GA 079 | Run Improve Grow with Ray Attiyah

You're listening to episode 79 with Ray Attia. 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 episode of the Gemba Academy Podcast. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to this and for watching our Lean and Sig Sigma training videos over@gembaacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, a few notes before we get to the show. First, we're only a few weeks away from the AME International Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, this conference runs from October 19th through the 23rd, and if you're on the fence as to whether you should go or not, I definitely encourage you to come and check it out. This is the biggest Lean conference around, and there are some amazing presenters this year, including John Ratzenberger, best known for playing Cliff Clavin on Cheers. As it turns out, Mr. Ratzenberger is a huge supporter of manufacturing and continuous improvement, and I can't wait to hear his message. He's the final keynote of the conference. Now, Gemba Academy will be exhibiting at the show, and we're going to be throwing the biggest and best party at this year's AME Conference on Tuesday night. Now, this free networking party will involve any sort of drink that you'd like, as well as lots of snacks and hors d'. Oeuvres. But what it won't involve is a sales pitch or any kind of presentation. So if you're going to the show, be sure to RSVP as soon as possible. Now, you can RSVP for the party@gembaacademy.com ame and if you haven't already purchased a ticket to the conference, we can save you 10%. Again, just go to gembaacademy.com ame for all the details. Now then, today's guest is Ray Attia. Now, Ray is an author and consultant. His book, Run Improve, Grow, is designed to help organizations move from a place of struggle and drudgery to a place of joy and engagement. And as you'll hear, Ray's approach to continuous improvement is very similar to what we Lean thinkers do in practice. Ray, as you'll hear, is especially passionate about granting autonomy to all associates, so they're free to think and constantly Improve. Now, to access the show notes for this episode, Simply go to GembaPodcast.com and look for episode 79. Again, that's GembaPodcast.com and just click on the link for episode 79. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Ray, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from today?

Well, thank you, Ron. I'm calling in from Cincinnati, Ohio.

Matt, you are the. I just got done interviewing a guy from Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, that's crazy. Aaron Allen. Yeah, he's former Toyota guy. He's in Cincinnati. Literally talked to him two hours ago.

So, yeah, Cincinnati is a pretty good town for lean and manufacturing, so it wouldn't be surprising if you have some really good experts here in town.

Now, I have the most important question for you of the whole show.

Okay.

Are you ready?

I am ready.

Are you a Buckeye or a Bearcat?

You know, I'm actually from New Jersey.

Okay, so I'm actually Rutgers or something.

Exactly, I'm Rutgers. So it's actually kind of nice because they played UC in football and we always happened to lose to them, and now we're playing Ohio State, and they're actually going to be hosting Ohio State in my hometown in Piscataway, New Jersey in a couple weeks.

There you go. Well, awesome. At least you're a Big Ten guy. So that's good.

We are now. And we finally have a team after I've graduated, so it's kind of nice.

Very good. All right, well, Ray, we're going to talk today about run, improve, grow. And I want to talk about your book and so forth, but let's just start things off with you telling us about your background and how you first became interested in this sort of work.

Well, you know, when I was 15, I actually worked in a. In a warehouse, in a manufacturing facility, started unloading trucks, and I started sitting down at lunchtime with a lot of the workers and really getting to hear what they liked about work and what they didn't. At the same time, I found better ways and more efficient ways to unload the truck. So it was kind of almost natural for me. I wasn't the biggest person or the strongest, but I kind of found ways to do things more efficiently. So when I decided to go to college, I decided to go into industrial engineering. And that's when I saw how people and process and systems kind of connect together. And it was natural for me. It was almost like I don't feel like I'm ever Working because I do what I love to do. And so I just had a passion for that and I just stuck with it. When I was at Johnson and Johnson, I came out to Cincinnati with Johnson and Johnson, and I was able to really do a lot of practice and trials of various lean activities there, all the way from product development all the way through manufacturing. And just loved it. Loved the fact that people can make their jobs easier. And I loved it where you can actually see the gains of improvements and people felt more successful going home.

Mm, very good. And so now you run a consulting business?

Yes, it's the company's Dfinity Partners. We're a professional training business started about 20 years ago. Next year will be 20 years.

Okay.

