GA 061 | Adventurous Thinking with Sally Dominguez

You're listening to episode 61 with Sally Dominguez. 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 from Gemba Academy, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy Podcast. I'm so happy you're listening, and we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, I'm really excited for today's episode since it's a bit different than any show that we've done before, since our guest, Sally Dominguez, doesn't have a traditional lean thinking background. Instead, she brings more of an innovation, design and architecture background to the show. But as you'll hear, Sally also comes to the table with some excellent insight on how people and organizations can become better innovators and problem solvers, and through something she calls adventurous thinking. Now, as you'll hear, she recommends some really interesting ideas, several of which tie closely to what we lean thinkers attempt to do on a regular basis. But if you're like me, it's always nice to hear a slightly different angle to these concepts from time to time, which is why I'm excited for this episode. Now, I also want to point out that Sally's going to be presenting an adventurous thinking workshop at the upcoming AME International Conference, which is going to be in Cincinnati, Ohio this year from October 19th through the 23rd. Now, as you've probably heard me say before, this AME International Conference is Gemba Academy's favorite lean thinking conference and will be there again this year. Now, we're also going to be hosting another happy hour networking session like we did at last year's AME Conference. Now, we don't have all the details for this quite worked out, but once we do, we'll be share the specifics here on the podcast. Finally, like last year, Gemba Academy will be able to save you 10% if you register for the AME Conference through us. Now, we're following finalizing the details on this, so please be sure to subscribe to the podcast on itunes or any other podcasting service. Now then, show notes for this episode, which do include links to subscribe to the show for free, can be found over@gembapodcast.com 61 and that's 61 for 61, so gembapodcast.com 61 okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Well, all right, Sally, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to visit with us. Where are you calling in from today, Ron?

I am sitting in beautiful Marin County, San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm delighted to be with you this morning.

It sounds like you were born and raised there, is that right?

I'm a Sydney girl. Bondi beach is my real home, but the Bay Area is my adopted home, and it's fantastic.

Now, we've had some folks from Spain and England, but you just had the coolest accent so far of all the episodes we've done.

Well, I come from the land down under, Ron.

All right, very good. All right, well, Sally, let's just go ahead and start. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and what you're up to these days?

Sure, Ron. So my background is I'm an architect. I practiced architecture, mainly residential, a little commercial in Australia for 12 years. And during that time I designed a product. Actually, it was a high chair that, you know, I just designed because I saw a lack. I had a baby and I had nothing to put it in that was very easy to clean and a little stylish. I designed something that ended up being a bit of a design icon, I'm pretty happy to say. It's in two museums. I designed it with no knowledge of manufacturing, and so I came at manufacturing from a completely ground up point of view. And in doing that, I actually invented a new rotomolding finish and learned a lot about processes and production, designed my second product, designed a couple more products, and ended up designing a modular rainwater harvesting system that's like a Lego block you fill with water called Rainwater Hog, which has won a ton of awards now. And so I sort of morphed from architecture to product. But what I was really interested in was my very different point of view when I came to design and produce something from a classic product designer. Then I started judging inventions on Australian tv. I judged on a thing called the New Inventors for six years, looking at all sorts of inventions, specializing in materials and technologies. Then I started judging cars, and then I started doing a little rallying, judging cars, and generally being a media commentator on innovation and sustainability. So I pretty much said yes to everything that's come my way. Ron.

Nice, Nice. All right, well, I understand you're going to be speaking at the upcoming AME conference in Cincinnati. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Sure. Basically, through my career, as some of my stuff started gaining a lot of public traction, I was asked more and more about my process, and I came up with this way of looking at problems and looking at product ideation, which I termed adventurous thinking. So I'm really excited because the AME has invited me to deliver my adventurous thinking philosophy, which is a Five Ways of Approaching Problem Solving, at the International Conference. It's in October. I'm not sure which day I'm on, but we're running from the 19th to the 23rd of October in Cincinnati, Ohio. I've never been there. I'm excited, and it's going to be a great conference. I mean, there's other. There's about 40 other workshops, but I'm really hoping everybody will come to mind. Let's be up.

