GA 059 | Lean Beginnings with Steve Stansbury

You're listening to episode 59 with Steve Stansberry.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey there.

This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy podcast. This is, as always, thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean at Six Sigma training videos over@gembaacademy.com now, one quick plug for Gemba Academy. If you're not a customer of ours and you're interested in checking out our more than 700 Lean and Six Sigma training videos, which do include something called Gemba Live, which is where we go into companies and we, we actually spend a day or two with them and kind of really feature them in a sort of a case study. And you'd like to check that out for free, no strings attached. Go over to Gemba Academy.com and sign up for a three day trial. Again, it's free, there's no strings attached. We'll follow back up with you to see if you have any questions, but if it doesn't look like it's a good fit for you, no sweat. But that's really our best sales tool is just to let folks kind of check out the content free of charge and see what they think for themselves. Now, with that said, on today's episode, we are going to talk to a gentleman named Steve Stansberry. Now, Steve Kane, who was Gemba Academy's Director of sales and marketing, recently ran into Steve Stansberry at an AME regional conference and the two started chatting. And Steve Cain said, gosh, he really needed a podcast with Ron. And so Steve Stansbury myself kind of reached out and connected and got to talking a little bit. And Steve's got a really incredible story and background. He's been practicing lean for over 23 years and he's worked for a number of different companies. And he kind of specializes in what he calls kind of a Lean startup, not to be confused with the Lean startup movement of Eric Rees, but more of a how to get a company kind of thinking and practicing lean. And so that's really what we talk about in this episode is some of the things that he's seen that have worked well for him and the companies that he's worked at that, you know, that worked. And then also maybe some things that didn't work. And so all of us are more than likely on the lean journey to some extent. So I think hearing from someone like Steve is super valuable. Now, show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com 59 and that's 5, 9 for 59. So gembapodcast.com 59 all right, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Steve, well, thank you so much for taking time to come onto the show. Where are you calling in from today?

Well, Ronald coming in, calling in from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

All right, very good. Well, it's pretty close to us. We're here in Keller, Texas. So good times. Good times. All right, well, Steve, let's go ahead and just start the show with you telling us a little bit about your background, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and then what you're up to these days.

Sure, sure. You know, I started my career back in the early 90s at Rye College. I hooked up with General Motors after bouncing around for a couple years, and that's where I really got to put my degree to work as an industrial engineer. And I really focused on the classic industrial engineering. You know, time studies, line balance, layout, read design, so on and so forth. And I did that for six or seven years with them at that time as a future program engineer. And as we know, anyone has worked in automotive, all roads lead through Detroit. And ultimately I ended up on the future program of the Cadillac CTS and the variants that go with it. I got the great opportunity to get on that future program, and that's when GM was really trying to revive the Cadillac brand and they want to do so by building the best car design in North America, built in the best plant design in North America. So I was immersed immediately into benchmarking and learning about Toyota production system, what GM had done in Europe and South America and China. And I also was introduced to the theory of constraint. And up to that point, as a traditional ie, I found myself kind of not fitting in. But this really resonated with me and it really took off and I just started absorbing everything. And when I wanted to deploy what I learned, I found that as I designed the assembly plant, which was a terrific experience, made the best of my care, I really got to learn about the systems that ran inside it. And I saw that program through to a year after launch. And at that point I felt like I was ready to spread my wings and I took off to Some other companies and I had, you know, we'll say I've been around the block and, you know, a lot of failed experiments and I've learned a lot from those and it's made me into what I am today. And at this point now I'm running the operational excellence initiatives for a great little company here in Oklahoma City and having a great time and all. Everything I had learned in my past 20 years, I picked a company that had the right fit for me and what I was looking to do. So I'm taking everything I learned and applying it and having a great time.

All right, very good. All right. Well, Steve, what we'd like to do, as you know, to start all of our shows, is have our guests share a quotation, maybe a leadership or Lean related quotation that inspires them. So do you have a quotation that inspires you?

