofing and Error Reduction [Webinar]

KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2024 60:13


YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9A0Zlf_048&ab_channel=KaiNexus As presented by John Grout on 1/17/24. Hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus. This webinar is a 60-minute primer into mistake-proofing (a.k.a. poka-yoke). Information about the basics of mistake-proofing, why people make mistakes, and how to start the process of reducing mistakes will be presented in a fast-moving and entertaining format.Objectives: Build awareness of mistake-proofing Introduce a concise presentation format: “pecha kucha," with 20 slides x 0:20 seconds each = 6:40 minutes (we'll do two of these with discussion in between). What is mistake-proofing? Include lots of examples Why do people err? How can design eliminate errors? Next steps in implementation John Grout is the David C. Garrett Jr. Professor, former dean, and award-winning teacher in the Campbell School of Business at Berry College. Dr. Grout has researched lean supply chain management and mistake-proofing (a.k.a. Poka-Yoke) extensively and published numerous articles on the topic. John was awarded the Shingo Prize for his paper, “The Human Side of Mistake-Proofing” with Douglas Stewart. John has also consulted with a large variety of firms to mistake-proof their processes.

KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast
Webinar Preview: A Poka-Yoke Primer: Mistake-Proofing and Error Reduction with John Grout

KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2024 6:13


Register for the webinar here In this video, host Mark Graban from KaiNexus talks with John Grout about his upcoming webinar to be held on January 17th. This webinar is a 60-minute primer into mistake-proofing (a.k.a. poka-yoke). Information about the basics of mistake-proofing, why people make mistakes, and how to start the process of reducing mistakes will be presented in a fast-moving and entertaining format. Objectives: Build awareness of mistake-proofing Introduce a concise presentation format: “pecha kucha," with 20 slides x 0:20 seconds each = 6:40 minutes (we'll do two of these with discussion in between). What is mistake-proofing? Include lots of examples Why do people err? How can design eliminate errors? Next steps in implementation About the Presenter: John Grout John Grout is the David C. Garrett Jr. Professor, former dean, and award-winning teacher in the Campbell School of Business at Berry College. Dr. Grout has researched lean supply chain management and mistake-proofing (a.k.a. Poka-Yoke) extensively and published numerous articles on the topic. John was awarded the Shingo Prize for his paper, “The Human Side of Mistake-Proofing” with Douglas Stewart. John has also consulted with a large variety of firms to mistake-proof their processes.

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons
#159 Leading a Culture of Excellence at US Synthetic with Mr Travis Russell

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2023 48:54


Summary KeywordsCulture, learn, organisation, leaders, principles, Travis, excellence, continuous improvement, system, synthetic, process, champion, great, people, journey, discovered, problems, love, brad, learning.IntroductionWelcome to episode 159 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. It is a pleasure to have Mr Travis Russell on the show with us today. Travis is the Global Director of Talent and Leadership Development at Champion X. Travis previously was the Production manager at US Synthetic, a Shingo Prize-winning organisation. Today, we will explore Travis's approach to achieving Enterprise Excellence within organisations and share his insights. Let's get into the episode.We are proudly sponsored by S A Partners, a world-leading business transformation consultancy.Contacts Brad: connect via LinkedIn or call him on 0402 448 445 or email bjeavons@iqi.com.au. Email Travis: travis.russell@championx.comWhat's next? Join our next community! https://www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com/community.Listen to another similar podcast episode: #60, How to Create a System of Willing and Able Problem Solvers with Mike Hoseus.a. Listen on our website - https://www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com/podcast/episode/4e44c0b2/60-how-to-create-a-system-of-willing-and-able-problem-solvers-with-mike-hoseusb. Watch on YouTube - https://youtu.be/QXmau6vvVdM?si=4ljn1Ueri7tUAb5-Check out Lean Time-Saving Quick Tips with Norm and Paul Akers: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLROkf9gKrj_7lrO3kDOdXzbuWx0O5oN3Z&si=Gkp0aN54qumdyGyB.To learn more about what we do, visit www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com.Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.

My Favorite Mistake
Shingo Institute Executive Director Ken Snyder: Navigating the Nuances of Lean Leadership and Sustainable Change

My Favorite Mistake

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2023 48:05


Episode page with video, transcript, and more⁠ My guest for Episode #230 of the ⁠My Favorite Mistake podcast⁠ is ⁠Ken Snyder⁠, Executive Director of the ⁠Shingo Institute⁠ and Senior Lecturer at Utah State University.  Ken has been the executive director of the Shingo Institute since 2015. He developed an interest in Japanese business practices while living in Japan during the time he was a student. His interest led him to major in Japanese history from the University of Utah and then to pursue an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business for the purpose of working with a Japanese business expanding to the United States. He joined the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business in 2008. Before joining the Huntsman School, Ken was president of Marketing Communication Inc., an operating division of Taylor Corporation, where he directed a group of six companies while growing revenues from $25 million to over $80 million. In this episode, Ken shares his favorite mistake story about his time at Taylor Corporation, when he thought he had made an improvement in their process for collecting data from 6,000 dealers — but everybody went back to the old way. Why did the change fail to stick? What did Ken learn from this? How does this influence his teaching today? We discuss that and more! Questions and Topics: General question: When is it a matter of backsliding or the change was never adopted? Tell us about the Shingo Institute and its namesake Shigeo Shingo… Lean Blog Interviews podcast with Ritsuo Shingo Is it hard for companies to sustain performance after being awarded the Shingo Prize? Not just tools, but Principles The Shingo Model Learning and improving — not just you but the Institute

My Favorite Mistake
Shingo Institute Executive Director Ken Snyder: Navigating the Nuances of Lean Leadership and Sustainable Change

My Favorite Mistake

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2023 48:41


Episode page with video, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #230 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Ken Snyder, Executive Director of the Shingo Institute and Senior Lecturer at Utah State University.  Ken has been the executive director of the Shingo Institute since 2015. He developed an interest in Japanese business practices while living in Japan during the time he was a student. His interest led him to major in Japanese history from the University of Utah and then to pursue an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business for the purpose of working with a Japanese business expanding to the United States. He joined the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business in 2008. Before joining the Huntsman School, Ken was president of Marketing Communication Inc., an operating division of Taylor Corporation, where he directed a group of six companies while growing revenues from $25 million to over $80 million. In this episode, Ken shares his favorite mistake story about his time at Taylor Corporation, when he thought he had made an improvement in their process for collecting data from 6,000 dealers — but everybody went back to the old way. Why did the change fail to stick? What did Ken learn from this? How does this influence his teaching today? We discuss that and more! Questions and Topics: General question: When is it a matter of backsliding or the change was never adopted? Tell us about the Shingo Institute and its namesake Shigeo Shingo… Lean Blog Interviews podcast with Ritsuo Shingo Is it hard for companies to sustain performance after being awarded the Shingo Prize? Not just tools, but Principles The Shingo Model Learning and improving — not just you but the Institute --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/favorite-mistake/support

Connecting the Dots
The Shingo Guiding Principles 3-part series: Cultural Enablers (Part 1) with Dr. Peter Hines

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2023 29:20


Professor Peter Hines, is the Co-Founder of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School. LERC grew to be the largest academic research in lean globally. He has undertaken extensive research into Lean and written or co-written twelve books including Shingo Prize winning books “Staying Lean”, “Creating a Lean & Green Business System” and “The Essence of Excellence”. His latest book “Why Bother” was published in 2022 and received Shingo Publication Award in May 2023. Peter now runs the Enterprise Excellent Network providing European based forms with on-site benchmarking, learning, and networking opportunities. He also continues his academic links with work in the Lean/Industry 4.0 and Lean/People spaces and is a Visiting Professor at Southeast Technological University and Faculty Fellow with The Shingo Institute at Utah State University.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

The Tool Belt
Leadership lessons from Toyota

The Tool Belt

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2023 20:16


IndustryWeek columnist, leadership coach and author Katie Anderson recently won the Shingo Prize for publications for her book, "Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn," a collection of stories and lessons from Isao Yoshino, a longtime Toyota executive who played big roles in the development of that automaker's business culture. Anderson discusses key leadership lessons from Yoshino, offering a glimpse into Toyota's evolution from a company that only made vehicles in Japan into the global powerhouse it is today.

Connecting the Dots
Management for Omotenashi by Mike Martyn

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2023 30:38


Mike Martyn is the Founder and President of SISU Consulting Group, and international consultancy supporting more than 500 organizations in 22 countries. Over the past 20 years, Mike has also contributed hugely to the development of the Shingo Model and Assessment Framework, is Director Emeritus of the Shingo Institute, a 3x Shingo Prize winning author and Lifetime Member of the Shingo Academy.One of Mike's primary roles with SISU is the development of leaders at each level of the organization. In this role, Mike has trained and personally coached thousands of leaders through his live workshops, online development courses, executive coaching, and Coaching Camps.Mike's experience with the concepts of omotenashi, kaizen and ikigai come from his extensive travels to Japan. Beginning with a business trip in 2004, Mike has spent countless hours learning about Japanese culture and benchmarking world-class kaizen cultures. Beginning in 2011, Mike opened up these trips to other business leaders, and in 2013, he organized the first Japan Study Tour for the Shingo Institute.Since 2013, Mike has traveled back and forth to Japan an average of twice a year, focusing his time on his own personal development as well as coaching others. During his visits, Mike has been asked to be a guest lecturer at numerous Japanese companies and share his approach for creating team-based daily kaizen cultures as described in his Shingo Award Winning book, Own the Gap. Over the years, Mike has also had the opportunity to gain “behind the scenes” access to some of Japan's top companies; Honda, Denso, Nissan, Toyota, Ina Foods, and TESSEI, to name a few.The visit to TESSEI in particular would help shape his understanding of what defines great leadership, and serve as a catalyst to bring his 20 years of experience together into a model for leaders. Over a period of two years, Mike met with, learned from, and collaborated with TESSEI's Former Chairman, Teruo Yabe. These sessions, in addition to Mike's work with other Shingo-winning clients led to the publishing of Management for Omotenashi.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Connecting the Dots
Mistake-proofing (Poka-yoke) with John Grout

