GA 071 | Practicing Lean with Mark Graban

You're listening to episode 71 with Mark Graben. 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. As always, thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your weekend to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now then, today we welcome Mark Graben back to the show. Now, Mark is a longtime friend of mine and if you're not familiar with Mark's work, he's, he's really, really done some amazing work in the lean healthcare movement. Mark, I'm sure he'll share his background a little bit. Started in manufacturing and then transitioned into healthcare. And Mark's actually been on the show twice before, so I think he's first three time guest. So he was on episode seven. So you could listen to that@gembapodcast.com seven the number seven and then again in 46. So gembapodcast.com 46. And so but today what Mark and I are going to talk about is a new project that he's working on and it's basically an ebook that he's publishing on the LeanPub platform, which is a really interesting way for authors and publishers who maybe have lean thinking tendencies to get work out there. So I'll let Mark kind of explain the background and why he chose that platform. But then the name of this book is called Practicing Lean Learning how to Learn how to Get Better Better. So it's a really interesting title. So I definitely want to ask Mark about that title and what he's thinking about when he says that. I think I know, but I want to, you know, understand from Mark himself. Mark has actually asked me to participate in this project and so I may actually write a chapter here in the near future, kind of talking about my journey with continuous improvement. So I think it's going to be a fun episod. I'm not sure what to expect. Mark is a really great guy and he's got a lot to say and he's got a lot of opinions on things. So hopefully those will come out because I always enjoy hearing Mark's perspective on things. So show notes for this episode will be found over@gembapodcast.com 71 and it's 71 for 71. So again, gembapodcast.com 71. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, Mark, well, thank you so much for taking time to visit with us again. So where are you calling in from, Mark?

I'm calling from San Antonio. Thanks for having me on the show again, Ron.

Yeah, I mentioned in the intro that I think you're the first three time guest.

Now, Mark, hey, do I get a special jacket like the Saturday Night Live five Time Club for the hosts?

Well, when you move back up here, then I'm gonna. I'll at least take you out for a cup of coffee. How's that?

Yeah, this is probably the last. This is the last podcast we'll do with me in San Antonio. I'll be relatively a neighbor again soon.

That'll be fun. Can't wait. All right. Yeah. So if anybody. I mentioned it on the. The intro, but if you want to go back and listen to Mark's podcast, he was on episode seven and episode 46, so yeah, episode seven we do. It's kind of more traditional Lean health care topic. And then 46. What would you talk about in 46? Well, that was something Lean healthcare slanted, but can't remember the exact topic of it, but I'm sure it was good.

And Ron, let me give a shout out. You were the guest on my podcast series, episode 181.

Wow.

People go to leanblog.org 181 let me give that plug real quick.

181 so you're just making me feel bad to. We're lying. 71 when you're 181, bark's like the original Lean. You have to be the original. I don't know if you're the right original Lean blogger, but you have to be the original Lean podcaster.

Maybe you could ask why did it take me 181 episodes to have you on the show? I apologize.

I don't know. That's cool. All right, well, Mark, you know the drill. We like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation. You've obviously shared some quotations in the past. So do you have something that you'd like to share today?

Yeah, and hopefully this is a different quote. And I do Remember now episode 46, we talked about going to Japan.

Oh, that's right. That's right.

This quote is from Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who of course is still Revered to this day in Japan. He taught them a lot about quality and management, and it was a big influence on Toyota. There's a quote, there's a shortened version of it that's often in people's email signatures. The Deming quote is often said it is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. The longer actual. There's a longer version of the quote from a program or a book about Dr. Deming. It was actually a book about Dr. Deming. The longer version of the quote says, learning is not compulsory, it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory, it's voluntary, but to survive, we must learn. And so I think that there's more to the quote. I think the shortened version sometimes gets used as a threat, like if you don't do what I'm telling you to.

Do, you're going to go out of business.

We're not going to improve, and therefore we're not going to survive. And that wasn't. I don't think that was Dr. Deming's intent. I think his intent was maybe this ties into the theme of what we're going to talk about today. Hopefully we all continue to learn and that it's our choice and therefore we improve and therefore we survive.