And we're working with companies, actually helping and showing them. How do you transform both the lean and the leadership at the same time and making it an experiential learning opportunity. So I've got a phenomenal team. Everybody in our team has come out of running manufacturing companies. So we have very practical ideas and we developed a run improved growth system that I think is applicable to many, many size companies, from small to large, and all different industries.

Well, one thing I forgot to ask. Are you going to. You're going to be at the AME Conference, right, in your hometown?

Yes, actually that same week, we're actually also hosting. We've got a number of our clients, I think our tour facilities, and we're also going to have a group there. I think we're going to have a booth there. But we're also hosting that week the Fearless Award, which we're recognizing the best manufacturing frontline supervisors that week as well. So we're trying to connect that with AME and looking forward to having you guys in our hometown as well.

Fantastic. Well, you need to come to Gemba Academy's party Tuesday night. Okay. And have a drink on us.

Well, I'd love to. Thank you.

All right. All right. Well, Ray, to start all of our shows, we like to have our guests share a quotation that possibly inspires them. So do you have one?

I think for me, Disney has always been one that I've always been inspired by. He took what used to be a circus industry and turned it into a positive experience. So he's got a quote. If you could dream it, you can do it.

I love it. I love it. On the flip side of that, I'm always thinking up, I'm not an inventor by any means, but I always had these ideas and I was like, man, it would be cool if he could do this and then I Google it and it's already been done.

You know what the thing about it is? People have ideas, but it's the ones who actually follow through with it.

Yeah.

And there's a big difference with people who have ideas. I mean, I coach a lot of people who during their startups and I talk to a lot of people who said, you know what, I'd love to start my own business, but they never do.

Yeah.

So I think, you know, just like what you guys have done with the Lean Academy, you know, it's, there's a lot of ideas. It's actually then doing it.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, very good. Well, Ray, let's go ahead and jump into the meat of the interview. So tell us more about Run Improve Grow and how it aligns with lean thinking.

Certainly. So Run Improve Grow came out of many companies that we work with and who have been very successful with lean implementation. And when companies really do a great job with lean, they make the process more robust. They simplify the work, they reduce the waste, they reduce the scrap, they make the day to day operations run smoother. And I visited a company, Fidelity Investments in Covington, Kentucky who had one of the best running lean operations I had seen. And what I left there with was a what's next? And what I realized that they didn't have in place was, so if you've got a good lean system, why can't the frontline supervisors run the entire business on their own to free up middle managers to work on proactive improvements and growth? So when I look at Run Improve Grow, Run Improve Grow is actually taking the same lean principles that we do for the functional process of making the product and making the work into the management system. So what we're trying to do is really create a run system that's reliable, that the front line can run and own on their own. Okay, free up middle management. Because if you really do lean right, you should free them up from daily surprises and have them work on proactive improvements and then create a grow team that's looking into the future. So if you really do lean right, you really put people into a more value added role. So a plant manager doesn't have to ask the question what's going to ship today? Their job is to say, okay, what does this plant look like two to three years from now? Do we have the right training, the technology, the equipment? And so Run Improve Grow is really the management system that supports a successful lean implementation.

So it sounds very similar to in lean terms, we would Talk about granting autonomy or autonomous teams. Right. To allow them to kind of run their own business. And so supervisors can become coaches and so forth. Inspiring people versus directing them. Is that basically what you're saying?

Absolutely. I mean the number one role of a frontline supervisor is to lead people and develop them.

Yes.

Not to make sure that the work gets out the door.

Yes.

Our job as lean practitioners is to give them the systems that allows the work to happen on their own. What I typically see is the breakdown is if you do that, what then becomes a role of the middle management and senior management. And a lot of times that's not clearly defined. So what Run Improve Grow does, it helps them recognize and have a what percentage of their time should they be working on run activities, improve activities and grow activities. And it really sets a higher standard of Middle management should be spending 40, 50, 60% of their time on proactive improvements versus reactive improvements. So when I look at improvements, unfortunately in most companies, 95% of improvements that they work on in lean efforts are reactive. Which is we're not meeting standard, we're fixing problems. Our quality is off, we late deliveries. Productivity is not meeting standard. What I see Run Improve Grow is saying no, we should have the frontline supervisors and the team leaders and the frontline employees working on the reactive improvements. Our job as middle management is to set up the next system proactively to build the next infrastructure for them to grow and to support the new business.