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2023 30:05


John Grout is the David C. Garrett Jr. Professor, formerdean, and award-winning teacher in the Campbell School of Business. Dr. Grouthas researched lean supply chain management and mistake-proofing (a.k.a.Poka-Yoke) extensively and published numerous articles on the topic. In2004, John was awarded the Shingo Prize for his paper, “The Human Side ofMistake-Proofing” with Douglas Stewart. John has also consulted with alarge variety of firms to mistake-proof their processes. John's book Mistake-Proofingthe Design of Health Care Processes can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/3YL7g57.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Lean Blog Interviews
Professor John Grout, a Deep Dive on Mistake Proofing and Lean

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2022 76:11


Expert on mistakes and mistake proofing, professor and former business school dean Episode page with video, transcript, and more: https://leanblog.org/462  My guest for Episode #462 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Professor John Grout the former dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College in Rome, Georgia.  He was recently a guest on “My Favorite Mistake” — Episode 186, so I encourage you to check that out. He's the current Chair of the Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Data Analytics Department and the David C. Garrett Jr. Professor of Business Administration. John has overseen the development, approval and implementation of Berry College's Creative Technologies program and Berry's makerspace, HackBerry Lab.  Dr. Grout has researched mistake-proofing extensively and published numerous articles on mistake-proofing. In 2004, John received the Shingo Prize for his paper, “The Human Side of Mistake-Proofing” with Douglas Stewart. John has also consulted with a large variety of firms to mistake-proof their processes. He's also published “Mistake-Proofing the Design of Health Care Processes” a book that's freely available online. His Website: https://mistakeproofing.com/ Today, we discuss topics and questions including: Your origin story – how did you first get introduced to TPS, Lean, etc? Context of discovering mistake proofing? Shingo's book on Poka Yoke “Shingo was not kind to Statistical Quality Control”… use SQC and/or mistake proofing? Acceptance sampling… keeps bad product out… maybe? Field goals — Conformity to specs vs. closer to center? Successive checks and self checks Source inspections – Shingo's gold standard Why should you react when a part's out of control but still in spec?? Do you HAVE to stop the line? Don't be dogmatic?? Statistics don't do well with rare events Do we have data on how universal the “universal protocol” is? Doctor signing vs. you signing the surgical site? ZERO – “the only way to go” in terms of goals The goal of “zero defects” can be controversial.. is it possible? Motivating? Demoralizing? Possible research – optimal time to stop doing final inspection?? Why is it easier to error proof now? Technology “People don't like to own up to mistakes” Naida Grunden episode on aviation safety Can't error proof everything?? Preventing execution errors is easier than preventing decision errors The balance and benefits of examples to copy vs. developing thinking?? “Catalog or catalyst”?? BOTH The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more. This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network. 

Real. Technical. Midwest.
Jim Benson Ruins Agile…Again!

Real. Technical. Midwest.

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2022 57:31 Transcription Available


Jim Benson, Shingo Prize winner has released a new book, The Collaboration Equation.  In today's conversation, we breakdown where most organization's lean and agile transformations stall and why most of your problems are people problems.  Pull your inner andon cord and lets get aligned!!!Support the show

My Favorite Mistake
Professor John Grout on Preventing Mistakes, Yet Learning From Them When They Happen

My Favorite Mistake

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2022 47:09


Professor, former business school dean, expert on mistake proofing Episode page with video, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #186 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is John Grout. He is the former dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. He's the current Chair of the Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Data Analytics Department and the David C. Garrett Jr. Professor of Business Administration. John has overseen the development, approval and implementation of Berry College's Creative Technologies program and Berry's makerspace, HackBerry Lab. Dr. Grout has researched mistake-proofing extensively and published numerous articles on mistake-proofing. In 2004, John received the Shingo Prize for his paper, “The Human Side of Mistake-Proofing” with Douglas Stewart. John has also consulted with a large variety of firms to mistake-proof their processes. Check out his website, www.MistakeProofing.com. He's also published “Mistake-Proofing the Design of Health Care Processes” a book that's freely available online. In this episode, John tells his favorite mistake story about using early mistakes to learn and then win a tower-building exercise, defeating a number of “A students” in the process. From John's story, what does that teach us about learning from mistakes — early and often — in a way that propels toward success? Why is this an entrepreneurship lesson (or a human lesson) and not just an engineering lesson? We also talk about questions and topics including: Surprisingly, it's the A students” who think they know how the world works Knowing vs. Experimenting? “It's all about the scientific method” — Lean Startup PDCA = Plan Do Check Adjust Others didn't observe and learn from your mistake? Spaghetti building – kindergartners vs. MBA TED talk — the god complex, trial and error Small tests of change = mistake mitigation method Chick-fil-A, ThedaCare, and rapid prototyping ThedaCare stories Adam Savage – Every Tool's a Hammer book How do you define mistakes? Strict definition vs common definition? mistakes — (strict definition) conscious deliberation that leads to selecting the wrong intention. (common definition) synonym for error. For example, the term mistake-proofing uses the common definition since mistake-proofing is used more to prevent slips than mistakes (using strict definition) Errors – breaks down then into mistakes vs slips Mistake – do what you intended to do Slips — right intent but not executed well How do you define “mistake proofing”?? Or Slip-Proofing How do we decide if mistakes or slips are preventable? “Different vocabularies” for each… Why are checklists the “weakest form of mistake proofing”? Some recent examples you've seen of mistake proofing in everyday life? Be careful signs… “How can I make this process fail? Make it fail in a benign way…” The language around “mistake proofing” or “error proofing” vs. — is it a mistake to say things like “fool proofing” or “idiot proofing”?? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/favorite-mistake/support

State Of Readiness
Tim Pettry | CI Program Director, Cleveland Clinic

State Of Readiness

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2022 59:12


Video Version https://vimeo.com/702374226 About the Podcast My guest today is Tim Pettry, Program Director for Continuous Improvement at the Cleveland Clinic's Akron General (CCAG) Hospital where he directs the implementation of a Culture of Improvement for over 5,500 caregivers, utilizing the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model. One of the biggest “take-aways” of this conversation is the difference in syntax between manufacturing and healthcare that needs to be considered when attempting to deploy an Continuous Improvement program in a healthcare environment. But we start the conversation at the beginning (where else?) with Tim's 18 years of experience at Ford Motor Company at their Cleveland Manufacturing Site. As a result of the continuous improvement efforts of Tim and his colleagues, Ford won the Shingo Prize with Tim himself being appointed to the Shingo Institute's Board of Examiners in 1996. I am sure you will enjoy listening to the conversation as much as I did. Give a listen. About Tim Pettry Tim Pettry is the Program Director, Continuous Improvement at Cleveland Clinic Akron General (CCAG) where he directs the implementation of a Culture of Improvement for over 5,500 caregivers, utilizing the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model. He has been a member of a Continuous Improvement team since 2008 that serves over 70,000 Cleveland Clinic caregivers worldwide. Prior to jumping into the Healthcare field, he spent 18 years with the Ford Motor Company at their Cleveland Manufacturing Site in several roles including Cost Analyst, Training Manager, and Ford Production System Coordinator. His final year at Ford he served as a Ford Production System Coach for Powertrain Operations. Tim's career started in retailing as a Department Manager for the May Company (now part of Macy's) where he learned to appreciate the concepts of customer service. Recognizing that a career in Retailing did not fit with his new role as a father, Tim joined Ernst & Whinney's (now Ernst & Young) National Client Services department in Cleveland, where he led a team of 6 analysts and multiple students who were responsible for providing secondary research data and analysis in support of major request for proposals for Audit and Consulting services, and maintaining the firm's Mailing and Alumni programs. Tim's passion for continuous improvement work comes from participating in and leading several cultural transformation efforts while at Ford and the Cleveland Clinic. A highlight of his career was helping to save Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant 1 from closing in 2002. The work there was recognized as one of the pivotal events in valuing work and delivering results in the book, “Inside the Ford-UAW Transformation” Tim was appointed to the Shingo Institute's Board of Examiners in 1996 after leading the team responsible for writing Cleveland Engine Plant 2's Achievement Report and coordinating the site visit that led to the plant being awarded the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing. He has served as a lead examiner for over 10 years. As an examiner, he has participated in a number of site visits to a variety of different manufacturing and healthcare organizations. Additionally, as an examiner, Tim has had the opportunity to review numerous books vying for the Shingo Prize for Publications. Tim served for 6 years as the Shingo Institute's representative on the AME / Shingo Institute / SME Lean Certification Oversight and Appeals Committee, serving as Chairman of the committee in 2010. He earned his Master of Business Administration in Management and Labor Relations from Cleveland State University. He and his wife, Lisa, have 5 grown children and 7 grandchildren. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpettry/ Company: Cleveland Clinic Title: Program Director, Continuous Improvement Headquarters:  Cleveland, Ohio, USA Year Founded: 1921 Company Type: Not-for-profit Hospital Company Size: 72,500 Employees, $12.4 Billion in Revenue Practice Areas:  Cleveland Clinic is a not-for-profit American academic medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio with expertise in all healthcare practice areas and is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States. It is owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an Ohio not-for-profit corporation established in 1921. It runs a 170-acre (69 ha) campus in Cleveland, as well as 11 affiliated hospitals, 19 family health centers in Northeast Ohio, and hospitals in Florida and Nevada. International operations include the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi hospital in the United Arab Emirates and Cleveland Clinic Canada, which has two executive health and sports medicine clinics in Toronto. Another hospital campus in the United Kingdom, Cleveland Clinic London, opened to outpatients in 2021 and is scheduled to fully open in 2022

Connecting the Dots
People Value Stream with Dr. Peter Hines

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2022 35:26


Professor Peter Hines, is the Co-Founder of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School. LERC grew to be the largest academic research in lean globally.  He has undertaken extensive research into Lean and written or co-written twelve books including Shingo Prize winning books “Staying Lean” “Creating a Lean & Green Business System”. His most recent book “The Essence of Excellence” was published in January 2019 and won a Shingo Publication Award.  Peter now runs the Enterprise Excellent Network providing European based forms with on-site benchmarking, learning and networking opportunities. He also continues his academic links and is a Visiting Professor at Waterford Institute of Technology, Master Trainer with The Shingo Institute at Utah State University. Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3 (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3) CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release date Contact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Connecting the Dots
Bryan Crowell – Own The GAP