Yeah, I can't wait. Well, we're big fans of Amy. In fact, we're partnering with them again this year, and we're obviously we're going to be exhibiting there at the conference, so we're going to do a networking party. So, Sally, you have to come to that and potty run, have a drink with us, and that's going to be a blast. So we're going to have more details also on the conference as we get closer. We're going to, like we did last year, we're going to offer a 10 discount to folks that want to sign up for the conference through GEMBA Academy. So we don't make any money on that. Full disclosure, we're just good friends with ame. We think it's the best Lean Conference in the world, so we want everybody to be there.

Oh, nice job on that because, you know, honestly, it's already the biggest Lean conference in the world, but the more people that can come, the more idea exchange we can get. And, you know, everybody benefits. So I think giving it 10%. Good on you, mate.

Exactly. All right, well, thank you. So, Sally, as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation that inspires them. I think you have more than one, which is cool. We'll let you break the rules a little bit, but why don't you go ahead and share those with us?

Thanks, Ron. I have two. I have Albert Einstein, who is an amazing lateral thinker, And I have Dr. Seuss, another fantastic thinker. Albert Einstein says, if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.

Love it.

Now, I love this because it's just about, let's not get stagnant. And that could have been really a Dr. Seuss. It almost sounds like a rhythmic Dr. Seuss. My Dr. Seuss quote is, better to know how to learn than to know.

What's that mean to you?

Well, you know, I think the fact is you've just got to always be open. Open to the fact that there is so much that we don't know. There's so much to be curious and excited about. So what, you know is such a tiny part. And the journey to what you don't know and learning more is where exciting things happen.

Yeah. No, I love that. In fact, I was actually having some conversations with some colleagues recently, and I said, you know, a lot of times, you know, we kind of, you know, call yourself an expert or whatever it is, but it's really easy to fall into that trap that, you know, that we believe that we're the way, the truth and the light with all things lean or any topic. And I think that's a very dangerous kind of mindset when you think you know it all, that's probably when the fall is about to occur. Wouldn't you agree?

I absolutely agree. I mean, when I was an architect, the first thing I do would be on a building site. I mean, I was young for what I was doing. I built 34 houses. I'd done a lot of building. I started really young. And I would walk on there and I'd say, look, I know what it is that I'm looking for, but I'm not going to pretend I understand how to build like you do, so can we work together? And it's interesting because other architects in the same, you know, especially women, would say, oh, I get on a building site, and it's. So there's like a wall up to me. And I said, I've never had that, because I've always gone on and said, here's what I really want. But I'm totally open to the fact that you know how to deliver it much more than I know how to deliver it. So let's work. You know, I think it's. I think it. Yeah, Nobody wants to be obnoxious. Nobody wants to push the expert title. You know, hopefully you come across as an expert without needing to tell anybody that you're an expert.

Exactly. All right, so let's get into this adventurous thinking. I'm fascinated by the idea. We've shared a little bit offline on what it's all about. So let's just start at a high level. What is it? And you did coin the phrase. Right? I think you said that earlier.