Yeah. And you know, this is going to resonate with a lot of people. You know, Tiona is famous for saying a lot of great things and I couldn't really find that was truly inspirational. But I found a quote that resonates with me and it keeps me steady. Ticciona said that all we're doing is looking at the timeline from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point we collect the cash and we are reducing the timeline by reducing non value added waste. And to me, that centers me, especially when you get wrapped up in emotional issues and problems and the data is not clear and you got a lot of organizational inertia looking at what are their goals and what are we trying to do? Well, it's ultimately all about time and everything is subservient to time. So when the customer, when we have problems in a plant, on the line, in the office, whatever those problems do, they rob us of time, which ultimately costs us money. And those problems are defined by seven forms of waste. But ultimately it's about time. And when we focus ourselves on compressing time, the flow time of the process, we're really becoming customer centric and looking at the system as a whole, which is what we really want to do. We want to improve our systems, not just the process.

Now, one question I have for you on that, Steve. So some practitioners, lean practitioners, will get a little bit bent out of shape when people are saying, oh, Lean's all about time and something like Six Sigma is about quality. Obviously that's wrong. I mean, Lean is very focused on quality. So how do you reconcile that, you think, with that quotation that Mr. Ono was saying?

As far as Six Sigma being related.

Quality, not just Six Sigma, just how some people will think that Lean is not. Their quality is not a part of Lean, which obviously it is. I mean, it's a huge part.

Well, when you think about quality, if you decide it as a customer focused problem, whether it's internal scrap or rework or warranty call, that takes time and money and resources out of our pocket. Right. So you have to do it over or you have to fix it, or you have to satisfy the customer with a replacement. And that robs us of time. So it's a struggle. And Six Sigma is a very effective tool as part of the system. Exactly. Yeah.

Very good. All right, so what we're going to talk about today, Steve, is kind of, I guess we're calling it kind of Lean Startups. Not to be confused with the Lean Startup movement of Eric Ries with kind of starting up a company, if you will. But this is more about implementing Lean, bringing a lean thinking way of working to an organization. So let's just start with just a real general question. In your past experiences with all of the startups that you've done, where do you think most Lean startups fail?

Well, where I've seen them fail in my experience. And Lean becomes a secondary agenda to running the business. You can't do Lean. In fact, I cringe when I hear other OPEX professionals use that phrase because that signals to me that it's become a secondary agenda to running the business. And that's a struggle because what that does is it puts all the pressure and all the ownership on the OPEX professional, which is kind of nice. You like having that responsibility, but that's really a recipe for disaster. What you want to do is have Lean integrated into the way we do business. Therefore it's not a secondary system requiring another set of resources or in a conflict of priorities, for instance. So we can either implement 5s or standard work or we can go fix our quality. And when you have to make that decision between running a business and doing Lean, and then you're in trouble because when you run out of resources, where they're gonna go towards running the business and not towards managing the operational excellence system. And that's a problem.

Yeah, I love that. So it's like use practice Lean as a way to help you run your business. So it's like, yeah, no, that's beautifully so. It's almost like we were talking earlier, like 5s. You know, somebody wants to do 5s. But why, you know, why are you doing it right? What problem are you Trying to solve.

Exactly. In fact, I've had a. I've always had a sensei when I would say, hey, the problem here is we don't have standardized work. And he'd say, you have a. What you have is a solution in search of a problem. What is the problem you're trying to solve? And when you solve that problem, then you deploy the tool to help you solve that problem. Therefore, you've solved the problem.

Beautiful. I love it.

I love it. All right.

So, Steve, what do you think is the most critical component to a lean startup?

Well, you know, there's. You got the House of Toyota with all the tools and all the subsystems, but ultimately it comes down to executive commitment. The leadership of the business, the leadership of the business unit of the organization. They have to be committed to the journey, and they have to. They have to make it part of their daily work. If they don't do that, then no one, because we all know that we do the 10 things our boss wants the most. And when it's not his number one priority, then it's not our number one one priority. So you have to have the executives on board. And I know that's a struggle for a lot of professionals because they're in the opposite approach where they're trying to sell their leadership, the program, and they're struggling with it, and they wonder why they're not getting the results. So I feel for those folks, but that's just a lesson learned over time that you've got to have them on board. They have to be leading it. You have to be in their hip pocket, and they have to be leading it. Secondly, I found that not only do you have to have the executives on board, but you have to have three in a row. And that's something I learned. If you've got a breakdown in the command chain, then your system is vulnerable. So what we like to say is that, do you have three leaders, any point in the command chain that are committed to the. To the purpose that if you do, then you're going to be successful in that area. So if you had a CEO, VP of operations, the plant manager, that plant's going to be successful. You've got a team leader, a supervisor, and a production manager. That area of the plant is going to be successful. So you always want to have three in a row. And that's where I always tend to focus my launches on, is where are you going to be successful based on the leadership you have? Because they're the ones that are going to have to do the work and carry out the execute the process.