What is your. Are you familiar with like Zappos and their new kind of Holacracy I think they call it, where it's kind of this ultra self management, like literally there are no bosses. Have you, have you heard of that?

Yes, yes. And I believe that we should not be managing people. Our job is to manage systems and lead people. So there's an element there which basically says I shouldn't have to manage people now. We should still have an element of leadership. And leadership doesn't necessarily mean management. Just because you're in charge of people or their boss doesn't necessarily make you a leader. Leader could be, you know, the second shift maintenance technician that could be a leader. So I think what they're doing is really pushing the envelope of if we hire great people, if we give them great systems, they should be able to execute the day to day activities and run the business on their own, which is 100% what I believe. We also then need to make sure that our grow teams and people who are responsible for leading people have a different role. So I think their Premise of it is sound, but it also comes down to how good of a job that they do hiring, how good of a job they put in lean systems that are reliable. Yeah, so. So 100% I believe in what. What Tony and his group is doing there.

So I want to dig a little bit more into and just into run, improve, grow. So. So make sure I understand. So you mentioned like a grow team, but is it. So is it literally like run is its own kind of ecosystem, if you will, or is it more of a sequential thing, like you must be able to run before we can improve, before we can grow? Does that make sense?

Absolutely, absolutely. It's actually done in parallel. It's similar to manufacturing processes that are in parallel. So you have a run group and a run function that. So run to me, is your core business today.

Okay.

So you've got an existing set of products, you have an existing set of customers, geographies that's you support. So a salesperson, for example, is part of the run team. Their job is to sell the current products we have. A grow team is innovating some new products or services that we currently don't have.

Now, could that same salesman that's on the run team also be on the grow team?

They can. Yes. Yes. So they basically have dual. In that case, they have dual responsibilities and dual roles. When I look at a grow team, and this is where it's really important for growth teams, grow teams need to almost work outside of the organizational structure of our current run business. Otherwise, what I typically see is the people who have power, the people who have control, don't really want to make transformational change because it disrupts their sense of organizational design. A grow team, to me, should actually be a separate entity that reports to the CEO and president outside of the current business model because their job is really to be disruptive. Their job is to be innovative. Now, could you have a dual role where you're on both? Absolutely. But the run is really the current business that we have today. The current core business, the grow is the new. So when I think of grow, I don't think about it in size. I think about it as relevance. Are we growing in relevance? Are we adding products and services that are more relevant for the future? Run is taking the current products that we have and winning more market share. So you could actually be bigger in size but lose relevance if you're not careful.

So then how does improve work in. Is that also a separate team, or do you want people running, making improvements as well, which would obviously kind of be the lean approach, everyone making improvements every day sort of thing.

Absolutely. And I have a system design, kind of the system thinking. So nothing's ever separated. They're all connected.

Yeah.

So the improve, there's two parts of the improve. There's the reactive improvements, which is actually part of the run. So think of the reactive improvements helping make the run more reliable. So that would be, you know, eliminating the waste. That's where a lot of the typical lean activities happen. That would be the daily huddles that the frontline supervisors have. We call them what went well huddles, where the frontline supervisors are leading daily activities. What went well yesterday, what needs improvement, Reliability issues. The proactive improvements actually make the growth easier, so they help simplify bringing in the new. So when a company's launching a new product, when a company is adding a new facility, when they're expanding into a new geography and need to have products in different language, the proactive improvements should be done two years or so in advance to make that launch easier. So when I worked, I'll give you a start. For example, when I worked at Ethicon, which is a division of Johnson and Johnson, we were implementing or launching the endoscopic instruments. This is back in 1991. So our job as a proactive team was to redesign what the organization looked like at 10 times the current size. So we're trying to figure out how do we launch products that usually takes us three years, and how do we launch products in six months and still follow FDA requirements? At the same time, we're now implement or launching products that requires you to have an implantable device which is at a higher level. So our job is to design a new business system that's completely transformative versus the current one. So that would be a proactive team. We were off site, we were dreaming up different approaches, different technology, where the reactive teams are helping make sure that we're hitting our current standards and so forth.

Yeah, paying the bills, running a business.