I did. And I would credit Dori Clark, who's a thought leader on personal branding. And one of my. One of my. I consider her a little bit of a mentor. Ran an exercise where she said, you know, head out and ask six people, colleagues, friends, people that know you and people that work with you, what three words they'd come up with when they think of you. It's a really interesting exercise, Ron. And it's actually, I do that in part of my sideways thinking, because it's not what you think you're putting out. It's an understanding of what other people consider you're putting out, which can often be different. And my six, and then I went and actually did eight, all came back with adventurous. I was like, huh? The word had not occurred to me. But now that I think about it, it does describe what I do in that I'm extremely open. I've got this broad experience. So what I've done is taken a process that's the opposite of linear. So this is a thinking process that basically allows you to quite quickly come up with a crazy diverse number of options in problem solving or product development. I've called it adventurous thinking, because that's what all my friends told me I did. This is a philosophy that's based on. I've got a little Jacques Derrida, which is a little bit of disruptive thinking. I've got some architectural thinking in there, and some classic design thinking. Basically, adventurous thinking is about if you have a small amount of time and perhaps you're just one person, you can actually use this system in a small amount of time to generate crazy numbers of options that then you can sort through, and often things that you would never have thought of before. So it's basically, I've developed what I'm calling the five ways, which are the tools. You want me to tell you what they are?

Yeah, let's go through each one.

All right, so my five ways starts with negative space. So shall I describe them as I go, or shall I list them and then we'll talk about them?

You know what, let's give a short explanation of each one, and then I think I'm going to probably want to go back and dig into a few of them.

My first of the five ways is negative space. And it's the simplest because it's something that graphic designers work with every day. Basically, if you look at a page and you have an image on a page, the image itself is the positive space, and all that white space or space around it is the negative space. So in a scenario, say I'm sitting here at the desk talking to You, Ron, then my positive space is my desk, my computer, me, the chair, my negative space. I would need to picture a sphere or a kind of silence or a square or a block around me. And the negative space is under the table above my head. That's the physical negative space. And then my. My other longitudinal negative space is the pause when we're not talking. What I haven't said yet. So basically the negative space. If you think of, you know, a waiting room in a doctor's surgery, there are many moments that are happening that could be filled with other activity. We might go back to that one. I'll talk to you. The second of the five ways is sideways, and that's sideways thinking is basically about trying to remove your subjectivity from the way you're thinking. And I run some exercises where I use my Briggs profile. I identify, say, for instance, in a brainstorming group, experts and introverts. And then I'll reverse their roles so that the extroverts will take notes and the introverts will run the brains. Brainstorming session. And what's really interesting is we always. The feedback always is the introverts will be, you know, I've never had a chance to get across like that. And the extroverts will say, that's not the result that would have happened if we were in charge. Not a criticism, just a fact, you know. So sideways thinking is about trying to take another point of view, whether it's the customers, whether it's, you know, somebody involved in part of the process. Then we have backwards thinking. Backwards thinking is understanding life cycle analysis. You know, the idea that a product starts with the elements the energy use goes through. Production is delivered to a consumer all the time using energy generating waste. So part of that backwards thinking is understanding the loop, the life of a product and making that loop tighter. It's very similar to circular economy thinking. Rethinking is my fourth of my five ways.

What was that? Say it again.

Rethinking.

Okay. Rethinking.

Basically considering something you already have and understanding whether you could multiply, magnify, minimize, or repurpose that to a greater good. And the final of the five ways is parkour. And I'm not sure, Ron, if you're familiar with parkour, have you ever seen.

No.

All those crazy French athletes who go running across a landscape, sort of tumble turning and jumping off buildings. And parkour is basically a way of traversing a landscape really efficiently, never looking back. So it's also, you could describe it as disruptive thinking. Okay. And it's basically, I like to think of it as you throw a spanner in the works and then you watch everything just explode. And then you catch all those bits and play with them for about five minutes and see if you can make something better of it.

Interesting.

Interesting. It's a really hard one. I mean, that is high stakes design thinking. Because most of the time disruptive thinking ends in spectacular failure. However, it's also how you get the true disruptive technologies and products. So, you know, Red Bull, for example, Red Bull is a really interesting one because at a time when soft drinks were doing the taste test, who tasted better, who had more value, more bang for buck? You know, basically a big can, cheap price. Red Bull comes in tiny can, super expensive, weird taste. I mean, still a weird taste.

Yeah.

And totally blew that market apart because people were looking for something else. You know, align themselves with extreme athletes and bam, you've got a whole rethink of soft drink. So that's disruptive. That was high stakes.