Yeah. No, I love that. I think you're right. The longer version is definitely a different feel than the shorter version. So. Good stuff. All right, well, let's go ahead and catch everybody up. What's new in your lean life, Mark?

Well, so other than moving back to the Fort Worth area, I'm working on a third edition, revised edition of my book, Lean Hospitals, which I was just working on again a little bit earlier today. Maybe I'm not level loading my work, but I felt kind of compelled to do this for a number of reasons. I'm also working on a new ebook project. Part of the timing, it's been right now exactly 20 years ago since I was starting my career back at General Motors. That's a big round number. 20 years. I've been thinking back to that and reflecting on that. And so that led to, I guess, the timing of feeling compelled to go ahead and write some stuff that is the starting point of an ebook project called Practicing Lean, to share some of those reflections and hopefully try to get some other people to share some thoughts about their early days with lean or continuous improvement.

All right, so Practicing Lean, the book subtitle is Learning how to Learn how to Get Better. Better.

And I'm glad you thought that was funny because it's meant to be a little tongue in cheek.

Yeah, No, I mean it's obviously it's learning how to learn how to. It's even hard to say, but it's, it's kind of like Gemba Academy improvement, learning improved, you know, and the same kind of, same kind of concept, I.

Guess it kind of folds back on itself. But yeah, learning, learning how to learn. You know, I think learning is one thing, but then learning how to learn is another thing. Or learning how to teach, I guess is related to that. And then learning how to get better at getting better.

Yeah.

Do we improve? I mean we talk about the need to improve the way we improve, to improve the way we try to coach and teach others to improve the way we manage. There's that spirit of continuous improvement that hopefully runs deep in anyone who's involved in all of this.

Yeah, now you're using the Lean Pub, I guess platform for this. So tell why did you choose that? I know you've done some other stuff on that and what's the advantage of that versus just like, I don't know, self hosting it up on a webs on your website?

Yeah. Leanpub.com, they're interesting story. What they call Lean Publishing has parallels to the Lean Startup movement, where one of the tenets of the Lean Startup movement, beyond listening to your customer, understanding your customer, continually improving your product and services, part of the Lean Startup methodology says don't wait to launch, don't wait until you have a perfect product to go to market. To go to market with what they call a minimum viable product, something that adds some value to some customers, get customers, get feedback, build upon it. Like with a lot of software companies, you can pretty well continually update your product. Now with books, traditionally a book is a very static thing. I get to go and do an update of the book Lean Hospitals every three to five years. It's very, very static in the meantime and that's uncomfortable at times. There's not much continuous improvement with the traditional book. So by not just self publishing, but doing what they call continuous publishing, I've gone to market with two chapters of this book, some introductory material and then a first chapter with some of my reflections on my own early days with Lean then so people can go and buy the book early and all the proceeds are going to go to charity. But early on the price is low. As I add chapters over time from different contributors who I'm working on recruiting, people who buy the book early will get updates to the book for free. Then over time I'm going to gradually kind of ramp up the Price of the book. Right now it's only 299 as the suggested price. LeanPub has another interesting feature where you can, within boundaries, choose what you want to pay. I think by the time it's a full book, I may set the price to 999, which is not uncommon for Kindle books. But this idea of go to market with something, especially because this book will have chapters from different contributors, the book is going to take shape over time. I thought by me publishing my thoughts and reflections, I could try to sort of try to set a tone, try to set an example of. I'm willing to talk about some things I wish I had done better 20 years ago or 10 years ago and encourage others to speak up, because nobody's perfect. And I don't think any Lean consultant or Lean author should ever portray themselves as perfect or infallible. So for me, those are the reasons to go ahead and, and launch now and then add to the book over time.

Yeah, no, and, you know, I hope it's okay to say, but you mentioned to me about me being a contributor, and I think it sounds like a fun, fun thing. I'm worried about if I can get all of my mistakes into one chapter.

You don't have to share all of them. I mean, at some point I had to say, okay, that's. My chapter's long enough.