Exactly, exactly. And ultimately you don't have. And this is where in my book I talk about, you will not have the opportunity to introduce new products and new services if you don't make the current business reliable. Your customers are not going to look for you for new products and services if you can't even do the things today. Right. So you have to make bold promises and deliver on them. Then you have the opportunity and you get a pass and a ticket into the bold strategies.

You know, a few episodes ago, we had Simon Sinek on and he talked a lot about, you know, Simon's more of a social scientist kind of thing. And he got pretty, pretty intense at times, which was awesome. And he talked about how many lean thinkers, you know, we. We mistake or we, I don't know, we. We make some, I don't know, poor choices when we kind of lose sight of the human element of continuous improvement and instead focus on efficiencies and whatnot. And Simon's premise, and I tend to agree with it, is that we really need to focus on the human side of things first. And when we get that right, efficiency, profitability, innovation, all those things will come as side effects of that cooperation. Do you agree with that?

100%. 100%. And I'm a big Simon Sinek fan. And also, when we launch any improvement efforts with our clients, we have them write a story and we have them put together a one to two page letter. And the way the letter starts out is by talking about the customer and about talking about winning. And we start out by talking about what's happening in the marketplace, what we're doing well, what the opportunities are in the marketplace, what the challenges are, and then create kind of a compelling purpose of why are we doing this? And people like to win, but it also brings a team together. So instead of sales versus manufacturing, marketing versus engineering, we now see the competition as the person that we're trying to compete against. But having that. And I talk about system thinking and design thinking. It is an experience. It is the human element. And we look at the frontline supervisor, and we look at that person who leads 80% of the workforce. They have to be able to tell their people, why are we doing this? And I'll tell you one thing that is not very motivating is by talking about shareholder return. You know, that's not a big one that everybody's like, hey, we got to make sure we hit our stock price today.

Yeah, exactly.

I hate companies when I walk in the door and they've got their stock price posted. You know, that's like, that's a result of doing great work. But I think Lean is really a tool that allows people to feel good about their work, give them a reliable day, give them a sense of success and winning. What I think people, and I'm talking about more to the front line, what they want is, can you just remove my surprises on a daily basis?

Basis, yes.

Okay. Just make it so I have a reliable day and I have no surprises. You know, that's one of the things my wife needs and wants as a mom, that's what I want as a dad. No surprises.

Good luck with that, though.

I know that. But that's what we want, right?

Exactly. Yeah, I know.

So the human element is. That's what we want in life. Why do people consistently go to the same places? They like reliability.

Yes.

Okay. So at work, what we want to do is give them reliability in their day to day work. And what that does is allows them the freedom and the time and the mental capacity to work on new things and ideas. Yes, but how many times do they have no time to work on those new ideas? Because I have a surprise and I don't know if my suppliers can deliver on time or if I don't know if my engineering guys are going to give me my, my drawings correctly or I don't know this. So Lean is about removing the surprises to basically liberate people for them to be creative.

Yes.

And I think that's where the opportunity for Lean to be a huge selling point for companies to say, let me tell you why you should come work for us. Because we have these phenomenal lean systems that on a daily basis you're going to feel successful.

Yeah. Love it. So, Ray, why don't you think more organizations approach things this way? What are the main barriers?

I think the number one item that I'll put in there is called management systems, and I write about that in the book. And the management systems drives behaviors. For example, I'll give you an example of a management system. Management system is the questions your boss asks you. If the first question your boss asks you on a daily basis is, how are shipments today? Or are there any problems? Or hey, I noticed your numbers are off. It drives a certain behavior. I tell folks, hey, try this. Try asking a different question. What are the two or three improvements that your team implemented last week that came out of the prior week's daily huddle? So the management system drives behaviors and in there is decisions. What decisions are you not allowed to make? So, for example, you know, a frontline supervisor, a lot of times I work with them and they tell me, well, I can't do that. I'm like, well, has anybody told you you're not allowed to? Well, no. So unless they tell you, you cannot, I believe you can. So the organization, the management system drives those behaviors. And that's why I think a lot of organizational management systems are obsolete. They are a pull between lean. So imagine your arms, you know, going, you got left arm to one side and the right arm to the other. You got lean pulling you on one side. And you get your management system pulling you the other way. You want to have standard work and a good flow on a daily basis. But then you're being told, hey, make sure you hit your numbers at the end of the month to make sure we had our overhead absorption. So you've got this conflict. And what wins is not lean. What wins is management system stock price. Yeah, but the other piece of that is the managers are conditioned that that's how they behave.