So we had. So I. So I was taking notes. So we have negative space, sideways thinking backwards thinking, rethinking and parkour. I can't even say it. So let's go back to negative space a little bit. I want to dig into that one. One really interested me. Let's. Let's explore that one a bit deeper.

Negative space is the thinking tool that I find the most response back from people can apply it immediately to a work situation, which is great. So native space is basically. I'm not sure, Ron, whether you've ever noticed if you look at the FedEx logo, have you ever seen that?

The arrow? Yeah.

Okay, so that's a classic graphic negative space. So you've got this subliminal, we're moving forward thing, the arrow and the FedEx.

Yeah.

If you think about intermodal shipping, once we loaded a heap of cargo separately onto boats, ships, and then we shipped it, and then some genius said, look, hang on. If we put that in light containers and pack it, not on the ship, but pack it before it goes on the ship, we're actually going to reduce the amount of time to pack and unpack. So what they did there was look at the negative space. The negative space was this amount of time to load a ship and unload a ship. And by going to intermodal shipping containers, you are able to take that loading time and really minimize it. Or as I was referring to the waiting room at a doctor's surgery, this is one that I use with people in my workshop because we've all been there. So you sit in a waiting room waiting for the doctor. There's the space you're sitting in, you're sitting in a certain way, you have a certain proximity to other people. So there's physical space, but there's also the time you wait, the actual time you wait and there's the perceived time you wait. So you always think you're waiting longer than you do something to do with the sneezing child and the sick person across from you and all that other stuff, right?

Yeah.

So someone like say, for instance, the Mayo Clinic, who looked at perceived waiting time and disgruntled customers because they felt like they were waiting longer and making the wait time shorter didn't seem to make a difference. But coming up with this concept of a Jack and Jill room. So basically splitting the care into two so that the customer comes in, waits a short amount of time, goes into a prepping room, gets certain stuff done, then moves to the next room to see the primary carer. By breaking up that journey, even if the time was the same as the original wait, patient feels like there's something happening that's really taking the negative space and turning it into a positive experience.

Well, there's two things that immediately popped in my mind. You mentioned a shipping idea. Toyota recently there was a meals per hour movement where they went to New York City to help a feed the poor, basically and working with like soup kitchens and so forth. And. And that's exactly what they did. They used the boxes where had all this empty space in it, said, let's just get smaller boxes so we can fit more onto the truck. You know, more good food on the truck. And then the idea of waiting, this queuing theory is another. You've probably heard of this. But it's this idea of waiting in like Disney World. From what I understand is they're masters at it. So you're on these lines, but there's stuff going on, you're looking at things and so the weight doesn't feel as agonizing because you're doing things right.

Optimize the experience during. I mean, you can take that. I mean, you think about elevators. Elevators now have news going, ads in the elevators. You know, all those things are evaluated. Let's face it, we may not think it's value added, but someone's getting something from that and that's just taking negative space and optimizing it.

So I guess like from a problem solving perspective, right, you know, you're looking at a problem or a situation and you're trying to maybe come up with countermeasures to this problem. Maybe you've identified some root causes to this problem. I would imagine this, taking at it, I look at it from a negative space perspective, could help you come up with some unique countermeasures. Is that kind of what you're seeing?

That's right. What the key to negative space is to create a boundary. Because negative space, of course, is infinite in that it's everything that's not the main object. So what you need to do is start small. So if it was a waiting room and you didn't really know necessarily what the problem was, you take a situation or an object, you put a small boundary around it, a room or an area, you analyze that for the physical negative space, the time measure of negative space, and any perception of negative that you might get, like for instance, what's not said, you go to the doctor. What are you disgruntled about, what didn't get said to you? Or on a call center, you know that classic American Express thing where they rethought their call centers. Let's not get people off the phone so fast. Let's make sure that we've given them everything they were expecting to get on that call.