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 17, 2022 31:07


 Bryan is an experienced executive leader driving business results through people.  Bryan is experienced in diverse industries; automotive, machining, health care, etc.  Bryan is also the co-author of Shingo Prize winning book Own the Gap (Building a team-based Kaizen Culture). Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3 (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3) CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release date Contact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

The Lean Solutions Podcast
Lean Transformation with Tony Hayes

The Lean Solutions Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2021 31:08


This week I am chatting with Tony Hayes, an executive lean leader responsible for the Wabash management system, continuous improvement and quality at Wabash. In this episode, Tony and I talk about his experience with Lean and Lean culture as well as transformation and why it's so important to create a story around transformation with Lean. What You'll Learn This Episode: What makes a good Lean leader The characteristics of a bad Lean leader How to effectively scale during a transformation Spreading Lean culture in a large organization Creating development opportunities for leaders Having a dedicated lean team vs. having lean embedded in the organization Creating a story around why you're changing The importance of creating a learning culture Problem solving in Lean culture About the Guest: Tony Hayes is an Executive Lean Leader, responsible for the Wabash Management System, Continuous Improvement and Quality at Wabash, supporting the CEO and the Executive Leadership Team, driving customer value creation. He has extensive experience in delivering profitable growth, improving risk profile, and increasing return on invested capital in the automotive, transportation, aerospace and defense industries. Tony is a seasoned operations and lean expert with extensive experience in strategy and organizational governance. Tony has utilized his lean expertise to assist organizations with their most complex problems in manufacturing, engineering, material planning and logistics, value chain management, and quality. As Global Lean Leader, Supply Chain at GE Transportation a Wabtec Company, a $11 billion operation, Tony was responsible for developing and driving the strategic vision of global continuous improvement across the enterprise. As the Ford Production System (FPS) Lean Implementation Manager – North American Car Region at Ford, Tony was instrumental in Ford's Chicago Assembly Plant's journey to receiving the Shingo Prize, the highest standard for organizational excellence. Tony, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. He also holds a Master of Science in Manufacturing Management, a Master of Science in Operations Management, and a Master of Business Administration, all obtained from Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. In addition, Tony is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and is certified through University of Michigan in Lean Manufacturing and Operations, as well as Lean Office and Service, in addition to being a Shingo Institute Alumni. Important Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyhayes --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leansolutions/support

The Lean Effect
David Mann: (EP 49) When the problem is understood, the lean tools nearly invariably lead to a solution.

The Lean Effect

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2021 45:07


In this episode, David Mann, the Shingo Prize-winning author of 'Creating a Lean Culture,' who has spent almost 30 years practicing lean in a variety of sectors, discusses the behind story of writing his book and looks back on his career. He talked about the foundation required for a good lean culture. David shared how he used his advanced degree in psychology to implement lean. https://theleaneffectpodcast.com/ https://www.facebook.com/TheLeanEffectPodcast https://www.facebook.com/groups/272448766629082/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-lean-effect-podcast/ Insta: @theleaneffectpodcast Twitter @EffectLean Guest: David Mann https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwmann/ dmann@dmannlean.com Host: Mark Dejong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-de-jong-investor-lean-advisor-0288695/ Mark@4ppartners.ca https://www.4ppartners.ca Phone: 1-778-807-9691

The Lean Solutions Podcast
Technology & Automation in Lean with Bruce Hamilton

The Lean Solutions Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2021 41:45


This week on the podcast, I'm chatting with Bruce Hamilton. Bruce is President of GBMP, a Boston-based non-profit founded in 1994 that provides Lean and Six Sigma assistance to manufacturing, healthcare and service organizations. In this episode, Bruce and I chat about how technology development is impacting Lean and how organizations can reduce turnover and increase employee retention during Covid. What You'll Learn This Episode: The Lean Toyota Production system and why some organizations have failed to see improvement from it Creating a unifying concept for both management and employees Employee retention strategies during Covid How technology could change Lean Using an automation solution and if it's the right choice Some of Bruce's biggest influences in Lean How to make a change in your organization without a leader driving it Advice for people starting their Lean journey About the Guest: Bruce Hamilton is President of GBMP, a Boston-based non-profit founded in 1994 that provides Lean and Six Sigma assistance to manufacturing, healthcare and service organizations. Prior to joining GBMP, Bruce spent thirty years in manufacturing, leading his factory to a Shingo Prize award in 1990. From 1996 to 1998, his factory was also a project site for the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC.) Bruce is author and actor in the 2004 Shingo Prize winning video, Toast Kaizen and co-author of the comprehensive multimedia training package, e2 Continuous Improvement System, which combines GBMP's acclaimed video content with self-study workbooks, classroom learning and workplace practice. In 2000 he was inducted in the Shingo Prize Academy and in 2015 was inducted into the AME Manufacturing Hall of Fame. GBMP is an affiliate of the Shingo Institute and provides an annual Northeast L.E.A.N. Conference, http://www.northeastleanconference.org , held October 6-7, 2021 at the MassMutual Center, Springfield, Massachusetts. Important Links: https://www.gbmp.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-hamilton-a09a4616/ http://www.northeastleanconference.org/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leansolutions/support

The Healthcare QualityCast
Becoming the Change with John Toussaint, MD

The Healthcare QualityCast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2021 58:08


John Toussaint, MD, is the CEO emeritus of ThedaCare, a five-hospital system in Wisconsin, and the CEO of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. He was founding Chair of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality and of the Wisconsin Health Information Organization, as well as the non-executive leader of the Partnership for Healthcare Payment Reform in Wisconsin. He has participated in many Institute of Medicine subcommittees, including most recently the Value Incentives Learning Collaborative and the CEO Checklist for High-Value Healthcare. Dr. Toussaint's healthcare improvement work using Toyota Production System principles has been well documented in articles published in Health Affairs, the Harvard Business Review Blog, and Frontiers in Health Management. His work on payment reform and the transparency of provider performance data has been featured in The American Journal of Managed Care and the Commonwealth Fund publications, as well as news publications like The Wall Street Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Healthcare Finance News. He has been a featured speaker at the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, The Shingo Prize, The Lean Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and many international conferences. His groundbreaking first book, On the Mend, Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry, was recently awarded the 2012 Shingo Research and Publication award. It shows how healthcare can be fundamentally improved at the point of delivery to patients using the proven principles of lean management. His just-released second book, Potent Medicine, The Collaborative Cure for Healthcare, describes the three core elements necessary to transform healthcare and deliver better value: delivery of care designed around the patient; transparency of treatment quality and cost; and payment for outcomes. Presently Dr. Toussaint is the leader of the Healthcare Value Leaders Network (www.healthcarevalueleaders.org). A partnership between the Lean Enterprise Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts and the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. This partnership is helping to facilitate collaborative learning between organizations committed to transforming themselves using the lean methodology. Presently there are 27 members in the network. Here in Episode #133, John starts our show with a leadership mindset to act our way towards a new state of improvement. John gives us an overview of his career path, and what drove him to establish lean management principles as his guiding standard. He lays out the blueprint for leaders to establish management principles early for success and shares the dark moments story connected to the direct impact of failed leadership. John gives us great examples of leaders stepping up with courage and applying the fundamental principle of respect for people. He describes how he leverages the power of listening to build strong teams. He highlights his best practice approach for going to the Gemba with purpose, and how that led to a $4 million renovation project. John shares how appropriate payment programs will lead to an explosion of healthcare quality improvement. He encourages healthcare leaders to prioritize collaboration over the competition; and how healthcare leaders can create their best selves through reflection and personal Kaizen. • Connect with John's on LinkedIn • The Lens - Podcast • Access the Healthcare QualityCast LinkedIn Group • Leaves Us a Rating --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/healthcarequalitycast/message

Connecting the Dots
Dr. Charles Hagood, President of Strategic Consulting at Press Ganey speaks about some of the many Health Care improvements systems that his team is involved with at Press Ganey.

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2021 29:36


Charles Hagood, DSc, MBA has overseen the introduction and implementation of improvement systems, quality and process improvement initiatives, transformations, and system design activities in numerous healthcare organizations including some of the largest non-profit hospitals, national systems, small critical access hospitals, clinics, physician practices, and large for-profit systems in the US and EU. He has led organizations and teams in the design and implementation of new and efficient service lines in various hospital, outpatient and non-acute health care organizations. Additionally, Charles has also overseen the application of improvement methodologies into the planning, design, and construction phases of a wide range of clinical and hospital renovation and construction projects. Charles is a co-author of the Shingo Prize winning book for Research and Publication, “Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future” and has published various articles on the topics of innovation, Lean, process and performance improvement, and quality. Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3 (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3) CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release date Contact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons
#33 People, process and performance from Shingo prize winner Gareth Brown.

