GA 076 | The Courage to Lead with Simon Sinek

You're listening to episode 76 with Simon Sinek.

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 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 week to listen to this show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembaacademy.com, we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now then, I'm so excited for today's show since I was fortunate enough to recently interview Simon Sinek, who you may know as the man behind the famous why Video. Now, as you'll hear us talk about, this particular 18 minute Ted Talk video has been viewed more than 23 million times. Heck, I bet I've watched a video more than 50 times myself. Now, Simon has also written two must read books, Start with why and most recently, Leaders Eat Last. Now we'll link to these books in the show notes and we'll also link to Audible where you can access these books in audio format if that's how you like to consume books. So just go to gembapodcast.com 76 to get those links. Now, during the show, Simon and I cover lots of ground, which includes Simon sharing a rather strong opinion about the term Lean itself. And I don't want to spoil a surprise. So you're going to have to listen to this show to hear what he said. Now, we talk about many other things, everything from that TED Talk video to kind of how he discovered certain things about the various books and talks that he's given. And Simon's just a fascinating guy and I just know you're going to love the show. So please buckle in and be sure to listen to the whole thing. Lastly, I'd really appreciate it if you could share a link to this particular episode with at least five other people, since Simon's message really needs to reach as many people as possible. Now, the show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com 76 and that's 76 for 76. So gembapodcast.com 76 okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Simon, well, thank you for taking time to come onto the show. I really appreciate you taking I know you're Very busy, so really appreciate you taking time to visit with us.

Oh, my pleasure.

So yesterday I was finalizing my notes for today's call, and I jumped over to Ted.com and I looked up your famous How Great Leaders Inspire action video. I think I've watched it a few thousand times, but I saw that it's up to 23 million views and it kind of blew my mind a little bit. So I'm just curious, could you have ever imagined when you did that 18 minute talk that it would go on to be one of the most watched TED talks of all time?

No, of course not. Nobody can plan for that. People ask me all the time, how are you going to do another TED talk as popular as your first? And the answer is, I'm not. I didn't plan for that to happen. So I certainly can't plan to beat it.

Yeah. Well, I'm curious, how did you prepare for that talk? I mean, had you done that particular talk before?

I had been giving that talk in an hour, an hour and a half version for about three years prior to. What I didn't think was possible was to communicate the message in 18 minutes.

Yes.

And so when they asked me to do it, I thought, that's not possible. But of course that's not an option. And so, yeah, I guess it works.

Yes, yes, it definitely works. Yeah, it's one of my favorite videos of all time. And actually we saw you at the AME conference last year in Florida, so that was brilliant as well. I don't know if you remember that, but it was great. So the first question I have for you is, I'm curious, as it relates to your work, what problems are you trying to solve?

Well, the discovery of the why for me solved a very personal problem. I'd lost my passion for what I was doing. And the process of discovering my why restored my passion to levels I'd never experienced before. And it was only in learning more about it and the biology of human decision making did I realize that this is not some management idea, but this is literally the biology of how our brains work, how we make decisions, how we live our lives, how we run organizations. And so my work all contributes to this idea that we're all entitled to be passionate about the work that we do. Fulfillment, inspiration is not a luxury, but a privilege. It's not for the few people who get to say, I love my job. And the rest of us go, oh, you're so lucky. You know, it's that everybody gets to say that and we get to demand from our leaders that they provide environments that we want to come and work in and feel inspired to work in every day.

Yes. You know, I can't help but think of Barry Wehmiller as one of the best at doing exactly what you just said. So perhaps we can explore that later in the show. But first, I want to talk a little bit about the golden circle. Simon, so you first shared the golden circle in that TED talk that I mentioned earlier. And you taught us that while knowing what we do and how we do it is important, the most critical thing we can understand is why we do what we do. So I'm interested to know, how did you arrive at the idea of the golden circle? Was it through research or some sort of self discovery?

Well, it was an evolutionary idea. It's not like I sat in the room and just sort of like popped it out. You know, it originally began as an idea where I wanted to understand why some marketing works and some marketing doesn't. And, you know, I came from the marketing world and I was always sort of astounded by how I could take the same team and put them on one client or a different client. We'd have completely different results, even though I had the same brilliant people working on it. And I realized there was a pattern to how sort of good marketing works. And I wrote it down and it was that order. And it wasn't until I started to learn about the biology, which came a little later, did sort of, you know, bells and lights starts flashing. And I realized this wasn't about how marketing works. This is about how we live our lives. And that's when things started to make sense.