So is it safe to say that if you go into an area and you have two and you need a third, do you just do your best to get a third before you start?

Yeah, yes, yes, you'd want to, you know, it's kind of a chicken and egg thing. You know, you want, if you've got three in a row, three good leaders, you go, or you want to seek them out. And typically if you've got some influential people, you can get that third on. But that's, you know, where I've been successful. You've had three leaders in a row. Whether it be at a plant or be in a section of a plan or be in a business. It's, it's, it's always worked out that way for me.

No, I love that. I've actually never heard that before, but it makes total sense. So that's really good.

Yes.

So one thing I want to kind of revisit though, you talked about, you know, the importance of leadership. So let's, let's face the tough question. So, you know, there's somebody listening to this right now saying, yeah, that's fantastic, Steve. Yeah, I wish I had leadership that was behind me. But this practitioner, you know, he or she, maybe they don't, but they're still driving it. What advice do you have for that person? Should they just quit, get their resume polished up or what do you think?

You know, I was at a conference and those questions kind of came up and I just, I looked these folks in the eye and they could see that they knew they're in trouble. And you know, I, that one I don't have an answer for because your every situation is going to be, is going to be unique. But I tell you what you've got to do is try to stay away from as far as tools go and try to go for business systems approach. If anybody's heard of kata, the way we solve problems, the way we organize, the way we go about to the floor. And I'll go into that in a little bit about what we want to see as far as systems. If you can get those systems in place and integrate business cycle, then you've got a better shot. Because what the lean leaders got to do is create a pull system. Pull for his services, his or her services and not a push. When you're pushing at some point you're going to become a nuisance and management's not going to work. Want you to get rid of you. But what you want to say is hey, we need, hey Steve, we need your help. We're trying to solve this business problem. How can you, can you help us with this? And then you've got an in. So integrating, integrating lean into the business cycle really helps pave that way. And then you might be able to change some minds from those above.

Yeah, got it. All right, so obviously having leadership behind us, having the philosophy, understanding why we're doing this, it's very important to get going. But now, now there is a place and a time for tools. So what are the most important tools to begin that Lean conversion.

Yeah, and that's a, that's a great segue because you know, I always, I've always said if I, if I think about the three tools that I want, if I could have any three tools and just three tools, I'd want Hoshin Connery or policy deployment, I'd want a 3 thinking or problem solving and then daily management or managing for daily improvement. I'd want those tools because those are the foundations for it to launch every other tool in the toolbox. So if I could explain for a moment, like the Hoshin Connery I talked about in the previous question, how do we integrate into the business system? Well, policy deployment is merely what is my business plan for this year? What is my long range, my short range plans? If I can develop a plan identified by gaps in the business, then I create a burning platform to make improvements. If you want to increase EBITDA or if we want to drive down quality or we want to improve safety or improve productivity or reduce material costs, now you've got a gap and you can rally the world on that. Then they say, well, how do we solve these problems? Well then OPEX professionals say, hey, I got a tool for that. Right? So that's critical. A3 thinking is just your problem solving methodology. It's your scientific, it's your scientific method. And you know, problem solving is just a, is just a degree of granularity from a 3 thinking that you know, by understanding what the problem is, understanding the root cause of the problem and then and identifying the appropriate sourcing those countermeasures through timing and people. And you start solving those problems and ultimately you need at many levels of the organization some sort of daily management that is a standards based initiative that makes problems visible and brings people together to talk about and solve those problems. If you can do that, then every other tool will come into play and it will become obvious that say, hey, out of this extrusion work cell, we're finding that the schedules change and we're doing twice as many changeovers. We get protiv yet because we have to shorten that time span getting our product to the customer. Well, that's a perfect segue for a tool like SMED to come into play. So then these systems promote the tool usage down below.