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2021 28:33


Proudly brought to you in association with S A Partners, a world-leading business transformation consultancy.IntroductionWelcome to episode 33 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. I am so pleased to have Mr Gareth Brown with me here today. Gareth has a wide history in Enterprise Excellence, working for and leading organisation transformation journeys to award-winning results. Gareth is passionate about helping organisations establish continuous improvement and development in leadership, process and results.SummaryGareth won a Shingo prize at VistaPrint for this approach. It was a greenfield opportunity, as the factory was being built from the ground up. Gareth asked the staff, during construction, about how they wanted to work in this new facility. He used a future-state visualisation exercise. Imagine you are at a BBQ in two years, and you're telling your friends and family, "I work for (insert). It's incredible, it's achieving so much, and I love working there." Gareth then asked the team for their top five reasons for being able to state this. These set of values or behaviours were grouped and became the cultural framework for the team. When tricky conversations about the culture arose in the following six months, which they did, consulting the list of behaviours was often enough to diffuse any problems. The initial group of 30 staff was being scaled to 100 people. The expectation was that the new people would assimilate to the way things were being done (excellently!) from the start. Onboarding new staff in the right way, focussing on excellent culture and behaviours is an ideal situation.  Quotes4.18min if you don't know how you're actually performing, then it's very, very difficult to engage in the problem. Right? So you need to be able to put the problem or the opportunity up in lights. So that's the first thing.7:00min and even before we turned the first machine on at VistaPrint, we had discussions with the team about, "What does good look like? What kind of organisation do we want?"11:05min but it was certainly helpful to be able to visualise that long term equation and use that as a basis of, "Why are we doing these things?"13:20min every hour that we spent on building these foundations right at the start would save us nine or ten hours of grief later on.14:42min I think we underestimate the importance of really investing in that person as a leader at the start to make sure that they're part of the team and they understand where you want them to think differently as well as where you'd like them to subscribe to the existing paradigms. Key TakeawayThe key takeaway from this episode was Gareth's focus on people, process, and performance. Gareth outlined the importance of getting people on the journey and culturally engaged first. Without motivation to change and adopt new things, there is very little chance of team members engaging and supporting the journey. Emotion, either positive or negative, helps people embrace and lock away new learning and form new habits. When new people join a new organisation, they naturally have a high level of emotion and desire to fit in. This is a prime time to achieve cultural and systemic alignment with people.If you have a greenfield site opportunity, plan upfront and focus on the most important things, as Gareth and his team did. If you don't have that opportunity, review your new team member onboarding process. How can you improve this system to engage new employees early? Align them to the culture and system improvement approach you are looking to in the future?  LinksGareth's Profile: linkedin.com/in/garSA Partners

The New England Lean Podcast
Lean Transformations, Stretch Goals & Employee Engagement with Art Byrne

The New England Lean Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2021 84:04


This week we welcome Lean Legend Art Byrne to the show! Art Byrne is an Operating Partner with J.W. Childs Associates, a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations of middle-market growth companies. Art has implemented Lean principles in more than 30 companies (including subsidiaries) and 14 countries during the past 30 years, giving him a matchless knowledge of how to turn around companies using a Lean strategy. Art began his Lean journey as general manager at the General Electric Company. Later, as group executive, he helped introduce Lean to the Danaher Corporation. As CEO of The Wiremold Company he quadrupled the company size and increased its enterprise value by 2,500% in less than 10 years. He's also a 2012 Industry Week Manufacturing Hall fo Fame inductee. Byrne holds a bachelor's in economics from Boston College and an master's from Babson College. He also serves as a board member of the Shingo Prize. In this episode, we talk about the power of Lean; as a Transformational tool, and Engagement tool, and as a business philosophy. Art's career knows no limits; he's seen and done it all, and it was an honor to host him on the show. As always - I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you get something from it! Make it a great week! Art's contact info: "Ask Art" on LEI.org - https://www.lean.org/search/?sc=ask+art "The Lean Turnaround" on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Turnaround-Business-Principles-Transform/dp/0071800670/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=art+byrne&qid=1615140587&sr=8-2 "The Lean Turnaround Action Guide" on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Turnaround-Action-Guide-Implement/dp/0071848908/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=art+byrne&qid=1615140612&sr=8-1 New England Lean Consulting is the Northeast's premier business consulting firm, helping small-to-medium sized businesses with strategic leadership and operational methodologies that help your company lower costs, increase capacity and win more customers. Our industry experienced consultants provide guidance with the latest business solutions that help you to grow your business deliberately and strategically in order to sustain a long-term competitive advantage within the marketplace. Paul W. Critchley, President & Founder of New England Lean Consulting: Company website: https://www.newenglandleanconsulting.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NELeanguyLinkedin Company page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-england-lean-consulting/ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2sAIveqtNqE1fpRGXcdbXQ Paul's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-critchley-lean-consultant/ Lean Communicators Website: https://leancommunicators.com/ #LeanCommunicators --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/new-england-lean-podcast/support

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons
#16 Creating excellence in heavy industry – clear goals, empowerment and accountability with Raymond Floyd.

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2020 46:04


Raymond Floyd has had a career leading the operations for some of our largest petrochemical and mining organisations. His teams were some of the first to be recognised for excellence in operations, winning the Shingo Prize in 1991 with Exxon, and other prestigious awards. Raymond is the author of the Shingo Prize-winning book "Liquid Lean: Developing Lean Culture in the Process Industries" and "A Culture of Rapid Improvement: Creating and Sustaining an Engaged Workforce". Raymond encouraged lean quality stations, and these were dependent on the team. They were goal focussed, and the team knew what their part of the plan was. He would ask of his team members, 'What are you going to advance the goals? What have you done to advance the goals? What are you planning to do to advance the goals?' As team members reported on what they have done, others would see this and agree that they too could lean their activities. A ripple effect occurred as other teams reproduced these lean activities in ways that were encouraged.It has been an absolute pleasure to talk with Raymond and gain his wisdom. Thanks, Raymond, for helping me to develop my knowledge as well.LinksRaymond Floyd LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymond-floyd-582a5712/Email: thefloydteam@gmail.comLiquid Lean book: https://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Lean-Developing-Culture-Industries/dp/1420088629A Culture of Rapid Improvement book link: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Rapid-Improvement-Sustaining-Workforce/dp/1563273780Quotes 03.07min I have to admit I never actually thought of myself as being in lean practice. At the time we won the Shingo Prize, I was the global head of Exxon's synthetic rubber business and what we were doing was running the synthetic rubber business in the best way we knew how. 06.45min but if they have a quality station or something of that sort that shows the visible manifestation: this is the company goals you have given us; this is how we've translated it to our work area; this is what we are doing, this is what we have done, this is what we plan to do. Makes it really easy to have a conversation that you're really just meeting for the first time.16.34min but if you get everybody involved, the engineers and managers are doing what they should be doing, and everybody else is doing what they can be doing, and you begin to get a true synergy.28.42min you could see people change; you could see that what you were doing was changing people's lives, not just changing the performance of the organisation—changing the lives of the people within that organisation. And that's a really satisfying experience. 36.55min It's all a process of giving people the things that they need to have in order for them to do what you'd like them to do.Key Takeaways 1. Respecting and engaging all people in an organisation.2. Helping everyone within the organisation understand their company's goals, purpose and mission. 3. Helping everyone within the organisation develop their own aligned goals and purpose. These steps would allow everyone to understand strategic direction and align to themselves to this. It would engage everyone with a bigger purpose and clear reason why they are striving to improve strategically. This approach helps the whole organisation embrace change rather than resisting it. 

Lean Blog Interviews
Remembering Norman Bodek

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2020 29:41


http://www.leanblog.org/rememberingnormanI'm republishing a "remastered" and commemorative version of Episode 1 of this podcast series from 2006.I was incredibly saddened yesterday to hear that Norman Bodek passed away this week. Norman was 88.This was announced through an email from Norman's company, PCS Press.Norman Bodek, famed as “the Godfather of Lean”, inducted into Industry Week's and American Manufacturing's Hall of Fame, published over 250 management books, taught at Portland State University, and created the Shingo Prize at Utah State University. He recently wrote “Leader's guide for social responsibility” and this week published CEO Coaching by Kazuyoshi Hisano.We should all be so fortunate as to be as energetic as Norman was in his 80s. He was an enthusiastic teacher and mentor, but he also had a hunger for learning that was impressive and inspiring.He suggested that we do an “audio interview” series… that became this podcast and he was the first guest. He was the second guest… in fact, he appeared 14 times.I’ve written some additional reflections — you can find those, share your own, and find links to all of his past episodes by going to leanblog.org/rememberingnormanRepublishing episode 1… remastered a bit. Boy, the audio quality wasn’t as good back in 2006… I enjoyed re-listening to this the other day. I hope you will too. 

The Lens
15. The Importance of GOOD Metrics and How to Use Them

The Lens

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2020 30:05


Orry Fiume former VP of Finance and Admin at Wiremold and author of the Shingo Prize winning book “Real Numbers: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization”. We are discussing ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­the importance of good metrics and how to use them. "Not everything that counts can be counted." - Orry Fiume

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons
#9 The Evolution of the Shingo Model with Ken Snyder

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2020 55:40


IntroductionYou would have heard the terms 'Shingo Prize' and 'Shingo Model' mentioned by past guests. It is one of the most prestigious awards an organisation can win, recognising a culture of excellence. Authors can also be recognised for their contribution in this area through a Shingo Prize. Mr Ken Snyder, Executive Director of the Shingo Institute  has dedicated his career to researching best practices, supporting organisations on excellence journey's and recognising them through the Shingo Prize as they advance in their work to create a better future.Podcast Summary The Shingo Institute started the Shingo prize in 1988. At first it was mainly North American manufacturing for the first 10 to 15 years. There was a lot of initial success in identifying their assessment model and the systems, tools, and results. After time, it was apparent that the level of sustaining improvement efforts was proving difficult for some Shingo winners.  This became a challenge. The underlying cause seemed to be that 'lean' was being done by managers and engineering to their people, not with their people. What they saw with those who were able to sustain their improvement efforts over time and kept getting better and better was that they had figured out how to engage their people. It was everybody working together on improvement, it wasn't just management, it wasn't just engineering. It was everybody was involved, and they had changed the culture.So, what were the three insights that Ken and his team researched and discovered?The first was that the companies who did sustain the improvement journey were not tracking KPI's but were talking about tracking leading behaviours.The second insight that was purpose and system drive key behaviours.The third insight is, that employees at every level of the organisation can answer questions like, 'Why do you do this or that?' or, 'How did you achieve that improvement?' These three insights informed the development of the 10 Shingo guiding principles, in the Shingo model. Ken believes that they a really important missing piece in our previous way we are doing assessments because the culture is the accumulation of all of the behaviours of the people in an organization. The Shingo institute then developed a workshop to introduce the Shingo model to the world and called it, at the time, Shingo 101. They now call it the "Discover Excellence workshop". You can download the Shingo model handbook from their website:https://shingo.org/shingo-model/Quotes15:30 min You can do a lot of improvement but you're not going to be able to make it sustainable unless you've got the right kind of culture. 24:05 min Purpose and system drive behaviors and if you want those ideal behaviors that will drive those ideal results. We need to have a clear purpose and we need to make it easy for people to do the right thing. 26:55 min Guiding principles inform ideal behaviors. 27:48 min Culture is all about the behaviors and those principles guide ideal behaviors and they explain why. 30:31 min ..you can't just have a purpose, you have to have a meaningful purpose, you have to have a purpose that people unite around and unify around, you've got to have a purpose that people can understand and relate to you. You can't just have it be something that's meaningless and petty, and not and not lasting.LinksKen's LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/snyderkenEmail: ken.snyder@usu.eduUtah State University: http://www.usu.edu