Yeah. Oh, that's good. That's good stuff. All right. And I did. I've read. I haven't read every word of them. I just actually downloaded it earlier today and read most of chapter one and two, and I think it's going to be a really interesting project and I'm excited to see it unfold. So. Well, let's go ahead and just kind of jump. In the second chapter of the book, you kind of talk about your journey and some of the mistakes that you made. And so before we get to those, why don't you just give us the elevator pitch of Mark Graben's background and, and kind of how you got to where you are today as far as starting manufacturing and so forth.

Yeah, So I graduated 20 years ago and two months from Northwestern University. My undergraduate is in industrial engineering. Like a lot of people who are involved with Lean, I started my career at General Motors in the Detroit area. Worked there for two years. The first year was very traditional, bad GM culture. I got to see the ill effects of the old GM management culture. There were some people I worked with there that GM had hired in from the Toyota supply base, but we didn't have the right leadership to really help tap into their expertise. We got a new plant manager in my second year there, one of the first GM people who had experience at NUMMI working with Toyota. So really impactful for me to see the impact of even changing one senior leader on the tone of an organization. Then for the rest of my first 10 years of my career, I was in manufacturing. I went to graduate school. I worked at Dell, I worked at Honeywell, I worked at a manufacturing software company startup for a little while. And now it's been almost exactly 10 years since I've been in healthcare. There's another round number to kind of reflect upon how that's going and thinking back. So I kind of had two early stages, and in the first chapter of the book, I talk about, I think, trying to recognize that those of us who are experienced with lean, whether it's 10 years of experience or 20 years of experience or even five years of experience, it's easy to look and see mistakes someone else is making. And I get a lot of blog posts out of this. I'm not trying to mock others. I'm trying to kind of point out, hey, let's learn from someone else's mistake here. But I kind of reflect and say, well, if somebody's really new to this, maybe these are mistakes that come from being well intended, but just from being inexperienced or not having a good mentor or they're not getting the right training, and that's not their fault. And maybe I shouldn't be so hard on people because step back and say, well, there were things I screwed up in my first year of lean. So I think it's kind of a reflection of trying to find a balance of. When do you try to constructively criticize others versus when do you just focus and reflect on your own mistakes and learn from those? So chapter one sort of tries to explore that a little bit. When should we be kind versus when should we be tough on someone? I think there's a difference between mistakes we make just because we're new versus people making the same mistakes for 10 years straight. I think those are different situations. But anyway, that's kind of how I got to where I am today. With gray hair and reflections.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, so let's kind of. Why don't you summarize some of the things that you wrote about in chapter two there? And maybe let's start with manufacturing. What were some of the. Some of the early mistakes of young Mark Graben back in the day?

Yeah, I think early on Whether it was trying to do some things that were lean or just doing industrial engineering. I say this even today, I'm a recovering engineer because I think an engineering education, even though Even in the mid-90s we were doing team projects and communication skills were starting to be emphasized, it was still really all about getting the right answer. Find the answer, calculate the answer, know the answer. And that can lead to, I think, some awkward transitions into the workplace, where I think what I learned at General Motors. And so this was the culture that encouraged you to, here's a problem, go out and you figure it out. You the individual, you the engineer. And so I was kind of reflecting that. Yeah, I mean, I went to the Gemba, but a lot of times I would stand on the catwalk and I would be timing and measuring the automation, the machining equipment, and I was looking at dumping data out of computers that would tell me the buffer levels and how much the line was flowing versus stopping. There were some ergonomic projects I was involved in where, you know, I was impacting people's workspace. And I think I was well intended. I didn't want people to get hurt. I didn't want people to have sore arms and sore backs. But, you know, thinking back on some of these stories, I was trying to come up with the right answer, and I probably wasn't. I wasn't doing enough to engage people in the workplace. Now, I think to my credit, I did spend more time talking and getting to know the frontline employees, the UAW workers. I think I was respectful, but I think I still had the bias of thinking my job is to come up with the answer. I think, especially in the case of that ergonomic improvement, when you're making a pretty significant change to somebody's workplace, it's easy to go through all the work and the engineering planning and a little bit of construction and get the thing installed. I did this to help you and then to be frustrated and say, why aren't you using the ergonomic assists that we put in? And they say, well, I like doing it the old way, or I don't care about that ergonomics business or blah or whatever. But I think there are lessons learned, and I could have done more to engage the workers in understanding the problem, involving them and developing those solutions, instead of relying on a supervisor to say, hey, if you don't use that ergonomic assist, we're going to write you up for violating policy.