Yeah, got it. So what's your opinion on kind of some of these lean roadmaps that you'll see out there? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, you know, as a good student, I studied that and I can never get that system resonate with me because what it typically does, and I've looked at roadmaps and they typically file the same guidelines through how do we develop 5s and going through standardized work? Well, the problem is that you make operational excellence a secondary system to the business process. If you're lucky, you can kind of mold that into the business plan and say, hey, we're going to focus the roadmap on this value stream. But again, what we end up having is solution of a problem. We're going to go do 5s, and surely with the organization we become more efficient. And I struggle with that because again, you put the pressure on the OPEX professional to not be the sensei, the coach, but to be the doer of the work and the project manager. And like any good manager, you're going to come with some organized flow of the project with timing and resources. And you forget the whole reason why you're doing is that is to solve problems. Another example, kind of a microcosm of the roadmap is the model cell. And I've been part of a couple model cells. And the great thing about a model cell is it shows off all the tools in all their glory. However, at some point you're implementing tools that, that aren't solving problems and yet. And the people on the floor who are the most important users of the tools don't understand why they have these tools. They can't connect them. And typically the answer you get is because management's making us do it. Which is not the answer you want when you're out on the floor helping them. Helping them solve problem.

Yeah, got it. So the last question I have for you in this section, Steve, is just we've talked a lot about lean leadership and the importance of them, but what's their role in this whole conversion process?

Yeah, their role is, you know, when you got into this profession, you said, boy, being the sensei, how do I be a sensei? How to be a coach? And we never end up getting there. But You've got to be the coach. You got to step away from the process. You know, in my experience, I found myself in organizations that were. Didn't have a lot of bench strength, and they were in some sort of distress. So I was usually the, as far as lean goes, the smartest guy in a room and the only person capable of making the change. So I not only came up with good ideas, I had to implement them. And then again, that becomes Steve's lean program, not the business's lean program, and that's a problem. So what the lean leader's got to be. He's got to be the coach, he's got to be the mentor, and he's got to be the owner of the behavior, the leadership behavioral process, not the owner of the tool, if that makes sense. So, you know, I pondered on this for a little while, and I really couldn't come up with, you know, a succinct way to do it. But you've got to resist the notion of be to come up with the answers. But you got us. You've got to drive. What behaviors are we looking for in this system? How do the leaders behave in the system, how the followers behave in the system? And then when the tools are deployed, then managing those behaviors within the. With the. Within the processes and the tools.

Yeah, I mean, I think a big part of it for me is having the. That the courage as a leader to grant autonomy and just kind of let go a little bit.

Absolutely.

It's so hard, though.

Right, right. Well, you know, the professionals like us that we're trained to see waste and trained to see problems, and through our experience, we have all kinds of solutions that fit. And being patient and resisting the urge to give the answer is counterintuitive to our nature, certainly in our culture and in North America that we, you know, we answer is we want to be the hero. But sitting back and watching is. And coaching behaviors is counterintuitive to the way we've been raised.

Yeah, exactly. All right, Very good. All right, Steve. Well, let's go ahead now and transition into what we're calling the reflection section. And so, as you know, within the kind of the Toyota model, we spend a lot of time talking about the two pillars, respect for people and continuous improvement. Continuous improvement. We can put our fingers on it. It's the tools, it's one piece, flow, jidoka, these sorts of things. But respect for people, man, that can be really hard to kind of define. So what does respect for people mean to you, Steve?