The New England Lean Podcast
Delving into what Lean is truly all about with Bruce Hamilton

The New England Lean Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2020 49:50


This week our guest is Bruce Hamilton, the President of GBMP and my friend. Bruce is also Director Emeritus for the Shingo Institute, home of the Shingo Prize, and is a Senior Examiner for the Shingo Prize and a Certified Shingo Institute workshops Facilitator. Bruce is a past recipient of the Shingo Prize in both the business and academic categories and Inductee to the Shingo Academy (with five awards in all). In 2015 he was inducted into the AME Manufacturing Hall of Fame. In this episode, Bruce and I chat about pivoting the business due to COVID 19, the effects of short-term versus long-term thinking when practicing Lean, and what we (the Lean community) get right and what we get (or got) wrong. It was a fantastic conversation; I hope you enjoy it! Bruce's contact info: Company Website: https://gbmp.org/ Personal Website: https://oldleandude.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-hamilton-a09a4616/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/oldleandude New England Lean Consulting is the Northeast's premier business consulting firm, helping small-to-medium sized businesses with strategic leadership and operational methodologies that help your company lower costs, increase capacity and win more customers. Our industry experienced consultants provide guidance with the latest business solutions that help you to grow your business deliberately and strategically in order to sustain a long-term competitive advantage within the marketplace. Paul W. Critchley, President & Founder of New England Lean Consulting: Company website: https://www.newenglandleanconsulting.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NELeanguy Linkedin Company page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-england-lean-consulting/ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2sAIveqtNqE1fpRGXcdbXQ Paul's Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-critchley-lean-consultant/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/new-england-lean-podcast/support

Dos Marcos
La-Z-Boy Chain CEO on Launching 5,000 Ideas in One Year

Dos Marcos

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2020 81:00


Brad Parker is the founding partner of Doorcounts and the CEO of a six-store chain of La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries located in the Portland, Oregon area. In the episode, we trace the origins of the first door counter back to Peter, a Russian transplant who spoke no English and put together an innovative ticker to monitor how many people walked into Brad’s stores. You’ll find out how Brad’s team became lean practitioners and implemented TWI Training (combining doing and teaching). Why does Brad have his team tie a Fire Underwriter’s Knot on the first day of TWI training? That conversation kicks in at the one-hour mark, so keep listening. Also, discover how Brad’s group generated 5,000 ideas in one year with less than 100 employees, implemented all of them, and won the Shingo Prize for Research (it’s a big deal). We cover surfing to work, sleeping in recliners, and our Wizard Academy connection. One thing we didn’t get to is the all-new foot traffic report you can get direct to your inbox. If you’re curious to find out how your store traffic compares to nearly 700 other mattress and furniture stores in the USA and Canada then subscribe to the Retail Traffic Index by Doorcounts—a daily digest of the previous day’s average foot traffic. Also, if you’re looking for the radio spots we mention around the 43:30 mark, head to our Facebook page. Thanks a million to Brad and the entire team at Doorcounts for all their support and for creating incredible tools and technology that are having a positive impact on retailers. Nationwide Marketing Group Thank you to our headline sponsor Nationwide Marketing Group. As a member of Nationwide Marketing group, you instantly have access to over 200+ ambitious, entrepreneurial-minded advocates who are dedicated to helping your business thrive. Nationwide serves more than 5,500 independent retail members with tools, resources, training, and technology to help their businesses grow. Podium Podium is the ultimate messaging platform. Podium consolidates text and messaging channels into one easy-to-use system. During COVID, mattress and furniture retailers have experienced a huge influx of questions and inquiries from people wanting to do business in a contact-free manner. Podium allows businesses to generate a link and request payments via text, no customer log-in required! You can try Podium Starter for free right now. And, you can save 10% when you sign up and mention Dos Marcos. Head over to Podium.com/dos today and start capturing more business!

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons
#3 Practicing enterprise excellence Professor Peter Hines, Part 2 of 2

Enterprise Excellence Podcast with Brad Jeavons

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2020 35:01


Welcome to Episode 2 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. In this episode we continue the conversation with Professor Peter Hines, exploring his recent book "The Essence of Excellence". We share his insights on the topic of sustaining excellence journeys for the long term, and his techniques to avoid the frustration and impact of failed improvement efforts within organisations. This episode delves deeply into the BESCILLED model develop by Peter and his co-author Chris Butterworth. The interview explores the key elements of this model and how it's use can help create a sustainable excellence journey.Peter talks about his new focus on the Enterprise Excellence Network. This network gathers together the world best organisations, many of whom are Shingo Prize winners. Peter discusses how the network provides members an opportunity to visit the best of the best and learn what to focus on next. It is a forum by which high performing sites can learn from each other to keep progressing their excellence journey. Quotes03:04;29  I remember asking the Toyota guys, why is it that you're so good? And the answer was 'the rigorous and disciplined application of the Toyota Production System'. And really, what I got to learn from that, eventually, and it took some time, was 'the rigorous and disciplined application of' was probably more important than the Toyota Production System. 15:21;08 And if you ask even senior executive, what are your values, they can usually reel off two or three quickly, but the other two or three, probably they can't even remember what they are. So, in other words, they're not making an impact.16:13;01 So, the sum of behaviours is the culture in the organisation. So, hence the starting point is not just strategy formation and deployment which obviously, we have to do Hoshin, planning etc, which gives us in best case the 'what do we need to do', hopefully also the 'why' which is sometimes missing. But it doesn't give us the 'how' in terms of culture. So, the starting point for most organisations is only the 'what', it's not the culture. So, actually adding the behavioural and strategy deployment means that we start with values and principles, we turn them into behaviour, we deploy them down into the organization.19:38;13 The key role of the manager is actually checking whether or not we're running the organisation to standard, and we're actually achieving the gains and we're achieving what we need to do in terms of strategy. We're actually checking whether the right behaviour is in place. And if it's not, we're then spending time developing coaching, either through formal courses, or actually mostly from on the job and ongoing coaching and development, which takes us into the last segment, which is the learning and development.24:27;09  And certainly, when I've been out, and I've taken these senior people, and we've shown them some of these organisations, you know, the lights just come on. And they come back so passionate, and so fired up and so wanting to do this sort of approach, it's unbelievable. But it's actually quite difficult to prise them away from, you know, we don't have time for this, you know, or we don't think we need it and so forth. 32:47;22 I think my advice is go see someone better than you... And you know, they may not be perfect, but if they're better than you, there's something to learn. And, you know, any firm on any office complex or any industrial estate, there must be someone there better than you. So, you know, go and knock on your neighbour's and have a look around. You know, even if you just start at that local level, I would do that.

Purpose & Principles Podcast
Purpose & Principles | Episode 9 - Gary Peterson - Coaching & Leadership

Purpose & Principles Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2020 28:27


Gary Peterson is the EVP of Manufacturing at OC Tanner company. He is also a Shingo Examiner and board member at the Shingo Institute. Over the years, I've interviewed Gary several different times for instructional videos, culture conversations and points on manufacturing excellence and continuous improvement. In fact, I met Gary during my first week working at OC Tanner many years ago long before we were each in our respective positions. It was there where I was introduced to the Shingo Prize, continuous improvement and many other lean leadership concepts. Later, I led the intellectual property development at the Shingo Institute. So, Gary and I have many great experiences together, and here is the thing: Gary is a tremendous leader and I'm grateful to call him a friend. Why do I share this history? Because this episode, while short and to the point, is full of so many great learning points and insights. I'm excited for you -- the listener -- to hear this conversation. Let me know what you think.

KindSight 101
#80: Truly Human Leadership (With Robert Chapman)

KindSight 101

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2020 34:07


Bob Chapman, Chairman & CEORecently named the #3 CEO in the world by Inc., Bob Chapman is very intentional about using his platform as a business leader to build a better world.Chapman is Chairman and CEO of St. Louis, MO-based Barry-Wehmiller, a $3B global manufacturing business with almost 12,000 team members. The company began as a small pasteurizing and bottle washer business in 1885 and, through acquisition and organic growth, has grown into 12 business units serving primarily the packaging, paper converting, sheeting and corrugating industries. Chapman became the senior executive of this private company in 1975 at age 30 when the 80-year-old business had $20 million in revenue, outdated technology and a very weak financial position. Despite the obstacles, Chapman applied a unique blend of strategy and culture over the next 40 years in leading Barry-Wehmiller through more than 100 successful acquisitions.Over the past two decades, a series of realizations led him away from traditional management practices to what he now calls Truly Human Leadership--a people-centric approach where his employees feel valued, cared for, and an integral part of the company’s purpose. At Barry-Wehmiller, they have a unique measure of success: by the way they touch the lives of people.Chapman’s experiences and the transformation he championed were the inspiration behind his 2015 WSJ bestseller Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. The book is co-authored by Raj Sisodia, founder and co-author of Conscious Capitalism.Chapman regularly writes about the powerful intersection of people-centric leadership and good business strategy on his blog, TrulyHumanLeadership.com, and on LinkedIn, where he is an Editor’s pick. In 2016, Harvard Business School released a case study featuring Barry-Wehmiller’s unique approach to business.Chapman’s list of speaking engagements include the Aspen Ideas Festival, Conscious Capitalism events, Fortune Scale Up Summit, TEDxScottAFB, the 2016 US Congressional Retreat, WorldBlu, CEO Global Leaders Forum, International City Managers Association, the AME International Conference, Institute for Healthcare Consumerism Forum, Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Excellence Conference, HERO Forum for Employee Health Management, and numerous others.Chapman shares his leadership journey and the story of Barry-Wehmiller whenever he can as it is an example of the way businesses and organizations should be: focused on creating value for all stakeholders—team members, customers, communities and shareholders. Not only is it the right thing to do, it creates meaning and fulfillment for team members.Chapman has a BA from Indiana University and an MBA from Michigan. He spent his early career as an accountant with Price Waterhouse.For more info about Bob, please contact mary.rudder@barry-wehmiller.com