Yes.

So we don't examine that piece of it. The management what questions measurements to me drive a lot of those behaviors. And unfortunately we have sometimes the wrong metrics. We also take really, really good technical people and promote them into poor supervisors. So then they become part of that, hey, let's make sure that we're great firefighters. Which also comes back to the management system. Who do we reward? I remember my first client used to get very, very frustrated that we were patting the purchasing people on the back for expediting parts. And he's like, they shouldn't be patted on the back. They should be punished for not doing a good job planning. But the people who do a great job planning, nobody looks at them. So then subconsciously, firefighters become great arsonists. They love being recognized for that. So I think that it doesn't become part of our behaviors.

So do you have any examples of where you've seen this sort of system work?

Well, definitely. We have a number of huge successes. One that comes to mind is a engineered products company here in Cincinnati called Vega, Vega of the Americas. And they actually put Lean in place probably about a decade ago and really did a great job of improving the flow of materials from Europe. Worked with the engineers and really did a nice job of getting a good flow of information from engineering customer service because it's a highly. They make equipment for measuring levels of liquids in tanks. So it's a highly engineered product, very, very technical and very unique applications. So the work that they did 10 years ago of putting in lean freed up their management team to start working on new products and new innovations. So it liberated the managers out of the day to day running in the business. But it also gave the fact that they got out of the day to day business. It actually gave the front line more autonomy. As you said earlier, it gave them more autonomy and ownership to the run. So it actually became a dual benefit. We had more efficiencies and we were focusing on new products and innovation. And that business, I think is about four to five times the size that it was 10 years ago. Now they're basically saying, okay, let's do it again. So they're in the process of revamping their management system another time and the management system should be refreshed based on how the business changes. Now they're going into other countries, they're adding new products. So now they're trying to say, okay, how do we reduce the number of layers that we have between us and our customers by 40% and how do we get to even though we're bigger, how do we get to even a flatter organization? And then they put together a grow team and they're working with another company called Start Something Bold and innovation and going after new industries. So they're doing a really good job of applying Run, Improved, Grow at every and they're taking this improvement effort into their sales area and they're taking lean into other areas outside of manufacturing. And it's so that it's become part of their DNA.

Love it. What was the name of that company again?

It's called Vega of the Americas.

Wow. Maybe I need to get them onto the podcast so maybe you can introduce me.

Absolutely, absolutely. I'd say Ron is one of the, you know, forward looking, excellent leaders that is also has a tremendous amount of humility, but he's also one who's always looking for the next. What's next, what's next, what's next. And that, and that typically is where we found to be our best clients is they're not broken. Yeah, they're not in a bad situation. It's like I mentioned earlier with Fidelity, you know, when I brought Run, Improve, Grow to Mike Bull at Fidelity who actually wrote the forward of my book, he was like, this is exactly what I always wanted, but I could not put my finger on it. So it's what you said earlier, it's really creating an organization that runs the business autonomously and allows a separate function to work on the future. So you're doing both. You've got the core business and the future. They're integrated, but it's really a kind of a system approach.

Can you tell us a little bit more about Run, Improve, Grow the book and why lean thinkers may want to check that out.

And I'll tell you, I've started up, invested in or purchased 19 different businesses. This book, without question, writing this book was the hardest professional thing I've ever done.

Okay.