Yeah.

So that wasn't about minimizing the physical time. That was about understanding what people weren't hearing, what people weren't getting, and making sure that they get it.

Love it. All right, let's go to backwards thinking. What's that all about? Let's go deeper on that.

I feel like this is just so relevant right now. I mean, it's been a core to the way I've designed for a long time. And it's basically the idea of life cycle analysis. And I believe, I mean, Toyota's brilliant at lifecycle analysis, but most companies are looking at that as part of their sustainable policy. You know, the idea that you understand all the elements and the functions and the energy that is going into producing a service or a product, then it goes right through production, you give it to the customer, but you also then need to understand at the end of its useful life, what has happened to that thing. So what we do in backward thinking is we actually do a thing called back casting. And to describe it most simply, I'll use one of the examples that I often use in my workshops. And that's a classic handbag or man bag, depending on what you're carrying. So say you were carrying a briefcase, right? Yeah, we stick that on the table. So we look at something now in this Case, it's a briefcase. And we take it apart into its components. Materials on one side, functions on the other. Now, materials will go right down to the stitching material. You don't have to know what they are. You need to know they're there. The zipper, the zipper tag, the lining. So that's all down on materials, on functions. You might have a closure, a handle, you know, studs on the bottom to stop the base wearing out, that sort of thing. So once you have those two columns, you look at, okay, imagine this thing is used nearly every day for 10 years. Pick a time frame. I mean, I'm an architect. I like to go for longer because we want our buildings to go forever. But say, 10 years for a bag, okay? So then you look into the future and you examine what each of those materials and functions will look like 10 years down. And it's usually pretty easy to identify what will have failed in 10 years. So then you come back to the present and you say, okay, how can I design that failure out? And at that point, what you want to think is, do I want this bag to last 10 years, or is it more reasonable to assume that we'll have nothing to carry in that bag in five years? In which case, why don't I change the design life of this bag so that maybe this bag is something that lasts four years? And what do I want it to do at the end? Do I want everything from the bag to recycle back into the waste stream so that I don't create unnecessary waste, or do I want the whole thing to disintegrate as though it was a blossom tree? I mean, this is the classic Madonna cradle to cradle thinking that California is very big on, you know, so do I want to make it out of a biography, biodegradable thing, or do I want to design it for disassembly at the end, like a Herman Miller chair? And so this actually then has you rethink the way something's put together and usually results in a simplification that tends to be a cost efficiency, a production efficiency. Like, it brings to the table so many efficiencies because you simply understood exactly how long you want it to last and what will happen when somebody's finished using it.

Yeah, no, I love it. But there's actually a. Within the engineering world, I believe it's called vave value analysis, Value engineering. Where do much of what you're talking about take the product apart, look at each part, and what is the function of that part? And then a lot of Times, you can simplify the product right at that point. But to your point of an environment and things like that, I think that's a brilliant way to really look at a product and how to make it better going forward.

Yeah, really. I mean, a lot of cars are using this. You know, you can use chromium to tan leather and that's fine and it makes beautiful soft leather. But at the end of the life, and you know, there's so much research right now into automobile fluff, you know, so fluff, once you've recycled everything from the car, you're left with this sort of toxic, manky stuff that seeps into the environment called fluff, which is all the bits and pieces you couldn't recycle. Litter is only in there, you know, And I think PR genius that named that stuff fluff. So, so much research now into, okay, if we don't chromium tan our leather, then at the end of the life, it's naturally tanned. We don't seep chromium into landfill.

Yeah.

And so many car people now are like, this is great. You know, it's a simpler process, it's more natural. There's no off gassing, simple thing. Just by rethinking, okay, what will happen at the end of life.