Yeah.

So I think one of the early reflections was that I was doing too much doing and not enough teaching, not enough involving others. And I think I've gotten better with that over time as I've learned how to facilitate, how to help other people come up with an answer instead of trying to give them the answer. But I screwed up a lot early on, I'll admit.

Yeah. Okay, well, very good. Is that the only mistake you made in manufacturing?

That's just one category. That's one category of mistake. I think learning how to work with people. And there's a story in the book chapter about, again, I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to get a safety problem solved. Maintenance wasn't getting it solved fast enough. I probably got a little over emotional and escalated the issue and went over the head of the maintenance guy and really, you know, really, you know, for right or wrong. I really, really cheesed him off. And, you know, I think just, you know, trying to just learn, you know, how to work, work through others and working with others and, and, and not just trying to be right. Yeah, you know, I think some of that, maybe it's just, you know, comes with maturity, inexperience. I think the other category of mistakes were things I just didn't understand yet about Lean. And some of the questions that I asked were maybe dumb questions, but I was new and inexperienced, and I think for the most part the people I was asking dumb questions to were patient and they were teaching me. Blogs didn't exist then. They weren't going home and writing a blog post about this young engineer who asked a dumb question.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. All right, well, what about healthcare? So you've obviously, like you said, you've been doing it for, for 10 years now. What are some of the, the early mistakes you've made there?

Well, you know, I mean, at least, you know, coming into healthcare, I wasn't, I wasn't starting from scratch. So I was, you know, I was building upon some of the things I have learned about lean and working with people and facilitating instead of having answers. One of the things I struggled with early on in healthcare was just trying to connect with people to explain Lean or communicate a passion for lean in a way that they could relate to. So as I was coming in and learning healthcare, and I think as an engineer or a process person, you see process, it was easy for me to see parallels between manufacturing and health care and things about how to improve quality, how to manage people, things that I thought were transferable. And so you try to teach by telling stories or using examples that we're just going over people's heads because they had never been in a factory yet alone. A lot of times people in healthcare just don't have a lot of respect or understanding for manufacturing. So I think that slowed down people's learning. That was my fault, not theirs. I just, you know, I hadn't built up enough stories and examples that I could use to try to connect with them in health care terms. So I, you know, things that would have worked well in my last manufacturing job weren't working in health care because it was a different audience, people with different backgrounds. I had to learn, you know, and get to know their backgrounds and what motivated them and what interested them. And even today, I probably still, you know, I try to limit it, but, you know, when I tell stories about leadership or management from other settings, I think sometimes people, they hear, oh, factory, you know, the brain shut off a little bit. And that's probably still something I should be more careful about doing.

Yeah, no, it's really interesting. Curious, though, if someone's listening to this mark and they're like, man, that sounds like a really cool project and maybe I want to learn more or see if I could contribute. Maybe they've long time practitioner. Can anyone participate? Or what's your guidelines? What are you looking for? Talk to that person that might be interested right now.

Is it somebody who works in a hospital who wants to get involved with Lane?

No, no, no, no, no. The book. They want to write a chapter.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. No, if they want to write a chapter for the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I would suggest is going to the website for the book, which is leanpub.com practicinglean they can read a sample for free. The first chapter, the introductory chapter. If they want to read both chapters, they can buy the book for. The suggested price is $2.99. They can buy it for as little as 99 cents. Read that. And then there's a form that can fill out online that's got some questions about what reflections they have. Why do they want to contribute a chapter to the book? What are some of the things they might write about? Because I'm interested to hear different stories. I'm trying to recruit people from manufacturing, from health care, from software and services settings. I'm sure there are similar stories about an entrepreneur saying, well, the first time I was trying to apply Lean Startup concepts, our minimum viable product was not the least bit viable. And that was an early mistake. It was just minimal. It was garbage. It didn't add any value to anybody. I've heard stories like that it's funny. In the startup world, there's more of a culture around sharing failures. Maybe I should add this into the introduction of the book. I think in a lot of other settings, there's not that culture of sharing lessons learned and mistakes. And some in the lean startup community even joke that we make a little bit too much of a fetish out of failure. But failure happens and we learn. Hopefully we learn from it.