Took me about five and a half years and I finished it, finished the majority of it during the downturn of the market around 2011. And I'll start with the last chapter. I'M going to do a covey start with the end in mind. So the last chapter talks about how do you become a talent magnet and how do you create an organization that has run so well that people just want to be part of it? And I remember some of the critics that I had when I wrote it. It's like, nobody wants to hire right now. They need sales. And I said, you know what we're dealing with with a little bit of downturn, but when this comes around a couple years, talent's going to be the key. So a lot of the book is really back to the. Back to the Simon Sinek Back to the why, why do we do run Improved grow? Why do we do lean? I believe it should be a strategy to get the best and brightest to come work at our company and feel successful. So the way that I have it is at the end of the book it talks about how do you become a talentmak? Prior to that, it says for you to be able to go out and hire people, you have to grow and you have to grow in relevant ways and not just in size, but in relevance. And so I talk about how do you create a grow team that creates bold strategies based on the future needs of the customers that your customers don't even know. So I don't believe in asking your customers, what do you want? I believe in going out there and, and really researching them and really understanding and observing them. It's like somebody asking us 20 years ago, what kind of mobile phone would you want and what would you want on it? We couldn't answer that. So it talks about how do companies go out and really understand their markets and create bold strategies. Well, prior to that, in the book I talk about, well, you can't have access to your customers to talk about the future if you don't do a good job of building consistency and reliability. So then I talk about how do you create bold promises and then deliver on them. So that means we want to be the fastest, we want to be the highest quality and reliability, we want to be on time, we want to be the best value. So how do you make bold promises and deliver on them? Today we actually have one of our clients in their lunchroom. They actually have in there, it says we make bold promises. And so earlier than that it really talks about how do you create a fearless front line that runs the business. So it really says how do you create a frontline team? And I've done these seminars where I've asked people, how many of you by raise of Hand have asked your folks, I want you to think outside the box. So they raised their hand. I said, okay, now keep your hands up if you want your folks to act outside the box. And it's funny how many hands go down. So what I talk about is, well, you're asking them to think outside the box, but do they believe that they can act? And creating a fearless culture says that we feel that we don't have to overthink it. If we think something should be done, we believe that we can do it. So removing fear from the organization is critical. And the person on a daily basis who delivers that message is the frontline supervisor. The frontline supervisor, Manufacturing or other businesses lead 80% of the workforce. I've done, you know, we've worked with 300 some odd companies and I've worked, talked to probably a thousand different leaders. Five percent of your workforce are frontline supervisors. They lead 80% of the workforce. If those 5% do not believe that and they themselves do not feel fearless and empowered, then it's not going to come through. And I can give you an example of Brian Penzone at Lakeshore up in Columbus, Ohio. He actually went to his leadership and said, we want you guys to challenge us with even harder work. When he finally got his operation running so well that he can lead and manage five groups instead of just one, look out months instead of hours or days, the supervisor went to the president and said, bring us harder projects and harder work. Be bolder with your strategies. When a supervisor can do that, you know, you've got a really good culture. So the book Talks walks you through the roadmap of how do you create a fearless front line? How do you create a fearless culture? How do you transfer that momentum outside of manufacturing into other departments? How do you upgrade your management system? And then how do you start working on the new bold strategies and then become a talent magnet?

Alright, run, improve, grow. And we'll go ahead and link to that book over in the show notes. So everybody should go and check that out. You can find the show notes@gembapodcast.com 79 okay Ray, well let's go ahead and transition now into the reflection section. And the first question I have is related to respect for people. You know, we spend a lot of time and lean talking about continuous improvement, which are the tools, the things we do. But respect for people can be a bit more difficult to define. So what does respect for people mean to you?

Respect to me is looking at each person's uniqueness and accepting them for who they are rather than who they're not. I've got three daughters, I got an 11 year old and twin nine year olds and the twins are identical twins in terms of looks but they're polar, polar personalities. My oldest is a phenomenal creative person. She is going to be a writer, a film producer, just total creative. My middle one is very structured. She would be a phenomenal lean practitioner, quality engineer, accountant, judge, pilot, police officer, anything that requires rules and structures. She's awesome. Where the youngest is going to be a risk taker, adventurous, she loves people being happy, she loves harmony. So she would be great in sales and hr. So respect to me is really just accepting each person and putting them in roles where they're going to be successful and not judging them for who they're not. The other thing is I think a lot, and it's funny you bring up respect because I think that's the source of a lot of conflict. And I think that if we really understand what causes disrespect, which is comparisons at times when people are compared but it's really just getting to know who they really are and what makes them tick and what's their motivations, that to me is what. It's super powerful as leaders and I don't believe there's a how you can separate lean with respect because they connect together. I think you have to connect the leadership with the lean and you know, that's the kind of people I look to hire at definity is they have to understand how to treat people with respect.

Yeah. What's the best advice you've ever received?