Well, and I'm also just reminded of like within the lean problem solving methodology. Again, coming back to that, at the end of the problem solving journey we like to perform. You know, I'm sure you've heard of it in your research. Hindsight or reflection, looking back, and it's almost sometimes referred to as repentance. You know, what did we do wrong? What could we have done better? And so I see tons of parallels between what you're talking about and what we lean thinkers are constantly trying to do.

Yeah. I have had, I have had a lot of feedback from leading practitioners to say that this stuff does augment.

Yeah.

In that it's a really time efficient way to generate a whole lot of thoughts that then feeds straight into that process.

Yeah. No, I love it. I love it. Now, the last thing I want to kind of explore here, we were talking offline and then, you know, a key tenet we lean thinkers are fond of is failing fast. In other words, doing, you know, when we're trying to solve problems or come up with countermeasures to root causes, we want to often do small, quick experiments and. But obviously many times they fail. Right. Which is okay so long as we learn something. But from what I understand, you also believe in a small, daily failures concept. Can you. Can you elaborate on this some more?

Yeah, I do. I mean, there's a couple of reasons for this, and I do. I celebrate that about Lean, that there's room for failure in so many systems and so much thinking. People are so obsessed with moving forward. If you fail, it creates a more robust constitution. And if you want to be an innovator, you think of some of the great innovators out there, they prolifically fail, but on small basis. So I'm. Part of what I do is about creating new neural pathways, right? So if you are engaged in practicing something quickly that you're bad at, then you're actually creating new brain pathways. And that's a really important thing. Nobody wants to stagnate. Nobody wants to be in a routine. You can be really expert at something. But if you, for instance, like me, don't even understand computer coding, what better way to stretch your brain, literally, to create new pathways than to try Scratch or one of these MIT kindergarten programs? But 10 minutes a day to extend what you do, but also to know that you'll fail and to be comfortable with that. So part of the mindset for innovative thinking and adventurous thinking is bearable discomfort. The idea that you understand that for a certain amount of time per day, I advocate no more than 10 minutes, because really, who's got more than 10 minutes? Bearable discomfort. You're trying something, you know you're not good at. You could try and write music, you could try and do programming, you could try and draw. You're doing something that you know you're not good at, understanding that you'll fail and being super okay with that, because that is making you a more robust and adventurous thinker.

Wow, that's so powerful, though, because who does it, really? Because we don't like being uncomfortable. Right.

Onwards. That nobody has time for failure. I mean, really, culturally, there's no place for failure. And if you really want to be an amazing thinker, of course you have to be super good with failing on the small stuff. It's like, don't sweat the small stuff, because really, you're going to come up with something massive, but you need to be prolific in order to get that, you know?

And what's funny is, eventually you are going to become. You're going to be programming on Ruby on Rails, and next thing you know, you're going to be this awesome programmer. Right?

Then I'll be on to something else.

Exactly.

And I'll be killing myself in the playground.

Take up gymnastics or something like that. Right, okay. All right. Well, very good. So the last question I have on just adventurous thinking is, aside from your workshop at AME in Cincinnati, where can people learn more about. About what you're teaching?

I have, I teach down at Stanford. Every once in a while I run a six week workshop. I'm also presenting at the Industrial Designers International Conference at IDSA in August. And I have a website which is adventurousthinking.com so that if I speak too fast and my accent is in the way of people understanding what I'm saying, I've written it out. Right.

When's your book coming out? Come on.

That's funny you should mention that. Yes, I'm working on my book this summer. I'm hoping that it will be out later this year. You know, my ideal book, again, down to just. Let's. Let's call it what it is. I've been asked to write a lot about my background, but in my opinion, the book would have a perforated spine. So we could have the whole bio story stuff in the back and the philosophy with the tools and techniques in the front. Anyone who just wants to go straight to the heart of it can just tear off the biography, hand it to someone else, and work with my philosophy. So this is, you know, don't want to waste anyone's time, but I have, you know, these tools are so useful because basically, if you're like me and you work on your own and you're busting to brainstorm, but you can't always find the people, this actually enables you to do really fast, really productive brainstorming on your own or in a group.