Yeah, and sometimes I almost think it's not always failure, it's just like, we could have done better. You know, I even, like, look, I'm thinking about myself, like, what would I write? You know, and for me, like, my biggest challenge, I suppose, was like a lot of young kind of, I was a tool head, you know, like coming out and learning all these fancy tools and whatnot. And I could. And I would used to try to invent ways to use the tools instead of just going out and finding problems and trying to make things better, you know, and, and, or, you know, really having a deep understanding that really and truly lean is about people. And that's, that's really it. It's people. Right? I mean, and it's, it's processes and so forth. But normally people are involved in those processes. And so that's another mistake that I made was, gosh, just not realizing the impact that autonomy can have. When you give someone autonomy and freedom to, you know, try and fail and then pick, help pick them up when they fail, I would have never done that 15 years ago and like, get out of the way. I can do it or what are you doing? Don't do it like that.

Yeah, well, and I would say, I mean, you're not alone in that. I did things like that early on and I try to remind myself, try to remind others. You can't blame. It's hard to blame somebody for something they haven't been taught. Now, I mean, and I think you take that within balance. I mean, yeah, somebody might not have the greatest instructors or access to instructors at the same time, there's lots of good books out there. There's lots of good videos people can watch. Sometimes people don't go and seek out stuff like that. So then they repeat the same mistakes over and over. They don't learn from them. That's where I get a little bit more frustrated than somebody who makes a mistake their first time out. But, you know, yeah, I guess if.

Someone'S, what do they say? If you're unconsciously incompetent, you don't even know what you don't know, then you got to cut them a little slack. But if they're consciously incompetent, you know, they know what they don't know, then. Then, you know, sometimes the tough love can. Can come in a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, like, one of the things I kind of rant about and blog about is the example of, you know, companies that go overboard with Office 5s. And, you know, you see articles in the news about people who are told you're not allowed to hang a sweater on the back of your chair.

Yeah. What.

Why does that matter to the business one iota? Yeah. And if that's someone's first time with 5s, it'd be more forgiving than if that was someone who had gone and done the same thing in five different companies and left this trail of irritated people behind and wondered why it never.

Took, you know, or maybe they blame the people for.

Well, you know, they just. They weren't disciplined about Office 5s, and that's why it didn't work.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, maybe they shouldn't have been disciplined about sweaters on the back of their chairs. Maybe that doesn't matter.

You know, it's funny you say that. We just got done. We're going to be refreshing, finishing our 5s course. And we. In the original course, there was a big bookshelf that. Then that got transformed. That was the big case study. And. And now we actually partnered up with FedEx office, and we just went to. To their office here in Dallas area in the Galleria area, and we shot a kind of. We recorded two different kind of 5s improvements. And. And one of them was a gentleman's desk, and it was in pretty bad shape and. And whatnot. And so he had a whole, you know, like that kind of traditional cubicle thing, and one of his bins at the top, you know, with the big door that opens up, he had a bunch of pictures of his kids and, you know, just some other mementos that meant a lot to him. And literally, he had this whole thing filled with personal stuff. And so by the time we got done with, you know, sorting out all this, you know, I think he had like, Microsoft Word 2002 book or something like that. You know, it's like, do you really need that? You know, and so we cleaned out so much stuff that he still had plenty of room. And I. And we. I kind of asked him, I said, well, what are your thoughts on. On all your personal items? Because I said, I don't have any thoughts on it. What are your thoughts? And he's like, you know, they mean a lot to me and, you know, I work here for my family and it's good for me to look up and remember why, why I do what I do. I do it for them. And I thought that was super powerful, you know, versus if I would have said, you get two pictures, choose carefully, you know.