Well, respect for people is something that resonated me early in my career when I realized that we all went to work for the same reason. And I found that having a meaningful job and being able to contribute was really important. Ultimately, that came before I learned about the Toyota production system. So it just really fit my eye. End up just with an example, I was facilitating a Kaizen event, and during the preparation phase, we were mapping out the process, and we came across this part of the process where the finished goods and the bill of material weren't in the system correctly. What it created was a process where the scheduler would have to go in, work around the system, create work orders outside the system, and then immediately close them, like literally seconds later to account for the inventory usage. And she would spend four hours a day opening and closing work orders because they didn't have a good process to do so. And that was. I found that disrespectful to her because, you know, you think about. She comes home after a long day of work, and her spouse says, hey, how is work, honey? And her response is, I don't know, I just did some stuff. Right. And ultimately is that, you know, as leaders, are those the types of jobs we want to provide for employees where they feel like if they don't have just. They're just doing stuff to keep busy. And so, you know, whenever we design a solution, we want to make sure that it includes a way to engage people in the ownership and improvement of the business, that they feel like they're part of that and they have a say and they have value. They know they're adding value, and their input is valued. So, you know, when we put in, you know, like an approved cell, we want to make sure we have visual communication devices to help teams come together and help these folks contribute. And to me, that's respect for people. It's not just a safety thing, keeping people safe. It's not just a pay scale making sure people are paid competitively. But people find that. I found that people value a good job over a high pay. And typically, if they're demanding higher pay, it's because they don't value their job the way they should.

Yeah. Something we've recently explored in our culture of Kaizen course is the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. You know, extrinsic with a carrot, it only works.

Works.

It's not very effective. Right. But when people have that intrinsic motivation, then, you know, you can conquer the world, right?

Sure. Absolutely.

All right, Steve, what's the best advice you've Ever received?

Well, you know, as I, as I went through leadership, I had a, I had a mentor who was also my manager and terrific guy, and he always had pithy comments for me. But one thing that really resonated for me, and this isn't really necessarily about lean, but it's about leadership. It's. Is he said, beware of the shadow that you cast as a leader. And what that meant to me was that, you know, as a leader, you're always being watched and you need to carry yourself in a professional way. And everything you do is selling yourself or demotivating others on a negative side. So, you know, that, that just really sticks with me. You know, in everything I do as a leader, I carry a burden, that I take ownership for the workforce. That it's. That I need to be here to help to help these folks improve the business. That, you know, always, always be aware that people are always watching you yourself in a professional, adult way. That, that they, they can see that, hey, that's, that's the way I want to be. And that that type of behavior is contagious.

Love it. Do you have a personal productivity habit that others might benefit from?

Well, I. Yeah, you know, I'm kind of hard on myself, but I found my myself to be generally disorganized. So I've. I've created. These are honest, at least. I. So, you know, one thing, I keep with me a journal every day, and I start my day off with going through my calendar for the day, and I go through my journal of things that I need to do that day. And I try to spend 15 to 30 minutes every day getting myself ready for that day and lining up my day and making sure I've got time prepare for my activities, time to execute my activities, and then time to reflect on activities. And other than that, you know, I just, you know, I crave action, so I'm always going and going. But I also like to trace, to stay balanced, where, you know, people can be very productive or they can be very organized. And I try to balance one productivity activity with a maintenance activity, making sure I keep all my ducks in a row. But then I'm out earning my keep for the company.

Love it. Now, do you write in a. You actually write or you type?

No, I write, I write. I'm manual. I believe the whole business can be run without a computer. So I'm old school and you know that.

All right. So, Steve, is there one thing that surprised you during your last year of practicing or implementing Lean?

You know, it's unfortunately, with my experience of being with 10 different businesses and nine different industries over the last 23 years, nothing really surprises me anymore. You know, I just, I've seen it all before. You know what surprises me is my stamina to keep going. And you know, there's days I just decide I just need to quit this, go find something else to do because there's times where it can be very frustrating. But my heart's here. So I guess if it surprises me about me, it's, it's the fact that I can, I can stay focused and having a heart for people keeps me coming back to work every day.

Love it. All right, so do you have a routine or ritual that you follow when things aren't going well and you need to recharge and refocus?

Yeah, you know, I'm a very self reflective person so I find that, you know, if things aren't going well, I tend to turn, internalize them on myself. So that can be kind of destructive mode if you, if you, you allowed to take hold of you. So you know, stepping away, stepping away from the process and looking at, from the outside, one of my sensei's taught me about, and this is somewhat unique and there's, I'm sure there's interpretation of it, but you take time to be in the system and you also take time to be on the system. So in the system you wear when you're executing your standards work, you got your nose in the business and you're just really executing a process. But being on the system is stepping outside and watching the process saying hey, how did that process go? How do I improve that system? And it's a real systems use. So when I, when things are, when I'm finding and not making progress, I'll step away and kind of look at the whole and say, am I coming from this, from the right direction? Am I taking the right approach? Is there a different way to come about this? And that kind of gets me re centered And I'll dip into some of my, some of my learnings I've had along the way and kind of reflect on that to make sure I'm holding, holding tight to the philosophies and principles I've been about talking.