Supply Chain Now Radio
"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 3)"

Supply Chain Now Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2019 34:11


"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 3)" Supply Chain Now Radio, Episode 243 This episode concludes the series with Norman Bodek. Norman is President of PCS Inc. In 1979, after working for 18 years with Data Processing companies, Norm Bodek started Productivity Inc. - Press by publishing a newsletter called PRODUCTIVITY. At the time, he said he knew virtually nothing about the subject and had spent very little time in manufacturing facilities. But, he quickly became fascinated with the subject and went to Japan to discover the processes that was making Japan the world leaders in quality improvement and productivity growth. Even though on his first visit to Japan he didn't know a single person or speak Japanese, he has since, in the last 31 years, gone to Japan 80 times, visited more than 250 plants and published more than 100 Japanese management books in English, and over 150 other management books. As a fortune cookie once told him, "You have the talent to discover the talent in others." Mr. Bodek said his claim to fame is that he found amazing tools, techniques and new thoughts that have revolutionized the world of manufacturing. He has met Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Joji Akao, Mr. Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shigeo Shingo and many other great manufacturing masters and published many of their books in English. Each person he met gave him a new perspective on continuous improvement. Mr. Bodek has lead over 25 study missions to Japan and was one of the first to find and publish books, training materials and run conferences and seminars on TPS, SMED, CEDAC, quality control circles, 5 S, visual factory, TPM, VSM, Kaizen Blitz, cell design, poka-yoke, lean accounting, Andon, Hoshin Kanri, Kanban, and Quick and Easy Kaizen. Mr. Bodek, who was once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week Magazine, and "Mr. Lean" by Quality Progress Magazine, said his most powerful discovery was the way Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the infinite creative potential often lying dormant inside every single worker. Most recently, he worked with Gulfstream Corporation, a private jet company, where 1000 people that went from 16-implemented ideas in February 2005 to close to 40,000 in 2011, and resulting each year in annually savings of over $2 million. Mr. Bodek founded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence at Utah State University with Dr. Vern Buehler and is one of the few to be personally awarded the Shingo Prize. He also was inducted into Industry Week's Hall of Fame. Learn more about Bodek’s firm, PSC Inc, here: https://www.pcspress.com/ Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode Subscribe to Supply Chain Now Radio: https://supplychainnowradio.com/subscribe/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at CSCMP Atlanta Roundtable Event: https://tinyurl.com/y43lywrd Reverse Logistics Association Conference & Expo: https://rla.org/event/80 SCNR to Broadcast Live at MODEX 2020: https://www.modexshow.com/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: https://www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit 2020 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards: https://www.atlantasupplychainawards.com/ SCNR on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: https://conta.cc/2YTuebX Check Out News From Our Sponsors The Effective Syndicate: https://www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog Spend Management Experts: https://spendmanagementexperts.com/ APICS Atlanta: https://apicsatlanta.org TalentStream: https://talentstreamstaffing.com/ Verusen: https://www.verusen.com/ Georgia Manufacturing Alliance: https://www.georgiamanufacturingalliance.com/ ProPurchaser.com: https://tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: https://supplychainrealestate.com/ Vector Global Logistics: http://vectorgl.com/ This episode was hosted by Chris Barnes. For more information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-243

Supply Chain Now Radio
"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 2)"

Supply Chain Now Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2019 28:56


"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 2)" Supply Chain Now Radio, Episode 239 This episode features Norman Bodek. Norman Bodek is President of PCS Inc. In 1979, after working for 18 years with Data Processing companies, Norm Bodek started Productivity Inc. - Press by publishing a newsletter called PRODUCTIVITY. At the time, he said he knew virtually nothing about the subject and had spent very little time in manufacturing facilities. But, he quickly became fascinated with the subject and went to Japan to discover the processes that was making Japan the world leaders in quality improvement and productivity growth. Even though on his first visit to Japan he didn't know a single person or speak Japanese, he has since, in the last 31 years, gone to Japan 80 times, visited more than 250 plants and published more than 100 Japanese management books in English, and over 150 other management books. As a fortune cookie once told him, "You have the talent to discover the talent in others." Mr. Bodek said his claim to fame is that he found amazing tools, techniques and new thoughts that have revolutionized the world of manufacturing. He has met Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Joji Akao, Mr. Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shigeo Shingo and many other great manufacturing masters and published many of their books in English. Each person he met gave him a new perspective on continuous improvement. Mr. Bodek has lead over 25 study missions to Japan and was one of the first to find and publish books, training materials and run conferences and seminars on TPS, SMED, CEDAC, quality control circles, 5 S, visual factory, TPM, VSM, Kaizen Blitz, cell design, poka-yoke, lean accounting, Andon, Hoshin Kanri, Kanban, and Quick and Easy Kaizen. Mr. Bodek, who was once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week Magazine, and "Mr. Lean" by Quality Progress Magazine, said his most powerful discovery was the way Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the infinite creative potential often lying dormant inside every single worker. Most recently, he worked with Gulfstream Corporation, a private jet company, where 1000 people that went from 16-implemented ideas in February 2005 to close to 40,000 in 2011, and resulting each year in annually savings of over $2 million. Mr. Bodek founded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence at Utah State University with Dr. Vern Buehler and is one of the few to be personally awarded the Shingo Prize. Learn more about Bodek’s firm, PSC Inc, here: https://www.pcspress.com/ Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode Subscribe to Supply Chain Now Radio: https://supplychainnowradio.com/subscribe/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at CSCMP Atlanta Roundtable Event: https://tinyurl.com/y43lywrd Reverse Logistics Association Conference & Expo: https://rla.org/event/80 SCNR to Broadcast Live at MODEX 2020: https://www.modexshow.com/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: https://www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit 2020 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards: https://www.atlantasupplychainawards.com/ SCNR on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: https://conta.cc/2YTuebX Check Out News From Our Sponsors The Effective Syndicate: https://www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog Spend Management Experts: https://spendmanagementexperts.com/ APICS Atlanta: https://apicsatlanta.org TalentStream: https://talentstreamstaffing.com/ Verusen: https://www.verusen.com/ Georgia Manufacturing Alliance: https://www.georgiamanufacturingalliance.com/ ProPurchaser.com: https://tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: https://supplychainrealestate.com/ Vector Global Logistics: http://vectorgl.com/ This episode was hosted by Chris Barnes. For more information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-239

Supply Chain Now Radio
"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 1)"

Supply Chain Now Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2019 27:22


"Profiles in Supply Chain Leadership: Norman Bodek (Part 1)" Supply Chain Now Radio, Episode 237 This episode features Norman Bodek. Norman is President of PCS Inc. In 1979, after working for 18 years with Data Processing companies, Norm Bodek started Productivity Inc. - Press by publishing a newsletter called PRODUCTIVITY. At the time, he said he knew virtually nothing about the subject and had spent very little time in manufacturing facilities. But, he quickly became fascinated with the subject and went to Japan to discover the processes that was making Japan the world leaders in quality improvement and productivity growth. Even though on his first visit to Japan he didn't know a single person or speak Japanese, he has since, in the last 31 years, gone to Japan 80 times, visited more than 250 plants and published more than 100 Japanese management books in English, and over 150 other management books. As a fortune cookie once told him, "You have the talent to discover the talent in others." Mr. Bodek said his claim to fame is that he found amazing tools, techniques and new thoughts that have revolutionized the world of manufacturing. He has met Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Joji Akao, Mr. Taiichi Ohno, Dr. Shigeo Shingo and many other great manufacturing masters and published many of their books in English. Each person he met gave him a new perspective on continuous improvement. Mr. Bodek has lead over 25 study missions to Japan and was one of the first to find and publish books, training materials and run conferences and seminars on TPS, SMED, CEDAC, quality control circles, 5 S, visual factory, TPM, VSM, Kaizen Blitz, cell design, poka-yoke, lean accounting, Andon, Hoshin Kanri, Kanban, and Quick and Easy Kaizen. Mr. Bodek, who was once called "Mr. Productivity" by Industry Week Magazine, and "Mr. Lean" by Quality Progress Magazine, said his most powerful discovery was the way Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the infinite creative potential often lying dormant inside every single worker. Most recently, he worked with Gulfstream Corporation, a private jet company, where 1000 people that went from 16-implemented ideas in February 2005 to close to 40,000 in 2011, and resulting each year in annually savings of over $2 million. Mr. Bodek founded the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence at Utah State University with Dr. Vern Buehler and is one of the few to be personally awarded the Shingo Prize. Learn more about Bodek’s firm, PSC Inc, here: https://www.pcspress.com/ Upcoming Events & Resources Mentioned in this Episode: SCNR to Broadcast Live at CSCMP Atlanta Roundtable Event: https://tinyurl.com/y43lywrd Reverse Logistics Association Conference & Expo: https://rla.org/event/80 SCNR to Broadcast Live at MODEX 2020: https://www.modexshow.com/ SCNR to Broadcast Live at AME Atlanta 2020 Lean Summit: https://www.ame.org/ame-atlanta-2020-lean-summit 2020 Atlanta Supply Chain Awards: https://www.atlantasupplychainawards.com/ SCNR on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/scnr-youtube The Latest Issue of the Supply Chain Pulse: https://conta.cc/2rLkO5Y Check Out News From Our Sponsors: The Effective Syndicate: https://www.theeffectivesyndicate.com/blog Spend Management Experts: https://spendmanagementexperts.com/ APICS Atlanta: https://apicsatlanta.org TalentStream: https://talentstreamstaffing.com/ Verusen: https://www.verusen.com/ Georgia Manufacturing Alliance: https://www.georgiamanufacturingalliance.com/ ProPurchaser.com: https://tinyurl.com/y6l2kh7g Supply Chain Real Estate: https://supplychainrealestate.com/ Vector Global Logistics: http://vectorgl.com/ This episode is hosted by Chris Barnes. For more information, please visit our dedicated show page at: www.supplychainnowradio.com/episode-237

Innovation and Leadership
#252 Former CEO of Wiremold and Author - Art Byrne

Innovation and Leadership

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2019 22:46


Art Byrne is an Operating Partner with J.W. Childs Associates, a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations of middle-market growth companies, where he leads the implementation of lean management at Childs' portfolio companies. While serving as CEO or an equivalent position, Byrne implemented lean principles in more than 30 companies (including subsidiaries) and 14 countries during the past 30 years, giving him a matchless knowledge of how to turn around companies using a lean strategy. Byrne began his lean journey as general manager at the General Electric Company. Later, as group executive, he helped introduce lean to the Danaher Corporation. As CEO of The Wiremold Company he quadrupled the company size and increased its enterprise value by 2,500% in less than 10 years. Byrne holds a bachelor's in economics from Boston College and an master's from Babson College. He also serves as a board member of the Shingo Prize.