Yeah, Love it.

A little complementary to some of the other design thinking.

Well, I can't wait to. Hopefully I can attend your work workshop in Cincinnati. I want to come to it and, and learn more.

Yeah, where would you rather be? Come to Cincinnati.

Exactly.

All right.

I'm from Ohio, by the way, you know, so I gotta go home and visit my mom when I go back. All right, so let's go ahead now and transition Sally into the next section of the podcast, which we call our, our reflection section. And so the first question that we ask, you know, in Lean, we talk a lot about the importance of continuous improvement and respect for people, kind of two pillars. What does respect for people mean to you?

I really love that you actually say respect for people instead of assuming that everybody has respect for people. I think for me it's making sure that everybody gets heard and it's making sure that I don't assume I know what's Best for somebody else. You know, I'm a designer. I've designed a lot of stuff. But I think it's so important to be humble and know what you don't know or understand, that there's so much more out there that you can learn from. So respect for other people, respect for and, you know, the environment, respect for everything is about just not speeding forward and trampling.

Yeah.

Just being a little careful and a little humble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Love it. Sally, what's the best advice you've ever received?

Never say no. I believe it was Richard Branson. Don't think before you say yes. Say yes and work out how to do it later. And it's worked for me every time.

Okay. Okay. What about a personal productivity habit? Do you have one that others might benefit from?

Yeah, I do. You know, if I'm stuck on. I'll admit that I could do with really radical lean training. I will. My. My process is not as linear as I wish it was when it comes to administration and getting things sorted from idea through. But when I'm really, really stuck, I just need ocean. I ideally need ocean crashing on rocks or some part where the land meets the sea and there's movement. If I can look out on an ocean horizon and hear saltwater and see the movement of water, it's incredible how uplifting I find. I generally find I can solve any problem. That and going to Burning man every year would be my 2.

And going to what?

Burning Man.

What's that? I don't know what that is.

Massive art festival in the middle of the Nevada desert. Where. And this is an incredible thing for anybody that wants to study humans and community. For one week in the year, an entire city called Blackrock City forms 60,000 people with infrastructure. It's about radical self reliance. So you take in your own water and your own food and things to share and people that are utter strangers live together for 60,000 of you in the desert in very extreme conditions for a week and bring art and bring sort of culture and thoughts for everybody to share. Everything is free and you can never ban anybody from coming into anything that you're giving. So I'm hoping to throw a workshop in there. I'm definitely gonna be singing on center stage. It's an amazing experience of what people are capable of doing. A temporary city.

I didn't know you sang.

I did.

I should have had you sing a little bit here. No, I'm just kidding. All right. So, Sally, is there one thing that surprised you during your last year of working with your Clients.

Well, the last year has been one where I've actually had the opportunity to deliver this program that I've designed to wide range of people. For instance, it was only three weeks ago through AME that I delivered adventurous thinking to my first lean practitioners. And you know, I'm stoked at how these tools appear to be so easy to take up. I actually thought I'm a pretty weird thinker. I understand that my process is not everybody's and I've come up with some pretty strange things in my life and I'm excited at how versatile and flexible people that are. Nothing like me can be, you know, And I also love that no matter where you are, whether I'm in China, delivering my workshop, Australia or here, you know, what I love is everybody can interpretive dance. Interpretive dance, bringing the world together.

I'm going to go off course here a little bit. You mentioned China. So I'm curious, how does this adventurous thinking go over in China?