Now you've got 20, 20 plus years of experience. So you know, it's definitely not your first rodeo. But I'm curious, is there, is there an area, a skill area or a knowledge area that you feel that you even you need to improve in order to become more successful at practicing lean?

Yeah, it's funny, after 23 years, I feel like I don't know anything. And you're always learning. But, you know, one thing I've really focused on and I'm translating that to the organization, is coaching, Kyle. Really, really tightening up that. And, you know, like I said, coming from typically distressed organizations where I had to have all execute, you tend to go out to the shop floor and the first thing to do, hey, here's what we should do here. And what you've done is rob that person of the opportunity to learn. And so, you know, working on my coaching, kind of leading with questions, observing first and then generally being quiet and watching and then offering. Offering coaching through a question rather than an answer. So really get into that and really focusing on that mantra, doing micata. And it Sounds like after 20 years, you just know this, but you build habits over time and they need to be broken. So that's something I'm trying as a leader. I need to demonstrate that if I expect my reports to execute the same way. Life.

Yeah. That whole concept of solving people's problems, we call it stealing their monkey, the monkey on their back. So stop stealing people's monkey.

Right, right. Exactly. Exactly.

So I do have one other question for you, and I was especially interested with your experience and your background, if you could go back in time, you jump into a time machine and go back 23 years and talk to Steve. Right. Before you kind of begin this journey.

Yeah.

Is there any advice you would give Steve, or would you just say, good, go. Go get him, killer. Good luck?

Well, you know, that's hard to say because I wouldn't be what I am without going through what I went through.

Right, exactly.

But I would. You know, I always. I had the hero syndrome where I thought, I can fix this. And what I found is that I can't fix executives. And what I need to do is choose my companies wisely and pick companies that have a good leadership approach, that are committed to the journey and that are going to listen to coaching, especially from those who don't rank as high as them. I imagine as you get into the C level suite, you're talking guys who have been. They tend to have egos and they want to be told that they're doing it wrong. So you're making sure that you're. You're connected with a good leadership team that's gonna help you learn and grow. And I might not have worked in 10 different businesses, so I may be. Maybe worked in one or two. And, you know, my wife would probably appreciate that more than anything else. Not having to move and change jobs regularly.

Yeah. All right. Well, Steve, I really enjoy talking with you. It's always great to talk to folks like yourself who, you know, truly live here, living the lean way of life and practicing it and doing great work. So why don't we wrap this show up with you sharing some final words of wisdom and then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you?

Certainly. I always pick up nuggets of wisdom along the way and I've always had great leaders along the way. One thing I was taught is don't let best get in the way of better. We tend to want to design the perfect system but move the ball down the field towards the goal. You know, it's best to just, let's get a little bit better now. We go to the threshold of knowledge and then we'll reevaluate when we get there. So that, that's something I try to live by, to keep you centered and not not get too wound up in imperfection. But if you want to talk more, you can Find me on LinkedIn. My contact information is there, both email and cell phone and I'm open to talk to anybody anytime. I enjoy discussing it. I especially enjoy hearty debate. So I take all comers. So I look forward to hearing from some folks.

So is it just Steve Stansberry then?

Yep. Steve Stansberry, you'll find the Director of Operational Excellence for the Climate Control Group at LSB Industries. So if there's more than one Steve Stansbury out there, you'll find me with LSB Industries. Okay. Yeah.

And we'll go ahead and we'll link to all of your social media outlets there in our show notes which you'll looking at our board here. It's going to be Gimbapodcast.com 5959 so we'll link to everything there. So Steve, thanks again for taking time out of your busy day. It's been awesome and look forward to actually meeting you in person one day maybe at a conference or something and going out and talking shop.

Super. I really appreciate it, Ron. Thank you.

All right, take care.

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