Excellent. Now, in Leaders Eat Last, you explored the topic of brain science and why things like dopamine and oxytocin play such a critical role in human behavior. How did you come to study this?

Yeah, I'm not a researcher per se, I'm not an academic. But I am a little kid. I have an insatiable curiosity to understand why things work and why things do the things they do in all aspects of my life. I get on a plane, I want to understand how a wing works and a jet engine works. It's just how I am. And I went on a trip to Afghanistan as a guest of the United States Air Force, and everything on our trip went wrong. And I had sort of a very, sort of. It was a very intense experience and would observe these remarkable human beings around me who trusted each other with their lives. You know, as I like to say, people in the military are willing we give medals to people in the military who are willing to sacrifice themselves that others may gain. Where in the private sector, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that we may gain. You know, and I realized, like, it was completely different to the world. I was brought up in the private sector, in business, and literally, it was no other reason than I just wanted to understand where trust came from. Are they actually more trustworthy people? Is that really what it is? That doesn't sound right. You know, and so when you start asking these questions about why trust exists in some organizations and not others, it necessarily takes you back to our anthropological beginnings and makes you sort of forced to understand the environments for which we were designed to survive in. And so that's where it all began. It became from my desire to be around more people to trust. Like I said, all my work is semi autobiographical, so it was my own struggle.

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. So obviously you teach the importance of understanding our why. In other words, you know, what's our. What's our cause? What's our purpose? You know, why do we do what we do? So my question is, is any why okay? Or some why's better than other words? In other words, is there, like, a North Star that should be guiding us?

No, because it's objective, right? All whys are positive. There's no people say, look, I have a negative. You know, that guy's a negative. Why? Nope. All whys are positive. The other thing is, all whys have nothing to do with product or service that you sell or offer. And you only have one. People are like, we have four whys. I'm like, no, you don't. You have one why. It is the sum total of who you are, how you were raised, the lessons you learned as a young person, and the rest of your life simply serves as an opportunity to either live in or out of balance with your why. The same with an organization. A why is why. Was the organization founded? What problem was it attempting to solve? The founders? What vision did they have? It's an origin story. And there's no such thing as a North Star why. Objectively, this is why. A why is important because your why may resonate with some people, but not others. And that's the point of stating and knowing your why, which is you want to attract the people who believe what you believe, and you want to be attracted to the people who believe what you believe. That's why when we listen to political races, we want our leaders, or our would be leaders to tell Us what they believe, not just what they would do. Because when we hear what they believe, we want to align ourselves with those who share our beliefs and that we trust that they will do the things to uphold those beliefs. And the same is true in a company. We want to know what the company stands for, why they do what they do so that we can devote ourselves and our energies to helping them advance that cause. Otherwise, it's just a job, just a series of transactions. I do work, you pay me money. It's a transactional relationship.

Now, if you could just take a rough swag at a percentage of companies that have done a great job of identifying their why, what would you think it would be?

Under 10%.

Really? Wow. That's pretty scary, really, isn't it?

Well, I see opportunity.

Yeah. You have job security, Simon. Yes.

Well, that's kind of depressing, isn't it? I'd like to work myself out of a job. Yeah, I guess I talk about trust and cooperation. There should be no demand for my work.

That's true. Yes. Now, how does your work apply to people who, let's say, aren't knowledge workers, or perhaps they're not even leaders of people? In other words, say some person listening to this right now hates their retail job or their factory job, can they get value out of the golden circle and finding their why just as individuals?

Oh, my goodness. Of course. It has nothing to do with the work that we do. It has to do with the people with whom we work. We are social animals and we respond to the environments we're in. You take a good person, you put them in a bad environment, they're capable of doing bad things. You take a person that maybe others have given up on, they may have even performed bad acts, you put them in a good environment, they're capable of becoming remarkable human beings. Yeah. You know, I think people in the knowledge world, in the knowledge business world, are terribly. They suffer from hubris and terrible ethnocentrism. That how I can't imagine someone who works in a factory would actually be happy, you know?

Yeah.

And that's because they think happiness is equated with the work that you do, which is nonsense. Happiness and joy are equated with the people with whom we work. And if we feel trusted and trusting, then we love going to work regardless of the work that we do. You know, we've all helped our friends move and it's been a joyous experience. Well, lifting boxes and carrying them, putting them on a truck is not a joyous experience, but serving and taking care of our friends is. We've all been on our hands and knees trying to help someone build IKEA furniture.