Yeah. And I think that's where, you know, I think early on, people lose sight of what are we trying to improve. They're implementing a tool instead of asking what better results are we trying to get. And I've seen psychology studies that literally will say people's productivity is higher when they do have a family photo on their desk. Now, that doesn't mean force everyone to have a picture on their desk, but because there's that reminder and that connection and that sense of purpose. So that's why I think banning personal items from a desk is silly. Now, there might be some desks that get out of control and have 400 stuffed animals, but. Okay, address that separately. Some workplaces would encourage 400 stuffed animals. Right.

Well, this guy, Gary is his name, he said that there comes a time to where he needs that space, then he'll trim it down a little bit. But right now it works for him. So I thought. Sounds great. Sounds great. Yeah. All right, well, very good, Mark. So. Well, again, we're going to link to everything in the show notes for this episode, which will be GembaPodcast.com forward/71. So everybody please go out and check out that ebook. So let's go ahead now, Mark, and transition into the, into what we call now the reflection section. And so we've gone through several of these questions with you over the, over the last two episodes that we did. So we're gonna. I think we got some new ones for you. So the first one that I have, Mark, is I'm curious if you can maybe share some good advice, maybe not best advice, maybe some good advice that you've received over your career.

Well, that's right. I've been thinking a lot recently back to mentors and people who helped me 20 years ago. And that GM culture generally was a mess, but there were some really great people working there. And one of the supervisors there who, he was in the quality department by the time I got there, but he had been a long time frontline supervisor and he was the type, he liked to mentor the younger engineers. I'm sure he was in his 50s and I think he was young at heart and he liked to hang out with the younger crowd. And give advice. And I remember him telling me, or just giving advice around again. I think as an engineer we had our bias toward data analysis, answers, simulations. And he really recommended, he said, as you're out there in these departments you're assigned to, don't forget to take time to talk with people and build relationships. And the coffee pot was probably 15 cents for a cup of coffee. It's like go and buy someone a cup of of coffee. Go to the union shop assistant committee person and buy her a cup of coffee and sit at the picnic table and talk and let them know who you are and get to know who they are and not to lose sight of the importance of putting time into that. So I think that was really good advice. To put time into building relationships to be able to work with people. That was really good advice.

Human engineering, I guess, right?

Yeah. I mean, it all sounds so obvious. Like, what kind of socially deficient engineer were you, Mark? And I mean, I don't think. It wasn't that, but I think just this idea that it's not a waste of time, far from it. It's a really good use of time to go and not go out there to talk about a project like here. I want to get your input on this thing that we're trying to do. I want you to be engaged, but at some point there's time and a place for water cooler talk and building relationships and getting to know people. And I think like he was saying, let them know you've got good motivations, that you're there to help and whatever they think of management types, let them get to know you. That was really good advice.

Got it. So is there one thing that surprised you during this past year of you practicing and implementing Lean?

Oh, surprises. Lots of surprises. I think you know, one thing, and this is kind of a sad surprise. I think the thing that surprises me is that, you know, as much as you know, some organizations have done really great work with, you might call it daily continuous improvement or you know, Kaizen and Joe Schwartz and I have tried to do a lot to share stories from his organization where they're implementing thousands of Kaizens per year and all these great results are happening. There's still such great resistance to that in a lot of organizations. I guess the thing that surprises me, or I wish didn't happen was the excuse making that happens where people come up with 12 different reasons why they can't do continuous improvement improvement. Or there's this kind of catch 22 conundrum. People say, well, we can't do continuous improvement because our culture's not ready for that. We don't have a culture of continuous improvement. And I'm like, well, how in the heck do you ever. Nobody ever magically had that culture of continuous improvement. It sort of goes along the lines of kind of the practicing lean story. None of us are good at continuous improvement at the beginning. But at some point you get a start, you're going to make some mistakes, learn from them, practice, get better and that culture can develop. And so it discourages me when I see kind of like this self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy that oh, continuous improvement wouldn't work here. When I would believe with very strong certainty that yes, it can work. It doesn't mean that it'd be easy. It doesn't mean they have all of the right leadership behaviors in place. But that's part of the culture change and the. And so it's just, it makes me sad when people in healthcare are not fully engaged in improvement and patient care the way they should be. And a lot of it is, I think their leaders just say, well, no, I don't think that's going to happen. So they don't even try. That still surprises me.