Okay, here's something that is fascinating me and I actually want to do more research into this. I teach at Stanford every semester and I always have at least five Chinese international exchange students. I usually have five Brazilian, five Chinese. That's sort of my international quota out of a 40 person class. Usually my Chinese exchange students really struggle to generate things that are not typical, you know, a little unusual. So when I went to Shenzhen, government paid for me to go over and deliver my workshop to 45 people over there, some business people, some design students, half male, half female, half old, half young. And I had a translator and I sat with some of my colleagues over there who were Chinese to work out the interpretation for things for my five ways like the real interpretation and also things like interpretive dance, which is part one of my exercises to warm up. Anyway, delivered a four hour workshop to this class with very low expectations. They were the most creative class I, I've ever had these hands on exercises that I do. I couldn't believe what I was saying, Ron. And it made me realize that the nuance of language is really holding back my foreign exchange students. Or it's just that the people that are coming across to study, say at Stanford are, I don't know, looking for something else. I'm not sure, but this, you know, a lot of people talk about Chinese entrepreneurs are trying to look for ways to be more innovative. I couldn't believe the innovative thinking in that room.

Why do you think that is?

I think that perhaps classic design thinking has been presented in such a way that perhaps doesn't resonate I do think that starting the session the way I do with this very strange and absurd. I start with an absurd exercise, which I'll be doing at the AMA conference, by the way. You have to come. And it really does. It reduces people into fits of laughter. And once you're in that state, you're much more open to again, failing. Every exercise that I set up in this workshop is about failure. That doesn't matter. It's practicing a technique, but it's. You're never gonna. There's no true answer. And I think. I don't know. They were so energized and they begging me to come back. And these were business people as well as design students. They were very. A very varied crowd. And I think that it's the way design thinking is being taught over there is perhaps not resonating. I think the Chinese sense of humor is being a little bit underestimated also.

Love it.

Yeah.

All right, last question. Do you have a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become more successful at your work?

Oh, absolutely. I am convinced from my limited so far interaction with lean thinking that I need lean. I super need lean. And I'm really excited for the conference because, yeah, sure, I'm presenting for a couple of hours, but what I'm about to learn, I believe, is really going to enable me to get so many of my thoughts into action. So I don't want to sound like I'm saying that because you're gemba wrong, but it's a fact that right now I can see this thinking, this mindset that will really supplement what I do. So. So I'm excited about.

Well, fantastic. Fantastic. All right, well, Sally, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to visit with us. 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?

Okay, Ron? Well, my final words of wisdom are this, that most of what we're doing every day, we really shouldn't worry too much about. I think you should say yes to absolutely every opportunity. If it's driving a rally, if it's doing something in your bearable discomfort zone, heck, yeah. You say yes, always say yes. Sort it out later. I think that's the key to seizing life by the ears and having a fantastic time, but also to business success in the way of being an open thinker. And what was the second thing? Well, contact me. Yeah, well, adventurousthinking.com it's my primary site. I also have Sally Dominguez.com that's more about me. I do a lot of speaking and innovation speaking and inspirational speaking. And I also have. If you want to have a look at my modular rainwater harvesting system, it is probably the most awarded rainwater harvesting solution out there. I think that is rainwaterhog.com.

Yeah, I'm really interested in that. We have a rainwater capturing barrel, for lack of a better word. The problem is I have a hose that I'm like, I can't get it over to my garden. So what do I do?

This is designed to give you double the price pressure of that barrel.

Okay.

And it's got a whole lot of other tricky things. It's a. You know, I really did rethink from first principles the way to do a rain barrel. In fact, I was reading an article on Elon Musk and how he rethinks everything from first principles.

Yes.

Like, that's exactly. That's exactly what I do. And I love it. I love Elon Musk. Everybody does, right? What a genius.

Yeah. He's a little bit smart.

Just a bit, you know?

Yeah. All right, well, hey, Sally, thanks again. I can't wait to meet you at AME in Cincinnati and we'll talk soon.

It's gonna be fun, Ron. We'll do a bit of singing at those drinks you're hosting.

There you go. There you go. Okay, Take care.

All right. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast.

Now it's time to take a free.

No strings attached, fully functional test drive of Gemba Academy's School of Lean and Six Sigma over@Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to.

More than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge@GembaCademy.com.