Yes.

You know, it's a pretty awful job. It's a pretty awful task, but we enjoy it and we say yes because of the joy of helping our friends or having the joy of our friends helping us. So it's terribly, terribly pompous to think that because the work is unglamorous that you can't have joy. I can tell you I've met factory workers and people who are in the stone crushing business who are way happier, way more inspired and way more fulfilled than somebody who works for a tech company or a bank. Yes.

Well, I don't know how much you've studied the Lean movement that we kind of work in, but one of the principles that we teach is respect for people. And what you saying is so true. It doesn't matter if you sweep floors or you're the CEO. We all have inherent respect and we should all take care of one another and help each other.

And we're all cogs in a machine. Yeah, that's right. Some of them have a more visible role, like the hands on the front of the clock, and some of them are more hidden. But every piece in that machine needs to work and feel valued and valuable. Otherwise things break. That's just the way it works. That's why we refer to companies as quote, unquote, well oiled machines. As you know from the Toyota experience, lean has nothing to do with efficiency. Lean is everything to do with people. And the biggest mistake the Americans made bringing the Toyota process to America was calling it lean.

I didn't know how much you really knew about the Lean movement. Simon, a whole new army of questions for you, but I'm fascinated to hear you say that.

And Americans turned it into a tool for efficiency. And that's never what it was supposed to be. And so there are zero. Zero examples of an American company successfully implementing lean when they do it as a tool for efficiency. Zero.

Yes.

Right. So how good can a process be if there's zero examples of success? You know, and when it's used as a people tool, is it used for a tool for helping people respect each other and help each other and kaizen moments where you can help someone else solve the problem that they're suffering? You can take an accountant and ask them to look at this machine and say, do you see something that I'm not seeing? It's about cooperation, not efficiency.

Yes.

Now, efficiency may come out of the cooperation as will profit and innovation. But the motivation is human. It's not a metric.

Yes. Oh, beautiful. So, you know, back in the 80s, when Dr. Womack and these guys were traveling around Japan, and it's actually John Krajczyk, who coined the term lean. If you had been sitting in that room and you were on that research team working around and looking at why are these guys so good, and you're kind of trying to come up with a name to call this, what would you have said?

Well, this is the challenge. When you have economists and these guys doing the research, because they're looking at the results. If you had social scientists and anthropologists doing the research, they would have named it something else. Right. They would have called it teaming, or they would have called it cooperation, or they would have called it trust, or they would have called it community. Because that's how Japanese companies operate. You give your life to the company, but the company offers you equal loyalty to them.

Yes. Have you been to Japan?

I have, yeah.

So what do you take from their culture versus, say, the traditional Western culture?

Look, there are things that work in their favor, and there are things that they will struggle with. There's no such thing as a perfect system. Every system is balanced and has its strengths and has its weaknesses. And some of our strengths are their weaknesses, and some of their weaknesses are our strengths. I mean, you look at Europe is the same way. One of the things that I love about America is we have an entrepreneurial spirit that Europe doesn't have. So, for example, if you start a business in America and you fail, there's no humiliation in that. Everybody's like, cool, nice try. Way to go. In Europe, if you try to start a business and you fail, it comes with humiliation and maybe even get ostracized from a community simply because you're viewed as a failure. And so this is why I think there's more sort of. You look at the number of patents and sort of crazy innovations that happen in America, it's because I think this society, this culture, is just less afraid of trial and failure as opposed to other societies. Again, it's not a better or worse thing. Now, America has its other weaknesses, which is sometimes we go too quickly and we don't. You know, we're sort of blazing a trail and we're not looking where we're going. And, you know, sort of being comfortable with those kinds of things comes with its own set of liabilities that the Europeans don't have. They have an element of stability that we don't have. You know, so my point is to compare one culture to another and ask which is better or worse is a fool's errand. But to find out sort of why they do what they do and the natural strengths that align themselves with one culture to another, I think it makes us better qualified and better able to choose where we want to live and where we want to work and how to operate in those societies. The Swiss, you know, look at the industries that a certain country will dominate if you want to understand their culture. Right? So the Germans, it's all about engineering, right? Not a lot of passion there, but my goodness, things work well. The opposite is Italy. Oh, my God. It's passion up the wazoo, but things don't always work that well. Right now it's not better or worse. A Porsche is different from a Ferrari. One is an engineering marvel and the other one is a marvel, or a Lamborghini is a marvel of passion and love. So I think what you're putting your finger on is the importance of understanding why, because then we can understand how to work with these organizations, work with these people, work inside these countries, but also better direct our own careers so that we will live and work in a place in which we can naturally thrive. Will you naturally thrive in Los Angeles or will you naturally thrive in New York? You know, well, that same obvious question, because you understand the culture of New York versus language is true. From company to company, will you naturally thrive in the culture of company X or will you naturally thrive in the culture of company Y? It's not a better or worse thing. It's just a different thing.