Yeah, it's kind of like I remember hearing Masaki and Mai a long time ago. We did a video for Gambia Academy and he started it off by it is a room full of executives at this company, like C level executives. And he said there's three things that you need that you have to have for, you know, to be successful with Kaizen. And the first thing is top management commitment. And then he said, and then the second thing that you need is top management commitment. And then the third thing is top management commitment. You know, and if you don't have that, unfortunately it doesn't not to say that, you know, if you don't have that, that you can't be successful at all. Because you can, you can work in your area and do the best that you can, but it's just not going to be as easy as if you have that, that level of commitment from the top.

Yeah, and that's catch 22. Because you know, lots of, lots of people talk about the need to have senior leaders not just sponsoring lean, but learning and participating and changing the way they lead. And a lot of times people will say, well, we don't have that leadership support so I'm not even going to try. And part of me says, well, okay, maybe I mean, you could go and try to find a job someplace else or you could go and try Anyway, and it's, there's, there's gray area there where it's, when do you tell someone to just go and try and persevere and influence people versus you're right. Maybe you should.

Yeah.

Try to find a place. Yeah.

The last corporate job that I had before Gambia Academy, I had a boss and, I don't know, senior vice president or something or other. And, and he had a sales background and the fact that this company that I worked at had to make anything kind of just annoyed him. You know, there were factories that actually had to produce something. It was like, just sell something. Go, go sell, sell, sell. I was like, well, we actually have to make it once we sell it. And, but what I tried to do in that situation was just, you know, I, I, I worked as hard as I could to make things better. He did give me the autonomy to do my job, which was good. I don't know if it was because he just didn't care or he just couldn't be bothered, but nonetheless, he let me go. And so I went out and I tried to make things better and had some successes. And when I did, I made sure to have two or three slides and a PowerPoint deck that I sent to him so he could include it at his end of the month kind of staff meeting with his leadership and come to find out eventually people were like, you know, they used to. One guy told me a story, he's like, now when we're going through these board level kind of meetings, everybody's get like their eyes are in the back of their head, they're just dying with all these charts and graphs and data and blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden the continuous improvement stuff comes up and it's pictures of, you know, improvements or something. And then you say what happens is people actually lean in and they pay attention because it's something real to them, you know, and, and so that's what I found was just, I just almost honestly tried to make him look good, you know, and, and that's how I found success when I didn't necessarily have, you know, awesome support. So, yeah, good stuff. All right, next question I have for you, Mark, is do you have a routine or ritual that you follow when things aren't going well and you need to recharge and refocus?

Yeah, I mean, I tried like, you know, people would say exercise. I try to keep that fairly consistent. I guess that, you know, I don't get frustrated and say, oh, I'm going to go run 10 miles and burn it off. For me, I like to try. I like to laugh. So I like to watch silly stuff on TV, silly stuff on YouTube. And I think the other way, I like to blow off steam. I like to try to create sort of funny or silly things for my blog.

You're good at that, Mark. I mean, my goodness, those little pictures and stuff that you do.

Yeah. So whether it's like a simple little lean meme or a more involved video or something, for me, that kind of blows off steam. And I don't know, I like that creative process. It makes me laugh. That gets me recharged. If it makes others laugh, okay, fine, that's great. But that, I mean, I think that's. That's one of the things I like to do. I could say, well, I'm just. I'm goofing off. Well, I think I'm. I think that's. Now that. I mean, I think about it, that's the way I recharge my batteries in a weird way.

Now, everyone, if you're listening to this, you're going to have to come to the show notes GembaPodcast.com 71 and I'm going to have Jessica link up one of the best pieces of work you've ever done, Mark. And it was a picture of me. It was some little silly contest that we did where I was like, my arms were up in the air celebrating something. It was actually after a video that was really hard to shoot. We finally got it done, and I was like, yes. And so you then transposed me onto a roller coaster with, like, the Dalai Lama or something like that.

Well, I'm trying to remember. Did we make a. Did we have. I think we. I think I posed a little challenge and a little contest for people to Photoshop that picture of you with your arms up in the air.

Something like that.

I'm trying to even think where that is.

You did one with, like, Monk. I was with monkeys around me, and then you put me in, unfortunately, the University of Michigan crew.