Lean Portland
Ep 5: Lean Brain Thinking with Brock Husby

Lean Portland

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2019 33:22


About the presentation Left brain thinking. Right brain thinking. How do our brain functions impact our Lean practices? Continuous improvement implies continuous change. How do our ingrained habits influence our actions? There is an increasing awareness and incorporation of psychology and neuroscience in business and leadership reading; how and which of these concepts have you integrated into your Lean practice? You can watch the video of the presentation at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EBEoiWaTtw Brock Husby, PH.D., P.E. Brock is a process improvement Leader with primary areas of focus on Lean applied to Finance, Agile/IT/Software Development, Product Development, Healthcare, and Manufacturing, as well other applications. Brock is a Licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.), Certified Scrum Master (CSM)/Lean coach/Lean Product Developer, consultant, author (Productivity Press, Inc. & IISE), instructor (IISE, ELSS, UTSA), speaker and researcher. He has co-authored two books on Lean through Productivity Press: “Lean Daily Management for Healthcare Field Book” and “Hoshin Kanri for Healthcare: Toyota-Style Long-Term Thinking and Strategy Deployment to Unlock Your Organization’s True Potential”. He is currently a Senior Lean Coach with Standard Insurance, leading the Lean transformation in IT/Software Development. He was a Process Assurance Engineer/Corrective Actions Engineer for the Space Shuttle Program at the Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral, FL) and a Technical Assistant at Car and Driver Magazine. He was an Associate Vice President (AVP) at Baylor Scott & White Health, where he was an integral part of the deployment of a holistic Lean approach throughout the 13-hospital, 13,000 employee system. A case study from my Ph.D. Dissertation (based on his consulting work) was recently featured in Prof. Jeff Liker’s new book “The Toyota Way to Service Excellence”. He was one of the 3 Industrial Engineers who built the program for Denver Health becoming the first healthcare delivery organization to win the coveted Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence (March 2011) and demonstrated operational expense savings of $124,000,000 (as of 2013). The event was held in Portland, Oregon on Dec 4, 2018 at CENTRL Office, hosted by North Highland.

The Impact Report
#113: Hunter Lovins

The Impact Report

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2018 35:15


Hunter Lovins On Our Finer Future Hunter Lovins, President and Founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, believes that citizens, communities and companies, working together within the market context, are the most dynamic problem solving force on the planet. A champion of sustainable development for over 35 years, Lovins has consulted on business, economic development, sustainable agriculture, energy, water, security, and climate policies for scores of governments, communities, and companies worldwide. Time Magazine recognized her as a Millennium Hero for the Planet, and she has won the Rachel Carson and Right Livelihood awards, among dozens of others. Lovins has co‐authored fifteen books and hundreds of articles. Her best known book, Natural Capitalism, won the Shingo Prize. It has been translated into a more than three dozen languages and summarized in the Harvard Business Review. Bard MBA Director Eban Goodstein spoke with Lovins about her trailblazing work in sustainability and her latest book, A Finer Future, which was released in September. impactreportpodcast.com

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management
The Journey From Plastics & Axles to Shingo Prize Featuring Tracey & Ernie Richardson

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2018 47:36


Today’s Special highlights our southern friends Tracey and Ernie Richardson — The couple who started their work life at the first Toyota Plant in North America and wrote a book about it. Today’s Appetizer is the opposite of an app… The post Podcast: Just-In-Time Cafe, Episode 40 – The Journey From Plastics & Axles to Shingo Prize Featuring Tracey & Ernie Richardson appeared first on GoLeanSixSigma.com.

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management
Leaving the Office and Building a Joyous Culture With Gary Peterson

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2018 36:28


This week we discover the benefits of adding agony to the hiring process. Get the back story from Elisabeth’s interview with Gary Peterson, VP of Operations for the Shingo Prize-winning O.C. Tanner Company. We’ll cover the surprising results of this… The post Podcast: Just-In-Time Cafe, Episode 35 – Leaving the Office and Building a Joyous Culture, Featuring Gary Peterson appeared first on GoLeanSixSigma.com.

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management
How to Balance Your Crap-to-Fun Ratio With a Personal Kanban, Featuring Shingo-Prize-Winning Author Jim Benson

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2018 40:14


This episode is jam-packed with goodies! For Today’s Special, Tracy interviews Jim Benson, the coauthor of Personal Kanban. For the Appetizer we’ll review a free time tracking app called Toggl. For Lean Six Sigma In The News, we’ll find out… The post Podcast: Just-In-Time Cafe, Episode 31 – How to Balance Your Crap-to-Fun Ratio With a Personal Kanban, Featuring Shingo-Prize-Winning Author Jim Benson appeared first on GoLeanSixSigma.com.

Innovation and Leadership
#190 CEO & Lean Strategist - Marley Lunt

Innovation and Leadership

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 10, 2018 26:38


Marley Lunt is a Lean Strategist who partners with people and organizations to achieve world class performance. Marley uses a “People First” style to build capability which has led to many successes. By understanding the struggles leaders and team members experience, Marley tailors each approach to harmonize the needs of individuals with business goals and objectives. In his prior role at The Boeing Company as a Lean Practitioner, Marley established the standard for the Lean Management System and oversaw implementation across all Boeing Commercial Airplane programs. Marley was also recognized for creating a Lean culture and enabling the success of the GoldCare program, Boeing's premier integrated service that brings together engineering, materials, and maintenance to service customer airplane fleets. A balance between real life application and Lean theory is important. Marley has in-depth understanding of the Lean body of knowledge including the Shingo Model and rich historical sources that greatly influenced the Toyota Production System. Marley uses his creative talents to build trust with people and to keep the stuffy consultant stereotype at bay. Marley's favorite talent is playing the didgeridoo. He is a very good performer with over 12 years experience playing and making didgeridoos. Marley's Lean Journey Begins (short version) Marley's Lean journey started while working a summer job at a beef processing plant to pay for college. One day Marley reported a problem with a workstation on the production line and was told the issue would be fixed. After weeks of inaction, the problem resulted in Marley losing the function of his left hand requiring months of physical therapy. During the following semester at Utah State University, Marley was introduced to Lean, The Shingo Model, and Toyota Production Model through Dr. Randy Cook. When Marley saw and felt the deep level of respect for people and culture of continuous improvement at Shingo Prize recipient companies, such as Autoliv and O.C. Tanner, Marley decided to change his career path from becoming a stock broker to a Lean champion.  While attending Utah State University, Marley co-founded the Lean Leaders Club (now Shingo Student Chapter) to provide more in-depth Lean experience for students. He also worked for the Shingo Institute managing the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award. Career Highlights The Boeing Company Lean Management System  While at The Boeing Company, Marley established the standard for the Lean Management System and oversaw implementation across all Boeing Commercial Airplane programs. The implementation of the Lean Management System aligned the workforce and increased support for employee ideas to improve the business.  GoldCare Marley was formally recognized for transforming the culture of the GoldCare program, Boeing's premier integrated service that brings together engineering, materials, and maintenance to service customer airplane fleets.  The impact of Marley's work at GoldCare enabled the team to perform above contracted levels and gain the trust of old and new customers. Marley's influence led to record setting multi-billion dollar service deals for The Boeing Company.

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management
Unleash Your Creativity & Get Results Using the Toyota Way, With Shingo Prize Winner Karyn Ross

Just-In-Time Cafe: Lean Six Sigma, Leadership, Change Management

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 28, 2017 44:10


Wrap up a fabulous 2017 with us at the Just-In-Time Cafe this month and listen to our interview with Shingo Prize winning author Karyn Ross as we discusses transformation in the service sector. We’ll cover an app that will make… The post Podcast: Just-In-Time Cafe, Episode 22 – Unleash Your Creativity & Get Results Using the Toyota Way, With Shingo Prize Winner Karyn Ross appeared first on GoLeanSixSigma.com.

The Constructrr Podcast
Maximize Performance through Gaining Clarity First

The Constructrr Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2017 38:06


Karen Martin helps organizations use clarity, focus, discipline, and engagement to achieve higher levels of performance on financial, operational, and cultural fronts. She is president of The Karen Martin Group, Inc., a global consulting firm. Karen and her team have helped organizations such as AT&T, Chevron, GlaxoSmithKline, Epson, International Monetary Fund, Lenovo, Mayo Clinic, and the United States Department of Homeland Security learn more effective ways to design work systems, grow market share, solve business problems, and accelerate improvement. She is the Shingo Prize-winning author of The Outstanding Organization and coauthor of three additional business performance improvement books. Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with hundreds of organizations, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that "tolerance for ambiguity" has become a cliched job requirement. It doesn't have to be that way. We talk about why some organizations don't have clarity, the pitfalls of not setting a clear foundation and relying on ambiguous goals. And lastly, we talk about some of the recommendations she has for better organization clarity. Where to find out more about Karen Martin and her upcoming book, http://Clarityfirstbook.com (Clarity First).  http://KarenMartin.com (KarenMartin.com ) http://KSMartin.com (KSMartin.com) https://twitter.com/karenmartinopex (Twitter ) https://www.linkedin.com/in/KarenMartinOpex (LinkedIn) https://www.facebook.com/KarenMartinGroup (Facebook) https://www.youtube.com/KarenMartinGroup (YouTube) https://vimeo.com/karenmartingroup (Vimeo) https://www.slideshare.net/karenmartingroup (SlideShare) https://www.ksmartin.com/# (Newsletter) You can preorder the book now at: http://Clarityfirstbook.com (Clarityfirstbook.com) Learn more about the Lean Construction Institute at http://leanconstruction.org (leanconstruction.org). Show notes: constructrr.com/ep49 Music By: Epic Music Supervision

APICS SED Webinar Series
Shingo Assessment: What Happens Before, During And After

APICS SED Webinar Series

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2017 57:43


When companies challenge for the Shingo Prize, they undergo what is arguably the most rigorous assessment process in the world of operational excellence. This webinar is your chance to hear two seasoned Shingo examiners tell about the process and the pitfalls they often see. They’ll answer questions like these: · What’s the process of challenging for the Shingo Prize? · How do you know when your organization is ready to challenge for the Prize? · What do Shingo examiners look for when they visit your site? · What type of questions do examiners ask when performing an on-site assessment? · How can systems produce the right behaviors and results? · What happens after the site visit?