So how much have you studied the whole kind of Toyota production system or the lean movement?

I would call myself a neophyte.

Okay.

I'm a beginner, and I probably understand things superficially, especially compared to you and your community.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's always fascinating, though, I mean, just the fact that you got the whole respect for people part because, well, I would say, sadly, a large percentage of my, you know, continuous improvement friends, they may say that, but. But they don't always have that.

You know, there's a lot to be said for marketing, and I wish they never called it lean because it really has done huge damage to the value that the idea actually offers.

Yeah, well, you know, and I actually interviewed James Womack and these guys a few years ago, and they actually basically said the same thing, that if they had to do it over again, you know, they probably would have chose. Chosen a different name. Especially when word manufacturing is put at the end of it. Because then it's like, wow, I work in an office. So you know, these principles don't apply to me or I work in a hospital. And of course the principles apply to anyone, no matter what kind of work you do. To my wife, who stays at home with my children, you know, these principles of respect and helping and finding value.

In things is, well, it needs to be remarketed. Right. So my friend Bob Chapman runs a company called Barry wehmiller out of St. Louis. $2 billion company, 8,000 employees. They've implemented Lean and they've done a very, very successful job of it. But they call it Truly Human Leadership.

Yes.

And so because they've rebranded it Truly Human Leadership, it is basically a Lean journey. Everybody who learns the principles understands that it's about helping each other and it's not just about metrics. So that is a successful example of the implementation of Lean. But they didn't call it Lean.

Yes, exactly. So what's the most unusual or surprising why that you've ever encountered?

I mean, none of them are unusual or surprising. You know, I tend to have a very agnostic view of these things. You know, they're based. It's like, you know, it's based on. The thing that is more interesting to me is how people react to it, you know, and you know, when you're working with especially high performing organizations that have a lot of stuff already figured out and they learn their why and you see all the light bulbs start to fire and all the pieces click into place, you literally see it on their face. You see click, click, click, click, click, click. And in an instant they understand why things that worked, worked and why things that didn't work didn't work and why frustrations happened. It's kind of an amazing thing to be in the room when it happens. It's sort of like this. You know, you watch someone have an epiphany. It's a beautiful thing. And especially for sort of the very sort of leader minded people out there, it supercharges them and gives us an incredible sense of calm. It's kind of an amazing thing to see, quite frankly.

Yeah. You know, I recently gave a talk where I told a story of a man who experienced one of these same awakenings during a week long Kaizen event. And it is so very special and humbling to experience those sorts of situations. So Simon, why do you think people need to be reminded to start with why shouldn't it be common sense?

You know, I think one of the biggest liabilities to why is those who Know it, think everybody else understands it as clearly as they do. And those who don't know it, you know, don't know to stop and look for it at the end of the day. You know, we wake up every day and we go to bed every day and it's what happens in between that seems to preoccupy our attention. At the end of the day, we don't wake up in the morning and say, what does five years look like from now? And you know, we're visual animals and we're often motivated by short term gains. And that necessarily forces us sometimes to take our eye off our long term goals and visions. And I think what why does is it keeps us focused on the whole picture. The way I like to describe the why is when you do a jigsaw puzzle, the first thing you do is you lean the box against the wall and then you start putting the pieces together. Now, you could do the jigsaw puzzle without the box against the wall, but it's much more difficult. And it really is on a short term basis. Each piece connecting to each piece, that's about as good as you can do. What the why is? It's the picture on the box and sometimes you put your head down, but every now and then you have to look up and you double check the short term gains you're making to the bigger picture. The why is the picture on the box, that's what it is. And the what is putting the puzzles, pieces of the puzzle together. And so what we often do is go to work to put pieces of puzzles together with no concept of the picture that we're trying to build.