Best advice? I always go back to my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Mann. He was a phenomenal, phenomenal teacher. And I'm a little biased toward teachers because my dad was a high school math teacher and Mr. Man allowed us to debate with him and he allowed us to disagree and argue on our grades with him. So imagine that a fifth grade teacher allowing the kids to debate with him and he said, remember, I'm not exactly sure how it went but basically just because third, they're adults doesn't mean that they're right. But when you do disagree with them, do it with respect. And it's funny you bring up respect because he made sure that if you didn't agree with him, he also taught you how to bring up your point and do it in a respectful way. But his point was just because they're adults doesn't mean that they're right. And so he kind of got me to start asking a lot of questions like, well, kind of. Why don't accept it just because somebody said it. So that made me probably a hard person to lead in companies. I remember my boss at Johnson and Johnson told me that I was unmanageable because I would not just accept things. So I think Mr. Man did a nice job of getting me to understand that.

Yeah. All right. Do you have a personal productivity habit others might benefit from?

You know, my best productivity habit revolves around email. I think email is one of the worst misused tools we have. It's a phenomenal tool, but it's misused and it's too easy to feel a sense of success by just blowing through email. So one of the things that I do with my phones and on my computer is I have to go out. I never have any emails pushed to me. So I basically manually sync my emails periodically through the day when I'm ready to have them. Years ago, we had voicemail systems. I don't know if everybody in the companies have them, but I would check the voicemail maybe three times in the day, once when I got to work, once after lunch, and once before the end of the day. Why not email the same way? Because right now we respond and we condition people that we are going to respond to emails whenever they send them, and that really sucks up a lot of thinking time. So that's probably my biggest productivity tool that has helped me tremendously.

Got it. Now, is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become better at practicing continuous improvement?

You know, for me, when I look at the system of Lean, the one area that I really want to get better on and develop is around product marketing. I know that that may sound weird when it comes to Lean, but I think that if we can understand how product marketing functions happen, we can influence and design the demand planning process, the manufacturing process, the supply process, and work with them. So really understand product marketing. And because a lot of the decisions on the product itself, the design, the components, the way that the features functions, the way it's packaged, positioned in the marketplace, I think lock in a lot of lean systems. So I would say that's probably the big one. I'd say probably second to that is probably demand planning algorithms. How do you really understand demand patterns and cyclicality and how do you adjust the manufacturing operation? How do you adjust a labor or production plant based on those demand patterns?

All right, well, Ray, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I know you're busy and I really appreciate you taking time to visit with Us. So let's wrap the show up with you, maybe sharing some final words of wisdom and then why don't you tell folks how they can come connect with you?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think when I talk about run improve, go, if there's one thing that I ask people to leave a session that I speak about is this. Our job is to simplify the run for our front line. That's our job as leaders. And let's build the run system around our top performers. Imagine if you built a system around your top 10%, how simple that business will be. You know, Lean is about eliminating waste, but the next level is simplification. You know, we should be trying to simplify their job and their work to make them feel successful. And too often we it's easier to add things than remove them. So why don't we look at the work and say how do we truly simplify the work and design it around our top 10%? If we do that, the rest of the management system and the rest of the organization becomes so clear and so simple, it's scary. So I think that's the biggest thing that I tell folks is design your business and your systems around your top 10% and see what it looks like. And you'll be amazed of how that liberates managers from the day to day activities and allows them to focus on the future and growth. The ways that they can connect with me, they can go to dfinitypartners.com they can go to runimprovegrow.com and if they happen to be in town for the AME, we're have a booth there. We're going to have the Fearless Frontline Awards. And we're happy to have you guys after you do your social hour, we'd love to have you bring a group down. We're going to have a group there as well.

Oh, so we're competing now? Is that what it is? Is that what you're trying to say?

I think we're actually going to to be complimentary because I think you're going to be done. You're going to have some people who it sounds like they're going to be well in the stimuli and then we're going to be able. So if there's a way for us to work together, I believe in collaboration.

You get everybody to ours and then we'll put them on a bus and we'll send them over yours. How's that?

I am going to make that a point of bring up the group. So hopefully everything. But if it doesn't happen, then I'm sure. Sure we'll work together in the future.

Exactly.

All right, thank you so much for the time, Ron. And you guys are doing a great job there as well.

Thank you. All right, Ray, you take care, and we'll see you in Cincinnati.

Sounds good. Thank you, Ron.

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 GembaCademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos, free of charge at GembaAcademy.com.