Yeah. That was as. Oh, Ron's gonna hate me.

So if this link thing doesn't work out, I think you do have a backup.

Well, I want to see the. I want to see the show notes because I'm trying to. I want to go and look at those pictures.

Yeah, I want to dig it back up because that's some good stuff. All right.

Yeah. But now one of my fun projects. So let me just plug a funny little web. I think it's funny. Lean memes.com lean. That's M E M E S.com and if, you know, if you know, Internet memes, this is where, you know, you just got some sort of picture and then like some sort of goofy text on top of it. Something from pop culture or just some. Some funny picture. And so I've got kind of a team of contributors who send me stuff and it makes me laugh and I put it out there on the website.

Good stuff. All right, last question I have for you, Mark. Is there one knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become more successful at practicing lean?

Oh, there's more. There's more than one. I mean, one thing I've been reading. I mean, I always. I mean, I do really try to keep learning. I've been reading a book that's on my desk right now. It's fairly new. It's called Management Lessons from Taiichi Ono. It was written by the former president of Toyota Taiwan, who worked with Ono very directly. I think he was, at the early days of his career, and he was learning from Ono very directly. And things like that helped me kind of remember back to basics Toyota philosophy. And it's just to become grounded in that and make sure that that's a good reminder. But the other thing I've been reading recently is on coaching, and there's a couple of books by Ed Schein, who was a professor at mit. One of the books in particular is called Helping, about how to provide help to others in the workplace setting. There's another book called Humble Inquiry. And so the book Helping talks about how to work with people. And I think one of the things that was really interesting there, he said, you know, if somebody. And this happens a lot, somebody will reach out and ask a question in some way, they're asking for help. And in a way it makes it feel good that, hey, someone's reaching out to me for help. Let me try to be helpful. And one of the points Shine makes is that when somebody asks for help, they're really making themselves very vulnerable. They're taking a risk. They're saying, hey, I don't know something, or here's something I'm not sure about. And you have to be very. You have to be kind of cautious or kind and try to help make up for sort of that deficit of pride, or to try to help when somebody has asked a question and made themselves vulnerable, help build them back up in the process of helping them, which is probably a good piece of advice so that you don't breed dependency. And I think that's where in my own progression, when somebody asks me questions, I try to not just give an opinion or give an answer, but to often ask a lot of questions.

And what do you think?

Get better at that Socratic method. And the book Humble Inquiry does a real good job of talking about different types of questions and not just open ended questions, but really kind of breaking it down and think about different questions to help move a conversation or a problem solving process along in a different way. So that's some stuff that I've been kind of personally digging into recently because I think that's something I can get better at.

Yeah. So we'll link all those up in the show notes because I haven't even read those books so I like to pick them up myself. So thanks for those tips, Mark. Yeah. So all right, well let's go ahead and wrap the show up with. And I think you've heard me say this before, but sharing some final words of wisdom perhaps as it relates to learning. And then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you?

Sure. Well, I guess the final thought and just come back to the title of the book, practicing Lean. People often use words like implement lean or do lean or lean out. I think the word practicing is powerful because in hospitals where on doctors, they do what they practice medicine, lawyers practice law. And so I think often people use the word lean practitioner. I believe the root of that word is practice. I would encourage more people to I'm trying to adopt the language of saying I've been practicing lean for 20 years because if we keep practicing, we'll get better at it. As opposed to saying people practice golf, nobody's ever a perfect golfer. Right. I think I would encourage people to keep learning, keep practicing, keep reflecting. I think that's what makes us all do a better job at trying to change the world like we're trying to do with lean. And then how to contact me again? Leanpub.com practicinglean they can go to leanblog.org, they can go to markgrabin.com, you can find me on Twitter, just arcgrabin. I'm pretty easy to find online.

And graben is G R A B.

A N for those that don't smell it. B as in Bravo, A N as November.

Yep, got it. All right, my friend. Well, I look forward to you getting back up north here and we'll meet up at a local Starbucks or maybe we'll go have even a frosty beverage after hours or something. How's that?

That would be really nice.

All right, Mark. You take care.

Okay. Thanks, Ron.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast.

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