Beautiful. So in addition to all the why work that you've done, you've also spent a lot of time, especially recently I think, on the importance of making people feel safe. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on how leaders of people can create this circle of safety in a work environment where perhaps there's restructuring or business transformation or maybe process changes that could be brought on by things such as continuous improvement. How do we go about that when things are changing within the organization? Not necessarily headcount reduction or anything like that, but change is difficult for anyone. So how do we go about that?

I'm tired of listening to people tell me that people fear change. No, they don't. What people fear is sudden change. Where people feel fear is big change. What people fear is change without context. Right? And so effective change is. It's about evolution, not revolution, right? Because revolution is sudden and violent and there's always a counter revolution. Evolutionary change is sticky and it lasts. And that doesn't mean it has to take decades, but it can take months instead of days. Right. Change that has context, which is everybody understands the why. Everybody understands the vision. Everybody understands the picture on the box and understands that we have to make this change in order to get closer to the vision that we have. And everybody goes, oh, I see no problem. Right? So change is. People are very comfortable with change when, A, they have context, B, it's not sudden and unforeseen, and thirdly, when they feel safe within that change. So I think one of the main reasons people fear change in a modern business context is because layoffs are so heartily embraced as a means of balancing the books. People fear that any kind of change puts their job at risk. Whereas if we worked in an environment where we felt safe, where we felt that our leaders would sooner sacrifice the numbers to protect the people and never sacrifice the people to protect the numbers, if we worked in an environment where we felt that our leaders cared about us as human beings, they didn't engage in conversations about head counts because they viewed us. They viewed heart counts. This is what Bob Chapman does.

Yes.

He thinks about heart counts. It's hard to reduce a heart count. And if we worked in that environment, when our leaders say that there's going to be change, we say, how can we help? Rather than hunkering down. So change is only negative and only bad and only faces resistance when we don't understand the context and we don't trust the people.

So there's a lot of continuous improvement practitioners listening to this podcast right now, and I'm curious, you know, from you, you gave us some great advice on the name, so that's duly noted. But what other advice do you have for us people who are out trying to do what Barry Wehmiller and these organizations have done, but perhaps we're not as far along on that journey.

You know, it takes courage, and the courage of leadership is the willingness to do the right thing, even though there's no guarantee that there's going to be success. So, for example, somebody on this journey would never say to somebody, I will give you more responsibility if you prove to me that you can handle more responsibility. That'll never happen in an organization that undertakes this journey. Just like a parent who says, you know what? I think you're ready to take the training wheels off, even though the kid may be too afraid. Right. A good leader looks at their people and says, you know what? I think you're ready for more responsibility, even if you don't think you're ready for it. And they just let the person try. And sometimes it doesn't go right. And sometimes we gave them too much responsibility too soon. And that's on us, not on them. Right, but no person should have to prove that they're worthy of trust. For example, leaders simply extend trust. I mean, the example that comes to mind is, again, Bob Chapman. When he bought a new factory and he started implementing some of these things, he recognized that the way they treated the people on the factory floor and the way they treated people in the management office were different. If you wanted supplies and you worked as an accountant, you just went and opened the supply closet and took out whatever you needed. If you worked in the factory and if you wanted supplies, you had to go to the locked cage and have somebody else who works in the cage sign out the parts for you. And so he thought that was ridiculous. So he took all the cages down and got rid of all the locks, got rid of the person who works in the cage. And now if you needed something, you went and signed it out yourself. He made no grand pronouncements and he asked for nothing in return. That's called leadership. And I think, quite frankly, the single most important. You know, I get asked this all the time. You know, what are the qualities and characteristics of all great leaders? You know, charisma, vision. You know, I know some great leaders who aren't that charismatic, and I know some spectacular leaders who don't have big Steve Jobsian visions. They have maybe much smaller visions, but they're still great leaders. One thing I can say without a doubt that all the great leaders that I've ever met all possess is courage. It's really, really hard, and the risks are real. And if you stand up and say, I'm going to lead properly, that means you have to give away credit when good things happen, and you have to take responsibility when bad things happen. And that's not for everyone. That's a huge pill to swallow, and it can only be done when you have somebody who's got your back. Leadership is a very, very, very lonely, lonely experience. It can be anyway. And when you go on the leadership journey, I strongly recommend going on it with someone, whether it's someone inside the organization or outside the organization, and you choose to go on it together. Let's do this. Let's both. Let's both learn how to do this. And when you have a mom and a dad, when you have a Roy Disney and a Walt Disney, when there's that George Balanchine, Lincoln, Kirstein, like whatever your combination is of the visionary and the builder, and they trust each other and they care about each other, and they go on the journey together. That's how you implement these big transitions. That's how you become. You go on the lean journey. You can't do it alone.