Dose of Leadership with Richard Rierson | Authentic & Courageous Leadership Development
269 – Bob Vanourek: Inspirational Speaker. Leadership Coach & Consultant

Dose of Leadership with Richard Rierson | Authentic & Courageous Leadership Development

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2016 33:09


Bob Vanourek is the former CEO of five firms, ranging from a start-up to a $1 billion NY stock exchange company and including winners of a state-level Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award and the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence.  He is author of Leadership Wisdom: Lessons from Poetry, Prose, and Curious Verse (2016) and the co-author of Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and ... Read More

Lean Leadership Podcast
Episode 032: Mike Orzen - How to Get Your Desired Results With Your Lean Efforts, Part Two

Lean Leadership Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2016 33:00


Today's episode is a continuation of our conversation that we had with Mike Orzen in Episode 31. So if you haven't heard episode 31 yet, after you listen to this episode go back and check out the beginning or our conversation with Mike. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Mike, he is the founder and President of Mike Orzen and Associates. He has been consulting and coaching improvement efforts for over 20 years. Mike is an Adjunct Professor with The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence and is a faculty member of the Lean Enterprise Institute. He is also a Shingo Award winning Co-Author of Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Enterprise.

Lean Blog Interviews
Alan Gleghorn, CEO of Christie Clinic

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2013 29:35


My guest for podcast #173 is Alan Gleghorn, CEO of Christie Clinic in central Illinois. Alan is one of the keynote presenters at the upcoming Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, to be held June 5-6, 2013 in Orlando. Alan has been CEO for 14 years, leading Christie Clinic in their Lean journey that started in 2005 when he saw ThedaCare's current CEO Dr. Dean Gruner present at a conference. In this episode, Alan talks about how they got started with Lean, what they learned from Autoliv and the Shingo Prize assessment process (being the first healthcare organization to do that). He also talks about his Summit keynote and how their work with Accountable Care Organizations is leading to better value and outcomes for patients. This podcast was produced in conjunction with the Healthcare Value Network as a continuation of their previous podcast series. To point others to this, use the simple URL: www.leanblog.org/173. You can find links to posts related to this podcast there, as well. Please leave a comment and join the discussion about the podcast episode. For earlier episodes of the Lean Blog Podcast, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. You can also listen to streaming episodes of the podcast via Stitcher: http://landing.stitcher.com/?vurl=leanblog If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Visión Tec OPINIÓN
El poder de la comunicación efectiva

Visión Tec OPINIÓN

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2012 2:30


¿Cuando das una instrucción se ejecuta correctamente? En muchas ocasiones el mensaje se tiene que dar 3 o 4 veces para dejar la idea clara en un 90%. Te invitamos a escuchar este interesante podcast en el que Abel Gómez Medina, director de la empresa The Shingo Prize, habla acerca de la comunicación efectiva en el ámbito laboral afirmando que es fundamental que los líderes de las organizaciones busquen métodos y herramientas que den seguimiento y soporte a los mensajes enviados al personal, asegurándose de que estos sean verdaderamente entendidos.

Visión Tec OPINIÓN
La importancia de medir los comportamientos organizacionales

Visión Tec OPINIÓN

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2012 2:21


Comúnmente las empresas u organizaciones buscan alcanzar la excelencia operacional, y generalmente se interpreta en tener mejores resultados que se traducen en más utilidades, un indicador frío. Escucha este interesante podcast sobre lo que deben de conocer las organizaciones de hoy.

Visión Tec OPINIÓN
Planeación Estratégica

Visión Tec OPINIÓN

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2012 1:54


En este podcast Abel Gómez, Director de The Shingo Prize en México, señala que solamente el 10% de las empresas que realizan o desarrollan planeación estratégica la implementan en las organizaciones. Después de haber visitado más de 100 empresas de un nivel global y competitivo reconocido, las compañías diseñan, desarrollan e implementan de manera imperativa y tenaz, sin embargo algo que comúnmente se olvida es el seguimiento y control.

Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak
Moog QuickSet “Visualizes” The Shingo Prize

Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2012 55:18


Lean Blog Interviews
Jerry Bussell, Jacksonville Lean Consortium

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2012 25:27


Episode #137 is a chat with Jerry Bussell, the founder of the Jacksonville Lean Consortium. Jerry is one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Lean Transformation Summit from the Lean Enterprise Institute - to learn more, visit http://www.lean.org. To point others to this, use the simple URL: www.leanblog.org/137. You can find links to posts related to this podcast there, as well. Please leave a comment and join the discussion about the podcast episode. About Jerry: Sporting a license plate reading “Leanjax,” Jerry Bussell is the past chairman and founder of the Jacksonville Lean Consortium, a group of companies and government agencies improving business performance by sharing knowledge about implementing lean principles. Recently retired as vice president, Global Operations, at Medtronic Surgical Technologies, Bussell is president of Bussell Lean Associates, a lean management advisory service for CEOs and their executive teams. He is also executive advisor to Underwriters Laboratories’ Center of Continuous Improvement and Innovation. Bussell received the prestigious Medtronic Wallin Leadership award for transforming Medtronic ENT's traditional manufacturing operation into a nationally recognized model of lean manufacturing. Under his leadership, Medtronic ENT/NT received an IndustryWeek Best Plants award for North America in 2002, a Shingo Prize in 2003, and a Shingo Silver Medallion recipient in 2009. In 2005 Bussell was inducted into the Shingo Academy for his contributions to operational excellence. He is a past chairman of the Board of Governors for the Shingo Prize and is a member of the Champions Club with the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. Bussell holds a bachelor’s degree from St. John Fisher College and a master’s degree from Baylor University. He is currently writing a book on lean leadership lessons from Abraham Lincoln that will be available in 2012. For earlier episodes of the Lean Blog Podcast, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. You can also listen to streaming episodes of the podcast via Stitcher: http://landing.stitcher.com/?vurl=leanblog If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Lean Blog Interviews
Bob Miller, on Dr. Covey and the Shingo Prize

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2010 24:12


Episode #94 of the LeanBlog Podcast is here and our guest is Robert Miller, Executive Director of the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. Bob was previously a guest for Podcast #59 (www.leanblog.org/59) talking about changes to the Shingo Prize criteria. Here, we are talking as a follow up to my discussion with Dr. Stephen Covey in Podcast #91 - www.leanblog.org/91 Bob tells me some of the background and history about how Dr. Covey became involved with the Shingo Prize and how he became a professor at the John M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Bob also talks about some of the future hopes and plans for Dr. Covey's involvement with the Shingo Prize. You can read about or comment on this podcast at www.leanblog.org/94 For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.ort, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Lean Blog Interviews
Dr. Stephen Covey, Respect and Lean

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2010 10:40


Episode #91 is a very special one-on-one conversation with Dr. Stephen Covey, recorded at the Shingo Prize Conference in Salt Lake City last week. My main question to Dr. Covey was to ask his thoughts on Toyota's "Respect for People" principle, sometimes called 'Respect for Humanity." You can listen to the audio or you can read a transcript below in this post. After the chat with Dr. Covey, I share a few thoughts at the end of the podcast about Dr. Covey's work and Lean, along with a little background about the interview and my personal reaction to speaking with him. Visit www.leanblog.org/91 to read the transcript or to join the discussion.Thank you to Bob Miller, the Executive Director of the Shingo Prize, to Steve von Niederhausern, the Director of Marketing and Communications for the Shingo Prize, and to Michael Ockey, who works for Dr. Covey and FranklinCovey for their help in lining up the time with Dr. Covey and for helping me prepare. I'm going to have a separate podcast discussion with Bob on his thoughts about Lean and Dr. Covey's work. For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the “Lean Line” at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id “mgraban”. Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast

Lean Blog Interviews
Matt May, "In Pursuit of Elegance"

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2009 18:25


This podcast is an interview with Matt May, author of the Shingo Prize winning book The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation. Available May 19 is his new book In Pursuit of Elegance. Matt's website is www.inpursuitofelegance.com. Come back for a 2nd conversation with Matt next week. There is also a video podcast version of this discussion available as episode #4 at www.leanvideopodcast.org. For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page at www.leanpodcast.org, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Lean Blog Interviews
Bob Miller, "Shingo Prize"

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2009 21:26


Episode #59 of the LeanBlog Podcast is here and our guest is Robert Miller, Executive Director of the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. We are discussing the Prize, some of the recent changes made in its criteria, and some future directions for the Prize named after Dr. Shigeo Shingo, of Toyota Production System fame. www.shingoprize.org is their website. If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.

Lean Blog Interviews
Gwendolyn Galsworth, More on Visual Displays and Management

Lean Blog Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2008 21:44


Episode #49 is another conversation with Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, who you might remember from Episode #26 last year and Episode #45, which was the first part of this conversation. In this episode, we talk about "Visual Displays," a topic from her Shingo Prize-winning book Visual Workplace, Visual Thinking: Creating Enterprise Excellence Through the Technologies of the Visual Workplace. Gwendolyn established Quality Methods International (QMI) in 1991 as a consulting, training and research firm, specializing in the Visual Workplace. If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.