Yes. Okay, so I have a few just random questions that I gotta ask because I don't know if I'll get to talk to you again, Simon, to be.

Honest, but go for it.

What Simon Sinek book are you most proud of?

I'm very proud of Leaders Eat Last. Yeah.

I didn't want to say it's my favorite, but I also love it.

Start with why is simple and elegant.

Yes.

And it's a foundation. But Leaders Eat Last is really a mature. I find it to be a mature much more. It's a much deeper piece of work. And it was much, much, much more difficult to write and start with why I had to just get out of me. But Leaders Eat Last was an extraction. I mean, it was. I'm proud of that work.

Well, my story with Leaders Eat Last, we were actually on a long road trip, my family and I, and. And I've got a bunch of kids, so it gets a little noisy. So I put the headphones on and I listen to it through audible. And the beginning, when you're telling the story of the fighter pilots and all this, I was like, oh, it was so incredible, Simon. It's like. And then I read it because I actually prefer reading over listening, but I also read it. Very, very good. Very good work.

Thank you.

So, you know, just one last question, I guess is you kind of led onto it is what's next for Simon? I mean, you have more books in the works or.

Yeah, there's another book in the works. It's coming out next April.

Okay.

The working title is Together is Better.

Together is Better.

Ok. It might change, who knows? But that comes out next April, and I'm really excited about that. It's actually going really well. It's a really beautiful piece of work. And we've designed it to be delightful. That's what we want it to be. We want it to be delightful. Wow. Wonderful. So that's happening. And really, I've spent the better half of 10 years preaching this thing called the why and talking about purpose and really creating demand for these things. And now that there's demand for it, I'm looking to partner with people and working with people to now Bring product to bear so that people can actually implement this stuff now that people know about it and want it and understand the value of it. Now people are saying, well, how do I do it? And so we want to answer that question. So that's really exciting.

Wonderful. Well, I can't wait to read it and listen to it and all the rest of it. So, Simon, I could talk to you for hours, but I want to be respectful of your time. So let's just go ahead and wrap this show up with perhaps just sharing some final words of wisdom. And then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you on social media or any other website that you have?

Sure. Thanks very much. Well, this is a very personal journey for me. These ideas that I talk about and write about, as I said before, are things that help me better understand my position in the world and the way in which I operate in the world and the way in which I interact with people. And what I learned was that the solutions I came up with for myself worked for others, too. And so I sort of made the choice that I would share them with as many people as who would listen. And so, you know, leadership is a thing about giving. The leaders are the givers, not the takers. And every single one of us has the opportunity to be the leader we wish we had. And it's the most remarkable journey. Sometimes it's thankless. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's lonely. And like being a parent, the joy you get from being a leader is seeing that your people grow up to become something bigger and more than you ever could have imagined you could have done for yourself. And you sit back and you say, it was all worth it. And I want as many people as possible to experience the joy of that journey. It really is amazing. Not to mention the fact the remarkable world that we can build around us when we ask others to help us. So it's people like you who I consider we're all working from different sides of the same coin. Who I'm out there. My job in the metaphorical jigsaw puzzle is to point at the box and remind people to keep looking at the box. Hey, guys, don't forget the picture on the box. Hey, guys, don't forget the picture on the box. That's my job. And what you're doing by teaching people about Lean and the Lean Journey is a way to do the jigsaw puzzle.

Yes.

And the companies that are actually doing it well are pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that are making our picture come to life, and we all play a role. And so it's important for us to work together shoulder to shoulder to build that vision that we all share. So thanks very much for giving me a forum to share my ideas, and I'm proud to march shoulder to shoulder with you.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, how can people connect with you?

Oh, all the usual places. You know, Twitter, Facebook. Our website is startwithy w h y.com and we have a bunch of free stuff on there and a y discovery course on there. And we have these little things called notes to inspire that you can sign up for to get a little dose of inspiration in your mailbox every morning. Lots of fun stuff to help advance the cause. So startwithwide.com as the place to go.

All right, well, thank you again, Simon. I really appreciate it. And you've made a huge impact on my life, not just as a business professional, but, you know, I feel like I'm a better husband and father and friend because of you. So thank you.

That means a lot. Thank you, Ron. Yeah.

All right, well, take care and hope to meet you in person one day.

I look forward to it. All right, 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 at Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge@gembaacademy.com.